Daily Archives: November 17, 2020

AMERICAN PROTEST-Despite pre-election plywood covering store fronts in cities across the United States, it was total fearmongering that far right militias, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa would initiate street violence during or after the November 3 presidential election.

Why? We clearly know who are the major purveyors of violence in the United State, especially who has the guns and military equipment, extensive training, and uses them every day to attack and often kill people in the United States and other countries. It is not the far-right militias, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa. Instead, it is local and federal police departments and the countrys military.

First, the largest armed group in the United States is the countrys military. They have an annual budget of at least $750 billion, with another $400 billion scattered among other federal agencies and departments. They have about 500 domestic military installations and control 800 foreign military bases.At present the United States government is engaged in nine foreign wars, and whenever there is a serious domestic rebellion, presidents routinely order the countrys military to enter cities like Detroit and Los Angeles to suppress civil disturbances.

Furthermore, a branch of the armed forces, the National Guard, has trained units in Alabama and Utah ready to instantly deploy to any part of the United States to quell new civil disturbances.

Second, there are nearly 15,000 police departments in the United State and least 75 percent of them have SWAT teams trained in commando operations and bestowed more military equipment than they can use.They engage in over 100,000 quasi-military operations every year, and in May-July 2020 these SWAT teams were widely used to quell demonstrations opposing excessive police violence over the entire United States.

Third, the FBI has 52 field offices, and each office has a trained, heavily armed SWAT team of at least 42 people. Like U.S. Marshalls and ICE officers, they can be instantly deployed to oppose street demonstrations, as they recently were in Washington, DC and Portland, Oregon.

Fourth, these groups are connected through Fusion centers and other administrative mechanisms to operationally link them together to suppress mass movements, like Occupy and Black Lives Matter. Their tools include drones, spy planes, and mass surveillance.

Fifth, the FBI has made it clear that the main domestic terrorist threat in the United States (ignoring the 1000 people per year that the police murder) comes from Alt Right white supremacists, not unarmed mass movements, like Black Lives Matter (BLM).

The latter is a protest organization with a nationalist outlook, with no military component, but extensive support from large, social justice philanthropies (e.g., Ford Foundation). While BLM and the sympathy demonstrations it sparked in June 2020 could not prevent organized criminals, undercover cops, provocateurs, and deranged people from showing up, BLM does not recruit, organize, or train these opportunists.

Sixth, Antifa is not even an organization; it is a loose 80-year-old alliance of local anti-fascist individuals and informal small groups that coalesce to confront fascist groups when they initiate violence.Also, there is no connection between Antifa and Black Lives Matter. They are rarely at the same events and neither group engages in electoral politics.

Too bad so many trees had to needlessly die for all that plywood.

(Victor Rothman is a California-based political analyst.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Original post:

Why Street Violence from Militias, Black Lives Matter, and Antifa Never Appeared - City Watch

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For Korea watchers, U.S. President Donald Trumps narrative that Democrats, backed by foreign powers, have stolen the election through massive voter fraud uncannily resembles a widespread conspiracy theory that emerged in South Korea following its legislative election on April 15. Both narratives suggest that the liberal/progressive parties colluded with China to tamper with ballots, in elections that were expected to and indeed did benefit the progressives.

The convergence of the narratives on electoral fraud in South Korea and the United States is not a coincidence. Different forms of the American far-rights discourses and practices have been adopted by its Korean counterparts, from the emergence of fringe media outlets that stand in opposition to the mainstream media, to the widespread use of Pepe the Frog memes on fringe sites. Furthermore, an increasingly assertive Beijing has made it easier for South Korean conservatives to rally around their existing anti-communist identity and accuse progressives of colluding with outside enemies, a stance that fits neatly with the narratives from the U.S.

But this is not merely a tale of two similar narratives or a frivolous double-take on fringe conspiracy theories. It brings attention to the domestic contexts that have allowed these conspiracy theories to emerge out of the fringe, as well as the potential of greater challenges. The American struggle with right-wing populism has been well-documented already, and this article instead focuses on the South Korean context, which has received relatively less attention. The movement questioning the results of the April 15 election in South Korea highlights factors in its political landscape that may further disrupt the foundations of its democratic system in the same way that the election of Trump has done in the U.S., and it underscores the transnational element of todays right-wing politics, which act both at the domestic and international levels.

