Roger Stone equated his nearly-finished legal fight with the epic Battle of Thermopylae in his latest Instagram post, a legend that has taken hold in the imaginations and self-styling of the young and right-wing.

The meme, a badly photoshopped image from the movie 300, features Judge Amy Berman Jackson as the Persian King Xerxes saying: All we require is that you bear false witness.

Stones head, pasted atop Spartan King Leonidas sword-wielding body, retorts: See, thats going to be a problem

Stones flourishes on the post are familiar. He has favored the bearing false witness line all throughout his trial proceedings to brandish his loyalty to President Donald Trump, who has retweeted speculation about a pardon for his friend and former adviser.

I flatly refused to bear false witness against the president who I have known and respected for over 40 years, Stone wrote. The caption was trailed by a flock of hashtags reading #rogerstonedidnothingwrong and #saverogerstone.

The publicity-loving Stone has used his Instagram to paint Jackson as his enemy before, once posting a picture of her with crosshairs shortly after she imposed a partial gag order on him.

Stone apologized, but that post led the judge to ban Stone from speaking publicly about the case. She eventually barred him from using his Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts due to his vigorous posting. Many of his posts featured articles from right-wing media sites that included conspiracy theories denigrating the wide spectrum of Stones political enemies. Jackson found that the posts were a violation of his gag order.

Once again I am wrestling with behavior that has more to do with middle school than a court of law, Jackson said in court then. The goal has been to draw maximum attention.

As campy as Stones latest meme is, the legend of the Battle ofThermopylae with the badly outnumbered Spartans making a last, heroic stand against the sprawling forces of the Persian army is a favorite among gun rights activists, Tea Partiers and white nationalists alike.

The phrase Molon Labe or come and get them, Leonidas supposed defiant response when Xerxes demanded that the Spartans surrender their weapons, has been appropriated by gun enthusiasts who believe their political foes want to take their firearms. It has also become a catchall for Tea Party types who oppose intervention from the federal government.

A video posted on YouTube by user Aryan Wisdom in 2016 and since viewed over 5 million times has clips of 300 edited over with audio of President Donald Trumps speeches, with images of various political figures overlaid onto the characters in the movie. In this rendition, Trump, obviously, is the brave Leonidas. Playing the evil Xerxes is George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and constant rightwing boogeyman.

The Stone saga, which has spanned years, most recently saw Jackson okaying a delay in Stones surrender date until July 14. She had ordered him to stay under home confinement until then.

This will address the defendants stated medical concerns during the current increase of reported cases in Florida, and Broward County in particular, and it will respect and protect the health of other inmates who share defendants anxiety over the potential introduction and spread of the virus at this now-unaffected facility, Jackson said.

She sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison back in February, after a jury convicted him of making false statements, witness tampering and obstructing Congress Russia probe.

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Originally posted here:

Stone Shares Meme With Roots In Alt-Right To Attack Judge - TPM

Last month, I retweeted a comment by a contrarian writer who questioned whether racism was to blame for the spread of the coronavirus, and a close (white) friend responded to me with a well-meaning text:

I feel it is my calling to help end the oppression people of color like you face in our society, he wrote. I understand I have white privilege. And that has consequences.

His message left me feeling bewildered. What oppression had I actually faced? And what privilege had society conferred upon my friend because of his white skin?

Growing up as a Sikh, turbaned boy in the majority-white environment of British Columbia, Canada, I was a constant target of bullying throughout my elementary school years. On bus rides home, I remember having to sit in the back where the older, cool kids hung out, and they used to jump up and slap the top part of my turban. I was consistently harassed with comments like Go back to where you came from and You dont belong here.

Upon immigrating from India when I was 4, my family suffered tremendous economic hardships and cultural challenges. My father drove a taxi at night and my mom worked many menial jobs as a cook, housecleaner, barista and motel cleaner. Its fair to say my family never had success handed to them on a silver platter. But more than a decade post-immigration, we have found our footing in Western society, with my dad making nearly six figures operating his own software company.

Rising from poverty to economic prosperity is a common narrative for immigrants from all backgrounds in the West. For example, after the communist takeover of Cuba in 1959, many refugees fled to America, leaving most of their wealth behind and having to start from the bottom. But by 1990, second-generation Cuban Americans were twice as likely to earn an annual salary of $50,000 than non-Hispanic whites in the United States.

The notion of white privilege stems from the idea that white people have benefited in American history relative to people of color. And its true that the institution of slavery and the following decades of anti-black dehumanization has a continuing impact today. A major 2013 study from Brandeis University found that 32 percent of the wealth gap between whites and blacks can be attributed to inherited wealth and length of homeownership, two factors linked to institutionalized racism. Meanwhile, Harvard economist Roland Fryers much-publicized study on racial bias in policing found that cops are 53 percent more likely to use physical force on black civilians compared to whites (his study, however, found no anti-black bias in fatal police shootings).

Because of facts like these, an emerging definition of white privilege is now being widely circulated on social media: White privilege doesnt mean your life hasnt been hard. It just means your race isnt one of the things that make it harder.

And yet, this definition suffers from several shortcomings. For one, it ignores anti-Semitism the second leading cause of hate crimes in America, according to the FBI. In addition, the growing demonization of whiteness now means that white people are no longer immune to racism. I can think of several instances where friends and colleagues have been racially targeted for being white and holding contrarian but intellectually defensible positions such as we need to have generous, but reasonable limits on our immigration system or even I dont think racial minorities are systematically oppressed in Western society today.

And the concept of white privilege cant explain why several historically marginalized groups out-perform whites today. Take Japanese Americans, for example: For nearly four decades in the 20th century (1913 1952), this group was legally prevented from owning land and property in over a dozen American states. Moreover, 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. But by 1959, the income disparity between Japanese Americans and white Americans nearly vanished. Today, Japanese Americans outperform whites by large margins in income statistics, education outcomes, test scores and incarceration rates.

One could argue the successful stories of my family, Cuban Americans and Japanese Americans are cherry-picked cases. But whites are far from being the most dominantly successful group in Western society. A wealth of data collected in a longform Quillette analysis, shows overwhelming white underachievement relative to several minority groups among health outcomes, educational achievement, incarceration rates and economic success.

On the whole, whatever systemic racism exists appears to be incredibly ineffectual, or even nonexistent, given the multitude of groups who consistently eclipse whites.

According to median household income statistics from the US Census Bureau, several minority groups substantially out-earn whites. These groups include Pakistani Americans, Lebanese Americans, South African Americans, Filipino Americans, Sri Lankan Americans and Iranian Americans (in addition to several others). Indians, the group I belong to, are the highest-earning ethnic group the census keeps track of, with almost double the household median income of whites. In Canada, several minority groups also significantly out-earn whites, including South Asian Canadians, Arab Canadians and Japanese Canadians.

Interestingly, several black immigrant groups such as Nigerians, Barbadians, Ghanaians and Trinidadians & Tobagonians have a median household income well above the American average. Ghanian Americans, to take one example, earn more than several specific white groups such as Dutch Americans, French Americans, Polish Americans, British Americans and Russian Americans. Do Ghanaians have some kind of sub-Saharan African privilege?

Nigerian Americans, meanwhile, are one of the most educated groups in America, as one Rice University survey indicates. Though they make up less than 1 percent of the black population in America, nearly 25percent of the black student body at Harvard Business School in 2013 consisted of Nigerians. In post-bachelor education, 61 percent of Nigerian Americans over the age of 25 hold a graduate degree compared to only 32 percent for the US-born population.

These facts challenge the prevailing progressive notion that Americas institutions are built to universally favor whites and oppress minorities or blacks. On the whole, whatever systemic racism exists appears to be incredibly ineffectual, or even nonexistent, given the multitude of groups who consistently eclipse whites.

In fact, because whites are the majority in Canada and America, more white people live in poverty or are incarcerated than any other racial group in those countries. If you were to randomly pick an impoverished individual in America, you are exponentially more likely to pick a white person than a person of color, because of population differences. Today, 15.7 million white Americans (almost twice as many as black Americans) live in poverty. Given such facts, why would we deem all white people as privileged, even if whites have lower poverty rates compared to African Americans and Hispanics?

It should also be noted that suicide rates are disproportionately high among the white population. In 2018, whites had the highest suicide rate of 16.03 per 100,000. The New York Times has reported that whites are dying faster than they are being born in a majority of US states in large part due to high rates of substance abuse and suicide. In comparison, black Americans had a suicide rate less than half of whites (6.96) and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders had the lowest rate of 6.88 per 100,000. In this context, do blacks and Asians have some kind of unmerited privilege they must atone for?

If we look at health outcomes reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we find that African Americans are less likely than whites to die of several health conditions such as bladder cancer, leukemia, esophageal cancer, lung cancer, bladder cancer, brain cancer and skin cancer, to take a few arbitrary examples. But no one in their right mind would protest any health privilege enjoyed by African Americans in these instances. And while blacks have the highest COVID-19 death rate, more than double that of whites, the group with the lowest death rate from the coronavirus is actually Asian Americans. Given the crisis of the pandemic, perhaps it would be laudable for Asians like me to confess their Asian privilege on social media because otherwise, as the Twitter hashtag goes, #SilenceisViolence.

