When Patricia and Mark McCloskey stormed out of their lavish St. Louis mansion in a wild-eyed, class-war lather, brandishing guns aimed at nearby Black Lives Matter activists, they committed one of the most risibly deplorable, meme-birthing acts of socio-political optics since U.C. Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-sprayed a seated group of students protesting with the Occupy movement in 2011.

Firearm enthusiasts on Twitter mocked the McCloskeys inexpert gun-handling, and armchair fashion pundits, like myself, couldnt help but notice their chosen uniform for the outburstMarks pink polo shirt and light khakis, and Patricias French boating chemise and capri leggings. When they were inevitably declared the champion Ken and Karen of the summer, they also unwittingly pulled a 202-year-old symbol of American normcore into a national polemic by turning it into the label of the un-woke.

The timing of the St. Louis incident couldnt have been worse, as the company, the countrys oldest apparel brand, filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter due to a variety of financial and market reasons. Here was another stain on its otherwise crisp chinos, its long-held place in the public consciousness as the definition of fashion safety for the conservative class, now an emblem of toxicity.

Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPIAlamy

The psychology and semiotics of fashion dictate that in times of turmoil, your personal style is especially burdened with the symbolic history of your commercial choices, for good or ill. In the late 1960s, clothing was just one of the aesthetic battlegrounds for the visual opposition of us vs. them, between the John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlafly on the one hand, and the anti-war activists who stopped shaving their armpits and went commando under their ponchos.

Now, the playing field is a lot more complicatedtraditional symbols of conformity or anarchy are being further warped by the participants in the frontlines of the culture wars.

The Hawaiian shirt was once an innocent staple of summer, Margaritaville and endless boogie guitar solos. Now, its caught a case of political COVID and must be quarantined since being co-opted by 8chan gun enthusiasts called Boogaloo Bois, a disparate group of heavily armed anti-government militia-types.

Some of them abhor immigration; some believe there is a white genocide happening, and others are eager to incite a civil war to defend their rights to carry M4 rifles into a Wendys. Reece Jones, an author and a professor at the University of Hawaii, went viral on Twitter earlier with a thread explaining the connection.

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Along with Brooks Brothers and Robin Williams shirts, some previously inoffensive basics of womens fashion have also acquired a suspicious patina. Is a sheath still alright to wear, or a wallpaper print dress for that matter? When worn at the White House lectern by Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, they become something else, implements in a broader campaign of disinformation.

The array of body-con outfits at her briefings suggests at first a Tracy Flick-ish brand of intensity but its as transparent a costume as some of her specious talking points. I will never lie to you, she said during her first appearance in the role. And then, of course, she proceeded to lie straight to the cameras, constantly, as if it was part of a sorority hazing stunt.

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Clothes are not the only politicized aspect of our appearances nownor were they ever; hair is also a prominent battleground. During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinettes signature powdered pouf was copied by the bourgeoisie, but it was reviled by the starving sans-culottes, who saw it as a wasteful indulgence, another representation of her to loucheness and profligacy.

A more modern hairdo once popular with hipsters is the shaved/faded sides and long-on-top look, or grown-out high and tight once favored by everyone from Macklemore to David Beckham. That, too, has been appropriated by far-right figurehead Richard Spencer and his ilk, who have taken to wearing it with Brooks Brothers suits, because Nazis used to wear the hairdo to look tidy under their helmets.

The New York Times once dubbed it the Hitler Youth, but it has since gone on to be nicknamed the Fashy Haircutshort for fascist, natchand some of its adherents seem blithely unaware of the politics telegraphed by their coiffure. In 2016, the Washington Post once noted the irony of white nationalists sporting a hairstyle thats already been repurposed in the 21st century by young people whose ethos is radical safe-space inclusiveness, not ethnophobic separatism with eugenic undertones.

In the context of today, that misdirection is precisely the point. The alt-right has intentionally become more sophisticated about blending in, substituting red tank tops and MAGA hats with more ambivalent iconography, the kind of fungible avatars that can be taken at face value, or interpreted as dog whistles if weaponized.

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Arguably, another head of hair that looks suspect in the current climate is worn by perennially corporate hyper-conservatives like Jared Kushner. Its the third-grade-picture-day, combover haircut that announces you have a turtle in your lunchbox and get to wear big boy pants because you havent wet the bed in weeks. Its hair that looks excessively Boy Scouty and feckless precisely because it isnt, like when predatory octopods camouflage themselves by mimicking the ocean floor.

For maximum due diligence, ask yourself a few difficult questions before opting for the old standbys when getting dressed for your next Zoomtinis. Remember that something that looks safe on the surface rarely is. We must all make sacrifices during times of (culture) war, but dressing in flip flops and pajama bottoms is arguably better than walking out of your house looking like you want to annex the Sudetenland.

The McCloskeys, by the way, are looking at a possible felony for what the Circuit Attorneys Office in St. Louis called unlawful use of a gun in an angry or threatening manner. The fashion police, however, has not yet pressed charges, though a guilty verdict seems like a foregone conclusion.

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Herman Mashaba, former DA politician and mayor of Johannesburg, is preparing to fight the municipal elections next year in three areas: Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. In an interview with BizNews founder Alec Hogg, Mashaba said he is committed to saving this country. He is not prepared to sit back and complain at dinner parties and warns that whoever takes over from the ANC will inherit a bankrupt country to fix, Mashaba said on Rational Radio. In this in-depth analysis, leadership expert Chuck Stephens explains why he believes Herman Mashaba is a progressive conservative who might draw the crowds at election time. Editor

By Chuck Stephens*

The Inconvenient Majority. Sometimes called the silent majority, is really a kind of political centre-of-gravity. It does swing though, from place to place and from election to election.

Let me take two glances at Britain and America before taking a close look at South Africa.

In Britain, there were rising concerns about European policies like immigration and about high levels of corruption. First Britain confronted its European partners, but it was outnumbered. This fired up an ultra-conservative, patriotic movement called Brexit. It became very vocal, and to try to tame it, Prime Minister Cameron ran a plebiscite. That backfires, and the Leavers won. So Cameron resigned and his successor tried to comply with public opinion by negotiating a soft Brexit.

This proved to be very difficult because of two forces. First, the sheer size of the European Union which made no bones about not wanting Britain to leave. Second, because of a three-way split in parliament. Essentially, the Brexit bloc was bigger than any other, but couldnt muster a 50% majority. Finally Theresa May resigned in frustration and Boris Johnson replaced her. This was symbolic for he was more inclined to a hard Brexit. Conservatism prevailed when he called a snap election. He got Brexit done.

