Tucker Carlson is capable of only two facial expressions. One is a deeply furrowed brow that narrows his eyes to a point at which they almost disappear, not dissimilar to the face a child makes when they are angry, or lost, or both. He uses this expression when he is describing the point of view of someone with whom he disagrees. The other is a wide-eyed look of pleading which sends his eyebrows at least an inch in the other direction. It is an expression meant to portray logic and reason, of why-do-you-hate-America indignity. He uses it chiefly when describing his own views and solutions to the problems facing the country.

All of this is to say that if eyes are windows to the soul, Carlsons spirit is black and white. He is a binary man whose whole career has been defined by his opposition to, and his apparent hatred of, other people and ideas. And at a time when America is more polarised than ever, he is having a moment.

Tucker Carlson Tonight, his daily show on Fox News, became the highest-rated programme of all cable news over the last quarter, with an average audience of 4.3 million viewers. His voice bounces off the walls in the White House residence each evening, where the president is an avid watcher. Republican strategists have encouraged him to mount his own run for the most powerful office in the world.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

The upcoming election has a real possibility of making Trump a one-term president, and conservatives are already looking for a vessel to keep Trumpism alive. Could Tucker Carlson, a man whose fortunes have risen in tandem with Trumps, outlast him?

*****

Carlsons breakout television role was not so different to what he does today. In the early 2000s, he played the voice of the right on CNNs Crossfire, a show that pitched liberals against conservatives in gladiatorial nightly debates. The format first aired in the 1980s and was revived when Carlson was brought in to do battle with alternating hosts from the left, Paul Begala and James Carville.

The show was emblematic of the growing trend in cable news at the time to chase ratings by setting up fights between their guests it was Punch and Judy punditry. It worked for a while, but viewers soon grew tired of it. The issue came to a head in an infamous appearance on the show in October 2005 by Jon Stewart, who took Begala and Carlson to task for their performative and partisan on-air fights, accusing them of hurting America.

Youre doing theatre, when you should be doing debate, he told them, to applause from Crossfires own audience. Here is what I wanted to tell you guys: stop. You have a responsibility to the public discourse, and you fail miserably.

That show was seen as a turning point. When it was cancelled three months later, Jonathan Klein, then-president of CNN, said he sympathised with Stewarts arguments.

Carlson was 35 when the show was canned. The Stewart dressing down was described by one YouTube commenter as Carlsons villain origin story, perhaps in recognition of the transformation he undertook over the next few years.

Following a three-year stint at MSNBC, during which his show was plagued by low ratings, Carlson co-founded the Daily Caller, a news website pitched as the conservative answer to Huffington Post.

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It was during his time as editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller that Carlson began to draw accusations of having sympathy for nationalist and white supremacist ideas. It would become a common theme in his career from here on out: Carlson would always deny harbouring these views himself, but would continually find himself in the company of people who did.

His association with the nationalist fringe became more pronounced with Donald Trumps ascendancy to the presidency. In 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Centre a non-profit that monitors the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists wrote that the Daily Caller has a white nationalist problem.

Throughout the 2016 election and since, the Daily Caller has not only published the work of white nationalists, but some of its writers have routinely whitewashed the Alt-Right, while one editor there is an associate of key Alt-Right figures, the report said.

The Daily Callers embrace of white nationalists reflects the resurgence of the nationalist right, ethno and otherwise, represented by President Trump. Trumps campaign and Electoral College victory electrified the radical right and pulled the Overton Window further in their direction, it went on.

Carlson was still involved with the Daily Caller when he had his debut on the Fox News show that he still hosts today. Introducing the first episode on November 14, 2016, Carlson said he wanted to challenge people on their power, pierce pomposity, crush smugness.

And yet, he promptly started going after the party and associated establishment figures that had just lost power in a general election, along with the media, the deep state, and anyone but the most powerful man in the most powerful office in the world.

Like the Daily Caller, one of the shows primary themes was white grievance, a theme that continued to win him fans among white nationalists.

Will Carless, a journalist who covers extremism for the investigative site Reveal, co-authored an investigation into Carlsons influence on and relationship with the alt-right and white supremacists online. The 2018 report found widespread support for Carlson on websites and forums associated with hate speech.

Tucker Carlson claims senator who lost both legs in Iraq hates America

As our reporting showed, Tucker Carlson, more than any other major news personality, has been instrumental in bringing fringe ideas to the mainstream, Carless told The Independent.

Hes revered for that in some of the most vile corners of the internet, where racists and other extremists see him as their useful idiot, someone with huge reach who seems ever-willing to flirt with their hateful ideas.

Carlsons stock response to accusations of sympathy for white supremacists is indignation. Fox News did not provide comment when approached by The Independent.

Im not responsible for your views or the views of any other human being Im responsible for mine, he told Reveal in response to its investigation. Youre trying, quite transparently, to smear me with the views of people I have nothing to do with.

But the racism and the bigotry is not always so far detached. This month, his top writer, Blake Neff, was revealed by CNN to have been posting racist and sexist comments to an online forum for years.

CNN wrote that there has at times also been overlap between some material he posted or saw on the forum and Carlsons show. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and President Jay Wallace condemned horrific racist, misogynistic and homophobic behaviour.

Tucker Carlson Tonight is not so different to Crossfire, in that each night Carlson attempts to tear down a liberal position. But instead of debating another person, he argues against the most bad-faith interpretation of his opponents ideas.

In the early days of the show, he was fond of entertaining a theory that Trumps election was a blow to the corrupt elite, but that it still lurked in the background ready to rob hard-working middle-class Americans of their victory. This framing allowed the wealthy, privately educated heir to a large fortune (Carlsons stepmother is an heiress to the Swanson frozen food empire), avid supporter of the most powerful man in the world, to portray himself as an anti-establishment figure. In those shows he acted as a kind of anger translator for the syntactically challenged president. He would mock outraged reactions from the left to Trumps abuses of power.

The dog-whistle politics of Carlsons show has been a constant. But the 51-year-old father-of-four has grown increasingly fond of accusing those with whom he disagrees of hating America.

A recent segment on Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic senator from Illinois and a former US Army lieutenant colonel who lost both of her legs in Iraq, was a classic example.

Carlson took issue with a suggestion by Duckworth, whose name has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Joe Biden, that there should be a national dialogue over the removal of statues dedicated to historical figures with links to slavery, such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Its long been considered out of bounds to question a persons patriotism, said Carlson. Its a very strong charge, and we try not ever to make it. But in the face of all of this, the conclusion cant be avoided. These people actually hate America. Theres no longer a question about that.

If eyes are windows to the soul, Tucker Carlsons is black and white

The attack prompted Biden campaign spokesperson TJ Ducklo to respond. Tucker Carlson and his colleagues who traffic in hate speech masquerading as journalism are accomplices to Donald Trumps perverse mission to use division and bitterness to tear this country apart, he said.

Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim woman elected to Congress, also hates America, according to Carlson. She is a regular target on the show.

Virtually every public statement she makes accuses Americans of bigotry and racism, he said in a recent tirade. This is an immoral country, she says. She has undisguised contempt for the United States and for its people.

He also regularly attacks Omars fellow freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on one occasion calling her a moron and nasty, excoriating her for allegedly casting herself as a revolutionary while having had a comfortable upbringing.

There is indeed an aura of hate around Carlson, but most of it seems to emanate from him. It is directed towards anyone who doesnt look and think like Tucker Carlson, a side of America that is perhaps unfamiliar to him, but which is no less American.

Its a sign of the extremes to which Carlson has fallen that he attributes these unpatriotic feelings to Elmo, the beloved Sesame Street character. Carlson took issue with a segment on the show in which the puppet addressed the Black Lives Matter protests and tried to explain the issues behind them to his young audience.

Its a childrens show. Got that, Bobby?, Carlson said. America is a very bad place and its your fault, so no matter what happens, no matter what they do to you when you grow up, you have no right to complain.

Thats the message and it starts very young, he added, with his brow furrowed.

*****

A national reckoning over racial injustice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd might have been a humbling moment for Carlson. As the demonstrations spread to every corner of the country, polls showed a shift in support for the Black Lives Matter movement among the public.

At the same time, the public appeared to sour on President Trump and his handling of the protests, as he responded with calls to dominate the streets and displayed little enthusiasm to address the underlying causes of the anger.

Interestingly, however, this is where Carlson and the presidents fortunes differed. While Trumps ratings plummeted, Carlson seemed to find his voice. It might seem counterintuitive for a man who claimed racism doesnt exist in America to gain viewers at a time when the country seemed to be waking up to the idea that it very much did, but Carlson attracted even more viewers by pushing fears over the protests.

Carlsons show was dominated by images of fire and brimstone. The protesters were criminal mobs, the demonstrations were a form of tyranny and a threat to every American, according to Carlson.

Even as the protests calmed down and violence gave way to largely peaceful mass demonstrations, Carlsons backdrop remained on fire. It was us versus them.

On television, hour by hour, we watch these people criminal mobs destroy what the rest of us have built, he said during one nightly monologue.

People like this dont bother to work. They dont volunteer or pay taxes to help other people. They live for themselves. They do exactly what they feel like doing. They say exactly what they feel like saying.

There was little attempt to understand the grievances of the protesters, preferring instead to stoke the fears of his viewers by telling them they were in danger.

This may be a lot of things, this moment were living through, but it is definitely not about black lives, Carlson said. And remember that when they come for you and at this rate, they will.

It was Tucker Carlson at this angriest and most unhinged, and the ratings went up.

The president, who came to power by stoking us-and-them divisions, often takes his cues from Carlsons show. He watches it regularly and often models the White House agenda based on the shows topics.

A group of moms stands between federal agents and demonstrators during a Portland protest

REUTERS

A group of moms link arms to stand between federal officers and demonstrators in Portland. The call themselves the 'Wall of Moms'

REUTERS

Teal Lindseth reacts to tear gas after federal officers dispersed protesters from in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

Federal officers disperse protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, during demonstrations in favour of racial justice and against militarised federal officers making arrests

AP

A protester flies an American flag while walking through tear gas fired by federal officers during a protest in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

A federal officer pepper sprays a protester in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

Federal police disperse a crowd of about a thousand protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty

Federal officers use crowd control munitions to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

AP

A protester reacts to milk poured on his eyes after being tear gassed during a protest against racial inequality in Portland, Oregon

REUTERS

A Black Lives Matter protester carries an American flag as teargas fills the air outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

AP

Orion Crabb holds his head back while a medic rinses tear gas from his eyes after federal officers dispersed a crowd of about 1,000 protesters from in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

Federal officers use crowd control munitions to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon

AP

A protester kicks in temporary boarding at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

AP

A protester holds his hands in the air while walking past a group of federal officers during a protest in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters hold their phones aloft during a demonstration in Portland, Oregon, where militarised federal police have been arresting demonstrators

AP

Federal police walk through tear gas while dispersing a crowd of about a thousand protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

KaCe Freeman chants during a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

AP

A group of moms stands between federal agents and demonstrators during a Portland protest

REUTERS

A group of moms link arms to stand between federal officers and demonstrators in Portland. The call themselves the 'Wall of Moms'

REUTERS

Teal Lindseth reacts to tear gas after federal officers dispersed protesters from in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

Federal officers disperse protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, during demonstrations in favour of racial justice and against militarised federal officers making arrests

AP

A protester flies an American flag while walking through tear gas fired by federal officers during a protest in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

Getty Images

A federal officer pepper sprays a protester in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in Portland, Oregon

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Does Tucker Carlson hate America? - The Independent

The L.A.-based painter Canyon Castator uses a metaphor to frame his artistic practice: If the gallery is a dinner party, he says, hell be there on time and ready to start all the awkward conversations. The 30-year-old artists allegories for climate change, alt-right media, and American consumption come steeped in sardonic humor and alluring color. Filling his paintings with a bizarre assortment of characters that pull from TV cartoons, arcade games, and the streets of the American youth, Castator playfully serves incisive social commentary while inviting viewers to dig in.

Despite the cynicism of his work, Castator resists the clich of the miserable, self-isolating artist. Since setting up a studio in downtown L.A. five years ago, he has converted several floors in the building into working spaces for fellow artists, offering a readymade community to young practitioners navigating the citys sprawling landscape and disparate creative scenes. Recently, hes partnered with Carl Kostyl Gallery and the arts organization ILYSM to establish a month-long artist residency in one of his open studios.

With works now on view in two exhibitions that reflect on the socio-political impact of COVID-19We Used to Gather at Library Street Collective in Detroit and Riders of the Red Horse at The Pit in L.A.Castator appears to be hitting his stride within the dystopian climate of our current moment.We called up Castator at his studio to talk about art, the apocalypse, and opening up uncomfortable conversations.

ELLA HUZENIS: So many of your works depict these crowded arrangements of human and animal characters. How do you conceive of these scenes? And, has your perception of these kinds of gatherings changed at all in this era of social distancing?

CANYON CASTATOR: I guess the work to me is constructed a little differently. A lot of the charactersyes, they are people or cartoons or animals and theyre closely compactedbut theyre all kinds of symbolic icons for this relationship of ideas, jumping from one to another. You know, one character might represent this idea to me, another character represents another thing. So Ive kind of dehumanized them in a way, so that they can, in my mind, represent these themes and play off one another. In the early work, I was making paintings that had my friends and using old photographs but now, really, these characters are just stand-ins for ideas. And sometimes, its a clear concept, a clear idea, and other times, one thing contradicts another.

HUZENIS: Similarly, in the past, youve painted figures without backgrounds as well.