Overall, I can think of several privileges I have benefited from that are arguably more significant than white privilege. Roughly speaking my family has more wealth than many in my social circle, including my friend who texted me to atone for his white privilege. This would be a form of class privilege.

I was also afforded the privilege of taking a full one-year break from education to pursue my passion for creative writing and social commentary. Had I been in a different economic circumstance, I wouldve been forced to immediately attend college or spend a substantial portion of my time working in my gap year. Comparatively, my friend who texted me went to university right away and tenaciously worked part-time on the weekends to afford his tuition. Perhaps it would be more appropriate for me to confess economic privilege to him. I was also afforded the privilege of my parents strongly encouraging me to read books and learn new vocabulary words at a very young age, which has undoubtedly aided me in my freelance journalism career. This kind of literacy privilege has, in part, given me the tremendous opportunity to write essays for top publications like The Globe and Mail and The Grammy Awards, despite being just 19 years of age.

Writing this essay, I also have the immense privilege of being a person of color. I receive plentiful backlash for defending the positions I hold, but had I been a white person, I would have easily been demonized as alt-right or even a white supremacist, despite having average libertarian or classical liberal views on politics.

Fundamentally, privileges of all kinds exist: able-bodiedness, wealth, education, moral values, facial symmetry, tallness (or in other contexts, shortness), health, stamina, safety, economic mobility, and importantly, living in a free, diverse society. Rather than whiteness, an exponentially more predictive privilege in life is growing up with two parents.

This is why 41 percent of children born to single mothers grow up in poverty whereas only 8 percent of children living in married-couple families are impoverished. In a racial context, the poverty rate among two-parent black families is only 7.5 percent, compared to 11 percent among whites as a whole and 22 percent among whites in single-parent homes. In fact, since 1994 the poverty rate among married black Americans has been consistently lower than the white poverty rate. Furthermore, an illustrative study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that when controlling for family structure, the black-white poverty gap is reduced by over 70 percent.

Privileges of all kinds exist: able-bodiedness, wealth, education, facial symmetry, health, stamina, safety, economic mobility, and importantly, living in a free, diverse society.

When surveying the tremendous complexity of racial disparities, its simply wrong to presuppose all whites are privileged, let alone racist. Using the despicable actions of a few to judge an entire group of people is never sound reasoning. Just because some white people (who were kids) weaponized their whiteness and harassed me for the color of my skin, doesnt mean I view all white people as racist or privileged.

None of the statistics in this piece discount racial prejudice, unequal opportunities or the privilege of not experiencing racism. They simply point to the glaring fallacies of the all-consuming white-privilege narrative which has degraded our national discourse into identity politics and racial tribalism. White people are now one-dimensionally seen as an undifferentiated mass of privilege and wealth whereas minorities are seen as powerless victims oppressed by a society ingrained with white supremacy and racial bigotry.

Ultimately, I dont want to be treated as Rav, the brown-skinned boy or Rav, the underprivileged minority. I want to be treated as an individual with a unique set of circumstances and characteristics. To cohere as a multiethnic, pluralistic society this standard must be applied to all colors and ethnicities. But until we collectively repudiate race-based stereotyping and fallacious, inflammatory generalizations, we shift the focus away from real inequity and discrimination and never truly make progress.

Rav Arora is a 19-year-old writer based in Vancouver, Canada, who specializes in topics of race, music, literature and culture. His writing has also been featured in The Globe and Mail and City Journal.

Here is the original post:

The fallacy of white privilege and how it's corroding society - New York Post

When we look back on 2020, the emblematic photos of the year will undoubtedly include images of crowds gathered around toppled, spray-painted statues. The indictment of these monuments has focused the countrys attention on how the history of slavery in the United States casts a long shadow that stretches all the way from the Middle Passage and Jim Crow to the protracted record of police violence against African Americans that led to the Black Lives Matter movement in the first place.

The histories of slavery and racism in the United States have never been more pertinent. This is also the case for the comparatively understudied history of race as a concept, without which it is impossible to understand how Europeans and their colonial descendants in the United States engineered the most complete and enduring dehumanization of a people in history.

The logic behind the history of race initially seems deceivingly clear: to justify the forced deportation of 400,000 Black Africans to North America (and another eleven million to other parts of the Americas between 1525 and 1866), Europeans and their American heirs found it necessary to debase and revile their captives. Yet todays racism is more than a malignant byproduct of the 19th-century American plantation system; it also grew out of an elaborate and supposedly scientific European conception of the human species that began during the Enlightenment.

By the early decades of the 18th century, the Continents savants and natural philosophers no longer automatically looked to the Bible to explain the story of the human species. Intent on finding physical explanations for natural phenomena, naturalists employed more empirical methods to solve one of the biggest anthropological questions of the day: why did people from Africa, millions of whom were already toiling in European plantations, look different from white Europeans?

By the 1740s, one could find a dozen or more purportedly scientific explanations. Some claimed that blackness came from vapors emanating from the skin; others claimed that black skin was passed on from generation to generation via the power of the maternal imagination or from darkened sperm; still others asserted that the heat or the air of the Torrid Zone darkened the humors and stained the skin.

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The dominant anthropological concept that emerged around 1750 was called degeneration, which can be understood as the precise opposite of what we now know to be true about humankinds origins. In contrast to the model that shows how evolution and successive human migrations from the African continent account for humanitys many colors, degeneration theory maintained that there was an original and superior white race, and that this group of humans moved about the globe and mutated in different climates. These morphological and pigmentation changes were not seen as adaptations or the results of natural selection; they were explained as a perversion or deterioration of a higher archetype.

Medical practitioners stepped in to flesh out that vague narrative, creating the basis for the idea of what we now call race. Anatomists, in particular, dissected the bodies of supposedly degenerated Africans, and published numerous now-shocking articles on the supposed damage of living in a tropical climate: black brains, black bile, black sperm and even race-specific black lice.

The most bigoted of European physicians attributed specific organ-based liabilities to Black Africans, including indolence and diminished cognition. Not surprisingly, these falsehoods and the methods that produced them flourished in the United States: in 1851, Samuel A. Cartwright identified two diseases associated with Africans. The first was a mental illness he dubbed drapetomania, which caused slaves to run away. The second was dysaesthesia aethiopica, a type of lethargy that struck Africans who were not enslaved or overseen by whites. His cure: anointing them with oil, and applying a leather strap.

Europe also bequeathed Americans with the very category of race. By the 1770s, German figureheads including Emmanuel Kant and J.F. Blumenbachthe latter of whom coined the term Caucasian because he believed that the original prototype race originated in the Caucus Regionaffirmed that new biometric and anatomical discoveries justified the use of the modernistic word race to distinguish among human subspecies.

Racial classification schemes provided the most powerful framework for understanding the divide between white and Black. Some naturalists took this one step further, proposing that Africans actually formed a different species entirely. Predictably, this latter idea was adopted by some members of the proslavery lobby in the United States.

Progressive thinkers, abolitionists and, eventually, formerly enslaved people including the writer Olaudah Equiano began critiquing the roots and effects of racial prejudice as early as the 1770s. And yet, even as scientific research has confirmed just how wrong Enlightenment theories of race were, many of the most rearguard and unscientific European notions regarding race have remained deeply embedded in the American psyche, not to mention in the arsenal of the Alt Right. Indeed, the immigration policies of the Trump Administration, in insisting that immigrants from certain countries are less desirable than others, are effectively resurrecting centuries-old notions about the supposedly deterministic nature of race.

Racialized thinking, especially when weaponized by our politicians, must be repudiated at every turn. Part of an effective rebuttal to such malicious positions may come from extending our understanding of racism to include the anecdotal, spurious and pseudoscientific birth of these ideas centuries ago. This may ultimately be something that every American can agree on: wherever we come from, we are all the unfortunate heirs of a deadly and illegitimate science.

Historians perspectives on how the past informs the present

Andrew Curran is the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment and, more recently, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely. He is the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University.

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Facing America's History of Racism Requires Facing the Origins of 'Race' as a Concept - TIME

Leigh Tauss, an editor at the North Carolina alt-weekly INDY Week, was alone in the papers Raleigh office on the night of May 30 when the first brick crashed through a window. At first, I pretty much hid behind a water cooler, she says, chatting on the phone in late June. If you scroll back through my tweets, the whole thing is there.

INDY Week prides itself on providing progressive news, culture, and commentary for Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill; Tauss had spent that evening documenting local protests that mirrored other uprisings nationwide inspired by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis five days earlier. Shed returned to the office in part to wash the tear gas out of her eyes.