Beijings Dark Shadows Extending from Seoul to Washington?

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Preparing for the election amid a COVID-19-struck economy and unfavorable polling numbers, Trump had been suggesting for months that the election might get stolen by Democrats and foreign actors like China. In particular, the Trump campaign problematized the increased use of mail-in ballots. In August, Trump said, The mailmen are going to get them, and people are just going to grab batches of them [China and Russia], theyll be grabbing plenty of them. Its a disaster, its a rigged election waiting to happen.

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As expected, once it became apparent that the election would not be going his way, Trump started to call the mail-in ballots illegal, and launched numerous legal battles. Foreign Policys James Palmer warned that Trump is likely to take up the conspiracy theories circulating in the right-wing Chinese media that link Biden to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

As Trump started to make claims of illegal ballots, Min Kyung-wook, an ex-member of the South Korean National Assembly, wrote on November 5 that the dark shadows of the April 15th election that unseated him had extended to the U.S. presidential election, referring to Joe Bidens expected victory. Drawing a parallel between the two elections, Min pointed to the CCP and leftist factions allegedly collaborating with Beijing as the forces behind the acts of electoral fraud in both the U.S. and South Korea.

A former prime-time news anchor at Korean Broadcasting System, Min has been spearheading the movement to raise awareness about alleged electoral fraud since losing his seat in the April 15 legislative elections, in which his party, the United Future Party (now the People Power Party), suffered a landslide defeat. Min started to bring to the surface internet conspiracy theories claiming that advance votes had been tampered with in order to hand a landslide victory to the ruling Democratic Party of Korea.

South Koreas April election saw a record 26.7 percent of voters casting their ballots in advance, with the National Election Commission and the political parties encouraging voters to do so amidst the pandemic. Similar to the U.S., voters who voted early favored the progressives. For instance, in Seoul, the Democratic Party led the United Future Party by 26.76 percent in advance voting, while the margin was reduced to 1.35 percent in regular voting. Also, the ballots cast in advance were counted after the regular votes, so several races where the United Future Party was leading flipped at the last minute, much like Pennsylvania and Georgia in the U.S. election.

Shortly after the election, Min publicized far-right conspiracy theories about the election that had been circulating on the internet. He pointed out that the ballot boxes containing advance voting ballots were stored in places without CCTVs, and highlighted the discrepancy between the results of early and regular voting. Min obtained crushed ballots some of them believed to be stamped by the authorities from an observer and presented them as further evidence of election tampering. He also problematized the QR codes on advance voting ballots, suggesting that these contain the personally identifiable information of 5 million Korean citizens, including records on criminal activities, military service, tax payments, and so forth.

The China Factor

A critical element of Mins claims is that Beijing was involved in the electoral fraud that allegedly took place during the April election, colluding with leftist forces in power that are sympathetic to the Chinese agenda. Min made an unsubstantiated and ultimately refuted claim that Chinese tech giant Huawei supplied 700 pieces of election equipment to the National Election Commission and that the personal information obtained through QR codes was transmitted to the Chinese. He also presented a numerical arrangement and claimed that this was a code that read FOLLOW_THE_PARTY, left by a Chinese hacker who had infiltrated the NECs system.

Such a narrative exploits anti-Chinese sentiments, which remain extremely high in South Korea. According to a Pew Research poll, the percentage of South Koreans viewing China unfavorably jumped from 31 percent to 75 percent between 2002 and 2020. In addition to the current pandemic and recent controversies over the suppression of protests in Hong Kong and revelations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, South Koreas direct exposure to an increasingly influential and assertive China has played a role. For instance, the installation of U.S. anti-missile systems in the country in 2016 led Beijing to impose a wide-ranging ban on South Korean products, which brought to public attention the countrys economic reliance on China and created a collective sense of resentment toward a more assertive Beijing.

