Voice of the People: Columnist Thiessen an ‘alt-right’ conspiracy troll; uncertainty an added burden during pandemic – Akron Beacon Journal

Thiessen an alt-right conspiracy troll

The balanced views of conservative editorialists in the ABJ often present facts that my favored sources overlook. Their alternative points are worth seeing to temper my own opinions. George Will, Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer (RIP) and others are all thoughtful, well-informed writers.

But I am disappointed to see less of them lately, replaced by an alt-right conspiracy troll (Marc Thiessen), who should have no place in a publication embracing journalism. In his 4/19 editorial headed The antidote to the virus is freedom, Mr. Thiessen did lay out intriguing information about Taiwanese successes achieved without having to subject their population to economic shutdown. Taiwan is a free society, contrasted with China, the totalitarian government he rightly chooses to shame.

Ironic that he never felt that the similar, head-in-the-sand actions of his fanboy hero might be relevant. He wrote that Taiwan triumphed over COVID-19 by acting fast on 12/31/19, taking proactive medical measures that nipped COVID-19 in the bud unlike China, which blew it. BAD China! Not to excuse them, but being first, China didnt have the luxury of data compiled and spoon-fed to their leader on what was happening on another continent, as we had. Trump had this information concurrent with Taiwan, along with every opportunity to act similarly and save the U.S. from our economic shutdown and massive loss of life. In the many hours of his rallies disguised as daily COVID updates, he has devoted a mere 4 minutes extending empathy for those who died needlessly, many from his own thoughtless quackery.

Too bad Thiessen cant overcome his bias to point fingers occasionally where they belong. Trump now demands that concerned governors Free us from the economic prison his willful ignorance condemned us to.

Alan Stauffer, Tallmadge

Uncertainty an added pandemic burden

As a clinical social worker, I have witnessed the impact of social isolation, financial losses and an uncertain future facing my patients, many of whom already experienced anxiety, depression or both. Uncertainty about the future is an added burden for everyone but particularly difficult for many, especially older individuals with additional physical risk factors such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension and pulmonary disease.

One of the greatest sources of hope is accurate data about this disease, as the recommendations from government officials range from being based on existing scientific evidence as seen in Ohio to the frequent disconnect between scientists and other state and federal leaders. Many experts have said expanding our testing will help. Identifying individuals who have recovered and now have antibodies will help. I would also like to see a commitment to reporting the number of people who test positive but who are asymptomatic. This last piece of data is often left out.

I realize that reporting the high number of identified cases of the disease who are nursing home residents and staff in addition to health care professionals are important pieces of information, as extra measures of safety are needed to protect these individuals. However, what may decrease the anxiety among people who have not contracted the illness would be to balance the reporting of the horror stories one could experience if they became ill with the hope that not having any or mild symptoms is likely as well. Knowing what those percentages are would give us one more piece of useful information, and it might even have a calming effect.

Alan Kurzweil, Fairlawn

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Voice of the People: Columnist Thiessen an 'alt-right' conspiracy troll; uncertainty an added burden during pandemic - Akron Beacon Journal

Bill Maher Refuses to Touch the Joe Biden Sexual-Assault Allegation – The Daily Beast

Another Friday means yet another edition of Real Time with Bill Maher, the late-night program of choice for the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos, Steve Bannon, and other alt-right, fascism-friendly trolls tearing at the fabric of America.

I was curious to see if Maher, who prides himself on being politically incorrect, would address former Senate aide Tara Reades allegation of sexual assault against Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for presidentgiven that the comedy host has made a field day of mocking Trumps disgusting treatment of women (he once said Trump was making sexual assault great again), and that Biden has, after many days of silence, been making the media rounds to address (and deny) the claimincluding a stop at MSNBCs Morning Joe.

But Maher mostly declinedinstead opting for a more lighthearted bit on Biden called 24 Things You Dont Know About Me, a play on the Us Weekly column. In it, Maher cracked, I was asked to social distance even before the virus, beside a creepy photo of Biden massaging a womans shoulders from behind, as well as, My first idea for a campaign slogan was, Im on Her.

He closed the bit with: You think Im in cognitive decline? You should see the other guy!

Over an hour of jokes, including interviews with Matt Taibbi, Eric Holder, Bret Stephens (ugh), and a pair of monologues, Maher only addressed the allegation against Biden once in a question to Holder, saying he thought it was ridiculous and that it would go away and no one would pay any attention to it, before asking Holder what his thoughts are on it. Maher also questioned how appropriate it was to even be discussing the Reade allegation against Biden given the state of America with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. (Holder claimed that all allegations have to be taken seriously and the what has been described is inconsistent with the Biden he knows.)

If comedy-pundits on the left are going to rip the Trumps of the world for alleged predatory behavior toward women, they should also take aim at those in their own party, lest they be rank hypocrites.

Then again, Maher has a pretty spotty track record when it comes to #MeToo allegations against those on the left, having recently launched into a wildly misogynistic defense of his pal Chris Matthews, after the MSNBC host resigned following allegations of sexual harassment. And, when a number of women came forward last April to accuse Joe Biden of uncomfortable groping and close contact, Maher went as far as defending the former vice president and attacking his accusers.

But you know, were getting a little nitpicky, Maher said. I mean, of course no one likes to be touched unwantingly, and women get a lot more of that than men, but the first person who brought this up said he made her feel gross and uneasy. You know what makes me feel gross and uneasy? A second Trump term.

Hes not Harvey Weinstein or R. Kellyhes more like the TSA, he added. And its getting ridiculous. A woman who came forward today said she was touched by one of his speeches.

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Bill Maher Refuses to Touch the Joe Biden Sexual-Assault Allegation - The Daily Beast

Justin Rohrwasser tattoos: Patriots kicker would help himself by further explaining his Three Percenters ink – MassLive.com

EDITORS NOTE: Justin Rohrwasser talked to WBZ-TV on Monday night. You can read his comments and watch that interview here.

The Justin Rohrwasser story isnt over.

The weekends attention on the Patriots fifth-round picks tattoos connected to the alt-right group the Three Percenters is just the beginning. Weekend social media is about to be overshadowed by talk radio and ESPNs debate shows. With no NBA Playoffs or Major League Baseball, its going to be all draft talk and a controversial kicker makes for compelling TV.

If Rohrwasser is being connected to something he truly doesnt want to represent, he should get out in front of this now and further explain where he stands. Otherwise, hes going to spend the rest of his career connected to the alt-right.

Rohrwasser, like all of the New England picks, did a conference call with the media Saturday and was asked one question about his ink, and he answered it. He sounded sincere and disappointed in himself when asked about the tattooed logo on his left arm:

Question: One of your tattoos matches a group called the Three Percenters. Whats the story there?

He answered: I got that tattoo when I was a teenager and I have a lot of family in the military. I thought it stood for a military support symbol at the time. Obviously, its evolved into something that I do not want to represent. When I look back on it, I should have done way more research before I put any mark or symbol like that on my body, and its not something I ever want to represent. It will be covered.

Thats a good start to an answer but not enough. It needs to be a larger conversation. With no follow-up questions, which arent easy to do in the structure of a conference call, it may seem like Rohrwasser got off easy.

For people who would like it to go away, he put it behind him. For others, theres nothing he could say that would make it OK.

But for people still forming their opinions, there are unanswered questions. Hed be smart to try to answer them.

The biggest is: If he was ashamed of the tattoo, why didnt he cover it up before now?

He got the tattoo as a college student at Rhode Island before he transferred to Marshall. There are pictures of him in college without it. Most people would vigorously conceal an image on their body they were embarrassed about, especially if theyre regularly on television. If he couldnt get it removed or covered by a new tattoo, he could have used long sleeves, a sweatband, a bandage or something as simple as athletic tape. Why didnt he? In photos, he could have turned his arm away from the camera. He didnt. Why not?

Worth noting, its not just one tattoo. That Three Percenters tattoo is inches away from a large tattoo of the words Liberty or Death.

The phrase Liberty or Death was the theme of an alt-right protest on Seattles City Hall in 2018. It was co-organized by two groups. One called Patriot Prayer and the other was the Washington State Three Percenters. On his other arm is a Dont Tread on Me tattoo another popular slogan among the alt-right.

If Rohrwasser really made a mistake by getting the Three Percenters tattoo, hed help himself by explaining the other two. What does he believe, and what doesnt he believe? If he has a good explanation, now would be a good time to get it out there if he cares how hes perceived.

Hes being accused of being racist. Thats hard to live down. The Three Percenters have inconsistent history on that front. Some of their leaders have denounced racist acts. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies them as anti-government which puts them on the same side as many White Nationalist groups. Their members have been anti-Islam and provided armed security during the Nazis march Charlottesville in 2017.

Having friends of another race doesnt mean somebody isnt a racist, but its noteworthy that several of his African-American teammates went on Twitter to defend him when accusations began flying.

Rohrwasser quickly made his own Twitter private, but his Instagram is still live. It includes an April 2, 2019, post where he appears to be giving a presentation in support of Jordan B. Peterson. With it he posted:

"One day Ill be lucky enough to do this for a living.

Peterson is a controversial Canadian academic who is criticized for being anti-feminist, anti-gender identity and anti-Islam. He called white privilege a Marxist lie, according to the Guardian.

Had Rohrwasser been drafted by a different team, this would still be a story, but it wouldnt come with the same prologue. Fair or not, every story that involves race in Boston becomes the next spot on the timeline of the citys unpleasant racial history, following Tom Yawkey, bussing riots, Bill Russell, Dee Brown, etc.

Add to that Tom Bradys red hat, Robert Krafts campaign contributions and Bill Belichicks letter and the perception of the Patriots is that theyre connected to President Donald Trump, who is the darling of the conservatisms extreme flank. Even though there are quite a few players in Foxborough who supported Colin Kaepernick and are anti-Trump, including Devin and Jason McCourty who are likely heirs to Bradys leadership position, the perception stands.

So New England drafts a guy who tattooed alt-right symbols to his body, it doesnt play like an isolated incident and only increases the attention this is going to get.

There are people in the NFL, or really any profession, who have every political belief across the spectrum. But if it doesnt come up in conversation, most people arent aware of them. Rohrwasser has no obligation to say anything else and given the Patriots history of reticence, he might not.

But the perception of him is starting to harden. If its not accurate, hed be smart to say something. Get on camera somewhere and explain who he actually is. Invite hard questions. Without the full story, peoples imaginations are going to fill in the blanks.

Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.

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Justin Rohrwasser tattoos: Patriots kicker would help himself by further explaining his Three Percenters ink - MassLive.com

If ever there was a time for hygge, its now – Marin Independent Journal

Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal

Are you feelin it?

Can you see the light at the end of the tunnel? Are you envisioning the thrill of parking in a public lot? Walking in both directions down a supermarket aisle?

OK, Im sorry I got your hopes up. Were all in this for at least another month, so I say we all just try a little hygge.

It seems that hygge (pronounced hoo-ga) has been going on in Scandinavia for generations. And it apparently is working just fine. So fine that in the annual World Happiness Report, a publication of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Scandinavian countries compose four of the top five happiest countries in the world. For the record, the United States comes in at No. 18, three spots behind Costa Rica but hey, we edged out the Czech Republic and Belgium.

Hygge, which began in Denmark, is described as a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or wellbeing.

The primary principles include atmosphere, presence (the ability to be focused on the now), pleasure, gratitude, comfort and togetherness. Or, as we refer to it here: Stay-at-home.

