Weeks before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, a burly and bearded neo-Nazi told a CNN reporter on camera that "Jews are terrorists."

At the rally -- which turned deadly -- he participated with gusto, carrying a banner that, according to court documents, said, "Gas the kikes, race war now!" during a march past a synagogue.

But when Robert Warren Ray was indicted in June 2018 for using tear gas on counter-protesters at the event, police discovered he was nowhere to be found.

The fugitive, known in far-right circles as a prolific podcaster under a Bigfoot-themed avatar and the name "Azzmador," has vanished -- at least from real life.

However, Ray's podcast, which he calls The Krypto Report, later appeared on a new gaming livestreaming service that has become a haven for right-wing extremists who have been deplatformed from YouTube and other mainstream social media channels.

Called DLive, the live-streaming platform with a blockchain-based reward system allows users to accept cryptocurrency donations -- another perk for extremists barred from using services such as PayPal or GoFundMe, or who want to raise money internationally. Ray, a 54-year-old Texan, was a hit.

He quickly became one of the top 20 earners on DLive, according to an analysis by online extremism expert Megan Squire of Elon University in North Carolina, who studied the period from April 2020 -- the earliest data available -- through mid-January 2021.

It's not just the police who are searching for Ray. Since September 2019, he has been flouting court orders and missing appearances in a civil case that names him as one of 24 defendants accused of conspiring to plan, promote and carry out the violent events of Charlottesville.

"(Ray) has failed to communicate with Plaintiffs and the Court in any manner --even while continuing to participate on social media, post articles on the website of The Daily Stormer, and publish podcasts," said plaintiffs' attorneys in court documents filed in June.

As for the criminal case, which charges Ray with maliciously releasing gas, authorities have labeled him a fugitive since his 2018 indictment.

To be sure, Ray -- who mysteriously stopped podcasting from DLive a few months ago -- didn't get rich on DLive. But while he was ignoring court summonses for his alleged role in organizing Unite the Right, he earned $15,000 on the platform in just six months, according to Squire's analysis. He cashed most of it out, she said.

"The idea that he's wanted for all of this stuff, but then just gets to sit at home behind a microphone and make money on the side -- I thought that was just not good at all," Squire said.

Experts say the story of Ray and DLive underscores a reality about people who get chased into the shadows by lawsuits or deplatforming crusades: There will almost always be an entrepreneur who is willing to provide a venue for exiled promoters of hate.

"Where there is demand, eventually supply finds a way," said John Bambenek, a cyber security expert who tracks the cryptocurrency accounts of extremists.

Public scrutiny drives alt-right personalities deeper into the bowels of the internet, reducing their visibility.

And while their retreat to ever more obscure corners can make it more difficult to monitor the chatter, Michael Edison Hayden, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the game of whack a mole is ultimately worthwhile.

"I have seen firsthand the degree to which figures who were...extremely successful in radicalizing large numbers of people, become extraordinarily marginalized, extraordinarily fast in so-called dark corners of the internet," he said.

There are few neo-Nazi figures who have been as widely deplatformed as Andrew Anglin, publisher of The Daily Stormer, one of the web's most notorious hate sites -- and where Ray gained prominence as a writer and podcaster. Anglin's Daily Stormer was dumped by Google and GoDaddy after Anglin in a post mocked the protester who was killed in Charlottesville as a "fat, childless 32-year-old slut."

This made it more difficult for laypeople to find his site, though it has managed to stay on the internet, partially through the work of an adroit webmaster. "There was just this ongoing battle of what (the webmaster) would do in order to keep Anglin's voice online," Hayden said.

Like Ray, Anglin is on the lam. He has evaded attorneys since the summer of 2019, when he lost a spate of lawsuits. In the biggest judgment against him, Anglin was ordered by a judge to pay $14 million to a Jewish woman in Montana who had endured anti-Semitic harassment and death threats from Anglin's "troll army" of supporters. (One voicemail said: "You are surprisingly easy to find on the Internet. And in real life.") Anglin, who did not respond to CNN's request for comment, has said in court documents that he isn't living in the country.

The woman, Tanya Gersh, recently told CNN that she has yet to receive a dime of the judgment and is appalled that people are profiting from hate.

"If knowing that doesn't disgust you, we have really, really been led astray in our country," she said.

Founded in 2017, DLive, which is owned by a 30-year-old Chinese national named Justin Sun, takes a 20% cut of its streamers' revenue, according to its website.

Although DLive initially allowed far-right figures -- including Ray -- it has purged several amid scrutiny in the wake of the deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6.

That day, Anthime "Tim" Gionet, better known as "Baked Alaska," used the service to live-stream his role in the incursion. In the video, he curses out a law-enforcement officer, sits on a couch and puts his feet on a table, and can be heard saying, "1776, baby," according to an FBI affidavit. Gionet was suspended from the site, as was Nick Fuentes -- part of a White nationalist group of young radicals called the Groypers -- who was also at the January 6 rally, though he says he did not enter the Capitol. Both had already been permanently jettisoned by YouTube and other social media outlets, though Fuentes remains on Twitter.