In America, there has always been a strong conservative base. For a century, American elections were contested by two parties the Democrats and the Whigs. Then along came an upstart new party called the Republicans, in the mid 19th century. Its leadership race was won by Abraham Lincoln, who went on to win the next presidential election too. However, he only garnered about 37 percent of the vote which was split three ways. But he had more than anyone else, so he was first past the post.

Lincoln was so conservative that when States started to secede over the question of slavery and their sovereign rights as states, he read that as treason.

Lincoln was so conservative that when states started to secede over the question of slavery and their sovereign rights as states, he read that as treason. A civil war started, during which Lincoln declared the Emancipation proclamation freeing the slaves. Once again in 2020, over a century later, America may be at the edge of civil war. Once again, the way I read the trending, conservatism will prevail. A kind of Reformation was started when the civil rights movement connected to the white left after the abhorrent death of George Floyd. This looked like a rising tide that would wash away the Republicans.

But I rather expect like Brexit that there will be a strong Counter-Reformation in the months that remain before the Nov 3 election. The silent majority in America will vote with its feet against anarchy, violence and polarization. The Democrats are splintered into so many factions, some militant like Antifa, some democratic socialist left like Bernie Sanders, and some moderate like Joe Biden. Meanwhile there is a Blexit of black conservative to join the silent majority of centrists with their comrades in arms in the alt-right. I would call this alignment the inconvenient majority once Biden, twice shy.

In South Africa, the predominant political space is shared by Liberals and Socialists. I regard Liberals as centrists or near-left. Socialists vary from near-left to far-left like the SACP and EFF. But honestly, the ANC is split between two factions one socialist and one liberal. You dont dare call the DA a conservative party they will quickly remind you that they took a stand against apartheid while the ANC was still in exile. Their core values are liberal, not conservative.

Read also: Herman Mashaba SA, ANC cannot exist in mutual prosperity ANC must go

In short, we are left with a fragmented Conservatism. You have the alt right, mostly in the ethnic enclave of the Freedom Front Plus. You have tribal conservatives in the Inkatha Freedom Party. You have small parties like the ACDP which champion religious constituencies. Then you have two significant blocs one in the DA and the other inside the ANC.

Vytjie Mentor left the ANC some time ago, she once served as an MP, but she fled to the ACDP. This week she switched allegiances again to the new Peoples Dialogue party (soon to be launched). I regard Herman Mashaba as a kind of progressive conservative who walked away from the DA when it decided to return to its roots, instead of following Mashabas more populist approach. Listen to the policy platform of this new emerging party, after a long process of consultation with stakeholders:

What will start to happen, I predict, is that the inconvenient majority will start to coalesce in or around (maybe in coalitions) with this new party. Just like the Republican party, which when it first started, chose Abraham Lincoln as its presidential candidate, and went on to re-define Americas future, Mashaba and the Peoples Dialogue can pull off the ANC-exit that centrists and conservatives together have been dreaming about.

I do not belong to any party, as I am an independent observer. This is certainly not a paid political announcement. I am simply reading the signs of the times, in an informed way. To me, it looks like dj vu all over again.

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Herman Mashaba: Why he might draw the crowds at election time Chuck Stephens - BizNews

Alt text is a short text description of an image published to the internet that can be read aloud by accessibility programs for the blind and visually impaired, including screen readers.

But there's another reason to include alt text: Google and other search engines use alt text to better understand your photos' content, which affects your website's page ranking in search results.

While alt text is not required, you should strive to add useful, well-crafted alt text to every image you publish via WordPress so all users and search engines can better understand your content.

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Because alt text describes the image to a visually impaired person, try to make the alt text as useful as possible. That will also help search engines rank your web pages appropriately for relevant keywords. Here are some things to keep in mind:

2. Add the image to your media library, either by browsing or dragging it to the web page.

3. After the is uploaded, the Attachment Details page should appear on the right side of the screen. Enter a description of the image in the Alt Text field.

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5. Click "Insert into post."

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What is alt text in WordPress? How to add image descriptions on your web page to improve accessibility and web - Business Insider India

I'll bite. I post for a variety of reasons:

1) COMMUNITYI have been a part of this community from the the very beginning. Originally it was a place to joke with and learn from like-minded people. At the start, it was only about sports: recruiting guesses, game analysis, and insider observations from practice. That bubble was pleasurable. Here in a little corner of the emerging internet, you could talk about something you loved with other people who loved it too. In sports, we had the big bad PAC10 opposition with all their greater traditions and higher rated recruits, and Cal was always a seeming underdog, but you could come here and feel empowered because even if we lost a game we could laugh about it and celebrate the Cal experience and make it our own. This place made Cal more than just the sporting event, it was a culture of eternal fatalistic optimism. And, sometimes, we even won.

Our first controversies and tensions were around who should play, or plays that should have been called, and then if coaches should be fired. Like the sports world in general, sports banter became more aggressive and hostile and taking a position. The first divides in the community appeared.

Then, the real world started to leak in. Greater sports, university, and political issues became part of the debate. It has been a slow decline in the quality of discussion, and slow increase in partisanship aimed at "winning" some greater contest of political sport (or typically more about making others feel that they are the "losers") then it is about supporting a sense of community and learning from one another. In short, we went the way of the internet and are in a lot of ways no better than any SEC or 4Chan board. We have sock puppets and trolls and people who just want to argue. What used to be a haven and a feel good part of my day is now a mixed source of angst. So, community is the main reason I post here, but much of that has been lost.

2) KNOWLEDGE There is such an interesting group of accomplished people on BI that I often get exposed to information and opinions that I would have never otherwise gained. This is when BI is at its best.

3) HABITFor better or for worse, BI is built into my daily routine. It's one of about 5 sites that I check without really even thinking each day. It's the digital equivalent of walking to the end of the driveway and getting the morning paper. I wish it still had all the positive connotations of "starting my day off right."

4) CATHARSISBe it a devastating loss in football or something devastating in the political theater, there is something cathartic to put your words down and having your "community" affirm and echo your experience. This post itself is a good example.

5) DEFENSE OF THE GOODEthical positions in both the sports and political realms are increasingly drowned out by "having a take," ""if you aren't cheating you aren't trying," "greed is good," and "win at any cost" rationalizations for the degradation of principles and the higher mission of life and sport. In some small way, and with full self-awareness of the pompousness of this claim, I believe that posting here contributes and defends a worthwhile counter argument, that seeds are planted, that if enough people contribute to the persistence of good, it disseminates.

6) ANTIDOTEPositions here I disagree with are the same I hear stated on the news and by some friends and family. Posts I make and others I read, give me a sense of relief and affirmation (you can perhaps call it confirmation bias) that not EVERYONE feels these things and that there are really rational, factual antidotes to a lot of the poison of partisanship.