The current political context plays a role in it as well. Under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea has been attempting to rebalance its relationship between Washington and Beijing. While Japan and the Five Eyes allies have banned Huawei from bidding for 5G contracts, Seoul has left the Huawei question to be decided by the private sector, and it has not prevented LG U+ from using Huawei equipment in its 5G network. Further, Seoul has remained either silent on or slow to respond to concerns such as the re-education camps in Xinjiang or the passage of the new National Security Law in Hong Kong, issues that have provoked criticism from other democracies.

Conservatives, who generally support the alliance with the U.S., have been criticizing the current administration for being too soft on China, and the far-right has activated existing Cold War identities that label progressives as reds or commies. In this context, Min leveraged Sinophobia, both domestic and foreign, to strengthen the claims that Beijing interfered in both elections. For instance, Min borrowed the unsubstantiated report, circulating among U.S. conspiracy theorists, that 20,000 fake IDs from China and Hong Kong were seized at Chicagos OHare Airport, as well as the claims that Hunter Biden is involved in lobbying activities with the Chinese. The mail-in ballots controversy and the victory of Joe Biden, for Min, reinforces the idea that there is a transnational group of leftists from Seoul to Washington who are collaborating with Beijing to undermine the liberal world order, which gets us to the culture war.

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Culture War

Mins campaign to expose the alleged electoral fraud has been supported by right-wing, independent media on online platforms. In recent years, YouTube has seen explosive growth in South Korea; based on data from Android users, the number of YouTube users increased by 38 percent to 34 million between 2016 and 2019, and the hours of content uploaded to Korean YouTube channels grew by 50 percent between 2018 and 2019. The increase in popularity and profitability of YouTube channels has attracted numerous celebrities and content creators, including right-wing commentators who have not been able to find a platform in mainstream media.

Most of the top South Korean YouTube channels in the politics category lean toward the right. Ranked by total video views, eight out of the top 10 channels in this category have a right-wing stance. Shinuihansu, the top-ranked channel, has over 1.3 million subscribers and 978 million views, and Jin Seong-ho Broadcasting has 1.1 million subscribers and almost 800 million views. These channels are run by former politicians and journalists who have connections and insider knowledge. Their easy-to-digest news briefings have become extremely popular among conservatives in South Korea especially the elderly, who share these clips via KakaoTalk, the omnipresent Korean messaging app.

Many of these YouTubers have wholeheartedly embraced the U.S. style of culture war against leftists, whom they deem to be present not only in politics but also in the arts, academia, and the private sector, in cahoots with Chinese capital. For instance, the Garo Sero Institutes YouTube channel, which has over 600,000 subscribers and over 315 million views, has been referring to the institutes activities as a cultural war. The channel features Kim Yong-ho, a former entertainment journalist, and Kang Yong-seok, a former member of the National Assembly, both of whom have not been shy about exposing the private matters of celebrities and sharing unsubstantiated reports. The goal is not only to draw attention to their political commentaries but also to harness gossip and fake news in service of the culture war against the left. They have obviously taken their playbook from the U.S. alt-right, which has been linking the left with Hollywood. The Garo Sero Institutes Kim produced a film titled Parasite Family, which makes a direct reference to the ongoing scandal over the Moon governments former justice minister, in a manner similar to Dinesh DSouza.

What Are the Implications?

To be clear, the mainstream in both the U.S. and South Korea has responded to these claims of electoral fraud with swift dismissal. However, in the era of alternative facts, the space that the mainstream occupies is under constant challenge, and these fringe theories have come out of the fringes, with prominent political figures in mainstream parties, like Trump or Min, behind them. The context in the U.S. that has led to the resurgence of the far-right has been well-documented and analyzed, and it might be necessary to continue watching this space in South Korea, which seems to be mirroring the U.S.

In his recent book Why Were Polarized, Ezra Klein writes about how what he terms mega-identities, which organize diverse identities along two-party lines, have contributed to what seems to be an irreconcilable partisanship in the U.S and South Korea might be headed in the same direction. Although the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in 2016 has been celebrated as a sign of South Koreas democratic maturity, this may have been South Koreas Obama moment, which clearly demarcated the end of the old South Korea symbolized by Park and her father, the authoritarian leader Park Chung-hee, and the beginning of the new South Korea of the Candlelight Revolution.