"DLive was appalled that a number of rioters in the U.S. Capitol attack abused the platform to live stream their actions," and when its moderators become aware of the live streams, they shut them down, the company said in a statement to CNN. "All payments to those involved in the attack have been frozen."

Ray's DLive account, too, has been suspended, a company spokesman said, although the action did not publicly appear on his page until a couple of days after CNN reached out to the company on February 5. The DLive spokesman said the decision to sanction his channel was unrelated to CNN's inquiry, and that the suspension amounts to a permanent ban.

In any case, Ray stopped posting to DLive about four months ago, around the time a judge in the Unite the Right case found him in contempt. He did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.

Gionet was arrested in Houston last month, but Fuentes and Ray have both since popped up elsewhere online.

Fuentes -- DLive's top earner, who took in about $114,000 in six months ending in January -- has been scrambling to keep his podcast streaming since DLive booted him. For a few weeks, he'd figured out a way to keep using YouTube, even though the platform had dropped him, largely by using intermediaries to embed a livestream from other YouTube channels on his own website.

Squire said she spent those weeks engaged in a game of cat and mouse with him, repeatedly finding the 22-year-old Illinois native and notifying the third parties, and YouTube, of Fuentes' actions.

The third parties have mostly acted swiftly and banned Fuentes' content, Squire said. And while YouTube didn't act on all of Squire's initial reporting, the company took action when CNN flagged it.

"We've terminated multiple channels surfaced by CNN for attempting to circumvent our policies," a YouTube spokesperson said last week. "Nicholas Fuentes' channel was terminated in February 2020 after repeatedly violating our policies on hate speech and, as is the case with all terminated accounts, he is now prohibited from operating a channel on YouTube. We will continue to take the necessary steps to enforce our policies."

Following YouTube's crackdown, Fuentes began experimenting with other blockchain based technologies that enable him to stream his nightly program without being deplatformed. His recent moves have left Squire frustrated. "I don't have an answer on how to do the take downs -- I just don't know," she said.

Ray, meanwhile, appears to have retreated to another obscure streaming site, called Trovo, which is so new it is still in beta mode.

In the chat section of what appeared to be Ray's new Azzmador page on Trovo, a follower said "we missed u Azz" on January 15.

Ray has yet to livestream any podcasts on Trovo. But in recent days -- after several months of silence -- a Telegram account bearing Azzmador's logo with a link to his DLive channel burst back onto the platform with a series of racist and anti-Semitic messages.

"Harriet Tubman and MLK are both fake historical figures who had Communist Jew handlers/promoters," read one February 7 message.

Some startups see the deplatforming of online firebrands as a recruitment opportunity.

"Hey @rooshv, so sorry to see you get censored!" a Canadian company called Entropy -- which targets YouTubers and other streamers seeking to avoid censorship -- tweeted at Daryush "Roosh" Valizadeh, an online personality in the so-called "manosphere," who has touted misogynistic ideas such as that women are intellectually inferior and that rape should be legal on private property. Valizadeh -- who authored an online post called "Why are Jews behind most modern evils?" -- had just been dumped by YouTube less than a week prior, on July 13. "We would be honored to support your streams," the tweet added.

In March 2019, Entropy's three young founders were interviewed by a podcaster about their new product, and excitedly touted their first big-name user, Jean-Franois Garipy, an alt-right YouTuber who frequently featured White nationalists on one of his shows.

"He was actually the first streamer to try us out," said co-founder Rachel Constantinidis. "He tried us out for a number of months, and we were able to really improve the stability of the platform based on his feedback."

In an email to CNN, Garipy denied a CBC news article's characterization of him as supporting "ideas of white superiority and white 'ethnostates,'" saying, "no proper context was provided by the journalist to understand the circumstances in which I discussed these subjects in the past."

Fuentes and Gionet did not respond to CNN's requests for comment, and Valizadeh declined an interview.

Just as far-right provocateurs are driven underground to more niche sites when they are booted from mainstream platforms, so, too, do they often gravitate towards cryptocurrency such as bitcoin when banished from using online payment services like PayPal and GoFundMe.

"Cryptocurrencies are indispensable to them at this point," said Squire.

Because many of them were early adopters -- and because bitcoin's volatile value has recently skyrocketed -- some are now sitting on vast sums.

Most successful in this realm has been Stefan Molyneux, a Canadian vlogger who has promoted ideas of non-White inferiority and has said, "I don't view humanity as a single species." Molyneux, dropped by PayPal in late 2019, starting taking bitcoin donations in 2013 and is holding onto a chunk of the cryptocurrency that amounted to more than $27 million as of Thursday morning, said Bambenek, the cyber security expert.

(Molyneux -- who is still on Facebook and Instagram -- has also been expelled from YouTube, and has since shown up on lesser-known platforms such as BitChute, DLive and Entropy, where his audience is considerably diminished. Molyneux told CNN in an email that he stopped covering politics last year, and is now writing about parenting. He declined to answer any questions about his finances.)