I hid in the basement for a while and ended up leaving with another reporter, she says. Shed heard strange voices in the office while waiting for her friend to show, but at that point, only a lamp and a water cooler had been stolen. But the next day, we found out that looters had smashed every window in the building, stolen my computer, set a couch on fire, and made the sprinkler system go off for four hours, Tauss says. The entire space was flooded, and it was a total loss. So I tweeted pictures of the vandalized office and all the shattered glass.

One of those tweets went viral, and raised the ire of those enraged by both the protests and any journalists reporting on those protests empathetically. So then, on top of the devastation of losing our office, on top of the trauma of having all of our reporters get tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets at these riots, we had the alt-right coming after us, Tauss says. Soon she was inundated with the most hateful, vile messages you can imagine. Which did not, of course, keep her from covering the very next nights protests, and the weeks of jarring and momentous eventsthe curfews, the often violent conflicts between protestors and law enforcement, the toppled Confederate monumentsthat followed.

Theres a certain personality type that goes for this job that kind of thrives on chaos, she says. Weirdly, I find it calming. It helps, of course, to believe deeply in what youre doing. My business getting smashed, or me getting tear-gassed or shot with rubber bullets, is just not as significant as the police violence happening against Black bodies routinely in this country. I really try to keep that my focus. Thats why were doing this right now.

Alt-weeklies, historically, thrive on chaos, even as that chaos usually poses an existential threat to them specifically. By mid-March, just a few weeks into widespread national shutdowns in response to COVID-19, the phrase total annihilation had emerged as the best way to describe the industrys outlook. This has, without a doubt, been the single worst week in the history of Americas alternative press, wrote Joshua Benton in a March 19 Nieman Journalism Lab piece already then tallying the layoffs, the suspensions of print issues, the impassioned calls for donations, the outright shutdowns. (Poynter has a comprehensive updated list surveying the carnage across all media.)

Local journalism overall has, of course, struggled mightily for years, if not decades, but this is a comically awful time to be a free, hyperlocal newspaper largely distributed in the same bars, clubs, and restaurants upon which it depends for advertising. Bonus points if the papers covering a region where the government response to COVID-19 has been especially inept. Like Texas. I told everyone from the beginning, says longtime Austin Chronicle music editor Raoul Hernandez. Im a journalist in a disaster area.

But the death of George Floyd after Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin put his knee on Floyds neck for nearly nine minutes, and the national outpouring of grief and anger that followed, is a story that historically progressive alt-weeklies were born to cover. The protests. The earnest activism. The reinvigorated focus on Black Lives Matter, and bail funds, and defunding the police, and any given citys Confederate monumentsall subjects these sorts of papers have explored vigorously for years. Thats why beloved Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger could offer vibrantly thorough and unabashedly personal insight into the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP), an activist occupation of a Seattle neighborhood that for weeks generated a wealth of misinformation, Media Twitter abstraction, and Trump-driven demagoguery.

It was just the sort of complex, delicate, constantly mutating storyCHOP was dismantled on July 1 after multiple reported shootingsbest handled by reporters who actually worked, and lived, in town. From what Ive been seeing from the national news outlets, especially more conservative ones, they tend to focus on things like theres a warlord whos also a SoundCloud rapper, and theres a bunch of crusty anarchists, says Stranger staff writer Jasmyne Keimig of the early CHOP discourse. And sometimes there is truth to it, but I think it mostly obscures the problems, and the things that people are actually talking about on the ground.

In Ohio, the online weekly Columbus Alivewith a staff consisting of two peoplegoes viral with the bizarre tale of a colorful school bus full of hippie circus performers accosted by a SWAT team during a downtown protest and refashioned, via right-leaning social media, into one of those dreaded Busloads of Antifa. (Marco Rubio tweeted about it, but sometimes juggling clubs are just juggling clubs, and an ax for firewood is just an ax for firewood.) Pittsburgh City Paper can both counter police narratives about the use of force at local protests and explain the ongoing controversy at the citys biggest daily, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which barred some of its own Black reporters from covering those protests due to bias. In Oregon, the Pulitzer Prizewinning Willamette Week can tap into a surge in calls for racial justice so far-reaching it triggered the Portland Stripper Strike.

And of course, in Minneapolis, the longtime alt-weekly City Pages can suddenly find itself standing at the epicenter of an international movement and poised to play a crucial role in leading it, even as prestigious out-of-town journalists parachuted into town seemingly by the thousands. I do think its been very interesting to see Minneapolis portrayed in national media, says City Pages editor-in-chief Emily Cassel. I mean, when in history has the world paid this much attention to the Twin Cities, right?

But the paperand the timeless alt-weekly format and ethoswas built for this fraught moment.

I dont think that all print media is guilty of printing verbatim what police tell them, but I think some of them are, and weve been writing about defunding the police for years, Cassel says. Weve been writing about Reclaim the Block and Black Visions Collective and these groups that are suddenly springing into consciousness here in the Twin Cities and nationallyweve been writing about their efforts for years now. These are things that we pay attention to. Weve been critical of Bob Kroll [the confrontational president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis] for years now. All of these things where its like, Yes. Welcome. Join us.

Alternative to what? The platonic ideal of an alt-weekly thrives on antagonism, on a defiant and communal sense of otherness. Feuding with the bloodless and monolithic daily paper. Feuding with the clueless and totally bullshit rival alt-weekly, back when most cities could support two (!!). Feuding with the hapless local-TV-news cabal. (I spent my first day in journalism at a long-gone Columbus publication literally called The Other Paper, sitting with my cackling coworkers as they watched bootleg footage of a local newscasters false teeth flying out of his mouth on the air.)

Those were the days. Those were the days is practically this corner of journalisms national creed. In 2020, some of the biggest alt-weeklies, including the Boston Phoenix and my former home, the Village Voice, are gone, while some others, including L.A. Weekly, have changed owners and lost much of their prestige. For those that remain, its altogether possible (as with Columbus Alive and Minnesotas City Pages) that the local daily now owns the local weekly. (Others are independently owned or part of national chains, but whatever the arrangement, most have roughly a dozen editorial staffers, if that. The Stranger itself laid off 18 employees in March; its sister paper, the Portland Mercury, laid off 10.)

But even most of the daily-owned papers have retained their autonomy. Their defiance. Their hard-fought right to use curse words in print, the importance of which cant be understated, even post-internet. We have pretty unlimited leeway for the most part, Columbus Alive editor Andy Downing says, describing his papers relationship with the daily Columbus Dispatch. Every once in a while you get an email, Did you need to use the word fuck here? Its like, Well, probably not, but I did.

And most importantly, alt-weeklies have held fast to what is, in most cases, their progressive ardor, their hallowed privilege to say, in print, what more buttoned-up journalists arent even supposed to think.

Take the deified Chicago Reader, founded nearly a half-century ago and now helmed by co-editors-in-chief Karen Hawkins and Sujay Kumar. We are allowed to acknowledge that we have a point of view, Hawkins says, chatting in mid-June. Every person has a point of view. Our publisher wrote a post this week about the myth of objectivity. I have always believed in that. The Reader, as an alt-weekly, is a publication that has always taken a stand on certain issues, and reported on issues in a very particular way. That, to me, has been the biggest relief: the freedom to acknowledge, yes, hi, police brutality exists, and its not OK. Nothing is racially tinged. Its just racist. Lets just call it what it is.

That blunt approach applies to the legacies of these papers themselves, and how theyre changing, demographically, in ways that heighten and sharpen their perspective on our current era. Its not lost on us, the history of the Reader, and how its been traditionally a white male legacy publication, Kumar says. So yeah, in some ways people trust it, but in other ways people are easy to dismiss things with, Oh, yeah, thats just the Reader, its North Side white guys. Even though Karen and I are black and brown editors running it. Its a wild time.

That dynamic, an alt-weeklys constant reckoning with both its own history and the countrys, can manifest in myriad ways, down to an individual word choice. Tess Riski, an intimidatingly prolific Willamette Week reporter whod previously written for major dailies from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald, recalls a recent staff conversation about whether to refer to local protests as uprisings. I think were able to think in more progressive ways, she says, about what the right language might be.

Which in turn gives an alt-weekly more credibility with both readers and activists than other publications, and makes it better equipped to dispel the wilder social-media rumors about whos leading these uprisings, and why. Were on the ground talking to people at protests who identify as being anti-fascist protesters, Riski says. Were talking to the people instead of just hearing officials messages about it. So its easy for us to hear claims about these violent antifa protesters and know that it might be kind of bullshit, because were just more in the loop on that. Its not new to us. Its like parents have their interpretation of what kids slang is, right? And then they try to explain it, and a teenager is like, No, thats wrong. I feel like were the teenagers who know the slang. Does that make sense?