CASTATOR: That was really about de-contextualizing images from their environment and throwing them into a blender and kind of making them stand for themselves. If you have an entire scene, a deer looks like it belongs in a picture with nature in the backgroundits a setting, it just feels like it belongsbut then, if you remove that and you pair it up against something else and neither element really belongs or has an environment to react to, then those images are forced to react to one another, and I think you get more out of each one of those images that way. For a while, I was just completely de-contextualizing things in the space. It also allowed me to operate without gravity, or the rules that are inherently dictated by creating a space.

I loved the way that those paintings looked, but if you have the brightest color that you can possibly imagine, straight out of the tube onto an all-white canvas, that white is still going to eat it up. It makes it so hard to play colors off one another if theres always this very, very overpowering white background that they have to sit in. So I think on a conceptual level, I really liked the thinking behind it, but Ive been adding backgrounds and colors lately. I can sacrifice the de-contextualization of the image.

HUZENIS: Tell me about your most recent set of works, Real Tap Water, Karaoke Bar, and Sunset. Were all these made in quarantine?

CASTATOR: Real Tap Water was supposed to be shown at the Dallas Art Fair, which was canceled due to the pandemic. I kind of knew that that was going to happen while I was making it and therein didnt finish it in time for the deadline because the deadline meant nothing. I was afforded more breathing time because of that.

The other two paintings were both made during quarantine for Library Street Collective in Detroit. Both will be included in a catalogue and an exhibition called We Used to Gather. Id been speaking with them about what was going on and the kind of work I was making and things that I was missing, and they were telling me about the whole concept behind the show. I love, love, loveto an embarrassing degreekaraoke.

HUZENIS: Do you have a go-to karaoke song?

CASTATOR: Yeah, theres an Eminem song that I do, Without Me. My friends still, to this day, give me shit about it because its embarrassing how well I can do this one Eminem song. But I grew up in a trailer in the middle of nowherehe was a success story.

HUZENIS: The scenes in these works all share a kind of apocalyptic atmosphere. What is it about the apocalypse that interests you?

CASTATOR: Well, I think Ive kind of created this practice for myself where I can touch on incredibly serious and morbid or repulsive themes because Im balancing that out with humor, satire, these cartoon-like elements. I try to find a way to make these themes palatable because I think its difficult and unsettling for certain people. If a gallery is a dinner party, and somebody brings something that people dont want to talk about in a very direct manner, its awkward silence and then, oh we dont talk about that in this household. But if you do it in this kind of sardonic, playful approach, you can trick people into talking or thinking about things that they would typically find uncomfortable, which I think is a major part of my practice that I enjoy.

I had this show in New York and the concept behind the show was the fragile mind of someone who becomes attracted to conspiracy theories and throws themself into the conspiracy theory culture thats available on the internet. Its obviously all tongue-in-cheek, but Im able to take the temperature in real time of some of the ugliest sides of American history. Finding these back-door ways to open up uncomfortable conversations is really something I look for in the work.

HUZENIS: Tell me about your artist community in L.A. and the spaces youve been converting into artist studios.

CASTATOR: When I moved here, I didnt have the intention to move to Los Angeles. I came out for a two-week apartment switch with a friend. He was living in L.A., I was living in New York, and we just switched. By the time the two weeks was up, both of us had decided that we wanted to move, so we just both stayed. It was the most effortless, unplanned, and breathless effort to move to Los Angeles.

I had a room in a very large loft building with other people downtown, and I spent about a month-and-a-half just walking into buildings, looking for a studio that was close enough that I could commute on foot daily. I walked into dozens of these old industrial buildings, asking if they were open to renting to an artist. Then I just happened to be walking past this place one day and saw them drop a For Lease sign on the window, and I went up.

My dad is also an artist and lives in Los Angeleshe moved here six months before I did, coincidentally. He was also looking for a studio, and we found this beautiful, open space in this building. Eventually we developed this relationship with the landlord where he got over his hesitation about renting to artists. I think he still refers to it as this artsy-fartsy stuff that he doesnt understand, but we pay rent on time, so he loves that.

As businesses have moved out of the building, weve just jumped on the lease for each floor and have taken them over and built out artist spaces. Now its nothing but artists. Its amazing. Its completely transformed the feeling of the building.

HUZENIS: How do you determine who rents?

CASTATOR: Other artists have recommended friends. Thats how the majority of the spaces have been filled. But between myself and my father, weve kind of just wanted serious artists only. No vanity-project-bullshit. No DJs.

My friends outside of that little microcosm arent artists. I spend a lot of time with friends I grew up with in Colorado that ended up here or people that work and operate and exist in completely different worlds.

HUZENIS: What was it like growing up in a college town like Boulder?

CASTATOR: Well, I was born in Texas and lived with my mom until I was 10, out in the middle of the country, outside of Austin. Then I moved to go live with my dad at like 10 or 11. It was a completely different experience because we lived in the center of Boulderall of a sudden, I lived in a city. Well, maybe Boulders a city, maybe its a town, Im not sure. Its a big little place.

Boulder was a weird place to grow up because its a bubble. I think in the time that I lived there the school was voted number one party college in America. Im six-foot-three and have been since I was a freshman in high school, so it was amazing because if I was walking home and walked past some college party, I would just walk in and start bullshitting about how bad whatever program was that I was in and drinking. I was skateboarding a lot at the time, so all of my friends were older than me from the skate park, and they would invite me. I never had an eyebrow raised at the fact that I was like 15. It was a very quintessential college experience, without ever having to go to class.

HUZENIS: Were you a rebellious kid?

CASTATOR: I was just kind of a prick. I went to an alternative high school that I was able to not attend all the time because I was traveling for skateboarding. I rode for a small company and we would make videos and I would go on filming trips and compete in and out of state. Its a great way to grow up because the skate park is this amazing melting pot of different people and freaks and people that have grown up but still remain interested in this thing from their childhood. Just across the board, I was exposed to quite a bit.

HUZENIS: Both of your parents are artists, but aside from their influence, youre mostly self-taught.

CASTATOR: I didnt go to art school. I started painting around the end of high school and I moved to New York. No one in my high school in Boulder was ever like, Oh yeah, you should apply to Cooper Union, its free if you get in. I would have conversations with people at these institutions, and theyd be like, Well you might think you might want to be an X character now but well find some way that you can apply your talents to X, Y and Z. I was just so turned off.

So I moved to New York for exposure and to be around this thing that I didnt know anything about, but obviously realized was important. And, I guess, to cultivate taste, which I had none of before I moved there. I started working at galleries as an art handler and [with the recommendation of a close mentor, New Museum Deputy Director Karen Wong] the New Museum hired me on their installation staff. Then, by a weird chain of events, through Karen Wong, I was introduced to the artist Tal R, who invited me to be a guest student of his during his last semesters at the Kunstakademie in Dsseldorf.