BitChute, Trovo and Entropy did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.

By publishing their wallet IDs online and urging followers to donate through cryptocurrency, extremists have -- perhaps unwittingly -- provided unprecedented insight into their financials. In an attempt to cut out the middleman and combat fraud, bitcoin transactions -- including sender and recipient identifiers -- are all recorded in a public ledger, available to anyone.

Individual donations to far-right personalities mostly appear to have been small, and Bambenek said they are shrinking on the whole.

One exception: Nick Fuentes received a single donation of 13.5 bitcoin, at the time worth about $250,000, in December from a person whom researchers believe was a computer programmer in France who apparently killed himself shortly afterward, according to a Yahoo News exclusive report.

Another notable cryptocurrency enthusiast is Anglin of The Daily Stormer who, in addition to owing Gersh of Montana $14 million, has another $4.1 million judgment against him for falsely branding comedian and CNN contributor Dean Obeidallah -- an American Muslim -- as a terrorist. He also owes money to Taylor Dumpson, who, after becoming the first Black female student body president at American University, endured a harassment campaign orchestrated by The Daily Stormer. That $725,000 judgment is against Anglin, the site and one of the site's followers.

Anglin, who claims on his website to be banned from PayPal, credit card processors and even his PO Box, has been directing his donations to bitcoin since 2014. Over the years, he received more than 200 bitcoin, but most appear to have been cashed out, according to Bambenek, who said Anglin is holding on to at least 10.1 bitcoin, worth more than $525,000 as of Thursday morning.

But Anglin's cryptocurrency holdings are becoming more difficult to monitor.

While Anglin was embroiled in the Gersh lawsuit, his website started advertising donations through a more obscure cryptocurrency called Monero, which -- contrary to crypto's ethos of transparency -- keeps transactions private.

Demonetizing and deplatforming aren't the only way to defang groups and individuals who espouse identity-based hate.

"You also need to sue them," said Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America, a nonprofit civil rights group.

Ray and Anglin are among a couple dozen defendants named in a lawsuit underwritten by Spitalnick's group on behalf of several activists who are Charlottesville victims. The two men are accused of being part of the leadership team that not only planned the Unite the Right rallies on August 11 and 12, 2017, but primed the pump for violence.

Four of the 10 plaintiffs in the civil rights lawsuit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October, were struck by the car driven by a neo-Nazi into a throng of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer, whose physical appearance Anglin would later disparage. Their injuries ranged from broken bones to concussions to torn ligaments. The other plaintiffs in the suit say they have suffered emotional distress either from physical injuries inflicted during the event or from psychological trauma and have missed work as a result.

In the days leading to the Unite the Right rally, much of the planning and coordination happened on The Daily Stormer, which -- with Anglin and Ray as principal authors -- began to take on a menacing tone, according to the suit.

On August 8, the suit says, Anglin and Ray said the purpose of the upcoming rally had shifted from being in support of a Confederate monument of Robert E. Lee, "which the Jew Mayor and his Negroid Deputy have marked for destruction" to "something much bigger...which will serve as a rallying point and battle cry for the rising Alt-Right movement."

"There is a craving to return to an age of violence," Anglin wrote, according to the suit. "We want a war."

The Daily Stormer advertised the rally with a poster depicting a figure taking a sledgehammer to the Jewish Star of David.

"Join Azzmador and The Daily Stormer to end Jewish influence in America," it said.

Prior to the event, the suit says, Ray and Anglin wrote on The Daily Stormer that "Stormers" were required to bring tiki torches and should also bring pepper spray, flag poles, flags and shields.

Anglin did not attend the rally in Charlottesville, but Ray did. During the march past the synagogue, the suit alleges, he yelled at a woman to "put on a fu**ing burka" and called her a "sharia whore."

The suit says he then proclaimed: "Hitler did nothing wrong."

Fast forward three-and-a-half years. By January, Ray's once-prolific podcast had been dark for several months. His fans began to notice. On a forum called GamerUprising, somebody started a thread on January 25 called "What happened to Azzmador????"

"He just disappeared and no one even seems to care," wrote the user, who goes by "Creepy-ass Cracker."

But there are signs that Ray plans a return to podcasting as Azzmador.

On February 3, a fan on his Trovo page asked when Azzmador would begin streaming.

He responded in a word: "soon."

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How White nationalists evade the law and continue profiting off hate - Action News Now

PANDEMICS CAN have unexpected side-effects. One of them, according to a report last year by the New York Federal Reserve, may be a surge in support for extremist ideas. It observed how cities in Germany that suffered the most deaths from influenza by 1920 then voted in unusually large numbers for extreme-right parties, such as the Nazis, by the early 1930s. In the past year, too, according to studies in Britain and America, there has been a spurt in online searches for extremist content. Anger over lockdowns or loss of trust in government could be driving new interest.

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What texts might people be turning to? Researchers study literary habits of the far-right by monitoring reading lists traded on social media, texts promoted on podcasts or recited by enthusiasts as audiobooks on YouTube, output from right-fringe publishing houses and, most extreme, the diatribes that serve as manifestos of those who commit atrocities. Together they suggest several strands of hateful writing. Brian Hughes of American University in Washington, DC says that the sheer availability of online extremist ideology is, in part, responsible for the elevated rates of extremist mobilisation.