7) ACCOUNTABILITYMaking a record of a position offers some limited accountability for my own thoughts and for those who disagree with me. Unfortunately, there is a rise in never admitting you are wrong, moving the goalposts, and just out and out denial of what is written in black and white. Somehow I feel like this discourse, if you can call it that, helps to create digital footholds in an increasingly post-truth, gaslighting reality.

8) IMPROVE CAL SPORTSThis of course used to be the primary objective. But in the years since and the way the chatter has evolved, this gets lost. The hope is that by the critical eye of a community and the collective celebration of the best parts of the Cal experience, the powers-that-be are guided and steered.

9) DRIVE TRAFFICI post to drive internet traffic.

10) PASS ON TRADITIONSLike seniors (or in this case senior citizens) passing on traditions to freshmen, this place is a reservoir of Cal culture, nostalgia, and history. This library passes on our collective version of fandom and perhaps is part of expanding and entrenching our fan base. How else would one know the meanings of (we need a pinned Bear Insider glossary by the way):

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Federal officers walk through tear gas while dispersing a crowd of about a thousand people during a protest in Portland, Ore. (Nathan Howard / Getty Images)

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A major American city has been taken over by violent anarchists, according to the Trump administration and right-wing news. Portland, Ore., is a city under siege, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, said last week. On Thursday, Wolf visited Portland to see for himself the lawless destruction, which is allegedly so dire as to warrant the deployment of federal forces, who have spent the last few weeks teargassing, beating, and temporarily kidnapping protesters. Fox Newss Sean Hannity decried constant chaos; Tucker Carlson claimed the whole city had been destroyed by the mob.Ad Policy

This would be alarming stuff, if it were true. Portland, where I live, has been the site of ongoing protests against police brutality and racism since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a 54-day stretch of activism as of this writing. Over the past two months, mostly peaceful demonstrators have filled bridges, parks, and Interstate 84, sometimes numbering in the thousands. In what is now a predictable pattern, each night a group converges near the Justice Center and Federal Courthouse downtown. Usually small provocationstossed water bottles or fireworks or a Granny Smith apple with a bite out of itspark a wave of violence from law enforcement. Occasionally, there have been more overt acts of vandalism, particularly in the immediate wake of Floyds death, including broken windows and small fires. (For more detailed timelines of the protests in Portland from local reporters, read this and this.)

But the city is hardly wracked by chaos. Outside of the few square blocks downtown that are marked by graffiti, boarded-up windows, and metal fencing, things feel normalor rather, as normal as possible given the impact of Covid-19, which has had a far more disruptive effect than have the protests. The bulk of the violence cited by Wolf amounted to graffiti and other property damage. Meanwhile, his agents and other federal officers have seriously injured a number of protesters, including a Navy veteran who had his hand broken by federal officers after he tried talking to them. The mood in the crowd downtown is often jovialat least until law enforcement arriveswith people dancing and chanting and giving out vegan stew, barbecue, and donated bike helmets. On Friday night around 10:30 pm, shortly after federal forces started spraying tear gas, filling a city block with noxious fumes, a few families were strolling by shuttered storefronts just a few blocks away, apparently unaffected by the siege.

Federal agents showed up in Portland in early July, after Trump signed an executive order protecting statues and monuments from criminal violence during racial justice protests. In response, the Department of Homeland Security created a task force to surge resources. Ostensibly, federal forces are in Portland to protect federal property, including the courthouse. But their primary effect has been to escalate violence. On July 11, a deputy with a tactical unit of the US Marshals Service shot a demonstrator named Donavan LaBella in the head with an impact munition, fracturing his skull. On July 16, reporters for Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that federal agents were grabbing people on the street and pulling them into unmarked cars.

I am basically tossed into the van. And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldnt see and they held my hands over my head, Mark Pettibone, one of the people detained, told OPB. While Pettibone had been at the demonstration that night, he was on his way home when he was whisked away. I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time. As The Nations Ken Klippenstein reported, the agency responsible for Pettibones detention was the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), a SWAT team-style unit officially charged with responding to terrorist threats.

A number of lawsuits have been filed against the federal government for civil rights violations, and protests that had dwindled to a hundred people or so are now drawing thousands to downtown. Things had been in fact kind of winding downuntil the federal police force or whatever it is, Im still not quite sure, came in and literally blew things up, said Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who joined the demonstrations over the weekend and on Tuesday night. Theyre responding with this horrific amount of force that is causing so much trauma and injury to what had been relatively minor acts of, at the very worst, vandalism of property.

How did a city of 653,000 become the testing ground for what Trump has suggested will be broader interference in US citiespart of an election-year strategy to stoke fear and advance an authoritarian vision of law and order? The groundwork for federal intervention in Portland was laid long before this summers protests by right-wing groups and media, which turned the city into a bogeyman. While Oregon has a legacy of state-sanctioned racism and is still home to a disproportionately large number of hate groups, Portland has also long been the site of antifascist organizing and other left protest movements. (Demonstrations in Portland against George H.W. Bush between 1989 and 1991 were so notorious that a member of the administration dubbed the city Little Beirut.) Extreme groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have repeatedly targeted the city over the past few years, holding rallies that inevitably drew counterprotests and created media spectacles.Current Issue

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Demonstrations in Portland immediately following Trumps election in 2016 were huge and, at times, explosive, with police deploying tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets in response. The following year, days after a white supremacist stabbed and killed two people on Portlands light rail, the alt-right group Patriot Prayer held a Trump Free Speech Rally rally; police responded to by detaining hundreds of counterdemonstrators. Similar incidents occurred throughout 2017 and repeatedly in the years since, and conservative media eagerly latched onto a narrative of Portland as lawless anarchist enclave. National Review, for instance, devoted a cover in 2018 to a story by Kevin Williamson in which he described anti-fascist goons and thugs as being in effective control of Portland. In July 2019, clashes between the alt-right and counterdemonstrators drew attention from Trump (Portland is being watched very closely Hopefully the Mayor will be able to properly do his job, he tweeted) and prompted Texas Senator Ted Cruz to call for federal prosecutiona premonition of what was to come.

Portlands drawn the fascination and ire of a lot of right-wing media personalities, fascist groups, neo-Nazi groups, and of course the president, said attorney Juan Chavez, who directs the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center and is involved in litigation against the city of Portland regarding treatment of protesters. Were a big enough city to matter but small enough to be a laboratory for a lot of these tactics. And exacerbating this is the way our city government has portrayed protesters in the past, and the way Portland police have portrayed protesters in the past and currently.

