White nationalists keep showing up in the hearings of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Evidence is mounting that white nationalist groups who want to establish an all-white state played a significant role in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that left five dead and dozens wounded.

Thus far, the hearings have documented how the Proud Boys helped lead the insurrectionist mob into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C, journalist James Risen wrote in the Intercept.

Based on July 12, 2022, testimony from a former Oath Keepers member, the white nationalist group coordinated with the Three Percenters, another group of white nationalists, and the Proud Boys in mobilizing their extremists groups to rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, as asked by President Trump in his Dec. 16, 2020, tweet.

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As a cultural anthropologist who has studied these movements for over a decade, I know that membership in these organizations is not limited to the attempted violent overthrow of the government and poses an ongoing threat, as seen in massacres carried out by young men radicalized by this movement.

In 2020, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security described domestic violent extremists as presenting the most persistent and lethal threat to the people of the United States and the nations government.

In March 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that the number of arrests of white supremacists and other racially motivated extremists has almost tripled since he took office in 2017.

Jan. 6 was not an isolated event, Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and its not going away anytime soon.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights group, tracked 733 active hate groups across the United States in 2021.

Based on my research, the internet and social media have made the problem of white supremacist hate far worse and more visible; its both more accessible and, ultimately, more violent, as seen on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol and the shooting deaths of ten Black people at a Buffalo grocery story, among other examples.

In the 1990s, former KKK leaders including David Duke rebranded white supremacy for the digital age.

They switched KKK robes for business suits and connected neo-Nazi antisemitic conspiracies with broader anti-Black, anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic racism.

From the 1990s to the late 2000s, this movement largely built discreet online communities and websites peddling racist disinformation.

In fact, for years one of the first websites about Martin Luther King Jr. that a Google search recommended was a website created by white nationalists that spread neo-Nazi propaganda.

In 2005, the white nationalist website Stormfront.org had 30,000 members which might sound like a lot. But as social media expanded, with both Facebook and Twitter opening to anyone with an email address in 2006, its views got a lot more attention. By 2015, 250,000 people had subscribed to become members of Stormfront.org.

Between 2012 and 2016, white nationalists on Twitter saw a 600% increase in Twitter followers. They have since worked to bring white supremacism into everyday politics.

The Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit tech industry watchdog group, found that in 2020 half of the white nationalist groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center had a presence on Facebook.

Without clear regulations preventing extremist content, digitalcompanies, in my view, allowed for the spread of white nationalist conspiracies.

Racist activists used algorithms as virtual bullhorns to reach previously unimaginable-sized audiences.

White nationalist leaders, such as Richard Spencer, wanted an even bigger audience and influence.

Spencer coined the term alt-right to this end, with the goal of blurring the relationship between white nationalism and white conservatism. He did this by establishing nonprofit think tanks like the National Policy Institute that provided an academic veneer for him and other white supremacists to spread their views on white supremacy.

This strategy worked.

Today, many white nationalist ideas once relegated to societys fringes are embraced by the broader conservative movement.

Take, for instance, the Great Replacement Theory. The conspiracy theory misinterprets demographic change as an active attempt to replace white Americans with people of color.

This baseless idea observes that Black and Latino people are becoming larger percentages of the U.S. population, and paints that data as the result of an allegedly active attempt by unnamed multiculturalists to drive white Americans out of power in an increasingly diverse nation.

A recent poll showed that over 50% of Republicans now believe in this conspiracy theory.

In 2016, during Trumps presidential campaign, Vice Magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes formed the Proud Boys to further the goals of the alt-right by protecting white identity with the use of violence if necessary.

Proud Boys members are affiliated with white nationalist ideas and leaders, but they deny any explicit racism. Instead, they describe themselves as Western chauvinists who believe in the supremacy of European culture but also welcome members of any race who support this idea.

Along with pro-gun militias such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, the Proud Boys are an experiment in spreading white nationalist ideas to an online universe of potentially millions of social media users.

Data from manifestos posted online by white nationalist groups shows that many mass shooters share a few common characteristics they are young, white, male and they spend significant time online at the same websites.

The alleged shooter in the killing of 10 Black people in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo on May 14, 2022, described his reason as wanting to stop what he feared as the elimination of the white race.

His fears that people of color were replacing white people came from 4chan, a social media company popular among the alt-right.

In 2019, nine African American church members were murdered in Charleston by a young white man who became radicalized through Google searches that led him to openly white supremacist content.

Massacres in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and at a synagogue in Poway, California, all took place after the shooters began spending time on 8chan, an imageboard popular with white supremacists and the home of QAnon posts.

For many of these individuals, the most important part of their radicalization was not about their home life or personality quirks, but instead about where they spent time online.

The reasons men join groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and even some liberal groups is less clear.

A former Proud Boy member offered one reason: They want to join a gang, Russell Schultz told CNN on Nov. 25, 2020. So they can go fight antifa and hurt people that they dont like, and feel justified in doing it.

Antifa is a loose-knit group of usually nonviolent activists who oppose fascism.

Other former extremist group members describe seeking camaraderie and friendship, but also finding racism and antisemitism.

But more than any other issue, racial demographic changes are providing recruitment opportunities for white nationalists, many of whom believe that by the year 2045 white people will become the minority in the United States.

In July 2021, the most recent date for which statistics are available, the U.S. Census Bureau notes that of the estimated population of 330 million American citizens, 75.8% are white, 18.9% are Hispanic, 13.6% are Black and 6% are Asian.

What is also becoming clearer is that the spread of white nationalism endangers the idea of a democratic nation where racial diversity is considered a strength, not a weakness.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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White nationalism, fueled by social media, is on the rise and attracting violent young white men - Arizona Mirror

The Alt Right

Origins of the term

White supremacistRichard Spencer, who is President and Creative Director at the National Policy Institute, a tiny white supremacist organization, coined the term alternative right in August 2008 in an article in Takis Magazine, a far-right publication.

At the time, Spencer was using alternative right to refer to people on the right who distinguished themselves from traditional conservatives by opposing, among other things, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and open immigration. That same year, Paul Gottfried, a Jewish paleo-conservative, employed the term alternative right when he gave a speech entitled, The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right, at the H.L. Mencken Clubs Annual Meeting in November 2008. For this reason, some sources credit Gottfried with originating the term.

Spencer further popularized the term when he chose Alternative Right as the name for an online publication that debuted in 2010. Spencer shut the website down in 2013, but it was soon re-launched by Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki, former writers forAlternative Right. Spencer went on to found another journal,Radix. BothAlternative Right (rebranded as Affirmative Right)andRadixare forums for racists, antisemites and others who identify with the alt right.

What is the ideology of the alt right?

Alt right adherents identify with a range of different ideologies, all of which center on white identity. Many claim to be Identitarians, a term that originated in France with the founding of theBloc Identitairemovement and its youth counterpart,Generation Identitaire. Identitarians espouse racism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of their respective counties. American Identitarians, including Richard Spencer, claim to want to preserve European-American (i.e., white) culture in the U.S.

As Michael McGregor, a writer and editor forRadix,wrote in February 2015, Identitarians want the preservation of our identity--the cultural and genetic heritage that makes us who we are. Identitarians reject multiculturalism or pluralism in any form.

Others in the alt right identify as so-called radical traditionalists, people who want to preserve what they claim are traditional Christian values but from a uniquely white supremacist perspective. Some inthe alt right identify as white nationalists who want to preserve the white majority in the U.S., claiming that whites losing their majority status is equivalent to white genocide. They issue mendacious propaganda on subjects like immigration and black crime as evidence of whites imperiled status.

Another segment of the alt right refers to themselves as neo-reactionaries (those who reject liberal democracy and ideas associated with the Enlightenment. Some neo-reactionaries refer to their theories as the Dark Enlightenment.) Others call themselves race realists or alternately HBD advocates, a reference to human biodiversity (a belief that ones race governs traits such as behavior and intelligencewith non-whites being inferior to whites). However they define themselves, alt righters reject egalitarianism, democracy, universalism and multiculturalism.

Many alt righters are also blatantly antisemitic and blame Jews for allegedly promoting anti-white policies such as immigration and diversity.

In 2015, alt righters began disparaging members of the conservative movement with the derogatory termcuckservative, a combination of conservative and cuckold, that is used by white supremacists to describe a white conservative who putatively promotes the interests of Jews and non-whites over those of whites. The alt right also refers disparagingly to the mainstream conservative movement as Conservatism, Inc. or Conservative, Inc., in an effort to highlight its associations with wealthy donors (whom the white supremacists dismiss as pro-immigration globalists whose policies undermine white nationalism in America).

Who makes up the alt right?

The alt right is an extremely loose movement, made up of different strands of people connected to white supremacy. One body of adherents is the ostensibly intellectual racists who create many of the doctrines and principles of the white supremacist movement. They seek to attract young educated whites to the movement by highlighting the achievements and alleged intellectual and cultural superiority of whites. They run a number of small white supremacist enterprises, including organizations, online publications and publishing houses. These includeNational Policy Institute, run by Richard Spencer; Counter Currents Publishing, run by Greg Johnson; American Renaissance, run byJared Taylor; and The Right Stuff, a website that features numerous podcasts with a number of contributors.

Alt righters use terms like culture as substitutes for more divisive terms such as race, and promote Western Civilization as a code word for white culture or identity. They tend to avoid explicit white supremacist references like the14 words,a slogan used by neo-Nazis and other hardcore white supremacists. While alt righters share the sentiment behind the 14 words theyre more inclined to talk about preserving European-American identity.

The Groypers are the latest alt right group to grab media attention. This loose network of alt right figures want to normalize their racist and antisemitic views, and are undertaking an organized effort to publicly lambast mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote an America First agenda and for not being adequately pro white.

The subculture of the alt right

The alt right also has its own subculture and language and both tend to attract young, white men. Many of these young men are active in the Chan world, including 4Chan, 8Chan (now defunct) and Reddit. These message boards, where most people post anonymously, are a key source of internet memes and trolling efforts, which often target women and minorities. For example, it is common to find memes that belittle the Holocaust and depict well-known Jewish figures, among others, being gassed. The memes creators hold that bigoted humor and irony help attract new followers to the alt right.

Another aspect of the alt right subculture is its connection to the online world of misogyny known broadly as the manosphere. Men in this movement believe they are being stripped of power by women and pro-feminist social structures. They also are hostile to women on a personal level, with some believing that women are objects to be possessed and used for sexual gratification, while others resent women for their own inability to attract them or to form meaningful relationships with them.

One incident that preceded the advent of the alt right but anticipated its misogyny was Gamergate. In 2014, males in the gaming community expressed hostility and resentment toward certain female gamers and attacked and threatened them online. This pushed a number of women to leave that community. Gamergate showed alt right adherents the effectiveness of online harassment campaigns against their perceived enemies.

Alt right vs. alt lite

In 2015 and 2016, a number of people who considered themselves part of the alt right were not white supremacists, but held certain views that aligned with white supremacist ideology: they were anti-immigrant, anti-globalism, anti-feminism and believed that the left and/or liberals are actively working to destroy American culture.

These people became known as the alt lite. In late 2016, the alt right and alt lite definitively split when people associated with the alt lite, including Mike Cernovich and Lucien Wintrich, began to distance themselves from the negative publicity surrounding the alt rights white supremacist views. The split became very clear after Richard Spencer and some of his followers were caught on video giving Nazi salutes during a National Policy Institute conference shortly after the 2016 election.

The Charlottesville Backlash

The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a peak moment for the alt right. The event brought together between 500 and 600 white supremacists, including Klan members, neo-Nazis and racist skinheads. A torchlit rally the night before the event was attended largely by alt right adherents, and the next days gathering was the largest public white supremacist event in decades.

The alt rights moment of triumph was cut short, however, when a white supremacist named James Fields used his car to murder counter-protester Heather Heyer, and wound many others.

The repercussions were immediate for the alt right, and for the larger white supremacist community. Scores of them were doxxedtheir real identities exposed and as a result, some were fired from their jobs, had to leave their universities, or were rejected by their families or romantic partners. Many white supremacists social media accounts and websites were taken off line and some were kicked off popular crowdfunding websites, eliminating a key income source.

More than two years after Charlottesville, efforts to deplatform white supremacists continue, even as many have migrated to newer, less-scrutinized platforms like Discord and Telegram.

Alt right groups have also turned away from large rallies and have focused on distributing white supremacist propaganda, particularly on college campuses, and holding small flash demonstrations and private events.

In addition to criminal cases, Unite the Right organizers, including alt right leaders, have been dogged by civil lawsuits at both the state and federal levels, and are accused of conspiring to plan the rally and promote violence in Charlottesville.

Lawsuits are not the only irritant affecting white supremacists since Unite the Right. In July 2018, Richard Spencer was refused entry into Europe while en route to Sweden to speak at an alt right conference. Jared Taylor was banned from Europe in March 2019 and Greg Johnson was deported from Norway in May 2019.

Meanwhile, alt right leader Spencer, who helped spearhead the events in Charlottesville, has become increasingly unpopular in the alt right due in part to the perception that he failed to capitalize on the energy generated by Unite the Right.

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Alt Right: A Primer on the New White Supremacy

On June 7, Tehama County voters will decide whether Dave Kain or Chad Parker is their next county sheriff.

Kain is currently employed as a Captain by the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. He has won numerous awards.Parker formerly worked for the Tehama County Sheriffs Office, but left his position in 2018 to take up a job as an investigator with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Both men have had long careers as Tehama County law enforcement officials.

On his campaign webpage, Kain proposes to expand the Tehama County Jail, implement new technology to enhance criminal investigations, create alternative custody programs, and designate a special deputy for rural areas. If elected, Parker also plans to combat rural crime with the creation of Rural Crime Deputies.

Dave Kain and Chad Parker.

Parkers campaign slogan is Moving Forward With Trusted Local Leadership and he claims on his campaign webpage to want to restore public trust in the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. However, his close ties to Red Bluffs alt-right community may alarm Tehama County voters, even in a heavily Republican county where around 65% of the population voted for Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.

If elected, Parker proposes to name Dave Greer, a retired sheriffs deputy, the leader of his management team. Greer has 35 years of experience working in Tehama County law enforcement. He is a founding member of the nonprofit group Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County.

On its Facebook group page, the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County claims its mission is to recognize Jesus Christ as their leader and that the written guidelines in the Bible shall be subject to and secondary to the laws of California. The mission statement also says it is important for law enforcement officials to seek out people who are lost and help them with the message of Jesus Christ.

The administrator for the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County page is Rob Brinton. Brinton graduated from West Valley High School in the early 1980s and is an Air Force veteran. He worked for 28 years as a law enforcement official in Tehama County for several agencies before retiring. In 2018, he made an unsuccessful run for Tehama County Sheriff.

Brinton is currently employed as a real estate agent in Cottonwood. He is also the Northern California ambassador for the Code 9 Project, a national organization dedicated to educating, training and advocating for the prevention of PTSD and suicide for all first responders and their families.

Brinton has publicly shared a variety of extremist far-right content on his Facebook page, all of which appeared after he retired from the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. In April of 2021, Briton called U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) a Fucktard for supporting the defunding of the police in St. Louis. He subscribes to a selective far-right version of Christianity as a member of the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County.

After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in May of 2020, Brinton took to Facebook to share his unhappiness regarding the protests for justice sweeping across the country. He tagged Chad Parker, as well as former Shasta County Sheriff Eric Magrini, and other North State law enforcement officials in the Facebook post.