French writers have been strikingly influential, including those in the Nouvelle Droite movement. Alain de Benoist, an illiberal thinker, inspired members of Americas alt right such as Richard Spencer, a white supremacist. The works of a philosopher, Jean Renaud Gabriel Camus, also stand out. Ideas drawn from his book The Great Replacement (2011), are often repeated by those who say non-white immigration threatens Western countries. The book has been cited by mass shooters.

The work of another French writer, Jean Raspail, is championed by anti-immigrant activists in America. His dystopian novel from 1973, The Camp of the Saints, imagines the violent overrun of France by brown-skinned migrants. It is a weaponised retelling of an apocalyptic biblical parable, says Chelsea Stieber of Catholic University. The French understand it as literature, she says, whereas in America it gets to be this reality that could happen. Leading Republicans have promoted it, she points out, including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, both erstwhile close advisers of Donald Trump, as well as Steve King, a noxious ex-congressman from Iowa.

Apocalyptic writing is especially popular among a strand of the far-right known as accelerationists, meaning those who believe civilisation (or at least liberal democracy) will soon collapse. They hope the end can be hastened by violent acts or even civil war. In this vein an Italian fascist writer, Julius Evola, is also cited by Mr Bannon and Mr Spencer and lauded in far-right circles, along with his call for blowing everything up. He promoted an idea of heroic men who rise above history (Mussolini was a fan). Memes of him in his monocle are shared online by adoring followers.

Extremists turn to such writers because they justify using violence to clear the way for a supposed new golden age to begin. Others tell them how to achieve that. Siege, a book by James Mason of the American Nazi party, purports to be a guide to violent revolution. It had little impact when it was published in 1992, notes Graham Macklin of the Centre for Research on Extremism, in Oslo. But its rediscovery by neo-Nazis roughly five years ago has led to a surge of interest. PDFs of it are now shared widely online; the hashtag readSiege spreads periodically on social media. Now, its everywhere, he says.

The study of such writing matters, even if one researcher admits he feels like projectile vomiting while tackling some especially violent or cruel texts. Ideas can have deadly consequences, says Joanna Mendelson of the Anti-Defamation League. People are quoting and referencing books as a kind of reassurance that they are validated in their extremist views, she says. Many of the same ones reappear repeatedly among anti-Semitic and other extremist factions. A few, such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (an anti-Semitic conspiracy originating from Russia in 1903), or the racist, eugenics-based writing of Lothrop Stoddard in the 1920s, are repeatedly rediscovered or reinterpreted by new writers. What used to be called eugenics, for example, is today dressed up as race realism.

One book is still considered the bible of the far right. The Turner Diaries, a barely readable novel from the 1970s by William Pierce, another American Nazi, imagines an insurrection by a group called Order against a government that promotes egalitarian values and gun control. It has supposedly sold 500,000 copies. One avid reader was Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. (He used a lorry full of fertiliser and explosives, a method depicted in the novel.) Others were inspired to form a real-world paramilitary group, also called the Order.

Jared Holt, who researches domestic extremism at the Atlantic Council in Washington, says such books are still powerful. Veteran members of groups pass them on to younger ones. They are used to build ties between adherents, to test new initiates and ease the anxiety of some by giving a sense of purpose to their lives. He notes, too, how younger readers are finding new writing. One rambling, self-published book called Bronze Age Mindset, for example, has won a cult following, reportedly including staffers at Mr Trumps White House. It draws on ideas from Nietzsche and tells readers to prepare for the military rule that will soon begin in America. For some readers such bilious writing is appealing. Finding out why is a first step towards confronting it.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Deadly inspirations"

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Deadly inspirations - What their chosen reading says about America's far-right | United States - The Economist

Allison Siegelman| Erie Times-News

U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been responsible for circulating wacky QAnon conspiracy theories that have dark, satanic themes that are reminiscent of those believed in ancient times. She and those associated with alt-right and QAnon groups target the Jewish people in the same way the Nazi Party did: They spread stump rhetoric, written propaganda and images all weaving the fiction with horrifying false characterizations and conspiracies about how the country is being destroyed by people amongst us.

What is most concerning is that Holocaust revisionism and denial has been embraced by some in academics with an agenda. It is so extreme that the genocide of 6 million Jews (along with many other minorities) throughout Europe is being questioned, especially by the younger generations who did not live through World War II.

We are in times that leaveus with few of those who lived through the WWII period. The elders today are mostly those who were babies to toddlers at the time of the war. Soon, they, too, will be gone. History has recorded in video and text the wars atrocities as they occurred and retrospectives. These archives have been maintained in Holocaust museums in Israeland the U.S., along with the U.N., and many other government archives, museums and archival organizations.

