Trump Judge Casts Deciding Vote to Grant Qualified Immunity on First Amendment Retaliation Claim: Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears – People For the…

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Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trumps judges on Americans rights and liberties. Cases in the series can be found by issue and by judge at this link.

Trump Sixth Circuit judge Chad Readler cast the deciding vote to reverse a district court and rule that a government security officer had qualified immunity and could not be sued for excessive use of force in responding to a persons protest against government officials. The July 2020 decision is Sevy v Barach.

Anthony Sevy went to a Michigan state courthouse to pay a $10 parking ticket. When he tried to pay with a debit card, he was told he would have to pay an additional $1.75 processing fee. He refused and later returned with $10 worth of pennies as a form of protest, which officials refused to accept. Things escalated and two security officers became involved. According to Sevy, one of those officers, Philip Barach, grabbed him as he was leaving, threw him to the ground, and choked him until he lost consciousness while he was placed under arrest. When he awoke, he was handcuffed and taken to an elevator where, Sevy explained, Barach threw him to the ground and knocked his head against the side of the elevator. Sevy was charged with disorderly conduct, to which he pleaded no contest, and was allowed to go home.

Sevy then proceeded to sue the officers in federal court, claiming Fourth Amendment excessive force and First Amendment retaliation. The district court granted qualified immunity to the other officer but denied it to Barach, who then appealed.

All three judges ruled against Barach on the Fourth Amendment immunity claim, either based on the merits or for lack of jurisdiction. In a 2-1 vote with Readler providing the deciding vote, however, the majority reversed the district court and ruled that Barach should get immunity on the First Amendment claim. In order to overcome qualified immunity, a person must show that clearly established constitutional rights were violated. The majority maintained that Sevys First Amendment claim was not clearly established because he could point to no caselaw establishing a right to recover on a First Amendment retaliation theory for excessive use of force in executing an arrest.

Judge Karen Nelson Moore strongly dissented. Sevys First Amendment right to protest and criticize government officials, Moore explained, is clearly established such that a reasonable officer would know that he could not use any force to retaliate against an individual for the exercise of that speech. Moore continued that [a]mple precedent supports the clarity of Sevys rights, and that a reasonable officer cannot claim that they would be surprised to learn that the use of physical force in retaliation for the exercise of those First Amendment rights was a constitutional violation. A previous decision addressing identical action, as the majority seemed to be demanding, was simply not necessary according to Moore, and the decision should have been affirmed.

As a result of Readlers deciding vote, however, Sevy will not be able to pursue his First Amendment retaliation claims. The case is yet another example of an appeals court decision made possible by a Trump nominee that reversed a lower court and dismissed a claim without trial against a law enforcement official for excessive use of force, in this case in retaliation for the exercise of a First Amendment right to protest.

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Trump Judge Casts Deciding Vote to Grant Qualified Immunity on First Amendment Retaliation Claim: Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears - People For the...

Did Judge Reeves Reach the Correct Result in Jamison v. McClendon? – Reason

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As many readers know, District Judge Carlton Reeves recently published a blistering opinion about the injustice of qualified immunity law in Jamison v. McClendon. In the case, Judge Reeves argues that its factsinvolving a Black driver allegedly badgered, lied to, and searched by a white police officershine a light on why justice demands that qualified immunity must be overturned. The officer violated the Constitution, Judge Reeves concludes, but he cannot be held liable thanks to the "unsustainable" doctrine of qualified immunity that in "real life . . . operates like absolute immunity." Judge Reeves writes: "Just as the Supreme Court swept away the mistaken doctrine of separate but equal, so too should it eliminate the doctrine of qualified immunity." He concludes: "Let us waste no time in righting this wrong."

There's a lot going on in the Jamison case, and there are many aspects of the case that are very interesting and very much worth reading. As most readers know, there's an ongoing national conversation about whether qualified immunity should be abolished. I gather Jamison was designed to be (and already is) part of that public conversation. That's a hugely important debate that has often been discussed here at the blog, in particular with respect to Will Baude's important scholarship.

As a Fourth Amendment nerd, though, I wanted to focus on a doctrinal part of the case that has not been discussed: Was Judge Reeves correct that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity under current law?

I'm skeptical. It seems to me that that Judge Reeves likely was wrong, and that the officer was not entitled to qualified immunity. In particular, I worry that Judge Reeves may have misunderstood the relevant Fourth Amendment doctrine. That misunderstanding may have led Judge Reeves to treat the constitutional violation as a close call that required ruling in favor of the officer on qualified immunity grounds. It seems to me, though, that the officer's constitutional violation was obvious. It therefore violated clearly established law, and the officer should not be entitled to qualified immunity.

Let me be the first to add: Yes, I realize that, if it turns out I'm right, it doesn't undermine the case against qualified immunity. Most of Judge Reeves's opinion is addressed to a public debate about whether the Supreme Court should overturn its qualified immunity cases. My post is on a really small-scale issue. I'm only talking about how current law should apply to this one case. And to the extent it's relevant to some readers, I oppose qualified immunity, too, I would like to see it overturned. (At least as long as that change wouldn't lead to eliminating the exclusionary rule or create other systematic changes in Fourth Amendment law, which is entirely possible. But that's a complicated question for another day. )

Nonetheless, given that this opinion is already getting a lot of attention, I thought it might be interesting to explain why I think the result in this particular case was likely incorrect. It shouldn't change the national debate, but it does lead me to wonder if Judge Reeves picked the wrong case to demonstrate qualified immunity's problems. It's a small point, I concede, but perhaps of interest to the fellow Fourth Amendment nerds reading.

I'll start with the facts; turn to the Fourth Amendment analysis; next turn to the qualified immunity question; and conclude with my own take.

I. The Basic Facts

The plaintiff, Jamison, was stopped for a license plate tag violation. The defendant, Officer McClendon, pulled him over. Jamison is Black. McClendon is white. McClendon became suspicious that Jamison had something illegal in the car. However, McClendon had zero actual legal suspicion to think Jamison had anything illegal in the car. It was purely a hunchand one, we can assume, was based in part on Jamison's race.

Eventually, Jamison expressed consent to search the car . An extremely thorough search of the car followed. After almost two hours, absolutely zero evidence was found. McClendon then allowed Jamison to leave, although Jamison's car was damaged as a result of the search.

Jamison later sued McClendon. The Jamison opinion is focused on the first of Jamison's claims, brought under the Fourth Amendment. In particular, the new decision focuses on a specific part of the traffic stop. In their depositions, Jamison and McClendon gave starkly different recollections of what happened in this part of the stop. But because Jamison involves a motion for summary judgment filed by McClendon, we have to accept Jamison's version of the facts as true.

According to Jamison's deposition, McClendon repeatedly badgered him into consenting. McClendon pleaded with Jamison to consent five times before Jamison finally gave up and permitted the search. To pressure Jamison to consent, McClenson lied multiple times to him about a report that there were massive amounts of cocaine in the car.

And this next part is particularly important. According to Jamison, while McClendon was trying to get Jamison's consent, McClendon "placed his hand into the car, and patted the inside of the passenger door," and then "moved his arm further into the car . . while patting it with his hand."

For what it's worth, McClendon denies all of this happened. His story is just that he asked Jamison for consent and Jamison simply consented. But McClendon's conflicting version of events is not relevant at this stage because McClendon is the moving party. Where the facts conflict, we have to accept Jamison's version of events as true.

II. The Intrusion Into the Car

Now let's turn to the Fourth Amendment claim. Just to make this super-long post more manageable, I want to focus specifically on Jamison's claim that McClendon violated the Fourth Amendment by placing his hands inside the car and patting the inside of the passenger door.

Was that an unconstitutional search? Judge Reeves reasons that it was. First, it was obviously a search. McClendon's body physically intruded into the car. The next question is whether it was an unreasonable search.

And here Judge Reeves makes a critical assumption. Judge Reeves assumes that whether an officer's physical intrusion into a car is reasonable is governed by a Fifth Circuit case, United States v. Pierre, 958 F.2d 1304, 1309 (5th Cir. 1992), that involved a border check point.

In Pierre, a border patrol agent stuck his head inside a car at a border check point to speak with a passenger about his citizenship. Upon poking his head in the car, he smelled marijuana. The Fifth Circuit analyzed the constitutionality of the officer sticking his head into the car using a totality of the circumstances analysis that looked to the extent of the privacy right, how much the border agent needed to see the passenger, and officer safety concerns.

Pierre in turn relied on New York v. Class, 475 U.S. 106 (1986), a case in which an officer, during a traffic stop, reached into the passenger compartment of the car to move papers that had obscured the car's VIN. The Court subjected that search to a general reasonableness analysis, holding that the search "was sufficiently unintrusive to be constitutionally permissible in light of the lack of a reasonable expectation of privacy in the VIN and the fact that the officers observed respondent commit two traffic violations."

In Jamison, Judge Reeves applies the totality of the circumstances inquiry from Pierre and Class to McClendon's search into the car. Applying the Pierre factors, Judge Reeves concludes that Officer McClendon's search of the car was on balance unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional.

III. The Qualified Immunity Analysis

Judge Reeves then concludes that McClendon is nonetheless entitled to qualified immunity. Because the reasonableness of searching the car is based on a totality of the circumstances, he reasons, we need factually similar caselaw telling us how the totality of the circumstances test should apply before the violation is clear.Here's how Judge Reeves frames the question:

The question in this case is whether it was clearly established that an officer who has made five sequential requests for consent to search a car, lied, promised leniency, and placed his arm inside of a person's car during a traffic stop while awaiting background check results has violated the Fourth Amendment. It is not.

It was not clearly established, Judge Reeves reasons, because there was no factually similar caselaw that could establish how the totality of the circumstances test applied. In particular, neither Pierre nor Class clearly established that the search here was unreasonable:

While it has been clearly established since at least 1986 that an officer may be held liable for an unreasonable "intrusion into the interior of a car," this is merely a "general statement of the law." Clearly established law must be particularized to the facts of the case.

In Pierre, the officer could not see into the suspect's back seat and had to put his head inside to speak to the suspect. In Class, the suspect had been removed from his car and the officer put his hand inside to move papers so that he could see the car's VIN. Neither case considered a police officer putting his arm inside a car while trying to get the driver to consent to a search. Both cases also found the officer's conduct to be reasonable, thus not providing "fair and clear warning" of what constitutes an unreasonable intrusion into a car.

"Given the lack of precedent that places the Constitutional question beyond debate," Judge Reeves concludes, "Jamison's claim cannot proceed." Officer McClendon is entitled to qualified immunity.

IV. Why I Think Judge Reeves Likely Was Mistaken

That brings me, finally, to why I think Judge Reeves was likely wrong. By focusing on Pierre (the check point case), and Class (the VIN case), Judge Reeves concluded that the constitutionality of an officer reaching into a car must be analyzed in the Jamison case using a totality-of-the-circumstances test. That created lots of room for qualified immunity because vague standards can't provide the clear notice to the police of a bright-line rule. You need similar cases before the vague standard becomes clear.

But I think that framing was problematic. Pierre and Class were specific kinds of Fourth Amendment cases that fit into a specific doctrinal box. Pierre was a border check point case. Class was a case about finding a VIN to check for traffic violations. Both are examples of non-law-enforcement so-called "special needs"-type searches. In that doctrinal box of Fourth Amendment law, the doctrine relaxes the usual probable cause requirement and instead applies a more relaxed reasonableness test given the non-law-enforcement interests (such as border inspections or traffic safety) advanced by the search.

But Jamison is not a special needs case. McClendon does not claim that he physically intruded into the car and patted the inside of the door for reasons of officer safety. He doesn't claim he did that to inspect Jamison's car for safety violations. There was no border checkpoint. McClendon's claim, as I understand it, is just that it didn't happen at all. Once we accept Jamison's claim that it did happen, as I believe we must at this stage of the case, we have a clear search (McClendon placing his hands in the car and patting down the inside of the door) that has absolutely zero legal justification and that is not subject to a general reasonableness test.

Outside the special-needs context, the Fourth Amendment law of searching a car is a clearly established bright-line rule. Because it's a bright-line rule, the violation becomes obvious even if there is no factually identical or closely similar case.

Consider how the Fifth Circuit stated the rule, citing cases, in Emesowum v. Cruz, 756 Fed.Appx. 374 (5th Cir. 2018): "It has long been clearly established that police may not search a car for evidence absent probable cause or consent." There's considerable Fifth Circuit caselaw not just establishing that rule, but also saying the rule is clearly established. See, e.g., Mack v. City of Abilene, 461 F.3d 547 (5th Cir. 2006) ("Appellees' search of a car in an open parking lot without a search warrant, without probable cause, without a concern for officer safety, and without consent violates clearly established law. A reasonable officer would not think the Constitution allows a random search of a vehicle where none of the above justifications apply.").

To be sure, qualified immunity can still apply if there are fair questions about how that clearly-established rule applies. For example, imagine an officer searched a car but was just slightly short of probable cause. Qualified immunity will apply because how the clearly established doctrine applies is tricky: the officer might reasonably believe that there was probable cause even if a court later disagrees. But when it's clear that the clearly established rule was violated, then qualified immunity can't apply.

My sense, then, is that McClendon did violate clearly established law. Sticking his arm inside the car and patting down the inside of the door was obviously a search. It was governed by the rule, long recognized in the Fifth Circuit as clearly-established law, that the officer needed some justification for that searchprobable cause, or a warrant, or a safety concern, or a special needs concern. But there's no plausible argument I am aware of that any of those justifications could apply. To use the Fifth Circuit's language in Mack, this was "a random search of a vehicle where none of the above justifications apply."

V. Conclusion

For these reasons, I tend to think Judge Reeves was mistaken to confer qualified immunity on McClendon as to that particular part of the case.

As always, I have posted my best sense of things, but I may be wrong. If you think I'm mistaken, I'd appreciate it if you could explain why so I can consider the argument and post a correction if I've erred. And there are lots of other fascinating doctrinal parts of the opinion to talk about, as well as of course the underlying policy debate over whether the Supreme Court should overturn qualified immunity.

Go here to read the rest:

Did Judge Reeves Reach the Correct Result in Jamison v. McClendon? - Reason

The Police Lie. All the Time. Can Anything Stop Them? – Slate

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Police patrol outside of a Manhattan courthouse on Jan. 9, 2015, in New York City.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Christopher Parham was grocery shopping for his boss when Henry Daverin, a plainclothes NYPD officer, approached him. Daverin accused Parham of driving recklessly on an illegal scooter without a helmet; a few minutes later, Parham was writhing in pain on the sidewalk outside. What happened during those few minutes was a matter of dispute. The NYPD said that Parham, a Black 19-year-old, had violently resisted arrest. Daverin and his colleagues said that they did not use force against him even though Parham had gruesome Taser burns all across his back.

Then surveillance video of the episode emergedand proved that nearly every detail of the NYPDs account was false. Parham had immediately cooperated with Daverin; he did not resist arrest. Nonetheless, Daverin and his colleagues had assaulted Parham, tackling him to the ground, then Tasing him over and over again. After Parhams attorneys released the videoand his local representatives raised concernsthe district attorney dropped all charges. Daverin, who had been named in at least 10 other misconduct lawsuits, was never disciplined, either for brutalizing Parham or for lying about it. Two years later, he remains on the force.

The police reaction to George Floyds murder, as well as the resulting nationwide protests, introduced many Americans to the fact that law enforcement officers lie. After officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, the Minneapolis Police Department issued a statement falsely claiming that Floyd physically resisted officers and excluding the fact that Chauvin knelt on Floyds neck for nearly nine minutes. When Buffalo police officers violently shoved a peaceful 75-year-old man, their department falsely asserted that the victim tripped and fell during a skirmish involving protesters.

This tendency to lie pervades all police work, not just high-profile violence, and it has the power to ruin lives. Law enforcement officers lie so frequentlyin affidavits, on post-incident paperwork, on the witness standthat officers have coined a word for it: testilying. Judges and juries generally trust police officers, especially in the absence of footage disproving their testimony. As courts reopen and convene juries, many of the same officers now confronting protesters in the street will get back on the stand.

Defense attorneys around the country believe the practice is ubiquitous; while that belief might seem self-serving, it is borne out by footage captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras. Yet those best positioned to crack down on testilying, police chiefs and prosecutors, have done little or nothing to stop it in most of the country. Prosecutors rely on officer testimony, true or not, to secure convictions, and merely acknowledging the problem would require the government to admit that there is almost never real punishment for police perjury.

Officers have a litany of incentives to lie, but there are two especially powerful motivators. First, most evidence obtained from an illegal search may not be used against the defendant at trial under the Fourth Amendments exclusionary rule; thus, officers routinely provide false justifications for searching or arresting a civilian. Second, when police break the law, they can (in theory) suffer real consequences, including suspension, dismissal, and civil lawsuits. In many notorious testilying cases, including Parhams, officers blame the victim for their own violent behavior in a bid to justify disproportionate use of force. And departments will reward officers whose arrests lead to convictions with promotions.

Two major cities are taking two different approaches to the problem. In New York City, prosecutors keep secret databases of unreliable police officers, though only two boroughs actually prohibit those officers from taking the stand. Without further reforms, however, this approach fails to address the underlying problem: Prosecutors are reluctant to accuse officers of lying in the first place, or to investigate an officers claims to learn if they align with reality. As a result, an officer who lies convincingly can evade the list indefinitely. In San Francisco, by contrast, District Attorney Chesa Boudin has sought to eradicate the incentives that lead police to lie in the first place. Both cities are witnessing an experiment play out in real time: What happens when the criminal justice system can no longer rely on its enforcers to tell the truth?