I stand behind my brothers and sisters. NO ONE STANDS ALONE. Im retired but not dead ill bring the fight to you and stand beside you until my last breath or drop of blood you are my family I love you and I WILL STAND BESIDE YOU. LETS BRING THE FIGHT TO THEM YOU FUCK WITH ONE OF US . YOU FUCK WITH ALL OF US..

Rob Brinton Facebook post about Black Lives Matter protests

Parker, and numerous others, liked Brintons Facebook post. One individual who commented under the Facebook post said protesters would explode like a tube of toothpaste if they decided to play frogger with motorists.

Rob Brinton Facebook post on U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO).

Brinton, like Parker, is friends on Facebook with Woody Clendenen. Clendenen lives in Tehama County, is a well-known member of the Cottonwood Militia, and owns a barber shop in Cottonwood which occasionally flies a Confederate flag

Clendenen also participates in Red, White and Blueprint podcasts and docuseries episodes, along with two of the co-owners of the alt-right propaganda media company, Jon Knight and Carlos Zapata.

Top: Recent profile pictures used by Woody Clendenen on Facebook; Bottom: Screenshot from a short documentary about the Cottonwood Militia.

The Confederate flag flying outside of Woody Clendenens barbershop in Cottonwood.

Red, White and Blueprint advertisement featuring Jon Knight (black shirt with yellow logo) and Woody Clendenen (gray shirt with red logo.

Screenshots from a Red, White and Blueprint Facebook story which shows the company filming scenes for the next docuseries episode at Clendenens property. Carlos Zapata stands in the middle of the group while looking toward the camera in the image on the right side.

Since the Feb. 1 recall of Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty, journalists working for national media outlets have lined up to get a glimpse of Clendenen in his barbershop environment which doubles as an alt-right man cave for him and his clientele.

Chalk the relationship between Clendenen, Parker, and Brinton up as yet another connection between the Tehama County Sheriffs Office and the North States alt-right community. As I reported in an A News Caf piece last August, Clendenen is also friends with Bill Derbonne. Derbonne is a former Tehama County Sheriffs deputy who is working as an investigator for the Tehama County District Attorney.

Derbonne is alleged to have illegally sold guns and gun supplies out of the back of his patrol car and on city property when he was employed as the chief of police in Asotin, Wash., before accepting a position with the Tehama County Sheriffs Office.

On May 10, Dave Greer, the retired law enforcement official Parker plans to put in charge of his team if elected as the sheriff of Tehama County, posted a statement on his Facebook page complaining about being told at a local candidates event in Red Bluff the he does not act like a Christian. Greer said the attendee told him this because of Greers political positions and who he supports.

Our Country, State and local government are in need of one person, Jesus, wrote Greer. I have come to a point in my life that I take time to seek His guidance in most big decisions I make in my life.

I think as Christians, we need to pray before we vote, continued Greer. I am in no way telling anyone who to vote for, but I am saying, lets take time to bend a knee before we select a name on the ballot. Seek His guidance and personally see where the candidates stand with respect to Jesus.

Dave Greers Facebook post regarding the claim that he does not act like a Christian.

Greer ended his Facebook post by writing that county residents should vote for candidates who will be bold in their faith and stand for Christian values. Greg Phelps, the youth pastor at the Cavalry Chapel in Red Bluff, liked Greers Facebook post and supports the election of Parker as county sheriff. Content shared on Phelps Facebook page shows he is against COVID-19 mandates and the vaccine, and does not believe President Biden won the 2020 election. Phelps has also shared homophobic and anti-transgender content on his Facebook page.

Screenshots from Greg Phelps Facebook page, including his profile picture.

Dave Greers wife, Shawn Greer, is Parkers campaign aid. According to Parker, she is a wealth of knowledge for me. Shawn Greer is the leader of an alt-right activist group named Tehama County Citizens for Freedom, and she has published an extensive collection of material filled with misinformation and far-right commentary on the groups webpage. Greer also runs a group known as Tehama County Citizens for Trump, and manages pages for that group, and for Tehama County Citizens for Freedom on Facebook and Telegram. She goes by Shawn Marie on Facebook.

Chad Parker stating on his Telegram page that Shawn Greer is a wealth of knowledge for me.

Left: Shawn Greers profile picture on Facebook (shes standing with Dave Greer); Top Right: One of Shawn Greers social media profile pages; Bottom Right: Dave Greers Facebook profile picture.

When Berrendos Middle School teacher Stacy Pearce went viral for wearing a yellow Star of David to compare COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the Jewish Holocaust in a brazen display of anti-Semitism at a protest in Red Bluff, Dave and Shawn Greer came to her defense. They, along with Parker and Calvary Chapel pastor Greg Phelps, signed the petition supporting Pearce on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

In addition to signing the petition to support Pearce, Shawn Greer also doubled-down in her support for the sentiments displayed by the teacher on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage by repeating and defending the toxic false equivalence between the Jewish Holocaust and COVID-19 mandates in Californias public schools.

Shawn Greer believes COVID-19 is a hoax and that President Bidens election in 2020 was not legitimate. Greer and other members of Tehama County Citizens for Freedom have shared several pieces of content on various social media platforms that supports Red, White and Blueprint, and the broader alt-right community in Shasta County.

Facebook post on Tehama County Citizens for Freedom Facebook page made by Shawn Greer which celebrated the recall of Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty in February. The post included a picture of Jon Knight, Carlos Zapata, and Lani Bangay of Red, White and Blueprint.

Greer has helped organize several anti-COVID-19 mandate medical freedom anti-Covid-19 rallies, including the School Walkout in October and the recent convoy rallies that took place on Red Bluffs 1-5 Adobe overpass.

At the convoy rallies, Greer and fellow activists wave the Gadsden Flag with the famous saying, Dont Tread on Me and homemade signs that exclaim statements such as Trump Won. At the most recent overpass protests, an old Chevy truck pulled up to display several signs. The largest one read A (Hole) C And the Squad, followed by Pathetic and God Bless America. At a convoy rally last summer, one attendee wore a T-shirt with a large Q superimposed over the United States flag signifying his support for the QAnon movement.

Photographs of recent far-right protests in Red Bluff shared on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

Photographs of recent far-right protests in Red Bluff shared on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

Elissa McEuen, one of the leaders of the movement to recall Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty, attending a medical freedom rally in downtown Red Bluff last summer.

In addition to organizing far-right protests in Red Bluff, Shawn Greer is also a QAnon believer. The QAnon movement emerged in far-right circles during the Trump presidency. It pushes a variety of false claims which include the belief that a cabal of cannibalistic sexual abusers of children, who worship Satan and operate a worldwide child sex trafficking ring, are conspiring against Donald Trump.

QAnon beliefs are rooted in anti-Semitism, and followers of the movement, which many call a cult, claim that Democratic politicians, Hollywood actors, and others, are part of the so-called cabal. QAnon followers participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington D.C.

Greer does not openly support QAnon on Facebook, but she has posted a significant amount of pro-QAnon material on the Tehama County Citizens for Trump Telegram page. Perhaps Greer does not want to share her believe in QAnon conspiracy theories on Facebook because it is a more popular platform, unlike Telegram, which is mostly used by people who follow far-right conspiracies and extremist movements.

A considerable amount of debate surrounds the identity of Q, the leader of the QAnon movement. Greer has gone as far as to post on Telegram that President Trump is actually Q. On May 2, Greer published a statement on Telegram claiming President Trump gave an AirQ to a live crowd at an event said he makes them during every rally speech.

Content posted by Shawn Greer on Telegram which shows her belief in the QAnon movement.

Over the course of the last few days, Greer has spent her time publishing material on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom social media pages and webpage that tells voters to not vote early and to take their time and pray about how God wants you to vote. Greer has also been actively pushing disinformation about how mail-in voting is not safe, and that in 2020 mail-in ballots in Tehama County were unable to be scanned by the tabulator so the elections office duplicated every single one.

Carlos Zapatas comments on Facebook about the Proud Boys who attended his arraignment.

July 2021 Proud Boys photo by Doni Chamberlain.

In addition to the activism in the Red Bluff area, Greer also communicated with a self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys who claimed he attended Carlos Zapatas July 2021 arraignment at the Shasta County Court House for his role in the May 4 assault of Nathan Pinkney. Zapata shared on Facebook at the time that he supported the Proud Boys. Allan Stellar of the Daily News newspaper claimed the members of the Proud Boys allegedly visited his Palomino Room bar and restaurant in the city.In a conversation with someone who identified as Tristan, Greer shared the trial court date and said that Zapata needed to be supported because he was becoming quite the political leader in Shasta County. Zapata was later found guilty of disturbing the peace while fighting. Zapatas two friends who joined him, Christopher Meagher and Elizabeth Bailey faced the same conviction as Zapata in addition to battery.

Unlike the arraignment, members of the Proud Boys did not show up at Zapata, Meagher, and Baileys trial.

Shawn Greers conversation with a self-proclaimed Proud Boy about Carlos Zapata.

Chad Parkers ties to the alt-right extremist community should alarm voters in staunchly Republican Tehama County. Parker claims to want to restore public trust in the Tehama County Sheriffs Office, but his campaign aid and the spouse of the man he would like to put in charge of his management team, if elected, is a far-right activist who believes a wide variety of conspiracy theories and supports the Proud Boys. On top of this, Parker is part of a network of Christian nationalists and county sheriff deputies who maintain ties to the Cottonwood Militia.

Tehama County has an important decision to make this summer. Will voters go the way of far-right Christian nationalists, QAnon believers, Carlos Zapata and the Proud Boys, or will they meet in the middle and cast their vote for Kain?

###

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Will Tehama Sheriff Candidates Ties to Alt-Right Extremists Alarm ...

Guest post by Alt-Right Exposed

Right on cue, the Deep State Alt Right movement has been activated in order to conflate President Trump and Republicans with racism, and hatred of women, ahead of the mid term elections.

Andrew Weev Auernheimer, webmaster of the Deep State Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, publicly praised the cowardly mass shooting and terrorist attack, by one of his followers, against innocent Black Americans in Buffalo, New York on March 14th.

On the Poast social media platform, WeevstatedViolence works. Terrorism works., and They have launched open war against us, and occasionally there are a few heroes that are willing to respond in kind. I support anyone that kills Democrats.

TRENDING: DEBUNKED! Jan. 6 Committee "Surprise" Witness GETS CAUGHT - US Secret Service Sources DENY Trump Tried to Grab Steering Wheel -- ARE WILLING TO TESTIFY!

In numerous articles on the Daily Stormer, and on their Gamer Uprising forum, posters have been celebrating the attack, and calling for more violence.

Andrew Weev Auernheimer is a convicted computer hacker, who was sent to prison after being caught stealing and doxxing over 100,000 iPad users.

Mysteriously, Weev was suddenly released by Obamas Justice Department, after serving only 13 months of a 41 month sentence. As soon as he left federal prison, Auernheimer immediately started to praise convicted Oklahoma City terrorist Timothy McVeigh, and he publicly called for statues to be erected of terrorists who attacked the United States government.

Weevthen fled to Ukraine, where he suddenly had someone tattoo a swastika on his chest, and started Sieg Heiling, while attempting to align himself with Donald Trump, during Trumps 2016 presidential election campaign.

This is all eerily reminiscent of Alt-Right leaderRichard Spencersuddenly doing Sieg Heils and praising President Trump right around the same time.

It has long been considered common knowledge on right wing message boards that Andrew Weev Auernheimer cut some sort of a deal with the feds, to get out of jail early in order to infiltrate, disrupt and neutralize the right wing.

Weev, who is of of Jewish descent, according to his ownmother, ingratiated himself to Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, editor of a site called Total Fascism, which was later became the Daily Stormer. Anglin allowed Weev to become the webmaster of the site, despite his ethnicity and his early release from federal prison.

Weev and Andrew Anglin registered the Daily Stormer in Russia, in order to conflate Trump and conservatism with Russia, during the 2016 election. If these two were not taking orders directly from Adam Schiff, it is hard to tell how they would act any differently.

The alleged Buffalo shooter, 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron, was an avid reader, and a huge fan of the Daily Stormer. Gendron promoted and praised the site by name in his manifesto, while describing himself as a Neo-Nazi, a white supremacist, and an incel. All of these buzzwords are constantly being bandied about on the Daily Stormer and on their forum.

Gendron also shared a lot of Daily Stormer memes on a Discord channel which has long been considered an FBI honeypot on 4chan.

Weev and Anglin recently switched the sites domain to a registrar in Communist China, but the CCP dumped them after the Buffalo shooting. It seems that promoting terrorism is a bit much for even the Chinese Communist Party to stomach, at least publicly.

The site is now only accessible on the Tor network, which is park of the Deep Web, or Dark Net, where drugs and child pornography are routinely trafficked.

The official Daily Stormer forum, Gamer Uprising, is still up and running on the regular Internet. A whois search of Gamer Uprising indicates that the forum is registered in Tonga, and is hosted in the state of Washington, on the notorious vanwa.tech.

It turns out that vanwa.tech is being kept online by a shady Russian company calledDDoS-Guard, which is the host of the official website of the terrorist groupHamas. Vanwa also hosts the8chanforum, where the Buffalo shooter just happened to post and hang out on. Just a coincidence, we are sure.

For most of the existence of the site, Anglin advocated Neo-Nazism, and called for the extermination of Jews, and the ethnic cleansing of all non-whites. As soon as Weev became involved, the site took an even darker turn, if that is possible, in which they started calling for the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder of women and teenage girls, in addition to committing terrorism against all minorities.

Timeandagain, have documented how the Daily Stormer started promoting the Incel movement in the past.

The incel, or involuntary celibate movement is composed of losers who hate and demean women, because they lack proper hygiene and basic social skills. Most of them are addicted to pornography, so they do not have the courage to approach women without coming across as creepy.

Due to being constantly rejected by normal women, the incels become bitter and lash out at women, often threatening to rape them. Some, like Elliot Rodger, who is often praised on the Daily Stormer,murderedtwo people, all because of his inability to approach women.

In one recentarticle, Andrew Anglin celebrated the stabbing death of a 13 year old Florida cheerleader, Trystin Bailey, in 2021. While the rest of the world reeled back in horror at this gruesome, cowardly murder, Weev and Andrew Anglin celebrated it.

If all of this activity were confined to the Dark Web, that would be one thing. However, the incel movement that Weev and Andrew Anglin started, is beginning to become popular, even among young influencers on the right, who should know better.

The Daily Stormer is promoting and endorsing Donald Trump again, in order to, once again, conflate support for Trump with racism, terrorism, and hatred and violence against women. The exact same people did the exact same thing during the first year of President Trumps term, when they encouraged the attack on Charlottesville.

These incels and Neo-Nazis are not conservatives.

They are not traditional.

They hate Christianity and everything that the West stands for.

They are not part of our culture.

They are not American, and most importantly, they will not replace us.

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Alt-Right Incels at Deep State Daily Stormer Site Celebrate Buffalo ...

from the failboat-sets-sail-again dept

Laura Loomer still thinks she can sue her way back onto Facebook and Twitter. In support of her argument, she brings arguments that failed in the DC Appeals Court as well as a bill for $124k in legal fees for failing to show that having your account reported is some sort of legally actionable conspiracy involving big tech companies.