City leaders have been sharply critical of the federal response, and have demanded that the Trump administration remove its officers. But Chavez and some activists say that the initial response to citywide protests by local politicians and police helped grease the skids for federal intervention. For weeks, Mayor Ted Wheeler, also serving as police commissioner, did little to restrict the polices use of tear gas and impact munitions against protesters and journalists beyond issuing statements of concern and loose directives with unclear enforcement mechanisms. (A temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge and a new state law restricting tear gas use did eventually put pressure on the bureau to justify its uses of force.) Now, Portland police appear to be coordinating with federal officers to disperse crowds downtown. Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner met with Wolf during his visit to Portland, and in a press conference over the weekend parroted the claim that the city is under siege by rioters.

Basically, you had thousands of people hitting the streets and getting met with tear gas, impact munitions, and harsh police tactics, and that really set the tone for where we were going, said Chavez. I think the city didnt grasp what they were dealing with. There was an immediate political response, that while it came quickly it wasnt adequate. And because of that, basically people did not feel like they had adequate civic feedback on their demands.Related Article

While the city implemented some reforms this yearremoving police from public schools, disbanding the controversial Gun Violence Reduction Team, and reallocating $15 million from the bureaus budgetmany activists wanted a deeper transformation. They ignored us, they did not center victims or protesters, they did nothing to de-escalate, they did nothing to engage, said Teressa Raiford, the founder and executive director of Dont Shoot PDX, which has been organizing for police reform in Portland for years and in June filed a class-action lawsuit against the city for indiscriminate use of tear gas. That is why Donald Trump took advantage of the situation. He knows exactly whats happening here in Oregon. Its a shame. Its disgusting.

Despite the public attention to the demonstrations and apparent public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Raiford said that immediate safety issues for Black residents are still going unaddressed. On July 10, for instance, an 18-year-old named Shai-India Harris was shot and killed while walking down the street in southeast Portland. Police have not arrested anyone in her case.

Its not clear how all of this will end. Appearing on Fox News on Monday, Wolf said that the DHS was not going to back down. Neither are the protesters. The entire community, the entire city is on our sideeverybody from nurses to teachers to children to parents to families that have lost their loved ones, great grandmas, Raiford said. The most immediate questions concern the extent to which the violence will escalate. Longer term, Chavez wonders about the legal endgame. Can and will the federal courts allow this type of federal invasion of a state? In a lot of ways I think were in uncharted constitutional territory, he said. Even if the courts do act, it may not be fast enough to protect the people who will be out in the streets again tonight.

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Why Portland Became the Test Case for Trumps Secret Police - The Nation

Alt text is an important tool that helps identify images, improve SEO standing, and provides visually impaired users, or anyone who needs additional help identifying the contents of visuals, assistance with on-screen images.

It's most closely associated with web page design, but you can add alt text to images in any Microsoft Office document, including Excel spreadsheets. Excel lets you add alt text to every kind of image and graphic in two ways, including from the "Illustrations" button in the "Insert" ribbon.

While most people don't routinely do this, it can be a good idea, especially if your document will be referenced by anyone who uses a screen reader for visual assistance.

Here's how to add alt text to your Excel spreadsheet.

1. Open Excel and add your desired image to a spreadsheet.

2. Right-click the image and choose "Edit alt text" from the drop-down menu. The Alt Text pane should appear on the right side of the screen.

The alt text command is found in the context menu when you right-click an image. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

3. Type the alt text you want to use to describe the image.

4. If the image is irrelevant to understanding the overall spreadsheet for example, it's a line or box that's been added entirely for aesthetic reasons click the checkbox beside "Mark as decorative."

If an image adds no informational value to a spreadsheet, you can mark it as decorative. Dave Johnson/Business Insider

5. When you're done, close the pane or click something else. The alt text will be automatically added to your document.

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

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

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

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

No hype, just the advice and analysis you need

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REUTERS

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

REUTERS

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

Getty Images

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

AP

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

Getty Images

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

Getty Images

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

Getty

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

AP

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

REUTERS

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

AP

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

Getty Images

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

AP

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

AP

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

Getty Images

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

AP

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

Getty Images

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

AP

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

REUTERS

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

REUTERS

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

Getty Images

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

AP

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

Getty Images

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

Link:

Does Tucker Carlson hate America? - The Independent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HUZENIS: How do you determine who rents?

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

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

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

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

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

HUZENIS: Were you a rebellious kid?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See the rest here:

Artist Canyon Castator Is Making The Apocalypse Palatable - Interview

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Militia groups regularly coordinate with police.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve Nesius / Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

bluejayphoto via Getty Images

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

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

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

Where we go from here, is forward.

More here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit

Permission granted by Redefine Meat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eshchar Ben-Shitrit

Founder and CEO, Redefine Meat

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

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

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

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

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

Optional Caption

Permission granted by Redefine Meat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author Matt Alt | MATT SCHLEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael S. SchwartzGetty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trump administration announced this week the nomination of a former conservative commentator with a history of inflammatory and conspiratorial tweets to be the head of the Office of Personnel Management.

John Gibbs, the nominee, is currently the acting assistant secretary for community planning and development at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he has worked for three years.

A CNN KFile review in 2018 of archived versions of Gibbs' Twitter feed showed he had spread a false conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign chairman took part in a satanic ritual. Gibbs also defended an anti-Semitic Twitter user who had been banned from the platform, and made derogatory comments about Islam and the Democratic Party.

Gibbs' Twitter feed has been set to private since 2017 and the few tweets archived and accessible to public view offer only a small glimpse of his activity on social media.

Gibbs is a former conservative commentator and software engineer who initially joined HUD as the director for the Strong Cities, Strong Communities initiative. In August of 2017, he transitioned to the role of senior adviser, working in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, and is now an acting assistant secretary.

OPM manages the government's workforce, serving as a human resources department for civilian employees.

Gibbs' nomination comes as the White House aggressively moves to install loyalists across the government in key positions.

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, defended Gibbs' nomination in an email to CNN.

"Instead of highlighting Mr. Gibbs' work to increase economic development programs for low-income people or his successful deployment for more than $9 billion in CARES Act funds to respond to COVID-19, the media would rather dwell on some nonsense from 2016," Deere wrote.

A spokesperson for the Democratic minority on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs said the past comments raised concerns.

"These reports raise serious concerns that should be discussed during the nomination process. Ranking Member Peters will thoroughly evaluate the record and qualifications of any nominee that comes before the committee," the spokesperson said, referring to Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat.

Aaron Jacobs, a spokesperson for Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, another Democrat on the committee, also raised concerns about Gibbs.

"Sen. Hassan has serious concerns about Mr. Gibbs's nomination to lead the Office of Personnel Management," Jacobs told CNN in an email.