The New York Police Department provides a case study in how the criminal justice system rewards lying. One NYPD officer, David Griecocommonly known as Bulletheadhas been sued at least 32 times, costing the city $343,252, for civil rights violations, including excessive force and fabrication of evidence. Yet Grieco was promoted and prosecutors continued to call him to the stand long after a slew of his victims blew the whistle on his violent and lawless behavior. Judges continued to rely on his word to lock up defendants. And Griecos name did not appear on Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalezs long-secret list of officers with known credibility problems.

When you have a system of that kind of impunity, it snowballs. It teaches, encourages, and enforces badbehavior. Chesa Boudin, San Francisco district attorney

Grieco is a symptom of a much deeper problem. Widespread lying about Fourth Amendment violations is at least as old as the exclusionary rule itself. The Supreme Court applied this rule nationwide in 1961s Mapp v. Ohio, preventing state prosecutors from relying upon illegally obtained evidence to secure a conviction. Mapp spawned a surge in dropsy cases: Rather than admit to an illegal search, police claimed that defendants simply dropped drugs on the ground in front of them, since evidence found in plain view can be used at trial. Studies of criminal trials in New York City found that, after Mapp, police began lying about arrests to ensure that evidence would be admissible. In the early 1970s, the New York district attorney even told the New York Court of Appeals that, since Mapp, officers lied on the stand in a substantial number of dropsy cases. Two decades later, the Mollen Commissiona famous investigation of the NYPDfound that officers routinely engaged in perjury and falsification of records, the most common form of police corruption.

When NYPD officers are accused of illegal behavior, the department itself usually investigates, then conceals its findings and imposes, at worst, a slap on the wrist, like brief paid leave. Prosecutors could separately investigate, but they have little incentive to question an officers story: If they know an officer is lying, they cannot legally rely on his testimony; if they remain in the dark, they can still use his perjury to clinch a conviction. Moreover, prosecutors and police work together to put defendants behind bars, developing a team mentality that prevents prosecutors from scrutinizing officers testimony with appropriate skepticism. As long as officers lies cannot be proved false, prosecutors have little reason to question their account of events. As a New York assistant district attorney told the Mollen Commission: Taking money is considered dirty, but perjury for the sake of an arrest is accepted. Its become more casual.

Occasionally, the system will catch these lies. Yvette, an Egyptian American who lives in New York City, believes cross-examination of deceitful officers likely secured her acquittal. (Her name has been changed at her request to protect her from retaliation.) In 2017, Yvette witnessed three NYPD officers arresting the owner of a Brooklyn hookah lounge. As the police were detaining him, he handed Yvette his phone and asked her to call his mom. The officers promptly attacked her, she told me, severely damaging her knee. When she begged for an ambulance, the officers ignored her. Yvette eventually called one herself and learned at the hospital that the attack tore her ACL. When two officers visited her bedside, she asked if they were going to take her statement. They explained that they were there to arrest her for allegedly attacking the officers at the hookah lounge.

What these officers did not know was that Yvette had recently recovered from multiple surgeries on her knee, one of which resulted in a staph infection. It had been a mere two weeks since Yvette learned how to walk without a cane again. Now the NYPD was accusing her of a violent assault.

At a three-day bench trial, Yvettes public defender, Theodore Hastings, grilled the cops about their account. Two officers claimed that Yvette had attacked them at the exact same time, a physical impossibility. A third alleged that Yvette had run about 500 feet before lunging at the officers.

Yvette herself also testified. The judge heard my story and understood and felt my pain, she told me. She saw I really wasnt lying. The judge acquitted Yvette of all charges.

But hoping a judge will vindicate the truth is a luxury most wrongfully accused people cannot afford. Not everyone has a medical record or video footage to prove their account. If an individual goes to trial, they have a right to access the arresting officers record of misconduct because it could help prove their innocence. But the vast majority of criminal cases do not go to trial, and until recently, defense attorneys in New York City could not obtain officers disciplinary records due to a notorious shield called Section 50-A. The state repealed this law in June, and Mayor Bill de Blasio has since promised to publish an online database of police disciplinary records. With New York Citys prosecutors still fighting to conceal their do-not-call lists, it will now be left to defense attorneys, activists, and the public to track untrustworthy officers.

Across the country in San Francisco, newly elected District Attorney Chesa Boudin is taking a different approach. Boudin, a former public defender and staunch critic of mass incarceration, confronted testilying head-on. Police are allowed to lie and get away with it over and over and over again in matters big and small, he told me. I can think of dozens of examples where police were either able to get away withor faced no consequences if they were impeached and called out on their dishonesty. When you have a system of that kind of impunity, it snowballs. It teaches, encourages, and enforces bad behavior.

Boudin has minimal control over the SFPD itself. But he has created a robust do not call list of officers whom his office will not call to the stand as a witness. Officers who are caught testilying go on the list, as do those who commit other forms of misconduct. Boudin has also mandated careful assessment of charges like assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. When police use excessive force or brutalize someone, Boudin said, the most common outcome is that the police arrest the person and ask prosecutors to charge that person with resisting arrest or assaulting an officer. He now requires his staff to review video footage of the incident before filing those charges. Its not because we think officers are lying most of the time, he said. We just know that, until we watch video footage, we have no ability to distinguish between a testilying police report to cover up excessive force and legitimate criminal activity of assaulting an officer.

A third reform may have more direct practical consequences for victims of routine testilying designed to avoid the exclusionary rule. Too often, officers find a trivial reason to stop someone, or just make one up, then discover drugs or weapons in the ensuing search. The target of these pretextual stops is usually a person of color. We know driving while black is a reality for far too many people, Boudin said. If you have dark skin, youre more likely to get pulled over, more likely to get searched, and more likely to get arrested. Youre also more likely to have force used during your arrest than if youre white.

To disincentivize this behavior, Boudins office stopped charging any contraband case that grew out of a pretextual stop. As an example, he cited searches initiated after a stop for some minor traffic offense. Our vehicle code makes it possible for police to legally stop any car, Boudin said. We all know that most drivers do not come to complete stops at stop signs and most police dont enforce that law most of the time. If the police do pull over a driver for an incomplete stop, and the encounter results in an arrest for possession of drugs or guns, his office will not bring charges.

Ilona Solomon, a San Francisco public defender and former colleague of Boudins, admires his work but remains skeptical that he has the power to change the citys broken law enforcement apparatus. There is an entrenched culture in the DAs office that is very resistant to reform, Solomon told me. Chesa cant fix all the problems immediately, and some things he doesnt have control over.

Still, in his seven months on the job, Boudin has made headway in the face of sustained opposition from the SFPD. Solomon pointed to two recent cases involving the same officer, Robert Gilson. In 2017, a California judge found Gilson had changed his testimony regarding a search and arrest, deeming him not reliable. Yet prosecutors continued to call him to the stand, and judges continued to paper over his inconsistencies.

In one recent case, Gilson stopped a Samoan man who was holding a bag of marijuana, which is legal in California. After a lengthy search, the officer discovered bindles of cocaine. Gilsons reason for the stop shifted: At the time, he said he wanted to search bulges in the mans pocket; later, he testified that he sought to determine if the man was holding an illegal amount of marijuana. A judge accepted this reasoning and refused to suppress the cocaine. In another case, Gilson stopped a Black man, justifying the action because the man was jaywalking. After Gilson threatened to strip search the man, he let the officer search him, uncovering a small stash of cocaine. A judge refused to suppress the evidence, crediting Gilsons testimony that he believed the man was concealing drugs due to his worried demeanor during the search.

Solomon represented both men. She told Boudin that, in both cases, Gilson had engaged in blatant racial profiling. Boudin agreed and dismissed all charges. Still, Boudins office could not say whether it had placed Gilson on its do not call list, which is not public. The SFPD confirmed Gilson was assigned to field operations but said they could not comment further on personnel matters.

The system cannot exist without it. It would grind to ahalt. Bennett Capers, Fordham Law professor

Kate Levine, a Cardozo Law professor and former public defender who studies police accountability, told me shes skeptical that patchwork solutions like a do not call list can ever stamp out testilying. Maryanne Kaishian, a public defender in Brooklyn, agreed, noting that its easy for clean officers to conceal the involvement of a known dirty cop by keeping his name off all paperwork. Nor do these lists remove officers strong incentive to lie: Police are more likely to get promoted if they effect more arrests that result in successful prosecutions. Promotions come with more prestige and a higher salary. Prosecutors still have an incentive not to question officers blue lies.

To end testilying, Levine said, I would entirely change incentive structures. Officers would be rewarded for reporting on their colleagues lies and scrutinized when their stories do not line up. They would no longer be able to coordinate their stories before testifying, a common procedure that lets them iron out potential inconsistencies. Nor could they watch bodycam footage before providing their version of events, another perk thats not provided to civilians. Prosecutors would be rewarded for rooting out unconstitutional behavior. Officers who lie, and prosecutors who tolerate them, would be terminated immediately. In short, the system would encourage police officers and prosecutors to focus less on winning cases and more on following the rules, even when a constitutional violation stands in the way of a conviction.

What would happen if a city really tried to eliminate testilying? I posed this question to Bennett Capers, a former federal prosecutor and Fordham Law professor who studies police lies. In all honesty, I think my initial reaction would be that the system cannot exist without it, he told me. It would grind to a halt. Capers said that run of the mill policing would have to change. We are doing about 13 million misdemeanor arrests a year. With a lot of those small crimes, theres fudging. Nobodys paying attention.

Police, in other words, would have to stop arresting so many people for minor crimes. Once cities stopped deploying officers to harass misdemeanants, they could shrink their police force, reducing the number of encounters between cops and civilians. Agencies might then dedicate those resources to investigative and detective work in order to build solid cases against suspects, thereby creating a higher bar for which cases to pursue. Prosecutors would be forced to make a more careful calculation about the risk of bringing a case to trial and drop cases that rested on a search of dubious legality. In the short term, the legitimacy of the entire system might take a hitthough only because its participants confronted the illegitimate basis of so many convictions. Over time, however, the system might regain the legitimacy it lost with a preference for punishment over justice.

We all wanted to see justice happen, Capers recalled from his time as a prosecutor. And law enforcement often thinks that, in the interest of justice, the rules get in the way. Im not aware of ever saying, Does this story sound quite right? We benefited from small lies.

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The Police Lie. All the Time. Can Anything Stop Them? - Slate

The Court of Justice of the European Union in Schrems II: The impact of GDPR on data flows and national security – Brookings Institution

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The recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decision in Schrems II finding that the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is invalid and its additional findings with respect to standard contractual clauses, closes off key mechanisms for transferring persona data from the EU to the U.S., with important impacts on trade and the development of technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI).

This is the second time the CJEU has found that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mechanisms for transferring personal data from the EU to the U.S. is invalid.1 The earlier CJEU decision in Schrems I found that the European Commission adequacy decisions with respect to the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor was invalid.2 An adequacy decision is a finding by the European Commission that a third countries privacy laws are essentially equivalent to the rights and obligations under the GDPR.3 The importance of data flows for transatlantic economic relations necessitates that the U.S. and EU engage in a third attempt to develop a mechanism that can enable data flows and pass muster with the CJEU. However, whether this remains a fruitful path forward is uncertain in light of what we now know about the approach of the CJEU to adequacy under GDPR. In particular, the focus on how government agencies access data for national security purposes is becoming the key barrier to data flows between the EU and the US. More broadly, the CJEU decision makes clear that all the key GDPR mechanisms for transferring personal data from the EU to third countries are unstable, namely adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses (SCCs) and binding corporate rules (BCRs).4 In this respect, the CJEU decision will have ramifications beyond its immediate impact on data flows between the EU and the U.S. The following addresses the explicit CJEU findings on adequacy and SCC as well as the broader issue of how to balance national security and privacy. The paper concludes with observations about the potential impact of the decisions for the U.S. and beyond and suggests some ways forward.

In this column I focus on two key issues at play in this most recent Schrems case: (1) the disconnect between application of EU law to national security agencies in third countries compared with domestic security agencies; and (2) and the severe limits the decision places on existing GDPR mechanisms for transferring personal data from the EU to third countries. I also offer observations on what this will means for data flows, and in particular the implications for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A core issue in both Schrems cases was how national security agencies operate to preserve security and also ensure sufficient levels of privacy, and whether this is consistent with GDPR. The attempt by GDPR to extend EU privacy rights and obligations to countries and entities receiving EU personal data reflects a broad dynamic, which is that as the global free flow of data increases the scope for national security agencies to access the personal data of everyone, national privacy standards need to be globalized as well to be effective. Yet, governments often provide different levels of privacy protection and redress depending on whether a person is a citizen and where they are located. Under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the U.S. provides different levels of legal redress to people in the U.S. compared to those outside the U.S., including access to U.S. courts. GDPR in effect seeks to extend the full suite of rights and obligations available in the EU under GDPR, to any country receiving EU personal data.

Underlying the CJEU decision in Schrems I and Schrems II that invalidated the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor agreement and in this most recent case, has invalidated the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, is a disconnect between the GDPRs international impacts, and its domestic application to member state national security agencies. In both Schrems cases, the issue was U.S. government access to personal data for national security purposes and the rights of EU citizens in the U.S. to judicial review and redress. In both cases the CJEU found that the U.S. fell short in that the U.S. was not according EU personal data the protection and rights of redress available in the EU. When it comes to access to data for national security purposes, under EU law, including GDPR, any limitation on EU rights to privacy must be necessary and proportionate.5At the same time, national security is the sole responsibility of member states.6In effect, each EU state is given the discretion to balance national security needs with data privacy rights. Yet, the EU is not according a similar discretion to third countries. In fact, GDPR uses the threat of withdrawing access to EU personal data as a tool to seek reform of other countrys security agencies to reflect the CJEU notion of proportionality, while exempting member state governments from similar expectations or threats. This effectively sets up the CJEU as the arbiter of whether other countries approaches to accessing data for national security purposes are proportional.7

This disconnect between GDPRs international and domestic application when it comes to national security also risks EU demands becoming increasingly detached from the reality and practices of national security agencies. On the one hand, the outcome in the U.S. between security and privacy reflects U.S. constitutional constrains, national security needs and privacy concerns. In the EU, it does not appear that any such balancing took place, leaving the EU approach to privacy untouched in important ways by the equities and needs of member state national security agencies. The result is a set of demands on third country national security agencies that the EU does not, and could not, make of its own national security agencies. This dissonance between what the EU is expecting of other governments and what it is able to ask of its member states is compounded by various findings that EU data may in fact be safer and accorded better due process when in the U.S. than in the EU.8

The issue with how the U.S. government accesses data for national security is what lead the CJEU in both Schrems cases to invalidate the European Commissions adequacy finding with respect to the U.S. This Schrems decision also makes clear that not only adequacy decisions but also SCC and BCRs are much more limited than originally thought. Another consequence of the Schrems decision is to underscore the fragility of these GDPR data transfer mechanism. As the Irish High Court and CJEU overturns a second adequacy finding by the Commission, the CJEU has made clear that SCCs (and BCRs) may require data flows to be terminated at any point should the processor in the third country be unable to comply with GDPR, either due to requests from a third government for access to data or due to changes in legislation. These outcomes will inevitably increase risk for businesses that rely on cross-border transfers of personal data. This will affect not only the large tech companies but also those in manufacturing and services that are increasingly data driven.

To understand the implications of this decision for these GDPR transfer mechanisms, it is helpful to reflect on the institutional incentives and priorities driving the different finding by the European Commission on the one hand, and EU domestic courts and the CJEU on the other. The European Commission in making an adequacy decision weighs a range of goals that are in tension with each other. While focused on assessing whether U.S. laws and practice are adequate under GDPR, the Commission also takes into account the impact of stopping flows of personal data on international trade, investment and diplomatic relations. In contrast, the process for challenging an adequacy finding rests upon findings by a National Data Commissioner, findings by domestic courts, and finally the CJEU. None of these bodies is expected to consider the range of issues at play for the Commission. Instead, the question is more narrowly whether the third country provides a level of privacy protection consistency with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. It is these competing institutional incentives and focus that helps explain the different conclusions as to whether the U.S. confers adequacy.

These internal institutional tensions raise several issues for the EU. First is the validity of other adequacy findings. For instance, what does the Commission really know as to how national security agencies in Israel, Japan or Argentina collect, use or share EU personal data. Second is the stability of any adequacy findings. The narrow focus of the CJEU on consistency with the EU Charter and demand for essential equivalence leads very little room for different approaches to privacy in other countries, reducing scope for adequacy findings and to using any transfer mechanism under GDPR. When it comes to determining whether the actions of other governments in collecting data for national security purposes are consistent with GDPR and the EU Charter, the vague standard of proportionality has led the Commission and CJEU to different conclusions regarding the adequacy of U.S. limits and safeguards.9Taken together, this suggests that all adequacy decisions by the Commission must be treated as potentially suspect and open to being declared invalid by the CJEU.

Another impact of this Schrems case is to limit the availability of SCC (and BCRs).10The issue with SCC (and BCRs) is that it is a contractual obligation that does not bind other governments. Therefore, where practices by national security agencies for accessing personal data are inconsistent with GDPR, SCCs do not obviously remedy this problem. The CJEU nevertheless held that SCCs remain valid where the controller adduces additional safeguards that rectify these gaps.11It is not clear what these safeguards are or how they could work in practice. Another wrinkle here is the finding by CJEU of the accountability for processors in the EU to ensure that the legislation in the third country allows the data processor to comply with the SCC, before transferring personal data.12It is not clear whether this merely requires comparing third party laws with GDPR or also the practice of national security agencies, which is harder to assess but arguably what should matter the most.

The result is that after Schrems II, all GDPR mechanisms for transferring personal data to third countries are much more limited in scope, durability and stability.

The first thing this Schrems case makes clear is the extent of the tension created by GDPR between balancing access to and use of data, and the privacy rights and obligations in GDPR (Mattoo and Joshua Meltzer 2018). The EU view is that they can have strong privacy and a strong digital economy, including cross-border data flows, and this is likely correct at a certain level of abstraction. However, the details of GDPR now make clear how GDPR sets up real tensions and trade-offs in terms of getting what the EU wants under GDPR in terms of privacy, and access to and use of data consistent with a robust engagement in the digital economy and digital trade (Jia et al. 2019).