As far as institutional education, thats the most that Ive got under my belt, and it was incredibly beneficial. It was 100 euro a semester as a registration fee. Thats it. And there were no real classes. It was just studio all the time. That has completely informed the way that I built up the studios here in the building. Very few of them have four walls. Theyre mostly just divided spaces with this kind of open-air, community feeling to them.

HUZENIS: What was the experience of working as an art handler at the New Museum like?

CASTATOR: My life opened up quite a bit because you do these very intensive installations and de-installations that were maybe two or three weeks worth of work where youd rack up a lot of hours and overtime. And then I had a month, basically, to be in studio. That was the best moment for me in New Yorkwork-life balance.

I helped install theChris Ofili retrospective, and just to be that close to those paintings and see them in person for the first time was amazing. I somehow wound up at a hotpot dinner with Chris and Karen Wong. Hes hands-down the coolest artist Ive ever met, maybe the coolest person Ive ever met. The guy literally just breathes in air, exhales cool. One of the coolest experiences from my last exhibition in New York was when [New Museum director]Lisa Phillipscame and did a walkthrough. It was a very surreal experience because I used to get checks with her name on the back.

HUZENIS: You mentioned that you still share your studio with your father. Tell me about your working dynamic.

CASTATOR: Were very similar, but we dont keep kind of the same hours. The space is divided; he has his zone and I have my zone. I feel like a lot of people couldnt spend that amount of time around their parents, but hes probably the most informed person I could talk to about my work, as hes seen it develop over the course of my entire life.

HUZENIS: Whats the most valuable lesson youve learned from him?

CASTATOR: I think the greatest thing hes instilled in me is how to remain excited about your work, to celebrate each tiny victory. Not everything is going to be amazing, so when you do have these moments where you feel like youve had some level of success, you have to bask in them and celebrate them. Hes been an artist my entire life, and hes remained excited about his practice and eager to make things. Thats just a really good way to live. Ultimately, being an artist is very much about living a life worth reflecting into objects or images. I think its important to be happy. I dont really get off on the whole miserable, brooding thing. Thats another reason why I like being in LA. Everyones happy and fucking tanned all the time. The sun is shining every single day. How are you going to be this suicidal masochist if you live here?

See the rest here:

Artist Canyon Castator Is Making The Apocalypse Palatable - Interview

In mid-June, on a sunny late afternoon, dozens of protesters led by Indigenous and youth organizers gathered in front of the Albuquerque Museum at the feet of La Jornada, a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oate. They called for the statues removal, saying it was a monument to a genocidal colonial history. On the outer banks of the crowd, at least six militiamen from the New Mexico Civil Guard, a civilian militia, flanked the protest in a tight semicircle, some of them shouldering assault rifles.

When some of the protesters began taking a pickax and chain to the statue, a man in a blue shirt later identified as Steven Baca Jr. sprayed a cloud of Mace at them. Then he threw a woman to the ground. Her head hit the pavement with an audible smack, and Baca fled, with protesters trailing him, shouting at him to leave. Baca turned to face a man in jeans and a black hoodie, who tackled him. A bystanders video caught the scuffle that followed: Baca drew a handgun from his waistband and fired four shots. Theres a man down, someone shouted. Theres a man down!

Protesters call for the removal of the statue of Juan de Oate as an armed militia member looks on outside the Albuquerque Museum on June 15 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Throughout the hours-long demonstration, Albuquerque police had waited behind the museum with an armored car, some watching from museum security cameras. Meanwhile, members of the so-called Civil Guard, dressed in Army uniforms and helmets, tried to keep protesters from the statue. They were there, they claimed, to keep peace and enforce the law. After Baca shot the protester three times, the militia surrounded him, protecting him as he sat in the street. The nearby police took four minutes to arrive. The protester, Scott Williams, was eventually taken to the hospital in critical condition.

The shooting at La Jornada, Spanish for the expedition, occurred several weeks after the beginning of #BlackLivesMatter protests in Albuquerque. At those demonstrations, too, a disquieting camaraderie between official police and another militia, the New Mexico Patriots, emerged. Were all here for the same cause, man, an Albuquerque police officer said to a group of body-armored gym-goers and militiamen before a #BLM protest, according to a video taken by a militia member and shared online. Were here to help.

The incidents are in line with the deeper history of the Albuquerque polices behavior during the civil rights movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. High Country News unearthed archival documents from the Center for Southwest Research illuminating a history of police cooperation and cross-pollination with radical right-wing and vigilante groups in New Mexico. According to police and FBI reports, newspaper clippings and the testimony of activists, that cooperation included surveillance, harassment and misinformation campaigns against social justice movements by informants and radical provocateurs.

While community members and activists have long complained about excessive use of force and surveillance at protests and in minority neighborhoods, these documents clearly show that New Mexico law enforcement tolerates and at times embraces white vigilantism. And despite the Albuquerque Police Departments statement condemning the New Mexico Civil Guard after the shooting, militiamen with known white-power affiliations continue to patrol protests with the silent encouragement of law enforcement.

Theres this overlap between the people who populate militias and populate police departments.

THEY ALL TRAVEL in the same circles, said David Correia, associate professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. Correia has done extensive research on the cross-pollination that occurred between police, radical right ideology and vigilantism during the civil rights movement. These are all former police or former military, or former guardsman or current guardsman. Theres this overlap between the people who populate militias and populate police departments.

Police brutality and political repression flourished in Albuquerque throughout the civil rights movement. A 1974 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights documented an array of alleged abuses and found that police in Albuquerque and across the state used unconstitutional and at times violent, even deadly, methods when policing minority neighborhoods and political dissidents, including the Chicano groups Alianza Federal de Mercedes and the Black Berets.

The militant Black Berets regularly faced death threats from the local Minutemen militia as well as misinformation campaigns organized by the anti-communist John Birch Society. According to Beret leader Richard Moore, the group sent an informant to the militias meetings in the late-1960s and created a roster of those who attended, including multiple police departments comprising the secretive Metro Squad, a police intelligence unit. Many members of the right-wing Minute Men [sic] organization were from the sheriffs, the state police, and the Albuquerque Police departments. So making a distinction between the two sometimes wasnt easy, said Moore in 2001. The group gave out the list at a press conference in Santa Fe, including to a New Mexico attorney general, hoping for an investigation. It never came.

In 1968 and 1969, a spate of bombings struck some of Alianza leader Reies Lpez Tijerinas relatives. In May 1968, William Tiny Fellion a paid assassin, demolitions expert and John Birch Society member, as reported by state police just two months earlier blew off his left hand planting a bomb at Alianzas headquarters in Espaola, New Mexico. According to a New Mexico State Police report, Fellion told an officer that he would kill Tijerina and his followers free of charge because he has no use for that type of people. After Fellions botched bombing, tips came in that led both Alianza and the FBI Albuquerque Field Office to believe local police were behind the bombings.