Todays conspiracists who wish to diminish or discredit the history preserved through videos, publications and testimonials of the millions who lived through that time are attempting to erase the Holocaust, and for what purpose? It appears to be a radical political agendaor delusions from mental illness that are responsible.

The hatemongers are attracted to provincialism. They are willing to use any tactic to keep America from being a diverse democratized nation that today offers humans of all races, religions, ethnicities, genders and sexual persuasions freedom from persecution and oppression.

However, the U.S. has a jaded past that is filled with slavery, racism and segregation. It is no surprise that our nation birthed a movement in the late 1800s, known as eugenics, that led to the sterilization of over 64,000 disabled or impoverished (mostly of dark-skinned) Americans. Hitler and the Nazi Party subscribed to this ideology disguised at the time as science. The desire to propagate a superior race lead to the insanity of the 20th century Holocaust which is still recorded as the worst genocide in history it eliminated two-thirds (67%) of the worlds Jewish population, or 6 million Jews.

Genocide is the deliberate killing of a people with the intent of eliminating them from existence.

The Jewish people had endured many battles and oppression since their tribal identity was created by the father of monotheism (the belief in one God), Abraham. It was Hitlers Nazi fascism that targeted death to all Jews throughout the world not just to drive them out of a land. The Nazi Party was able to formulate conspiracy theories that relied on demonizing Jews bycirculating tales of Jews plotting to deceive and destroy the non-Jewish population. They played on arousing fear in a demographic group who were provincial, gullibleand eager to find a scapegoat for the ills of their nation.

Today, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and those like her are doing exactly the same thing. These extremists are looking to instill fear and anger in Americans who see anyone other than white and Christian as a threat to the U.S. They wrap their falsehoods with patriotism and glorify the quest to attack the Jews as if Jews are not trustworthy and upstanding citizens.

Ironically, those who participate in such defamation can be seen as the real enemy of a democratized nation. Those who remain indifferent or dismissive of the trend in radicalized American patriotism and the militia cells that we today call domestic terrorism are as much to blame for the threat to our nation.

If we are to survive as a democracy, we must put party politics aside and look to history for an understanding of what gave rise to democracy. George Santayanas iconic words spoken in 1905 could not be more relevant, Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. It was in 1948 before the British House of Commons upon the end of WWII that Winston Churchill revised the quote as, Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. I ask that we, as Americans, embrace the most basic tenet of democracy to avoid a horrific slide into fascism and worse: immorality.

Allison Siegelman of York Township is a member of Central PA American Israel Public Affairs.

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QAnon and the alt-right draw from the Nazi playbook - GoErie.com

Wrapping yourself in an American flag does not make you a patriot any more than going to church makes you a Christian.

The people who stormed the Capitol Jan. 6 were not patriots, despite their chants of USA! USA!, weaponized American flags, and the blessings of a man who would be their king.

The true patriots at the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, were the Capitol Police and the D.C. Metro Police. They defended the members of Congress against the murderous mob who, unchecked, might have lynched (they had a gallows) sitting members of the U.S. government, including the vice president.

The flag-waving mob consisted of revolutionaries, insurrectionists, seditionists, rebels, thugs, racists, extremists, criminals, sovereign citizens, rogue cops, war-trained veterans, domestic terrorists, conspirators. Not a patriot among them.

To be fair, many of the people in the riot just got caught up in the moment, mob mentality, mass hysteria. They probably thought they were in the right because they truly believed Donald Trump won the election.

After all, since last summer Trump had been telling his supporters the only way he could lose the election was if it were rigged. And when he actually did lose the election, he refused to accept the results and whipped his supporters into a seditious frenzy by claiming without any evidence whatsoever that the election was stolen from him.

Aided and abetted by journalistically bankrupt right-wing media and self-serving politicians, Trump still sustains The Big Lie that he won despite overwhelming evidence that he lost.

The Big Lie is a tactic chillingly articulated by one of the architects of the Holocaust, Josef Goebbels, who said: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

I used to believe it could never happen here. I was wrong. It is happening here.

By grandiosely and mendaciously repeating the Big Lie that he won the election, Trump and his media sycophants have fooled and made fools of millions of credulous Americans.

Two hundred-and-still-counting rioters are facing federal charges ranging from misdemeanors to felonies to sedition. Fooled by Trump and the alt-right media. Foolish for taking selfies.

REALITY CHECK

Not only does Trump continue to promulgate the Big Lie, he has mesmerized millions of Americans into thinking theyre patriots. And these zombie patriots have appropriated the American flag as if only they were entitled to it.

Theres nothing patriotic about overthrowing our government.

And it is oxymoronic to use the American flag in support of insurrection.

All together now: I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands .

Theres a whole lot of cognitive dissonance going on here, some very pretzeled logic, alternate reality.

It is a fundamental law of the universe: The more you ignore reality, the more it will work against you. Just ask the folks in jail.

I like to think some Trump supporters were shocked back into the real world, ashamed of what happened Jan. 6 and beginning to realize what Trump and his echo chamber have played them.

U.S. democracy marched forward and certified the election of Biden and Harris despite the riot and Trumps histrionics.