Credibility of that sort can manifest in everything an alt-weekly does, and make the paper feel vital and revolutionary even in its silliest moments. In another lifetime, from my perspective, Columbus Alive, which published its last print issue a year ago and is now online only, was itself the accursed rival alt-weekly. But it long ago became a crucial and tangible part of the Columbus I live in now. Deep features on the rise of homegrown white nationalist Andrew Anglin and a prominent brewery founder accused by multiple women of sexual assault. (Last month in North Carolina, the INDY Week staff forced out then-editor Jeffrey Billman for botching a similar tip about a local restaurant owner accused of sexual misconduct.) The sex shop that turned into a semi-official protestor hub. The local activist who had his own brush with Trump-driven viral infamy that got so out of control he was mistaken for a member of indie-rock band the National.

But its just as gratifying to watch the Alive Facebook page troll its own trolls (Nice job liking your own post, Kirt) or uncork the headline Columbus Discovers America (Doesnt Like Him). In April, a Dispatch photographer took an iconic, disturbingly zombie-esque, instantly viral photo of a statehouse protest against Ohios coronavirus-driven stay-at-home order; the Alive had the institutional backing to repost it and the authority to do so under the headline Get a Load of These Jokers.

The slightest hint of snark, after all, is historically a crucial part of the experience too. There was a little bit of this feeling of Thats pretty funny, so we should do it, Alive associate editor Joel Oliphint says. (In honor of he and Downing being the papers last two editorial staffers, Oliphints Zoom background is the sinking kayak meme.) You know what I mean? If its funny enough, if it feels funny enough, you roll with it. You dont want to be that all the time. But there are times where you want to embrace the alt-weekly aspect of this.

Other historically crucial elements of the alt-weekly experiencethe curse-word-driven media feuds, for exampleare far less prevalent in July 2020. There are more important battles to fight, including the one for survival. Every publication, of any size, is struggling mightily nowthat Poynter list mightve updated since you last looked at itand at the local and less hyperpartisan level, at least, theres a growing sense that everyones in this together, this being the COVID- and protest-driven eternal moment of Maximum News under terrible economic conditions. Even in Pittsburgh, with the daily Post-Gazette wracked with internal turmoil about how to cover the protests, theres a kinship with other media in town, bordering on outright sympathy.

I think people are trusting us more, which feels really validating, says City Paper news editor Ryan Deto. On top of that, we had the Post-Gazette scoop, and everybody looking at the Post-Gazette and being like, Well, can we trust them? Which is a shame, because their reporters are doing really good work now theyre just being undermined by their management.

Not that City Paper doesnt enjoy trolling its own trolls from time to time: Recently the paper started selling T-shirts with the slogan Woke Commie Rag, in honor of an anonymous online detractor. Everyones in this together; everyones just trying to survive. Memberships. Merch. Fundraisers. Sponsored public events, if we ever get back to having public events again. Immersive local arts coverage, after all, is another alt-weekly tentpole, even if COVID-19 has made that coverage extra surreal.

When everything first started shutting down, we kind of went into news mode, says Minneapolis City Pages music editor Keith Harris. Its like, Whats happening? This concerts closing. This place is closing. Is this happening? For a couple weeks there, it was really busy in terms of just coverage. And then it got to the point where, OK, when theres one show left that hasnt canceled yet, do we really need to let people know that the Eels arent coming here in July?

So what then? You survive. Livestream concert listings. Playlists. Interviews. (Which Harris describes as the feature where you ask someone, So, hows quarantine going? What are you eating in quarantine? for the 15th time.) And strangest of all, earnest pleas to stay out of bars. There is a sense, given the national push to reopen restaurants and schools and such, that alt-weeklies are leading the charge in subverting the jokers and arguing for the continued logic of self-quarantine; there is a sense that these papers are literally trying to keep their readers alive.

One of the things Ive done for most of my 27 years at the Chronicle is edit the live music listings page: Here are the 20 shows you need to know in the next week, the Austin Chronicles Raoul Hernandez explains. At first the paper pivoted to playlists, to streaming suggestions, to downloads. So thats worked well. But as the state has opened up and there have been some live music events, suddenly the question is So, are we recommending these? And it hasnt been much of a question to me, because as the editor of the page, the answer is simple: No, I am not recommending anybody go out.

It is impossible to overstate how bizarre those words sound, coming out of a veteran alt-weekly music editors mouth. Which is a hard position to be in, because were the boosters of the local clubs and the artists, Hernandez says. Were part of that ecosystem. So to not be able to get behind them and say, Go team! is not a position anyone wants to be in. But what do we recommend? We recommend you stay home. Thats what we recommend.

As for the long-overworked news desks, the street protests are ongoing, and in places like North Carolina the debate over Confederate monuments is still raging, and the aftermath of all this action, all this national attention, is still roiling cities like Minneapolis. Which gives City Pages plenty to write about, and plenty of opportunities to defend the Twin Cities from the harsh scrutiny of the outside world.

I think one of the things that was most frustrating to me in the last couple of weeks, and we wrote about this, was the bail funds, City Pages editor in chief Cassel says. The Minnesota Freedom Fund coming under fire from people on Twitter, from everywhere else, saying, Oh, what are you going to do with these donations? You got $30 million and you can only spend $200,000. Even, I think, the Star Tribune [the daily that owns the weekly] recorded that one a little wrong. They hadnt done anything wrong in our minds. I wouldnt know what to do with $30 million if it appeared in my lap. And so I think those kinds of stories, where its providing the context of No, no, no, youre not familiar with what this group does or how they work, they have one full-time staff memberthose kinds of stories I think we can tell pretty effectively.

Because what this progressive surge offers alt-weeklies nationwide, at least in theory, is the mother of all teachable moments. What does systemic racism, what does white supremacy, what does income inequality, what do all of these things look like, and how did they play out? says the Chicago Readers Hawkins. I think peoples realizationsudden realizationthat their interactions with Officer Friendly are very different than, say, my interactions with Officer Friendly. I think its a way to, like, Oh, hey, now lets look at this other thing thats super easy in your life thats really shitty for a lot of other people. I feel like it opens this window for people into all these other things that theyve overlooked.

In Seattle, any sense that the relentless 24-hour news cycle is slowing down is only relative. Two local protestors were hit by a car on Saturday morning; one, a 24-year-old named Summer Taylor, later died from their injuries. The city officially shut down CHOP on July 1, though the debate, both local and national, over what that movement meantwhat utopian promise it represented, what should happen to the public art it generated, what degree of a threat to public safety it posedwill continue, and comprise an ongoing alt-weekly beat all its own.

Ive got more people telling me Oh, this feels like the golden age of The Stranger, or This feels like the old times, Keimig told me back in mid-June. I think because this is a situation that we really know how to cover well. So thats new. I have not heard that before this moment, but it definitely feels gratifying to hear, because its like, all right, were doing something right. Were hitting a mark in some way in the eyes of the people.

Chatting again in early July, she offered an early CHOP post-mortem: Ive heard a lot of people say this, and I really believe it too, where CHOP is not the beginning, and CHOP isnt the end. The goals of defunding the police, of abolishing the police, of freeing protestors, the big things that people are fighting for, we still are. As for The Stranger as a whole, I think were really tired. Weve kind of needed to take somewhat of a step back and rethink our approach, because we were really burning the candle at both ends just trying to keep up with the glut of information that was coming in, almost by the minute.

But the work continues, and the enthusiasm remains, total chaos and the threat of total annihilation notwithstanding. I think were kind of mirroring the protestors, she says, in the sense that were seeing this as a long-haul thing, too.

See the rest here:

Alt-Weeklies Face Total Annihilation. But Theyre Thriving in the Chaos. - The Ringer

No, whats that?

Rachel Swarns wrote a book called American Tapestry, about Michelle Obamas white ancestors. Its fascinating. One of my favorite other books is Katharine Grahams Personal History. I love that book. I think Ive read it three times. Shes a hero of mine.

Are you at all worried about how youre going to keep that romantic notion of books now that youre entering the book world and making it your work?

Well, no, I dont think so. I find this work to be a calling. If I can keep a romantic notion about journalism, which I also have after working twenty-plus years at the New York Times, I can do the same with books being in the publishing world. I dont worry about that. Im somebody who lives with a lot of optimism, enthusiasm, and passion. And I dont think theres really anything that can rob me of that. If I can get through the tragedy I went through in my life, losing the man I love when our son was just six months old, and finding my way back, eventually, to a place of joy and happiness, I dont think Id be shaken up by being on the inside of an industry that I love, you know?

What do you think you bring to this job from your journalistic background?

Well, remember, its not just my journalism background. Ive been running the Pulitzer Prizes for the last few years. So Ive been immersed in books because we have five books categories. And Ive been announcing the winners of those for years and reading those books. I selected the jurors who judged those books and gave them their guidance about what we were looking for, and listened to the board deliberations around that. So Ive been immersed in books for several years.

But, in addition, I think the best nonfiction books are reported books. They dont have to be written by journalists, but they have to be reported. Going back to the point you made about authenticity, to write authoritatively, you have to sort of put on a reporters hat. So I think my training is going to be a strength in terms of looking at proposals and manuscripts and with an editors eyea journalists and an editors eye.