ON THE CLOUDY EVENING of June 1, two weeks before the Baca shooting, members of the New Mexico Patriots met with at least six Albuquerque Police Department officers outside the Jackson Wink Mixed Martial Arts Academy in downtown Albuquerque, before a #BLM protest. If you guys would see something, gives us a holler, an Albuquerque officer told the militia. But take care of each other and, the main thing, take care of the people in Albuquerque.

Jon Jones, an MMA fighter, explained that their goal was to stop protester shenanigans without brandishing their guns.

A lot of these (protesters), they just move from one block to the next block to the next block, an Albuquerque police officer responded. So even just being two blocks away because police are moving there from one side that would be helpful, just right there.

Militia groups regularly coordinate with police.

Emily Gorcenski, a researcher and founder of First Vigil, a group that tracks far-right violence, says that there is an extensive history of armed vigilante groups collaborating with police. Militia groups regularly coordinate with police, she wrote, over Twitter. From Portland to Charlottesville, weve seen armed paramilitaries working directly with police against protesters over and over.

During the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017, police circulated a false white supremacist rumor that antifa planned to inject police with fentanyl. That same year, at a Portland alt-right rally, American Freedom Keepers militiamen helped police arrest counter-protesters, allegedly at police request.

In New Mexico, the NM Patriots and the Civil Guard both claim to coordinate with local police, reported the Albuquerque Journal, while the Civil Guard also says it has current and former law enforcement and military within its ranks.

Members of the New Mexico Civil Guard militia group are apprehended after a protester was shot in Albuquerque in June.

THE ALBUQUERQUE POLICE DEPARTMENT did not respond to requests for comment or to questions regarding its officers potential membership within citizen militias,including the New Mexico Civil Guard a group which APD Chief Michael Geier proposed bestowing hate group designation after the Baca shooting. In an email, a spokesperson from New Mexico State Police said their Investigations Bureau is actively investigating possible NMSP membership within militia ranks.

The Albuquerque Police Department has released few details about the shooting at La Jornada. The departments criminal complaint reported that Steven Baca Jr. acted in a manner in which to protect the statue from the protesters. It failed to mention his violent provocation, and described the crowd ejecting Baca from the scene as maliciously in pursuit of him. Steven was similarly recorded, leaving the area of the statue toward the street interacting with the crowd, the report read. However, his specific type of interaction with the crowd is unknown at this time.

Bacas charge for the shooting was dropped, leaving multiple other battery charges. He was an Albuquerque City Council candidate in 2019 and is the son of former Bernalillo County sheriffs deputy, according to Albuquerque Journal.

Given the departments history, Correia said, It's not clear where the line is between police and right-wing fascist militia in New Mexico.

We know it led to violence directed specifically at individual activists (and) should make us suspicious of the way APD operates today when it confronts social movements like (#BlackLivesMatter), Correia said. Because they've done this before, we shouldn't be surprised if they're still doing it.

After the June 1 meeting between Jon Jones, NM Patriots and the police, thebearded militiaman filming the meeting turned to address the camera directly. Were going to be out patrolling in a little bit,he said. See you guys out there.

Kalen Goodluckis a contributing editor atHigh Country News.Email himatkalengood[emailprotected]g or submit aletter to the editor.

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New Mexico's thin blurred line (The thin blurred line) High Country News Know the West - High Country News

If RSAs attendees were even able to score an Airbnb, it was second to the tech companies whod, for years, packed employees into expensive rentals that once were on the normal-person market. Companies whose fat salaries also pushed rents out of reach for locals. Both had ensured a steady flow of evictions among artists, writers, musicians, teachers, sex workers, people of color, the elderly, and restaurant workers. Or they became part of San Franciscos thousands upon thousands of homeless (like the grocery cashiers and pizza servers I knew living in cars).

This was February, yet I was already too aware of COVID-19s contagion to brave going to the RSA conference. My best friend, a hacker visiting for conference-related meetings, felt the same way. Instead, we went to Haight-Ashbury, essentially where I grew up, loving the gritty contrast of Haight street punks posing for Japanese tourists under the Ben and Jerrys sign on that iconic corner of colorful Victorians.

At Japantowns mall, she cautioned me to keep my phone clean with sterile wipes; while there we saw a man in a mask have a coughing fit that drove people away from him like dish soap dripped into a pan of oily water. She avoided RSA too, but caught covid when she got home. And in the following five months the world would come to a screeching halt and over half a million would be dead with no end in sight.

RSA Conference 2020 added 40,000 faces to our downtown of glittering towers and their corporate tenants technological promises of a better future, but that was a nominal blur for San Francisco tourism. We barely felt it. Yet the conference is a crystalline moment for me. I can pinpoint the day I began self-quarantining by the publication of my February 28 Bad Password column, Coronavirus bursts Big Techs bubble.

That column, like many of the Bad Passwords weve done here over the past five years, reads now like something that was published from the future, recognizing we were at the tipping point of the pandemic and cautioning the violent contractions to come.

Steve Nesius / Reuters

Like the rest of the world right now, Bad Password is going on a pandemic-induced hiatus. Shining a light on techs monsters and hypocrites has been our jam for five years, and theres been plenty of greed, data dealing, security chicanery, discrimination, misinformation, and recklessness to go around. When Bad Password started, infosec slang was finally becoming everyday terminology. No one understood yet what a skid was (most still dont) but I no longer had to explain what a dox was.

Right out of the starting gate we surfaced a National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) report that showed Facebook is the epicenter of abuse for over 23 million women -- with the sites real names policy at the heart of it. At the time, Facebook was targeting LGBTQ users and outing their names. After that column, I was real named by Facebook, who stalled their response to my attorneys, after which my account remained in Facebook jail for one reason or another. I dont miss it.

Bad Passwords next big fun-time was when Hacking Team, arguably a spyware-for-dictators company, got royally, publicly pwned. In How spyware peddler Hacking Team was publicly dismantled we examined what the hack revealed: a country-by-country rundown of who Hacking Team had done deadly deeds for. I cross-referenced Hacking Teams client work with human rights reports on digital abuses by date and place, then worked with a team to make an interactive map it was later used as a case study.

When Oculus Rift founder (and alt-right shitpost financier extraordinaire), Palmer Luckey, pivoted into pitching LIDAR tech to hunt immigrants, we took it apart brick by brick. Luckeys response made my colleagues envious by decrying it as fake news. Then there was the time we documented Elon Musks PR lackeys calling Pulitzer-prize winning investigative outlet Reveal an extremist organization for reporting on Tesla factory safety issues. And when that Bad Password was directly cited to Musk on Twitter, he famously responded with a call for a journalist rating system. Elon really wanted to leave me a bad Yelp review.