They saw Trump impeached, again. This time for the high crime of inciting insurrection. They witnessed a lopsided trial where the House impeachment managers proved beyond doubt Trump was guilty, guilty, guilty.

Depressingly but not surprisingly, 43 Republican senators ignored the evidence Feb. 13 and voted to acquit. Perhaps they just want to ride Trumps insurrectionary gravy train to its dead end. Or maybe those faithless pols are afraid of their Trump-loving and some clearly violent constituents?

What was encouraging and surprising Feb. 13 was that seven Republican senators Burr, Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse and Toomey broke ranks and voted to convict Trump. They risked political suicide by rejecting partisan politics and upholding their oaths to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

As Sen. Mitch McConnell so eloquently and hypocritically put it after he voted to acquit on an inane technicality, there was no question Trump was practically and morally responsible for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection riot.

Real patriots vote their conscience. Real Republicans accept the results of elections. They suck it up if they dont like who got elected, just as the Democrats did in 2000, 2004 and 2016.

Real patriots dont betray their oath of office and vote even after the riot not to certify the free and fair election of Biden and Harris.

Eighteenth-century British pundit Samuel Johnson noted, Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Former President Donald Trump is a lying, power-hungry scoundrel, and the people who blindly follow him are not patriots.

By their actions and rejection of reality, they have forfeited their right to call themselves patriots or to display the flag of the country they betrayed.

The election wasnt stolen, but the U.S. flag was.

Its our flag, and we want it back.

Tom Durkin is a freelance writer and photographer in Nevada City.

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Tom Durkin: Stop the steal of our flag - The Union of Grass Valley

Despite Donald Trumps seeming lack of interest in the project, a number of his followers around the US have been flirting with the idea of forming a breakaway party of the right to challenge the Republican establishment. Most of these have names which use the word patriot.

In Florida, former Republican voters registered the American Patriot Party of the United States or TAPPUS, for short while at the end of January a spokesman for the former president denied reports he was planning to fundraise in cooperation with a group calling itself the MAGA Patriot Party National Committee.

Patriot was a word that surfaced repeatedly during the assault on the US Capitol in January, being repeatedly invoked to define the identities and motivations of those who invaded the nations legislative heart. Ivanka Trump herself praised the participants on Twitter as American Patriots though she deleted her tweet after being challenged by other Twitter users for her use of this word.

Patriot is a common enough word, but its modern use is often nebulous. A simple dictionary definition of a patriot is one who loves and supports his or her country. So you could call anyone who expressed their love for their country a patriot no matter where or when they lived. In the US context, though, until relatively recently the word has been used most frequently in relation to New England and especially Boston in the era of the American revolution.

Patriot has long been a convenient shorthand for those American colonists who supported or participated in the revolution, as distinct from the loyalists who hoped that the North American colonies would remain part of the British empire. New Englanders, particularly those who live in or around Boston, like to think that their city and region holds a special place in the history of the revolution, and thus of the United States. It was the home of leaders such as Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. It was also the site of the Stamp Act riots, the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The regions sole National Football League franchise is the New England Patriots, who are based in Bostons southern suburbs. The teams mascot, Pat Patriot, is depicted as a revolutionary-era soldier, wearing a Continental Army uniform and a tricorne hat. On the third Monday of April, Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut celebrate the state holiday known as Patriots Day, in commemoration of the opening battles of the American revolution, which took place at Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy (now Arlington), Massachusetts.

The holiday is marked by re-enactments of these battles, and, more prominently, by the Boston Marathon. The 2016 film Patriots Day was so titled because its subject was the 2013 terrorist attack on the marathon.

What, then, is the connection between a regional tradition of remembrance of the revolution and the crowds of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol Building? In 2016 a small but assertive group which called itself Patriot Prayer emerged, holding pro-Trump rallies in liberal west coast enclaves such as Portland, Oregon. But the term did not gain wide usage among white nationalists and other members of the alt-right until 2020, when it became a popular way for Trump supporters to describe themselves.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who shot three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was hailed by Trump supporters as a patriot. Since Novembers presidential election, the word has been employed repeatedly among those who believe that the Democrats stole Trumps victory.

Trump supporters travelling from Louisville, Kentucky for the rally on January 6 referred to their group as a patriot caravan. Meanwhile the husband of Ashli Babbit the air force veteran who was shot and killed by Capitol police during the invasion praised her as a great patriot to all who knew her.

On the far-right Breitbart website, someone commenting on a story quoting Donald Trump calling for a peaceful transfer of power attracted a large number of approvals when they left the following comment:

There will NEVER be reconciliation. We have irreconcilable differences, and the fight has just begun. We need to disown the RNC until they support the Patriot Party.

The word patriot has an obvious appeal. Its difficult to argue against a person or groups love of their country and their willingness to take action to defend it. Thats particularly significant when, in the case of the alt-right, it believes that its nations core values are threatened.

But we might view white nationalists embrace of the term as inspired less by American history than by the 2000 Hollywood film The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson himself one of Hollywoods most ardent conservatives. Gibsons character enters the War of Independence only reluctantly to protect one son and avenge the death of another. In other words, for unimpeachable motives.