I think a lot of people dont know that not all books are fact-checked. And thats an especially interesting issue now, because were in a climate where the idea of things not being fact-checked or true is a big concern, but that hasnt extended to the book world. Should all nonfiction works, especially ones about politics or history, be fact-checked?

I think that we have to trust our authors, and select authors that we believe in, who present their manuscripts and their ideas in a way that they are already authoritative and already reflect the work that theyve done to set out what the story is going to be. And I also think that there are some amazing editors at Simon & Schuster who have handled some big books. They know what to look for. Sure, in an ideal world, I would have loved fact checkers at the New York Times in every story I wrote. But I think theres a track record and a system in place at Simon & Schuster and other publishers that brings about the results, successful results. I dont have towhat is that expression, remake the wheel? I want to build on the success that they have.

I didnt mean to imply that your writers were untrustworthy. I meant that people make mistakes. And theres just been so much concern about this in the journalism world. And thats why I was asking

A mistake is different than being sloppy, though. I mean, everybody makes mistakes. If youre not making mistakes, youre not growing. And, obviously, you dont want a mistake in your copy. But I can live with a mistake. What I couldnt live with is sloppiness. And theres a difference.

Let me ask you about that. There has been lots of concern about allowing ideas that are deemed dangerous, or alt-right, to use one example, into the public sphere in a way that causes turmoil at magazines or newspapers, and among readers. Simon & Schuster has a conservative imprint that publishes Candace Owens and Glenn Beck and Donald Trump. Im wondering what you think about publishing those kinds of books and whether you think that that is good for the public debate.

Well, of course it is. Im not into censorship, but I do think there has to be a fine line between books that inform the reader about different perspectives, that maybe open them up to a way of thinking about the world or an issue in ways that they havent, and that work thats dangerous or somehow doesnt add public value, if you will. Those kinds of books I wouldnt be interested in at all.

But I do think that there are people who think its controversial to write books about race, or the Black Lives Matter movement. So the most provocative books, just like the most provocative journalists, are always going to have supporters and detractors. And sometimes the book that is the most controversial, the newspaper articles that are the most controversial, are controversial because theyre hitting people viscerally and making them think, and thats not a bad thing. Now, something thats inflammatory just for the sake of being inflammatory, I dont think has any place at Simon & Schuster, or the New York Times, or anywhere else. It has to be a larger message of broader purpose.

The reason I brought up Glenn Beck, Trump, and Candace Owens is that Im not sure that there is a larger purpose, or that the purpose is to be something other than inflammatory. And I do think its interesting that the debate about whether those voices should be paid to offer their opinions by companies that are engaging in free expression hasnt hit the book world in the same way.

Yeah. I think you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis, honestly. Some of those books do have a place, and some dont. And Im hopeful that Ill know them when I see them.

Jonathan Karp has published a couple of the Presidents books. I assume the President, when he stops being President, will want to write more books. How would you feel about publishing his books in the future at Simon & Schuster?

You mean Trumps books?

Yeah.

Oh, hes the President. Everyone who leaves the White House has one or more books in them and that becomes part of public history. I think that would be not only appropriate but important.

O.K. It feels like maybe this is a little different. I wont make a joke about whether that book should be fact-checked, but I think you see what Im getting at.

Yeah.

But you dont find the issue of whether to do that particularly complex? You seem to be very clearly on the side of free expression and think every form of it is a good thing.

Yes, but as I said, it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. But, in terms of the specific question about the President, every President who leaves office writes their memoirs, their personal history, what have you. And it becomes part of American history. And I dont see that thats going to be any different with a Trump book.

Publishing is always talked about as being endangered, at least in the past couple of decades. Books have always been talked about as being in danger. Are we going to be done with booksare there going to be e-books, are there going to be no books? Is that something you worry about?

I dont buy it at all. I think there are lots of word nerds out there like me. I used to say this in journalism. When folks talk about newspapers no longer being around, it may not be in paper form in the future, but this country will always have a need for information. Whether thats newspapers, magazines, or books, one of the beauties of this country is we have a very literate population, a very engaged population, a very curious population, and thats not going to change. And books arent going anywhere. How you read them, whether you read them on a phone or in the dead-tree version, doesnt really matter, but theyre not going anywhere. There are too many important voices and important stories to tell.

See the original post here:

Dana Canedy, the New Head of Simon & Schuster, on Facts, Diversity, and the Future of Publishing - The New Yorker

Giancarlo Albanese, who attended a circuit party at Fire Island Pines, New York. (Screen captures via Instagram)

An attendee of a July 4 Fire Island, US, party that saw beaches swell with hundreds of toned torsos, rarely wearing face coverings or abiding by social distancing rules, has spoken out amid stinging criticism.

Giancarlo Albanese, a currency analyst at EverythingFx, weathered criticism after he posted a grainy Instagram photograph of countless people packed close together by dry-shrub, stretching back into the inky darkness of the Fire Island Pines.

Partygoers descended by the hundreds to New Yorks Fire Island, a queer circuit party hotspot, at the weekend, jamming the beachfront in swimwear while guzzling on alcohol and dancing to electronic music without masks drawingcriticism from state officials, property owners and LGBT+ community leaders.

Law enforcement were reportedly called to the scene after receiving calls concerning a failure to follow the states social distancing guidelines.

Albanese doubled down on his earlier remarks a string of expletives that included F**k your mask in an Instagram video posted Thursday (July 9).

He pettishly lit into critics skewering him while decrying people for caring about a lab-made virus and appeared to claim he is a member of QAnon.

If you came to this video to try and get an apology, unfortunately, youre not going to get it because I have nothing to be sorry about, he began, wearing a wrinkled white top and a gold chain.

The hundreds and thousands if not millions of people that also went out Fourth of July weekend to celebrate? Theyre also not going to apologise either.

Albanese added: The world has been consumed by mass hysteria and paranoia on an unprecedented scale right now.

People like me arent falling for it. Were not going to fall for the lab-made virus, were not going to fall for the mass-media marketing campaign thats been going on because its all bulls**t, every single ounce of it.

And you have to be woefully ignorant to honestly think that its not.

In a volley of hasgtags accompanting the video, he wrote: #newworldorder #agenda21 #predictiveprogramming #hollywood #massmedia #fakenews #coronavirus #covid19 #coronavrus #qanon #Qarmy #WWG1WGA #wwg1wgaworldwide #wwg1wga #thegreatawakeningworldwide #darktolight #love #conciousness #america #covid #pandemic #nwo #instadaily #instagood #conspiracytheory #falseflag.

Many of the tags were common dog whistles within alt-right circles. QAnon is a sprawling web of conspiracy theories, spewing often baseless assertions, spouted by an anonymous person or group of people who claim to be privy to government secrets.

Supposedly classified information has been dropped on various 4chan and 8chan message boards. Much of it points towards nefarious deeds perpetrated by an alleged deep state, where attacks against the Trump administration are the handiwork of an undergrowth of bureaucrats.

Where we go one, we go all, often clipped to WWG1WGA, is something of an oath for members of the imageboards.

Original post:

Fire Island partier who flouted coronavirus rules refuses to apologise: 'I'm not going to fall for the lab-made virus' - PinkNews

Since the 2016 Presidential election, a contingent of the media has been increasingly critical of Silicon Valley, charging tech founders, C.E.O.s, venture capitalists, and other technology boosters with an arrogant, nave, and reckless attitude toward the institutions of a functional democracy, noting their tendency to disguise anticompetitive, extractive behavior as disruptive innovation. Many technologists and their investors believe that media coverage of their domain has become histrionic and punitive, scapegoating tech companies for their inability to solve extremely difficult problems, such as political polarization, that are neither of their own devising nor within their ability to solve. The Valleys most injured, aggrieved, and single-minded partisans dont want to be judged by the absurdity of Juicero, the much-ridiculed luxury-juicing startup, or the fraud of Theranos, or the depredations of Uber. As Paul Graham pointed out, in a 2017 tweet, it was unfair to condemn the entirety of the tech sector based on a few bad actors. Criticizing Juicero is fine, he wrote. Whats intellectually dishonest is criticizing SV by claiming Juicero is typical of it. (The obvious ironythat people like Graham nevertheless feel free to write off the entirety of the media on a similarly invidious basisseems lost on many of them.)

Grahams tweet linked to a Slate Star Codex piece, also from 2017, called Silicon Valley: A Reality Check, in which Alexander had collated the most triumphalist dismissals of Juicero and paired them with his own views of what actual technological innovation looked like. While Deadspin was busy calling Silicon Valley awful nightmare trash parasites, my girlfriend in Silicon Valley was working for a company developing a structured-light optical engine to manipulate single cells and speed up high-precision biological research, he writes. Alexander goes on, in the post, to allow that Silicon Valley is not above reproach, acknowledging that anything remotely good in the world gets invaded by rent-seeking parasites and empty suits, but argues that journalists at publications such as the former Deadspin do not understand that the spirit of Silicon Valley is a precious thing that needs to be protected. (Deadspin, in its original form, did not survive the aftermath of Hulk Hogans lawsuit against its former parent company, Gawker Media; the lawsuit was underwritten by Peter Thiel, which complicates the issue of who, exactly, needs protection from whom.) He continues, At its worst, some of their criticism sounds more like a worry that there might still be some weird nerds who think they can climb out of the crab-bucket, and they need to be beaten into submission by empty suits before they can get away.