When FOSTA passed, we explained why this was a horrible defining moment for every internet user, and not just for sex workers. When revisiting it, we found it left a very real body count behind and that particular Bad Password is cited in academic articles on the topic. This heralded the great internet war on sex were suffering through, and with a sobering post-FOSTA terror we explained exactly how sex censorship killed the internet we love.

We did what Bad Password loves to do, which is show you the hypocrisy of a techie thing, shine a humorous spotlight on the greedy opportunists, and find the human thread to engender empathy (while seeking a strong positive to pull us forward when we can). I entered an alternative 1995 universe to take Rudy Giuliani, cybersecurity expert, down several notches. While others took the WikiLeaks bait hook, line, and sinker, we diagrammed exactly how Julian Assange was actually pushing propaganda. We hated Ajit Pai before it was cool. We also got to do one of the most thorough and painfully humorous takedowns of Ubers toxic techbro culture you may ever read.

Bad Password also reveled in exposing the lies, dirty dealings, and anti-sex crusades of all those alleged anti trafficking orgs that love policing sex on the internet (and off). We also did one of the most referenced investigations on PayPal, Square and big bankings war on the sex industry.

Where the past meets the present, before the disastrous 2016 election, we said yes, you should absolutely be worried about election hacking. And Bad Password did something many had hoped someone, somewhere would do: We drew a direct line between IBM working with Nazi Germany and tech companies working directly with ICE.

And yeah. Its still all Facebooks fault. I mean, theyve raised what, at least an entire generation on firmly defended Holocaust denial. So here we are.

Locked indoors during a global pandemic, re-reading the Bad Password about Apps and gadgets for the Blade Runner future we didnt ask for. Watching Georgias election-hacking Brian Kemp rescind all local mask mandates while masks have become mandatory in France (and other countries). Wondering if we can somehow hack our way out of all this.

Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

It has been five months since RSA Conference 2020. I feel like I emerged from my apartment to a San Francisco brutally ransacked by tech charlatans and venture capital Bioshock villains.

The tech buses are gone. The unbelievable traffic of Ubers, Lyfts, and Teslas has vanished. The Facebook, Google, Salesforce, and massive tech properties are vacant. The Twitter building is empty and could remain that way permanently. Tech employees have moved out in droves: one in ten city renters have broken their leases and moved out; others, like a house of Google employees who live near me, plan to be gone by the end of the year.

Vultures linger to see if we have anything left to bleed. Like Grubhub ignoring delivery fee caps and hiking fees on coronavirus-crippled restaurants yet again and Airbnb asking guests to donate money to their hosts.

Airbnbs across the city have no bookings. Zero. The (reviled) one on my block has nothing booked through at least 2021. It sits dark with the power shut off. I can see its back garden has turned brown, dry and dead. At least a third of the apartments and houses around me are vacant; Ive watched them move out.

Airbnbs linger on Craiglist as fully furnished apartments where they sit and gradually become discounted, then include all utilities and wifi, then offer the first month free. SF Craigslist, where rents are absolutely schizophrenic, veering drunkenly from 1990 levels ($1400/month) to tech boom heights ($5K and up). The Craigslist free section overflows with designer furniture and high-end household items. More often, these spoils of the pandemic get dumped on the sidewalk in haste.

I can tell you for a fact that we wont miss those people with more money than sense, whose businesses were so plainly naive and fraudulent, whose lack of empathy was a trait cherished as aspirational, and whose solidarity was predicated on the exclusion, use, and degradation of others. San Francisco had become a performative playground for sheltered college grads who wrote racist algorithms, who enforced "real names" policies on our LGBTQ communities, and whose companies leeched hate and deadly misinformation into our collective bloodstreams until eventually the world as we know it stopped.

Yet techs impact on my hometown, its invasive services no one wanted and human-unfriendly gig economy (as well as its economic crushing of the poor and disenfranchised), now combined with COVID-19 has delivered a one-two punch bringing us to our knees.

Where once we had localized areas of homeless encampments, they now sprawl block after block. Think Skid Row, but evenly distributed. Upper Haight, the neighborhood of my youth, looks like a post-nuclear blast zone town in Fallout 4, or Fallout 76. Five businesses on Haight closed permanently in the last week alone. Some blocks have two or three businesses remaining. Everything is boarded up. So many people have gone missing recently that my Haight Street friends and I wonder if its coronavirus, or a serial killer.

The smell of Ben and Jerrys ice cream is gone. For now.

bluejayphoto via Getty Images

While Big Tech had been unconcerned with the outcomes of their privacy abuses, held a blatant disregard for user security, and were unwilling to believe their tools would be used to livestream massacres, Bad Password tirelessly documented, raised the alarm, and worked its hardest to shine a light into the dark. Our attitude here has never been You should have known better. Instead, it has been the powerful people making decisions for the rest of us knew better, but did nothing.

Our plan is for Bad Password to return. Our hope is that when we do, the tech forces that got us into much of this mess (and certainly made it worse) will decide that enough people have died to justify excising anti-science propaganda, banning hate groups and Holocaust denial, and will own up to their catastrophic failures at being responsible, ethical, just, and compassionate participants in the world around them.

The days ahead feel dark now, but whatever comes next is in our hands. Let the unhappy techies keep their internet of shit garbage while we repurpose their devices and designs to reveal monsters, to document abuses that should never be repeated, and to take care of one another.

Where we go from here, is forward.

More here:

How it feels to survive Silicon Valley and a pandemic - Engadget

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit's world changed when his oldest son was born five and a half years ago.

As he became a father, he realized he now had a bigger role to play in shaping the world, both for his family and his son. And he did something he once thought impossible: He gave up meat.

While Ben-Shitrit has changed what he put on his plate, he told Food Dive his tastes have not changed. He still truly wants to eat a good steak. Which is why, on the day his second son was born two and a half years ago, he quit his job as a product manager in the 3D printing world. Soon after that, he founded a company to solve that problem: creating a plant-based steak that can be made with a 3D printer.

His company, Israel-based Redefine Meat, has done just that. Last month, the company announced the Alt-Steak a plant-based product with the texture, flavor and appearance of the real thing would be tested at some high-end restaurants in Israel, Germany and Switzerland later this year. The company plans to make the Alt-Steak widely available at restaurants in Europe starting in 2021, and in the U.S. at the end of 2021.

Redefine Meat has worked with butchers, chefs, food technologists and flavorings company Givaudan to create a product that replicates the look, taste,texture and cooking behavior of steak. The company says there are more than 70 sensorial parameters incorporated into the product.The company's proprietary 3D printers take three plant-based ingredient blends known as Alt-Muscle, Alt-Fat and Alt-Blood and put them together to create a multi-layered plant-based steak.

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit

Permission granted by Redefine Meat

The company, which raised $6 million in a funding round last year, has been working to disrupt the meat industry since its inception.

Not only is Ben-Shitritready to eat the steak his company produces, but he also thinks consumers want it. In the years since the company started, he said he's seen a big shift in consumer attitudes toward meat alternatives and the technology to produce them.