South Koreans remain divided over gender issues; immigration and race increasingly raise controversies on a national scale, as observed in the case of Sam Okyere earlier this year. In addition, consider voters disappointment with Moons progressive administration, which has failed to get the country out of Hell Choseon. The administration has been beset with alleged abuses of power by its appointees the precise reason Park was dethroned and economic policies that have failed to address concerns such as rising housing prices.

Meanwhile, the geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China will further pressure South Korea, the perennial shrimp between two whales, further activating Cold War identities on the far-right. Right-wing demagogues will continue exploiting the idea of a transnational cartel of leftists, corrupted by Chinese capital, collaborating with Beijing to undermine the liberal world order in all sectors, from entertainment to government.

The context of Mins quixotic crusade reveals a South Korea that displays conditions of intense political polarization akin to that of the U.S. under Trump, one that has presented tempting opportunities to Min and other far-right activists. The growing influence of far-right YouTube channels seems to be both a symptom and cause of this polarization, and they are increasingly seeping into the mainstream. Of course, conditions do not equal causation, but it definitely presents risks to South Koreas democracy.

Ultimately, in South Korea, we see the ramifications of a different type of interdependence between the far-right, which has reactivated Cold War identities, and the backdrop of decentralized platforms, culture wars, and a new geopolitical rivalry. The South Korean case highlights yet again how the erosion of democratic norms in the U.S. is not merely a domestic affair but one that has real, tangible consequences beyond its borders.

Dongwoo Kim is a program manager at Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, specializing in digital technology governance. He is a graduate of the University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, and the Yenching Academy of Peking University.

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Before Trump, South Korean Conservatives Also Claimed a 'Stolen' Election - The Diplomat

Far-right groups descended upon the Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. Saturday for the Million MAGA March, where they protested the results of the 2020 presidential election and made baseless claims of voter fraud.

Much to attendees delight, President Donald Trump made a brief appearance before the marches got underway.

Notably, some of the loudest attendees at the march, which originally had three different names but fused into one march, were the white nationalist groypers, led by Unite the Right attendee Nick Fuentes.

The boisterous group of bible-carrying, white college-aged men became so loud that, at one point, their chants drowned out the main events speaker.

Fuck Charlie Kirk, they chanted. They also railed against Fox News and Republican legislators during their mini-rally, which occurred simultaneously to the larger rally.

Their leader, Fuentes, eventually appeared, and there was nothing he said that they disagreed with. At every opportunity, the groypers gleefully applauded Fuentes remarks.

Many, while marching to the Supreme Court from Freedom Plaza, asked to take photos with Fuentes. When he accepted, the young groypers would shower their leader in praise, commenting on how they watch his DLive show each night or how much idolize him.

Alt-right figure and groyper Tim Gionet, aka Baked Alaska, and far-right YouTuber Vincent James were also present at the march.

When asked why he decided to come out to the march, one groyper told the Daily Dot, journalists suck before walking away. Attendees exhibited similar disdain for the media, including Fox News.

Also in attendance at the pro-Trump march was the far-right hate group the Proud Boys, which presented themselves as security for the event.

The large group of nearly 50 proud boys even went as far as to tout they would hit antifa with a dildo.

Overall, the march wasnt too eventful, as it mainly drew in many low-level MAGA characters and far-right groups. Later into the evening on Saturday, anti-fascist demonstrators and far-right instigators clashed.

*First Published: Nov 15, 2020, 1:42 pm

Zachary Petrizzo is an undergraduate student at George Mason University and a Washington, D.C. based journalist.

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Groypers, Proud Boys, other far-right groups rally for Trump at 'Million MAGA March' - The Daily Dot

Paul Gilroy is a writer and academic specialising in Black British culture. His books include There Aint No Black in the Union Jack (1987) , Small Acts (1993), The Black Atlantic (1993) and After Empire (2004). He has taught at Goldsmiths, University of London and Yale, where he was the chair of the department of African American studies. He is currently director of the centre for the study of race and racism at University College London. Gilroy was awarded the 2019 Holberg prize for his outstanding contributions to a number of academic fields, including cultural studies, critical race studies, history and African-American studies.

I know that you are close friends with Steve McQueen, our guest editor. How did you meet?I was teaching at Goldsmiths when he was a student there. One day, he knocked on my door with his friend, Desmond, another Black art student. He just wanted to talk and I was happy to do that. He kept on knocking on the door and he would bring his obsessions and his frustrations. I think that he was eager to be taken seriously in a way. It was clear in talking to him that we had interests in common and that he was a remarkable character.

He often speaks of himself as part of a continuum of Black artists, activists and writers who preceded and paved the way for him. I guess you would be included in that lineage.Well, Im just 15 or 16 years older than Steve, so maybe it was more about the fact that, back then, there were not that many other people writing about Black British art. The fact that I was perhaps helped to make a space in which some of the things he wanted to do could be articulated.

In many ways, Steves Small Axe films, particularly Lovers Rock, seem to me to be an elegy for another time and another kind of Black British communal identity that seems suddenly very distant.Yes, I agree. Demographically, the Caribbean population has shrunk and the dominant Black settler populations in Britain now are African people from different places, who arrived here under different conditions. Some, not all, arrived as refugees, some as middle-class people with more access to capital. So that generates a very different Blackness. It is more divided and more open to looking towards the US, and the generic forms of Black politics coming out of there, rather than being rooted in the aftermath of the slave experience.

The Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and then spread globally were seen by many as a moment of real change. Do you agree?I really dont know. It had to happen, but it does not guarantee anything for the future. I know there are people in the US who think that, because of what happened, we may be in the build-up to a new racial settlement there, a third reconstruction if you like, the first being after the civil war, the second the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I want to believe that is true, but I dont have enough information to be able to judge that. What happens next is the issue. At the moment, it feels like fatigue and depression and apathy may be in the ascendant. I dont want to be bleak, but, really, I dont see the momentum of the spring and early summer being maintained.

In your book After Empire you posed the question, could there be a contemporary British multicultural identity? Given all that has happened since, that possibility seems much further away now than when you asked the question.Yes, it does. There was a moment back then, when the reaction against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan created an alignment based on the urgent need to articulate an alternative that was not subject to the traditional belligerence, that was not Americanised. That has faded. The discrepancy between what is going on here and the widespread and sustained protests in America is stark. Here, there is apathy, fatigue, frustration.

I dont know if the technologies that get people protesting in the streets are so good at keeping them there

How do you feel about the explosion of post-BLM virtue-signalling from the corporate worlds of the art, media and fashion?Well, the eager corporations and brands with their black squares and empty gestures might be enough to nudge some people who are looking for radical answers into the arms of the alt-right. More positively, it showed that some people in high places were watching the uprisings, that even corporate capitalism was listening. Maybe there are sources of hope and possibility in momentarily winning their attention, but I think it has its limits.

In America and Britain, there is the sense that the colonial past and, in particular, the slave trade, has not been engaged with in any meaningful way either culturally, historically or in terms of education. Is it possible to move forward politically without that happening?No. And its not a case of looking for an apology because you are offended, its about looking through that history colonialism, slavery and familiarising yourself with it in all its intimate detail. The education system is broken from top to bottom and teaching the Tudors and the Nazis is never going to fix it. Whats exciting about Steves films, the Mangrove one in particular, is that they are an attempt to offer a historical transfusion that, in the present condition, can give younger viewers and mainstream viewers an alternative sense of what the history of this country might be over the last 50 years.

As someone who has written extensively about race and history, are you pessimistic for the future?I dont think we can afford the luxury of pessimism. I have been dispirited of late, but when I saw those young people out in the streets in the pandemic, with their masks on, spaced apart, announcing to the world that racism is a bad thing, it was inspiring and uplifting. That banner was taken up very widely and some of the people who took it up were very young. That is hopeful. The question is, can that mobilisation of people be the source of a movement that can carry this forward. Thats where my own pessimism bites me, because I dont know if the technologies that get people into the streets are so good at keeping them there.

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Paul Gilroy: 'I dont think we can afford the luxury of pessimism' - The Guardian