For this latest failed effort, she has retained the services of John Pierce, co-founder of a law firm that saw plenty of lawyers jump ship once it became clear Pierce was willing to turn his litigators into laughingstocks by representing Rudy Giuliani and participating in Tulsi Gabbards performative lawsuits.

Laura Loomer has lobbed her latest sueball into the federal court system and her timing could not have been worse. Her lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook, and their founders was filed in the Northern District of California (where most lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook tend to end up) just four days before this same court dismissed Donald Trumps lawsuit [PDF] alleging his banning by Twitter violated his First Amendment rights.

Trump will get a chance to amend his complaint, but despite all the arguments made in an attempt to bypass both the First Amendment rights of Twitter (as well as its Section 230 immunity), the courts opinion suggests a rewritten complaint will meet the same demise.

Plaintiffs main claim is that defendants have censor[ed] plaintiffs Twitter accounts in violation of their right to free speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution Plaintiffs are not starting from a position of strength. Twitter is a private company, and the First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies.

Loomers lawsuit [PDF] isnt any better. In fact, its probably worse. But it is 133 pages long! And (of course), it claims the banning of her social media accounts is the RICO.

The lawsuit wastes most of its pages saying things that are evidence of nothing. It quotes several news reports about social media moderating efforts, pointing out whats already been made clear: its imperfect and it often causes collateral damage. What the 133 pages fails to show how sucking at an impossible job is a conspiracy against Loomer in particular, which is what she needs to support her RICO claims.

The lawsuit begins with the stupidest of opening salvos: direct quotes from Floridas social media law, which was determined to be unconstitutional and blocked by a federal judge last year. It also quotes Justice Clarence Thomas idiotic concurrence in which he made some really dumb statements about the First Amendment and Section 230 immunity. To be sure, these are not winning arguments. A blocked law and a concurrence are not exactly the precedent needed to overturn decades of case law to the contrary.

It doesnt get any better from there. Theres nothing in this lawsuit that supports a conspiracy claim. And whats in it ranges from direct quotes of news articles to unsourced claims thrown in there just because.

For instance, Loomers lawsuit quotes an authoritarians George Soros conspiracy theory as though thats evidence of anything.

On or about May 16, 2020, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbn and the Hungarian Government called Defendant Facebooks oversight board not some neutral expert body, but a Soros Oversight Board intended to placate the billionaire activist because three of its four co-chairs include Catalina Botero Marino, a board member of the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, funded by Open Society Foundations Soross flagship NGO and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Prime Minister of Denmark, who is unequivocally and vocally anti- Trump and serves alongside Soros and his son Alexander as trustee of another NGO, and a Columbia University professor Jamal Greene who served as an aide to Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) during Justice Kavanaughs 2018 confirmation Hearings.

Or this claim, which comes with no supporting footnote or citation. Nor does it provide any guesses as to how this information might violate Facebook policy.

Defendant Facebook allows instructions on how to perform back-alley abortions on its platform.

Loomers arguments dont start to coalesce until were almost 90 pages into the suit. Even then, theres nothing to them. According to Loomer, she relied on Mark Zuckerbergs October 2019 statement that he didnt think its right for tech companies to censor politicians in a democracy. This statement was delivered five months after Facebook had permanently banned Loomer. Loomer somehow felt this meant she would have no problems with Facebook as long as she presented herself as a politician in a democracy.

In reliance upon Defendant Facebooks promised access to its networks, Plaintiffs Candidate Loomer and Loomer Campaign raised money and committed significant time and effort in preparation for acting on Defendant Facebooks fraudulent representation of such promised access to its network.

On or about November 11, 2019, Loomer Campaign attempted to set up its official campaign page for Candidate Loomer as a candidate rather than a private citizen.

On November 12, 2019, Defendant Facebook banned the Laura Loomer forCongress page, the official campaign page for Candidate Loomer, from its platform, and subsequently deleted all messages and correspondence with the campaign.

On page 94, the RICO predicates begin. At least Loomer and her lawyer have saved the court the trouble of having to ask for these, but theres still nothing here. The interference with commerce by threats or violence is nothing more than noting that Facebook, Google, and Twitter hold a considerable amount of market share and all deploy terms of service that allow them to remove accounts for nearly any imaginable reason. No threats or violence are listed.

The Interstate and Foreign Transportation in Aid of Racketeering Enterprises section lists a bunch of content moderation stuff that happened to other people. Fraud by Wire, Radio, or Television consists mostly of Loomer reciting the law verbatim before suggesting Facebook and Procter & Gamble schemed to deny her use of Facebook or its ad platform. Most of the fraud alluded to traces back to Zuckerberg saying Facebook would allow politicians and political candidates to say whatever they wanted before deciding that the platform would actually moderate these entities.

Theres also something in here about providing material support for terrorism (because terrorists use the internet), which has never been a winning argument in court. And theres some truly hilarious stuff about Advocating Overthrow of Government which includes nothing about the use of social media by Trump supporters to coordinate the raid on the US Capitol building, but does contain a whole lot of handwringing about groups like Abolish ICE and other anti-law enforcement groups.

All of this somehow culminates in Loomer demanding [re-reads Prayer for Relief several times] more than $10 billion in damages. To be fair, the ridiculousness of the damage demand is commensurate with the ridiculousness of the lawsuit. Its litigation word soup that will rally the base but do nothing for Loomer but cost her more money. Whatevers not covered by the First Amendment will be immunized by Section 230. Theres no RICO here because, well, its never RICO. This is stupid, performative bullshit being pushed by a stupid, performative journalist and litigated by a stupid, performative lawyer. A dismissal is all but inevitable.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, conspiracy, content moderation, john pierce, laura loomer, mark zuckerberg, rico, section 230, terms of serviceCompanies: facebook, twitter

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Alt Right Journalist Whos Lost Every Lawsuit Over Banned Accounts ...

The belief that immigrants arrive in the United States with the intent to "steal" has been ubiquitous in right-wing politics for decades: Immigrants have been accused of stealing jobs, stealing tax dollars, and stealing benefits. But lately, some of the GOP's most stalwart voices have drummed up a more explicit accusation that immigrants are here to steal the very essence of America and replace it with something foreign an idea plucked directly from far right wing media.

This week, Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who frequently promotes white supremacist talking points, made an adamant declaration during the Fox News Primetime show that Democrats were using immigration as part of a plan to "replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World" and that no one should "sit back and take that." It was the most explicit endorsement of the "great replacement" theory in Carlson's long history of white nationalism, and the segment drew an immediate backlash, including a statement from the Anti-Defamation League calling for Fox News to fire Carlson.

In the face of public backlash and advertiser boycotts Fox has encouraged advertisers to move their money from the opinion shows to Fox's other programming, branding their non-primetime and "news" shows as "safe" from the public relations nightmare of their "opinion" shows. Carlson's raving about great replacement took place not on his own show but on Fox News Primetime, where several companies that had previously pulled or refused to run ads on Tucker Carlson Tonight, aired ads that very same night.

The following night, Carlson doubled down on his remarks as white nationalists celebrated the broadcast and endorsement of their long held conspiracy theories on the most-watched cable news channel in the country.

The white nationalist "great replacement" conspiracy theory was popularized by French writer Renaud Camus in his 2012 book Le Grand Remplacement. Often intermingled with a "white genocide" conspiracy theory, it proposes that a variety of factors, such as an influx of nonwhite immigrants, multiculturalism, and falling birthrates among white Europeans, will result in white populations losing their position as the dominant demographic.

The conspiracy theory creates a dangerous dynamic in which believers view immigrants and nonwhite citizens as an existential threat to their communities. And the theory is not a purely academic endeavor; it seeks to mobilize believers into action against their supposed "replacement." This mobilization manifests itself in various ways, including political activism against immigration, efforts to encourage white women to have more children to bolster demographic growth, and, in an extreme form, deadly violence against immigrants and communities of color.

The theory has reared its head in violent outbursts such as the murder of 51 people at the Al Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Center in Christchurch, New Zealand, the killing of more than 20 mostly Hispanic shoppers in El Paso, Texas, and the screams of angry young men who shouted "Jews will not replace us; you will not replace us" at the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where antiracist demonstrator Heather Heyer was murdered by neo-Nazi James Fields Jr. Field's online behavior before Unite the Right indictes support for Nazi ideology and white racial purity. There is a clear link between the rhetoric broadcast to viewers via mainstream shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and the beliefs espoused by mass shooters motivated by the theory; in some cases, the language overlaps with striking parallels.

Elements of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory have also recently appeared in the statements of prominent conservative politicians. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) recently appeared on Fox News' Justice with Judge Jeanine and said that Black Lives Matter protests were part of "an attempted cultural genocide going on in America right now." Gaetz claimed that "the left wants us to be ashamed of America so that they can replace America," a message he later repeated on Twitter:

It's no coincidence that Gaetz echoed the "great replacement" talking points on Fox, as the network has played a role in promoting the conspiracy theory to American conservative audiences for years.

Fox News is home to a near-constant stream of claims that America is being subjected to an immigrant "invasion." Hosts and contributors including Brian Kilmeade, Stuart Varney, Pete Hegseth, Tomi Lahren, and Mike Huckabee have repeatedly fear mongered about a supposed "invasion" of the United States' southern border by migrants seeking asylum.

The vitriolic talking point has become ubiquitous in Fox's lineup; a Media Matters study last year found that Fox made over 70 on-air references to an "invasion" by migrants over the seven months leading up to the El Paso mass shooting, in which the perpetrator said he was responding to a "Hispanic invasion of Texas."

In addition to the open racism of its "invasion" talking point, Fox News regularly pushes the claim that Americans are being replaced by immigrants in order to benefit Democrats at the ballot box. On The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham warned in 2018 that Democrats "want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants." This May, Ingraham boosted an article from the white nationalist website VDare that attempted to link immigration to coronavirus hotspots.

Carlson tried to alarm audiences in July 2018 by saying that "Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country." In January 2020, he declared that the "long-term agenda of refugee resettlement is to bring in future Democratic voters, obviously."

With the entrance of a new administration, Carlson and Fox have doubled down on hysterical claims and misinformation around immigration, particularly at the southern border.

This year Carlson has claimed the immigrants currently in America "devalue your political power as a voter" and "subvert democracy itself." He declared asylum-seekers "a human tragedy for everyone involved and a tragedy for those of us who live here," warning that immigration will "change your country forever, possibly for the worse." Carlson regularly tells viewers that allowing immigrants to settle in the United States is a way to "punish" the people who already live here.

And the rhetoric isn't limited to Carlson. The replacement theory is now a staple in right-wing media's coverage of immigration.

Fox host Jeanine Pirro got to the crux of the "great replacement" theory last August when she claimed: "It is a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats."

And this sort of racist conspiracy theorizing extends beyond Fox.

Following the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Ingraham broadcast an unhinged rant claiming immigrants were the real insurrectionists.

Podcast host Bill O'Reilly warned that undocumented immigration would cause "traditional America to vanish."

Conservative writer David Horowitz accused the left of waging a "war on America's sovereignty" through immigration.

Longtime conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh stated in 2018 that immigration from Latin America was intended to "dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture. ... This is why people call this an invasion."

On Sean Hannity's radio show, Bill O'Reilly warned that undocumented immigration will cause "traditional America to vanish"

Far-right author Ann Coulter titled her 2015 anti-immigration book Adios America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole.

Radio host Michael Savage said America was "being invaded by a far more virile people" and called for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a US citizen, to be deported "for what she's done in this country." The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles accused the left of attempting to "radically change American culture" through immigration in order to "flood this country with people who will -- are more likely to support them politically."

As the language of "great replacement" has become commonplace throughout right-wing media, the rhetoric has also made the leap from commentators to policymakers. President Donald Trump himself retweeted proponents of the theory even before the 2016 election, and in 2018 he directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate the baseless conspiracy theory that genocide is being committed against white farmers in South Africa -- a policy that originated in a segment on Carlson's prime-time Fox News show.

Last November, a trove of emails leaked to the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed the extent of White House adviser Stephen Miller's sympathies for white nationalism. Miller repeatedly spoke of immigration in a way that would be recognizable to proponents of the great replacement theory, often referring to demographic changes in the context of immigration.

In one email to former Breitbart Editor Katie McHugh, Miller lamented the effects of the Hart-Celler Act, which eliminated race-based immigration quotas, writing that in modern politics "immigration is something that we can only vote to have more of immigration 'reform' is a moral imperative but it's impossible, evil, racist to reverse immigration."

From Carlson's nightly broadcasts to Matt Gaetz's national stage to the local politics of Florida's state Senate, conservative figures are now cheering on policies using language evoking the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, and their promotion of these talking points as an electoral issue means the hawkish anti-immigrant rhetoric that used to live primarily in fringe conservative media spaces is now a staple of conservative politics.

Allowing immigration policy, and our national discourse surrounding race relations, to be shaped by white nationalistnativist conspiracy theories that have already proved deadly both in the United States and abroad endangers the well-being of everyone in the United States. Right wing media and the conservative establishments' failure to stamp out racist, conspiratorial rhetoric from their midst has emboldened bad actors and legitimized a hateful ideology couched in white supremacy.

Nikki is a researcher at Media Matters for America, she can be found on Twitter @NikkiMcR.

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Racist Great Replacement Conspiracy Went From Alt-Right to Mainstream

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Republican gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines said Wednesday he will not fire a campaign staffer who said on his YouTube channel in 2020 that he wants to restore historical American culture by maintaining a supermajority of the original stock of the United States, and maintaining a homogeneity, referring to white people.

The staffer, Jake Lloyd Colglazier, has previously done fieldwork for the campaign, Huffines said, adding that he will not take any action against Colglazier.

On his YouTube channel, Colglazier warned that were nearing the demographic cliff, a reference to an increase of people of color gaining more political and economic power. On another livestream platform, he mocked a woman who appears to be Asian, saying she needed to be in China getting the shit beat out of her by her husband. In another post, he said, I spit on George Floyd.

If I were to go through the social media history of any young Texan I would find something I disagree with, Huffines said in an emailed statement. My campaign will not participate in cancel culture.

Huffines did not respond to questions about whether he condemned Colglaziers comments or whether he condemned white nationalism.

Colglazier, 24, a self-proclaimed American nationalist, previously worked for the far-right conspiracy site Infowars, owned by Alex Jones. While at InfoWars, he interviewed white supremacists such as Vincent James Foxx, who founded the now-banned alt-right Red Elephants site, and Faith Goldy, a conspiracy theorist who was fired from a conservative Canadian website for talking on a podcast hosted by the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.

Political Research Associates, a social justice think tank, first reported evidence of Colglaziers connections to the America First/Groyper movement on Friday. So-called Groypers make up an alt-right network of people who advocate for a majority white, Christian nation and identify as American nationalists. They coalesce around their support of Nick Fuentes, a white supremist podcaster who has been banned from Twitter, YouTube and the streaming platform DLive for violating hate speech policies.

Until Friday, the True Texas Project, a conservative nonprofit, had a biography for Colglazier on its website that identified him as currently the Deputy Communications Director for the Don Huffines for Governor campaign. That sentence has since been removed, and the True Texas Project did not respond to a request for comment.

Huffines, a former state senator from Dallas, said in his Wednesday statement that Colglazier is not his deputy communications director, but acknowledged hes done work for the campaign.