"I think that now people understand, with climate change and ... COVID-19, suddenly ...the notion of 3D-printed meat makes sense to them,"Ben-Shitrittold Food Dive."When we started, which was not so long ago, it didn't make sense. People told me, 'So why do we need meat not coming from an animal? Why would somebody want something that looks like meat?'And today, it's more, 'How efficient is it going to be? Is it healthy or not? Is it affordable or not?'"

Just a few years ago, 3D printing was seen as the next big thing in food technology. Trendwatchers said it could be used to amp up personalization of food, creating customized snacks, confections and decorations.

Fast-forwarding to today, the technology exists, but is not in wide use. Trends have moved more toward functional ingredients, alternatives to products that come from animals, and enhancing taste and texture.

The vast potential of 3D printing in the food world is part of what drew Ben-Shitrit to creating plant-based steaks.

In order to be successful, he said, the use of 3D printing "needs to be specific to a problem to solve a problem. In 3D printing of meat, you can solve problems. Thinking of snacks, OK. For chocolate, there's not really a problem to solve."

3D printing is really the only way to create a plant-based steak, he said. A conventional meat steak has different textures and juiciness, as well as fats that marble through different cuts. And even if a flavorist can perfectly replicate the taste of a steak,the appearance, texture and experience of eating steak are necessary for anything to serve as a convincing substitute.

Several other plant-based food companies that don't use 3D printing have tackled steak substitutes, and in some parts of the world, there are many choices on the market. European consumers can find many options at the grocery store, including one from Dutch manufacturer Viveraand one from Harmless Foods,a store brand at U.K. vegan grocer GreenBay. In the United States, both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have said they were working on developing steaks.

"When we started, which was not so long ago, it didn't make sense. People told me, 'So why do we need meat not coming from an animal? Why would somebody want something that looks like meat?' And today, it's more, 'How efficient is it going to be? Is it healthy or not? Is it affordable or not?"

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit

Founder and CEO, Redefine Meat

The printer that Redefine Meat has designed uses the three plant-based ingredients that mimic different components of steak and can print in dots tinier than a millimeter. They are used to create a multi-layered matrix that reproduces a conventional steak. Ben-Shitrit said the printer has made a single piece of meat that weighs about five pounds. It can produce a steak in about an hour, he said.

It took a lot of time and R&D to get to a product that is good and replicates a steak, mostly because eating is the most complex human behavior, Ben-Shitrit said. There is texture, scent, flavor and sight involved. The company put together high-tech machines and algorithms to try to determine the perfect balance of all of those aspects. A couple of months ago, Ben-Shitrit said, they found something that worked.

"It's an ongoing cycle of optimizingso many parameters," he said."This is where we use our technology. ...The computer, the algorithm, canlive with far greater complexity than what human minds can live with. If we just [designed meat ourselves], it would take usmillions of years."

Many food scientists, as well as conventional meat butchers, were vital in the development of the Alt-Steak. Redefine Meat's scientific team dug deep into the chemistry of what makes steak. The company has then found plant proteins that form the same amino acids, creating close to the same profile of the meat itself, fatty acids and blood in the red meat.

The ingredients to make up Alt-Steak components are relatively common plant-based ones. The main ingredients are soy and pea proteins, coconut fat and sunflower oil, natural colors including beetroot, water and natural flavors. Ben-Shitrit said that despite the chemistry deep dive used to create the ingredients, the company has not formed any novel ingredients mainly so there are no impediments in getting to market, he said. New ingredients take time to be cleared by regulators.

Optional Caption

Permission granted by Redefine Meat

The Alt-Steak is not only plant-based, but it is also healthier than its conventional alternative, Ben-Shitrit said. It has no cholesterol, less fat, less saturated fat and more fiber. And, he said, there's no potential dangers of being exposed to antibiotics or meat-related contamination.

However, he said, most people who eat steak are not doing so to be healthier. They're doing it out of enjoyment.

"But I think it is a healthy option," he said.

So far, Ben-Shitrit said his company has had a good relationship with conventional meat. Redefine Meat is working with several conventional butchers, both to get cuts, textures and blends right and for wisdom on how to make the best products. Ben-Shitrit said the company and the idea of plant-based steak has so far been embraced by the butchers.

"They don'tsee it as a threat.They see an opportunity there, and they also think that this will happen,"Ben-Shitrit said.

The ingredients and technology for an Alt-Steak give it a market price comparable to a high quality animal-based steak, and Ben-Shitrit says that's where he's aiming to price it. Unlike CPG plant-based meat, which producers are working to get to price parity with the conventional version to drive consumer adoption, the Alt-Steak targets consumers who are willing to pay for a dining experience, Ben-Shitrit said. He also is focusing on product quality rather than production economy, which drives a premium price.

Perfecting the Alt-Steak and growing it in foodservice is Redefine Meat's sole focus right now. Ben-Shitrit said the company is not going to be working on any other kind of meat in the near future. He said the company experimented with tuna filets in the past, but they haven't done extensive work on that product. Any other products are a couple of years away.

"What we're trying to achieve is to have a product in the market and to have a big presence to have an impact, and also to support the company," he said."And we believe that focusing on beef now makes a lot of sense. It's so big, it's so challenging. The opportunity's so big. So why confuse ourselves?"

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Redefine Meat wants to disrupt meat industry with 3D printed Alt-Steak - Food Dive

Joe Rogan is one of the biggest figures in podcasting. His show, The Joe Rogan Experience, consists of lengthy, often rambling interviews with a diverse array of athletes, academics, actors, entrepreneurs, and more. But you could also say that Rogan has really built his audience through selecting guests who bring their own notoriety to his show, or whose specialist subject is the kind of hot-button issue that will inevitably gain him some streams.

These interviews can take many forms, like getting infamous tech boss Elon Musk to smoke weed on camera, instantly immortalizing the moment in meme form. Or, more esoterically, speaking with pilots who claim to have had close encounters with UFOs. A lot of the time it's harmless (if slightly deranged) fun. And then there are the episodes which, by virtue of Rogan's massive online reach, lend a veneer of credibility to some truly dangerous prejudices.

Take the recent episode with guest Abigail Shrier. During Shrier's conversation with Rogan, in which she promoted her book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, Shrier invalidated the lived experience of trans and nonbinary kids and teens, and made numerous dangerous, entirely unsound false equivalencies. She compared transitioning among teenagers to historic adolescent phenomena such as eating disorders, self-harm, and (bafflingly) the occult, calling this age group "the same population that gets involved in cutting, demonic possession, witchcraft, anorexia, bulimia."

She even described wanting to transition as a "contagion" with the potential to infect other children with the same ideas, drawing yet more scientifically baseless parallels with eating disorders. "Anorexics, they are always really careful when they put them together," she said. "They have to be on hospital wards because we know that it will cause it to spread."