In practical terms, Schrems II calls into question the availability of adequacy findings, SCCs (and BCRs) as reliable and stable mechanisms for cross-border data transfers. If the U.S. is still not adequate, then it must be the case that other countries, including China will never be adequate and not only that, but it is hard to see how any Chinese company collecting EU personal data can transfer it back to China consistently with GDPR. Large companies may have to localize data storage and process in the EU.

Yet for small companies, the impacts are most pronounced. For many, setting up in the EU is not an option. There are SCCs, but depending on the government, additional safeguards may be needed for SCCs to be viable. Again, it is unclear what such safeguards may be or whether SMEs could implement them even if they exist. The CJEU decision also establishes an obligation on processors in third country to notify controllers in the EU of changes in legislation that prevent compliance with a SCC. This is an additional monitoring burden on SMEs in third countries and failure here can expose these companies to liability for harm caused to EU data subjects. The difficulties with SCCs also create additional costs and disincentives for EU companies to develop digital supply chains with SMEs in third countries.

As discussed, another issue at play is the balance between how security agencies use data for security, and also protect personal privacy in a globalized world. It is likely that GDPR is too unilateral and too EU-specific, and that national security is too important, for GDPR to lead to the types of changes the EU needs for an adequacy finding to work. The EU bet with GDPR has been that the economic importance to U.S. companies of allowing cross-border data flows of EU personal data will be enough to force the U.S. to reform how its national security agencies collect and use data. This has been a somewhat reasonable bet so far in that the U.S. has shown a willingness to negotiate and engage in some reform. But even here, U.S. reforms in order to obtain an adequacy decision have been limited and as we now know, not enough. It is also the case that the trend is not in the EUs favor. For while the economic importance of data grows, so do the security issues related to data flows. In fact, the trend is arguably towards security becoming a more important organizing principle for how digital economies develop and where data flows. Given this, the risk is that GDPR fails to lead to enough U.S. reform that can justify another adequacy finding, forcing the EU into self-imposed data isolation. In such an outcome, large U.S. and other companies will still service the EU market but the EU will become increasingly closed, reducing access to large global data pools and the opportunities for insights and the machine learning that underpin AI developments that the EU seeks to develop (European Commission 2020).

Given these risks and developments, what is needed is an international agreement on how to balance national security and access to data, with other key goals such as privacy. Such an outcome could be deemed an international agreement under GDPR article 45(2(c) that would support an adequacy finding and by extension, short up access to SCC and BCRs.

Authors note: The author was an expert witness for Facebook in the latest proceedings before the Irish High Court.

European Commission (2020), White Paper on Artificial Intelligence A European Approach to excellence and trust, COM(2020) 65 final.

Jia, J, G Jin and L Wagman (2019), The short-run effects of GDPR on technology venture investment, VoxEU.org, 7 January.

Mattoo, A and J P Meltzer (2018), Resolving the conflict between privacy and digital trade, VoxEU.org, 23 May.

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The Court of Justice of the European Union in Schrems II: The impact of GDPR on data flows and national security - Brookings Institution

Calls for police reform and racial justice spur a flurry of resolutions before the ABA House – ABA Journal

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Annual Meeting

By Matt Reynolds

August 4, 2020, 4:53 pm CDT

Protests like this one, the Black Clergy United March for Justice on June 13 in Tampa, Florida, prompted a number of resolutions before the House of Delegates at the ABA Annual Meeting. Photo from Shutterstock.com.

The ABA House of Delegates responded forcefully to calls for police reform at this year's annual meeting, passing resolutions calling for a curtailing of the qualified immunity doctrine blocking civil lawsuits and for heightened oversight of law enforcement through a national use-of-force database.

The House adopted Resolution 301A on qualified immunity with the backing of a vast majority of delegates at Tuesdays session. The legal doctrine has become a focal point for backers of police reform who see it as an obstacle to accountability for police misconduct.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take on eight cases related to qualified immunity. Critics would like the court to review the doctrine, which they say shields officers accused of using excessive force or unlawful searches.

Absent a ruling from the Supreme Court, a report accompanying the resolution says legislatures should now review the doctrine to decide whether to curtail it.

Paul Wolfson of the ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice argued that without ending or limiting the doctrine, people who are victims of police misconduct would have no avenue for relief.

In recent months, weve all been vividly reminded of the need to deter and remedy unconstitutional conduct by law enforcement officers, Wolfson said. Our fundamental constitutional rights will be meaningless unless those who are injured have a forceful remedy.

On Monday the House adopted Resolution 116A, which encourages the collection of records and data on use of deadly force, another flashpoint in the national debate over police brutality and racial injustice.

The passing of the resolution comes after both Republicans and Democrats have called for greater oversight of police officers through federal data collection.

Robert Harris, director of the Los Angeles Police Protective Leaguethe union representing the Los Angeles Police Departmentsays a national registry is a step in the right direction but said that the ABAs resolution on qualified immunity misses the mark.

If the goal is to hold officers accountable, theres a better way to do that, Harris said in an interview.

Harris said that people filing lawsuits over police misconduct may still win damages, despite the legal doctrine. His union supports stronger use of force policies and officer training, as well as technology that flags and weeds out problem officers, he said.

On Tuesday, the House also passed and adopted Resolution 10I encouraging the creation of legislation outlawing lynching.

A federal law to criminalize lynching, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, has stalled in Congress, California Lawyers Association president Emilio Varanini said. Attorney Laura Farber said that it was time for the ABA to take a stand as she urged delegates to pass the resolution.

Im also disheartened, sad and frankly a little disgusted to know that here in 2020 we have not yet, and Congress has not yet passed legislation making lynching a hate crimea federal crime, Farber said.

Resolution 301C, also adopted Tuesday, asks the government to desist from using force to suppress lawful First Amendment activity. That comes after President Donald Trump sent federal officers to Portland, Oregon, who fired tear gas and stun grenades at demonstrators and hauled some protesters into unmarked vehicles.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum spoke in favor of the resolution. She said that in some cases, protesters had been grabbed off the street as they were leaving demonstrations. Federal officials had assaulted peaceful protesters, including the Wall of Moms activist group, she said.

The federal governments actions in Portland served as a direct assault on the right to organize, to assemble, to march and to protest, Rosenblum said. I sincerely hope never again to see these infringements upon peoples First and Fourth amendment rights in my city or any other.

On Tuesday, the House also passed Resolution 301B to make Juneteenth a paid legal holiday. Black Americans have long celebrated June 19 to the mark the day that slaves in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed. Support for a national federal holiday has gained steam since the death of George Floyd while in police custody in May.

Delegate Deborah Enix-Ross said she could think of no better way for the ABA to show support for a more just society and an understanding of our nations history.

I know there are some who may have concerns about the economic impact of another federal holiday. But I would hope that we will never again equate the evils of slavery with economics. There is simply no price on doing what is right, Enix-Ross said.

ABA president-elect Reginald Turner voiced his support for the resolution and said slavery was the nations original sin.

Juneteenth is an appropriate commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. It should be a national holiday, to be celebrated by all, Turner said.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the ABAs annual meeting was held online for the first time in its history. Against the backdrop of recent protests, the meeting became a forum for how the legal community can address police brutality and racial injustice.

In her final speech before she handed the gavel to incoming ABA President Patricia Lee Refo, Judy Perry Martinez urged lawyers to root out racism.

Let none of us say the job is too big or the problems of racism run too deep, Martinez said. This is our torch to carry. Lawyers have a special responsibility to fight injustice, especially injustice caused by laws and practices that are racist and unjust in word or effect.

At a the ABA forum Justice and PolicingA Path Forward, on Friday, Martinez asked Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., about his thoughts on police defunding and qualified immunity.

ABA President Judy Perry Martinez interviews Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

The senator said he was no stranger to discrimination. He said that in the last 20 years, he has been stopped by state or local police officers 18 times, including seven times while he was in office. Scott said that underlines the importance of voting in local elections.

Those are the folks directly in positions of power to determine the type of local law enforcement you have, Scott said. When we dont vote in those elections, we are actually taking a step back from the one place where police reform comes to life immediately.

Scott, the GOPs only African American senator, led a Republican bill on police reform that would require departments to use body cameras and limit the use of chokeholds. However, the bill would not loosen the qualified immunity doctrine. Scott bristled against the notion of defunding police departments. He said he instead supports a strategy of providing police units with mental health experts to help prevent incidents from escalating.

The concept of defunding the police is the scariest thought Ive ever heard as it relates to communities of color and the vulnerable communities, Scott told Martinez.

The report that accompanies Resolution 301A says qualified immunity makes it virtually impossible for people who have suffered violence at the polices hands to obtain redress through civil court actions. The law also means that individual officers are rarely held to account for their actions, the report adds.

Without an effective civil remedy, serious abuses of governmental power will persist unchecked, many motivated by racial discrimination. That is not acceptable in the United States in the 21st century, the report states.

Several states have moved forward on overhauling the definition of qualified immunity. Colorado passed a law in June that would make it easier for people injured by the police to override a qualified immunity defense and claim up to $25,000 in damages, Forbes reports. Massachusetts legislators are proposing police reforms that would curtail qualified immunity.

Resolution 116A encourages governments to collect accurate records and data on deadly force incidents. The resolution encourages the creation of laws that would mandate an independent investigation if someone is killed during an encounter with law enforcement or in custody.

The resolution also calls for a national database that would record disciplinary actions against officers and complaints of excessive force. That could prevent officers with a history of using excessive force from moving from one jurisdiction to another.

The ABA Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice and the ABA Coalition on Racial and Ethnic Justice co-sponsored the resolution. Speaking in support, former ABA President Robert Grey Jr. said demands for racial equality had grown louder because of recent events, including the death of George Floyd.

It is now an American movement and one that demands accountability and responsibility, Grey said.

President Bill Clintons sweeping crime bill in 1994 mandated the federal collection of use-of-force data from police departments. But reporting has not been enforced and is inconsistent.

The report that accompanied Resolution 116A estimates that in 2019, police killed more than 1,000 people but says those numbers are based on efforts by the Washington Post and other outlets to capture data. A central database is vital to ensure up-to-date and accurate information, the report says.

The House on Monday also adopted Resolution 106A on restorative justice. The resolution urges prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys and others in the criminal justice system to consider an approach that prescribes meetings between offenders and victims that are facilitated by trained specialists.

Follow along with our coverage of the 2020 ABA Annual Meeting.

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Calls for police reform and racial justice spur a flurry of resolutions before the ABA House - ABA Journal

Coronavirus scams sweeping the nation – Las Vegas Sun

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By David Lazarus

Monday, Aug. 10, 2020 | 2 a.m.

There you are, sitting at home near the phone or in front of your computer, working remotely or just trying to stave off boredom amid the pandemic.

That makes you typical of many if not most Americans.

It also makes you a sitting duck.

Just ask Phil Moore, 73, who told me hes getting about 10 scam calls a week, typically using a spoofed phone number designed to trick his caller ID system.

It just blows me away that the government hasnt done a thing about it, Moore said with barely contained anger.

In fact, government officials are well aware that not only are scam calls on the rise as a result of so many of us being stuck at home, but theres been a steady increase in rackets involving the coronavirus.

The Federal Trade Commission told lawmakers that it has received more than 131,000 complaints relating to the pandemic. Among issues raised by consumers, the agency said, are complaints involving unsubstantiated health claims, robocalls, privacy and data security concerns, sham charities, online shopping fraud, phishing scams, work-at-home scams, credit scams, and fake mortgage and student loan relief schemes.

Not least among these concerns, the FTC said, is the rise of government impostors attempting to scam consumers out of their stimulus checks.

It is often the case that, following reports of a health scare, deceptive advertising or marketing touting miracle cures quickly emerge, Andrew Smith, director of the FTCs Bureau of Consumer Protection, testified at a Senate hearing. The COVID-19 pandemic has put this cause-and-effect scenario into overdrive.

Like Moore, Ive been receiving a ton of scammy robocalls, typically in the form of a recording masquerading as an actual call from a credit card company or warranty servicer.

The tech company YouMail, which tracks robocalls, says Americans received 3.3 billion of them in June. That translates to more than 111 million a day, or 4.6 million per hour.

As for dubious coronavirus health claims, dozens of complaints have been received by California officials regarding chiropractors claiming they can remedy either the coronavirus or COVID-19.

They cant. In fact, the Canada-based World Federation of Chiropractic, representing chiropractors in 89 countries, declared in March that there is no credible scientific evidence that chiropractic spinal adjustment/manipulation confers or boosts immunity.

Yet many dubious businesspeople continue to prey on peoples fears of the pandemic, promising safe harbor when what theyre really offering is to sink your financial boat.

The FTCs Smith cited in his testimony the example of Marc Ching, a Southern California entrepreneur with a controversial history as an animal-rights activist.

As I wrote in April, Ching agreed to a preliminary order from the FTC barring him from claiming that any product sold by his Sherman Oaks supplements company, Whole Leaf Organics, treats, prevents or reduces the risk of COVID-19; or treats cancer; or cures, mitigates or treats any disease.

The agencys complaint against Ching included a screenshot from the Whole Leaf Organics website touting one of his supplements as the perfect way to strengthen your immunity against pathogens like COVID-19, the coronavirus.

These sorts of pitches also have caught the attention of the Food and Drug Administration.

Our experience with previous outbreaks such as swine flu and avian influenza has shown that fraudulent cures or elixirs will emerge during any public health crisis, sold by unscrupulous actors capitalizing on the fears of vulnerable consumers, Catherine Hermsen, a senior FDA official, told lawmakers.

In the past months, we have seen an unprecedented proliferation of fraudulent products related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and more than ever before, the internet is being used as the primary vehicle for marketing these unproven products, she said.

The credit reporting agency TransUnion said in a recent report that online scams such as phishing and bogus charities are on the increase because of the pandemic, and that 9% of U.S. consumers have been victimized by fraud since the outbreak of the coronavirus.

Fraudsters are always looking to capitalize on major events to carry out their schemes, and it has become apparent through our research that COVID-19 is an exceptionally major event for fraud, said Shai Cohen, TransUnions senior vice president of global fraud and identity solutions.

The FTC and consumer advocates say its especially important at a time like this to keep your guard up. That includes:

Hanging up on robocalls. Also, ask your phone-service provider what resources are available to help keep scammers at bay, such as filters like Nomorobo.

Ignoring anyone who claims to have a cure for the coronavirus or COVID-19. No such thing yet exists.

Not falling for any scheme that involves sending money to someone you dont know. And if youre ever instructed to make a payment using gift cards, walk away.

Never giving personal information particularly financial info to strangers.

Paying no attention to anyone claiming on the phone to be a government official. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, will never call with a demand that you pay back taxes.

Its too much, an irate Moore told me. Someone needs to do something.

State and federal authorities are trying their best. But if the pandemic has taught us anything, its that we have to protect ourselves.

David Lazarus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

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Coronavirus scams sweeping the nation - Las Vegas Sun

Five new restaurants to try in Las Vegas – Eater Vegas

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CHINATOWN Saigon Baguette brings banh mi with bread made in house daily. Diners can stuff them with pork belly, Vietnamese deli meats, meatballs, lemongrass chicken, barbecue pork, and more for less than $6.50 each. The restaurant also offers pork bao, shrimp spring rolls, pate som, and Vietnamese bao. Takeout and delivery available, as well as a patio. The restaurant in Golden Springs Plaza is open Thursday through Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 5845 Spring Mountain Road #15, 702-333-0976.

CHINATOWN Seoul Tofu specializes in sundubu-jjigae, a stew made with freshly curdled soft tofu. Diners can add clams, shrimp, oysters, and beef; mushrooms; seafood; bean paste; ham and sausage; and more to the $12.95 bowls, and order a level of heat from plain to extra spicy. The restaurant is open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. with takeout and delivery options as well. 5980 Spring Mountain Road, 702-272-1081.

WESTSIDE Spice Indian Cuisine uses only halal certified meats in its dishes, and offers a variety of vegetarian options. The restaurant has four family packs that range in price from $75 to $150. Curry pots, tandoor dishes, South Indian specialties, and roti and naan options make the menu. Takeout and delivery available. The restaurant is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. 4001 S. Decatur Blvd., 702-202-0333.

SOUTHEAST Down 2 Earth Plant Based Cuisine abides by the motto, #NoBonesNoBlood. Chef Stephen Parker II worked at the Rio as well as a vegan restaurant, juice bar, and meal prep company before opening his restaurant. Southern fried oysters, crispy Brussels sprouts, a tofu teriyaki sandwich, barbecued jackfruit sandwich, and pesto pizza are just some of the menu items. Takeout and delivery available as well. Open from 1 to 6 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 955 Grier Drive, 702-625-3234.

WESTSIDE Rusi South Indian Flavour brings dosa, curry pots, biryani, and more southern India dishes make the menu. Takeout and delivery options available. The restaurant is open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 to 10:30 p.m., and from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday. 4850 W. Flamingo Road, 702-444-0201.

Every Restaurant and Bar That Opened in Las Vegas: 2020 Edition [ELV]

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5925 Spring Mountain Road, Las Vegas, NV 89146 (702) 333-0976

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Five new restaurants to try in Las Vegas - Eater Vegas

‘Heavy lifting:’ West is big, tough, deep and wide open – Las Vegas Sun

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Published Monday, Aug. 10, 2020 | 4:05 p.m.

Updated 9 minutes ago

The top of the Western Conference features the defending Stanley Cup champion, a 2018 finalist with even more talent and an MVP front-runner.

Good luck picking a favorite.