America First started as a conservative TV commentary series by Fuentes. With episode titles such as Combating Anti-White Hatred, Diversity Is Code for Anti White and Modernity Kills Women, the series also boasted guests including Foxx, Goldy and Patrick Casey, a leader in the Groyper white nationalist movement. The show also featured Colglazier, who went by Jake Lloyd at the time, on an episode about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Colglazier was one of three speakers at an America First conference in December 2019, when he called on the Groypers, to overtake the countrys conservative party.

The greater political establishment of the United States will crumble at the hands of the Groypers. History will remember the Groypers and the movement that followed, that flowed from America First, Colglazier said at the conference.

Colglazier could not be reached for comment.

Regardless of his staff position, Colglazier publicly remains a strong supporter of Huffines for governor, as he said in a December interview with Current Revolt and as seen in his Twitter profile.

Huffines is running to the right of Gov. Greg Abbott, whom he criticizes frequently for not being conservative enough. Among Huffines top campaign platforms are bans on critical race theory and building a wall at the Texas-Mexico border to try to block illegal immigration.

Abbott did not respond to a request for comment.

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Texas GOP gubernatorial candidate says he won't fire staffer tied to white nationalist movement - The Texas Tribune

Dont put me on the McDonalds takeout window, Temple Grandin said over Zoom from her home in Fort Collins, Colo. Not going to do very well there cant multitask, cannot follow long strings of verbal instruction. Its a little humbling to hear what Grandin says she cant do, considering how insubstantial it is compared with what she can do and has done. The author, scientist and Colorado State University professor is as responsible as anyone for broadening our understanding of autism, through her tireless lecturing and the many books she has written on the subject. (Thinking in Pictures: My Life With Autism, published in 1995, is the classic.) Grandin, who is 74, also helped transform the meat industry through her design of more humane handling systems for livestock. Though she has been so influential on how we think and feel about autism and animal welfare, its the more tangible things that matter most to her. I am interested in my practical projects, Grandin says. Where I can actually do stuff.

During the pandemic, there has been a lot of discussion about whos vaccinated and whos not, and historically, a fear of autism is one of the things that antivaxxers I will make only one comment: I have two Pfizers and a booster and a flu shot. Thats all Im going to say.

Well, if its OK, I have another couple of questions about vaccines and autism, and you can choose if youll answer or not. Thats a subject where thats pretty much all Im going to say. I am glad that I have my vaccinations. I dont have to worry about going to the hospital. Ill leave it at that.

In the past, youve expressed openness about people who felt skeptical about vaccines because of No comment.

Is it your understanding that the concern that certain parents have with vaccines is No comment.

OK, Ill move on for now. Youve written so much about being a visual thinker. How does a thinker like yourself think about moral problems, which often begin as abstractions? I have to convert it to a picture with a specific example. As Ive gotten older and loaded more and more pictures into my mental database, then I can search that database sort of like Google for images. So when I think about moral things, I see them as little video clips. Now lets explain how I categorized things as a young child. Lets take dogs versus cats: All the dogs in my neighborhood when I was 4 years old were large. I sorted horses, dogs and cats by size. But when a dachshund came into the neighborhood, I could no longer sort dogs by size because it was smaller than the other animals Id sorted as dogs. I had to find other sensory-based features that dachshunds shared with dogs: barking, nose shape, smell. I had to use the different criteria to put the dachshunds in the dog category. Id like to talk now about three kinds of thinking: Theres an object visualizer like me, who thinks in photorealistic pictures; then the other kind of thinker is the visual spatial, pattern thinker; then of course youve got your verbal thinkers. One of the big problems with verbal thinkers is they tend to overgeneralize. Theyll talk about some concept like an inclusive classroom, but theyll have absolutely no idea of How do I implement that?

Temple Grandin in 1993. Laura Wilson

On the idea of moral questions and visual thinking: Youve been asked a million times about the morality of someone like yourself, whos concerned with animal welfare, being part of the meat and poultry industry. Ive done a lot of thinking about that.

I understand how one could visualize something like a more humane slaughterhouse. But how do you visualize the moral aspect of something that might be harder to see, like, say, the negative ecological impacts of the industry? Ive been thinking about that very much. About four years ago, I went to a really important departmental seminar, and we had an older agronomist, a crop person, come talk to all the livestock people in our department, and he told me something that was a game changer on how I thought about things. I learned that the animals made some of the best crop land. If you do grazing wrong, it wrecks land. If you do grazing right, you actually improve the soil health and improve the land, and you can also sequester carbon. Also, theres research on things like seaweed that you can feed cattle to reduce the methane they put out. Now, thats not going to be sustainable youd strip the oceans of seaweed if you did use that but we need to find out whats in the seaweed, and then you could probably manufacture that ingredient. The other thing we need to think about on sustainability with some of these plant-based burgers is that they have a whole lot of ingredients different grains, peas, stuff like that. Each one of those ingredients has a supply chain, and that involves diesel-powered trucks and equipment to harvest that crop, grow that crop. Some of that could get unsustainable.

Do beef manufacturers have enough incentive to change to more sustainable behaviors? I learned a long time ago the importance of economic incentives. Some of the first research I did was on bruising. What I learned from that is if you had the wrong economic incentives, you had more bruises. If you had the right economic incentives, you reduced the bruises. I dont like to I have a no politics policy, so Im not going to get into specifics, but the United States and other countries have subsidies that motivate practices that are not sustainable. Ill leave it at that.

Im not going to ask you the specifics of your politics Im not getting into politics.

But given that politics touches everything, what does it mean to have a no politics policy? And why have it? Because politics interferes with the stuff I care about. Right now, at the age of 74, one of the big things I care about is I want to see the kids who think differently having successful careers, successful lives. Im seeing a lot of parents that overprotect their kid. Theyve got a 16-year-old who might be doing well in school, but he has never gone shopping. Youve got to get them out doing things. Thats stuff I care about.

Do you find politics too abstract? One of the things that bothers me is when its all gobbledygook, because theyre not talking about how youre actually going to fix something. Like when they had the power failures in Texas, they just talked gobbledygook. My approach to that and I know a lot about equipment is I would visit each of those power plants and find out exactly what froze. I wouldnt be fighting over who owns them, because I only have one goal: I dont want that mess to happen again. But I dont want to talk to suits. Get me alone down in the maintenance shop in that plant, and Ill find a guy who will sing to me. Hell tell me everything. As soon as the suit walks in the room, that guy will clam up because hes afraid hell get in trouble. Ive got to talk to the good technical people. Theyll tell me whats wrong, and they cant tell me much abstract BS.

What about when people talk about issues of race or polarization? Is that abstract? I try to figure out specific ways to solve something. One of the things thats really shocking is the rsum studies. You put different names on them, and theyre not called back for interviews. Its disgusting. Ill discuss that because thats hard scientific data that is specific, and I can look those papers up on Google Scholar.

There are specific studies debunking the idea that vaccines have a causal relation to autism, right? No comment. No comment. No comment.

You dont think it could be useful for people to hear your opinion? No comment. No comment.

I got it. You better get it. Because Im not discussing it.

Have you gotten in trouble for talking about this subject before? No comment. Ive had my two Pfizer shots and my booster. If they require a fourth shot, Ill be first in line, thank you.

I was just reading about how nearly 10 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions are the result of the cattle industry. Do you think we should be moving toward a future where we eat less beef? One of the things we need to be doing is reducing food waste. The amount of food that we throw out is absolutely disgusting.

And reducing food waste would be a sufficient counterbalance? Its certainly going to help. Theres simple ways you can reduce it. A lot of university cafeterias got rid of giving you trays, because if you put your food on trays, you take more stuff and waste more stuff. But, you know, theres methane emissions, but there are also carbon emissions, and the power plants and transportation put out the most carbon emissions.

Grandin teaching at Colorado State University in 2010. William A. Cotton/Colorado State University

Do you feel protective of the beef industry? I want to work on improving the beef industry. The work that probably brought about the greatest change was when I worked with McDonalds, Burger King and Wendys on implementing auditing and inspection of plants. I developed a simple scoring system, and the plants had to get acceptable scores on things like electric-prod use, stunning. When you have a big buyer insist on standards, I dont care what industry youre in, that can bring about great change. Thats also something thats a doable project. I avoid the vague things because they interfere with doable projects like my audits that brought about a big change. I dont want talk. I want measurements. Something I can observe with my eyes.

Youve had such success conveying your experience of autism to neurotypical people. Are there aspects of your autism that you feel you havent been able to convey? Thats too vague a question for me to even begin to answer.

In Oliver Sackss New Yorker profile of you, its evident that your search for meaning in life was driven by anxiety and fear. Why those emotions? I think Ive got that simplified now: The meaning of life is if something that you did made something better. Like, I get an email from a parent: Thank you so much. My kid is employed now because I read one of your books. That is a little piece of the meaning of life right there. Thats something that I did. I also think, having spent so many years in heavy commercial construction, its about finishing a project and making it work. I take that same approach to working with some of these autistic kids. If a smart autistic kid ends up on a disability check playing video games all day, thats a failed project compared with, lets say, he could learn a skilled trade and now owns a metal fabrication shop.

A handful of times now, Ive asked you sort of philosophical questions, and each time your answer was about a practical, tangible thing. I understand thats what Thats what I do.

Thats what you do. But Im interested in knowing whether you see any interrelationship between the philosophical and the practical because Im going to just talk about the practical.

But isnt the philosophical what helps determine how practicality is put to use? For example, making the philosophical determination that animals should be treated with respect then drives practical decisions about their treatment. Does that make sense to you? All right, Im going to give you an example: I got my brand-new copy of Nature that I like for my breakfast reading. I was looking at a complicated article about superconductors that can be used in computers. Ive read a lot of articles on batteries, and there are issues with mining rare earth metals to make batteries. Now, theres research going on where we could make some of these things out of easy-to-get materials like iron, for example. Im putting something thats more philosophical together with an engineering thing: If you can make batteries out of easy-to-get stuff, then it solves a lot of problems with mining rare earths where its likely to cause social-justice issues.

Do you feel social-justice issues are intrinsically important? Yes, they are important, but I want to avoid the politics. Ill give an example of a social-justice thing I totally believe in: We use DNA testing to prove that a prisoner did not do a crime. Thats a practical application of something that involves social justice.

Might there be impractical applications of social justice? Theres all kinds of theories that dont work. Id rather talk about stuff we know works.

I realize that maybe earlier I should have just asked this question bluntly: Do you believe vaccines can cause autism? Im not discussing that. I will give you one thing about vaccinations: I listened to the news, and a doctor was complaining about having heart-attack patients die because they could not get into the emergency room because the hospital was so full of unvaccinated Covid people. And then I talked to this person that was not vaccinated about, you know, maybe all these people filling up this hospital killed some heart-attack patients. He said, I never thought about that. That I will talk about.

But why not vaccines and autism? I dont want to talk about that.

Im curious about your reluctance. Im not discussing it.

OK. There are certain things I dont talk about because it interferes with stuff I care about. Its that simple.

Going back to that Oliver Sacks profile: You didnt give an answer for why it was fear and anxiety that motivated your search for meaning. When I was young, I was totally driven by anxiety. I found out my amygdala was three times bigger than normal. Ive been on antidepressant medication, an old form called desipramine, since 1980, and it stopped all that anxiety, that frenzied looking for the meaning of life. That made the frenzy go away. I have done some of my best work when it comes to design after I went on that drug. I just visited one of my projects: Its over 35 years old, and Im so pleased. None of the gates are broken off got the best gate hinges in the industry. Yeah, Im proud of that.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

Opening illustration: Source photograph by Matthew Eisman/Getty Images

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Brian Cox about the filthy rich, Dr. Becky about the ultimate goal of parenting and Tiffany Haddish about Gods sense of humor.

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Temple Grandin Wants Us to Think Differently About Kids Who Think Differently - The New York Times

When an armed man stormed a Texas synagogue on Saturday, taking a rabbi and three worshippers hostage, it seemed fairly obvious that the victims identity had something to do with the attack. But in a press conference after all four hostages escaped Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, FBI special agent Matthew DeSarno seemed to deny that, telling reporters the attacks motive was not specifically related to the Jewish community.

DeSarno was attempting to communicate that the hostage takers core demand the release of imprisoned jihadist Aafia Siddiqui wasnt about Jews. But interviews with the hostages themselves revealed a clear connection: Their captor believed that a Jewish conspiracy ruled America and that, if he took Jews hostage, he could compel the US to release Siddiqui.

He terrorized us because he believed these anti-Semitic tropes that the Jews control everything, and if I go to the Jews, they can pull the strings, hostage Jeffrey Cohen told CNN. He even said at one point that Im coming to you because I know President Biden will do things for the Jews.

Perhaps DeSarno wasnt aware of this when he made his comments, which the FBI has since walked back. But major media outlets ran with his line, blaring headlines that downplayed the anti-Semitism at the core of the attack. It was as though the attacker had chosen Beth Israel at random, rather than targeted a Jewish community near where Siddiqui was imprisoned.

The coverage only underscored a creeping sentiment that spread among us last weekend. Many Jews, myself included, already felt like few were paying attention to the crisis in Colleyville as it unfolded over the weekend; that we Jews were rocked by a collective trauma while most Americans watched the NFL playoffs.

This is not a new feeling.

In the past several years, American Jews have been subject to a wave of violence nearly unprecedented in post-Holocaust America. If these anti-Semitic incidents garner significant mainstream attention a big if attention to them seems to fade rapidly, erased by a fast-moving news cycle. The root causes of rising anti-Semitism are often ignored, especially when politically inconvenient to one side or the other.

There are always exceptions: In the wake of the Colleyville attack, for example, many Muslims have been particularly vocal allies. But for the most part, the world has moved on. American Jews, on the other hand, cannot for good reason.

Lets recount what the past few years have been like for American Jews.

In August 2017, the torch-carrying marchers at Charlottesville chanted, Jews will not replace us, as they rallied to protect Confederate iconography. Armed individuals dressed in fatigues menaced a local synagogue also named Beth Israel while neo-Nazis yelled, Sieg heil! as they passed by.

In October 2018, we saw the deadliest mass killing of Jews in American history: the assault on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, which claimed 11 Jewish lives. The far-right shooter believed that Jews were responsible for mass nonwhite immigration and wanted to kill as many as he could find in retaliation.

In April 2019, another far-right shooter preoccupied by fears of a Jewish-perpetrated white genocide attacked the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, killing one and injuring three.

In December 2019, New York and New Jersey the epicenter of American Jewry were swept by a wave of anti-Semitic violence.

Two extremist members of the Black Hebrew Israelite church, a fringe religion that believes they are the true Jews and we are impostors, killed a police officer and three shoppers at a kosher market in Jersey City. A man wielding a machete attacked a Hanukkah party at a rabbis home in Monsey, New York, killing one and injuring four. Orthodox Jews in New York were subject to a wave of street assaults and beatings.

In May 2021, the conflict between Israel and Hamas led to yet another spike in anti-Semitic violence, including high-profile attacks perpetrated by individuals who blamed American Jews for Israels actions. In Los Angeles, for example, a group of men drove to a heavily Jewish neighborhood and assaulted diners at a sushi restaurant. The attackers were waving Palestinian flags and chanting, Free Palestine!