Michael S. SchwartzGetty Images

Plenty of savvy producers book guests like this to stir up controversy and accumulate outrage-clicks from their viewers. But was Rogan sitting back as a host and letting Shrier dig her own grave? Nope. He appeared to reaffirm this notion that being trans is something a child can be persuaded into through peer pressure, referring to time spent with "wacky friends" at school. He also mocked Caitlyn Jenner, and described LGBTQ+ activists as people who aren't "looking at all sides of it."

"They have this agenda," he said, "and this agenda is very ideologically driven that anyone who even thinks they might be trans should be trans, are trans, and the more trans people the better. The more kids that transition the better."

For all their talk of self-harm and other issues that teenagers can experience, neither Rogan nor Shrier openly acknowledged that more than half of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide last year. And that wasn't due to "wacky friends" somehow transmitting gender dysphoria; it was due to the prolific, ubiquitous messaging in media that tells them there is something wrong with them, and how they feel doesn't matter.

By alluding to a pro-trans lobby with that aforementioned agenda, Rogan positioned himself and Shrier as marginalized voices in their own righta technique commonly employed by high-profile pundits who believe "cancel culture" is somehow coming for their right to free speech. But Rogan has 283 million active users across his social channels. Similarly, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling tweets her transphobic half-thoughts out to 14.3 million followersmany of whom are the very kids she is attacking. They have huge platforms, and they are using them to actively, willfully spread misinformation and propaganda that will cause very real harm.

"As long as these tactics keep making him money ... he doesn't care who he hurts along the way."

Of course, you could always make the argument that Rogan doesn't actually believe any of the views that he encourages his guests to espouse on his show. Maybe he is just a cultural weathervane, conducting interviews on whatever outrageous topic is making headlines at the time. In one episode, he might endorse Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, or provide a safe space for openly gay strongman Rob Kearney to share his story. But in others, he is guilty of humoring (if not downright enabling) homophobic jokes and alt-right conspiracy theories from his guests.

Which is worse? To expose such bigotry to your millions of subscribers because you genuinely endorse it? Or to have so little conviction that you will knowingly platform hate speech about some of the most vulnerable, persecuted young people in our society to benefit your own career? You be the judge. Both are appalling in their own way.

Rogan likes to put on a furrowed brow and even, pensive voice; the hallmarks of a reasonable man with an inquisitive mind. Someone who is "just asking questions" or "wants to start a debate." In reality, he's an intellectual shock jock who amplifies the voices of conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, homophobes, and transphobes in the name of interesting conversation. And it's becoming increasingly clear that as long as these tactics keep making him money and acquiring him followers, he doesn't care who he hurts along the way.

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Joe Rogan Is Spreading Transphobic Hate Speech and It's Putting Lives in Danger - Men's Health

Toys. Video games. Portable music players. Kawaii characters. Anime. When it comes to modern pop culture, weve all turned Japanese.

Thats the contention of the new book Pure Invention: How Japans Pop Culture Conquered the World by Matt Alt. Its an exploration of how key Japanese exports have influenced the wider worlds perception of the country and infused the world with a bit of Japaneseness at the same time.

Pure Invention: How Japans Pop Culture Conquered the World, by Matt Alt368 pagesCROWN

It occurred to me that Japan is a country that has a lot of cultural pull, but there had never been a book that tried to qualify it, says Alt, a native of the Washington, D.C. area (and occasional contributor to The Japan Times) who has lived in Tokyo since 2003.

To go about qualifying Japans pop cultural pull, Alt turned to some of the countrys most iconic inventions, from the Walkman to the Game Boy to Hello Kitty. To warrant inclusion, each had to satisfy what Alt calls the three ins: inescapable, influential and inessential. In other words, no Toyota cars or instant ramen: The products had to be something you wanted, not needed.

Taken as a whole, says Alt, these products have transformed the way we dream, and given us a template for a cool factor that wasnt made in America.

As Japan emerged from World War II, the first indication this devastated country might one day become a pop culture behemoth came in the form of cheap toy jeeps designed by a toymaker named Matsuzo Kosuge. Though made using cast-off beer cans and food tins, the jeeps nonetheless featured the precise and detailed design for which Japan would soon become famous and, due to a shortage of toys in the U.S., became a hit both in Japan and stateside. Pure Invention positions Kosuges story and his postwar success as the template for what was to come.

Kosuges jeep practically sums up U.S.-Japan relations in a single product, says Alt. Before too long, Japan found itself at the forefront of pop culture globalization. In 1946, Japan was already exporting toy jeeps to its former sworn enemy; by 1993, then-first lady Hillary Clinton would be spotted killing time on Air Force One with Nintendos first portable console, the Game Boy and playing Tetris, a game created in the former USSR.

Other Japanese gadgets chronicled in Alts book include the Nintendo Entertainment System, the karaoke machine and the Tamagotchi. But Pure Invention is about more than hardware: it also traces the more ephemeral parts of Japanese pop culture that have made it big worldwide, including anime, manga, emoji, kawaii culture, the post-modern literature of writers like Haruki Murakami and even the way we communicate online. The final chapter of the book traces the strange, tangled connections between 2channel, an anonymous online bulletin board for Japanese otaku (nerds), to 4chan, an English-language copycat, to Gamergate, the so-called alt-right and finally the rise of Donald Trump.

Author Matt Alt | MATT SCHLEY

I never imagined Id be seeing Trump supporters use anime imagery in support of their cause, says Alt. But anime and Japanese tastes have become the lingua franca of the internet.

In another sense, however, Alt posits that its no surprise the U.S. and other Western countries have embraced much of Japans cultural shorthand. After all, theyre experiencing many of the same economic and societal issues Japan already has. Or, as Alt puts it: Japan got to the future a little early.

The Japanese stock market had an epic crash in the 90s, which led to decades of economic stagnation, says Alt. Young people were casting about for new ways to define how they would live their lives in a world where all the promises of the Boomer generation had been wiped out. Were now seeing the same thing happen in the U.S. in the post-recession era, and many of the tools young people use to deal with it come from Japan.

Alt even sees echoes of such Japanese tools in this years biggest news stories: the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. In the latter, as with earlier movements like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, organization leadership is diffused and gatherings are planned on social media something users of 2channel had mastered back in the early 2000s (albeit with very different goals).

As for COVID-19 and the worldwide lockdowns, many of those stuck inside have turned to the tools of the otaku, says Alt, including Japanese video games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which sold over 13 million units worldwide within six weeks of its release in March.

It points to the Japanization of our tastes, says Alt. A big part of our fantasy DNA is now made in Japan. Its fundamentally changed the way we spend time and identify ourselves.

Matt Alt discusses Pure Invention in the latest episode of The Japan Times Deep Dive podcast. Listen now at jtimes.jp/podcast.

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'Pure Invention': How Japan's pop culture became the 'lingua franca' of the internet - The Japan Times