I pause here to tell you that Denmark is only No. 2 in the top five the actual winner of the happiest country in the world this year is Finland. However, I have eliminated Finland from our little discussion because the Finns idea of a great hygge is getting your body temperature up to about 150 degrees in a sauna, then running outside naked and jumping into a snow bank. I prefer my hygge indoors and with unshriveled body parts.

The word hygge itself is actually a derivative of the English word hug, and it can mean something different to everyone. When youre hunkered down as we all are, it can mean something as simple as a soft blanket and a good book, or looking through a window on a crisp, clear day and letting your face just feel the warm sunlight. The Danes say hygge is not about what it looks like, but what it feels like. And theyre feeling pretty good.

Lest you think this is just some feel-good sort of New Age mumbo-jumbo, I will tell you that there have been more than 30 books published on the subject of Denmarks cozy lifestyle. In fact, hygge was recognized in the Oxford Dictionarys words of the year back in 2016. The winner that year was post-truth, but hygge was a runner-up along with alt-right and woke. Hygge might not be Miss America, but it is Miss Congeniality.

In fact, the word has spawned several offshoots that further describe the cozy living concept. If you have a favorite old armchair, youd be sitting in your hyggekrog. Put your feet up wearing your favorite hyggesokker (socks) or old baggy sweat suit (hyggebukser) and have simple hyggesnak (chat) with friends or loved ones. Preferably via hyggezoom.

It all got me to thinking that if hygge works so well in Denmark and the other countries that compose the happy country top five (Finland, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway) why wouldnt it work here during these trying times of being homebound?

Denmarks contributions to the world have been modest but broad. Its given us Kierkegaard, Hans Christian Anderson, Hamlet and Legos. Beats the hell out of Timothy Leary, Beavis and Butt-Head, Emperor Norton and the pet rock doesnt it?

Oh sure, they also have free education, free healthcare for everyone and paid paternity leave; and they pay the highest tax rate in the world, but they make really great pastries.

I gotta go now. Its time for my hyggetini.

Barry Tompkins is a longtime sports broadcaster who lives in Marin. Contact him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.

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If ever there was a time for hygge, its now - Marin Independent Journal

Amazon and other platforms allowing payments to far-right groups – The Guardian

Dozens of hate groups and racist media outlets are receiving income via mainstream payment processors such as Amazon, Stripe and DonorBox, according to a new report by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

The groups still receiving donations and sales via such platforms include promoters of the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that motivated the Christchurch shooter, an organization cited as an inspiration by mass shooter Dylan Roof, and several groups that participated in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that ended in the killing of a protester.

The CMD report called Funding Hate finds that despite previous, widely publicized crackdowns, and explicit policies forbidding racist far-right groups from their services, companies are still allowing income to flow to white nationalist, neo-Confederate and neo-Nazi hate groups.

The report found three such groups were still using DonorBox, including the American Freedom party, which advocates the deportation of non-white people and the creation of a white ethnostate.

DonorBox banned the Council of Conservative Citizens, which Roof named as the source of his beliefs about black-on-white crime, after being contacted by CMD.

According to the report, some of these groups have found ways to circumvent previous DonorBox bans by using false names and emails.

Meanwhile, nine groups use Stripe, whose policies leave the door open to racist groups that do not explicitly advocate violence, according to CMD.

Their services are used by several groups including the neo-Confederate group the League of the South, who were prominent participants in Unite the Right; white nationalist media outfits like Red Ice and the Right Stuff; and anti-immigrant not-for-profits and groups like the VDare Foundation and the HL Mencken Club.

On Amazon, self-published books by white supremacist authors and the entire catalogue of white nationalist publishers including audiobooks are easily available.

Amazons offerings include books by the Vandal brothers, who advocate race war, and the antisemitic Arkansan militia leader Billy Roper.

Amazon also sells books published by Washington Summit Publishers, run by the white nationalist Richard Spencer, including an issue of Radix journal entitled The Great Erasure.

The website also carries books and ebooks published by Arktos Media, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as an alt-right publishing syndicate, which has translated and promoted racist books and which, according to the report, is closely tied to Richard Spencer, Red Ice and the white nationalist terrorist group the American Identity Movement.

Arktos titles are also available as audiobooks on Amazons Audible platform.

In addition, the Guardian found that many of Arktoss titles are available at no cost for users with a Kindle Unlimited subscription, including foundational texts of the so-called Identitarian movement by Markus Willinger and Guillaume Faye. Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant had extensive contact with leading members of the same Identitarian movement, which promotes fears of demographic replacement, in the lead-up to the shootings.

Other services which the report found were allowing far-right groups to receive income include GoDaddy, Patreon, Squarespace and some Donor-Advised Funds.

The reports author, the investigative journalist Alex Kotch, said in an email that companies should do more to keep hate from their platforms.

There is absolutely no excuse for a company to service, and make money from, any group identified by SPLC as a hate group, Kotch said.

He added: Many people dont understand that speech on corporate platforms is not subject to the first amendment. As long as a company has a formal policy, that company can remove any users who violate the policy.

An Amazon spokesperson said in an email: As a bookseller, we believe that providing access to the written word is important. That includes books that some may find objectionable, though we have policies governing which books can be listed for sale.

We invest significant time and resources to ensure our guidelines are followed, and remove products that do not adhere to our guidelines.

We also promptly investigate any book when a concern is raised.

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Amazon and other platforms allowing payments to far-right groups - The Guardian

The Future of the American Left, Part Two: The Tactics of Our Opponents – Quad

Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In my first essay of this series, published last week in the Quad, I discussed what I believed were the weaknesses of Bernie Sanders candidacy for President, and how left-wing activists in America can avoid repeating that campaigns mistakes and move on in pursuit of victory. I also outlined that this second installment would be about organizing the left, and while that essay is still forthcoming, I thought it would be more logical to first discuss both what we are organizing against.

So what is the left organizing against? The true antithesis of our beliefs is the radical, fascist right-wing of American politics. The American Republican Party has trended farther and farther to the right and become more and more anti-intellectual over the course of the last few decades; until now they are led by Donald Trump, who is somehow both an imbecile and an effective fascist leader. As has been repeated ad nauseam in journalism and elsewhere, facts are no longer universally agreed upon. An insistence on being in the right is all that is required to sway support for ones ideas.

This didnt simply happen, however, and it certainly wasnt something Donald Trump or the Republican Party invented. Two other entities pioneered this vitiation of political discourse: Fox News and the alt-right movement.

Anyone who considers themselves a leftist and is reading this essay almost certainly already knows this. It is painfully apparent to anyone with critical thinking skills that Fox News has twisted the truth for as long as it has existed. It is also apparent to anyone who experiences empathy and compassion for others that the alt-right, as a whole, feels no such thing. Recognizing all this is one thing combating and defeating them is entirely another.

Both Fox and the alt-right espouse similar rhetorical tactics: forcing their opponents to perpetually explain and defend their positions; masking the facts of an issue behind a misleading and sensational statement; reducing a nuanced, complex issue down into a binary; and many others. All of these tactics are insidiously intended to portray an attitude of control and authority even when the positions they present are factually incorrect. This is the downright Machiavellian part of the far-rights tactics: their goal is never to convince the person with whom theyre debating its to convince their audience.

It is painfully apparent to anyonethat Fox News has twisted the truth for as long as it has existed.

In a debate, the natural instinct at least for people debating in good faith is to convince the other person. That natural instinct is why virtually all liberals and quite a lot of leftists are so susceptible to falling victim to the far-rights tactics and helping them achieve their rhetorical goals. Because right-wing activists and voters have in recent years more frequently resorted to rhetorical methods such as these, recognizing them for what they are is imperative if we are to successfully undermine their effectiveness.

The YouTube channel Innuendo Studios produces a series titled The Alt-Right Playbook, and while its specifically about the tactics of the alt-right, it can be applied to those of Fox News as well. Its videos are relatively short, but each thoroughly unpacks a different method the alt-right uses to change the dynamic of a political discussion. In their video The Alt-Right Playbook: Never Play Defense, they lay out specifically the tactic of forcing opponents to explain and defend their views, always seeming to be reactive to the conservatives active. This active-vs.-reactive dynamic creates the illusion for the audience that the conservative is winning the argument, while simultaneously exhausting their interlocutor.

In Never Play Defense, the videos creator and narrator Ian Danskin says, if someone tries to force you to play defense, you dont have to play, turning this particular far-right tactic against them by suggesting that refusal to engage is a valid counter to it.

In addition to that opportunity to refuse engagement, I believe that calling out and attacking the method itself is an effective oppositional response. Saying, you keep condescending and attacking, rather than engaging with the facts because you cant engage with the facts takes the power of their method and turns it against them. Now you are the one on the offensive, and the right-winger youre debating must decide whether to defend, withdraw or continue attacking. Whatever they decide, in avoiding the appearance of reacting, youve taken away their power and won.

The idea of never playing defense is a part of and supporting framework for almost all other right-wing talking points. While I dont have the space on these pages to unpack it, the tendency of Fox News to use misleading and sensational statements relies on it when their anchors or viewers are called out on spreading them is an example. The American right relies on many other spurious rhetorical practices beyond all this, and I recommend watching the entirety of Innuendo Studios The Alt-Right Playbook to learn more.

At the end of the day, it is obvious that leftists in America must learn to spot the tactics of the right and learn how to wage an effective rhetorical war against them not only to achieve victory in more theaters but to simply survive. We have been losing that rhetorical war for far too long, and its high time we fought back.

We have been losing that rhetorical war for far too long, and its high time we fought back.

Next week, the third installment of the Future of the American Left series will be published online for The Quad and will focus on what American leftists are fighting for: our goals of universal opportunity, equality and justice. The first two parts of this series were focused on how the left should operate, but in Part Three, Ill be discussing why leftist ideals exist in America in the first place. It is arguably the most important one thus far, and I hope youll look out for it.

Kyle Gombosi is a senior music: elective studies major with a minor in journalism.KG806059@wcupa.edu

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The Future of the American Left, Part Two: The Tactics of Our Opponents - Quad

Author of book about victim blaming bombarded with misogynist abuse – The Guardian

A British academic whose new book is about why women are blamed for crimes committed against them has been subjected to thousands of coordinated attacks from alt-right trolls over the last week, culminating in her personal computer being hacked.

Dr Jessica Taylor, a senior lecturer in forensic and criminal psychology, is due to publish her exploration of victim blaming, Why Women are Blamed for Everything, on 27 April. Looking into what causes society to blame women who have been abused, raped, trafficked, assaulted or harassed by men, the book has drawn increasing publicity, including an appearance on Womans Hour.

But since 17 April, Taylor has been targeted by what she describes as a group of organised trolls who align themselves with the alt-right, mens rights activists, incel (involuntary celibates) and Mgtow (men going their own way) movements, who have posted thousands of messages on her public Facebook page, including rape and death threats. On 21 April, Taylor contacted police when the screen on her laptop was remotely accessed. The investigation is ongoing.

They had total control of my keyboard and mouse. I tried to stop them after about 30 seconds of this, I realised how serious it was and I shut my laptop down and ran inside to turn my wifi off and shut all other devices down, Taylor told the Guardian on Friday.

For five days, she was receiving 100 comments every few minutes, everything from telling me to die, kill myself, messages saying I will rape you, messages saying I am not a real psychologist or PhD, that Im fat, ugly, disgusting, dyke, ugly lesbian, barren, infertile, will die alone, that my parents hate me etc When we started banning and blocking, they really ramped it up and it became violent and abusive.

