Daily Archives: July 11, 2017

Malcolm Turnbulls speech reminded his Liberal colleagues that he has not stolen the party and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

It is a sign of how serious the divisions have become in the Liberal Party that speaking the truth about Robert Menzies is now depicted as making a provocative attack on the Liberal right.

Yet that is the situation in which Malcolm Turnbull found himself after giving his Disraeli Prize speech in London. As Turnbull pointed out in that speech, Menzies intentionally avoided calling the new party conservative in case that gave rise to misconceptions. Rather, Turnbull cites Menzies statement that they:

took the name Liberal because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his right and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

As the leading academic expert on Robert Menzies, Judith Brett, has pointed out, Menzies recognised when the party was founded in 1944 that there was a strong public sentiment in favour of building a progressive, new post-war society that was far better than the old.

In other words, it was a party that pledged to reject socialism, but wouldnt necessarily stand in the path of social progress.

In short, Turnbull is attempting to reclaim both Menzies and the Liberal Party he played a key role in founding, for a centrist rather than reactionary position. He is gently taking issue with Tony Abbott and those conservatives in the party who have focused on undermining, rather than working with him, regardless of the damage this might do to the partys electoral prospects.

I say gently because, as even the arch-conservative Eric Abetz acknowledges, Turnbull also cites Tony Abbotts earlier phrase that the sensible centre is the place to be. Nonetheless, Turnbull is reminding such conservatives that he has not stolen the party, and his leadership is legitimately Liberal.

There is a long tradition of attempting to appeal to the centre in Australian politics, not least in the hope that centrist politicians will be able to harvest votes from both major parties. Turnbull can legitimately argue that many of the small-l liberal positions he is associated with (despite his more recent concessions to the right) are in line with popular opinion. Same-sex marriage is an obvious case in point.

There was also a vibrant small-l liberal tradition on issues such as homosexuality in the party in the 1970s, prior to John Howards conservative ascendancy.

Nonetheless, there were some elephants in the room in London when Turnbull gave his speech.

It is open to debate what a modern Menzian position would be in regard to issues such as same-sex marriage or racial equality. After all, Menzies, like Labor prime ministers John Curtin and Ben Chifley before him, continued to support the White Australia Policy. Male homosexuality was illegal under state law for all of Menzies prime ministership.

Turnbull refers to Menzies forgotten people. However, the famous speech in which Menzies articulated that concept assumed (as Curtin and Chifley also did) that employees would continue to be predominantly male, and women would largely be in the home.

Turnbull clearly assumes that a modern sensible centre position would have kept pace with changing social attitudes. But at least on some issues, other Liberals will disagree.

The bigger elephant in the room is the issue of Menzies economic beliefs at the time the Liberal Party was founded, and what a modern day centrist position on economic policy would be. After all, contemporary Australian voters seem to be concerned about their economic futures, the power of big business, and cuts to social services.

Turnbull does briefly acknowledge in his speech that, by modern standards, Menzies:

was hardly an economic liberal. He believed in a highly regulated economy with high tariffs, a fixed exchange rate, centralised wage fixing and generally much more Government involvement in the economy than we would be comfortable with.

Indeed, Menzies was more of a Keynesian economically, not a market liberal like Turnbull.

Furthermore, Menzies characterised the middle class as the forgotten people partly because he believed that unskilled workers were not forgotten but were already well-protected by unions and had their wages and conditions safeguarded by popular law. Meanwhile, the rich were able to protect themselves.

While strongly supporting individual endeavour, he argued that the new politics should not return to the old and selfish notions of laissez-faire. Rather, our social and industrial laws will be increased. There will be more law, not less; more control, not less.

Menzies was strongly anti-communist and anti-socialist, but he was not a neoliberal.

Voters could be forgiven for thinking that at least some of Menzies words sound more like those of the contemporary Labor Party than the modern-day Liberal Party. The Liberal Party itself acknowledges that a belief in social equality was one of the principles on which the party was founded.

However, despite some concessions in this years budget, Turnbull may have his work cut out trying to convince centrist voters that his economic liberalism can adequately address todays scourge of rising inequality. Keynesian-influenced solutions are on the rise again in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Turnbull argued in his speech that the terms left and right had begun to lose all meaning. However, there is another, more unpalatable truth that he may need to face. It may be more that left and right are moving conceptually, because the centre has shifted too.

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Turnbull is right to link the Liberals with the centre but is the centre where it used to be? - The Conversation AU

The most telling feature of Daniel Fosters response to my article on Donald Trumps Warsaw speech is that, while he dislikes my definition of the West, he never offers one of his own. I argued that, in the United States today, the best predictor of whether a country is considered Western is whether it is primarily white and primarily Christian. (With Protestant and Catholic countries considered more Western than Orthodox ones, and Israel tossed in to buttress the Judeo part of Judeo-Christian.) I noted that non-white or non-Christian countries arent generally considered Western even when they are further west geographically than Christian, white ones (Morocco v. Poland, Haiti v. France, Egypt v. Australia). And that non-white, non-Christian countries arent generally considered Western even when they are economically developed (Japan) or robustly democratic (India).

Foster responds that Morocco was jostled about by Spanish and French empires for a few hundred years and that Western ideals were kind of a big thing in the Haiti of Toussaint Louverture and that Japan enjoys the sponsorship of a demure American empire and that Indias in the frigging British Commonwealth. Sure. Countries that Americans today consider Western and countries that they consider non-Western have interacted for a long time, and shaped each other in profound ways. So have white and black Americans. Yet Americans still distinguish between the two.

Foster is trying to have it both ways. He says that India, Morocco, Japan, Haiti, Egypt, and many other non-white, non-Christian places are right well tangled up in the West. Notice the slippery language. Are they Western or not? Saying no would require Foster to explain what excludes them from the club. Saying yes would render the term meaningless. Yes, India is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. (Its not called the British Commonwealth anymore.) So are frigging Nigeria and Papua New Guinea. If being influenced by (and influencing) the West makes you part of the West, then the West is everything.

Like other critics of my piece, Foster wants to associate the West with principles like democracy, freedom, tolerance, and equality. Thus, he says the Haitian revolution was fought for Western ideals. But if the real test of a countrys Westernness is its governments fidelity to liberal democratic ideals, then Japan, Botswana, and India are three of the most Western countries on Earth, Spain didnt become Western until it embraced democracy in 1975, and Hungarys slide towards authoritarianism means it is significantly less Western than it was a few years ago. Almost no one, including Foster, uses the term that way. And for good reason. If Western is synonymous with democratic or free, then you dont need the term at all.

What Foster is actually doing is linking these ideals to a particular religious (Judeo-Christian) identity. (Other conservativesPat Buchanan and Ann Coulter, for instanceexplicitly link them to a racial identity as well. And in America today, Muslim virtually functions as a racial category anyway. The Tsarnaev brothers, of Boston bombing fame, literally hailed from the Caucuses yet were not described as white.) Foster gives it away with this line: The West is the only civilization that blushes. Really? Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arabian, and African civilizations have no traditions of self-criticism or shame? Its telling that Foster sees the Haitian revolution simply as a struggle for Western ideals. Of course, African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and American revolutionaries turned the ideals of their oppressors against them. But they also drew on non-Western, pre-colonial traditions. During the struggle against apartheid, Bishop Desmond Tutu popularized the term Ubuntu, a Bantu word meaning common humanity. In his 2005 book, The Argumentative Indian, Nobel Prize Winner Amartya Sen argues that Indian liberal democracy owes its robustness in part to the legacies of a Buddhist emperor of India, Ashoka, who, in the third century BCE laid down what are perhaps the oldest rules for conducting debates and disputations and to a Muslim Indian emperor, Akbar, who in the 16th century, when the Inquisition was in full swing, outlined principles of religious toleration.

Near the heart of the immigration debate in America and Europe today is the question of whether non-white, non-Christian immigrants will embrace values like tolerance, reason, and womens rights. Conservatives tend to be more pessimistic. Liberalsremembering that, in many countries, such principles were once considered alien to Catholics and Jewsare more optimistic. Thats fine.

The problem is when conservatives ask not whether immigrants will embrace democratic or liberal values, but rather Western values. In so doing, theyre conflating the universal and the particular. Theyre implying that being Muslim itself is incompatible with good citizenship. Foster himself may not believe that. But if he thinks its a marginal viewdivorced from mainstream conservatism in America todayhes nuts. According to a 2015 Public Religion Research Institute poll, three-quarters of Republicans say Islam is incompatible with American values.

Donald Trump is not a to-be-sure paragraph. On the subject of Islam and the West, he reflects what most American conservatives believe. And defending his speech without acknowledging its context, as Fosters magazine, National Review, did is willfully nave. When Trump talked in Poland about defending our civilization from threats from the south and east, he was not talking entirely, or even mostly, about defending liberal democracy. How could he have been? He fawns over authoritarian leaders. He attacks judges for their ethnicity and tweets images of himself physically attacking a man with CNNs logo superimposed on his face. No president in modern American history has cherished liberal democracy less.

Trump arrived in Poland as the man who, during the campaign, said, Islam hates us, and called for banning Muslim immigration. And he gave his speech about the survival of the West in a country whose government is itself undermining liberal democracy (without the gentlest chiding from Trump), and will not admit a single Muslim refugee.

In contemporary political discourse, defending liberal democracy and defending the West are very different things. In fact, from Trump to Marine Le Pen to the leaders of Poland and Hungary, many of the people most loudly defending the latter represent the greatest threat to the former. Its reminiscent of Gandhis famous line: Asked What do you think of western civilization? he answered, I think it would be a good idea.

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Defending Liberal Democracy is Not the Same as Defending 'the ... - The Atlantic

Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinManchin defends voting record in interview with liberal The Young Turks Graham working on own healthcare plan Senate confirms Trump's 'regulatory czar' MORE (D-W.Va.) defended his record during an at times contentious interview with a progressive news outlet as he looks to shore up his left flank ahead of a tough Senate reelection bid.

Manchin sat down with The Young Turks' Cenk UygurTuesdaymorning on the site's subscription-only streaming service, where Manchin defended his voting record that's been ranked asthe most conservative for a Democrat in the Senate.

"We are a product of the West Virginia environment through some challenging times ...I 'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate," Manchin said.

Progressives have chafed at Manchin's moderate voting recordfor a while, but have become emboldened ever since the election of President Trump. Many believe the only answer to Trump's agenda is total obstruction and have been frustrated by Manchin's willingness to vote for certain nominees and arecent arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

FiveThirtyEight has found that Manchinvotes with Trump's priorities58 percent of the time. But since Trump won his state by a 42-point margin in November, Manchin and his supporters have argued that he's trying to toe the line and represent his constituents.

That's caused progressive groups to protest his position on leadership and call for a primary challenge. Manchin faces a primary rival inPaula Jean Swearengin, the daughter of a coal miner and an outspoken Manchin critic who has accused himof not being a good steward ofthe state's environment.

The Young Turks has a strong following among the progressive left. Manchin faces a difficult path to reelection thanks to Trump's favorability in the state, and two strong Republican challengers have already jumped into the race to replace him.

The conversation also comes months after reports that Manchin sat down for an off-the-record session with conservative outlet Breitbart,a move that further frustrated progressives.

During the interview, Manchin defended himself from questions overhis environmental record, arguing that he thinks there is a "balance between the environment and the economy" and disputingclaims that every stream in the state is contaminated by noting that he regularly eats fish from astream.

And while Manchinwouldn't label himself a progressive, noting that it depends on his definition, he pitched himself as compassionate.

"On issues, progressive means are you are supportive of things that helps peoples' lives," he said.

"A Republican goes to the bottom line every time. When it comes down to weighing as a human being, they are going to go to the bottom line. A true Democrat will go to the bottom of your heart."

Manchin toedthe progressive line on the issue of campaign financing, arguing that money is "destroying politics as we know it." He backed the move to end political spending fromsuper PACs and dark-money groups while also calling fora move to cut down the time politicians spend on campaigning.

That push came as Uygur confronted him on his top campaign donors, which include energy companies and Mylan, the pharmaceuticals company run by his daughter that has been dogged by concerns overthe prices of its Epi-Pen.

Manchin claimed that while he knows that Mylan has been "very much involved," he's never seen a list of his top donors and doesn't get into specifics with his fundraising team.

"I have no idea who gives me money ... quid pro quo, that's never been me," Manchin said.

Uygur circled back to theprogressive criticism of Manchintoward the end of the interview, asking him why progressives should turn out for him even when he didn't back Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersOPINION: Democrats, look to the other Clinton playbook to win again in 2018 Manchin defends voting record in interview with liberal The Young Turks Dems aim to take out longtime GOP incumbent in Texas MORE in his state's presidential primary, which Sanders won easily.

Manchin responded by arguing that his record as governor and in office will help him in 2018.

"When you talk about progressives, you're talking about the liberal wing who thinks I should be more liberal, if you will. I want to think Im responsible and compassionate," he said.

We might not always agree, but I owe everybody an explanation of how I vote and where Im coming from.

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Manchin defends voting record in interview with liberal The Young Turks - The Hill

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is heading toward a new economic crisis which could raise popular support for anti-Brexit parties, the former business minister and likely next leader of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats said on Tuesday.

Vince Cable, currently the only candidate in a contest to lead the Liberal Democrats, said that historically low interest rates had left the British economy too reliant on cheap money and many people would be hit by rising rates.

Britain's two main parties - the governing Conservatives and main opposition Labour Party - have thrown their support behind the 2016 referendum vote to exit the European Union, promising to negotiate a good deal with Brussels. The Liberal Democrats have instead argued that Britain may yet change its mind.

"There is something here which is not sustainable and it is going to hit us very hard," Cable, who holds a doctorate in economics, told reporters at a lunch in parliament.

He said an economic shock would spread doubt about whether the Brexit vote, which Prime Minister Theresa May has taken to mean a withdrawal from all key EU structures including its single market and customs union, was a sensible decision.

"We are getting into an environment where economics comes back to center stage...People didn't vote to be poorer and when they find that that's the environment in which they are in, I think the whole political chemistry around this subject will radically change," he said.

Cable, who last week said he thought Brexit might never transpire because the main political parties are too divided over terms for quitting the EU, said his party would be in a strong position to break through when that happens.

"We are not going to advance by small incremental steps - that is not my objective, it is actually to make a breakthrough," he said.

"The electorate is very volatile, they have been offered two alternatives neither of which I think are convincing and plausible and I think if we get the messaging right..., we have an opportunity to break through the (political) middle."

Cable served as business minister from 2010 to 2015 when the Liberal Democrats were the junior partners in a coalition government led by then-Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives. Cameron resigned after a narrow majority rejected his "Remain" campaign in the referendum.

The Liberal Democrats' influence has since waned and they now hold just 12 out of 650 seats in parliament. Ahead of last month's election they campaigned to give Britons a second referendum on Brexit once the final deal has been agreed.

Cable - credited as predicting the 2008 banking crisis - said he did not think the economic impact of Brexit would be comparable to the global financial crisis as banks were stronger now.

"It's different, it's a more longstanding, agonizing problem," he said, highlighting low levels of productivity as the central underlying problem in the British economy.

"It's declining. We are weak relative to other countries ... The underpinnings are weak. All this boastful talk about 'Britain has a terribly strong economy' - I'm sorry it's just not true. There are some fundamental weaknesses."

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Warning of economic crisis, top UK Liberal Democrat predicts anti-Brexit backlash - Reuters

The Left is impossible to keep up with.

Last week, after President Trump spoke in Poland, he reached out to the European nations he has been so attacked for alienating, and he sang an ode to Western civilization. This, a Washington Post opinion writer told us, was "white nationalist" "dog whistles."

A Vox.com writer Voxplained to her readers that Trump's speech was "an alt-right manifesto."

Extolling Western civilization, our elites tell us, now makes one part of the alt-right.

This is the way you argue if you want to increase the ranks of the alt-right. It's also the way Democrats and the left-leaning media have been fighting for almost a year: take something widely supported on the Right and lump it in with something rare and repulsive.

This "lumping" aims to toxify the whole Republican Party and every conservative idea. The effect, though, is often to make extremism more palatable to more people.

The clearest example of liberal lumping gone awry happened last year. Back in summer 2016, just after Trump took the GOP nomination, Democrats had a different strategy: drive a wedge between Trump and the Right.

"Look, we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there's nothing wrong with that; it's precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward," President Obama said at the Democratic National Convention. "But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn't particularly Republican and it sure wasn't conservative."

This was an eminently sensible tactic, given how un-conservative Trump is and that at 37 percent of the countrythe largest groupin an early 2016 poll identified as "conservative."

But then something changed. Maybe Democrats saw Trump as dead in the water, the White House was in the bag, and so they wanted to go for the kill and take back the House and Senate. Maybe it was less tactical and more visceralObama always hated Republicans, and his base was probably irked by his game of footsie with "reasonable conservatives."

In October, a few weeks before the election, Obama switched from the wedge strategy to the lumping strategy. Obama said Trump was merely the logical nominee for the Republican Party.

"There's sort of a spectrum," Obama said in an Ohio speech, which labeled the GOP one big "swamp of crazy a whole kind of ecosystem." A few months after arguing that Trump was this drastic deviation from the norms of the GOP, Obama argued that Trump was simply moving into the house the GOP had built. "He didn't build the building himself," Obama said in his witty climax, "but he just slapped his name on it and took credit for it."

At the moment, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman had withdrawn his support for Trump. Obama decided that this moment of party vulnerability was the moment to lump Portman in with Trump, declaring Portman's stance invalid. They're together, Obama argued. Trump and Portman. Portman and Trump.

Portman's agenda in the Senate had been "crazy," Obama argued, "based on lies." And so riffing on Trump's birtherism, dalliance with the alt-right, lying, bragging of sexual assault, Obama said "don't act like this started with Donald Trump. And that's why we've got to win this election at every level."

If you know anything about Rob Portman, a painfully boring moderate Republican, this is absurd. But you can see the logic behind the tactics lumping Trump with Portman could bring down Portman. Thing is, the opposite happened. It picked Trump up. Look at the Huffington Post's poll tracker or Real Clear Politics' average. Trump had consistently trailed in Ohio since the GOP convention. In the days after Obama's Portman equals Trump speech, Trump pulled ahead, and stayed there for good.

Ohio voters knew Portman. They supported him. And maybe Obama's argumentTrump's just a more vulgar version of Portmansunk into the brains of moderate Republicans.

Surely some people thought: oh, when Hillary said "deplorable" she just meant "right of center." When she said "homophobic" she just meant "opposes gay marriage."

Now the Left is up to it again. They think they're cleverly tying Trump's defense of the West to the alt-right, thus defanging any conservative defense of the West. Instead they may be dumbing down the meaning of alt-right, or making it seem more innocuous.

Oh, "alt-right" and "White Nationalist," just means that you love and care about Western civilization? I thought it was something bad.

Liberal lumping half-worked last year. The result may have been President Trump. The lumping they're trying these days is far more pernicious, lumping something far worse than Trump (white nationalism) in with something more crucial than the GOP (the West).

All good people should hope that this time the Left fails completely.

Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's commentary editor, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Tuesday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.

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Liberal lumpers try to make the alt-right's tent bigger - Washington Examiner

Premier Christy Clark has announced the B.C. Liberals key staffers as the party transitions to its new role as opposition, the same day that Premier-designate John Horgan named six women who will help fill out his leadership team.

The Liberal appointments include seasoned staffers and communications professionals.

These appointments will support our strong and experienced team of 43 MLAs in the legislature. Together, I believe we will form an extremely effective opposition to hold the NDP-Green alliance to account on behalf of British Columbians, an email signed by Clark, which was sent to Liberal staff and caucus this morning, said.

Clark has appointed Nick Koolsbergen as chief of staff. Koolsbergen most recently served as executive director of communications and research for the Liberal caucus and previously served as director of issues management in the Prime Ministers Office under Stephen Harper.

Jessica Woolford will serve as deputy chief of staff under Koolsbergen. Woolford most recently worked as executive director of corporate priorities at government communications and public engagement. She previously served as chief of staff to Minister Todd Stone and as an adviser to Ministers Mary Polak and Shirley Bond.

Clarks press secretary, Stephen Smart, will move into the role of executive director of communications and issues management for the Liberal caucus. Smart previously worked as a CBC reporter and has 18 years of media experience.

Primrose Carson will serve as executive director of operations and MLA support for the caucus.

Now that our leadership team is in place, in the coming days we will move forward with interviews of those staff who have expressed an interest in continuing to serve British Columbians through the B.C. Liberal Caucus, the email said.

Premier-designate John Horgan also announced today more names in the NDP leadership team lineup.

The six women, many of whom played key roles in Horgans election campaign, will serve in roles ranging from press secretary to the head of a new office dedicated to delivering on the NDP-Green alliance agreement.

After 16 years, we have a lot of work to do to address the problems caused by B.C. Liberal choices. Im confident that the leadership team were building has the energy, drive and commitment to deliver the change we promised British Columbians, Carole James, Victoria-Beacon Hill MLA and transition spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Donna Sanford, senior policy analyst at the climate action secretariat, will move into the role of executive director of the confidence and supply agreement secretariat. The new office will be responsible for delivering on the agreement between the NDP and Green parties, which sets out key priorities like campaign-finance laws and electoral reform.

Sage Aaron will serve as director of communications in the Premiers Office, a promotion from the same role at union MoveUP.

Kate Van Meer-Mass becomes director of operations in the Premiers Office, which will involve tour planning, scheduling and other leadership responsibilities.

Jen Holmwood assumes the role of deputy director of communications in the Premiers Office; Sheena McConnell will serve as Horgans press secretary and Marie Della Mattia will work as special adviser to Horgan. All three held similar roles for Horgan as leader of the opposition.

asmart@timescolonist.com

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NDP, Liberals announce key staff positions - Times Colonist

Pax Dickinson wants to fund the revolution. Not a blood-in-the-streets revolution, but one where hardcore right-wingers can economically secede from the parts of society they vehemently dislike. "We need parallel everything. I do not want to ever have to spend a single dollar at a non-movement business," Dickinson, the former CTO of Business Insider and general startup veteran, declared on Twitter.

Dickinson believes the money to build that parallel everything will come from crowdfunding. His new project, called CounterFund, is a lot like Patreon, a service that allows users to make monthly pledges to creators -- only with an unorthodox super-PAC grafted on. The way it works is that influencers -- Twitter personalities, podcasters, YouTubers, and so on -- join the platform, and then members of their audience donate like they would on Patreon.

Eighty percent of the money goes directly to the influencers. Ten percent is devoted to running CounterFund, and then the remaining 10 percent is spent by the top influencers as they see fit. What exactly that will be is a little hazy, but they could theoretically do anything -- commission a long narrative article, throw a benefit for an organization they like, or pay for a CounterFund member's healthcare.

The technology behind CounterFund will be owned by a separate company called Confed.Co. Dickinson told Inc. that Confed.Co will grant CounterFund a perpetual license, as well as exploring licensing deals with other entities interested in forming their own Patreon-esque fundraising sites.

Those entities will have to meet Dickinson's ideological requirements -- this is a strictly right-wing endeavor, and not tepidly so. "If Fox News will let you be on TV or Breitbart would be willing to employ you, @CounterFund is not for you," Dickinson said on Twitter. He's gotten some pushback from the other side -- Twitter users have expressed concerns about his team having a Jewish member.

In conversations with Inc., Dickinson explained that he sees CounterFund as the linchpin of a parallel far-right economy. The alt-right movement shouldn't fund or depend on platforms that are hostile to their goals, he believes. CounterFund's website sports endorsements from Richard Spencer, the suit-wearing white supremacist who went viral after being punched in the face, and comedian Sam Hyde, whose divisive show Million Dollar Extreme was kicked off the air by Adult Swim.

Dickinson is pitching CounterFund itself as a new kind of political party, one that cares for its community rather than pouring money into candidates' campaigns. It's hard to overstate the degree to which he's willing to take this project beyond mainstream acceptability. Dickinson compared CounterFund to Hezbollah: "Hezbollah is a government within a government. They collect garbage, they operate hospitals, they're an economy within an economy, and a government within a government."

He wants to connect "party members" with features like: "A jobs board, for only people who are in the party. A shopping board that only lists companies that are selling products that are within the party. So that you can take your money out of the leftist economy and put it into this new economy."

Dickinson is keen on this idea because he's been blackballed in the technology community for past ideological transgressions, as he tells it. In 2013, Dickinson was fired as the CTO of Business Insider for tweeting rape jokes (among other inflammatory things, some of which were intended as satire, he said at the time).

Dickinson later ran a crowdfunding site called WeSearchr alongside Chuck Johnson, a semi-notorious internet troll. WeSearchr raised more than $150,000 for a legal fund to benefit The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, and $7,700 to support former Breitbart employee Katie McHugh (including a donation from Dickinson himself) after she was fired for anti-Muslim tweets. Another lucrative campaign centered on the conspiracy theory that DNC staffer Seth Rich's murder was a political assassination. WeSearchr still exists, but Johnson and Dickinson had a falling-out (including unresolved financial disputes), which led to Dickinson splitting off to start CounterFund.

The arrival of CounterFund comes as Americans increasingly seem to be agreeing with the thrust of the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United vs. FEC: spending money is a form of political speech. People want to financially support companies that share their values and stick it to those that don't. Hence the #grabyourwallet campaign that encourages consumers to boycott any company associated with Donald Trump. Hence the outcry when people realized that Shopify hosts Breitbart's store, and that Cloudflare's technology protects virulent white supremacists from DDoS attacks. "You're either an SJW company, or you're not," as Dickinson bluntly put it. Neutrality -- taking all comers regardless of their politics -- is perceived as siding with the enemy.

Meanwhile, the concentrated liberalism of Silicon Valley means that right-wing dissidents, as well as some anodyne conservatives, worry about their ability to broadcast and monetize their views through popular social media services and other internet platforms. Consider the furor caused by rumors that Facebook discriminated against conservative news in its Trending Topics module, which eventually led to Facebook laying off its editorial team. For a member of the alt-right, it makes no sense to tacitly support a perceived "SJW" (social justice warrior) company like Patreon, which garners a percentage of every pledge.

Thus the current political climate is primed for ideologically oriented startups to take hold. "We're sort of having a hollowing out of the middle, where everyone's miserable," according to Dickinson. "The left half wants full-blown communism because they're miserable, and that's their solution, and the right half maybe doesn't know what they want, but they don't want that."

Dickinson is not the only one trying to organize. Cody Wilson is the man behind Defense Distributed, which develops 3D-printed guns. Wilson recently launched Hatreon as a way to support a YouTuber called TV KWA, after the latter was banned by Patreon. Podcaster Dick Masterson pulls in more than $20,000 per month on Patreon, and he reached out to Wilson publicly to ask about his options. Regardless, Wilson doesn't regard Hatreon as a business venture first, and told Inc. that he doesn't need it to take off like a rocket, the way a typical startup would hope to. "I don't see my site as exclusively the domain of the right, although I suppose that's the first group that will participate," he added.

"It's a schism," Dickinson told Inc. "We're becoming even more like two Americas than we were." Dickinson's ultimate aim is to wrest control away from his ideological opponents by building right-wing-friendly alternatives to their services and making the community more self-sufficient. "There's a cry for more organization amongst the alt-right movement," he explained. "They want something more than just these atomized people all doing their individual things."

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The Alt-Right Is Using Crowdfunding to Take on Liberal Silicon Valley - Inc.com

CAMPTON, Ky.Americas biggest wrestling event took place in a high school gym. It was the main event, a crybaby match between Kyle Maggard and the Progressive Liberal Dan Richards, who has hit upon the perfect heel gimmick for this time and this country, and especially this county.

Wolfe County lies in the heart of Kentuckys Eastern Coalfield and shares a border with Breathitt County, where Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance visited relatives in his youth. Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk famous foramong other thingsrunning up significant legal bills, calls eastern Kentucky home. Wolfe County is, to put it plainly, the sticks.

Eastern Kentucky has long relied on the coal industry for gainful employment, but over the years, coal jobs have vanished, leaving behind persistent poverty, obesity, and illiteracy. According to the Q1 2017 Kentucky Quarterly Coal Report, zero mines are currently operating in Wolfe County, and eastern Kentucky coal mines decreased total employment by 178 jobs, a 4.6 percent drop from the fourth quarter of 2016. Wolfe County is not the poorest county in the state (that distinction belongs to Owsley County, two counties away) but possesses a per capita income of $13,901.

Coal is the primary issue, not healthcare, a wrestling fan in attendance named Shirley told me. Because without the coal, people cant support their families. Without the coal, they cant pay their Medicaid bill. Its hard times.

Its what we live by, is coal, said Raymond, another spectator taking in the nights matches because he was just looking for something to do.

Ring announcer Nathan Lyttle said eastern Kentuckians have an inveterate optimism in two core facets of their lives. Family and coal; thats all it is, he said.

Richards, who uses these issues as fodder to draw heat (a positive or negative reaction from the crowd, though just take a guess which he gets), and Appalachian Mountain Wrestling booker Beau James know exactly how important it is to just about everyone at AMW shows.

Coal is not a job; its a way of life, James said. Its a tradition. Its a heritage. Its an Appalachian institution. When Dan says something about coal, people take it as, Hes talking about my grandad. Hes talking about my dad. Hes talking about me.

I think [the issue of] healthcare is a little too specific for people in eastern Kentucky, Richards added.

So when a Progressive Liberal chides the Appalachian crowds for continually voting against your own interests and stating matter-of-factly that [politicians] arent going to bring your jobs back, the people reflect for a moment about their unemployed spouse, their past-due medical bills, or whether there will be food on the table next week, and boo him. Loudly.

In the air-conditioned gym, the lights shone yellow upon the ring and the reporters and camerapeople from CNN, BBC, Vice, and local NBC affiliates. Lingering in the shadows were worn bleachers and a makeshift weight room; numerous banners signifying Wolfe Countys basketball prowess hung overhead. In the middle of it all, the reason many suddenly cared about the intricacies of Appalachian indie wrestling wore a blue Oxford shirt and khakis, and embraced his newfound fame by taking on a series of interviews before the show started.

I think its going to lead to more opportunity, Richards said of his swift rise to stardom. He was pragmatic about the possibilities, but hopeful too. Of course I have aspirations to go to WWE. Would I love to be a big star for them? Of course. I also recognize Im 37. [But Im] sure my name has come across their desk or their ears.

As the crowd of 125 filled the bleachers, Richards quietly retired to the solitude of his improvised dressing roomthe gyms equipment room, underneath the bleachers. It was clear that the hectic week, filled with camera crews and phone interviews, had taken a toll. Though the gate might not have fluctuated, Richards would now be performing for broadcasts that would be seen by people all over the worldand hed be the star of the show. Quite often, Im not the main event, Richards admitted.

Richards had become a star after media outletsincluding this onelearned of his shtick, which is clever and particularly relevant, but not necessarily over the top. Instead of a conservative acting as a parody of what he believed liberals to be like, here is an actual self-proclaimed Democrat merely exaggerating his politics in an area of the country that isnt particularly receptive. This microcosm is fascinating to people who otherwise wouldnt care about the industry; Richards is a heel whose gimmick can survive as long as the material is fresh, and theres no reason to think itll go stale any time soon.

The cozy spectacle of the nights earlier matches was complemented by homemade cupcakes and Ale-8-Ones. Then, it was time for the main event: Richards vs. Maggard, in which the loser would have to wear a diaper and drink from a babys bottle. As Richards emerged wearing his signature T-shirt covered with prints of Hillary Clintons face, he was met with a chorus of boos, taunts, and jeers, mostly from children. Killary! Killary! they chanted in unison.

About a minute in, Richards began to bleed from his nose, and due to state regulations, the match had to be suspended until he could staunch the bleeding. According to Lyttle, one kid screamed, Is that Hillarys abortion blood? Lyttle lambasted the childrens parents for the remark.

After Richards resumed the match, a wad of spit from the mouth of a ringside spectator sailed through the air in the direction of the Progressive Liberal. Richards, ever the heel, spit back. (Lyttle said he was appalled that anyone would spit in the first place.)

The match pushed the turnbuckles and ropes to their maximum capacity, or so it sounded. Richards seized control after another wrestler, Misty James, distracted the referee and interfered, and amidst the crescendo of boos, the Progressive Liberal unleashed his finisher, a cross-arm neckbreaker he calls the Liberal Agenda, and pinned Maggard. The match was over. A liberal had won in coal country, and the conservative had to suck on a bottle of room-temperature milk and put on a diaper.

In wrestling and in politics, there is no real high road; the lasting victories tend to belong to whoever can go lower. The crowd wanted to see the Progressive Liberal humiliated, and they got what they came for. As seen in the video above, Maggard called himself a man of my word, briefly griped to the official about his opponents dirty tactics (which was technically true), took a tiny sip of the bottle, and spit it out. As the oblivious Richards gloated and taunted the crowd, Maggard forced the bottle to his mouth and knocked him to the mat.

The wrestler Richards pejoratively called Fox News Maggot made his foe put on the diaper, even if it was just for a brief moment before Richardss allies stormed in to beat the stuffing out of the defeated deplorable. After a brawl that resulted in the official getting knocked out, a bunch of sullen wrestlers uninvolved in the original contest stalking around, and a group of children chanting Rematch! mixed in with incomprehensible yelling and boos, Richards exited the ring as he tried to convince a hostile crowd that he was the real winner of the night. Read as deeply into that scene as youd like.

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The "Progressive Liberal" Won But Still Ended Up In A Diaper - Deadspin