This sort of violence is certainly not the norm. In absolute terms, most American Jews are still quite unlikely to be targeted by anti-Semitic attacks. But both quantitative and anecdotal data suggest that there has been a sustained rise in anti-Semitic activity.

The following chart shows data on anti-Semitic incidents of all kinds, ranging from murders to harassment, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish anti-hate watchdog. The ADL data, while not perfect, is one of the better sources of information on the topic and it shows a spike in the past several years.

The explanation among scholars and experts for this rise tends to focus on Donald Trumps presidential candidacy and the concomitant rise of the alt-right.

In this telling, Trumps ascendance shifted the Overton window for the far right, leading to a rise in anti-Semitic harassment and violence. (Trump himself repeatedly made anti-Semitic comments despite having Jewish family.) Recent academic research finds that, in the United States, anti-Semitic beliefs are more prevalent on the right.

The attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway suggest this diagnosis is in large part correct. But the past few years of anti-Semitic violence demonstrate clearly that its not the full story.

The Colleyville siege seems to have been perpetrated by a British Islamist. The 2021 attacks seem to have emerged out of anti-Israel sentiment, a cause more associated with the left. The 2019 violence in New York and New Jersey doesnt really connect to politics as we typically understand it, emerging in part out of a radical subsection of the already-small Black Hebrew Israelite group and local tensions between Black and Jewish residents in Brooklyn.

What this illustrates, more than anything else, is the protean and primordial nature of anti-Semitism a prejudice and belief structure so baked into Western society that it has a remarkable capacity to infuse newer ideas and reassert itself in different forms.

Today, we are seeing the rise not of one form of anti-Semitism but of multiple anti-Semitisms each popular with different segments of the population for different reasons, but also capable of reinforcing each other by normalizing anti-Semitic expression.

There is no mistaking the consequences for Jews.

In a 2021 survey from the American Jewish Committee, a leading Jewish communal group, 24 percent of American Jews reported that an institution they were affiliated with had been targeted by anti-Semitism in the past five years. Ninety percent said anti-Semitism was a problem in America today, and 82 percent agreed that anti-Semitism had increased in the past five years.

Synagogues have had to increase security spending, straining often tight budgets that could be spent on programming for their congregants. Measures include hiring more armed guards to patrol services, setting up security camera systems, and providing active shooter training for rabbis and Hebrew school teachers.

Some of this is familiar; there have been armed guards at my synagogue as long as I can remember. But much of the urgency is new. For a community that has long seen America as our haven, a place different in kind from the Europe so many Jews were driven out of, its a profoundly unsettling feeling.

Dara Horn, a novelist and scholar of Yiddish literature, spent 20 years avoiding the topic of anti-Semitism. She wanted to write about Jewish life rather than Jewish death.

But the past few years changed things. In 2021, Horn published a book titled People Love Dead Jews, an examination of the role that Jewish suffering plays in the public imagination. Her analysis is not flattering.

People tell stories about dead Jews so they can feel better about themselves, Horn tells me. Those stories often require the erasure of actual Jews, because actual Jews would ruin the story.

One of the more provocative examples she mentioned is the oft-repeated poem, attributed to German pastor Martin Niemller, citing attacks on Jews as one of several canaries in the coal mine for political catastrophe. Youve probably heard this version of it, or at least seen it on a Facebook post:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak for me

In theory, the message is one of solidarity: What happens to Jews should be of concern to all of us. But Horn argues that theres a worrying implication to this message, one that instrumentalizes Jews rather than centering us.

What youre basically saying is that we should all care when Jews are murdered and attacked because it might be an ominous sign that real people might be attacked later, Horn tells me. I get that thats not what its trying to say, but it plays into this idea that Jews are just this symbol that you can use for whatever purpose you need.

In American political discourse, anti-Semitism often gets treated in exactly the way Horn fears: as a tool to be wielded, rather than a problem for living, breathing Jewish people.

Among conservatives, support for Israel becomes equated with support for Jews to the point where actual anti-Semitism emanating from pro-Israel politicians, from Donald Trump to Marjorie Taylor Greene, is treated as unimportant or excusable. The Jewish experience becomes flattened into a narrative of Judeo-Christian culture under shared threat from Islamist terrorism, eliding the ways in which Americas mostly liberal Jewish population feels threatened by the influence of political Christianity on the right.

Colleyville is already being deployed in this fashion. In a public letter, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) turned an attack on Jews into an attack on admitting Afghan refugees.

I write with alarm over reports that the Islamic terrorist who took hostages at a Jewish synagogue in Texas this past weekend was granted a travel visa, Hawley claims. This failure comes in the wake of the Biden Administrations botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and failure to vet the tens of thousands who were evacuated to our country.

Never mind that the attacker came from Britain, not Afghanistan. Never mind that he was not a refugee. Never mind that Jews are some of the staunchest supporters of refugee admittance in the country, owing to our own experiences as refugees after the Holocaust.

There are also problems like this on the left, albeit less common among mainstream political figures.

Incidents of anti-Semitic violence are mourned and then swiftly deployed in partisan politics, turned into a brief against MAGA America, rather than serving as an opportunity to confront the way many progressives fail to take anti-Semitism seriously as a form of structural oppression. Similarly, Jewish concerns about anti-Israel rhetoric crossing the line into anti-Semitism are ignored or even dismissed as smear jobs. I have had brutal, sometimes even angry conversations with progressive friends and acquaintances on this very topic.

The throughline here is that Jews dont own their stories; that anti-Semitism means what others want it to mean. And thats when people pay attention to anti-Semitism at all, which they often do not except for the few days after incidents like Colleyville.

A common refrain from Jews I know during and after the Colleyville standoff was a sense of total alienation, that they were glued to their phones and TVs while most others had no idea that American Jews were in crisis. It wasnt that we had been made into object lessons for others, at least not yet; it was that our suffering was barely worth noticing.

What American Jews need from mainstream American society right now is to be listened to, for our fears about rising anti-Semitism to be heard and, once heard, taken seriously on their own terms.

This does not require the false assumption of a monolithic Jewish community, where all of us agree on how to tackle anti-Semitism. What it does require is a mental reorientation among Americas non-Jews: a willingness to reckon with the fact that anti-Semitism remains a meaningful force in American society, one that requires a response both unfamiliar and politically uncomfortable.

Link:

The world has moved on from Colleyville. American Jews cant. - Vox.com

In case you havent heard, Texas now has a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help women get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions for rape or incest and to take advantage of that, the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life is encouraging citizens to report those people at a dedicated whistleblower website, promising to ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions.

On Friday, Texas Right to Life had to find a new home on the web, because hosting provider GoDaddy gave the group 24 hours to find a different place to park its website. We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service, a spokesperson told The New York Times and The Verge.

By late Friday, it appeared it found that home: Epik, the provider that also helped save controversial sites Gab, social media platform Parler, and internet hate forum 8chan when other web service providers wouldnt take them, is now listed as the registrar and name server provider for prolifewhistleblower.com as well.

But the site may have gone too far for any web provider to touch, even Epik. Initially, GoDaddy told The Verge that the whistleblower site violated multiple provisions of its Terms of Service including Section 5.2, which reads:

You will not collect or harvest (or permit anyone else to collect or harvest) any User Content (as defined below) or any non-public or personally identifiable information about another User or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent.

After Epik stepped in, the website still had plenty of trouble staying online. As of 4AM ET Saturday, we saw HTTP 503 error codes when trying to access it. According to Ars Technica, the Texas anti-abortion group tried to use Digital Ocean as a hosting provider first, but may have fallen afoul of that providers rules as well, and its not hosted there anymore.

On Saturday, the site appeared to have migrated to BitMitigate, a webhost owned by Epik itself, and one that specifically advertises its sovereign hosting services for platforms under attack. Yet by Saturday evening, the site was not loading for us at all, throwing an accessed a banned URL error. Reportedly, Epik also decided hosting the form that allowed citizens to inform on their neighbors was against its terms of service, too, and has cut it off once more. Weve reached out to Epik to confirm.

The anti-abortion groups website has been under siege for days now, with angry protesters flooding it with fake tips including at least one fake claim that Texas governor Greg Abbott himself had violated the law, according to the NYT. One activist on TikTok even created a script that can automatically feed fake reports into the websites tipbox, as Motherboard reported yesterday. He told the NYT that the automated tools hed created had received over 15,000 clicks.

But on Wednesday, Gizmodos Shoshana Wodinsky suggested another way for activists to protest: blowing the whistle on Texas Right to Life itself, by complaining to GoDaddy about what it was doing. Thats what appears to have happened.

Its not the first time web hosting providers or even GoDaddy specifically have played this role: Gab.com had to find a new home in October 2018, and GoDaddy took down white nationalist Richard Spencers Altright.com that May. Neo-nazi news site the Daily Stormer was similarly given 24 hours by GoDaddy to find a new home in August 2017, and wound up moving to the dark web instead. Gab was able to return, though, and Texas Right to Life at least briefly did as well.

Update, 4:36PM ET: Added additional context from GoDaddy.

Update September 4th, 4AM ET: Added that Epik appears to be Texas Right to Lifes new home for its site.

Update September 5th, 12:18AM ET: Added that the site now appears to be down, following a report that even Epik wasnt willing to host the whistleblower form.

See more here:

GoDaddy cut off Texas Right to Life's abortion 'whistleblowing' website, and it might be gone - The Verge

In 1945, 21-year-old Beryl Answick graduated with a first class diploma from the teacher training college in Georgetown, capital of what was then British Guiana. Guyanese education at the time was rigid and the (tamarind) rod much in evidence: Children were expected to know certain facts, the relevance of which did not always matter, she remembered. Chafing at these conventions, Answick (who became Beryl Gilroy on her marriage in 1954) moved to London in 1951 to study educational psychology at the University of London. She was one of very few teachers from the Caribbean in England in the 1950s; another was her friend E.R. Braithwaite, the author of To Sir, with Love (1959), a catalyst for her own later self-reckoning in Black Teacher. When she began to look for a teaching post, Gilroy was frustrated at every turn, the target of a widespread suspicion founded in an ignorance that could be described as folkloric were the baiting about cannibalism and washing not so vicious. In her memoir she presents herself both as object and subject of her story. Both perspectives offer first-hand testimony of wrongs done and not dusted.

First published in 1976, Black Teacher records the bewildering self-consciousness inflicted on Gilroy by British society: My life at school was clouded by an obsessive interest in my blackness. It seemed that no one could forget it It was difficult, at times, not to become the traditional black with the traditional chip on the shoulder there was, for instance, the usually unspoken implication that there was something sinister about black hands. She began looking at my hands, almost as if I were seeing them for the first time I was nervous about picking things up. I was especially nervous when it came to buttoning up the childrens coats. Rather than endure the staffroom, she took refuge in her classroom at lunchtime.

Children, she writes, are not born with race and colour prejudice. They absorb it from the adults around them. Gilroy countered the bigotry, or at times the simple stupidity, of colleagues, parents and the children who parroted what they heard, with a storytellers verve. When asked by one of her co-workers what natives do when they have their monthlies, she replied: Well, Sue, we swim! We jump into the nearest river and swim and swim for miles. Some of us swim for three days and some for four, but thats what we do. Her account of London in the period is as sharp as anything by Barbara Comyns or Muriel Spark. Her phonetic transcriptions of accents, while dated, bring into earshot a teeming cast of characters East Enders, posh North Londoners, Italian immigrants and so on.

As a child Gilroy was considered sickly, and at the age of two was given over to the care of her maternal grandparents, who lived in the region of Berbice, looking across the Corentyne estuary towards Dutch Suriname. This luxuriant tropical scenery and soundscape appears in several of her compatriots work, in the poetry of Grace Nichols and David Dabydeen, and, especially, in the fiction of Wilson Harris. (I once invited Harris, a long-time resident of Chelmsford, to talk about what it was like to live in Essex: he wrote back to say that he had no idea his mind was always in Guyana.)

Gilroys grandmother was a smallholder and herbalist, and there were many aunts, too, who passed on local stories. One of her first enthusiasms was botany, which later inspired her writings about nutrition. At twelve she was finally sent to school in Georgetown, where she did outstandingly well. Black Teacher doesnt hark back to those times or hanker for home, but in later books like Sunlight on Sweet Water (1994) and Leaves in the Wind (1998) Gilroy drew on her knowledge of local flora and fauna, as well as the proverbs, rainforest ghosts and wisewoman lore of her family.

In London, after endless humiliating days waiting in labour exchanges, Gilroy took temporary jobs, as a filing clerk in a mail-order sweatshop and as a uniformed maid to Lady Anne (no surname given), a determined supporter of the empire. Often sympathetic in her descriptions of others, particularly women and children, Gilroy can also be unsparing. She notes that Hilda, the ruthless manageress of the sweatshop, keeps a special needle to pick her teeth. She captures the precarity of working-class life: her workmate Mave is abandoned by her boyfriend, who absconds to Australia with their baby boy. Mave swallows two hundred aspirin with a bottle of gin. Gilroy offers to deliver a wreath to the funeral parlour and discovers that none of her co-workers is attending the ceremony, even though its taking place during their lunch hour. This is one of her early encounters with what? Stiff upper lip? Fear of someone elses misery? Revulsion against failure? It was as though, Gilroy writes, that in killing herself Mave had erased any right to their affection Now she was gone and they wanted her to drop out of mind.

Her stint as a ladys maid begins ominously. Lady Anne commends her posture and says: I suppose you come from a long line of carriers. But the relationship changes. Its a mark of Gilroys independence of mind that she is able to acknowledge her employers qualities. She admires her elegance, her possessions (the porcelain teacups), and unexpectedly declares that with her I found my own identity learning how important was a knowledge of both family and country. Theres also a superb comic cameo at the British Empire Reading Rooms, when Colonel Manson-Trot, asked to stand in for Lady Anne (whos been called away to a committee), declares: Count yourself lucky your allegiance is not to the French. No stamina, the French.

In 1954, she at last finds a teaching job, at a convent school in Bethnal Green. When the headmistress, Sister Consuelo, ushers Gilroy into her new classroom, the children dive for cover under their desks, shrieking. Only one boy, John, stands firm, saying: I aint afeared. The children are often hungry, unwashed, shivering in threadbare hand-me-downs, only able to express themselves through blows and screams and tears. This was shocking to Gilroy and her fellow immigrants from the colonies, who arrived full of illusions about life in the metropole. But Gilroy saw the energy inherent in her pupils naughtiness. She was a success: the kids started to learn and they loved her, too. She picked up on fragments of their home lives and turned them into stories and drawings; she emphasised play, music, dance, games of tag and blind mans bluff. She didnt reprimand or censor jokes, even when filthy. She was unconventional: when a little boy lashed out at another child, she smacked him on his hand, but then gave him a family of dolls to play with: Tell the dolls what you did! They want to hear it from your own mouth! Her approach was influenced by the work of Friedrich Froebel (she took a degree at the Froebel Educational Institute in the early 1960s), the founder of Kindergartens, who rejected rote learning and urged teachers to foster responsiveness, imagination and curiosity.

Her success was hard-won. Each day, she writes, it was as if I was going into a boxing ring where any breach in the defence would put me flat on my back all I wanted was to be left alone to do my job without feeling I was always being watched, assessed, measured and compared. Echoing George Lamming, who came from Barbados, she writes: Living as I did in the country of my skin, all the methods I used had to be acceptable to white observers.