But is it a stretch to apply this conception of the patriot to those who, like Babbit or the QAnon Shaman, stormed the Capitol because they believed that the Democrats had stolen the election? From the point of view of someone who believes the QAnon conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party elite were behind a vast paedophile ring threatening innocent children, perhaps this really did seem to be an act of patriotism.

Samuel Johnson famously claimed that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, but as is so often true the reality is undoubtedly far more complex.

Original post:

'Patriots' in America: how fighting for your country has taken on new meaning for Trump supporters - The Conversation UK

On Feb. 10, Fox News was in lockstep with other cable news channels and major broadcast networks in presenting more than four hours of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

But at 5 p.m. Eastern, Fox News pulled away from the most graphic video evidence of violence during the insurrection by pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and switched to its popular daily roundtable show "The Five."

Most of the panelists dismissed the Democratic impeachment managers' presentation, defended the former president and moved on to other topics including the viral Zoom cat lawyer video despite the historic nature of the events in Washington. Viewers who wanted Fox News journalists' take on the proceedings had to wait until anchor Bret Baier showed up at the top of the 6 p.m. hour.

The editorial judgment to cut away was met with derision on social media, where the conservative-leaning news network is often hammered by critics. On screen, Juan Williams, the lone liberal on "The Five," angrily chastised his co-hosts for ignoring the evidence presented.

What played out that day demonstrates the pressure Fox News is under, as the network faces growing scrutiny over its role in supporting Trump and his disinformation claims that many believe helped to fuel the deadly insurrection attempt in the Capitol.

The profit engine of Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corp. presents itself as a news network, but it's often defined by its opinion hosts, such as Sean Hannity, who pay fealty to Trump and the former president's devoted followers.

Those followers now have multiple options to feed their fix for right-wing opinions some of them far more extreme than what is delivered on Fox News. Satisfying those viewers while also reporting information that does not fit their worldview has become a challenge for an organization that faces vocal detractors on the political center and left, a potentially expensive lawsuit from one of Trump's baseless voter fraud targets and an increasingly outsize role in the parent company's financial performance.

"I have friends who don't watch Fox anymore because they see it as untethered from reality," said Richard Goodstein, a Washington attorney who has appeared on the channel as a liberal guest. "The question for Fox is balancing losing viewers like that to losing viewers who switch channels rather than watching someone like me who forcefully brings facts and opinions that they cannot tolerate."

Chris Stirewalt, the former political editor for Fox News, said in an op-ed column for the LA Times that he faced anger from the Trump multitudes after defending the network's election night call of the once reliably red Arizona for Joe Biden.

"When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed," he wrote.

Giving the benefit of the doubt and often full-throated support to a president whose lies led to an attempt to overturn an election in turn led to voting software maker Smartmatic's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against the network and three of its hosts.

The suit filed Feb. 4 alleges that Fox News and its hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro damaged Smartmatic's reputation and business by spreading Trump's conspiracy theories about the election being rigged to elect President Biden. (Fox News and the hosts have filed motions to dismiss the suit, saying the Trump's claims were newsworthy, even if they were false.)

A more immediate question hanging over Fox News is the same one the Republican party is grappling with: What is the next move for Trump? Just as Republican legislators fear Trump will support primary challengers back home if they take him to task, Fox News has to determine how to navigate his expected re-emergence following his acquittal in the second impeachment trial.

Joe Walsh, a former tea party movement congressman from Illinois and conservative radio host, said the right-wing audience remains enthralled with Trump.

"That's the only thing that's going to satiate the folks who turn on Fox," Walsh said. "Right now they are going on about big tech censorship and immigration. That's not going to be enough."

The challenges come as Fox News has emerged as the most significant piece of Fox Corp., which slimmed down after selling most of its entertainment assets to the Walt Disney Co. for $71 billion. During the current fiscal year, Fox News is expected to contribute 80% or more than $2 billion to Fox Corp.'s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, an industry-wide measurement of profitability.

Fox News has been the most-watched cable news channel for 19 consecutive years, thanks to its effective positioning as a right-leaning alternative to other TV news outlets. As the rest of the traditional TV business declined in 2020, the channel's audience grew. Fox News became the most-watched network in all of cable TV, according to Nielsen.

The network expected an audience falloff once Trump lost the White House, as it had seen viewers tune out after Barack Obama, a Democrat, defeated his Republican opponents in 2008 and 2012.

But Trump remained the main story in the weeks after the 2020 election with his unfounded charges of voter fraud, leading to the insurrection at the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters that killed five people, followed by the second impeachment trial. Depressed Trump supporters tuned out of Fox News during coverage of those events, while the ratings for MSNBC and CNN surged as viewers who don't habitually watch cable news were tuning in.

Fox News has managed to ride out ratings fluctuations in the past, but it took longer this time. The network has ranked first in viewers since Biden's inauguration, although it still trails CNN in the 25 to 54 age group important to advertisers.

The dip was significant enough for Fox Corp. Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch to calm the waters. On Feb. 9, Murdoch told financial analysts that the company extended the employment contract of Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott and praised her performance.

Scott took over the operation in 2018 after it had been rocked by sexual harassment scandals and racial discrimination lawsuits related to the reign of the network's founding chief executive, Roger Ailes. After maintaining the network's ratings leadership for two years, she is now jiggering the network's lineup and will add at least two more hours of right-leaning opinion programs, which have always been the most reliable ratings performers.

Murdoch also tried to counter the notion that Fox News has veered too far to one end of the political spectrum.

"We don't need to go further right," Murdoch said. "We'll stick where we are, and we think that's exactly right and that's the best thing for the business and for our viewers."

Despite the younger Murdoch's assurances, there is a sense among some politicos and people inside Fox News that the network has already moved further right to stave off the insurgence of new outlets that are courting their audience. Even veterans of past Republican administrations, such as Matthew Dowd, who worked for George W. Bush, believe there has been a shift.

"We saw them as conservative and more likely to be more friendly than others, but we never saw them as like, 'Oh, let's do Fox because they're basically a propaganda arm,'" Dowd said. "You always thought of it as a conservative outlet, but it was rational conservative."

A Fox News insider not authorized to speak publicly on the matter said the conservative bent of the network is reflective of where the Republican Party has gone under Trump.

This past year, Fox News saw the rise of a pesky new rival in Newsmax, which kept up a steadfast defense of Trump's voter fraud claims through President Biden's inauguration. Last fall, the Boca Raton, Florida-based channel averaged as many as 1 million viewers at 7 p.m. Eastern on some days with host Greg Kelly, who on Trump's last day in office said, "I miss him already."

Newsmax's ratings have faded in recent weeks. Since the inauguration it has averaged 226,000 viewers compared with 2.5 million for Fox News.

The other right-wing Fox wannabe is the more strident San Diego-based One America News Network, which does not have enough distribution in cable and satellite homes to be measured by Nielsen.

But the new breed of conservative outlets know how to attract attention. After Fox News Media canceled Dobbs' Fox Business Network program where many of Trump's election fraud falsehoods were promoted OAN founder Robert Herring asked in a tweet for the host to give him a call. "We may have a position available for you in which you wouldn't be censored for speaking the truth!" Herring wrote.

Dobbs remains under contract to Fox News and still gets an annual salary in the seven figures.

Neither of the upstart channels has the financial resources or infrastructure to knock Fox News off its perch. Nevertheless, Fox News is entering an era where a multitude of new contenders will try to nibble away at the conservative audience it once had to itself.

"They've gone from having zero wing-nut competition to aggressive wing-nut competition," said Mike Murphy, a former Republican consultant and current political analyst for NBC News.

In addition to watching on cable, viewers can stream Newsmax and OAN without a pay TV subscription. There are also more digital conservative channels such as the First, which carries a nightly show from former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck's Blaze Live. Both are available on free ad-supported streaming services such as Pluto.

Social media has provided new outlets for right-leaning voices as well. The Facebook page of Fox News contributor Dan Bongino, a former cop and Secret Service agent turned pugnacious Trump-defending pundit, has more monthly engagements than any major mainstream news organization on the platform.

Jon Klein, a digital media entrepreneur and former CNN president, said audience fragmentation is inevitable now that streaming has reached critical mass.

"Ten years ago conservative audiences were not that digitally savvy," Klein said. "The early adopters of digital media were younger, more liberal, educated, et cetera. None of this digital technology is a mystery anymore to the older white males who watch Fox News and certainly not a mystery to the alt-right young men they want."

Fox News does have an internal image problem resulting from the Arizona election call, which it stood by, despite an angry response from the Trump campaign and his supporters.

Stirewalt was fired from Fox News in a company restructuring on Jan. 19. Bill Sammon, the longtime executive in charge of the Washington bureau, which has long fought to remain independent from the network's opinion side, announced his retirement a day earlier.

Both moves were seen as responses to their roles on election night, leaving some of the journalists at the company stunned and concerned that the network is lessening its commitment to straight news.

Rupert Murdoch recently told The Washington Post that Stirewalt's exit was not related to the Arizona call. It was known among Fox News executives that Murdoch was not a fan of Stirewalt, who declined comment.

Even the perception that Fox News ousted journalists over reporting an election result that was ultimately accurate could damage one of the foundational constructs of the channel. The integrity of the Fox News polling unit and the precision accuracy of its election decision desk has helped define the divide between news and opinion.

But keeping the core conservative Fox News viewer happy is the company's primary goal. Rupert Murdoch's U.S. newspapers the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post have been highly critical of Trump's actions on their editorial pages since he lost the election. Any personal political convictions he has on the matter are not worth alienating fickle TV viewers who could ultimately have an impact on the company's balance sheet.

"They are not sentimental about their programming decisions," Klein said of the Murdochs. "They do what they need to do to get an audience."

(c)2021 the Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Continued here:

Fox News tries to keep Trump fans satisfied, but at what cost? - Gazettextra