By then, six months after the election, Alexander had emerged as one of the keenest observers of technologists as a full-fledged social cadre, and of their sharpening class antagonism with an older orderthe institutions in New York, Boston, D.C., and Los Angeles that Balaji Srinivasan has disparaged as the Paper Belt. (Srinivasans Twitter bio reads not big on credentialism, a common posture in a place that likes to present itself as the worlds most successful meritocracy, although he provides a link that itemizes his connections to Stanford and M.I.T. if deemed relevant.) This new group, Alexander suggested in an earlier beloved essay, I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup, published in 2014, sits at an odd angle to Americas extant tensions. In the essay, he describes our tendency to conceal the degree to which our beliefs and actions are determined by tribal attitudes. It is obvious, Alexander writes, that America is split in recognizable ways. The Red Tribe is most classically typified by conservative political beliefs, strong evangelical religious beliefs, creationism, opposing gay marriage, owning guns, eating steak, drinking Coca-Cola, driving SUVs, watching lots of TV, enjoying American football, getting conspicuously upset about terrorists and commies, marrying early, divorcing early, shouting USA IS NUMBER ONE!!!, and listening to country music. He notes that he himself knows basically none of these people, a sign of how comprehensive our national sorting project has become. The Blue Tribe, by contrast, is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to everything except country. Whats crucial, he emphasizes, is that these are cultural differences rather than political onesan Ivy League professor might hold right-leaning beliefs, for example, but is nevertheless almost certainly a member of the Blue Tribe.

These are caricatures, of course, but Alexanders crude reductionism is part of his argument, which is that these categories are drawn and redrawn in bad faith, as a way to disavow tribalistic rancor without actually giving it up. When, for example, members of the Blue Tribe censure America, they are purporting to implicate themselves in their criticism; in reality, however, they are simply using America to mean Red America, without making that distinction explicit. What may sound like humility and self-scrutiny is, in fact, actually just a form of thinly disguised tribal retrenchment.

He introduces the idea of a third cohort in an aside: (There is a partly-formed attempt to spin off a Grey Tribe typified by libertarian political beliefs, Dawkins-style atheism, vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up, eating paleo, drinking Soylent, calling in rides on Uber, reading lots of blogs, calling American football sportsball, getting conspicuously upset about the War on Drugs and the NSA, and listening to filkbut for our current purposes this is a distraction and they can safely be considered part of the Blue Tribe most of the time.) This is clearly meant as a teasing description of the S.S.C. readerand, by extension, the Silicon Valley intellectual. Since the post was published, Grey Tribe has become a shorthand compliment paid to thinkers who float free of the polarized fiasco of American discourse. But Except the Outgroup is not an encomium to the Grey Tribe; it is his gentle reminder that most of its members, most of the time, share a vast portion of their political commitments with the Blue Tribe that they so often censure. He has been very upfront about this in his own case; last year, he wrote, lest there was any confusion, I am a pro-gay Jew who has dated trans people and votes pretty much straight Democrat. Any sense of rivalry, he suggests, is likely reducible to the narcissism of minor differences.

The division between the Grey and Blue tribes is often rendered in the simplistic terms of a demographic encounter between white, nerdily entitled men in hoodies on one side and diverse, effete, artistic snobs on the other. On this account, one side is generally associated with quantification, libertarianism, speed, scale, automation, science, and unrestricted speech; the other is generally associated with quality, progressivism, precaution, craft, workmanship, the humanities, and respectful language. Alexander, in another widely circulated essay, published in 2018, has popularized an alternative heuristica partition between what he calls mistake theorists and conflict theorists. Mistake theorists, he writes, look at any difference of opinion and conclude that someone must be making an error. They reckon that when the source of the mistake is identifiedwith more data, more debate, more intelligence, more technical insightthe resolution will be obvious. Conflict theorists are likely to look at the same difference of opinion and assume that no mechanism will provide for a settlement until incompatible desires are brought into alignment. The former tend to believe that after we sort out the problem of means, the question of ends can be left to take care of itself. The latter tend to believe that the preoccupation with means can serve to obscure the real issue of ends. Mistake theorists default to the hope that we just need to fix the bugs in the system. Conflict theorists default to the worry that what look like bugs might be featuresand that its the system that has to be updated.

Link:

Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valleys War Against the Media - The New Yorker

Giancarlo Albanese, a Fire Island partier who was shamed across social media for flouting COVID rules after photos (one of which was his) and videos of packed 4th of July parties at the gay New York resort destination of Fire Island Pines went viral, is speaking out in a new clip.

Albanese, you may recall, posted a photo of a packed gathering and wrote: F**k Your mask. F**k your social distancing. F**k your vaccine. F**k your eugenics. Kiss my a**hole if you think Im an ass

In a new video posted this week, Albanese doubled down on his remarks and behavior, and revealed himself to be a follower of the conspiracy theorist group QAnon.

Albanese tagged his new clip #newworldorder#agenda21 #predictiveprogramming#hollywood #massmedia#fakenews #coronavirus#covid19#coronavrus#qanon#Qarmy#WWG1WGA #wwg1wgaworldwide#wwg1wga #thegreatawakeningworldwide #darktolight#love#conciousness #america#covid#pandemic#nwo #instadaily#instagood #conspiracytheory#falseflag

QAnon, is an alt-right conspiracy theory that believes in a deep state plot against the government to undermine Trump. The phrase where we go one, we go all is often shortened to WWG1WGA and used as a hashtag by Q followers.

ICYMI: Fire Island Trends After Videos of Packed Parties, Defiant COVID Carriers at NYC-Area Gay Resort Go Viral: WATCH

Said Albanese: If you came to this video to try and get an apology, unfortunately youre not going to get it because I have nothing to be sorry about. The hundreds and thousands if not millions of people that also went out Fourth of July weekend to celebrate? Theyre also not going to apologize either.

The world has been consumed by mass hysteria and paranoia on an unprecedented scale right now, Albanese added. People like me arent falling for it. Were not going to fall for the lab-made virus, were not going to fall for the mass-media marketing campaign thats been going on because its all bullsh*t, every single ounce of it. And you have to be woefully ignorant to honestly think that its not.

Albanase then went on to attack the keyboard warriors that want to criticize him

A lot of people right now have a lot of pent up anxiety. A lot of pent up fear and hate because of maybe the lockdowns or their life isnt going well right now. This isnt school guys. You cant play tattletale. You guys need to grow up! Instead of wasting time and energy trying to criticize somebody else for their life, their viewpoints, and how they see the world.

Watch Albaneses clip:

Read the rest here:

Fire Island Partier Who Flouted COVID Rules Says He's Not Sorry, Reveals Himself to Be QAnon Follower: WATCH - Towleroad

The trouble with political metaphors is that they can gain a lot of traction without having much substance at all. Theyre catchy analogies, vividly illustrative but imprecise and potentially misleading .

Consider, for example, draining the swamp. Donald Trump repeatedly promised that, if elected, hed do that in Washington. Of course theres no literal, logical relationship between the federal government and a swamp, but Trumps metaphor resonated emotionally with many voters. Why? Because people were feeling left behind, their issues ignored; they saw Washington as dysfunctional, an unproductive, corrupt wasteland badly in need of reform. Enough people (barely) were persuaded that outsider Trumps crude, take-no-prisoners style could clean up the decadence and redeem the government.

Truly, Washington was (and is) a mess, and they had that right. But beyond responding to the mesmerizing appeal of a magical swamp cleanup, they forgot to do the work of analyzing accurately the causes of the mess, or what might realistically be done to attack it. Consumed with populist anger, they failed to see that Trump was bogus, a snake oil salesman totally unfit to deliver on his flashy promises.

Story continues below video

The real problems in Washington, Trump voters should have seen, begin with (1) the ideologically driven, paralyzing domination of partisanship over our elected representatives, and (2) the stranglehold on government by big money from Wall Street, corporations and billionaires and the privileging of their interests and those who represent them in the government. These are the real swamps that need draining. But Trump has only fanned the flames of division, all the while helping the rich get richer.

Like the rank amateur he is, Trump misidentified the nature of the swamp. (1) Egged on by people like Steve Bannon and the alt-right, he claimed repeatedly that the crux of the problem in Washington is the deep state, i.e. entrenched career civil servants in government departments and agencies. To the contrary, those experienced careerists provide essential continuity that steadies the ship of state through choppy, ever-changing political waters. (2) Naively, Trump has repeatedly jettisoned international cooperation. In isolationist, America first mode he has erratically weakened or severed our advantageous international associations like the United Nations, NATO and most recently his decision to leave the World Health Organization. He has impulsively abandoned treaties like the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, while pandying to dictators and leaving our allies wondering what has happened to America and whether they can any longer trust us.