Black Teacher was met with hostility when it first appeared. Gilroy was accused of boasting and of exaggerating the prejudice she had faced; for her part, she complained her account had been softened in the editing. In To Sir, with Love Braithwaite had glowingly described his eventual success in an East End classroom, but he wasnt censured. A black womans claims, however, were seen as vanity.

Gilroy took a break from teaching after her marriage to Patrick Gilroy, an English scientist who was active in anticolonial circles. She describes the isolation she felt as part of an early mixed couple in the suburbs, where she brought up their two children: Paul, the historian and author of There Aint No Black in the Union Jack, and Darla-Jane, a dress designer and teacher (Gilroy herself looks super stylish in the photographs in this book; her outfits have been included in exhibitions at the V&A). It isnt hard to see in Paul Gilroys work his mothers refusal of racial essentialism and separatism, a connection between her approach and the stress in his writing on the Black Atlantic on the possibilities of mingling, merging and transformation. (It would have been interesting to have appended to the new edition their thoughts on their mothers approach, as well as an account of, and strategy for, racism in schools today.)

During her years out of the classroom, Gilroy set up playgroups, took several further degrees and diplomas, and produced textbooks and readers for schools in Guyana. She also began a series of childrens storybooks, The Nippers, which brought black children into the action as a matter of course (its impossible to find copies today). In 1959, she wrote her first novel, In Praise of Love and Children, about Melda, a Guyanese woman who moves to London to join her brother, Arnie. The narrative moves between Meldas childhood maltreatment at the hands of her stepmother, and the disaster of Arnies marriage to Trudi, a German woman. The book was described by publishers readers, according to Gilroy, as psychological, strange, way-out, difficult to categorise, and rejected. She was indignant that the Caribbean (male) writers who reported on the manuscript didnt seem to understand it. (She exempted from this charge only the radio producer and writer Andrew Salkey, who encouraged her work.) In Praise of Love and Children didnt appear in print until 1996.

In the late 1960s, Gilroy went back to teaching. She found London much changed, largely for the better: there were now many more children like her own, who had one or more parents from the former colonies or beyond, and she was determined to see them thrive. In 1969, she was appointed head of Beckford Primary School in North-West London, the first black woman head in the city and almost certainly in the country. In Black Teacher, she mentions that there are 44 nationalities at the school; in an interview for Wasafiri magazine in 1986, she says 55. Racist taunts and assumptions still existed, but the mood was brighter. After the Race Relations Act came into force in 1965, she sat on the Race Relations Board.

In his Holberg lecture in 2019, Paul Gilroy argued for a new radical humanism. In scholastic settings, he said, distaste for history increases with increased appetites for sophistry. The resulting combination increases reluctance to approach the central issues of anti-racist ambition and hope. He goes on to warn that docile nihilism, resignation and complacent ethnic absolutism reign unchallenged while the seductions of the alt right to which they are kin present a growing danger. He calls for other kinds of ontological ballast forms of identification that, in opposition to reified identity, emerge from affinity and convivial contact, place, generation, sexualities and gender. (Work could perhaps be added to this list.)

Racial tensions have changed idiom since the 1960s, but have hardly disappeared, despite the structures of recognition that have been established. The more startling change, however, which Gilroy could not have foreseen, has taken place in the classroom. During the two main periods of her career, 1954-59 and 1968-82, she enjoyed, as a teacher, some freedom and even a certain standing. According to Black Teacher, she created her own programmes of learning, devised idiosyncratic projects and sensed where her lessons could eventually lead her pupils she wasnt just wiping tears, joining in their games or buying a troubled child a hamster. Since then, a succession of education ministers have undermined the status and autonomy of teachers, and conditions for children themselves are greatly altered. When John, the not afeared boy, kicked Gilroy sharply in the shins, she decided not to punish him. Perhaps her success with John, who eventually said he was sorry and kissed her name on the blackboard, is idealised. Perhaps she was too indulgent. But for many years now there has been little chance that such behaviour in a classroom would be met with anything other than discipline.

Its not naive to think that in the 1960s and early 1970s education was improving, and prospects set fair. Teachers and former teachers are today vocal in execrating the rigidity and harshness of some academies and free schools. Children as young as five are sent to Pupil Referral Units and Alternative Provision: in 2018, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the number of children sent from primary schools to referral units was 1572, while the figures for permanent exclusion from state secondary schools was 7894, with black and biracial children disproportionately represented. Independent schools dont release statistics, and anyhow prefer to ask that parents withdraw a pupil. The offence is frequently drug-taking, which exists in all sectors of society and is more or less mainstream in many parts of culture.

Beckford School, where Gilroy became head, was named after William Beckford, whose fortune one of the largest in the 18th century derived from vast sugar plantations in Jamaica. He is thought to have owned three thousand slaves. His son, another William, the Orientalist and author of Vathek, blew his inheritance by building and rebuilding Fonthill Abbey, a folly which, in a kind of hopeful foretoken, kept falling down. A campaign to change the schools name and commemorate instead its trailblazing former head was defeated last year. From this month it will be known as plain West Hampstead Primary School. But a mural, or some other permanent memorial, to Beryl Gilroy is planned. As Raymond Williams pointed out (and Paul Gilroy has echoed), we create shared values by choosing our forebears according to our present needs.

View original post here:

Marina Warner I ain't afeared: In Her Classroom LRB 9 September 2021 - London Review of Books

A final decision to re-install the fence has not been made, as law enforcement review intelligence about the Sept. 18 rally.

WASHINGTON U.S. Capitol Police officers have been told to prepare for fencing to return to the Capitol complex, ahead of an alt-right rally scheduled for Sept. 18. A decision on whether to re-install the imposing barriers has not been finalized, as intelligence on the upcoming Justice for J6 rally is examined, officials familiar with the matter said.

The Capitol Police officers said they were first told to be ready for fence reconstruction during a roll call meeting about two weeks ago a huddle when department leaders brief officers on daily matters, changes in procedure, and upcoming events.

The roll call discussions concerning reconstructed Capitol fencing have not been previously reported.

The Justice for J6 rally is scheduled for this month near the west front of the Capitol a protest supporting jailed Jan. 6 insurrection defendants.

Matt Braynard, the head of data for the 2016 Trump campaign, announced the gathering on Steve Bannons podcast this summer, issuing a clarion call for his followers to seek justice for Capitol riot defendants.

As we continue to raise the profile of these individuals, it makes it harder and harder for the lefts phony narrative about an insurrection to stick, Braynard said on Bannons podcast July 30. Whats going to define [the rally] is where its going to take place: were going back to the Capitol.

Around the time of the USCP roll call discussions, Metropolitan Police sent a flash alert to all members of the department conveying a full activation of the Districts police force on Sept. 18.

"In anticipation of First Amendment activities on Saturday, September 18, 2021, the Metropolitan Police Department will be fully prepared, the department said after WUSA9 first reported the alert. As with all First Amendment demonstrations, MPD will be monitoring and assessing the activities and planning accordingly with our federal law enforcement partners. MPD will have an increased presence around the city where demonstrations will be taking place and will be prepared to make street closures for public safety.

Officials familiar with the discussions told CBS News on Wednesday Capitol Police leadership are awaiting final reviews of intelligence surrounding the rally. Two sources familiar with the intelligence said members of far-right extremist groups including the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend the event, demanding the release of hundreds charged in the insurrection.

We are closely monitoring Sept. 18 and we are planning accordingly, said USCP Chief J. Thomas Manger. After Jan. 6, we made Department-wide changes to the way we gather and share intelligence internally and externally. I am confident the work we are doing now will make sure our officers have what they need to keep everyone safe.

Read the rest here:

Capitol Police officers told to prepare for fence to return ahead of Justice for J6 protest - WUSA9.com

Nihilism doesn't have a great reputation.

It's associated with existential dread, immorality and Nazis.

But writer and journalist Wendy Syfret says the philosophy can also lead to a happy, positive, fulfilling life.

Syfret says nihilism's basic message is that "life is meaningless".

"Anything around you that is trying to give you any kind of direction whether that is politics, religion or your understanding of love is kind of just made up," she tells ABC RN's Life Matters.

Supplied/photo by Ben Thomson

Nihilism says that, in the scheme of things, everything we do is pointless and everything we experience is irrelevant.

It can be.

In her new book The Sunny Nihilist, Syfret gives some examples of nihilism-gone-wrong, including being used by the aforementioned Nazis to justify their atrocities and by Russian anarchists to justify a political assassination.

Life Matters is here to help you get a handle on all the important stuff: love, sex, health, fitness, parenting, career, finances and family.

Today we see nihilism espoused by alt-right influencers and "black pill" incel groups.

Syfret says if you come to nihilism looking for something destructive, you will find it.

"Like all philosophies, you get out what you put in in many ways, it is a void," Syfret says.

And as a famous nihilist philosopher said:"If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Well spotted.

Syfret describes FriedrichNietzsche as "the poster boy of nihilism".

Public domain

"He didn't invent it but he very much brought it to the forefront," Syfret says.

But, she says, Nietzsche didn't consider himself as a nihilist.

"He didn't say nihilism is this endpoint where you reject all meaning and then you just sit in a dark room," Syfret says.

"He was more saying, use nihilism as a way to look at the people who are telling you what to value and to ask, 'What are these people getting out of this? And how are they trying to control me?'"

Nietzsche was wary of systems of power religion, nationalism or any other system that claimed to offer easy answers to life's big questions.

Once we reject the morals and values promoted by existing systems of power, Nietzsche argued, we are free to explore for ourselves what we truly believe.

His rejection of the status quo can be seen in how, in 19th century Germany, he fiercely opposed anti-Semitism.

So while Nietzsche wasn't the cheeriest guy in the world, Syfret says, he was not an inherently bad person.

His sister on the other hand

Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth was a Nazi when she died in 1935, Hitler attended her funeral.

In 1943, a letter to a journal named Angry Penguins marked the beginning of one of the most sensational hoaxes in Australian history.

In 1887, she and her husband attempted to found a colony of 'racially pure' Germans in Paraguay.

It failed spectacularly. The couple returned home and her husband killed himself.

By this time, FriedrichNietzsche had experienced a mental breakdownand in the years following he suffered multiple strokes.

This was when Elisabeth took control of her brother's archive and used it to further her own racist agenda.

She took bits and pieces of his writing and spliced them together into a manufactured book called Will to Power, which was published under Nietzsche's name soon after his death.

More than 120 years, yes. But Syfret says nihilism is now embedded in internet culture.

She gives the example of young pop music fans posting about their idols murdering them, or the gleeful memes shared at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic when a Japanese theme park banned screaming, instead asking ride-goers to 'scream inside your heart'.

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Young people, Syfret says, have witnessed the decay of the structures that were supposed to bind society together: religion, government, the media.

At the same time, she says, those in power are failing to make choices that allow young people to have a steady job, own their own home or live on a planet that isn't wracked by fossil-fuel-induced climate change.

The uncertainty of the pandemic has many of embracing stoic and existentialist ideas, even if we don't know it.

Now, employers try to convince workers to find meaning in their jobs (Syfret devotes a chapter of her book to showing how destructive this can be) and advertisers pretend meaning can be found through the consumption of products.

In her book, Syfrettells of a meeting she witnessed where copywriters were desperately trying to imbuea popular brand of ice cream with meaning.

"It's exhausting when every single interaction you have with your day is trying to tell you that it's some meaningful, life-altering event," Syfret says.

"Sometimes you just want an ice cream."

So do I. But ultimately, millennia from now, neither younor Inor that ice cream will exist.

Pexels: Kindel Media

"Whether you have a great day at work, whether you absolutely nail your presentation, whether you're super charming on the zoom date you have tonight in the scope of human history, of the history of the planet, the reality is these things don't really matter," Syfret says.

"That can be a liberating way to step back from your life a little bit [and] not focus on the incredibly stressful things that we tell ourselves are the centre of the whole universe."

Hopefully, Syfret says, being confronted with how insignificant your life ultimately is also causes you to examine what is truly of value to you.

For some, she says, that might be art, music or social justice. For Syfret, knowledge that the planet will continue long after she's ceased to exist has led to her involvement in climate activism.

"As the idea of the self dissolves, it can also be a way to feel more connected to a larger community, or a sense of the health of the planet."

And, Syfret argues, by acknowledging that nothing you do ultimately matters, you're more likely to take time to enjoy the simple things whether that's patting a dog, breathing fresh air or eating an ice cream.

Enjoy it!

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Nietzsche didn't consider himself a nihilist and other things you should know about nihilism - ABC News

Consider mandatory arrest laws, which require the police to make an arrest whenever they suspect an act of domestic violence. As many Black and Latina feminists predicted in the 1980s, when these policies began to be implemented, such laws increased the incidence of domestic violence against women of color; numerous studies have shown that retaliatory violence after arrest is linked with poverty, unemployment and drug and alcohol use factors that disproportionately afflict Black and Latino communities. Indeed, male joblessness is linked with domestic violence against women the world over. But poor abused women cannot, as a rule, turn to the state to employ their partners, or for the money they would need in order to be able to leave them. Instead, they can only ask that their partners be locked up, which many are understandably reluctant to do. Mandatory arrest laws were born out of a concern for womens safety. But they have sometimes had the effect of making marginalized women worse off, and have served as a cover for the deep conditions poverty and precarity that make certain groups of women especially vulnerable to violence.

The law has its limits on campus, too. The Office for Civil Rights, which administers Title IX, does not publish racial statistics for allegations of Title IX violations. Title IX requires schools to appoint officers to protect students from discrimination on the basis of sex, but not from discrimination on the basis of race, sexuality, immigration status or class. Thus, as a matter of Title IX law, it is of no concern that, during at least two recent academic years, the small minority of Black students at Colgate University, the elite liberal arts college in upstate New York, have been disproportionately targeted for sexual violation complaints; and, as a matter of law, no notes are kept on where else this might be happening.

Given the lack of data, we cannot know for certain that Title IX disproportionately affects marginalized groups, but there is good reason to think that it might. Janet Halley, a professor of law at Harvard, has spent years documenting the unseen costs of campus sexual harassment policies, including accusations that unfairly target men of color, undocumented immigrants and L.G.B.T.Q. students. How can the left care about these people when the frame is mass incarceration, immigration or trans-positivity, she has asked, and actively reject fairness protections for them under Title IX?

So, we must ask: Would legally recognizing consensual faculty-student relationships as sex-discriminatory make campuses fairer for all women, for queer people, for immigrants, for the precariously employed, for people of color? Or would this bring with it unintended consequences, to be suffered by some of the people already most marginalized in our universities? In a context in which more and more academic labor is performed by adjuncts on low pay and with no job security, which university teachers could we expect to be targeted by such a legal change? Could such a change be leveraged to undermine academic freedom? And would the young people, usually women, involved in consensual relationships with their professors end up better off?

In considering these questions, it is perhaps instructive to return to one of the few times that U.S. courts have been asked to rule on whether faculty-student relationships can be penalized: a 1984 case called Naragon v. Wharton. Kristine Naragon, a graduate student instructor at Louisiana State University (L.S.U.) had a romantic relationship with a 17-year-old freshman student also a woman whom she wasnt teaching. At the time, L.S.U. did not have a ban on faculty-student relationships, but the school decided not to renew Ms. Naragons teaching duties after the freshmans parents demanded that the administration intervene. Meanwhile, L.S.U. declined to sanction a male professor in Ms. Naragons department who was having a live-in affair with an undergraduate woman whose work he had the responsibility of grading. The court ruled in L.S.U.s favor, finding that by punishing Ms. Naragon but not the male professor, the school had not been motivated by homophobia.