By Friday, more than 2,000 accounts had been blocked from her Facebook page.

Taylor is the founder of VictimFocus, an international research, teaching and consultancy organisation which aims to challenge the victim blaming of women subjected to violence and abuse. Her book is based on her doctoral research and on her 10 years of practice with women and girls, including interviews with women who were blamed for being raped, and the professionals who supported them.

I knew the book needed to be written but I didnt know it needed to be written this badly. The targeted attacks from men in the last week have been appalling. I will always centre women in my work and I will keep making misogynists uncomfortable. Abuse and trolling is scary and its exhausting, but its never going to get me to a point where I say, I will just stop talking about the abuse of women and girls, said Taylor.

She said the book was written for every single woman and girl who has been told that she had to do something differently, change something about herself or make her life smaller so she isnt subjected to male violence. Ive had enough and millions of other women have had enough, too [This book] has made a lot of men angry. You have to ask why that is. What are they frightened of?

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Author of book about victim blaming bombarded with misogynist abuse - The Guardian

Law Enforcement Must Be Too Busy Policing POC to Stop Swastikas and Alt-Right Gatherings – BELatina

Any essential work involving physical contact during the coronavirus pandemic is nothing short of commendable.

From drivers and cashiers, to law enforcement and healthcare workers, everyone who puts their lives at risk in one way or another to keep our relative normalcy going deserves much more than daily applause.

However, even during a public health crisis or perhaps precisely because of it the disparities and injustices are only doubled.

It is impossible to overlook the fact that, while Dr. Armen Henderson was arrested in Miami outside his home as he prepared for his shift to volunteer and protect people on the streets from the spread of COVID-19, there are those who can walk the streets threatening those who dare to attack their supposed freedom with guns and swastikas.

During the past week, several states in the country were the scene of protests as dystopian as the crisis itself, where hundreds of people denounced the closure imposed by state governments to prevent the spread of the virus.

Residents of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and other states took to the streets at the instigation of a series of tweets from the president and thanks to the support of far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, small armed conservative militias, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccinators and other elements of the radical right, according to The Guardian.

While some of the protests were organized by conservative coalitions and identified as Trump Republicans, their social networking collaterals, especially on Facebook, did the rest, prompting other states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York to join the demonstrations, variegatedly mixing the right to bear arms with the governors decision to impose a shelter in place.

Seeing nurses counter-demonstrate in Denver was a Dantesque image of the phenomenon that Donald Trump has fanned for years.

For those whove chosen to put their trust in science during the pandemic its hard to fathom the decision to gather to protest while a deadly viral pathogen transmitted easily by close contact and spread by symptomatic and asymptomatic people alike ravages the country, wrote Charlie Warzel in his opinion piece for the New York Times. But it shouldnt come as a surprise. This weeks public displays of defiance a march for the freedom to be infected are the logical conclusion of the modern far-rights donor-funded, shock jock-led liberty movement. It was always headed here.

Meanwhile, law enforcement continues to prioritize arrests based on race, as was the case with Dr. Henderson or underground parties in Canarsie. Immigrants continue to be confined to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers with few health protocols, and undocumented citizens suffer from the governments neglect of the economic package approved by Congress.

Worse yet, in the face of demands from activist groups to release prisoners during the pandemic, the president and his party have once again seen an opportunity to put their priorities above the needs of voters.

As James Hohmann and Mariana Alfaro wrote for the Washington Post, The coronavirus spread threatens to unravel prison sentences for President Trumps former associates that career prosecutors fought hard to secure, including Rick Gates, former deputy Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, some of whom may favor a presidential pardon and release.

If there is any doubt left about the profound flaws in the American judicial system, it is because you simply have not been paying attention.

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Law Enforcement Must Be Too Busy Policing POC to Stop Swastikas and Alt-Right Gatherings - BELatina

Ben Shapiro branded as ‘white supremacist’ by student leaders who condemn his planned speech: ‘We do not have to follow the First Amendment’ -…

Syracuse University's Student Association in a virtual meeting passed a resolution Monday condemning conservative figure Ben Shapiro's planned speech at the school this fall, the college's paper the Daily Orange reported.

The lengthy resolution also branded Shapiro as a "white supremacist." In one rather jaw-dropping paragraph, student leaders added that "not only is Ben Shapiro a white supremacist, but he is homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, ableist, and classist. It is inappropriate to bring someone on our campus that [sic] has actively disrespected our very own students through his language and actions."

The students' argument? "Shapiro's generalistic and harmful comments about Arabs and Palestinians promote white supremacy. When it comes to discrimination against Arabs and Palestinians, whilst Arab is considered to be an ethnicity and Palestinian is considered to be a nationality, both groups are generally racialized and discriminated [against] based on skin tone."

Oddly the same paragraph acknowledges that Shapiro "himself is Jewish and has been targeted by white nationalist terrorists" and adds that he "has not explicitly stated that the white race is better."

It's worth noting that the Boston Globe issued a correction last fall after one its columnists erroneously called Shapiro's news site, The Daily Wire, a "white supremacist-adjacent alt-right outpost."

"Because of a reporting error, the @Large column in today's Arts section, which is printed in advance, mischaracterizes the conservative media outlet The Daily Wire." Shapiro's outlet added that the correction reads, "Its founder, Ben Shapiro, has spoken out against the alt-right. The Globe regrets the error."

The Daily Wire went further in a report about the correction:

As TheBlaze has frequently reported, Shapiro is no stranger to such attacks from left-wing college students, as he's endured smears and protests amid many speaking events at schools across America over the last several years.

According to Campus Reform, one student association member during a video meeting expressed support for the resolution, said Syracuse is a private college, and added: "we do not follow the First Amendment ... Well, we do not have to follow the First Amendment. As members of the Student Association, it would be very ill-informed of us to ignore students crying out and saying they feel unsafe and to put our political beliefs and values over safety."

The resolution concluded by requesting that "the University take whatever measures are necessary to prevent [Shapiro's] event from taking place."

The student association's finance board approved the College Republicans' $39,000 request to invite Shapiro to Syracuse, the Daily Orange said, adding that he's is scheduled to come to the campus in early October.

The College Republicans' executive board released a statement rejecting the resolution, saying the organization "emphatically" disputes the notion that Shapiro is a white supremacist, the Daily Orange reported.

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Ben Shapiro branded as 'white supremacist' by student leaders who condemn his planned speech: 'We do not have to follow the First Amendment' -...

The Innovia Foundation’s former president has finally won his three-year battle to stop the organization from donating to a racist website – Pacific…

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Young Kwak photo

Last week, Innovia Foundation CEO Shelly O'Quinn initially refused to say whether the foundation would stop contributing to the alt-right website VDare.

There's one thing the Innovia Foundation can never say: That it hadn't been told.

Mark Hurtubise, the outgoing president of the foundation then known as the Inland Northwest Community Foundation was first alerted by his grants department in late January of 2017 that his organization was being used as a middleman to help fund VDare, a racist alt-right website.

So way back in February of 2017, Hurtubise says, he sent a six-page letter to the foundation's board members, warning them that the institution's integrity was at stake, and laying out a number of noxious statements that had been published on VDare.

There were articles accusing black people and immigrants of having lower IQs, arguing that America was founded explicitly as a "white nation, for white people," blaming Jews for "weakening America's historic white majority," and a quote, from VDare's founder, that "Hispanics do specialize in rape, particularly of children."

A wealthy donor wanted to use the "donor-advised fund" he'd set up with the community foundation to donate thousands of dollars to VDare.

Legally, the ultimate destination of his money was solely controlled by the community foundation. But the foundation's board chair at the time, Bob Bishopp, argued that they had "no legal basis" to not send the money to the hate group, although he also noted that, in the near future, the board should revisit the issue, and potentially rewrite their policies.

Hurtubise refused to sign the check, but the board which included community figures like Patricia McCrae, president of KHQ, Inc., and Sandi Bloem, former mayor of Coeur d'Alene went forward with the donation anyway.

For the next three years, Hurtubise repeatedly pleaded with the foundation's leadership to officially commit to no longer funding hate groups. But records suggest that Hurtubise was rebuffed, accused of trying to hurt the foundation and told he might need to consider getting a lawyer, all while Innovia continued lavishing increasingly large sums upon VDare.

Since Hurtubise stepped down as the foundation's president in June of 2017, the group has sent an additional $34,500 in donor-advised funds to VDare.

"I had concluded there was no empathy, no real concern for people who were being affected by these grants," Hurtubise says. "It's not moral."

But last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate group, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations released a white paper on how charities contribute to hate groups. It starred Innovia under a section titled "Donor Recommends a Grant to a White Nationalist Organization."

Within six days, Innovia announced that they would no longer support VDare, and that a new anti-hate policy would be passed next month to ensure they "never again provide grant funds to organizations that promote hate."

Innovia says that they'd spent years laying the groundwork for the new policy.

Daniel Walters photo

Betsy Wilkerson, recently appointed to the Spokane City Council, rejoined the Innovia board in 2018.

"The community has taken the foundation out behind the woodshed and we got spanked. We did," acknowledges Spokane City Councilwoman Betsy Wilkerson, a black woman who rejoined the Innovia Foundation board in 2018. "We were slow in responding. But we had to work through the process."

TRUTH OR VDARE

Named after "Virginia Dare," supposedly the first white child to be born in America, VDare's mission goes beyond the rhetoric of a typical anti-immigration group and into claims that changing the country's racial balance threatens the very survival of America's identity.

"VDare.com also regularly publishes articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists and anti-Semites," notes the Southern Poverty Law Center in an article labeling VDare a "hate group."

Conservatives often reflexively dismiss the SPLC, accusing them of tarring even mainstream conservative groups by calling them bigots. But many of those conservative groups also accuse VDare of bigotry. Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, for instance, calls VDare a "white supremacist" website. In 2018, the Trump administration fired speechwriter Darren Beattie just for speaking at a panel with the founder of VDare.

And when conservative outlets exile a right-wing figure as too beyond-the-pale for their views to be even published, VDare welcomes them with open arms. The conservative National Review magazine fired John Derbyshire for writing a piece for another publication urging parents to tell their children to avoid "events likely to draw a lot of blacks."

But he found a home at VDare, where he quickly wrote that "white supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements history has come up with."

The conservative Canadian outlet Rebel Media fired commenter Faith Goldy after she celebrated a "rising white racial consciousness" at the infamous 2017 alt-right rally in Charlottesville and then appeared on a neo-Nazi Daily Stormer podcast. Today, Goldy publishes podcasts with titles like "Whites Have Rights: It's Time to Get Serious About Secession" on VDare.

While VDare founder Peter Brimelow denies he's a white nationalist he's said that his "heart is with civic nationalism," but his "head is with racial nationalism" he's repeatedly celebrated the fact that VDare publishes white nationalists. Fifteen years ago, Brimelow was publishing a far-right figure named Jared Taylor, praising him as "the most brilliant and accomplished figure among white nationalists."

The month before the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, one of the organizers had penned a VDare article titled, "Yes Virginia (Dare), There Is Such a Thing as a White Genocide." When a woman was killed by a white supremacist in the rally, even the online payment service PayPal refused to process donations to VDare.

But for two and a half years after Charlottesville, donor-advised funds continued to support VDare. In 2018, the Inland Northwest Community Foundation spent $90,000 and held numerous meetings with around 50 different stakeholders to rebrand itself as "Innovia," but continued to shell out increasing amounts of funding to VDare on behalf of its mystery donor.