Trump is not a swamp drainer; hes a demolitionist. Convinced that the career professionals stood in the way of his wrecking ball, he began immediately (and has continued) to purge any who confronted him with facts and evidence contrary to his impulses. If they placed loyalty to the countrys interests above blind loyalty to him, they were gone. Repeatedly he has replaced experienced personnel in key positions with egregiously unqualified, un-Senate-confirmed, acting minions who unquestioningly do his bidding.

In Trump world, established norms the guard rails and levees that protect our democracy are disparaged and attacked. Recently, over the course of six weeks, our president has fired five inspectors general, legally mandated independent watchdogs in Cabinet departments (State, Defense, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and the Intelligence Community) for investigating corruption in his administration.

More broadly, he quickly set about weakening essential elements of the executive branch, against the interests of the people. For example, privileging military might over diplomacy, he has ruthlessly hollowed out the State Department, decimating its budget, paring its personnel while beefing up even further a military budget no one can see the top of. For example, he has done everything possible to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency, ignoring global warming, weakening the protections for clean air and water. For example, his continuing politicization of the Justice Department under the devious Attorney General Bill Barr for corrupt personal reasons must be denounced as an affront to the rule of law. It ought to keep all Americans awake at night.

Not least, his bullying tactics have turned congressional Republicans into fawning puppets who, with only a handful of exceptions, dare not oppose him or call out his misdeeds.

If you are serious about draining a swamp, you need to assign the task to someone with relevant experience in swamp engineering, someone with a proven track record; what we got in Trump was a huckster who claimed business acumen but had only a highly dubious, smoke-and-mirrors record of performance. You want someone who prioritizes the goals of the property owners, not someone bent on promoting first his own interests, as Trump has demonstrably done over and over. You need someone with balanced judgment who can build and skillfully lead an effective team; Trumps costly, badly bungled mismanagement of the pandemic crisis is but the latest striking example of his clumsy incompetence. You need someone with reliability and integrity; Trump is an unashamed, non-stop liar who has effectively turned prevarication into an Orwellian 1984-style political weapon. And when there are failures, you want someone with character to stand up and take responsibility, not someone who must always and inevitably find others to blame.

With Trump we got not a leader with good sense and diplomatic skills but a rash, unprincipled, confrontational gambler, dictatorial by nature and largely incapable of cooperative problem solving.

If you include a years campaigning, weve now observed the Trump presidency for four and a half years. Writing in the latest issue of The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum summarizes his performance thus: Notwithstanding his populist language, he has built a Cabinet and an administration that serve neither the public nor his voters but rather his own psychological needs and the interests of his own friends on Wall Street and in business and, of course, his own family. His tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy, not the working class. His shallow economic boom, engineered to insure his reelection, was made possible by a vast budget deficit, on a scale Republicans once claimed to abhor, an enormous burden for future generations. He worked to dismantle the existing health-care system without offering anything better, as he promised to do. All the while he fanned and encouraged xenophobia and racism, both because he found them politically useful and because they are part of his personal world view.

Most important, he has governed in defiance and in ignorance of the American Constitution. ... His administration is not merely corrupt, it is also hostile to checks, balances, and the rule of law (emboldened further by his partisan-supported escape from impeachment]. He has built a proto-authoritarian personality cult with tragic consequences for public health (i.e. clueless mismanagement of the rampant pandemic) and the economy. She goes on from there.

To any clear-eyed observer with a good nose, the swamp is now boggier, the swamp gas more putrid than ever. Trump has removed rather than added value to our democratic real estate.

Not only has he failed to attack the rot in Washington he brought more with him and magnified what was already there. Clearly, if he wins another term, our democracy will suffer even more serious, possibly irreparable damage.

There are now signs that support for Trump is weakening across battleground states. Considering what he has given (or rather taken from) us, its high time.

And yet in November a majority of Idahoans will almost certainly vote to elevate this man once again to our nations highest office. In heavens name, what are they thinking? Dont they care? It boggles the mind.

H. Wayne Schow, a native Idahoan, is a professor of English emeritus at Idaho State University. Schow lives in Pocatello.

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'Draining the swamp' and other metaphors - Idaho State Journal

The conservative vein that gave rise to Donald Trump's presidency; Brexit and the growth of far-right nationalism across Europe is here.

And it has found a home within the New Conservative Party.

The party - which emerged from Colin Craig's Conservatives - wants a full repeal of the post-Christchurch terror attack gun-laws. Its rhetoric has drawn comparisons to white nationalism.

Canterbury man Lee Williams has spoken out at rallies against what he sees as the infiltration of the West by people of colour.

"A New Zealand is going down the exact same path of importing in an alien culture that refuses to integrate," he is heard at a recent free-speech rally.

He has given his full backing to the New Conservative Party in another video on his page.

Auckland University senior lecturer in politics and international relations Dr Chris Wilson says such rhetoric can be dangerous.

"They focus on the importance and superiority of white civilization and the protection of white cultures and homelands in the West," he says. "These ideas are actually very dangerous; and they are motivating a number of people around the world, young white men in some of the most extreme cases to attack people of colour."

But New Conservative NZ party leader Leighton Baker rejects any suggestion his party is on the extreme right of the spectrum.

The farmer and businessman says he is "centrist", someone who believes in human rights.

"I'm a worker, I am a taxpayer, I am a father, I'm a grandfather...I don't believe that is extreme in any way."

When questioned over the fact there seems to be growing support from the far-right for the party he says it is beyond his control.

"We can't control what people are like...we've been really clear about what we are saying, so we can not actually control what other people say."

Baker is concerned New Zealand is losing its grip on democracy.

"It's a sliding step toward socialism," he says of the current political system. "If you had to choose between North Korea and South Korea most people wouldn't choose between North Korea.

"Now that's a bit extreme I get that, but it seems we are moving in that way."

His deputy, Elliot Ikilei, believes Western society is the one that affords people the greatest freedom.

"The greatest culture in the world is Western culture," he told a group of supporters at a recent public event in Wellington. "It is the one culture where freedom of speech is the cornerstone of that culture."

Ikilei has been a regular guest at free speech rallies. He's tough on crime and against race-based policies.

"We would get rid of Mori seats. We would get rid of anything that changes Mori to something special and high up," he says.

Among the party's other 22 candidates is right-wing activist - Dieuwe de Boer, who is standing in Botany.

The Conservative Christian made headlines in January when police raided his home in search of illegal firearms.

In 2019 he tried to find an alternative venue for alt-right speakers Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux.

He has said declining Western populations are being replenished by migrants - a theory that Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant referred to in his manifesto.

But he condemns the shooter's final act of terror, despite defending his right to air his views.

"I have been very outspoken against firearm amendment bills and outspoken for freedom of speech," he is heard saying in a recent Facebook video.

A play on the slogan popularised by Trump and an indication of the type of country the New Conservatives want.

See original here:

New Conservatives defend Western culture as 'greatest in the world', warn NZ 'sliding toward socialism' - Newshub

So many things have gone missing this summer: Fourth of July parades, fireworks, summer camps and, as we approach the dog days, state fairs. Last summer I took my kids to the Oregon State Fair, where they sampled deep-fried bacon on a stick and failed to appreciate just how bizarre it is that people make sculptures out of dairy products.

As we paraded up and down the midway and ogled the deceptively difficult carnival games, I regaled them with stories of the carnies, roustabouts and flimflam men who ran the games and booths and -- in their spare time -- confidence tricks. The term mark -- literally a big spender marked with powdered chalk on the shoulder -- comes from carnies and leads to this invaluable life lesson: always leave the mark a dollar for gas (so he can get home instead of being stuck -- angry -- at the fair).

The story of every mark who encounters a flimflam man is a carnival version of Joseph Campbells heros journey. First, the flimflam man approaches the mark. Second, temptation, followed by a small payoff to demonstrate the schemes purported effectiveness. Third, the hard sell to go all in. Finally, a sudden unanticipated crisis or change of events that results in a complete loss.

Millions of college students are now on this suckers journey. College students and their families are perfect marks. Theyre told a degree is the only pathway to good jobs. After a remote spring and summer best characterized by the great They Might Be Giants lyric If it wasnt for disappointment/I wouldnt have any appointments, theyre primed for the temptation of a return to campus and normalcy.

Parents are equally excited at the prospect of getting kids out of the house. Anti-pandemic panegyrics from Purdue Universitys president on Plexiglas and the Protect Purdue Pledge promise a payoff this fall. But once students and families are all in, the payoff will turn to pain before pumpkins begin appearing on porches.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, 62percent of colleges and universities are, as of this writing, welcoming students back to campus, and 21percent are planning a hybrid model. Only 8percent of institutions will start the fall semester online only.