None of this is to say that we cannot use the law, and Title IX specifically, to make university campuses more equal. But it is to recommend caution. It is not enough for us to think about what, as a matter of principle, the law should say; we must also think about what, in practice, the law will be used to do, and against whom. The law is a powerful tool, but it can also be blunt. It is also not the only tool available.

Rather than looking to the law, professors might look to themselves. Graduate students tend not to receive much instruction in how to teach much less in how to negotiate the strong feelings (of desire and elation, but also of anger, frustration and disappointment) that can charge the classroom. Likewise, we rarely discuss what to do about the fact that teacher and student are not just abstract intelligences, but embodied creatures. Writing about her experience as a new professor, the Black feminist bell hooks observed: No one talked about the body in relation to teaching. What did one do with the body in the classroom?

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Opinion | The Real Problem with Sex Between Professors and Students - The New York Times

Having reached the vice presidents chair in the U.S. Senate, the self-proclaimed QAnon shaman, UFO expert and metaphysical healer removed his coyote-skin and buffalo horns headdress and announced, with a megaphone, that it was time to pray.

Thank you, Heavenly Father ... for this opportunity to stand up for our God-given inalienable rights, proclaimed Jake Yellowstone Wolf Angeli (born Jacob Chansley), his face painted red, white and blue, and his torso tattooed with Norse symbols that his critics link to the extreme right.

Thank you, divine, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Creator God for filling this chamber with your white light and love, he added, in a prayer captured on video by a correspondent working for The New Yorker. Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. ... Thank you, divine Creator God, for surrounding and filling us with the divine, omnipresent white light of love and protection, of peace and harmony. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn. Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists and the traitors within our government.

Many phrases in this rambling prayer would sound familiar to worshippers in ordinary churches across America, said Joe Carter, an editor with the Gospel Coalition and a pastor with McLean Bible Church near Washington, D.C. But the prayer also included strange twists and turns that betrayed some extreme influences and agendas.

Continue reading here:

ON RELIGION: Twisted prayers and temptations to worship political power - GoDanRiver.com

The Maricopa County Attorneys Office and Phoenix police have designated a group of protesters as a criminal street gang.

The controversial decision has been blasted by community groups, defense attorneys, and legal organizations.

Politically Charged is an ongoing ABC15 investigation series. Click here to watch part one of the series and watch part two of the series in the player above.

While declining to provide specifics about the evidence, police and prosecutors have defended the charges.

POLITICALLY CHARGED: Officials create fictional gang to charge protesters

As I have stated numerous times, my office is committed to protecting the safety of everyone in this community, law enforcement and demonstrators alike," County Attorney Allister Adel said in a written statement. I fully support everyone in the exercise of their First Amendment rights, but I will not allow criminal conduct, disguised as protest activity, to harm our community.

ABC15 obtained the full grand jury transcript and video from an 85-minute bond hearing for one of the defendants.

Both pieces of testimony show the legal basis Phoenix officers and county prosecutors used to justify the gang designation and other charges against the group.

Below are excerpts from the grand jury transcript and a bond hearing related to key issues in the case.

ACAB GANG

Arizona statutes regarding criminal street gang classification are broad and only require two of the following criteria to be met: (1) Self proclamation; (2) Witness testimony or statements; (3) Written or electronic correspondence; (4) Paraphernalia or photographs; (5) Tattoos; (6) Clothing or colors; (7) Any other indicators.

Phoenix police Sgt. Doug McBride, a grenadier who manages the Tactical Response Unit and former gang detective, testified that all members of the group met the criteria for three reasons.

The first is the chanting of All Cops are Bastards, which he claimed is self-proclamation. The second was most of the group dressed in black, which meets the colors requirement. And the third was many of the group carried umbrellas, which McBride claimed was part of their uniform.

The following are exchanges between prosecutor April Sponsel and McBride during an October 30, 2020 bond hearing for defendant Suvarna Ratnam.

TIMECODE: 5:35SPONSEL: Were they yelling or saying anything?MCBRIDE: Yes, they were.SPONSEL: What were they yelling or saying?MCBRIDE: I believe it was ACAB. And then the group would respond, "All Cops are Bastards.SPONSEL: In regards to the ACAB, do you know where that came from?MCBRIDE: Weve been dealing with it since May, since these protests started. Its a specific group of individuals that identify themselves as being part of All Cops Are Bastards, or ACAB.

Heres how McBride testified before a grand jury when questioned by a MCAO prosecutor.

PAGES: 31, 34, 36Q: What is that name of this gang?A: It is called ACAB, A-C-A-B, and it stands for All Cops Are Bastards. We first came into contact with this group through graffiti, signage, ACAB written on the back of skateboards and different paraphernalia throughout our 150-plus day employment and mobilization and civil unrest in Phoenix.

Q: And what were those two other criteria where you were able to attribute the other individuals listed in the indictment?A: Both self-proclamation and the colors, the clothing.

Q: And through your training and experience of dealing with this ACAB group, what exactly color what color do they claim?A: Black.

Q: And are you finding that ACAB is following the exact same type of philosophy of lets say the Bloods and the Crips?A: Yes.

Q: And what about even maybe the same philosophy as the Hells Angels?A: Very similar, yes.

Q: And why would that be similar?A: I think because the tattoos, the intimidation factor, how they are directing their violent behavior very similar to the Hells Angel organization where they actually organize their violent behavior, and then they carry that out in a very organized fashion. Its not random with the Hells Angels.

Q: And are you finding thats exactly what this ACAB group is doing is they are organizing for the intent to create violence?A: Yes.

A judge who presided over the Oct. 30, 2020 bond hearing heard similar testimony from McBride.

The judge ruled that Ratnam could be released and said the court did not see evidence of violence the night of the groups arrest.

The court does not see that as a threat of violence, said the judge, discussing the groups actions that night.

A defense attorney at the hearing also cross-examined McBride about his claims about ACAB.

TIMECODE: 46:14DEFENSE: Now you said that this group was yelling all cops are bastards during this protest, correct?MCBRIDE: Yes.DEFENSE: I watched the video, didnt they say other things?MCBRIDE: Im sure they did.DEFENSE: Did you hear them say, black lives matter?MCBRIDE: Not personally no.DEFENSE: Did you watch the video with sound on it?MCBRIDE: I did.DEFENSE: And you didnt hear them save black lives matter at any point of time during this march?MCBRIDE: They may have, Im not saying they didnt. I just dont have an independent recollection.

In court motions, another defense attorney attacked the designation of ACAB as a gang, calling it fictional.

ACAB is not a gang at all but a political slogan, Christopher DuPont wrote in the motion to compel prosecutors to release more evidence. In a continuing affront to the First Amendment, most likely motivated by hatred for a group using such an impolite name (ACAB), state prosecutors abetted by Phoenix police alleged that the protesters had assaulted police officers with deadly weapons, including toy smoke bombs and collapsible umbrellas even insinuating, without foundation, that protesters had weaponized their fingernails.

ACAB is a common protest chant that originated almost a century ago and is used across the world.

DuPont further criticized the comparison to the Crips, Bloods, and Hells Angels.

The state called a witness to testify at grand jury that ACAB was just as dangerous and in many ways more dangerous than notorious gangs like the Crips and the Bloods, two gangs that have accounted for as many as 15,000 homicides in the United States during their 30-year run.

UMBRELLAS

One of the criteria used to file gang charges was that many members of the group carried umbrellas during the protest.

TIMECODE: 19:42; 29:15;SPONSEL: The umbrellas, have you seen this tactic used in the past?MCBRIDE: Yes.SPONSEL: And is this a tactic thats commonly used by this particular group?MCBRIDE: Yes it is.

SPONSEL: What are they doing with the umbrellas right there?MCBRIDE: They are keeping them between us and them, and theyre swinging them back and forth basically as a distraction, to conceal what theyre doing, just cause, theyre trying to prevent us from arresting them.

In testimony before the grand jury, McBride also discussed the umbrellas.

PAGE: 38Q: And what about the umbrella, is that part of their, I guess you could say their gang uniform?A: It is. Its an extension of what they are doing to disrupt us and to try and defeat our tactics which are pepper spray and different types of nonlethal munitions. The umbrella will provide a protective umbrella around them, to use the umbrella word, and then it will also conceal what they are doing. As this group moved on October 17th, they were able to conceal what each person was doing by draping umbrellas around the exterior of the group so we couldnt see inside.

Umbrellas are common at protests and have been seen in many cities across the country.

Its something the defense attorney emphasized in the hearing.

TIMECODE: 48:16DEFENSE: Would you agree those umbrellas are used for them to protect themselves from getting pepper sprayed?MCBRIDE: Thats one example of their use.

Members of the group told ABC15 the umbrellas are also to keep alt-right counter-protesters, who were following along next to police, from "doxxing" them.

PROTESTERS RIFLE

A member of the group, Britney Austin, was carrying a rifle during the protest.

McBride discussed the rifle during his grand jury testimony.

PAGE: 47A: I didnt mention earlier, but there is one individual that we noticed early on who has an AR-15 rifle slung. So they cover that person up as well so we cant see what they are doing either.

Q: Does that create a risk for you guys?A: Absolutely. Its a huge hazard for us.

Q: And even though that person is not pointing the gun at you guys in any way, shape, or form, by the mere fact they are covering it up does that put you guys in apprehension that something could happen?A: Absolutely.

In the bond hearing, the defense attorney questioned McBride about the AR-15.

TIMECODE: 39:30DEFENSE: You said there was an individual with an AR-15 at the scene that day?MCBRIDE: Yes sir.DEENSE: Alright, is there anything illegal about having an AR-15?MCBRIDE: NoDEFENSE: Was that person a prohibited possessor?MCBRIDE: Not to my knowledgeDEFENSE: Did that person ever point it at any officer or threaten to point it at any officer?MCBRIDE: Not to my knowledge.DEFENSE: So youd agree with me that that AR-15 did not calculate into your factors of rioting?MCBRIDE: Correct.

The judge at the hearing also said the gun and the groups other actions did not constitute violence or the threat of violence.

TIMECODE: 1:17:30The court has to look at whether that was a threatening use of force or violence. We are an open carry state, the judge said. You are free to carry a gun. That may be threatening to other people, but that is your right in Arizona.

Contact ABC15 Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@abc15.com.

Continued here:

Inside the case: Watch testimony behind the Phoenix protest gang charges - ABC15 Arizona

We should never forget what insurrectionists did at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. With President Trumps encouragement, overwhelmingly white men and womenstormed the building, hunted for elected officials, flew the Confederate flag, erected a gallows and killed a member of the Capitol Police.

We should also not forget what we saw, asthey sported such disturbing and bizarre iconography from KKK tattoos, Holocaust denial tee shirts and QAnon costumes to Pepe the Frog flags to crusader crosses- that The New York Times published a decoder. More pernicious due to its very ordinariness, however, was their display of every type, styleand color of tactical or paramilitary apparel and gear.In other words, the rioters dressed like many of us do when practicing yoga.

We need to stop wearing the costumes of the far rightnow. Millions of Americans of all political stripes and economic strata unthinkingly don the same uniforms in everyday life that far right extremists have worn in violent, anti-democratic actions at state capitals over the past four years and on Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. What should rightly be called militia-chic is everywherefrom camo baseball caps,womensunderwear, and infantrompers.

For some, like Claire Gibson, who lost several friends in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wearing a used camo jacket is an act of remembrance or respect. Nevertheless, she contended in 2019, the vast majority of Americans consider camo merely a style, even a new neutral.After the events of Jan. 6, it is something far worseand anything but neutral.

Militia chic is but one representation of the militarization of everything that we have experiencedsince the late 1970s.Post-Vietnam commitments to support the troops has morphed into the bipartisan embrace of all things actually and figuratively military not to mention a reluctance to examine in detail the military budget itself. How else to explain that we attend fitness boot camps at local gyms? That we dont question themilitary flyoversat professional, amateur, high school and Little League sporting events? That Rudy Giulianisexpression trial by combattaken literally by the mobwas introduced into popular lexicon through a hit HBO series?

If the past four years have shown us anything, it has shown us that militia chic has long been anything but a representation of respect, a mere style or simple metaphor. It is a politics, more and more closely associated with anti-Black racism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration, misogyny and other anti-democratic ideas. Historian Kathleen Belew carefully documents the ways in which Vietnam veterans, bitter at the countrys loss to an Asian people, brought the war home by reigniting the KKK and other white nationalist groups in the 1970s and 1980s.Todays groups say much the same: As one member of the alt-right put it, white men have one biological duty:to wage war.

Even if you think your camo boxers represent respect for the military, consider this: members of far right organizations are joining the armed forces at an alarmingly fast clip and finding quarter there. Up to one half of non-white soldiers have witnessedacts of racismandwhite nationalism. But why should this be a surprise when ten current bases are named forConfederate leaders?And conflation between white nationalism in the military and the Confederate flag hardly remains within the borders of the slave-holding South. AConfederate flagflew for years above a Veterans Administration Medical Center in Hot Springs, South Dakota, less than one hundred miles from the site of the final massacre of the Native people of the plains near Wounded Knee.

While some domestic terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh and Ashli Babbitt, are themselvesmilitary veterans,the vast majority of active duty and retired military personnel are not extremists, not insurrectionists, not terrorists. Instead, they are real-life heroes like Rep. Jason Crow (D-Co), whorefusedto leave the floor of the House until his fellow members were safe, with his only tactical gear a suit and tie.

In fact, most domestic terrorists are wannabe soldiers likeDylann Roof, who killed 12 worshippers at the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, S.C.in 2015, and other white men who may not even qualify for military service, but pretend to have the strength and courage embodied by the soldiers they have seen in video games, the internet and on television.Wrapped in an American flag or a Trump flagthey call themselves patriots when they are in fact traitors.

Maybe you think your camo clothes look great. If so, you might want to consider whose outfits match yours. Im throwing mine out.

Catherine McNicol Stock is the Barbara Zaccheo Kohn 72 Professor of History at Connecticut College.She is the author ofRural Radicals: Righteous Rage in the American Grain, Second Edition (2017) and Nuclear Country: The Origins of the Rural New Right(2020)

Originally posted here:

Opinion Still think your camo is cool? - The CT Mirror

Often I am reluctant to acknowledge myself as a former Baptist. No longer a Baptist (a long story), I am nevertheless proud of a basic Baptist tenet separation of church and state.

The First Amendment short but brilliant is, in fact, the foundation of freedom on which our beloved nation stands. It is a grand and bold statement. The First Amendment reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Civil War of 1861-1865 was fought over states rights to secede, and eventually and inevitably over the issue of slavery. During that war, at Gettysburg, Penn., President Abraham Lincoln said, Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.

Sadly, now we are engaged is a great civil and cultural war. It is an attack upon truth itself. The press is assailed as fake news, the findings of science are debunked (global warming), and the exercise of free speech is taken to allow sedition and insurrection as patriotic.

Most pernicious, to my mind, is the conflating of church and state by the religious alt-right, with undertones of white supremacy, racism, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitism and Christian nationalism. The civil or cultural war of today, in part, is being fought, alas, with sedition and insurrection, over our country being a Christian nation, which it is not now, nor ever was, nor ever should be.

The First Amendment guarantees that the USA is a nation that includes and welcomes peoples of all religious persuasions, and those of no persuasion. Our founders were primarily Enlightenment Deists with a profound faith in reason, upon which the Constitution was based. Thomas Jefferson is famous for the Jefferson Bible, cutting out portions of the Bible with which he disagreed.

We make a grave and grievous mistake conflating our nation with any particular religion to the exclusion of other faiths. The great experiment of our nation, as conceived, is embedded in the First Amendment. One nation, many diverse peoples. One nation, many faiths. It is a bold and grand experiment. Shall it endure?

Conflating nation and religion often results in a distortion of patriotism, which tends toward idolatry of nation. True patriotism is defined by love of ones country indeed, the willingness to fight, and if necessary, to die for the freedoms our country affords, including the freedom of religion, along with free speech, etc.

I love this country and the values and freedoms for which it stands. But I cannot admire nor condone those who strive to undermine the very foundation of freedom that must be afforded to every person. I pray this nation and the foundation on which it stands shall not only long endure, but thrive, with liberty and justice for all.

The Rev. Dr. Lloyd Parrill is a retired United Church of Christ minister. He served the Trinitarian Congregational Church, UCC, in Northfield for 35 years, from 1977 to 2012.

More:

Faith Matters: Our bold and grand experiment: Shall it endure? - The Recorder

Demands to know: Did foreign Bitcoin transfers fund the failed insurrection?

WASHINGTON, D.C. Today, U.S. Congressman Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) called on the Department of Justice and federal agencies to redouble investigation efforts into the reported single $520,000+ bitcoin transfer to multiple alt-right groups and extremist personalities leading into the deadly failed insurrectionist attacks on the U.S. Capitol.

Federal agencies are currently investigating a transfer of $522,000 worth of bitcoin to twenty-two different wallets belonging to several alt-right groups and extremists one month before the January 6, 2021 attack. The largest donation of approximately $250,000 went to a far-right extremist internet troll who was reported to be present at the initial January 6 Washington, D.C. rally and seen outside the U.S. Capitol as the riot began.

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In the wake of the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, Americans deserve to know if more than half a million dollars worth of bitcoin helped fund the failed insurrection. Are foreign entities paying far-right extremists to try to overthrow the U.S. government? Are there other cryptocurrency transfers to extremist groups we dont yet know about? asked Congressman Josh Gottheimer, a member of the House Financial Services Committee and Homeland Security Committee, today. We know this isnt an isolated incident. We know other terrorist actors and foreign groups use cryptocurrency to finance their attacks. Our federal agencies and the Department of Justice need to actively redouble their investigation and immediately brief Congress to help get to the bottom of this.

Gottheimer is the lead sponsor of the bipartisan Freezing Assets of Suspected Terrorists and Enemy Recruits (FASTER) Act, to give law enforcement the capability to freeze the assets of all domestic terrorists when a suspect is arrested by federal law enforcement. It also implements a one-of-a-kind National Homegrown Terrorism Incident Clearinghouse for all levels of law enforcement to collect and share information on incidents of homegrown, lone-wolf terrorism and violent extremism to help investigate and thwart future attacks.

Gottheimer is also the lead sponsor of bipartisan legislation the Online Terrorism Prevention Act to require regular disclosure of the presence of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations on social media websites, and to impose financial and criminal penalties for social media companies that fail to eliminate terrorist content from their platforms.

Original post:

Gottheimer: Feds Must Probe Bitcoin Transfers to Alt-Right Extremists Prior to Capitol Attacks - TAPinto.net

Here are three observations about culture and politics as viewed through the prism of the last days of the Trump administration and the first days of the Biden one.

Everyone is making media at all times, CNN reporter Elle Reeve reported of January 6 capital siege. Its crazy. Its like, Were you there if you didnt livestream it? And theyre all hoping for that viral moment that will give them more clout on social media.

The commitment to postingeven though this particular viral moment would ultimately provide authorities ways to track down the riotersshows the degree to which politics has been recoded, in the Trump Galaxy Brain, as some kind of media project. Politics is downstream from culture, Andrew Breitbart, founder of the eponymous hard-right web outlet, once said.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the Capitol as tear gas fills the corridor on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.)

You dont need an army of content-creating goons to have reactionary violence in the United States, of course. Reactionary mob violence, against the Indigenous and minorities, against the poor and the working class, has been an aspect of life in this country since before the creation of the Republic.

But whats become apparent to me is that the dynamics of the networked DIY media economy are particularly catalytic to reaction, in ways I havent heard talked about. Not just because it is an efficientvehicle for spreading unvetted misinformation, though this is true. Nor because it creates filter bubbles or incentivizes mob mentality, though this is also true.

After four years, everyone should know that the deepest reservoir upon which the Trump base drew was not the white working class, but the white petit bourgeoisie. Its a lot of small business owners.

The social media-ization of everything has added to that layer in a particular way. Social mobility may have declined in the United States, inequality has certainlysoared, debt has ballooned, and physical infrastructure is crumblingbut media has gotten easier and easier to access and consume. This expanding cornucopia of tech and entertainment has served as a compensatory narrative of progress and advancement for an empire in decline. The future seems more and more constrained, materially, but, on the flip side, you are freer and freer to build your own virtual worlds and get lost in them.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the US Capitols Rotunda on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.)

The promise of viral fame has also provided a new-model rags-to-riches story to keep gas in the tank of Americas myth of itself as a middle-class nation of self-defined, self-made people, despite the pervasive sense of narrowing opportunity (even as Big Tech consolidated its monopolies). Whether you are an independent journalist looking to Substack, a sex worker on OnlyFans looking to survive the pandemic via a paying fanbase, or a QAnon wingnut decoding breadcrumbs and monetizing the resulting notoriety via T-shirts and Trump merch, the recent past has held out the individual internet hustle as the path to some form of stable autonomy.

In her great book,Labor in the Global Digital Economy, theorist Ursula Huws makes the point that online attention economies are built around begging and bragging, creating systematic psychic stresses. There is, she writes, a cumulative battering of the ego that cannot be good for anyones self-respect even for those who (by definition a minority) emerge from the process as winners most of the time.

After the Capitol assault, the New YorkTimes wrote of participants that a number of the feeds we reviewed suggested that those whod made a sharp pivot to sharing misinformation were similar in their desire to cultivate a public persona. The protesters the Times interviewed

shared an entrepreneurial streak. They expressed a desire for connection with others and sought to achieve it online. But their attempts at conventional influencing (via modeling, reality television, running a small business and sharing motivational content) brought only modest attention.

Until, that is, they found an audience in extreme conspiracies, and a plausible route to the micro-influencer fame that was otherwise out of reach. Jake Angeli, the QAnon Shaman who became the face of the Capitol attack, is similarly a failed actor and web spirituality entrepreneur. Scotty the Kid, who single-handedly built last years Save the Children rallies, is a failed model and rapper (specifically rapping about BitCoin.)

The squeezed small-business-owner class has been, classically, considered the popular base for fascism. Official ideology privileges and glamorizes the dream of economic independence, yet small proprietors are slammed by competition, atomized, and relatively powerless. Thenetworked web economy specifically holdsout a dream of glamorous independence and celebrity inflated way beyond its ability to deliver to large numbers of people, creating a substantial and volatile base of thwarted small-media entrepreneurs looking for salvation.

This idea of digital medias role inthe fix we are in may make it seem that the unprecedented, coordinated action by Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Stripe, and more to deplatform both Trump and his more extreme fans in the last weeks can only be a positive development.

In the wake of the bans, everyone is now waiting to see what effects they might have beyond serving as a kind of temporary emergency brake that has been pulled.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the US Capitols Rotunda on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.)

But, actually, most experts already agree what will happen.

Bottom line is that de-platforming, especially at the scale that occurred last week, rapidly curbs momentum and ability to reach new audiences, Graham Brookie of the Digital Forensic Research Lab told the Washington Post. That said, it also has the tendency to harden the views of those already engaged in the spread of that type of false information.

And those who are already engaged, keep in mind, are literally tens of millions of people at this point. For those committed to sharing Stop the Steal memes, the coordinated action of Big Tech was further evidence of a diabolical scheme against them and against Americawhich is the very sense that created the conditions of reaction in the first place. Way back when Trump was first running in 2016, RAND found that how you answered the question do you feel voiceless? was the best predictor of his support among Republicansbetter than age, race, college attainment, income, or attitudes towards immigrants or Muslims.

So, peace in the information sphere is bought at the price of further extremism, probably on a large scale.

Make no mistake, the loss of internet platforms is a huge blow for the right-wing culture warriors and internet conspiracy addicts, disorganizing, demoralizing, and dispossessing them. But there were, after all, much more sinister groups in attendance at the Capitol, dedicated to forms of militia actionIRL war instead of just the meme war. Theyve been prepping for years for a showdown and are actively looking to recruit.

Its easy to imagine that, in turning off the online attention spigot, you have not only radicalized a sense of grievance on the level of belief but also redirected a lot of thwarted energy towards groups more dedicated to the non-virtual world as the center of the action.

Marchers parade past an Apple Store in San Francisco, protesting Apple Incs profits held in tax exempt overseas accounts in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images.)

On the other side of the radicalization funnel, Big Tech absolutely does have way too much control over peoples livesthat is hardly a sense that only ultra-reactionaries share. There is a huge, unfocused mass of anger at tech that goes beyond political affiliation. Just as vaccine skepticism that crosses class and demographic lines has been a conduit into broad right-wing growth during COVID, this general angst opens dangerous pathways of solidarity.

We risk allowing righteous resentment at techwhich is only going to grow as more and more as people see these platforms as the last avenue of social advancementto be tangled up and channeled into the racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic narrative of those who are the most evident target of the ban and the loudest voices against it.

As Doug Henwood pointed out recently on the Behind the News podcast, the giants of Platform Capitalism today seem to be playing the same role in the public discourse as the railroads did in the late 19th century. Rail let small farmers get their goods to market, but also put them at the mercy of giant monopolies, stoking resentment. Now, social media behemoths control access to an audience, to visibility, to careers, to community, and so on, stoking resentment.

Ryan Walker, I Saw the Farmer and the Consumer and they who come between (1902).

It was in the broad revolt against the 19th-century rail monopolies that a term was born so potent that it endures in our political lexicon: Populism. It started out as a left-wing movement of radical democracy and redistribution of wealth, but has been channeled into right-wing strong-man anti-elite politics.

It matters a lot who captures the resentment generated by the real injustices of corporate domination over communication. It is very bad if people preaching an apocalyptic gospel are the ones who speak for it.

The Social Dilemma, last years blockbuster middlebrow clickbait documentary on the horrors of social media, contains a scene that is meant as a parable for what social media is doing to the kids. We are shown how phone-addled suburban teens are impelled by the sinister forces behind their screens to participate in a violent street protest, ending up in cuffs.

Press image from The Social Dilemma. (Image courtesy Netflix.)

The documentary, however, specifically refuses to show what the protest is all about. The problem at hand, the implication is, is neither left- nor right-wing extremism, just extreme opinions, generically. As if that term could be defined non-ideologically.(To symbolize the docs all-sided criticism, the signs you see at the protest tout the Extreme Centerprobably not referring to Tariq Alis book of the same namecritiquing technocratic liberalisms role in paving the way for right-wing populism.)

Im sympathetic to the idea that the profit models and practices of social media capital are having socially corrosive effects. But, in general, I think that the Trump-era pundit obsession with trying to combat the growing right at the level of technology has too often ended up being about looking for a technical fix for deep-seated social problems that have developed over years of social erosionand this is dangerous.

An example of this perspective came in last years blockbuster Rabbit Hole podcast from the New York Times, which also set out to show how social media was a radicalization tool drawing people into conspiracies. The funny thing, however, was that its star example was Caleb Cain, described as a lonely young man, raised amid the decline of postindustrial Appalachia, failing to find a place for himself at college, then finding himself working aimlessly at a series of jobsDairy Queen, packing boxes at a furniture warehousewithout much of a sense of self-worth or future prospect.

From this life situation, this young man who started out as an Obama supporter discovers YouTube self-help content to fill his empty nights. This leads him to the mens-rights content that leads him to the so-called alt-light content that leads him to dipping into the deeper waters of white nationalist content.

But by the time the Times talked to him, Cain had been both successfully radicalized and then deradicalized on YouTube. At some point, he found his way to videos where his alt-right heroes debated more left-wing ideas, put out by BreadTube, a group of self-consciously ideological anarchists, democratic socialists, Marxists consciously out to engage with reactionary online entrepreneurs and counter them on their own turf.

There is actually a kind of vindication of the importance of effective intellectual engagement in hearing how Cain is won away from the abyss by watching his favorite alt-right YouTube stars get owned by online lefties rolling up their digital sleeves to engage with their arguments and offer alternate explanations for the alienation and demoralization of his actual lived condition.

Caleb Cain, aka Faraday Speaks, analyzing a Stop the Steal rally on YouTube.

Nevertheless, podcast host Kevin Roose strangely takes a totally other lesson away from this parable. Towards the end of his profile, he reveals that Cain himself has started a YouTube channel, Faraday Speaks, where he tries to use his experience to reach people like him who might be attracted to the nastier ideas he had found himself dabbling in. Seems great to me! But here is how Roose engages with Cain:

I guess what I am sort of wondering is that it seems like, you know, you went pretty far down this alt-right rabbit hole. You didnt get to the bottom maybe, but really close. And then you kind of found this path to this other part of YouTube that works kind of the same way, but with just a different ideology, and got sucked pretty far down into that by some of the same algorithms and the same forces that had pulled you into the alt-right. And I guess Im wondering if that makes you feel like the problem is still that you kind of are in the rabbit hole, but youre just in a different one. Youre still susceptible if the algorithm were to change in the future and lead you down some other path that was maybe more dangerous, that this could happen to you again.

You almost feel like Roose is about to say, Have you instead considered a subscription to the New York Times?

Figures including artist Joshua Citarella have been, for years, repeating the message that the best alternative to the right-wing online content funnel is creating self-consciously leftwing alternatives.And yet, faced with his own reporting showing actual case-study evidence that left-wing ideas helped pull Caleb Cain away from alt-right ideas, and Cains effort now to do the same for others, Rooses take on how to battle rising extremism is to tell him: stop doing that. (This Times Take, incidentally, very much fits Tariq Alis definition of an extreme center position.)

Rabbit Hole amounted to one long argument that YouTube, Facebook, et al. were derelict in their duties to stop societys far-right drift, and should be more forceful moderators. Well, now this demand has been fulfilled in the most dramatic possible way, albeit after it was almost too late.

My fear is that this focus on moderating away the problem is ultimately a substitute for having an ideology, for doing something about it or for even having to think about postindustrial Appalachia anymore or address the real social conditions that are drawing people like Cain towards reaction.

I cant say its not nice to have silence from Trumps Twitter. But its worrisome to me to think that now that the Great Muting has happened, everyoneor everyone whos comfortable enough to do sois just going to go back to not thinking about all that he represented, as if the level of chaos and social fragmentation that we have lived through were something you could just hit mute on. As if the movie doesnt still go on even though you cant hear whats going on.

Link:

3 Observations About Culture, Politics, and Social Media Radicalization in the Post-Trump Era - artnet News