Their tax records released that year show that during the first year of the foundation's new CEO, former County Commissioner Shelly O'Quinn, donor-advised grants to VDare cracked the $5,000 threshold for the first time.

In June of 2018, Hurtubise wrote about his frustrations in Alliance, a magazine about the philanthropic world: "In my long career," he wrote, without naming Innovia, "I believe passive racism was ratified over my objection when the board unanimously favored the biases of a wealthy donor instead of supporting the advancement of all races."

In September of 2018, he sent a letter to the board and O'Quinn. He cited the Alliance article and pleaded with them to explicitly guarantee that foundation funding would not be used to support "racist/and or discriminatory endeavors."

But Innovia quadrupled down. Between the summer of 2018 and the summer of 2019, it quietly channeled $22,000 more in donor-advised funding to VDare. Hurtubise had no idea it was that much. But he kept pestering the board to change their policies.

"I even said to the board, 'I'm assuming most of you are Christian,'" Hurtubise says. "'It's easy to say that you're a Christian if you've never had to be one.'"

By June of 2019, legal action was being discussed.

"As I am reading through emails you have sent to others over the past six months, including this weekend, I have to ask: What is your motivation?" O'Quinn wrote to Hurtubise. "Is it to: Destroy the foundation? Indict certain board members? Right a perceived wrong? If this is the case, then perhaps we both need to 'weigh seeking legal counsel.'"

In the email, O'Quinn stressed that she didn't want to get lawyers involved, but also that she refused to discuss what happened in the past.

Today, O'Quinn tells the Inlander that Hurtubise first raised the prospect of legal counsel and that she'd invited him to work with Innovia to change their donor-advised fund policy.

Hurtubise disputes that characterization and says O'Quinn's email was the final straw. In August of 2019, he sat down at a symposium about nonprofits funding hate groups that included the Southern Poverty Law Center and shared his story.

Still, the Innovia spigot continued flowing to VDare, with Innovia donating an additional $7,500 between September and November of last year. It was only this week that Innovia was willing to say they'd no longer fund VDare.

O'Quinn, however, claims the board hadn't been ignoring the issue. Instead, she says they'd been on a "journey over the last two and a half years" to change the board's policies.

"We did take action. It was not as fast as I would have liked," O'Quinn says. "It's not as simple as simply adopting an anti-hate statement."

NEVER AGAIN

But Hurtubise says it was as simple as telling the donor "no."

For wealthy donors, donor-advised funds offer an appealing deal: They can donate assets including money, stocks and land to a community organization, get a big, immediate tax write-off for it, and get to suggest how the funds should be spent. The catch? According to the IRS, the community organizations "must have the ultimate authority over how the assets in the funds are invested and distributed."

But O'Quinn says that, in the case of the donor recommending Innovia donate to VDare, he had the "expectation" that Innovia would donate to whatever 501(c)(3) nonprofit he recommended. O'Quinn argues Innovia had to consider issues like avoiding potential litigation. (Some donor-advised fund providers have been sued by donors who accused them of breaking promises.)

Hurtubise, however, notes that the attorney's law firm for the foundation was also the attorney's law firm for the donor.

"There's obviously an appearance of a conflict of interest," Hurtubise says.

But it's complicated, O'Quinn says. During her half-hour interview with the Inlander on Monday, O'Quinn uses the phrase "legal complexities" or "legally complex" nine times.

"Do you realize that of the 750-plus community foundations in the country, there's only a handful that actually developed anti-hate policy statements and we are going to be among them?" O'Quinn says. "Most of them have not, because it is not a simple issue."

Indeed, in a 2019 article in Sludge, a left-leaning journalistic website, investigative reporter Alex Kotch calculated that two of the largest donor-advised fund providers, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Vanguard Charitable, donated a combined $46,100 to VDare over a three-year period.

And as Kotch argues, these foundations aren't just giving the donors the right to donate to controversial organizations, they're giving them the power of anonymity. The IRS doesn't know who the donor is sending his money to VDare through Innovia. Even VDare doesn't know.

"The new white hood is the anonymity that is provided by foundations to facilitate the awarding of millions of dollars going to hate organizations," Hurtubise says.

For all his brashness, even Hurtubise isn't willing to identify the name of the donor, feeling bound by his fiduciary duty to the organization he just led.

But, increasingly, nonprofits are pushing back against the issue. Last year, the Amalgamated Foundation launched a "Hate Is Not Charitable" campaign to urge nonprofits to promise to no longer allow donor-advised funds to go toward hate groups.

And, next month, Innovia will officially be making that promise, part of what Wilkerson and O'Quinn characterize as their larger commitment to diversity and racial equity.

Hurtubise says that, at least, is a cause for celebration.

"It can be a model for what other community foundations can do," he says. "This is exactly what I thought the foundation should have done back in January of 2017."

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The Innovia Foundation's former president has finally won his three-year battle to stop the organization from donating to a racist website - Pacific...

Young Knives announce first new album in seven years ‘Barbarians’ – DIY Magazine

Announcing their first full-length album since 2013s Sick Octave, Young Knives will release their fifth album Barbarians on 4th September.

As with every Young Knives album, me and House always need a good reason to make it, Henry explains. We often start with some high concept that we feel passionate about and use it like a framework to build lyrics and motifs around. As confirmed but self-aware nihilistic miserabilists we often have to dig our way out of a spiralling bleak world view that would make for a super depressing listen. This album is no different. But I think thats the point of the records we make: how can we turn the worse aspects of humanity into something really fucking entertaining? Obviously there was a lot going on around the world at the time we were writing the record, with the rise of the alt-right and politics designed to divide us. All this fed into a sense that humans are always going to have this battle between our collective existence and the existence of the individual, some days we give and some days we take.

I read Straw Dogs [2002 book by philosopher John Gray] after having put it off for years because of the hype. Its something you cant un-read. Its key point is that no matter what scientific progress we have made, what advances we have made in our understanding of how the universe works, we have not become better humans, we are no less barbaric. I just thought that it was such an undeniable point; we are obsessed with self and social improvement, but we dont get any better as human beings. What if cruelty to others is just part of who we are? How do we live with that?

Sharing raucous lead track Sheep Tick, accompanied by a weird AF video, Henry adds, Music videos are awful and we wanted to lean into that. The idea behind this one was to make a video that you couldnt have pitched. We just started shooting without knowing what it was, our goal to make it as baffling and entertaining as possible. Weirdly, the great thing is that some of the video started to make sense with the song after we had finished it: Houses goblin character is the voice inside that tells you how worthless you are, and you have to make peace with him. Most of it doesnt make any sense though.

Check it out below.

'Barbarians' Tracklisting:

1. Swarm

2. Society for Cutting Up Men

3. Jenny Haniver

4. Red Cherries

5. I Am Awake

6. Holy Name 68

7. Barbarians

8. Sheep Tick

9. Only a God

10. What I Saw

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Young Knives announce first new album in seven years 'Barbarians' - DIY Magazine

Review: Going Dark The Secret Social Lives of Extremists by Julia Ebner – PoliticsHome.com

Julia Ebner was deservedly praised for her first book, The Rage The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, which shone a light on the interdependence of apparently viscerally opposed groups. Thus one groups actions justify the others narrative of victimhood that then provokes them to act in response, which in turn further reinforces the first groups sense of grievance leading them to take yet more extreme action and so on.

But for her second book, Going Dark The Secret Social Lives of Extremists, Julia Ebner deserves a medal a medal for bravery. In it she describes her experiences going undercover to join a series of extremist groupings, such as Trad Wives and MuslimTec, attending neo-Nazi rock festivals, and participating in closed online forums plotting ISIS cyberattacks on American infrastructure and orchestrating the extreme-right presence at Charlottesville.

In doing so, she exposes how extremist thinking whether alt-right or Islamist is propagated, how neophytes are drawn in and how ideology is turned into violent action. The attitudes she describes within the groups she infiltrated are scary not least in the medieval attitudes to women that were displayed.

The approach in all of the groups she penetrated was similar: create a social bubble where those participating feel secure, where the most extreme ideologies can be normalised and where those within the groups can be emboldened to spread the word or take direct action outside.

All of the groups were skilled in the use of social media to get their messages out not only to each other but more widely. Their aim is to spread divisive content to such an extent that the mainstream media (a term of abuse used by both the extreme right and the extreme left to undermine traditional journalism) has no choice but to cover it. They want to provoke and to polarise: no-one can sit on the fence, they have to take sides. The prize is to shift the Overton Window the range of ideas that are deemed acceptable in public discourse so that ideas that were once regarded as extreme and unacceptable become apparently reasonable points of view.

Julia Ebners descriptions of life within the groups she visited under a string of aliases are chilling. However, what is even more disturbing is to watch the techniques they promote surfacing in the wider political world. She writes about the 4Ds tactic: DISMISS the opponent; DISTORT the facts; DISTRACT from the central issue; and DISMAY the audience. If we look around, we see these tactics being deployed within mainstream politics.

Just the last few weeks have seen an advisor appointed to Downing Street who had espoused eugenics and racist theories of intelligence. He has since resigned, but his views were not initially repudiated, suggesting that the Overton Window has indeed been moved so as to include such ideology in the realm of the normal and acceptable.

Julia Ebners investigations show that what is going on within the extremist bubbles must be taken seriously. The groups have a sophisticated grasp of how to use propaganda and how to manipulate social media and the internet to promote their ideas. They have access to advanced hacking skills and are happy to contemplate using those skills to wreak havoc on the systems that underpin our critical infrastructure. And they already use their networks to plot and coordinate violent attacks and disorder.

Lord Harris of Haringey is a Labour peer

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Review: Going Dark The Secret Social Lives of Extremists by Julia Ebner - PoliticsHome.com

How Kevin DeAnna Orchestrated the Alt-Right’s Approach to Conservative Institutions – Southern Poverty Law Center

When WorldNetDaily (WND) named Trump Man of the Year in an unbylined article penned by DeAnna that he sent to his then-girlfriend Katie McHugh with the subject line My Tribute to the God-Emperor, the future president wrote in a Jan. 1, 2016, tweet: Thank you so much to WND.com for naming me the 2015 Man of the Year. This is indeed a great honor for me!

The God-Emperor as some on the alt-right called Trump had honored DeAnna with a digital homage.

President Donald Trump was named WorldNetDaily's "Man of the Year" in 2016, inspiring Kevin DeAnna to refer to him as "the God-Emperor." (Screenshot via WorldNetDaily.)

DeAnna, a longtime white nationalist activist and blogger who had kept his more extremist affiliations veiled to hold down his job at WND, boosted then-candidate Trump from the safety of various pseudonyms.

As Gregory Hood, DeAnna contributed to a variety of sites that would become crucial to the alt-rights rise, including the National Policy Institutes Radix Journal, Counter-Currents, and American Renaissance; meanwhile, as James Kirkpatrick, DeAnna served as a frequent contributor to the white nationalist, anti-immigration site VDARE. His connections to these pen names were unveiled by a trove of emails from former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh who also dated DeAnna from 2013 to 2016, and, again, briefly in 2017 that were leaked to Hatewatch. (McHugh, once a part of this world, has since denounced her ties to white nationalism.) Throughout the course of their relationship, DeAnna often asked McHugh to edit his essays under the Kirkpatrick and Hood bylines, as well as sent her links to published articles.

DeAnna was an earlier Trump booster under both pen names as well. Writing as Gregory Hood for white nationalist publicationRadix Journal in July 2015, he implored his fellow extremists to support Trump, arguing that the future leader had shifted the Overton window in the movements favor.

But Trumps tweet was important for another reason: it was evidence that DeAnna, a longtime white nationalist, had managed to hide in plain sight. DeAnnas political cleverness permitted him to cycle between extremist movements and his various positions within the conservative mainstream. This allowed him to form a youth movement, the Youth for Western Civilization (YWC), that would provide the basis for the budding alt-right and radicalize some of its most prominent leaders while nestled safely in the conservative machine.

DeAnnas own career trajectory which has led him from one of the most powerful right-wing political institutions into the belly of the alt-right illuminates how devout white nationalists creep into some of the same institutions that pride themselves on the myth that William F. Buckley and other conservative stalwarts purged antisemites and racists from the conservative movement.

Neither DeAnna nor his various editors and coworkers throughout the years including American Renaissances Jared Taylor, WorldNetDailys Joseph Farah, the National Policy Institutes Richard Spencer and Counter-Currents Gregory Johnson responded to repeated requests for comment via email.

DeAnnas career as one of the most prominent, pseudonymous thinkers on the alt-right was no accident. In fact, it fits with his previous work as a youth organizer. He plunged into the world of far-right organizing in the early 2000s while a student at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

DeAnnas foray into campus activism began with his involvement with the libertarian-leaning student paper, The Remnant, in 2001. He and fellow student Marcus Epstein served as managing editor and editor-in-chief, respectively, in 2003 using their platform to bring far-right academic Paul Gottfried to campus for a speech slamming Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The event was sponsored by the Rockford Institute, an ultra-conservative institution founded in 1976. For decades, it was best known for publishing the conservative magazineChronicles, which featured writing from an array of far-right figures, including Pat Buchanan, as well as white nationalist-connected essayist Sam Francis and The Social Contract editor Wayne Lutton.

Epstein wasnt the only person DeAnna found through campus activities who became involved with YWC. In 2005, DeAnna met Craig Burgers after he started blogging for the website Smash Left-Wing Scum. Burgers and DeAnna were affiliated with their schools respective branches of the right-wing, libertarian-leaning Young Americans for Freedom DeAnna as a group leader on his campus and Burgers as a member at Michigan State University.

After graduation, DeAnna was hired at the right-wing Leadership Institute (LI) as a field representative. The institute, founded in 1979, has been home to a number of prominent politicians and activists on the American right, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist and conservative provocateur James OKeefe.

YWC was founded shortly thereafter in 2006. Whether LI staff were aware of DeAnnas views is unclear. When Hatewatch first reported on the connections between LI and DeAnnas activities with the YWC in 2011, the Leadership Institute declined to comment. LI founder Morton C. Blackwell told NBC News in a report published May 12, 2011, There is no formal connection between the two groups, emphasizing that it was one of the smallest of the more than 1,400 conservative campus groups that receive organizational help and training from the institute.

The Leadership Institute did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

But DeAnna, at least, seemed to view the two as connected. A satirical autobiography, which DeAnna told McHugh he wrote while he was at the institute in 2010, sent to her by DeAnna in 2014, illustrated how he viewed his role.

April 10, 2014, 2:26 PM: DeAnna . . . was told he must travel to the capitol of the Empire, a land of marble and Negroes. There he would form an alliance with the Conservative Movement a mighty force that had harnessed all those who still cared about the fate of their nation into a great political coalition. . . .

Upon arriving, he found that he was enlisted in a far different enterprise than he had once thought. He found that the movement only had three goals tax cuts for millionaires, cheap labor for corporations, and never ending warfare on behalf of a far away land known as Zion. . . .

He grew in wisdom and experience each word let [sic] to another word, each deed to another deed. Soon, he found he could lead these students in greater causes. No campus was safe from the beauty of his words and the power of his charisma, no idiotic conservative idea could not be co-opted, no homely female college Republican chair could resist his patented technique of getting her really drunk and bragging he had a free hotel room. Comrades came and went, many betrayed and many proved their loyalty. In time, a movement began to be formed.

In the completely logical location of Lynchburg, VA, a small group of Odinic warriors adopted the half breed German into their midst. . . . DeAnna proclaimed the birth of a new organization, Youth for Western Civilization, which would realize the lost promise of the conservative movement and reclaim Vinland once and for all. Under the banner of the warhammer, YWC forces spread out across the content [sic], lacking in weapons but mighty in willpower. Sure of his destiny, but not of how he would pay the rent, DeAnna fights every day to achieve his destiny of total Aryan victory and somehow getting out of debt.

DeAnnas declaration that his goal of total Aryan victory contradicted his efforts in articles published by NBC News and elsewhere to downplay YWCs racialist overtones.

DeAnna spoke to McHugh candidly about how he believed the more mainstream conservatives at the institute perceived his politics. Writing to McHugh in September 2017, a few weeks after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, he expressed surprise that LI employees had been dismayed by McHughs anti-Muslim tweets. These same tweets resulted in McHughs firing from Breitbart in May 2017.

McHugh, Sept. 8, 2017, 4:26 pm: LI staffers were furious at me over some tweets about Muslim immigration after I gave a speech there. . . .

DeAnna, Sept. 8, 2017, 4:40 pm: Thats utterly bizarre. I was just talking to LI staff[.] I jokingly said I was Alt Right before there was an Alt Right, they all did the old oh, thats our Kevin laugh and then we talked about campus programming and they said how good it was to see me. . . . What did they do, send an email saying you arent welcome? I dont think they are even allowed to ban you from programs. Maybe as faculty, but for Gods sake, even Matt Heimbach is a YLS [Youth Leadership School a two-day training for young activists sponsored by LI] graduate.

Tim Dionisopoulos, former Youth for Western Civilization member. (Photo via Facebook)

DeAnna wasnt the only YWC member to settle at LI. Tim Dionisopoulos, the groups former Providence-based headof the regions unofficial YWC chapter, wrote for LIs Campus Reform blog until he left for a job at the conservative Media Research Center in early 2014. Likewise, as Hatewatch reported in 2011, Epstein also allegedly held an internship at the institute. Others including Heimbach, who founded YWCs Towson University chapter, and Devin Saucier took part in institute training.

They trained this entire next generation of white nationalists, Heimbach toldLuke OBrien at HuffPost in 2016.

DeAnnas position at the institute gave him time to take part in other far-right activities. In 2006, Epstein and DeAnna co-founded the ultra-conservative discussion group, the Robert A. Taft Club, alongside Richard Spencer, then an editor at The American Conservative. The club served as a discussion group for like-minded far-right personalities, and it featured a plethora of speakers throughout the years including more mainstream figures such as Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. It also provided a space for extremists to gather, socialize and strategize in a manner that was publicly frowned upon by the conservative mainstream.

But LI was far from the only mainstream conservative institution that made YWCs growth possible. The groups presence at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, provided it with a large platform.

In 2011, DeAnna came to CPAC for a panel called Will Immigration Kill the GOP? Jared Taylor, head of the white nationalist think tank American Renaissance, praised the event as one of the most pointed discussions of immigration at an event that often tried to avoid the subject.

The same April 2011 issue of American Renaissances now-defunct print newsletter that included Taylors report on CPAC contained an appeal to subscribers to donate to YWC. DeAnna, Taylor wrote, was an eloquent and distinguished young man who knows how important our cultural identity is. Despite YWCs almost studious avoidance of describing the Western civilization that it sought to protect as a white one, Taylors reference to our cultural identity clearly had one group in mind: white Americans.

DeAnnas departure from the YWC to, in his words, move onto different things coincided with his blossoming career as a pseudonymous white nationalist blogger under the pen names Gregory Hood and James Kirkpatrick. He also took a new job at Joseph Farahs ultra-conservative online publication, WorldNetDaily.

WND was one of the primary conduits for conservative conspiracy theories, including the birther theorythat President Obama was not born in the United States. Its unclear whether WND was aware of DeAnnas side gig as a blogger for several white nationalist websites. Recent reportingon Paul Kersey, aka WND marketing coordinator Michael Thompson, demonstrates he was not the only one. On May 25, 2012, WND published a lengthy response to an article in the SPLCs Intelligence Report on the 30 most prominent activistsin the radical right. Titled 4 from WND on Most Dangerous List,the piece highlighted DeAnna and Farah, among others, for their presence on the list.

In emails, Farahs relationship with DeAnna seems amicable and Farah seems either unaware or willing to overlook some of DeAnnas more radical connections perhaps because DeAnna attracted minimal attention otherwise. Most of his contributions to the site where he worked from 2012 to sometime in 2018, with a brief break starting in late 2013 and extending into part of 2014 lacked a byline, and articles he wrote under his own name up until 2013 were par for the course for WND. Among them was an interview with an authorwho called conspiracies around the Bilderberg Group a reality; an op-ed that posited without evidencethat mass Islamic immigration is transforming the Western character of [Europe]; and a defense of Russias crackdownon the dissident punk rock group Pussy Riot.

According to a BuzzFeed profile on McHugh published in May 2019, DeAnna and McHugh started dating in 2013, after the two met at a party in Virginia. A few months later, in December 2013, DeAnna made a reference to McHugh that he had ended his employment with WND. He tried to continue contributing to the website on at least one occasion. Im not sure why WND wont publish me anymore. Probably because I up and quit, DeAnna wrote to McHugh on Dec. 30, 2013, attaching a column on Duck Dynasty that he hoped the Daily Caller then McHughs employer could publish.

That same year, DeAnna began to push forward on a plan to join the U.S. Marine Corps. While living in Lynchburg, Virginia, DeAnna used his newfound free time to prepare for boot camp.

DeAnna, Jan. 16, 2014, 4:30 pm: When I came to Lynchburg, all I wanted was quiet training to get ready for the USMC, not a million things and new commitments. Once I get a ship date in stone I may just have to tell everyone in politics to shut up and leave me alone, as the USMC comes first.

Writing again to McHugh in early June 2014 not long before he was supposed to head to boot camp he noted:

I already have the kind of Prince of the Alt Right type life as a backup the USMC is a way for me to break into the mainstream at least somewhat, which has greater returns, at least economically.

But in the end, it was DeAnnas Prince of the Alt Right life that won out. The specifics of DeAnna and what happened with the Marines are unclear.

His work with Farahs site, combined with his growing responsibilities as a freelancer for several white nationalist publications, took a toll. Between salvaging VDARE crap, WND articles, and actually trying to fit in some important work, he wrote in a Jan. 12, 2016, email to McHugh.

Still, working at WND had its perks.

DeAnna could push his white nationalist work into the mainstream. In a March 15, 2016, email, American Renaissances Jared Taylor implored WND and Breitbart to boost an updated version of his organizations Color of Crime report:

We are about to release the updated Color of Crime and I thought you might want to look at an advanced copy. . . [I]t would, of course, be great if WND or Breitbart could mention it.

This is all based on very sober analysis of government statistics, and I think the data and conclusions are bullet proof. The report is by New Century Foundation and doesnt say AmRen on it anywhere, though the link to us is easy to find.

I think its damn good and I just wish it could break into the mainstream.

Alongside McHugh and DeAnna, Taylor messaged DeAnnas WND coworker, Michael Thompson, who worked in marketing. Thompson had been writing for American Renaissance and other white nationalist publications under the pseudonym Paul Kersey.

One of DeAnnas biggest successes at WNDaside from getting the God-Emperors attention, of coursewas publishing a nearly-100-page report on the dangers of anti-fascism. The unbylined report, titled Antifa: What Americans Need to Know About the Alt-Left, was released Sept. 25, 2017. DeAnna sent excerpts of an early draft for friends, including McHugh, to review.

The introduction painted antifascists as members of Americas most dangerous domestic terrorist group. DeAnna argued that Antifa didnt arise in opposition to the fascists; rather, it was there first.

Antifa arent the real fascists or the real racists. They arent militant Hillary Clinton supporters or Nazis in disguise. Nor are they anything new. They are simply the same leftists who have drowned the world in blood under the cover of egalitarian slogans since the days of Lenin.

To understand what happened in Charlottesville, whats happening in the United States today, and what is going to happen to our country in the near future, its time for all Americans to see these violent extremists as they really are, in their own words.

While none of these talking points were out of step with the conservative machines hyperbolic coverage of left-wing activism, DeAnna made at least one goal clear in a Sept. 1, 2017, email to McHugh:

Incidentally, I pretty much defend fascism in chapter 3. But then again, so did [Austrian economist Ludwig von] Mises.

DeAnnas invocation of Mises likely refers to the thinkers proclamation in 1927 six years before Hitler seized control of the Reichstag that it cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization.

DeAnna boosted his own work under the safety of his pseudonyms. Writing as James Kirkpatrick, he reviewed the report for VDARE, observing that the book oddly lists no author. Furthermore, Kirkpatrick contended, Antifa demonstrates that anti-fascism is not merely Left Totalitarianism, but now [also] deeply anti-white.

The fact that such a report, Kirkpatrick concluded, was published by WND demonstrates that mainstream conservatives are finally waking up to the terrifying reality of the American Lefts paramilitaries.

Most works focused on the rise of the alt-right have zeroed in on the work of far-right academic Paul Gottfried, whose 2008 address at the H.L. Mencken Clubs first annual meeting lay out an early vision for the alternative right. Gottfrieds vision of a conservative movement distinct from the hegemony of the neoconservative establishment was, in some ways, actualized in YWC long before he emerged on the scene.

Kevin DeAnna speaks at a 2009 conference of the H.L. Mencken Club. (Photo via Facebook)

Gottfried arguedthat the new right that the H.L. Mencken Club sought to embolden had youth and exuberance on our side. These youthful post-paleos were well-educated young professionals, who consider themselves to be on the right, but not of the current conservative movement. But while Gottfried argued in favor of seizing control of conservative institutions, he did not elaborate on how these young professionals ought to interact with the conservative establishment in detail.

YWC, which arguably represented the most viable option for bridging the chasm between the extreme, white nationalist right and the mainstream, officially disintegrated in 2013, and its members took various paths. Some, such as Heimbach, leaning into accusations that YWCs racial chauvinism was too extreme. As journalist Vegas Tenold documented in his book "Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America," Heimbach, who met DeAnna in 2010 at CPAC, was almost instantly engrossed by the latters project. YWC served as the basis for Heimbachs White Student Union at Towson University and, later, his Traditionalist Youth Network, which was explicit in its white nationalist tendencies.

But others, such as DeAnna, sought refuge in the conservative establishment while keeping their white nationalist views veiled.

DeAnna, for example, did not take kindly to Heimbachs grandiose displays. Writing to McHugh on Feb. 26, 2015, he referred to Heimbach, then head of TYN, as an anti-activist the sort of person who self-discredits all his own ideas.

Unlike Heimbach, DeAnna and his peers traveled in both circles. YWCs ties to the mainstream conservative world had prepared its most active participants well for these dual identities. As DeAnna observed in a 2009 Takis Magazine articletitled The Alternative Right, YWC was not outside of the mainstream it just took what the GOP was saying to its natural conclusion. YWC, he wrote, merely echo[ed] standard conservative rhetoric on immigration, multiculturalism, and American identity. The main distinction between YWC and the mainstream GOP, he continued, was that we actually back it up.

And this extended to their personal lives. As Rosie Gray observedin BuzzFeeds May 2019 profile of McHugh, the circle she and DeAnna ran in was seemingly unremarkable. Surrounding McHugh was a tight, insular group of friends . . . living and working in DC one not dissimilar to other groups of 20- and 30-somethings in media and politics,Gray continued, except [that] some of them were committed extremists. Their friendships served as networks of trust. After all, extremist groups are insular.

Still, those within DeAnnas social circle were not simply extremists, they were white nationalists with years of experience organizing from within the conservative movement.

Former Daily Caller editor Scott Greer. (Photo via Facebook)

One thread from 2014 about CPAC between former YWCers Dionisopoulos, Burgers, Saucier, and DeAnna and then-Daily Caller editor Scott Greer, sheds light on this connection. Not only does it show just how comfortable some members of the the alt-right were in navigating mainstream conservative circles in its early days, but it also demonstrates how these friendships shaped the trajectory of the movement by building networks of trust and cooperation.

Burgers, Feb. 17, 2014, 12:08 pm: What are your plans, if any, for CPAC? I assume DeAnna will be manning the Heathens for Economic Freedom booth, but other than that? . . .

Dionisopoulos, Feb. 17, 2014, 12:16 pm: Ill be there for the MRC [Media Research Center], but no concrete plans as to what Im actually asked with doing. I think its sort of a wander around the media area and hang out type of thing . . .

Burgers, Feb. 20, 2014, 8:41 pm: Alright, I guess I will plan on attending as well then. I assume Katie, Tim, and Scott are covered by work, but are you registering[,] Devin and Kevin? I have to figure out whether or not I should.

Also, I found out today Chulski [of Americans for Prosperity] will be hosting a well-funded open bar party on behalf of Michigan AFP. Well have VIP treatment there should we choose to attend.

Saucier, Feb. 20, 2014, 11:25 pm: I probably wont register, but will be there to help Richard.

Saucier appears to be referring to Richard Spencer. Another email from Saucier on March 6, 2014 the first day of CPAC alerted the group that Jared, presumably Jared Taylor, would be at the conference.

Amid innocuous dinner plans and vineyard excursions, the group organized a gaggle of invite-only white nationalist gatherings in the heart of D.C. Epstein hosted one series, known as the Alt-Right Toastmasters, that brought together journalists, open white nationalists, anti-immigrant stalwarts and a former DHS official for discussions related to the far right. The meetings, which have been reported on by The Atlantic, BuzzFeed and Splinter, served as a vehicle for bringing together the broader D.C. circle DeAnna was a part of. Though Epstein usually blind-copied all participants, the list of invitees to a June 6, 2016, get-together discussing, among other things, The Pros and Cons of Anonymity, includes an array of extremists.

At times, their affiliations were barely veiled. A July 2015 email from Saucier introduces the prospect of inviting Evan Osnos, a reporter for The New Yorker who first reported on the alt-rights loose coalition for Trump in 2015, to a private gathering. Osnos would be wearing a conspicuous name tag and had sworn not to give away any names or specific details about each person, wrote Saucier. While Saucier noted he intended to be conscientious of attendees security concerns, inviting an outsider in would, he continued, be a good opportunity to give this guy an impression of who we are.

Their shared beliefs and mutual concerns about expressing their more radical views held DeAnnas circle together after the collapse of YWC. Without the aura of respectability provided by YWC, however, group members scattered.

We want to have people spread as widely as possible, DeAnna wrote on a March 14, 2016, thread. Of those on the thread which included Epstein, Thompson, McHugh, Dionisopoulos, Greer and Saucier only two, DeAnna and Thompson, worked at the same organization at that time.

Having white nationalists spread across the Beltway wasnt just pragmatic in the sense that it allowed the movement to establish connections with as many institutions as possible it was practical for everyone involved. Said DeAnna in one email: Its a kind of insurance policy for each other.

Photo illustration by SPLC. (Original photo by Jeff Malet)

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How Kevin DeAnna Orchestrated the Alt-Right's Approach to Conservative Institutions - Southern Poverty Law Center

Billy Porter will play a powerful genderless fairy godmother in Cinderella and the alt-right must be shaking – PinkNews

Billy Porter's tuxedo gown designed by Christian Siriano. (Christian Siriano/Twitter)

Billy Porter is set to play a genderless version of the fairy godmother in an upcoming live-action remake of Cinderella, due for release in 2021.

Speaking to CBS News, Porter said it is a profound feeling to be playing the iconic character of the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella.

Magic has no gender, he said.

We are presenting this character as genderless at least thats how Im playing it. And its really powerful.

The Pose actor added: This is a classic fairytale for a new generation, and I think that the new generation is really ready. The kids are ready. Its the grown-ups that are slowing stuff down.

Porter shared the interview on Twitter and wrote: This Cinderella is a classic fairytale for a new generation. To be able to play this genderless, fabulous fairy godmother what a gift.

The upcoming Cinderella is being made by Sony and will also star pop star Camila Cabello and is directed by Key Cannon. The project is being described as a romantic musical comedy.

We are presenting this character as genderless at least thats how Im playing it. And its really powerful.

It will also star Idina Menzel of Wicked fame as the evil stepmother and Pierce Brosnan as the king. We can only hope he gets an opportunity to show off his incredible singing voice once again.

Porter has become a powerhouse in the LGBT+ community for his groundbreaking role on FX series Pose as well as for his incredible red-carpet looks.

The actor has also fought anti-LGBT+ discrimination at every turn. He recently faced backlash after it was announced that he would be guest starring on the upcoming season of Sesame Street in his iconic tuxedo dress.

Conservative Christian group One Million Moms started a petition to have his guest appearance cancelled, and Porter responded in the best possible way.

In a lengthy Instagram post, the actor said his slot on Sesame Street was one of the highlights of his life.

The emails, DMs, and messages of good will I received that day (and continue to receive) from parents and their children who have been bullied all over the world and desperately need to see someone like me, being their authentic selves on mainstream media, is far more important than anything #onemillionmoms could ever say.

Friendship, kindness and inclusivity shall triumph. And often, it simply starts by saying hi, he added.

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Billy Porter will play a powerful genderless fairy godmother in Cinderella and the alt-right must be shaking - PinkNews

FIVE PIECES OF PAPER Set For Matrix Theatre On Holocaust Remembrance Day – Broadway World

Honoring Holocaust Remembrance Day, writer/performer Moti Buchboot brings his solo show Five Pieces of Paper: Stories My Hungarian Grandmother Refused to Tell Me and Other Family Tales to the Matrix Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 7, at 8pm. The show received its world premiere (directed by Buchboot and Martha Gehman) in the 2019 Hollywood Fringe Festival. Five Pieces of Paper is set to return for five performances in the 2020 HFF this coming June.

The creation of Five Pieces of Paper: Stories My Hungarian Grandmother Refused to Tell Me and Other Family Tales was a direct reaction to the 2017 Charlottesville riots at the University of Virginia at which neo-Nazis, alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, Klansmen, and other racist groups marched and attacked counter-protesters. It is a show about countering hate and intolerance, hope and love, remembering the horrors of the not-so-distant past, and giving the audience an emotional multi-sensory experience along the way.

Moti Buchboot is an Israeli artist who moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. The grandson of a Holocaust survivor, he shares lessons learned from his Hungarian grandmother who began her life's journey in a Hungarian village, survived the Holocaust, and eventually settled in a small town in Israel. Told as a personal love narrative, this emotional rollercoaster unfolds through acting, Yiddish song, puppetry, storytelling, and on-stage baking. This spiritual ritual is meant to reveal and heal the trauma of a horrifying past.

Buchboot was featured in the role of Giant Blunderbore in Jack and the Beanstalk, the Panto at Santa Barbara's Lobero Theatre. He has also been seen in Pieces of Eight at the Met Theatre (directed by Martha Gehman). He co-created Dialogos at the Unknown Theater and created and directed Love, Loss, Lust, and a Tango at the Barnsdall Theatre. He has toured the world teaching and performing Argentine Tango. He has appeared in national TV commercials as well as on the History Channel, PBS, and MTV. He wrote, directed, and starred in Soul Dance, a short film that made the independent film festival circuit. He is also an author and a photographer. Current projects include Money, the Musical directed by Michael Pollock at Second City Hollywood and Word, a puppet show directed by Roberto Ferreira at the LGBT Center's Davidson/Valentini Theatre. He also has two short films in post-production.

Tickets are $20 may be obtained online at http://www.fivepieces.org. The Matrix Theatre is located at 7657 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, 90038.

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FIVE PIECES OF PAPER Set For Matrix Theatre On Holocaust Remembrance Day - Broadway World

Knowingly or Unknowingly, CIS Newsletters Promote the Work of White Nationalist Kevin DeAnna – Southern Poverty Law Center

But Hatewatchs analysis of CISs weekly email newsletters shows that for nearly a decade the centerhas been promoting material from Kevin DeAnna, one of the alt-rights most prolific propagandists. CIS newsletters from 2012 to present show the center has circulated at least 83 articles by DeAnna, former Youth for Western Civilization founder and current American Renaissance staff writer. A Hatewatch investigation revealed that DeAnna wrote for VDARE, a white nationalist website run by Peter Brimelow, beginning in 2011, under the pseudonym James Kirkpatrick. CIS circulated Kirkpatrick articles from The Social Contract, a journal established by CISs founder, John Tanton, in 1990. CIS cited Kirkpatricks work at both VDARE and The Social Contract.

Hatewatch reached out to both DeAnna and CIS for comment. DeAnna didnt respond, and CIS declined to comment.

Kevin DeAnna speaks at a 2010 conference of The Social Contract Press. (Screenshot via YouTube)

Hatewatch first detailed the proliferation of VDARE linksin CISs weekly newsletters in 2017, concluding that the anti-immigrant think tank had circulated over 1,700 VDARE articles over the course of 10 years. Krikorian arguedin The Washington Post in March 2017 that such findings were trivial. The center, he contended, linked to immigration commentary (from all sides) in its weekly email roundups; hence, it should come as no shock that some of the authors occasionally . . . turned out to be cranks.

In Kirkpatricks case however, the inclusion of material authored by DeAnna under a pseudonym bolsters already-existing evidence of the centers boosting of white nationalist talking points. DeAnna, under the pseudonym Gregory Hood, was a frequent and prolific contributor to a range of white nationalist sites, beginning in 2008.

CIS began including Kirkpatricks work in the think tanks newsletters in 2012. The number of times Kirkpatrick was cited rose, corresponding to DeAnnas growing involvement with Brimelows site, where he worked as both a writer and an editor. Hatewatch found CIS linked to Kirkpatricks stories three times in 2012; eight times in 2013; 11 times in 2014; 16 times in 2015; 11 times in 2016; eight times in 2017; 10 times in 2018; seven times in 2019; and at least twice in 2020. While most of these articles were focused on matters of immigration, Kirkpatricks role as a white nationalist scribe is barely veiled.

Many of the Kirkpatrick articles in CIS newsletters were riddled with common white nationalist tropes. Perhaps the most common theme involved the conspiracy of the great replacement. The concept originatedwith French far-right thinker Renaud Camus racist book of the same name, published in 2010. Though the term has, at times, been painted as a pseudo-intellectual version of the theory of white genocide, it has nevertheless inspired the same degree of racist violence, including at Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

A 2018 English adaptation of Camuss original text titled You Will Not Replace Us referred to an ongoing genocide by substitution in both Europe and America. As an article in The Nationon Camus and the great replacement observed, Camus portrayed the so-called replacists that is, proponents of multiculturalism and immigration as soon to be devored [sic] by the replacees they invite in.

CIS linked to numerous pieces from Kirkpatrick that pushed replacement theory. At times, the articles named the racist conspiracy outright. One Sept. 7, 2015, newsletter links to an article titled The Great Replacement Is Killing The EU Long Live a Europe Of Nations! In it, Kirkpatrick refers to the ongoing immigrant invasion in Europe, implying that the continued existence of the European Union has made the replacement of European peoples possible.

In other places, Kirkpatricks references to replacement theory were subtler. CISs Feb. 13, 2016, newsletter promoted an article that blasted then-presidential candidate Marco Rubio for not being sufficiently anti-immigrant. DeAnna, writing as Kirkpatrick, bemoaned the sweeping demographic changes in Europe and the allegedly disastrous effect it would have on Western civilization. Another article, included in CISs Nov. 15, 2018, newsletter, penned by Kirkpatrick for Social Contract press referred to migration as punishment inflicted by a cadre of global elites.

On July 28, 2019, CIS linked to an article titled Say It, GOP! Or Just Give It Up: Open Borders Is TREASON! The Left Is ANTI-WHITE! In the piece, Kirkpatrick claimed the left had ensured that anyone who didnt want whites replaced in their own countries would be tarnished as far right. Furthermore, he noted, assertions that Native Americans or any other indigenous minority in Europe had a right to the land led to the logical conclusion that Westerners needed to be dispossessed. That sort of thinking culminates in genocide, Kirkpatrick told readers, implying the possibility of what white nationalists refer to as a white genocide.

Most of Kirkpatricks articles in CISs newsletter, however, focused on pushing the right to embrace more draconian restrictions on immigration. Like many other authors at VDARE, he lamented the power of what the site often referred as Conservatism, Inc. a stand-in for the right-wing media, think tank, and political establishment and blasted insufficiently anti-immigrant Republicans as traitors.

The first Kirkpatrick piece CIS linked to in its Jan. 27, 2012, newsletter titled South Carolina Shambles: Slippery Newt Massacres Milquetoast Mitt Agonizes Immigration Patriots blasted Newt Gingrich. In addition to supporting sanctions against apartheid South Africa during the Reagan years, Kirkpatrick contended that the Republican presidential candidate and former speaker of the Houses biggest moral failing was betraying whites.

Perhaps more than any other person in this country, Kirkpatrick argued, Newt Gingrich is responsible for the astonishing conservative retreat on racial preferences and the continued existence of an anti-white racial spoils system in jobs and education. Kirkpatricks rant linked to a 2011 VDARE article referring to affirmative action as anti-white quotas.

Another CIS newsletter from July 8, 2016, linked to a Kirkpatrick article, which referred to anti-Trump Republicans as RATs and traitors to the party. The conservative opposition to Trump, Kirkpatrick opined, were deserving of such a title due to their cooperation with the Lying Press. The term, as Kirkpatrick observed in a VDARE article from June 2016, is an English translation of the German term Lgenpresse, which has become popular among certain circles of the so-called alt-right. Though the term itself originated as a rhetorical cudgel in the mid-19th-century,the Nazis further popularized it.

While CIS executive director Mark Krikorian attempted to distance himself and the center from the extreme, racist far-right, he has, as recently as last February, asserted the importance of bringing pieces published on those sites to the attention of readers.

Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies speaks at the Budapest Summit on Migration in March 2019. (Photo by Elekes Andor via Wikimedia Commons)

When asked by a caller on CSPANs Washington Journal about the continued inclusion of content from VDARE, Krikorian defended the decision.

We send out a weekly roundup of immigration commentary from all sides, including people we dont agree with, Krikorian told CSPAN, citing The New York Times editorials on immigration as an example. Though he acknowledged that the center linked to some sites that publish other material that he viewed as objectionable, he posited that such links were needed: If theyre important sites of immigration news, we include them because the whole point is [to] see the broad spectrum of views and judge for yourself.

Photo illustration by SPLC

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Knowingly or Unknowingly, CIS Newsletters Promote the Work of White Nationalist Kevin DeAnna - Southern Poverty Law Center

English Professor Publishes Book of Critical Essays with Slavoj Zizek – Seton Hall University News & Events

Professor Russell Sbriglia (left) and Slavoj Zizek (right), co-authors ofSubject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism.

Professor Russell Sbriglia has published a new book with internationally renowned academic Slavoj Zizek. Titled Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism, the book, which Sbriglia co-edited with Zizek, assembles the work of a number of scholars at the forefront of philosophical and literary theory, their own included.

Sbriglia is an assistant professor of English and director of Undergraduate Literature Studies at Seton Hall. He is also the editor of the book Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Zizek.Slavoj Zizek is the author of more than 50 books. Foreign Policy not only describes him as "a celebrity philosopher," but has also named him one of its "Top 100 Global Thinkers." In addition, The Chronicle of Higher Education has dubbed him "the Elvis of cultural theory," and VICE has proclaimed him "the most dangerous philosopher in the West."

Northwestern University Press, the publisher of Subject Lessons, notes that

the contributors to this volume many of whom stand at the forefront of contemporary Hegel and Lacan scholarship agree with neovitalist thinkers that material reality is ontologically incomplete, in a state of perpetual becoming, yet they do so with one crucial difference: they maintain that this is the case not in spite of but rather because of the subject.

Brown University Professor Joan Copjec, a prominent American Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist, says of Subject Lessons:

A band of new materialists has come after the subject, knives drawn. In what ways do these thinkers differ from materialists past? From each other? What do they mean when they speak of materialism, of objects, or subjects? By confronting these basic questions directly, the essays in this collection cut through the babble of confused debate to offer clear accounts of the issues at stake.

Sbriglia and Zizek are scheduled to appear at a launch party for the book on the evening of Friday, April 24at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, co-sponsored by the English Department of Princeton University.

Zizek will appear on campus at Seton Hall the evening prior onThursday, April 23to present a public talk titled "The Rise of Obscene Masters," and again on the morning of April24to lead a faculty seminar for the College of Arts and Sciences'Center for the Humanities in the Public Sphere (CHIPS) on "The Apocalypse of a Wired Brain."

Video of Slavoj Zizek's prior appearance on campus,"Samuel Beckett as the Writer of Political Abstraction; or, What Can Beckett Tell Us about the Alt-Right and Political Correctness?"

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English Professor Publishes Book of Critical Essays with Slavoj Zizek - Seton Hall University News & Events

Darwinism, Jews, and White Nationalists – Discovery Institute

A right-wing Polish member of parliament, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, recently made waves with the astonishing claim that pogroms have been good for the Jewish people, allegedly because they acted as what biologists call selective pressure in the Darwinian struggle for existence. In common parlance, this means the pogroms weeded out the weak Jews, leaving the strong and robust ones to survive and reproduce.

The context for his remarks, incidentally, was a discussion of the coronavirus, which Korwin-Mikke also sees as a good thing, because he thinks it will help promote evolutionary progress by killing off the weak, leaving the superior specimens to propagate the species.

All of this may sound bizarre, but recently I have been learning that it is common today for white nationalists to rely on such Darwinian explanations to promote their racist, anti-Semitic perspective. In the past few months I have been working on a chapter (in a book on Darwinian Racism in the Nazi Worldview) on the Darwinian racism of white nationalists. Korwin-Mikkes comments are unfortunately not uncommon in those circles.

Indeed the evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald, an emeritus professor at California State University, Long Beach, has published a trilogy of scholarly books that purportedly explains the behavior of Jews and anti-Semites as evolutionary strategies in the Darwinian struggle for existence. MacDonald is a member of the white nationalist or alt-right movement, and he is widely cited by other white nationalists. Darwinian racism and evolutionary psychology are both de rigueur among white nationalists today.

MacDonald is so committed to Darwinian explanations for human behavior, in fact, that he has popularized (at least among fellow white nationalists) the claim that opposition to Darwinism is a Jewish plot to subvert the white race. When the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed came out over a decade ago, MacDonald explained that Ben Stein participated in order to further the interests of the Jews. Of course, just like most conspiracy theorists, MacDonald ignores many inconvenient facts, such as that most anti-Darwinists in the world are not Jews, and most Jews, especially secular Jews, accept Darwinism with alacrity.

Photo: Janusz Korwin-Mikke, by Adrian Grycuk / CC BY-SA 3.0 PL.

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Darwinism, Jews, and White Nationalists - Discovery Institute

So Listen: The alt-right is not the right – The Post

The alternative right is undeniably damaging and toxic to American politics. Anytime intolerance presents itself in a culture it creates a fear and disturbs the constructive political conversation that is otherwise likely held. Unfortunately, because the alt-right makes use of the word right, many people group this small sect of people with actual Republicans and conservatives. That is not the case. The definition of the alt-right doesnt fall close to what a Republican is or stands for.

The term alternative-right, or alt-right, was coined by Richard Spencer by his webzine in 2010. Spencer is a well known white supremacist who used his platform to advocate for an America free of minorities.

The Southern Poverty Law Center defined the alt-right as:

"A set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that 'white identity' is under attack by multicultural forces using 'political correctness' and 'social justice' to undermine white people and 'their' civilization."

Alternative right stands to give hateful and racist people a means to organize. They believe in small government and limiting taxes, but that is where the similarities with the actual right end. Thats why they use the word alternative; they cant be a part of the real right.

In his farewell address to America, Senator John McCain discussed the issues that the alt-right and racist extremist groups pose to our country:

We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been, he wrote.

The majority of Republicans despise and denounce the alt-right. They dont have real political ideologies or opinions. Theyre just racist populists who pretend that they care about political issues other than race to try and legitimize themselves.

Aligning the alt-right with the actual right not only hurts the right, but it legitimizes white supremacy. It is up to not only Republicans, but every ideology of the political spectrum to denounce the alt-right as not a part of the Republican party.

Mikayla Rochelle is a junior studying strategic communication at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those ofThe Post. What are your thoughts? Tell Mikayla by tweeting her at @mikayla_roch.

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So Listen: The alt-right is not the right - The Post

My double life among the alt-Right: Taking a punch was something that I mentally prepared for’ – Telegraph.co.uk

The far-Right can be funny, in their way. Julia Ebner remembers when she pretended to be one of them. The first time she attended a meeting, it was in Mayfair, at a little pub called Ye Grapes. As she walked into the back room, the group were chatting about holidays in Hungary (I only give my money to free nations) and having to hide their political views (You get fired here if youre a Nazi). The food at Ye Grapes is Thai.

There were so many surreal moments, Ebner says about the two years she spent undercover, infiltrating a range of extremist movements both online and in the flesh. It was hard, because I would sometimes think they were joking, but they were serious about things where it seemed too absurd to be true.

Ebner has written about her experiences in a new book, Going Dark. By day, she works at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, an anti-extremism think-tank. By night, she was doing what she calls completely separate work. (As she puts it in the book: During my working hours I was the cat, but in my spare time I joined the mice.)

The ironies, she found, were exquisite. After the Mayfair event, Generation Identity invited her to a meeting in Brixton, not an area known for hostility to multicultural life. (They holed up in an Airbnb.) Over coffee in Vienna with their regional leader, Edwin Hintsteiner, she raised suspicions by asking for soy milk only to learn that at a party that night, the far-Right Freedom Party of Austria would be serving Club-Mate, a trendy energy drink from Berlin.

Online, where the absurdities of conspiracy theories such as QAnon or Pizzagate hold sway, the hypocrisycould be similarly complex. For example, Ebner says, take the vetting procedures in some of the neo-Nazi channels. You have to submit a genetic test. But people come back of course! with results showing a small percentage of non-white background. Which opens up a discussion about the Jews controlling them.

Ebner wasnt trained to enter these spheres. Her work was unsanctioned by the ISD. She was moving in the domain of intelligence officers or investigative journalists, who spend years learning how to work in the field. There are moments in the book, she admits, where you can tell that Im a complete amateur. That I didnt go through any kind of MI5 training, or any investigative journalism training.

And there were definitely moments where I thought: Maybe Ive gone too far, maybe I shouldnt have come here. At one point at the Brixton meeting, she drops a bank card that bears her real name. By chance, the woman who hands it back doesnt look at it. These are not mistakes that a professional would likely make.

I did have an exit plan for all the events I went to, Ebner says. In my phone, I had people who were prepared to come to the Airbnb in Brixton if something happened. In that case, she wasnt scared. With Generation Identity, I knew that their reputations would be at stake, so they wouldnt do anything.

Not all her investigations felt so safe. In the German town of Ostritz, for instance, Ebner attended Schild & Schwert (Shield and Sword), a neo-Nazi rock festival held on Hitlers birthday, April 20.

There, she recalls, I knew that some people had criminal records. Everyone was checked by the police on entering. And these people could potentially use violence. Once again, her faade had cracks. She wore black Adidas trainers, but New Balance is the alt-Right fashion; she didnt know how to dance to neo-Nazi hardcore rock. This time, it would have been harder to laugh and walk away.

I thought: OK, in the worst-case scenario, Im going to take a punch. I didnt think anyone was going to kill me, even if they found out who I was. But taking a punch was something that I mentally prepared for.

Before long, one neo-Nazi accosted her and refused to leave her alone. She pretended to be 23, and feigned what she calls a bogus naivety but he was bemused by her lack of knowledge. She didnt know, for example, about how Helmut Kohl and Mikhail Gorbachev sold out the German race. This time she needed her exit plan someone waiting outside with a car and had to escape.

Going Dark is impressive in moments like this, when Ebner is less offended or angry than disappointed in those she meets. Even her harasser is portrayed as he was: calmly described, no caricature. This, she says, was a conscious choice.

Its counterproductive to denounce them as individuals. We can denounce the ideologies, or conspiracy theories. But it doesnt help with getting people back from the radical fringes if we humiliate them or denounce them on an individual level, or attack them personally.

She even felt sad, when embedded in Generation Identity. There were some very young individuals in that movement. You could see that Generation Identity made an effort to bring that into their media campaigns which would also make it impossible for them to leave any more. There were moments where I wanted to say, Please leave now.

And yet, she never did. In part, Ebner admits, it was a cold strategic choice: preserve her cover, or save a soul.

There were moments when I did want to debunk conspiracy theories, or tell someone to leave. I could have done that. But I thought it was more valuable to stay there, collect all the information I could, then hopefully inform a bigger intervention programme with a wider scope.

Nor, she points out, was she trained in deradicalisation any more than she was in undercover work. Id prefer to leave that task to professionally trained psychologists and intervention providers. I saw my role as that of a researcher. Thats what Ive done at Quilliam and the ISD.

It was during her time at Quilliam, the think-tank where she worked until 2017, that Ebner was dragged into the news. In May that year, she wrote a piece for The Guardian in which she connected Tommy Robinson and the phrase white supremacist movements. Robinson declared on video that he was going to confront her, and he did. Entering Quilliams building, he found Ebner, a scuffle broke out with security, and he was thrown out, camera in hand, exactly as he wished.

Ebner had the data to prove that as she told Quilliam CEO Haras Rafiq afterwards Robinsons support base overlaps with that of white supremacist movements. Quilliam wanted the hostilities to go away. Ebner stood by her position, and wouldnt sell The Guardian out. The next day, she was fired.

Robinson, as he likes to say, is a campaigner for freedom of speech. Yesterday, he joined Toby Youngs Freedom of Speech Union, and Young says hes welcome there. It exemplifies another of the ironies Ebner found: those with the strongest positions are often papering over their cognitive dissonance.

She takes the example of free-speech warriors online. On the one hand they say that theyre being shut down, that theyre the victims of infringement of freedom of speech but on the other hand, theyre launching intimidation campaigns that are meant to silence their political opponents.

These things, she says wryly, are a bit like going to a Thai restaurant to speak about the Great Replacement, or going to Brixton for a Generation Identity meeting. Not impossible, just moral hypocrisy.

All Ebners undercover work involved what she calls an ethical line. She drew it at anything that would help them expand their reach or get recruits, and this put an expiry date on each of her attempts.

For example, I wouldnt have helped with running any campaigns, or reaching out to people during recruitment. Even when they asked me whether I could translate some materials, some campaign materials from German to English, I wouldnt have done that.

Her ethics also killed some of her budding plans. Not all of the groups I tried are in the book. In some of them, I was kicked out too early to get any deeper insights, because I refused to do certain things. For example, creating my own racist memes, or attacking a political opponent on Twitter with vile messages.

Even so, I wonder, was that ethical line ever perfectly firm? Ebner pauses, and picks her words. I think there are always grey zones. Even laughing at a joke, or nodding at a statement even if you dont say anything, simple approval or applause can confirm peoples views and make them more willing to show off.

Thats the problem on some of these messaging boards they have a big audience who glorify them. I wouldnt say that at any point I glorified anyone. But they do play to their audience. Not every user on these platforms is participating, but even by passively giving their confirmation or approval, they play into the radicalisation engine.

Ebner wants us to practice civil courage, and not assume that the intelligence services will handle extremism on our behalf. Everyone has the responsibility to protect themselves and people in their surroundings from being lured into these networks.

We often have civil courage on the Tube if someone gets attacked, someone steps in but we dont often see it in online spaces when someones being attacked. Not yet.

Working undercover, she concedes, has changed her. She felt close to being seduced, having seeds planted that might be hard to uproot. Infiltrating a trad wives group online the Red Pill Women she found female misogynists who ranged from ultra-conservative women and to be fair, its everyones right to hold those views all the way to endorsing domestic violence.

Ebner, who calls herself a feminist, was primed to disagree all the way. These women talked about womens sexual value to men; the need to be docile and marketable. And yet: Ebner, who had just emerged from a break-up, felt unsettled by some of their other claims about the burdens that women face in todays modern world, or about hook-up culture and online dating apps.

Mostly, she remembers, it felt like they were speaking about topics so close to my own worries and my own frustrations. Id never been able to identify with the topics talked about in jihadist groups or in neo-Nazi groups there were no topics there that touched me on a deeper emotional level.

Nobody, she tells me again and again, is immune to being radicalised. It isnt a problem for other peoples minds, and you dont always see the angle from which it comes. Ebner relied on a safety net: an informal debriefing process with colleagues at the ISD. There were counter-extremism experts who would have been able to spot the signs if I were going in that direction.

After two years of undercover work, Going Dark is the end of Ebners shadow-career. Even during that period, she grew liable to be unmasked. After the real name of Jennifer Mayer was revealed, Generation Identity sent Ebner a glacial message saying they hope it was at least interesting for her to meet them.

Today, she says, in the English- and German-speaking world, its virtually impossible for me to go undercover offline unless I wear a full-face mask.

And Im not sure I would want to do that work any more. Nor, she adds, would she ask others to follow her lead. I wouldnt recommend doing it offline.I dont think everyone needs or wants to take that risk the risk of having their face out there.

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists is published by Bloomsbury at 16.99. To order your copy for 14.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit the Telegraph Bookshop

Link:

My double life among the alt-Right: Taking a punch was something that I mentally prepared for' - Telegraph.co.uk