The Vegas Golden Knights earned the top seed in the West by winning all three of their games in a round-robin tournament against the Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars and St. Louis Blues. But the Avalanche still have Nathan MacKinnon and are healthier and deeper than before, and there's no sleeping on the Blues after they muscled their way to the Cup.

Its deep, Vegas coach Peter DeBoer said. There are no easy paths. ... Were happy to be a part of it, were happy we have the No. 1 seed, but we know theres a lot of heavy lifting here left to do.

Heavy is the name of the game out West, where size is as big an element of success as scoring. St. Louis is the standard, but the Calgary Flames bruised their way into the first round by beating up Winnipeg and present an obstacle for the third-seeded Stars.

The West, theres a lot of heavy, hard teams that play a pretty simple game and the Blues are obviously the best at it being the champs, Dallas captain Jamie Benn said. I think Calgarys pretty similar. They got some pretty rugged forwards that play the game hard, so we have to be prepared for that.

Reigning playoff MVP Ryan O'Reilly said the Blues are aware of the difficult road back to the final but are only preparing for their first-round opponent: the faster and smaller Vancouver Canucks. He and Canucks coach Travis Green mirrored each other minutes apart Monday by each saying his team must play its best hockey to win.

The same goes for the eighth-seeded Chicago Blackhawks going up against Vegas, and the seventh-seeded Arizona Coyotes against Colorado. Hart Trophy finalist Nathan MacKinnon is among the best players in the world and has a strong supporting cast with captain Gabriel Landeskog, winger Mikko Rantanen and rookie defenseman Cale Makar.

Theyre built to win right now," Arizona coach Rick Tocchet said. Theyre highly skilled, theyre hard on the puck. ... They got arguably one of the best players if not the best player in the league. Just a well-rounded team."

MacKinnon showed his value in the regular season by carrying the banged-up Avalanche to second in the West. Now he's ready to try to push them toward the Cup.

Every year you play in the NHL, you realize you don't have many chances, MacKinnon said. For me, this feels like my first real chance to win, which really excites me and I think it excites everyone.

INJURY CONCERNS

There are injury questions surrounding three Western teams' leading scorers, including Vegas winger Max Pacioretty's anticipated playoff debut for Game 1 against Chicago. Pacioretty hadn't entered the Edmonton bubble until last week, though general manager Kelly McCrimmon said the 31-year-old cleared quarantine in time to skate four days in a row and practice Monday.

Pacioretty being ready to go makes the Golden Knights even scarier.

It gives us more depth, DeBoer said. It adds our leading scorer back into our lineup. It helps our power play. He helps us in a lot of different areas.

Dallas Stars coach Rick Bowness said everyone's healthy, which seems to be good news for 50-point producer Tyler Seguin and starting goaltender Ben Bishop, who each missed the round-robin finale Sunday.

Tocchet said forward Nick Schmaltz had gotten a full practice under his belt and was feeling better. He might not be ready for Game 1 against Colorado on Wednesday, but Schmaltz is definitely getting close.

GOALIE CAROUSEL

The top three teams in the East could all employ something of a goaltending tandem in the first round. That's not common among the NHL's best, but this is an uncommon format that includes one set of back-to-back games in every series.

Weve got two starters a great luxury to have, DeBoer said of the Golden Knights' Marc-Andre Fleury and Robin Lehner. How were going to roll them out is to be determined."

Colorado has Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz to roll out however coach Jared Bednar sees fit. He has chosen his Game 1 starter but won't say. The same goes for the Stars between Bishop and Khudobin, who split time in the round-robin.

OH, CANADA

With the (empty arena) hosts Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs out and with all due respect to the East's eighth-seeded Montreal Canadiens, the best hopes of ending Canada's 27-year Cup drought are the Flames and Canucks.

Vancouver faces the tall first task of needing to knock off the reigning champs, and Calgary is considered an underdog as the No. 6 seed against No. 3 Dallas. The Winnipeg series made the Flames look ready for playoff hockey.

What probably people mean when they talk about being an underdog and being in a position to upset, I think really theyre really theyre probably referring to how hard the team plays and how good they are away from the puck, Flames coach Geoff Ward said. "If you get those two attributes in your game, youre always going to find that youre in a game and youre going to be a difficult team to beat.

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For more AP NHL coverage: https://apnews.com/NHL and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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'Heavy lifting:' West is big, tough, deep and wide open - Las Vegas Sun

The Latest: Women’s Rugby Europe tourney to end in October – Las Vegas Sun

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Published Monday, Aug. 10, 2020 | 8:50 a.m.

Updated 7 hours, 25 minutes ago

The Latest on the effects of the coronavirus outbreak on sports around the world:

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The Women's Rugby Europe Championship is scheduled to be finished off in October so European qualifying for the 2021 Women's Rugby World Cup can start in December.

Rugby Europe announced the dates for the two remaining matches: Spain vs. Russia on the weekend of Oct. 24, and Spain vs. Netherlands on Oct. 31.

The winner among those three will join Scotland, Ireland, and Italy in qualifying for the 2021 World Cup in New Zealand.

European qualifying will be played on the weekends of Dec. 5, 12, and 19. The winner qualifies directly, and the runner-up goes to a repechage. The schedule will be announced after the Women's Europe Championship is finished.

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North Alabama has suspended football practices until at least Friday after team leaders expressed concerns about COVID-19.

The FCS school said the Lions leadership council voiced those concerns to the coaching staff Saturday.

North Alabama said in a statement Monday the school will make every attempt to structure a meaningful football experience for this fall while remaining focused on health and safety.

North Alabama has switched, until at least Friday, to a model in which players can voluntarily continue physical conditioning in groups of 12 or less. Team and position meetings will be held in person with social distancing and masks mandatory.

North Alabama moved to FCS in 2018 after winning three straight Division II national championships from 1993-95.

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UTEP has postponed the start of preseason football practice after four players tested positive for the coronavirus.

School officials say all four players were asymptomatic and placed in a 14-day quarantine. School medical staff also recommended the entire team and coaching staff also go into a five-day quarantine before everyone is tested again on Wednesday.

Results of those tests will be determined when practice will begin, the school said.

I am fully supportive of the recommendations of our sports medicine personnel and team doctors, coach Dana Dimel said. We cant wait to resume preparations for our fall season, but safety comes first.

The Miners play in Conference USA

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More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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The Latest: Women's Rugby Europe tourney to end in October - Las Vegas Sun

Health officials are quitting or getting fired amid outbreak – Las Vegas Sun

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Published Monday, Aug. 10, 2020 | 3:57 p.m.

Updated 16 minutes ago

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) Vilified, threatened with violence and in some cases suffering from burnout, dozens of state and local public health leaders around the U.S. have resigned or have been fired amid the coronavirus outbreak, a testament to how politically combustible masks, lockdowns and infection data have become.

One of the latest departures came Sunday, when California's public health director, Dr. Sonia Angell, was ousted following a technical glitch that caused a delay in reporting hundreds of thousands of virus test results information used to make decisions about reopening businesses and schools.

Last week, New York Citys health commissioner was replaced after months of friction with the Police Department and City Hall.

A review by the Kaiser Health News service and The Associated Press finds at least 49 state and local public health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired since April across 23 states. The list has grown by more than 20 people since the AP and KHN started keeping track in June.

Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the numbers stunning. He said they reflect burnout, as well as attacks on public health experts and institutions from the highest levels of government, including from President Donald Trump, who has sidelined the CDC during the pandemic.

"The overall tone toward public health in the U.S. is so hostile that it has kind of emboldened people to make these attacks, Frieden said.

The cuts come at a time when public health expertise is needed more than ever, said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

Were moving at breakneck speed here to stop a pandemic, and you cant afford to hit the pause button and say, Were going to change the leadership around here and well get back to you after we hire somebody," Freeman said.

As of Monday, confirmed infections in the United States stood at over 5 million, with deaths topping 163,000, the highest in the world, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Many of the firings and resignations have to do with conflicts over mask orders or social distancing shutdowns, Freeman said. Despite the scientific evidence, many politicians and others have argued that such measures are not needed, no matter what health experts tell them.

Its not a health divide; its a political divide, Freeman said.

Some health officials said they were stepping down for family reasons, and some left for jobs at other agencies, such as the CDC. Some, like Angell, were ousted because of what higher-ups said was poor leadership or a failure to do their job.

Others have complained that they were overworked, underpaid, unappreciated or thrust into a pressure-cooker environment.

To me, a lot of the divisiveness and the stress and the resignations that are happening right and left are the consequence of the lack of a real national response plan," said Dr. Matt Willis, health officer for Marin County in Northern California. "And were all left scrambling at the local and state level to extract resources and improvise solutions ... in a fractured health care system, in an under-resourced public health system.

Public health leaders from Dr. Anthony Fauci down to officials in small communities have reported death threats and intimidation. Some have seen their home addresses published or been the subject of sexist attacks on social media. Fauci has said his wife and daughters have received threats.

In Ohio, the state's health director, Dr. Amy Acton, resigned in June after months of pressure during which Republican lawmakers tried to strip her of her authority and armed protesters showed up at her house.

It was on Acton's advice that GOP Gov. Mike DeWine became the first governor to shut down schools statewide. Acton also called off the states presidential primary in March just hours before polls were to open, angering those who saw it as an overreaction.

The executive director of Las Animas-Huerfano Counties District Health Department in Colorado found her car vandalized twice, and a group called Colorado Counties for Freedom ran a radio ad demanding that her authority be reduced. Kim Gonzales has remained on the job.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice forced the resignation of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Cathy Slemp in June over what he said were discrepancies in the data. Slemp said the department's work had been hurt by outdated technology like fax machines and slow computer networks.

We are driving a great aunts Pinto when what you need is to be driving a Ferrari, Slemp said.

Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins, was critical of Slemp's firing and said it was deeply concerning that public health officials who told uncomfortable truths to political leaders had been removed.

Thats terrible for the national response because what we need for getting through this, first of all, is the truth. We need data, and we need people to interpret the data and help political leaders make good judgments," Inglesby said.

Since 2010, spending on state public health departments has dropped 16% per capita, and the amount devoted to local health departments has fallen 18%, according to a KHN and AP analysis. At least 38,000 state and local public health jobs have disappeared since the 2008 recession, leaving a skeletal workforce for what was once viewed as one of the worlds top public health systems.

Another sudden departure came Monday along the Texas border. Dr. Jose Vazquez, the Starr County health authority, resigned after a proposal to increase his pay from $500 to $10,000 a month was rejected by county commissioners.

Starr County Judge Eloy Vera said Vazquez had been working 60 hours per week in the county, one of the poorest in the U.S. and recently one of those hit hardest by the virus.

He felt it was an insult, Vera said.

In Oklahoma, both the state health commissioner and state epidemiologist have been replaced since the outbreak began in March.

In rural Colorado, Emily Brown was fired in late May as director of the Rio Grande County Public Health Department after clashing with county commissioners over reopening recommendations. The person who replaced her resigned July 9.

Brown said she knows many public health department leaders who are considering resigning or retiring because of the strain.

The months of nonstop and often unappreciated work are prompting many public health workers to leave, said Theresa Anselmo of the Colorado Association of Local Public Health Officials.

It will certainly slow down the pandemic response and become less coordinated, she said. Whos going to want to take on this career if youre confronted with the kinds of political issues that are coming up?

Weber reported from St. Louis. Associated Press writers Paul Weber, Sean Murphy and Janie Har, and KHN writer Anna Maria Barry-Jester contributed reporting.

Weber is a reporter with Kaiser Health News. This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and KHN, which is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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Health officials are quitting or getting fired amid outbreak - Las Vegas Sun

More people needing financial help because of pandemic, Las Vegas credit union opens new location – KTNV Las Vegas

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LAS VEGAS (KTNV) Five months into the coronavirus pandemic and there's more economic uncertainty than ever before.

Many people are out of work, missing mortgage payments, or even facing bankruptcy. A North Las Vegas credit union is expanding, and helping people find financial relief.

SCE Credit Union announced the opening of its fourth branch in the Las Vegas valley on East Lone Mountain near Losee roads to better accommodate the needs of its members in the area.

"We knew there was a need out here, and our membership is primarily out here," said Mike Campion, SCE Credit Union's director of branches for Southern Nevada. He says many people are looking for loans or for help with their finances.

"We get that a lot of people in the community have experienced these types of deal, so it gives us the opportunity to offer these services that they'd normally not be able to get," said Campion.

Campion says they have seen an increase in people needing help, and says a lack of savings put many people in a tough situation when the pandemic started.

Now, it's his mission to coach the next generation about financial responsibility.

"We see the adults struggling, we see existing members struggling, so if we can get them started younger, we can help them," said Campion.

Learn more on scefcu.org

SCE Credit Union's new location is located on 2215 E. Lone Mountain Road in North Las Vegas.

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More people needing financial help because of pandemic, Las Vegas credit union opens new location - KTNV Las Vegas

German man severs another’s hand off with machete – Las Vegas Sun

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Published Monday, Aug. 10, 2020 | 9:51 a.m.

Updated 6 hours, 24 minutes ago

BERLIN (AP) A 22-year-old is under investigation after chopping off another man's hand with a machete at an outdoor recreation area in western Germany, prosecutors said Monday.

Prosecutors in Koblenz said the suspect told authorities he had been chopping firewood in a forested area west of the city on Saturday night when he witnessed a car crash.

According to the suspect, he ran to the car still carrying the machete to see if the driver needed help and that the driver pulled out a gun from the glove box and started firing at him, prosecutors said.

In reaction, he swung the machete at the driver, severing the 21-year-old's left hand. Minutes later, a large vehicle drove up from a nearby grilling area, and two men jumped out and punched the suspect multiple times in the face, prosecutors said the 22-year-old recounted.

The suspect was treated in a hospital for injuries to the face and released after being interrogated, prosecutors said. The investigation is still underway, but prosecutors said they were considering whether he acted out of self-defense.

The man whose hand was severed was treated in a hospital and reported to be in stable condition.

Police determined that the weapon he fired was a starter pistol only capable of shooting blanks.

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German man severs another's hand off with machete - Las Vegas Sun

How The Internet has Warped Film Criticism: Part II – mxdwn.com

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Evan Krell August 8th, 2020 - 8:48 AM

Part I: https://movies.mxdwn.com/feature/how-the-internet-has-warped-film-criticism/

In my previous article, I gave a brief overview on how YouTube has given rise to certain brands of internet criticism, touching on the skit filled angry reviewers of the mid 2000s and the nitpicking, exaggerated shows like Honest Trailers and CinemaSins. The article drew the through line showing how these types of videos help spur the alt right movement online and how they lead to the types of malicious hate and comments directed towards The Last Jedi for its prominent female characters. See that article for more info.

For this piece I wanted to use another case study to highlight this topic. Another large franchise film with prominent female characters; 2019s Captain Marvel. In the yearlong gap between Infinity War and Endgame, Marvel Studios released two films to bridge the gap, the first of which was Captain Marvel. It was also noteworthy for being Marvels first standalone superhero film with a female lead, something that was long overdue. It and Black Panthers development were being impeded by Marvel Entertainment head Ike Perlmutter and other studio executives who felt like films starring women or Black characters wouldnt perform well enough at the box office. It took a shakeup in management around 2015 to get the films on track. Regardless, it was long past time for more diversity in these films.

Anticipation was high in the lead up for the film. Carol Danvers was and still is a fan favorite in the world of comics and in the initial announcement for Marvels Phase 3 slate, the reveal that the film would focus on Carol was met with thunderous applause. Initial trailers in the wake of Infinity War were also met with excitement, doubled by producer Kevin Feige hyping up Carol Danvers as the most powerful character among the Avengers lineup. As the films release drew nearer however, the conversation began to shift.

Before the film released, Rotten Tomatoes had a feature called want to see, where users of the website could demonstrate their interest in seeing the movie. The numbers for Captain Marvel were astronomically low, with an abnormal amount of submissions far above the usual Marvel movie, or any movie for that matter. People speculated that these were attempts to review bomb and dissuade audiences from seeing it. Rotten Tomatoes soon altered this feature to only show the amount interested instead of a percentage. Sure enough on opening day when user reviews opened up, the film had tens of thousands of negative reviews, more than major blockbusters get in their entire run. Most of these reviews likely came from bots, and almost all of them featured complaints about the movie being feminist propaganda.

Sadly, this type of reaction wasnt all too surprising. YouTube, a breeding ground for alt right internet trolls, was plagued with similar messages all throughout the movies marketing campaign. One infamous example was a user editing stills of the film to make Carol Danvers smile, believing that women should smile and look pretty. All over YouTube, alt right users were posting lengthy rant videos, claiming the film was part of a feminist agenda and making vitriolic comments towards the films star Brie Larson. The videos only got more frequent once the film released and much like The Last Jedi, its often hard to talk about the film in some online spaces without a horde of alt right trolls launching into rants and personal attacks.

When moving the discussion backwards a couple of years, this type of unbridled bigotry doesnt seem apparent during the release of Wonder Woman in 2017. Theres sure to be some of this hatred on YouTube but it was never to scale of the Captain Marvel review bombing. There could be several reasons as to why. Theres certainly something to be said about the sort of cult of personality that has formed around DC Comics, though that more applies to Zack Snyder. There have however been examples of many DC fans putting together conspiracy theories that Marvel has paid off critics to bad mouth other superhero properties. Though these have always been a very vocal minority and likely didnt have much to do with the Captain Marvel discourse.

The simple answer is that Brie Larson was incredibly outspoken during the pre-release phase of the film. In interviews, Larson would often use her platform to speak out against inequality and sexual harassment in the film industry. She became the primary target of attacks from many alt right users, who as I mentioned in the previous piece, almost always harbor a deep resentment towards women. Brie Larsons outspokenness, coupled with titular characters stoicness and defiance towards traditional gender roles, infuriated the trolls to no end.

The discussion around the review bombing also got more people talking about the nature of user review websites like Rotten Tomatoes. The video game industry has seen a similar problem with video game reviews, and that is the nature of reviewer scores. Often times people wont actually read or watch a review, theyll just skip to end or scour the page to find the numerical score assigned to the movie. This mirrors the discussion surrounding YouTube channels like CinemaSins. The nuance is gone, and all people care about is if something is good or bad. The internet likes to speak in hyperbole. Everything is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or its an abomination. Rarely can something just be okay.

It doesnt help that Rotten Tomatoes scoring system is unorthodox and not a very good judge of quality. If a film has a score of 78%, that doesnt mean that the average review score is 78/100. It simply means that 78% percent of reviewers are in agreement about liking the movie. Those positive reviews could range from liking it a little bit to absolutely loving it. Despite this, people often flock to these scores and make judgments about the movie before actually seeing it for themselves. Thats not to say that these numbers cant be helpful in giving a vague idea of the films reception, they certainly can be. When the reviews are raided by these trolls though, that becomes skewed.

The entire history and festering of the online alt right is too much to cover in just two short articles. Films like Captain Marvel or The Last Jedi are simply some of the most public spaces where these hate groups are making themselves known. This goes beyond whether or not someone thinks Captain Marvel is a good movie or not. Its becoming increasingly clear that the avenues in which films are discussed, like YouTube and Rotten Tomatoes, are becoming one of the fronts where the alt right is most active. As always, its important to take a stand against bigotry wherever it rears its ugly head root it out whenever possible.

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How The Internet has Warped Film Criticism: Part II - mxdwn.com

Hiya, Nice to see everyone earlier. Here’s the second books lead, by Jamie Maxwell. Print headline: Rallying cry from the ‘establishment’ right…

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Allen Lane, 16.99

Review by Jamie Maxwell

IN Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum charts the fracturing of the Transatlantic right. The book is part-memoir, part-polemic. Over the past 20 years, the conservative movement has split into two factions, Applebaum contends: traditional neoliberals, who believe in free-markets, democratic institutions and the rule of law, and populists, who thrive on division, confusion, and nationalist paranoia.

Applebaum a journalist and historian based variously, in Poland, Britain and the US belongs firmly to the first faction. A veteran contributor to the Spectator, Sunday Times and Washington Post, she has enjoyed ringside access to rightwing elites for decades. Until recently, she was on good terms with Boris Johnson, a man she now describes as an all-consuming narcissist with a penchant for fabrication. (Nobody serious wants to leave the EU, she quotes the future prime minister as saying in 2014. Business doesnt want it. The City doesnt want it. It wont happen.)

In 2008 she broke with the Republican Party after John McCain added Sarah Palin a proto-Trump to his presidential ticket. McCain never spoke to me again, she writes. In Poland, Applebaum and her husband, the politician Radek Sikorski, have become targets of anti-Semitic propaganda linked to the countrys ruling Law and Justice Party. Whether I like it or not, I am part of this story, she laments.

Applebaums premise is that mainstream conservatives cautious, sceptical, committed, above all, to the cause of individual freedom have been sidelined by extremists. She is particularly interested in the so-called clerks of authoritarianism: the writers, bloggers, and intellectual agitators think Dominic Cummings and Steve Bannon who spread disinformation in order to undermine democratic norms.

Applebaums narrative sweeps across Europe and North America. In Hungary, she meets Maria Schmidt, an anti-communist scholar turned cheerleader for the far-right Orban regime. In Spain, she profiles Vox, an insurgent nationalist party cultivating a form of Trumpism on the Iberian peninsula. In Britain, she interviews John Sullivan, who once wrote speeches for Margaret Thatcher but now thinks the break-up of the UK is a price worth paying for Brexit. And in the US, she explores the dark pessimism of Donald Trumps highest-profile media supporters, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who believes American society is being destroyed by mass immigration.

The common theme uniting these disparate political threads, Applebaum says, is a desire for simplicity and the need to impose order on a disordered world. The end of the Thatcher and Reagan eras, coupled with the Wests triumph in the Cold War, left British and American conservatives with a deep sense of cultural despair, culminating in the revanchist campaigns of Brexit and Trump. In continental Europe, rightwing anxiety over the erosion of national borders produced new forms of militant euro-scepticism, laced with Islamophobia.

Class and inequality arent major factors in the rise of the alt-right, Applebaum insists: The vast majority of people [in the West] are not starving. If we describe them as poor, its because they lack things that human beings couldnt dream of a century ago. What matters is the growth of anti-pluralism and, in the age of social media echo-chambers, an aversion to fierce debates.

At heart, Twilight of Democracy is a rallying cry for an embattled neoliberal establishment; a warning, directed at the centre of the political spectrum, about the fragility of modern democratic culture and its system of open, constitutional government. Without constant vigilance, Applebaum concludes, that system may not survive the precariousness of our current moment. Liberal democracies always demanded things from citizens: argument, effort, struggle, she writes. They always required some tolerance for cacophony and chaos, as well as some willingness to push back at the people who create cacophony and chaos.

As you might expect from a celebrated historian of Soviet power, Applebaum is a forceful and intelligent writer. The splintered conservative social milieu she depicts is fascinating, both for its autobiographical insights and as a record of the internecine battles that have taken place on the Anglo-American right in recent years.

Less convincing, however, is her account of the schisms origins. The problem, she says, isnt closed-mindedness. It is simple-mindedness. Voters embrace authoritarian figureheads because they prefer unity over division and familiarity over the unknown. Demographic change is confusing, so it provokes a cultural backlash. Political discourse is contentious, so it is spurned in favour of more binary narratives. This logic is both reductive and self-serving: centrists can cope with the complexity of the 21st century, Applebaum a centrist says, but simple-minded populists cant.

Applebaum also mistakes her own sense of personal displacement for a fundamental shift in conservative ideology. Indeed, she consistently overstates the extent of the rupture in rightwing politics and downplays key elements of continuity between different generations of conservative leaders.

Applebaum assumes and expects the reader to assume that Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were democrats in a way that Johnson and Trump arent. But Thatcher cleaved away entire layers of local government and used the police to suppress strikes in pursuit of her radical economic agenda. Likewise, Trump may have entered the White House on a promise to drain the swamp, but he has governed as a relatively conventional Republican, cutting taxes for the ultra-rich, ditching vast swathes of federal environmental regulation and amplifying the grievances of white voters in a style consistent with past GOP presidents, Reagan among them. Ultimately, Trump is a product of conservative orthodoxy, not a rejection of it, and Thatcher was the archetype for Johnsons populism, not its antithesis.

This category error runs through the entire book. The new right is more Bolshevik than Burkean, Applebaum says. These are men and women who want to overthrow existing institutions, to destroy what exists. Really? Brexit was sold as an opportunity to restore British (or English) national independence from the grip of European control and Vox campaigns to defend Spains indissoluble unity from separatist movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country. These projects arent revolutionary. They are reactionary. The alt-right isnt trying to smash prevailing class structures. It is trying to strengthen them.

Applebaums analysis may be more relevant in Eastern Europe, where the post-Soviet consensus is visibly under strain, than it is in Western Europe and North America. But as a blanket account of how rightwing politics moved from the Reaganite optimism of the 1980s to the apocalyptic alarmism of today, it fails to convince. Twilight of Democracy is a compelling book, just not a very persuasive one. Applebaum wants things to go to back to normal, before hyper-partisanship and polarisation became the key registers of debate in London, Washington, and Warsaw. She overlooks the fact that normal wasnt all that democratic in the first place.

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Hiya, Nice to see everyone earlier. Here's the second books lead, by Jamie Maxwell. Print headline: Rallying cry from the 'establishment' right...

The Facts Just Arent Getting Through – The Atlantic

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A few weeks ago, I went to a political rally in a farmyard. The Polish presidential candidate Rafa Trzaskowski was speaking; in the background, a golden wheat field shimmered in the late-afternoon sun. The audience was enthusiasticthe host, a local farmer, had spread news of the candidates visit only the day beforebut the juxtaposition of Trzaskowski and the wheat field was odd. He is the mayor of Warsaw, speaks several languages, has degrees in economics, and belongs to the half of Poland that identifies as educated, urban, and European. What does he know from wheat?

But Trzaskowski was running for president in a country whose other half lives in an information bubble that teaches people to be suspicious of anyone from Warsaw who is educated, urban, and European. Polish state television, fully controlled by the ruling Law and Justice party, was sending aggressive messages into that bubble, warning its inhabitants that Trzaskowski was dubious, foreign, in hock to LGBT ideologywhich the incumbent president, Andrzej Duda, called worse than communismand beholden to Germans and Jews. The messages, constantly repeated on a wide array of radio stations and television channels, were designed to reinforce tribal loyalties and convince Law and Justice voters that they are real Poles, not impostors or traitors like their political opponents.

During his short campaign, Trzaskowski did his best to reach into that bubble too. He stood beside wheat fields, spent a lot of time in small towns, and ran ads that called for an end to division. We are united by a dream, he said in one speech: a dream of a different Poland, a Poland where there are no better and worse citizens. This was a deliberate choice: Instead of mobilizing the voters inside his own bubble by attacking the ruling party, he sought to bridge Polands deep polarization by appealing to national unity.

Anne Applebaum: Polands rulers made up a Rainbow Plague

He came close, winning 49 percent of the vote. But he failed. Trzaskowskis half of Poland was insufficiently enthusiastic, while the other half was energized, angry, and very much afraid of Jews, foreigners, and LGBT ideology. Dudas voters were also happy with the government subsidies and reduced retirement age that his party had approved, and not remotely inspired by Trzaskowskis language of solidarity and unityif they even heard it.

If they even heard it: If that doesnt sound familiar, it should. Because the same thing could happen in the United States this fallor during the next election in France, or Italy, or Ukraine. American politics, Polish politics, French politics, Italian politics, Ukrainian politics, all derived from their own history, economics, and culture, now have this in common: In each of these countries, deep informational divides separate one part of the electorate from the rest. Some voters live in a so-called populist bubble, where they hear nationalist and xenophobic messages, learn to distrust fact-based media and evidence-based science, and become receptive to conspiracy theories and suspicious of democratic institutions. Others read and hear completely different media, respect different authorities, and search for a different sort of news. Whatever the advantages of these other bubbles, their rules render the people in them incapable of understanding or speaking with those outside of them.

In some places, including Poland and the United States, the country is divided in half. In other places, such as Germany, the proportions vary, but the divide is just as deep. A couple of years ago, I took part in a project that looked at foreign influence in the 2017 German parliamentary elections. We found, among other things, that the overwhelming majority of Germansleft, right, and centerfollow a mix of big newspapers, magazines, and television outlets, including public TV. But many of the Germans who vote for the far-right Alternative for Germanythe number hovers between 10 and 14 percentget their news from a completely separate set of sources, including a heavy dose of Russian-funded German-language media, such as Sputnik and RT. The voters in the far-right bubble dont just have different opinions from other Germans; they have different facts, including facts provided by a foreign country.

David Frum: The great Russian disinformation campaign

The point I am making here is not about Russia. It is about the deep gap in perceptions that now separates a tenth of German voters from the other 90 percent. Is that chasm permanent? Should the other German political parties try to reach the people in the populist bubble? But how is it possible to reach people who cant hear you? This is not merely a question of how to convince people, how to use a better argument, or how to change minds. This is a question about how to get people to listen at all. Just shouting about facts will get you nowhere with those who no longer trust the sources that produce them.

Here is how this problem looks in the United States: On the day after Donald Trump met Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Sarah Longwell found herself in Columbus, Ohio, talking with a focus group she had conveneda room full of people whom she characterizes as reluctant Trump voters, people who had voted for the president but had doubts. Trumps bizarre behavior in Helsinki had bothered her. The president had looked cowed and frightened; in accepting the Russian leaders insistence that he had not interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, Trump appeared to side with Putin and against Americas FBI. D.C. is on fire about it, Im on fire about it, I think its a big moment, Longwell told me. I ask folks in Columbus, What happened yesterday in Helsinki? They look blank.

Longwell is a Republican activist, or rather a Never Trump Republican activistone of the few remaining members of what was once a large group. She spent 2016 rooting for an alternative to Trump. She spent 2017 losing friends. That was the year of the body snatchers, she said, when people who you thought were with you suddenly started to change. In 2018, she tried to figure out what to do next. Instead of giving up, she and another Never Trump Republican, the longtime journalist and activist Bill Kristol, raised money and set out to find people who felt the same way, not in Washington but across America, especially in Republican-voting suburbs.

Their initiative, now called Republican Voters Against Trump, immediately ran into the information wall. Among Longwells focus group in Ohio, Trumps bizarre behavior in Helsinki did not register. People havent heard about it, Longwell recalled thinking. Its not breaking through. This wasnt because the people in the group were uninterested in politics. Nor was it because they were only watching Fox News. On the contrary, they were getting news from social media, from alerts on their phone, from devices of all kinds. They were getting too much news, in fact. As a result, all reporting about Trumpthe crush of scandals and corruptionis, Longwell said, so omnipresent, so daily, that it becomes white noise to people.

Helsinki, porn stars, Grab them by the pussy, Ivanka Trumps Chinese trademarks, taxpayers money going to Trump golf clubs, the sex scandals, ethics scandals, legal scandals, even the power-abuse scandal that led to Trumps impeachmentthey have all melted together over the past four years. They have become a series of unpleasant news stories that follow TV advertisements for hairspray or mouthwash, that precede a Facebook post about a cousins wedding anniversary. For Longwells reluctant Trump voters, dislike of the scandals and dislike of the media that report on the scandals became one and the samea huge hornets nest that nobody wanted to touch or think about. At the same time, these same voters were being bombarded with other messagesmessages that reminded them of their tribal allegiance. They swim in a cultural soup of Trumpism, Longwell said. Being Republican was part of their identity. Images relating to God, patriotism, and the Republican Party were all around them. Cumulatively, those messages were much stronger than their dislike for Trump.

Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Revenge of the Never Trumpers

Ben Scott, a technology expert who worked on disinformation policy at Barack Obamas State Department and was an adviser to Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign, has studied that same phenomenon. Digital media, he told me, have allowed people to experience a higher frequency of highly evocative representationsmeaning the constant barrage of pictures, video, commentary, and memes that portray America, Christians, or families under siege; that align Trump with the Church and the Army; that see threats from foreigners, immigrants, outsiders of all kinds. People who live in this alternative news bubble also see or hear mainstream, fact-based media. But they reject them. They identify them as the enemy, and they learn to ignore them. The Clinton campaigns mistake, Scott reckons, was its belief that people inside this bubble could be moved by an appeal to facts. They werent.

At first, Longwell also thought that an appeal to facts could move reluctant Trump voters to change their mind. But when she played them videos that clearly showed Trump lying, they shrugged it off. In part, this was because they did not hold him to the same standards as other politicians. Instead, she thinks, they saw him as a businessman and a celebrity, someone exempt from normal morality. They say, Yes, he lies. But hes honest, hes authentic, hes real, Longwell said.

Even more powerful, though, is the pull of the group. Republican voters know that Trump lies. If they forgive him, that is because their friends and their families, the other members of their party, forgive him too. Im a Republican, my parents are Republicans, all of my friends are Republicans, Longwells focus-group members told her. To vote differently wouldnt just be an intellectual decision for these voters. It would tear them away from their tribe.

But what happens when that tribe itself starts talking about Trump in a different way? That, it turns out, is quite another matter entirely.

Inside the noisy and chaotic modern information sphere, the message doesnt matter nearly as much as the messenger. Many people no longer trust major media outlets to give them valuable informationand they may never do so again. They no longer trust politicians or groups they perceive to be outside their tribe eitherand the days when a president got a respectful audience just for being the president may never return again. But voters do trust people they know, or people who resemble people they know. Understanding this to be true, Longwell and Kristol began experimenting. Instead of just creating professional campaign videos (though they have made one or two of those), they began soliciting and disseminating homemade clips. The Republican Voters Against Trump website features a quote from one of themId vote for a tuna fish sandwich before Id vote for Donald Trump againas well as information on how to create your own video.

Hundreds of people have contributed clips, and many have already been posted. Among them are people who describe themselves as lifelong Republicans, as evangelical Christians, or as veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. The videos are unscripted: The people in them give their own reasons for feeling disillusioned or angered by an administration they believe has betrayed them and their conservative ideals, and they explains their views in their own words. People know that they are being sold something in an ad, Longwell said. By contrast, they look at the RVAT videos, they see someone in their community, and they think, I like that person.

When tested on focus groups, the ads do have an impact: People find them convincing. Perhaps this is because they reflect conservative anxieties about Trump without criticizing the conservative tribe. The people in the videos sympathize with Republican voters dilemma, as Longwell herself does. Tribalism isnt all negative, she said. It also involves elements of loyalty, trust, and community. Indeed, Trumps abuse of loyalty, trust, and community is what seems to anger both her and the people in the videos the most. Their feelings of betrayal come through.

Robert P. Saldin and Steven M. Teles: The last anti-Trump Republicans are biding their time

The use of insiders to reach into closed communities is an established techniqueone often used in touchier, more trying circumstances. Sasha Havlicek, who runs a counter-extremism organization in London called the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (the group also worked on the 2017 German election study), has tried many times to find credible inside voices to speak with people who are on the cusp of being recruited online, whether into ISIS or white-supremacist organizations. Havlicek and her colleagues sometimes find disillusioned former members to counsel these would-be recruits, but she also looks for church groups, local employers, veterans, or anyone who can offer an alternative sense of community. Whats important, she told me, is to find people who can offer a crucial form of reassurance: Once you change your vote or your politics, once you break from what everyone around you is doing, you wont be alone.

If the world of counter-extremism offers lessons, so does the experience of anti-communism. Back in the 1980s, Poland was a Soviet-occupied Communist country with an entirely closed media environment. The Communist Party ran all the newspapers and the sole television network. Protest was illegal, and protesters were arrested. But an unusual dissident group called the Orange Alternative broke through the wall of regime mediaby making people laugh. The group staged happenings that werent exactly demonstrations but something closer to comic performances. In 1987, the Orange Alternative held a parade on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, carrying pro-communist banners and drawing laughing crowds; another time, dozens of people dressed up as Santa Claus and gave out candy. The authorities were flummoxed: The parades were clearly protests, but the police looked stupid when they arrested people for wearing communist red outfits or Santa Claus suits. Srdja Popovic, the veteran Serbian activisthe helped lead a youth movement that overthrew the Serbian dictator Slobodan Miloevihas lectured on what he calls the power of laughtivism. Humor melts fear, he says. Mockery removes the aura of an authoritarian party or leader, making followers more willing to listen to alternatives.

In the U.S., this is one of the tactics now being pursued by the Lincoln Project. Founded by another group of anti-Trump Republicans, it doesnt need the elaborate introduction it might have required a few weeks ago, not least because it has so successfully trolled the president. In May, the group made a short video that began with the words, There is mourning in America. Today, more than 60,000 Americans have died from a deadly virus Donald Trump ignored. Gloomy music followed, along with gloomy pictures: tattered buildings, abandoned houses, shabbily dressed people. Then, at the end, a picture of the Lincoln Memorial and the American flag: If we have another four years like this, will there even be an America?

The clip, a harsh take on the famous Ronald Reagan Morning in America commercial, was an instant hit: More than 1.5 million people watched it within two days of its appearance on Twitter. Even more people saw it after it ran on Fox News in the Washington, D.C., market. One of its viewers was the president, who fired off a series of midnight tweets loaded with all the familiar insults: RINOs, losers, a disgrace. The result: Money poured into the Lincoln Projects coffers. John Weaver, one of the groups founders, told me that in subsequent days, the video was viewed on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook millions of times.

Reed Galen, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson: The party of idolaters

Since then, the Lincoln Project has launched advertisements mocking Trump in Russian; advertisements making fun of the presidents apparent difficulties drinking a glass of water; advertisements laughing at his campaign manager, who was later fired, possibly for that reason; advertisements appearing within minutes of the event that they parody. A clip needling the president over his weight and apparent mental decline briefly caused #ImpotusAmericanus to trend on Twitter. The sometimes nasty, sometimes childish glee radiated by the groups Twitter account (1.8 million followers) has provoked a harsh counterattack. The Lincoln Project and its founders have been denounced by some on the right as Democrats in disguise, acting under a false flag; by some on the left for alleged hidden agendas; by others as stooping to the same destructive tactics as the president. My Atlantic colleague Andrew Ferguson called the Lincoln Projects ad campaign personally abusive, overwrought, pointlessly salacious.

The Lincoln Projects founders count the attacks from the Republican Party as a success, not least because they distract the GOP from its campaign against Joe Biden. But do the Lincoln Projects ads get through to Republican voters, let alone change their minds? Steve Schmidt, another one of the founders, argues that the information bubble around the president really does now function like an autocratic personality cult: Before any positive messages can get through, the spell has to be broken. For that reason, attacking Republican Party leaders is a necessity. Diminish them, mock them, and laugh at them, Schmidt told me. Punch back hard before you lose the ability to do it. He also thinks that aggressive, even vulgar, laughter will help break through the wall of indifference and convince distracted voters that something important is happening. The side arguing from democratic values should not be the soft side in the debate, Schmidt said. It should be ferocious.

In the grand scheme of things, both of these Never Trump Republican projects are tinylike little speedboats racing alongside the aircraft carrier that will be the Democratic presidential ad campaign this fall. Weaver described their role as the sappers blowing up supply lines while the generals prepare their assault. Still, some of their efforts run parallel to Bidens campaign strategy. He, too, is looking for ways to reach into the conservative bubble, or at least to not offend it. Biden has, for example, been careful to avoid making statements that could be used to scare Republican voters. He does not call for defunding the police, for example, or the opening of the border, or the abolition of all private health insurance. He keeps his rhetoric moderate, even though his base is baying for redder meat. As Ezra Klein of Vox has written, the Democratic candidates campaign staff is well aware that mobilization is often the flip side of polarization. The language that excites his base will also enrage his opponents, which is why he avoids it.

The risk, of course, is that Biden ends up like Trzaskowski, issuing calls for unity that excite nobody, not even his own party. But not everybody in the liberal center ends up that way. Schmidts conclusionthat the side arguing from democratic values need not be boringwas also reached a few years ago by a group of university students in Zurich, the founders of an effort called Operation Libero. When they began, the Swiss Peoples Party, a populist-nationalist party, dominated the countrys politics. It had successfully promoted a vision of Switzerland as a closed enclave, and proposed a series of referendums designed to stoke xenophobia, halt immigration, and curtail the countrys ability to sign foreign treaties.

Peter Beinart: Biden goes big without sounding like it

In contrast, Operation Liberos founders argued for a more welcoming vision of the nation. They pointed out that modern Switzerlands founding moment was the liberal revolution of 1848, that the country had a long history of religious tolerance and openness to the world. Calling themselves the children of 1848, Operation Libero started making amusing video clipsan animated cartoon of Helvetia, the national symbol, howling as she is knocked over by a populist wrecking balland memes. The group created teams of volunteers who would argue against the Swiss version of the online alt-right, and invited the populists to engage in debate. It worked: Not only did Operation Libero help its own side prevail in several referendum campaigns, but its members looked like they were having fun doing it. One widely circulated photograph showed members of the groupincluding one of its founders, Flavia Kleiner, in a hot-pink jacketcheering exuberantly as they celebrated an electoral victory.

But Operation Libero didnt just offer fun; it also offered patriotisma different version of patriotism. We are offering a more positive view of Switzerland, Kleiner told me a couple of years ago. We dont want it to be an open-air museum with an idealized past. In the United States, the field is wide open for Biden, or anyone who supports him, to use emotive American symbols and traditions to mobilize voters of all stripes. One Biden campaign ad from last year went in exactly this direction, contrasting the language of the Declaration of Independence (All men are created equal) with the language of the 2017 alt-right march in Charlottesville, Virginia (Jews will not replace us). The renewal or recasting of American founding documents to suit a contemporary moment is, of course, nothing new. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and referred to the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But there is a possible trap here too. In this era of information overload, the appeals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that worked in the past might now sound trite; worse still, the language of democracy and of Americas founding can sound like yet another set of slogans in the information war. Trumps campaign seems to be hoping that this happens; thats why the president is already mocking the ideas and ideals of democracy itself. On social media, the president has posted Trump 2024, 2028, 2032 memes and teasing tweets about postponing the election. Although they did cause some alarm among some of his supportersproof that the rules surrounding elections still enjoy bipartisan respectTrumps tweets may have achieved their purpose among others: They made the familiar rhetoric of democracy and common purpose sound old-fashioned, out of touch, dated.

Its not just American rhetoric that no longer unifies. American history itself has become contentious too. At a moment when people are arguing over statues, how can stories about the past ever unite us? Or, to put it differently: How can Biden talk about American history in a way that doesnt alienate either his opponents or his supporters?

Read: The Kumbaya candidate

Some lessons might emerge, eccentric though they may seem, from another project Ive been part of. This one also used focus groups, in an attempt to understand how Ukrainians in regions with very different histories remember the past. Western Ukraine was part of Poland until 1939, the east has a long history of Russian domination, and the two regions have radically different memories, especially of the Second World War. Russian disinformation directed at Ukraine has long sought to exacerbate these differences, characterizing western Ukrainians as Nazis and reminding easterners of the part they played in the Red Armys victory. As a result, any conversation about the war is liable to make somebody (maybe everybody) angry.

But when focus-group moderators changed the subject to different historical traumas, it turned out that the differences were not so great. When Ukrainians talk about, say, the Soviet-Afghan War in the 80s or the economic collapse that followed the end of the U.S.S.R. in the 90s, they have similarly strong emotions and similarly evocative feelings, no matter which part of the country they inhabit. They are also more likely to believe the information presented in documentaries about those subjects, whereas they approach similar films about the Second World War with distrust.

To my knowledge, no one has yet done the same kind of study in the U.S. But I can guess that, as in Ukraine, some Americans are divided by their different historical memories. Right now, different interpretations of the civil-rights movement, and even of the Civil War and Reconstruction, lie at the root of angry arguments about statues, military-base names, and the Confederate flag. Reconciling those memories is not something that will happen between now and November. But there might well be other things we can talk about, other episodes in American history that evoke strong, unifying feelings in both red and blue America. The moment of national mourning that followed 9/11? The financial crisis of 2008? The Biden campaign has already begun to explore the national experience of isolation and lockdown. Unsurprisingly, the Trump campaign has responded with a disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about whether that isolation and lockdown were even necessary. From its point of view, anything that creates bonds between red and blue Americans is anathema.

One way or another, all successful campaignspolitical campaigns, activist campaigns, even commercial advertising campaignsneed to reckon with the fact that audiences live in different information spheres. The era of mass media and unitary campaign slogans is drawing to an end. This is not news: The Russian operatives who intervened in the 2016 election were telling members of Black Lives Matter Facebook groups different things from what they told the anti-immigration activists they targeted in Idaho.

Still, we havent really absorbed the significance of this moment. In this post-mass-media era, sowing division is far easier than creating unity, giving an advantage to politicians who seek to win by creating scapegoats and enemies. Targeted advertising makes it much easier to splice and dice the electorate, and it isnt hard to create misunderstandings between groups who no longer speak to each other. For all those reasons, the odds are that whoever is the ultimate victor, the 2020 campaign will leave America even more bitterly divided than it is today, and that will go on being a problem in the future.

Read: The long arc of Joe Biden

Even if the Democratic nominee wins, Can Biden reach into the opposite bubble? is a question not just for the autumn of 2020 but for the spring of 2021, the winter of 2022, and many years into the future. The need to reach across informational and cultural divides will add an extra layer of complication to the multiple economic, medical, and foreign-policy crises a new Biden administration would immediately face, and will make it difficult to carry out the deep reforms that our bureaucracy, our democracy, and our health-care system need. But unless Biden makes an effort to talk with his opponents, he could end up much like the candidate in the Polish wheat field, with only the facts and 49 percent of the public on his side. Bidens campaign may represent the last chance to bridge the gaps that divide us. If Trump wins another term, then we can be certain that no one will even try.

Originally posted here:

The Facts Just Arent Getting Through - The Atlantic

Gen Z Reviews Classic Movies | ‘Red Dawn’ is the most violent film of its time but barely worth the trouble no – MEAWW

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The year was 1984 (coincidentally) and John Milius came out with his masterpiece, 'Red Dawn'. The first movie to bear the PG-13 rating in the US, 'Red Dawn' was once declared the most violent movie ever by the Guinness Book of World Record.However, watching it now makes you really wonder what all the hype was about. Is it violent? Yes, but not nearly as much as many of the movies that have been released in the 30-odd years since 'Red Dawn' hit the silver screen.

Keep in mind, the 'Rambo' series had only just begun two years ago and was yet to really get into form. And even in its year of release, 'Red Dawn' only holds the distinction of having been the first PG-13 movies because 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' and 'Gremlins' had both been criticized for the level of violence they featured despite having a PG rating.

So in other words, it's not so much that 'Red Dawn' was so violent they had to invent a rating category for it, it's just that it was the first to come out after the change had already been made. It was still the most violent film of its time in terms of kill count (2.23 acts of violence per minute) but we now live in a time where movies have turned violence into an artform and sadly, beyond the violence, there's really not much to the movie.

'Red Dawn' is basically 'The Red Scare: The Cinematic Version'. The movie begins with the invasion of a town in Colorado by Soviet and Cuban troops and revolves around a bunch of teenagers (played by soon-to-be iconic actors like Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen) who begin waging guerilla warfare against the invaders.

If you knock your sense of disbelief out and leave it tied up in the attic before watching this film, you might still enjoy it. But it's so riddled with issues that it's hard to believe that this movie is something of a cult classic, to the point where the military operation that took out Saddam Hussein was called Operation Red Dawn and a remake of the movie was released in 2012.

'Red Dawn' feels like a strange combination of your grandfather's ravings about "the dirty commies" and your weird internet troll cousin's social media posts about the importance of guns and arming ourselves ahead of some phantom invasion or the other.To begin with, the movie's premise hardly holds up.

When the film begins, it is revealed that in this "near-future", NATO has broken up and Mexico is now a communist state. Yet none of that explains why the Soviets and the Cubans would pick Colorado of all places to launch their invasion.It's not a particularly well-written movie in any other aspect either. The plot seems hastily thrown together and the concept of character development doesn't seem to have been considered at any stage in the production process.

The only thing that comes close to explaining the why of the movie is Milius's own political views, which are on the very, very far right. The closest equivalents to his worldview that exist in contemporary politics are the anarcho-capitalist movements that deride both left-wing ideology and the state in equal measure.We see that distrust of the state in 'Red Dawn'. And a nice dose of hatred for "those damn dirty commies", of course.

Ultimately, the movie does have its audience today. Granted, that audience consists mostly of alt-rightists, gun nuts, and the kind of people who watch films solely for the gore, but it is an audience nonetheless. If you do hold the aforementioned political leanings, you might enjoy 'Red Dawn'. If you're just a gore fan looking for some vintage violence, you might enjoy it a little less. And if you're literally anyone else, the only reason to watch this movie is in film school or because you've been asked to review it.

'Red Dawn' was released on August 10, 1984.

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Gen Z Reviews Classic Movies | 'Red Dawn' is the most violent film of its time but barely worth the trouble no - MEAWW

Dear White People: 10 Best Episodes, According To IMDb – Screen Rant

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The controversialNetflixprogram known asDear White Peoplehas truly taken the internet by storm, neatly dividing the field into devoted fans and rabid haters. Although showrunner Justin Simien believes that the negative reactions only serve to rehash the original point of his show, the fact remains that the world is not as egalitarian is a lot of people assume it to be.

RELATED:10 Most Powerful Quotes from Netflix's Dear White People

Each of theepisodes often elaborates on a singlecharacter's perspective, showing audiences the many possible angles that one must consider before delivering judgment. The series is to conclude with its fourth and final season to be released later this year here is a list of the 10 best episodes from the first three, arranged by IMDb score.

When the Student Pep Rally blockade doesn't work out as planned, Gabe tries to check on Samantha, but her absence makes him suspicious. He believes that she had some sort of romantic/sexual encounter with Reggie, who she was allegedly taking care of that night.

Troy declares that a meeting will be organized to discuss the issue, while Gabe and Joelle run around obtaining the backing they need from the different marginalized communities at Winchester. Gabe's standing is left in tatters when it is discovered that he was the one who called the campus police to the party (which left Reggie severely traumatized).

In the second season premiere, Samantha is forced to deal with a troublesome Twitter troll spewing alt-right garbage directed against her account. During her radio program, she refuses to consider Joelle's various (and rather sensible) suggestions, choosing instead to ruminate on the nefarious AltIvyW.

All members of A-P are disconcerted about the school's insistence on fusing them with David House, implying that the management believes in the ridiculous idea of self-segregation.

As the season one finale, this episode does not consider one character's view, but rather ties all the loose ends together into a neat bow. Lionel's piece comes out in The Independent, which forces Troy to acknowledge his father's dominating behavior and he reacts by destroying the glass panes in the front door of Hancock Hall.

Luckily, the campus police don't shoot him for this act, but that could be because Dean Fairbanks manages to arrive at the scene in time. In the end, the two old-pals-turned-bitter-enemies, Sam and Coco, find common ground and return to being tentative friends.

Reggie spends his time healing from his ordeal the previous night (having a cop aim a gun at his face through absolutely no fault of his own). The Black Students' Union has a meeting over the event, pointing out that the campus police have no reason to be carrying around weapons on university grounds.

RELATED:10 Shows To Watch If You Love Dear White People

Sam rejects Kurt's obviously insincere attempts at smoothing things over and plans to take matters into her own hands. At least Reggie finds some minor solace in narrating his experience via open mic poetry.

Troy and Coco begin a sexual relationship, which he wants to convert into romance, but is firmly rebuffed. He later eavesdrops on Samantha's argument with Dean Fairbanks, learning (to his astonishment) that it was she who invited people to the Blackface party, although she rationalizes her actions as necessary to unravel the deep-seated problems of racism at Winchester.

Lionel tags along with Troy on his "campaign trail" to become the President of the student body. Everything becomes considerably more complicated when Thane Lockwood, a popular jock, dies in an accident.

Coco reminisces about her first year at college, in which she requested that she be moved to Bechet House rather than A-P, but her developing friendship with Sam put her at ease. The pair soon found their own paths, however, with Coco subscribing to a sorority while Sam involved herself with the Black Student Union.

In the present timeline, Coco's endorsement of the Dear Black People party upsets Samantha and Joelle greatly. However, it is Sam who is left shamed when Coco suggests that the Dean didn't punish the former as severely as she would have been if she looked "more black."

This episode takes viewers on Gabe Mitchell's journey, specifically after his falling out withSam (and every POC student on campus). For most of its runtime, the story focuses on their relationship, finally culminating in Sam and Gabe meeting up in her radio booth.

Here, everything that has ever gone wrong is painfully dredged up he is angry about her cheating on him, while she is annoyed that he continues to demand evidence of "racial inequalities." Finally, the pair realize that they still have feelings for each other andthat all their complaints are, in fact, a manifestation of their love.

The world through the eyes of Lionel Higgins is both rose-tinted and filled with terror. The poor introvert finds it tricky to muster up enough courage to take a stand, but at least he's beginning to learn to say no.

RELATED:Dear White People: 5 Characters We'll Miss When the Show Ends (And 5 Who We Won't)

Lionel tells the BSU about the Blackface party, which is then promptly shut down. He goes on to write a front-page story about it for Silvio. He is the first to identify Sam as the culprit behind the party. He tells her that he knows what happened, which is why she accepts the responsibility (and the inevitable punishment)by means of her show.

The series opener introduces the sophisticated dynamics within Winchester without any preamble a radio show host cries foul about a Dear Black People party, but explains her rage by accurately comparing the dangerous stereotypes about Black people with the benign ones that refer to their privileged counterparts.

Unluckily for Sam, her loyalty to activism is questioned by her friends when they find out that she's in a relationship with a "white boy." To set things right, she acknowledges her role in the Blackface party, calling it a "sociological experiment."

The darkest episode in all three seasons by far, Chapter V begins almost innocently, following Reggie's app testing journey (to see if someone is woke or not). Joelle complains about his persistent "cyberstalking" of Sam, but the two end up going to Addison's party after making up.

Here, Addison casually drops the n-word while rapping and Reggie takes serious offense to it. Unfortunately, someone calls the campus cops, and they just ignore Addison's involvement in the argument and demand that Reggie display his student ID. When he refuses, they draw their gun on him.

NEXT:Dear White People: 10 Quotes To Remember From The First Episode

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In real life, Ajay disguises himself as an academic, mainly writing textbooks for children who all hate him for making their lives more miserable. He also writes about TV and film, strewing his opinions across the internet to see if people care (they don't).

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Dear White People: 10 Best Episodes, According To IMDb - Screen Rant

The anatomy of a city with a hate problem – Xtra Magazine

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Four years ago, Jyssika Russell and two colleagues decided LGBTQ2 youth in Hamilton, Ontario, needed space. About an hours drive from Toronto, Hamilton has a population of nearly 750,000, a thriving arts scene, a large university. But there were no queer community centres. No gay bars. Some local non-profits ran LGBTQ2 programming, but nothing permanent that stood on its own. For a city of this size, we had nothing, Russell says.

Speqtrum is meant to be part of the solution. Russell and her co-founders designed the pilot project to provide active and social workshops for young LGBTQ2 people. Since then, Speqtrums offerings remain much the same. Our whole premise is to create and build community, primarily through activities, she says. The idea is that then that can help you connect and support each other.

But it is among the few offerings in Hamilton.

And that mattersespecially in a city where xenophobic protesters have made a routine out of demonstrating; where a former neo-Nazi leader worked at city hall, openly, for years; and where, in 2018, the most hate crimes were reported in the country.

That hatefulness was demonstrated in full force at Pride 2019 in Hamiltons Gage Park, when a group of protesters with homophobic signs showed up. According to the CBC, they physically clashed with counter-demonstrators who blocked them from the festivities. A number of people in pink masks identifying themselves as anarchists manoeuvered a portable barrier to block them, wrote CBC Hamilton reporter Samantha Craggs. Punching, shoving and hitting broke out between the two groups. Several people were injured.

Hamilton police were in attendance, but many felt they were slow to react. (An independent review of the incident, released in June 2020, found that the response to the violence was inadequate.) Meanwhile, Fred Eisenberger, Hamiltons mayor, and some of the city council came under heavy criticism for not more forcefully denouncing the protestersit took Eisenberger a week to release a formal statement. In the end, five people were charged: one of the homophobic demonstrators, and four of the counter-protesters.

A City of Hamilton spokesperson told Xtra that the city remains in solidarity with the LGBTQ2 community and is committed to being a Hamilton for All, where everyone in the city feels safe and welcome, and that they regret the violence that occurred at last years Pride event. Mayor Eisenberger and Hamilton Police Service Chief Eric Girt apologized for the pain and fear experienced that day by our Two-Spirit and LGBTQ+ communities, their friends and allies.

Hamilton is a city where marginalized communities have for years been trying to make space for themselvesthrough programs like Speqtrum and annual Pride events. But its also a city where hate has festered, particularly in the past few years. And its not alone: Research has found that right-wing extremism is growing worldwide. Thats why Hamiltons queer communitys fight against homophobia and racism isnt just their fightits everyones.

Hate does not emerge or operate in a vacuum, wrote Barbara Perry and Ryan Scrivens in their 2018 research paper on how organized hate groups emerge in Canada. The pair, both researchers of right-wing extremism, found three patterns: a community history and normativity of racism, a political climate of intolerance and a weak law enforcement response.

You can find these patterns in Hamilton. We have a history of hate groups in Hamilton that goes back over 80 years, as well as anti-Black racism within how we tell histories about Hamilton, and that is visible in leadership in Hamilton, across sectors, Ameil Joseph, an associate professor of social work at McMaster University, told CBC Hamilton in 2019.

In 2001, for example, just four days after 9/11, a mosque and a Hindu temple were targeted in acts of arson. Three men were arrested 12 years later, and all pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of mischief.

Theres a history of homophobia and intolerance toward LGBTQ2 people in the city, too. In the early 1990s, then-mayor Bob Morrow refused to declare Gay Pride Day; it would take a human rights tribunal ruling four years later to force him to recognize the day in Hamilton. Morrow, who was first elected in 1982, remains the longest serving mayor in Hamiltons historyhe didnt leave until he lost the 2000 election. (He also came back to serve as an appointed councillor after a city councillor died in 2014.) Even in his final year as mayor, he still did not attend Pride events, according to a local Hamilton Spectator report.

Since then, Hamiltons demographics have shifted significantly. Its become a bit of a joke in Toronto for people, fed up by sky-high housing and living costs, to claim they are going to pick up and move to Hamiltonand some of them are actually doing it. In 2016, a Hamilton Spectator report found that newcomers to the area were just as likely to be migrating from other parts of the province than from another country, and that the largest generational group of people living in the city were millennials. And nearly one in four people in Hamilton under the age of 15 are people of colour. Perry and Scrivens note that when newcomers arrive, they are often seen as scapegoats for all sorts of social ills by a small subset of people who are more likely to become radical.

Weve had a number of people and youth connect with us coming from other places in the [Greater Toronto Area] before they move here, mainly coming here because of cheaper rent, more services and transit options than the suburbs, says Russell. But, anecdotally, she noticed that some older LGBTQ2 people were doing the oppositemoving from Hamilton to Toronto for better access to safety and community.

Though the poverty level has lowered since the mid-90s, it remains high compared to the Ontario average. There are also massive income disparities at the neighbourhood level, according to the Spectator: 11 neighbourhoods in the lower inner city still have poverty rates of more than 30 percent.

Hamilton has a strong tradition of union activism and, at the federal and provincial level, the downtown ridings have been NDP strongholds since at least 2006, while more affluent areas of Ancaster and Dundas have typically voted for the Conservatives or Liberals. Yet, in 2018, Hamilton recorded the highest reports of hate crimes in the countryalmost triple that reported in Toronto, the biggest city in Canada.

It wasnt a surprise, says Michael Abraham, the lead at the SPACE Youth Centre, a drop-in centre for youth that provides programming for LGBTQ2 people. But it was so sad to see.

In 2018, there were 18 incidents of hate bias against the LGBTQ2 community; 58 were because of racial bias and 49 were because of the victims religion. That was a slight decrease in the number of incidents due to bias against sexual orientation from the previous year, when there were 22 incidents.

Hamiltons statistics in 2018 outstrip many other communities. Compared to the citywhich had 17.1 hate crimes per 100,000 peopleOttawa, the third ranked at the time Statistics Canada released the information, had only 9.8.

And Kojo Damptey, the interim executive director of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion, notes those numbers are also likely underreported. Those communities dont have a good relationship with the police, he says. Then theres the issue of hate crime reporting: For an incident to be officially counted as a hate-motivated crime, it must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that an actual crime occurred, and that it was motivated by hate. If Im walking downtown and somebody uses a racial slur at me, there is no chance that that person is going to be arrested, says Damptey.

Meanwhile, the tenor of racist, homophobic and transphobic incidents in Hamilton seemed to be getting worse. Weve often had the usual sort of religious person standing up on the hill with a sandwich board [at Pride], says Cole Gately, who was among organizers of Hamiltons 2017 Pride events. But about three years ago, people Gately describes as street preachers came to protest, as well as people he believes may have been affiliated with white supremacist groups.

It was in late 2018 that the Yellow Vest movementa group originating in France, protesting high gas and living costs, but that soon, in parts of Canada, intermingled with alt-right groupsmade its way to city hall. The first recorded protest, in December that year, was against Canada signing the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, an international agreement on a common approach to international migration.

After that, the protests at city hall became a weekly event, escalating into the confrontation at Pridewhich left many people in vulnerable communities wondering why a public space had become a venue for xenophobia and intolerance. Most of the leaders in our city and politicians said nothing, says Cameron Kroetsch, who is on Hamiltons LGBTQ advisory committee and the Pride board of directors. That has been the status quo, from what I can tell, for a long time in Hamilton. The city did eventually look into whether it could legally bar the group from a public space. A City of Hamilton spokesperson says that the citys corporate security team continues to observe rallies and demonstrations that take place in municipal spaces such as the city hall forecourt, andif there is reasonable evidence to substantiate a complainta trespass notice can be issued. So far, the city has issued two trespass notices related to violence by hate groups.

But more incidents have only increased friction in Hamilton. In 2019, a Vice investigation found Marc Lemire, a former neo-nazi leader, had been working at Hamilton City Hall for years, his name left off most of the citys public facing records. (After this was disclosed, Hamiltons LGBTQ advisory committee asked the city council not to fly the Pride flag at City Hall during Pride; instead, they didnt have a flag raising ceremony.) And Paul Fromm, a known white supremacist, was spotted at the Yellow Vest protests, according to the CBC. Then came the Pride counter-protesters.

The overall situation became scary enough that some community organizers worried they were putting themselves at risk just by holding events. Chris Farias was the host of Drag Queen Storytime in Hamilton, performing as Ladybird Fancypants. After one performance at Carter Park in the fall of 2019, Farias came home to find they had messages from concerned friends after hearing that threats had been made against Ladybird Fancypants and the event. Suddenly, Farias had to weigh performing against the potential of putting children at risk. I was scared that I was drawing hate to [kids], they said. Since then, Farias has only held Drag Queen Storytime online or for private events.

This hate Hamilton is, in some ways, a microcosm of the troubling rise of right-wing extremism in pockets of North America. Perry and Scrivens note that across Western Ontario, Quebec, the lower British Columbia mainland and Alberta, the economic transition and the demographic transitions that have affected [southern Canada] more than [northern Canada] have created a whole raft of anxieties for some elements of society. London, Ontarioonly about an hour-and-half drive from Hamiltonalso had alt-right protests in 2017.Hate speech and hate-promoting activity became so problematic that, in 2017, the City of London announced that the managing director of parks and recreation would be able to refuse or revoke permission for events on city grounds if they believed it promoted hatred or discrimination, writes Eternity Martis in her book They Said This Would Be Fun, a memoir about her experiences with racism while attending university in the city. (Martis is also a senior editor atXtra.) Hate incidents in the city have been so shocking that theyve made national headlines.

Theres evidence that organizers of the Hamilton Yellow Vest protests wanted to spread their movement further afield. According to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, last year Justin Long, a member of the group, said in a video that its his goal to clear anti-fascists out of Hamilton and then move on to another citymaybe Niagara Falls.

While not all white nationalists are homophobic, the majority of right-wing extremists are virulently anti-LGBT and share an anxiety and fixation on white birth rates, which are just barely keeping pace with racial minorities, writes Julie Compton for NBC News. And according to a 2020 United Nations Security Council Counter Terrorism Committee report, there has been a 320 percent rise in attacks by individuals affiliated with extreme right-wing terrorism in the last five years. This all combines to create a potentially dangerous situation for queer people.

That there are no permanent safe spaces for LGBTQ2 people wasnt always the case in Hamilton. The Well was Hamiltons queer community centre for 10 years. Embassy, one of a small handful of gay bars, was located smack downtown from the mid-1990s. Despite the best efforts of one former mayor, Pride festivities have been marked since the early 90s.

But both The Well and Embassy closed in 2016. There have been some efforts to provide funds for LGBTQ2 communities: The city of Hamilton has a diversity and inclusion facilitator and, in 2018, installed rainbow sidewalks outside of city hall. But according to Joey Coleman, publisher of civic affairs news site The Public Record, there is no direct operational funding dedicated for LGBTQ2 programming aside from the facilitator position. A City of Hamilton spokesperson says that the citys enrichment fund applies an equity, diversity and inclusion lens to our grant process and engagement plans to ensure we are reaching all. This includes grants for Pride Hamilton.

Hamiltons lack of LGBTQ2 spaces is such an issue that while doing research for a survey of Hamiltons queer community, Suzanne Mills, one of the authors of the report and an associate professor at McMaster Universitys school of labour studies, noticed the town halls they were holding were very popular among queer and trans folks. [The attendees] didnt want to participate in the research at all, Mills says. They just wanted to meet people, that they would talk to about how they wanted social spaces and things to do. The study, released in 2019, found that while Two-Spirit and LGBTQ people generally have a strong connection to Hamilton, fewer felt that same connection to the citys queer community.

Mills research has also found that while LGBTQ2 folks generally feel safe in Hamilton, many do not feel safe outside or in places affiliated with religion. Racialized cisgender people and trans people felt less safe comparatively.

Creating space in the city has long been a unique challenge. But Adam George Palios and Steven Hilliard have tackled it headfirsta reversal of sorts on the headlines about hate in Hamilton. Their promo company, Adam and Steve, is one of the biggest organizers of LGBTQ2 events in The Hammer. Last year, they hosted a Pride party in this midst of all the strife. There was not a homophobic protester to be found. Instead, 500 people showed up to celebrate queerness. I remember walking around that night, genuinely in tears, seeing people I hadnt seen in years, who, for the first time in so long, came out to Pride to celebrate, says Hilliard. I think that that is the measure of where a community is going.

Just holding safer space [can] also be very healing, says Palios. Just to know that you can go somewhere and relax with your friends and you dont always have to be on edge. In the absence of a dedicated gay bar, Palios and Hilliard instead work on educating staff at local venues on how to be a safe space for the queer communitywhether thats the club where they bring alumni from RuPauls Drag Race, or the local sports bar where they host Dirty Bingo.

Having space can be crucially important to stopping hate. And having a united front also shows that the community has strength and support from others. Those sort of mechanisms [community centres] are so important for developing broader community support and developing allyship and solidarity, but also in deterring violence, says Barbara Perry.

Mills study of Hamiltons queer community found that there was a sizable minority of people who are leaving the city to access services and community spaces geared for LGBTQ2 peopleand almost all of them would prefer not to leave. Theres just a lot of people who feel lonely and disconnected, Mills says.

While Hamilton lacks something permanent, other organizations have stepped up to support the LGBTQ2 community in the last few years. The AIDS Network provides more generalized non-AIDS related programming, according to Mills study. The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board hosts Rainbow Prom, a safe space for youth to celebrate. Kaleidoscope is an LGBTQ+ youth circle co-founded by Kiwanis Boys and Girls Clubs of Hamilton and NGen Youth Centre.

In May 2018, The SPACE Youth Centre introduced OQRA, an informal support group for queer and trans Black, Indigenous and racialized youth, after hearing concerns from the community that even what little was for offer in Hamilton was overwhelmingly white. (The Centre also offers Scope, an LGBTQ2 youth circle.) But Michael Abraham says the team is also trying to bring an intersectional lens to everything they do at SPACE. I think having spaces in which you can exist and flourish is a common need that pretty much anyone and everyone has, he says. So when you dont see yourself represented in your community, or the wider city, thats quite a challenge.

Speqtrums Jyssika Russell believes that this kind of organizing work is what can effectively stomp out hate in Hamilton. I think its just a perfect time to really highlight that whats going to stop a hate crisis in Hamilton is investing in community organizations, into mental health supports, into affordable housing and into addictions programs, Russell says. These are the things that will actually alleviate so many of those community issues.

Theres evidence that this kind of support for marginalized and vulnerable communities can push back against far-right radicalization. Perry and Scrivens reported that its often community activists who are able to see where hate is bubbling up and more effectively communicate that to authorities. One police officer in our study suggested that rights activists are crucial to counter-extremism initiatives because they fill in the gaps where police cant go, they wrote. (This, of course, depends on police having a trusting relationship with marginalized communitiesa reality that seems quite distant today.)

But funding remains an issue. Russell is currently fighting to keep Speqtrum going not only during a pandemic, but as the organizations provincial funds are set to run out.

A community hub space, first proposed by councillor Nrinder Nann, has received support from council. Mayor Eisenberger and several staff and councillors even visited Torontos 519 community centre, looking at it as a potential model for a centre in Hamilton. A community hub, however, was not in this years city budget, which passed before the COVID-19 pandemic began. (A city spokesperson said that as the city begins to reopen, this important work will continue.)

But the fight is far from over. I think sometimes people dont realize the amount of stress that this puts on people in our community, says Russell. The hate stuff is happening at the same time as our communities are hurting.

I think its incredible how resilient weve been able to be, she adds. But building these spaces, building community, takes a lot of time and energy and a lot of heart.

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The anatomy of a city with a hate problem - Xtra Magazine

Dear White People: Which Character Are You Based On Your Zodiac? – Screen Rant

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In many ways, the message offered by theNetflix Original,Dear White People, has been diluted in the backlash it has received for allegedly performing acts of "reverse-racism." Regardless, the show, currently about to enter its fourth installment, has received critical acclaim for its portrayal of minorities.The playful nature of the story blends seamlessly with the complex, and painful, issues brought up by the series.

RELATED:10 Most Powerful Quotes from Netflix's Dear White People

The world within Winchester University exemplifies the need for aBlack Lives Mattermovement, but simultaneously provides its students with safe spaces rarely afforded to people in the real world. In that sense, one might argue that thecharactersaren't entirely aware of the realities that lie beyond their campus protests. In either case, it would be fun to evaluate the Zodiac nature of some of the main roles (different as they all are from each other.)

The senior-most authority figure in all of Winchester, Dean Walter Fairbanks has earned his position with enormous amounts of hard work and persistence. As he keeps telling Troy, he wants nothing more than his son's success (without the accompanying stigma of stereotyping).

Being an Aries, Fairbanks is able to maintain control over the student body as well as Troy's future for a surprisingly long period of time. He clearly doesn't have a lot of patience, though, seeing as he considers Sam's complaints to be unimportant in the larger scheme of things.

Initially shy (read: Extremely introverted), Lionel comes into his own as a journalist for the school magazine, The Independent. Whenever it comes to his reporting, Lionel manifests the Taurus identity of hyperfocused diligence, devoting himself to gathering information about the stories that hefinds noteworthy rather than what his boss, Silvio, wants him to write about.

Lionel is a gentle soul, but when pushed to his limits, he can be quite the firebrand a fact proven when hepublicly accuses Silvio of beingSamantha's alt-right troll nemesis.

Coco had a tough childhood, one thatmade her into the woman she is today. Unfortunately, Coco tries her hardest to distance herself from her past, believing that only this will allow her the space to blossom into greatness, or, "the second black female President," as she calls it.

Nevertheless, Coco is suspended between both versions of herself, as many Gemini are, unable to decide which fork in the road power or comradeship is more suitable for her.

Reggie Green loves to learn, jumping from course to course and excelling in all of them with equal ease. A classic Cancer, his dreams are wider than his ambitions, which can sometimes lead to difficult or conflicting situations.

RELATED:10 Shows To Watch If You Love Dear White People

One example of this occurs when Reggie instantly falls for Samantha White, even though she has a boyfriend. Another is when he sticks up for the misogynistic abuser, Moses Brown, defending him against allegations from women (simply because they happen to be white).

Joelle Brooks is a Leo: a true force of nature that parallels her best friend, Sam, in terms of activism. She is a bit on thegrouchy side at times, like when she goes off at Reggie for pining over his unrequited (and totally unnecessary) crush.

Joelle has a high level of self-esteem, as well. This is partially why she happens to be one of the smartest kids at Winchester, although shenever gets to outshine Sam and herpassion.

Muffy Tuttle plays the antagonist at first, butting heads with Coco over the smallest of matters. She has a tendency towards being manipulative, a feature inherited from her extremely wealthy background.

However, her Virgo nature shines brightest much later, when she willingly confides in Cocoabout being pressured into having sex with Moses Brown. Muffy is not one to take others' opinions as doctrine, either, like when she tells Joelle that it is the duty for all women to fight together (irrespective of race).

The Libra within Gabe explains his academic brilliance and commitment, seeing as he takes on a series of jobs, including being a Teaching Assistant, in addition to his enormous Master's course load.

While dating Sam, Gabe begins to rid himself of privileged thought processes, considering POC issues with a gentle compassion (excluding, of course, the matter of calling the campus police on Reggie). Gabe is constantly attempting to balance his inner prejudices with doing the right thing, a definitive Libra sign.

Sam White is the protagonist and the most vociferous character in the show, establishing a satirical radio program to "teach" white peoplehow tominimize their various microaggressions.

As a dynamic Scorpio, Sam refuses to let anything hold her back against speaking her mind, regardless of how it could affect her friendships, romances, or scholastic endeavors. At the same time, Sam finds it hard to let go of control, as seen when she insists on hiding her relationship with Gabe, a white man.

Kelsey is not very involved in the sociopolitical drama eternally staged at Winchester, but this doesn't mean she doesn't care about them. The difference here, however, is that her Sagittarianhabits imbue her with sufficient composure not to overreact whenever something goes awry or missing (with the singular exception of her therapy dog, Sorbet).

RELATED:Dear White People: 5 Characters We'll Miss When the Show Ends (And 5 Who We Won't)

Kelsey is honest to the point of shamelessness, which is shown when she basically reads Coco for assuming that she was only now coming out of the closet.

The Capricorn-born are blessed with a burning desire to win at everything in life, something Troy exhibits on a daily basis. One of the most popular (and accomplished) pupils at Winchester, he even plans to become President of the student body in order to further his aspirations.

Sadly, Troy's journey aligns with those of his wealthy white peers. He is regularly at odds with the black students on campus, mainly for his "elitist" bearing and perennial Devil's Advocacy.

The mostenigmatic character is the Narrator, who primarily plays a disembodied voice discussing the major events in the series. He also offers psychological and emotional context for the actions and behaviors of the main cast.

Like the Aquarius, the Narrator is rarely involved in issues directly but rather seeks to maintain historical records. However, he is revealed at the end of season 2 to be a real person (an ex-professor named Dr. Edward Ruskins), who reaches out to Sam and Lionel on behalf of the Order of X.

Rashid displays the major Pisces traits of empathy, generosity, and politeness, all of which hold him in good stead as an exchange student from Kenya. Although he is unable to totally comprehend the discourse of racism in America, Rashid remains a supportive and helpful person, especially to Joelle (whom he has an open liking for).

Rashid can be a bit sassy at times, for instance, when he point-blank tells the Black Caucus that his "ancestors were smart enough not to get captured."

NEXT:Dear White People: 10 Quotes To Remember From The First Episode

Next Every Episode Of The Man In The High Castle Season 1, Ranked According To IMDb

In real life, Ajay disguises himself as an academic, mainly writing textbooks for children who all hate him for making their lives more miserable. He also writes about TV and film, strewing his opinions across the internet to see if people care (they don't).

See more here:

Dear White People: Which Character Are You Based On Your Zodiac? - Screen Rant

Election 2020: Conspiracy theory candidates become mainstream by politicizing fear – Palm Beach Post

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Q Anon adherents have become more visible and outspoken across Florida over the past few years. Now the plethora of Q candidates have mainstreamed the fringe beliefs.

Reba Sherrill of Palm Beach wants to represent Florida in Congress.

The Republican candidate for the District 21 seat presently held by Democrat Lois Frankel said she supports term limits and calls for health care plans to include dental and eye coverage.

Pretty standard campaign stances for Republican candidates. Then, there are Sherrills more atypical beliefs.

Sherrill also believes that "pedivores" or pedophile cannibals eat babies to get high. And that children as young as six are taught about having sex with animals.

"There are so many things that are actually being taught to our children in the school system, I would categorize it as pure evil," she said on a YouTube video. "They start educating children in kindergarten about bestiality, anal sex and all these different things that children should not be exposed to."

Whoa, thats out there, yes, but Sherrill is not alone among congressional candidates in some of her more eyebrow-raising beliefs.

Elizabeth Felton, also running for Frankels seat, promotes a debunked conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor.

Two candidates running for the GOP nomination in another Palm Beach County congressional district also espouse seemingly outlandish views. Jessi Melton asserts communists run Broward County and Darlene Swaffar claims the government confiscates children from families who refuse to immunize them.

Meanwhile, four other candidates vying for three other congressional seats across Florida have also advocated wild conspiracy theories. Those include allegations the "American Baseball League" is being taken over by Marxists and the implication that the "C" in the Chick-Fil-A logo is a symbol of sexual deviancy.

Political experts say the 2020 election has brought out candidates who are a standard deviation or two toward the margins of the spectrum.

"Normally, political parties would do things to suppress their fringes," said political strategist Rick Wilson. "Now, they don't have the ability to stop these people from defining themselves as the core of the Republican Party."

In Florida, a common denominator among most of the the conspiracy theorists is they follow Q Anonymous QAnon, or Q, for short.

Among other things, Q adherents posit that a "Deep State" cabal of pedophiles run by political elites, business leaders and Hollywood celebrities are plotting to take over the world. Qs mission? "Enlighten" followers in an attempt to prevent that from happening.

Another commonality: They support President Donald Trump, whom many Q followers point to as the one who will lead believers "from darkness to light."

To be sure, the Q candidates also make mainstream, conservative arguments.

Protecting unborn babies? Check. Cleaning Floridas waterways? Check. Improving education, halting sex trafficking and fiercely defending second amendment rights? Check, check, check.

However, Q candidates often have other beliefs beliefs that not long ago would only have been whispered in private with like-minded individuals. But no more.

One political analyst said the beliefs are heartfelt.

"When they say they believe something, they are not lying," said Joseph Uscinski, Associate Professor of Political Science and specialist in public opinion and mass media at University of Miami. "Generally these beliefs are sincere, and this is what they think is true."

Certainly, the QAnon crowd has become more visible and outspoken across Florida over the past few years.

At some of President Trumps rallies, they stand out by wearing t-shirts or holding signs with codes identifying themselves as believers. On the internet, they use symbols like triangles, owls and lightning bolts; and hashtags like #GreatAwakening, #Q, #QAnon, #QAnonTruth, #OutOfTheShadows, #FallCabal and #WWG1WGA "Where we go one, we go all."

They have appeared at local government hearings, too. At a June 23 Palm Beach County Commission meeting to discuss mandating face masks, conspiracy theorists were front and center, ranting about the devil, the "Deep State," pedophiles and 5G technology.

From political fringe to mainstream

Experts say the proliferation of conspiracy candidates this election cycle is unsurprising, particularly in blue states.

"Youve got districts and states that tend to be strongly Democrat or Republican, and you are more likely to see them come up particularly in places that are solidly blue," said Mark Fenster, law professor at the University of Florida. "Places where the Republican Party is fairly small, out of power, and very intensely motivated to believe the worst of the other side."

No longer on the political fringe, candidates espousing conspiracy theories have drawn support and raised money.

Case-in-point: Sherrills opponent Laura Loomer, is arguably the highest-profile conspiracy theory candidate in Palm Beach County. Loomer, who denies any association with QAnon, has raised a stunning $1 million, much of it in large donations.

"Big donors tend to give money to candidates that they believe are going to win, no matter their views," said John Krosnick, professor of political science at Stanford University. "Then they will own them."

Another candidate that has embraced conspiracy theories about communism, Melton, has raised over $156,000, including 22 donations from WinRed, a GOP fundraising platform created by Trump, Jared Kushner and Republican congressional leaders, among others.

Melton has also snagged high-profile endorsements from Kentucky GOP U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and political adviser and Trump insider Roger Stone, who recently had his prison sentence commuted after being convicted of seven felonies. Stone also endorsed Loomer.

Like Loomer, Melton has had her share of troubles with social media. Twitter suspended Melton on several occasions after she posted doctored photos, fake quotes, and medical misinformation.

Down, but far from out, Loomer and Melton found acceptance on Parler an alternative social media site where conspiracy theories run rampant and facts, falsified quotes, doctored videos and misinformation can be shared without fear of censorship.

It is a place where subscribers can learn about how FEMA is planning a mass slaughter of Christians with the use of guillotines. And how Trump saved thousands of kidnapped babies hidden in cages under Central Park and in San Francisco. And how Bill Gates plans to implant microchips in people through the coronavirus vaccine, as well as how those in power plan to confiscate everyones money and turn them into slaves.

While the subject of conspiracy theories runs the gamut from how 5G radiation causes coronavirus to why Dr. Anthony Fauci is behind the "Plandemic," child sex trafficking rings seem to be the conspiracy theory of choice among QAnon followers.

These rings are omnipresent, they say, run by Satan-worshiping demons such as Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson and Oprah Winfrey. One widely shared video accused online furniture retailer Wayfair of being part of a sex trafficking ring.

In July, TikTok joined Twitter in blocking Q-related hashtags and banning thousands of accounts after reports of Q members stalking other subscribers and not adhering to posted guidelines. Days later, Trump threatened to shut TikTok down.

Bipartisan conspiracy politics

Pam Wohlschlegel, committee member of the Republican Executive Committee of Palm Beach County, said the focus on conspiracy theorists in this years primary elections is overplayed. She doubts they will get much traction at the ballot box.

"I would think that most people won't support it," Wohlschlegel said.

Either way, Wohlschlegel said, the Republican Party, like the Democratic Party, does not prohibit anyone from running on its ticket and is not responsible for what individual candidates espouse. Its up to the voters to decide.

"Make intelligent decisions when you vote," she recommended. "The only way to do that is to study the candidates and take every advantage you can to meet them in person."

Wilson, a member of the Lincoln Project that opposes Trump, said the damage to the GOPs brand will be long-lasting.

"Its going to make the Republican Party much less sellable as an entity in suburbs among educated voters and those who are not mentally amenable to the absurdity it represents," he said.

Political affiliation does not dictate ones propensity for believing conspiracy theories, said Uscinski, who has written three books on the subject.

"It's not based on left-right politics," he said. "Its an absolute rejection of left-right politics. QAnon wants to kill the Clintons and Obamas, but they also want to kill the Bushes, Mike Pence, Oprah, Tom Hanks."

He also points out that, in the current election cycle, the right has not been the only side to fall victim to conspiracy theories.

"He ran against his own party and said everything is corrupt," Uscinski said of former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. "He just sticks with one conspiracy that the 1% control everything. But because Democrats dont have their own version of QAnon, you dont really hear about it that much."

But on a path paved by the highest-ranking government official in the nation, every QAnon candidate in Florida is running on a Republican ticket, save for one Independent. Trump opened the door, Uscinski said, and believers walked through it.

"Trump ran as a Republican, but he didnt run as a traditional Republican or a conservative," he said. "He ran as his own thing, which was against the establishment at large."

QAnon in a nutshell

QAnon is an unorganized faction bound by shared beliefs. Its roots trace back to 18th century Germany, but it did not garner mainstream media attention in the U.S. until the summer of 2018, when QAnon supporters wore distinguishing T-shirts to a Trump rally in Tampa.

There is no identified leader of QAnon, but some followers believe it to be a government insider with access to secret intelligence information. The leader then disseminates to QAnon followers the "truth" that the cabal the secret political operatives who run the country behind the scenes is attempting to hide.

QAnon writings tend to refer to people who should be feared in general terms by referring to them vaguely as "they," "the bad people," or the "Illuminati" powerful players like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Beyonc and Jay-Z who are hell-bent on world domination, they say.

Those who have been "redpilled are the enlightened ones. Those "bluepilled" are ignorant deniers of truth who choose darkness over light, ignorance over actuality.

Conspiracy theory culture can take hold, Krosnick said, when people have trouble accepting that a traumatic event can be caused by a lone individual or happenstance.

"You can understand why someone at home would wonder or say, This doesnt pass the smell test of plausibility," he said. "You cant deny JFK was assassinated, but the explanation for many people doesn't feel right."

In the past two decades, the rise of social media, combined with the proliferation of broadcasting, has helped propel conspiracy theorists out of the shadows. It was then cultivated by a president who has propagated doubt in mainstream media and government institutions, Krosnick said.

"The president shows up and says all the news you used to trust is now fake," he said. "The countrys ability to be confident that we have trusted sources to go to to know the truth has disintegrated."

So, in the perceived absence of reliable news sources, people gravitate to "conspiracy" theories to answer their questions, "alternative" facts to calm their fears.

"With a president that has promoted skepticism and is telling the public false information that is then widely discredited, now peoples imaginations are free to roam wherever they want to," Krosnick said.

While Trump and the Republicans do not hold a monopoly on conspiracy theories, those espousing the lion's share of those beliefs this election cycle are almost exclusively Republicans, said Fenster.

Typically, he said, conspiracy theories flow at a faster rate from whichever political party is out of power at the time. That is why widespread conspiracy theories on the right are so unusual this election cycle.

"What is different about today is that we have someone who broadcasts conspiracy theories who is in the White House," Fenster said. "It is now more on the right than on the left. And the alt-right community is defined by a conspiratorial view of how the world works."

Trump has become a master at using conspiracy theories to deflect attention away from issues on which he does not want the public to focus, Fenster said. During a recent week of polling that showed the president losing support nationwide, Trump reached for a doozy that reportedly shocked even his inner circle.

"Like the delay the election tweet," Fenster said of Trump's July 31 tweet suggesting the general election be postponed due to unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud. "Or really bad economic or COVID news. It distracts from that and will change the conversation once again."

So, when a president pushes conspiracy theories and convinces the public that facts are not facts and the mainstream media cannot be trusted, what is a skeptic to believe? Enter the QAnon phenomenon.

"Well see if it's on the fringes or not," Fenster said. "This could be a coming out party within Republican Party for QAnon believers, depending upon how they do in the elections."

Establishment GOP support?

Whether establishment Republicans show up to vote for QAnon candidates remains to be seen, said political analyst Trimmel Gomes. So far, national and state parties have said little, if anything, to denounce QAnon candidates.

"You may have traditional Republicans who may be concerned [about QAnon ideology], but theyve already been drowned out by everything else that's sort of invaded the party," Gomes said. "You are seeing the party just unfurl even further. Its getting so far right that anything goes. And now, QAnon has just latched on and become a melting pot for all the crazies."

Krosnick said that while it may appear the QAnon phenomenon is spreading like wildfire, research shows that is not the case. Social media followers can be artificially inflated and posts of support for conspiracy theories, or anything else for that matter, can be perpetuated by bots.

Uscinski, who has for years conducted regular polling in Florida about conspiracy theories, agrees that the number of QAnon followers is not exploding.

"We put it in a feeling thermometer that goes from 0-100," he said of a June 23 poll in Florida. "Q came out a few points better than Fidel Castro. And Florida hates Castro."

Still, some experts are concerned.

"I worry deeply about how we're going to get out of this mess," Krosnick said. "I dont see a pathway forward to help people regain trust in facts. Its going to take a really extraordinary set of leaders in the country to bring us back under control."

Gomes agreed.

"This phenomenon, unfortunately, has picked up legs," he said. "The test will be the upcoming election. Its worrying that people are losing grips on facts and questioning facts ...They don't trust the media, so you cant go back to them with rational arguments. And I don't know what the solution is to stop it."

@WendyRhodesFL

wrhodes@pbpost.com

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Election 2020: Conspiracy theory candidates become mainstream by politicizing fear - Palm Beach Post