On Twitter, Gibbs made multiple references to a conspiracy theory started by far-right bloggers that claimed Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign chairman, John Podesta took part in a satanic ritual. The claim has repeatedly been debunked.

Tweets from Gibbs, archived on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, show him promoting the conspiracy four times between October 31 and November 5 of 2016, using the hashtag #SpiritCooking.

When radio host Wayne Dupree, who has spread Sandy Hook school shooting hoax stories, tweeted that Clinton was losing Black support because her campaign manager took part in "Satanic #SpiritCooking," Gibbs quote tweeted him, writing, "True, true, and true. #Trump #SpiritCooking #BlackLivesMatter."

In tweets from early 2016, Gibbs also blasted "cucks," a derogatory term used by the far right to insult establishment conservatives, and derided the Democratic Party for accepting Islam.

"#Twitter down big today because they banned Ricky? #FreeRicky," he wrote.

In a February 2016 tweet, Gibbs said the Democratic Party had become the party of "Islam, gender-bending, anti-police, 'u racist!' "

Link:

Trump's pick to head Office of Personnel Management spread 'satanic' conspiracy theory, called Democrats party of 'Islam' and 'gender-bending' -...

In July 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would commute the sentence of Roger Stone, a political ally who was convicted of seven felony charges, including witness tampering, lying to congress, and obstruction, in relation to special counsel Robert Muellers investigation.

Shortly after the news broke, a photograph started to circulate online that supposedly showed Stone and members of the Proud Boys flashing a white power gesture at a bar:

This is a genuine photograph of Stone and members of the Proud Boys. Some may argue that this group is merely flashing an OK symbol, but this argument doesnt really hold up, especially when you consider that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group that espouses white supremacist ideals, and that white supremacists have adopted the OK hand gesture as a symbol of hate.

This photograph was taken around the time of the Dorchester Conference, Oregons oldest Republican political conference, in March 2018. The Willamette Week reported that Stone, who was scheduled to speak at the event, hired members of the Proud Boys to be his private security.

The Willamette Week wrote:

Roger Stonethe former political adviser to Richard Nixon and President Donald Trumpappeared without incident at the states oldest Republican conference last weekend.

But an organizer of the Dorchester Conference in Salem says Stone was so worried for his safety that he enlisted a right-wing group as private security.

Patrick Sheehan, a Dorchester board member who booked Stone, says Stone reached out to the Proud Boysa group notorious for its participation in Portland street brawlsafter reading about violent political clashes in Oregon.

He was worried about getting killed, Sheehan says. He gets death threats constantly.

Photos of Stone drinking with a handful of Proud Boys circulated across social media over the weekend, outraging Democrats.

The photograph of Stone drinking with a handful of Proud Boys mentioned in the Willamette Week article was originally posted by InfoWars host Alex Jones on Twitter on March 3, 2020. The image was captioned: InfoWars Roger Stone joined the @proudboysUSA in Salem Oregon tonight. I joined them in spirit!

This is a genuine image of Stone with members of the Proud Boys in March 2018. Although the meaning behind the OK hand gesture is a bit murky it was, and is still, widely used as a harmless symbol for approval or consent this symbol has been adopted by white supremacists as a symbol of hate.

Heres the Anti-Defamation Leagues explanation of the OK hand gesture as a symbol of hate:

In 2017, the okay hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters wp, for white power. The okay gesture hoax was merely the latest in a series of similar 4chan hoaxes using various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a common image as white supremacist.

In the case of the okay gesture, the hoax was so successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post photos to social media of themselves posing while making the okay gesture.

Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

And heres how Southern Poverty Law Center described the Proud Boys:

Established in the midst of the 2016 presidential election by VICE Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys are self-described western chauvinists who adamantly deny any connection to the racist alt-right, insisting they are simply a fraternal group spreading an anti-political correctness and anti-white guilt agenda.

Their disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions: rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spoutwhite nationalistmemes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known foranti-Muslimand misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside otherhate groupsat extremist gatherings like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Indeed, former Proud Boys memberJason Kesslerhelped to organize the event, which brought together Klansmen, antisemites, Southern racists, and militias. Kessler was only expelled from the group after the violence and near-universal condemnation of the Charlottesville rally-goers.

Other hardcore members of the so-called alt-right have argued that the western chauvinist label is just a PR cuck term McInnes crafted to gain mainstream acceptance. Lets not bullshit, Brian Brathovd, aka Caeralus Rex, told his co-hosts on the antisemitic The Daily Shoah one of the most popular alt-right podcasts. If the Proud Boys were pressed on the issue, I guarantee you that like 90% of them would tell you something along the lines of Hitler was right. Gas the Jews.

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Is This Roger Stone and Proud Boys Flashing a White Power Symbol? - Snopes.com

Count Jonathan Capehart, the openly gay Pulitzer Prizewinning columnist for the Washington Post, as one of those in her corner. Until 2012 they were merely casual acquaintances. Then came the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Each night they would meet at a local Hooters for dinner. Over wingsHooters has great wingsthey spoke for hours while tank-topped, short-shorted waitresses moved around them. Though they shared a similar worldview, Capehart, a regular MSNBC contributor, found Reid more liberal. Since then, the two have been intellectual sparring partners and close friends.

The person who wrote those columns is not the person I got to know sitting across from her at a table in Tampa at Hooters, Capehart says of Reids previous LGBTQ remarks. I dont know that person. I dont know that person who wrote those pieces.

Look, he continues, do you know how many people would be out of my life if I did not, one, learn to forgive and, two, give them the room to evolve?

Over the past few months, Reid has witnessed an entire nations belief system on race radically evolve. Following the killing of George Floyd in May and the worldwide protests that followed, America seems ready, finally ready, to take in the very things shes spoken on for years. Before the hoodie became a menacing totem for the alt-right in Florida, Reid fretted over her childrens clothes. She wasnt worried about other kids. She feared something else.

I think its important to have somebody who looks like you, who can empathize with what you feel, Reid says. For the most part, white Americans have traditionally been very trusting of the police. The police are Barney Fife. Theyre your friend. They get your cat out of a tree.

Im a law-abiding citizen, she continues. Ive never been arrested or committed a crime. But when I see those blue lights, I feel sick. I feel my heart racing. Even though I know I havent done anything wrong, Im afraid of the police. Im successful. I work at a great company. I have health benefits. And Im afraid of the police.

Matthewss swift retirement proved a shock to the network. It also offered a reset. It allowed room for something, someone different in different times. In the months that followed, Reid was one of a series of people who held down the 7 p.m. hour as MSNBC sought out a replacement. But there remained no clear choice.

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MSNBCs Joy Reid Makes Cable-Network History With the Debut of The ReidOut - Vogue

Sign-carrying anti-mask protestors chat with bystanders on Sunday. Photo: Yvette dEntremont

The Halifax Examiner is providing all COVID-19 coverage for free.

A dozen anti-mask protesters who gathered on the Halifax Waterfront Sunday afternoon were met by an equal number of mask-wearing counter protesters determined to push back on the messaging.

March to Unmask: Halifax was organized by Sandra Saunders and was part of a nationwide campaign against what the unmasking group is calling an unjustified push for mandatory masks. In addition to protesting masks, one brandished an anti-vaccine and anti-5G technology sign and another noted that Bill Gates wont save you.

Shortly before the 3 p.m. event started, a group of mask-wearing counter protesters showed up on-site with signs of their own. As Saunders spoke to reporters, they began raising their own signs and shaking homemade noisemakers.

Veda Wynters (centre) was one of a dozen mask wearers who showed up to counter Sundays unmask Halifax event. Photo: Yvette dEntremont

Halifax resident Veda Wynters was one of those who showed up to counter the anti-mask group. Sporting a Wonder Woman mask, she said she felt compelled to show up.

I decided to come here after reading all the comments on their (Unmask Halifax) Facebook page that has outdated numbers, incorrect information, conspiracy theories up the wazoo, and we just wanted to represent the saner side of Halifax, Wynters said.

Im immunocompromised. I have severe asthma, I have chronic issues, so if anyone shouldnt need to wear a mask, Im asthmatic. I shouldnt need to wear a mask and yet Im wearing a mask.

One of the other women who joined her added that mask wearing was about compassion for other people and she too felt they needed to push back.

Its not really for your protection, its for other people and it just infuriates me that there are people that wouldnt have that same compassion that all of these lovely people have, she said, gesturing broadly to the people wearing masks around her.

Both groups were generally respectful and calm, with the exception of one man aligned with the anti-mask group. He angrily yelled at a CTV cameraman for not interviewing him and got into a heated yelling match with two mask-wearing teenagers.

In an interview, Saunders said she became involved with organizing the March to Unmask Halifax event because her daughter is asthmatic and works in an industry that recently made them mandatory. She said she wanted to create awareness about what the group claims are the harms caused by masks.

She added that people shouldnt be listening to what mainstream media or the government has to say about wearing them during this pandemic.

We should never, ever be mandated anything, especially a medical device that poses harmEspecially cloth masks. Cloth masks, when you have the moisture from your breath coming out, your C02 is actually your waste product, Saunders said in an interview, pointing to this reporters cloth mask.

Seriously. So its kind of like eating your own poop, man, you know, because seriously the CO2 has virus and bacterial particles that your body is trying to expel and get rid of.

This is not accurate, and contrary to the scientific consensus on masks.

The fact that so few people showed up for a protest against masks was no surprise to Howard Ramos. The former Dalhousie University sociology professor recently took up a new post as chair of sociology at Western University.

Hes worked with the Association of Canadian Studies and their polling with national market research and analytics company Leger. Last week, Leger released a survey that showed 67% of Canadians believe wearing a mask in all indoor public spaces should be made mandatory.

When asked if requiring people to wear a mask in public places is an infringement on their personal freedoms, 70% surveyed disagreed.

The super majority of Canadians believe in the public health practices that have been happening and recognize that weve sacrificed a little bit of our freedom in order to have more freedom, Ramos said in an interview.

Wearing a mask gives us the opportunity to be able to go shopping, to be able to make sure that our friends and relatives and neighbours arent getting sick.

He said there will always be a minority who arent supportive, adding that those who are unsupportive often hold extreme alt-right views.

I think that were importing some of the narrative from the US, and within political views theres always a chunk of the population who prides liberty and libertarian values over other values, he noted.

So to me as I hear about this kind of event its to recognize that yes theres going to be this kind of group of people. Its not new, its something that always exists within society, but its important for us to put it into context that this is a minority of people.

Ramos said public health officials have done a great job, particularly in Atlantic Canada, with informing the public about why theyre implementing various measures in order to protect the health of the community at large.

I think that what ends up happening with a lot of the anti-vaxxers and the alt-right and why they often pair together is because of this prizing of individuality, he said.

If you look at Atlantic Canada, weve done very well because weve embraced the messaging from public health, and its important to remember that this is going to be a long term marathon that were running and that its not over.

On Friday, Nova Scotias chief medical officer of health announced that non-medical masks will become mandatory on public transportation as of July 24.

In a media briefing he stated that evidence around wearing non-medical masks has evolved throughout the pandemic. That evidence now clearly shows that non-medical masks are an effective tool in helping to prevent the spread of COVID-19. He added that before a second wave or resurgence of the virus, we need to normalize mask wearing and make it much more of a habit for Nova Scotians.

Strang also stressed that the vast majority of Nova Scotians are able to wear masks. He said although there are exemptions for medical reasons, there are very few valid medical reasons to not wear non-medical masks and they are primarily related to anxiety.

The Canadian Thoracic Society clearly states that there is no evidence that wearing a non medical mask worsens a chronic lung condition such as asthma or chronic obstructive lung disease, he said.

But I do recognize that for some people with chronic breathing conditions wearing a mask can create anxiety.

He urged people to try and overcome that anxiety by getting used to wearing masks for short periods in a safe environment, such as in the confines of their own homes. He also noted that while people with cognitive or developmental disabilities may also be unable to wear masks, there are very few medical reasons not to.

So if you think about it we have medical professionals that wear masks all day long every day. So what Im asking is that Nova Scotians wear non-medical masks for much shorter periods of time, he said.

Strang described masks are part of a package of personal protective measures that include frequent handwashing, good cough hygiene, physical distancing, cleaning common surfaces and objects, and staying home when youre feeling unwell.

He also encouraged Nova Scotians to seriously think about the role masks play in helping us protect each other, adding that wearing masks in public spaces where physical distancing isnt possible shows that you care about others and are taking a relatively simple step to keep them safe.

Theres a lot of misinformation and downright mistruth being circulated about masks. Wearing a non-medical mask is safe and effective, he said. Our response to COVID-19 has highlighted that in many ways we need to think more about putting others first ahead of ourselves.

Strang also noted that face shields or other types of eye protection are not a replacement for masks as they dont protect others.

Ive seen too many circumstances where people are making choices or organizations are making choices thinking that a face shield, that eye protection, is a replacement for masks, he said. Its not. Where we need to have masks on we need to wear masks. Theres no replacement for them.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US called on Americans to wear masks to prevent COVID-19 spread.

CDC reviewed the latest science and affirms that cloth face coverings are a critical tool in the fight against COVID-19 that could reduce the spread of the disease, particularly when used universally within communities, the CDC states in its press release. There is increasing evidence that cloth face coverings help prevent people who have COVID-19 from spreading the virus to others.

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Anti-maskers bring their misinformation to Halifax - Halifax Examiner

In 1962, Bertrand Russell finally responded to Sir Oswald Mosleys letters, which were badgering him into a debate about the merits of fascism. He replied: It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to ones own.

Russells words can be reflected in a more recent political tennis match, indirectly concerning Greta Thunberg. There should be nobody who does not know this teenagers name.

She already has proven herself to be articulate, precise and powerful beyond her years, as her 2019 address to the World Economic Forum proves: I dont want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire because it is.

Throughout the past year, she has broken through the political fishing nets designed to keep us immobile and now excels in the fact that, to quote her own book title, No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference.

Like any great thinker or shaker of established norms, there is kickback from the normally politically ambivalent. The vitriolic responses to Greta range between mild-mannered questioning to vicious ableist attacks due to her autism, her being a child and, while not as explicitly, a woman speaking more than is socially acceptable (as any woman ever will confirm).

Like most insults, those that are used most searingly tend to be that which the insulter fears the most; a female child who is deemed lesser due to her medical disability, and who has embarrassed the norms of the right wing establishment. Having no good argument in response, the manner adopted by those who conform to established norms becomes that of Harry Wormwood, the father in Matilda. Matilda has realised he has been mechanically lowering the mileage clock on cars he is about to sell.

Matilda: Daddy, youre a crook. [] This is illegal.

Harry: Do you make money? Do you have a job?

Matilda: No, but dont people need good cars? Cant you sell good cars, dad?

Harry: Listen, you little wiseacre. Im smart, youre dumb. Im big, youre little. Im right, youre wrong. And theres nothing you can do about it.

Greta is doing something about it, and well.

Naturally, there must be a response. Naomi Seibt, a 19-year-old German teenager, spoke on Friday 28 February at a smaller side event of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a prominent right-wing convention in the United States. She is described as the anti-Greta of climate change, and describes herself as a climate realist. Her views have already had to be defended due to being allegedly anti-Semitic. She has described Stefan Molyneaux, an alt-right spokesperson, as an inspiration for his views outside the mainstream. If this isnt enough, Seibt has been hired by the Heartland Institute, and the less said about them, the better.

Her views on climate change are as follows: Today climate change science really is not science at all. [] The goal is to shame humanity. Climate change alarmism at its very core is a despicably anti-human ideology and we are told to look down at our achievements with guilt, with shame and disgust, and not even to take into account the many major benefits we have achieved by using fossil fuels as our main energy source.

It is moments like this I wonder of the nerve of those who use snowflakes as an insult. Much like the phrase victim mentality, the goal is to simply be so obtuse as not to listen or care for anyone else other than oneself, that calling the other side weak is seen as a strength.

The denial of our climate crisis and the fact there is even a climate belief system shows how, for some, engaged debate is simply as useless as Mussolinis hairbrush. The question soon becomes one of overwhelming political fighting. It is another battle of left-wing versus right-wing, progressive versus traditionalist, new versus old. It is hard to ignore how commonplace this is nowadays. You will remember the protests against Greggs vegan sausage rolls last year. At football matches every other week I hear fans frothing with similar rage when the referee gives a free kick to the opposite team. I realise now that its nothing at all about football or pasties.

It is about an attack of the old order by the new. The old order has rejected modern ideas that told them, directly or otherwise, that they and, by extension, their ways of thinking, were wrong.

This fundamental fact must be understood if the progressives are to combat more products of Seibts ilk. To present a new idea that shakes grounded beliefs, one must expect a response that will reach higher levels of depravity depending on the gravity of topic.

The only way to defeat this is to stick to truth harder than ever. Greta Thunberg is doing the work for those who would not, or cannot, speak for themselves, and she is holding to account those who have long hidden from their crimes by sticking to truth. Naomi Seibt, and those like her, do not provide solutions to the problems they find in thinkers like Thunberg.

The negative effects of not calling out their astounding lack of sense and logic, and lending debate to those who have no intention of changing their own ways has been proven tenfold by the two blonde haired fellows in charge across both sides of the pond. It becomes a shouting match that entirely damages the name of intellectual debate, and soon, to paraphrase a famous saying, you will not be able to argue with them, as they will beat you with experience of inarguable incompetence.

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Anti-Greta and the challenges faced by young activists | Forge - ForgeToday

By Peter Galuszka

Early this past Wednesday morning, Mark Pettibone and Connor OShead were walking on their way home after a peaceful protest in Portland, Ore.

Suddenly an unmarked van pulled in front of them. Men wearing green uniforms, tactical gear and generic signs reading POLICE hustled them into the vehicle. They were not told why they were being detained. After 90 minutes, the badly shaken men were released without being charged.

The episode might sound like the activities of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his little green men who have shown up in places like Crimea and Eastern Ukraine to intimidate and detain people.

But this was Portland, a progressive city that has seen protests for weeks. President Donald Trump has urged federal authorities to move in on cities to restore his sense of order even though city officials in Portland do not want his help and are investigating what is going on.

And, guess who is playing a role in what could be a growing national trend of federal law enforcement performing snatch and grabs of innocent protestors?

That would be Kenneth Cuccinelli, the former hard right, state attorney general and failed gubernatorial candidate. He is now acting deputy secretary of the Trumps Department of Homeland Security.

Cuccinelli may be remembered for angering Virginia women by pushing for mandatory womb ultra-sounds before abortions. He pushed covering up the exposed breast of a woman on the state flag. Worst of all, he harassed former University of Virginia climate professor Michael Mann and demanded hundreds of his emails and other documents because Cuccinelli didnt agree with his research.

After the Portland episode, Cuccinelli told National Public Radio that federal agents had used unmarked vehicles to pick up people in Portland but said it was done to keep officers safe and away from crowds and to move detainees to a safe location for questioning.

The one instance Im familiar with, they were, believed they had identified someone who had assaulted officers or the federal building there, the courthouse. Upon questioning, they determined they did not have the right person and that person was released, Cuccinelli said.

I fully expect that as long as people continue to be violent and to destroy property that we will attempt to identify those folks, he added. We will pick them up in front of the courthouse. If we spot them elsewhere, we will pick them up elsewhere. And if we have a question about somebodys identity, like the first example I noted to you, after questioning determine it isnt someone of interest, then they get released. And thats standard law enforcement procedure, and its going to continue as long as the violence continues.

Some of the federal officers involved in the snatch and grabs are believed to be Customs and Border Protection (CBP), part of Cuccinellis department that are best known for their work in confronting, if not assaulting, suspected undocumented immigrants.

CBP officials acknowledged that at least in one case, they approached a person suspected of damaging federal property, but were turned away by an angry crowd, NPR reported. The customs officials say that the officers uniforms were clearly marked.

There have been calls in Congress for federal officers to wear insignias that clearly designate what their agency is. In some cases, protestors or simply people who happened by have been arrested by individuals dressed in military style clothing and carrying weapons, including assault rifles. But the detainees did not know who they were.

That could be an explosive situation because hard-right, white supremacists tend to head for trouble at demonstrations heavily armed and in combat dress.

There has been a national outcry about what happened in Portland. No wonder.

Personally, it reminds me of my experience reporting from the former Soviet Union. During the Cold War, KGB officials often whisked away protestors drawing attention to the plight of Jewish refuseniks and others.

Later, as unrest swept the country during coups against Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, new divisions of Ministry of Internal Affairs police and military were formed. They were dubbed OMONs or riot cops. Some were clearly marked; others were not. They even can a mechanized, motorized element known as OMSDONGS.

One wonders if thats the next step for Donald Trump and Ken Cuccinelli.

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The Return of the Cooch - Bacon's Rebellion

A battle of letters is under way on the broad and bitterly contested theme of justice and open debate and a truce seems unlikely anytime soon. We have been here before many times in previous years, with warriors for and against political correctness and wokeness facing off in prolonged bouts of written and oral sniping.

What makes this new battle slightly different is the moment in which it comes. Calls for racial and systemic justice are ricocheting around the world in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd.

The new battle is also significant for the calibre, strength and sheer firepower of the forces ranged against each other. On one side are 150 or so of the worlds leading writers, thinkers, academics and activists. They include JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Kamel Daoud and Fareed Zakaria. Most are on the left or centre-left of the political spectrum. They fired the opening shot and it took the form of a three-paragraph exhortation to anti-racism and social justice activists to eschew censoriousness, intolerance of opposing views and blinding moral certainty.

While calling out illiberalism, US President Donald Trump and the radical right, the letter also criticised left-liberals right to demand ideological conformity. The letter went up on the site of one of Americas oldest monthly magazines, Harper's Magazine.

Soon enough, platoons of fighters armed with hashtags and memes began to challenge the letters content and intentions. Within 72 hours, another letter was issued, this time by more than 150 other, slightly less well-known names in academia, the liberal arts, media and NGOs. That letter assailed the famous signatories, many of them white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms, and suggested their words reflect a stubbornness to let go of the elitism that still pervades an unwillingness to dismantle systems that keep people like them in and the rest of us out.

The second letter said the first was at best obtuse and inappropriate, and at worst actively racist because it was issued at a time of massive protests for justice. The worlds most famous public intellectuals, it said, were trying to detract from the public conversation about who gets to have a platform. The second letter appeared on a volunteer-staffed site whose stated mission is to confront inequities in coverage and to report on historically ignored communities.

The letters war would be laughable if it were not so consequential. It illustrates three dismal realities of our time.

First, illiberal liberalism can be just as hateful as far-right exclusivism. Contemporary culture on both the far left and the far right seems to suffer from the flaw American critic Lionel Trilling once diagnosed only in conservatism: it does not really express itself in ideas, but in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

Where the far right uses racial slurs or justifies discrimination on the grounds of religion, the far left runs a different grading system. By means of a hyper-conscious regulation of semantics, it ceaselessly looks for evidence of racism, sexism and any other distressing ism in speech. Perceived infractions are dealt with quickly and often very publicly.

Examples abound. When the novelist Margaret Atwood wrote a thoughtful piece for a Canadian paper two years ago, titled Am I a Bad Feminist?, she was accused of being an apologist for rape as a result of her white privilege. British university students tried to no-platform writer Germaine Greer for allegedly transphobic views. In the US, students at a west coast university staged a sit-in when a professor corrected a students spelling of the word "indigenous". Replacing the upper-case I with lower-case was an act of "linguistic micro-aggression", they said.

The best way to defeat iniquitous ideas is to allow them to be scrutinised

Second, the liberal project for meaningful change comes into question every time its supporters make an illiberal attempt to choke off debate. In 2018, Angela Nagle, author of Kill All the Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-right, noted that many people are attracted to progressive politics because they see that the world is unequal and unfair But they quickly find out that this isn't enough. To avoid being purged, she said, they have to learn an ever more elaborate and bizarre set of correct positions on a range of issues.

Indeed, it is deeply divisive to see the whole world only through the prism of power structures. Of course, there is inequality and injustice and, of course, more needs to be done to understand how these structures still stand and what can be done to bring about beneficial change. But a single-focus narrative often does little to build a coalition, or for that matter a fairer system. Instead, it divides and creates space for those who want to sow greater division, using racial and religious difference as tools.

Third, and most important, greater diversity of culture demands more diversity of expression, not less. Refusal to engage with alternative points of view even if contentious does not enable greater tolerance of opposing ideas; it merely makes everyone wary of discussing them. American civil rights activist Martin Luther King used relentless argument to push for equality of opportunity and equality before the law. Nearly a century ago, Mahatma Gandhi was writing about the need to convert an opponent by opening his ears, which was surely a reference to engaging with different points of view.

The best way to defeat iniquitous ideas is to allow them to be scrutinised. And then to be argued and refuted, point by point. It is interesting to note that a leading American site for professional development and training recently warned against woke-washing the workplace. It might create groupthink, it said.

The context of the warning is something that has been dubbed woke capitalism. It takes a fairly predictable form. Companies try to associate themselves with liberal causes by making lofty claims of a social purpose, indulging in rhetorical repositioning and then using their new activist avatar as a marketing ploy. It could be a T-shirt companys change of its iconic animal logo for different endangered species, a razor firm taking a stand against toxic masculinity, or a sportswear manufacturer picking a controversial black anti-racism footballer as the face of its marketing campaign.

Just days ago, it was the announcement by the Washington Redskins American football team that it was retiring its name, which has long been criticised as racist.

But the teams decision is seen to be more about the power of money with lead sponsors threatening to pull funding than a sudden attack of conscience. The other examples are also seen to be mainly about the business of positioning brands to appeal to millennial consumers. That said, it is at least worth celebrating the fact that social consciousness is now considered a marketable quantity.

The culture wars have raged for years and the core question has always remained the same: who gets to tell the story of a country, a society, a people, an event? It is a grand and worthy struggle for a more egalitarian society. But if the objective of both sides becomes control of the debate, it doesnt change the status quo; just who is up.

Updated: July 16, 2020 06:18 PM

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What is the deal with 'woke' culture and writing letters? - The National