Meanwhile, with depressing summer dispatches on COVID-19 outbreaks at campuses such as the University of Georgia, University of South Carolina, University of Washington and Louisiana State University, its clear higher education institutions stand about as much chance of enforcing masks and social distancing as alcohol consumption and abstinence.

Look no further than the COVID-19 parties at University of Alabama, where students bet on whod contract the disease first. As Temple Universitys Laurence Steinberg wrote in The New York Times, interventions designed to diminish risk taking in this age group have an underwhelming track record. Faculty are afraid; 53percent of Purdue faculty and staff report feeling unsafe about returning to campus this fall. And theyre unlikely to feel better when asked to sign waivers of liability for risks including but not limited to, illness, severe bodily harm, and death.

Most dispassionate observers now recognize that return-to-campus plans are, as Juliana Gray wrote in McSweeneys, cooked up by your universitys Vice President for Magical Thinking: our university has always valued creative problem-solving, so we have posted NO COVID-19 ALLOWED PAST THIS POINT signs on the doors of every campus building. Plus, to show how seriously we take the situation, the signs have been laminated When they arrive on campus, all students will receive a welcome package containing a face mask branded with our university logo, a rabbits foot, a horseshoe, an evil-eye charm, a Maneki-neko, a crucifix, and a bulb of garlic.

So when the number of cases is undeniable (which may make the viral load higher on college campuses than anywhere else in the country -- no small matter for a disease where infection appears to be a function of viral load) there will be no choice but to revert to remote learning. Not even President Trump is capable of spouting the flawed premises and twisted logic that has made my college classmate Alex Berenson (who used to be less of a Nazi) famous over the past few months: that every single person who is vulnerable to COVID-19 has some underlying condition and is likely to meet his or her maker sooner than later.

Its the stuff of eugenics and self-styled bermensches like Berenson. And no college presidents -- not even Jerry Falwell Jr. -- will get away with this nonsense when theyre surrounded by science faculty and researchers who know a lot more about this disease than Berenson and other experts without any STEM training. The alt-right argument seems more and more like a plot by the healthy (which increasingly means wealthy) to kill the less healthy, akin to historys darkest flimflams.

I know optimism is not only in short supply for parents and students, but also the towns many colleges and universities support. But as @profgalloway has pointed out, optimism is one thing. Its quite another when a CEO in the midst of a disastrous earnings call demonstrates near-delusional optimism so investors dont sell shares.

Given that most presidents apparently lack confidence in social distancing plans, and schools like Cornell have gone so far as to delude themselves (justifying a return to campus by comparing COVID spread in a fantasy compliant campus model with a students-gone-wild-at-home scenario), optimism for fall falls into the latter category. Its a slow-motion car crash. As higher education experts like Seton Halls Robert Kelchen recognize, colleges are postponing the inevitable. But that dam will have to break soon. Then come the big hits.

The interplay between optimism and flimflam is the story of America. For every Lewis and Clark, theres a Bernie Madoff. Visionaries like Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs thrived in the limbo between already-sold sizzle and the harsh reality of product development. Were a country built on big bets leading to world-beating innovation, but also -- it is now clear -- world-leading failure. Our highs are higher, and our lows are lower. (The flip side of audacity is our inability to take direction like social distancing and mask wearing. We stopped following instructions in 1776 and never looked back.)

One unfortunate byproduct of American exceptionalism is our susceptibility to storytelling flimflam men. Without marks, there would be fewer Edisons and Jobses -- who made dreams come true -- and no Trump, who did the same, except with nightmares; biological and behavioral crises like COVID-19 arent susceptible to art of the deal fixes.

Fittingly, the Trump administration ruled this week that international students could not remain in the country on student visas to attend programs that are wholly remote. As a result, Trump is forcing schools like Harvard and Princeton to promise in-person elements, furthering the flimflam and turning thousands of universities into Trump University.

***

Rather than elaborately and expensively planning for a carnival-like bait and switch that will anger millions of customers and set the marginalization of American higher education at warp speed, colleges and universities should have been putting all their time and resources into:

No. 1: Dramatically Improving Remote Learning

Wholl really be hurt when colleges and universities send students home in September or October? Students for whom life is most likely to get in the way: low-income, underrepresented minority and first-generation populations who most need the leg up promised by postsecondary education. According to a Brookings study, taking courses online increases the probability of dropping out. Another study found each online course produced dropout rates 10 to 20percent higher than on-campus courses; over a semester or two, that adds up to a huge persistence gap.

Susan Dynarski from the University of Michigan summarized the research: for advanced learners, online classes are a terrific option, but academically challenged students need a classroom with a teachers support. Spring 2020 withdrawals from California Community Colleges (online) courses were 17percent higher than spring 2019. And that doesnt include 2,000 students in hard-to-convert classes like nursing because courses were simply canceled.

Compounding the challenge is that at the vast majority of colleges and universities, it wont be a reversion to state of the art online learning, but still remote learning. Susan Grajek of Educause, the association of education technologists, distinguishes remote learning from well-considered, durable online learning. Remote learning, she said, is a quick, ad hoc, low-fidelity mitigation strategy. Remote learning lacks instructional design that prioritizes engagement, organization, navigation, assessment and purpose -- all major contributors to student persistence and completion.

With leadership focused on success rather than snake oil, much more could have been done: adding instructional design so students in need of support stand a chance of actually learning something and completing; transforming courses to active learning; scaling up online partnerships and critical online support services. Jeff Selingo asked the question trustees should have been asking since April: should all that energy, time, and money spent on preparing for the fall instead [have been] spent on trying to improve remote learning, which for many colleges this spring was subpar?

No. 2: Securing and Offering Tuition Insurance

Many colleges and universities offer tuition insurance, but plans like GradGuard dont cover foreseeable or expected events, epidemics, [or] cession of operations by the school. Its unbelievable that not one higher education institution has done the work of contacting an insurance company and devising a new plan specific to COVID-19, which would allow students to recoup tuition paid in the event the campus is closed and students wish to opt out rather than paying for remote learning. Thousands of trustees whove made their fortunes in the finance industry have been asleep at this switch, among many. Of course, the hardest part would have been marketing such plans and watching the scales fall from students eyes.

No. 3: Reducing Expenses in Order to Provide Discounts

The wealthiest colleges and universities can afford to provide discounts, although Williamss 15percent discount for 2020-21 still leaves total cost of attending at a laughable $63,200. Students want and expect to pay less for remote learning -- 90percent of them, according to a recent survey. But Im not aware of a single college or university that has attempted to get its fiscal house in order to provide discounts for remote learning. That would entail hard work, and the internal squabbles and food fights attendant to zero-based budgeting. Failure to even make the attempt is indicative of higher educations continuing crisis of governance.

***

When infection rates reach undeniable and untenable levels this fall and most colleges and universities revert to remote learning while continuing to charge full freight, including perhaps for room and board, as the University of South Florida and Washington State plan to do, the confidence trick will be complete. (Some schools may try remote teaching before sending students home -- students in classrooms, faculty teaching synchronously and safely from a distance -- but remote teaching is only plausible if students are kept in an impossibly impregnable bubble.

And no city, town or public health department will tolerate a seeping cesspool of virus in their community.) Colleges will try to hang their hats on surprise and lack of agency. But -- particularly after the lost spring -- students will see through the flimflam and be as angry as any mark ever was. Fool me once, shame on you (and class action suits). Fool me twice

When millions of marks get angry, events can spiral out of control. In the late 1990s, the government of Albania endorsed a series of investment funds that were actually Ponzi schemes paying monthly interest of 10 to 25percent. In early 1997 the funds were no longer able to make payments, sparking protests and violence. Victims beat police, burned public buildings and engaged in widespread looting. The chairman of Albanias Democratic Party was assaulted by protesters and held hostage. Foreign countries were forced to evacuate their citizens. The national unrest -- sometimes referred to as the Albanian Civil War -- ultimately required an Italian-led United Nations force of 7,000 soldiers to subdue.

Rather than risking civil war, colleges and universities would be wise to end the flimflam now. Shockingly, the University of Southern California -- the poster child for contemporary higher education greed -- has done exactly this, announcing last week that fall would be online and urging students to reconsider living on or close to campus.

For the majority of institutions with unstoppable momentum to return to campus, consider the example of Fitness by the Sea beach camp. After many delays by Los Angeles County, Fitness by the Sea finally opened in socially distant mode on Monday, June 22. That very night, Fitness by the Sea emailed parents to let them know they had a very difficult time keeping campers within the groups distanced from each other and from the staff. As a result, the camp was closing for the remainder of the summer and would immediately process refunds. We very much look forward to moving past all of this and opening under better circumstances next summer.

Camps that want to have a next summer, and colleges and universities that want to have a next year, wont treat their customers like marks. If they do, even though the upcoming academic year will be remote, I suppose students will learn at least one thing: beware of flimflams.

Here is the original post:

Colleges are flimflamming college students and parents about reopening in the fall (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed