Category Archives: Alt-right

There are just six months left in Donald Trump's presidential term. I think it's fair to say the office isn't going to change him.

But it's possible that he just changed the Republican Party forever.

In praising adherents of the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory on Wednesday as well as publicly endorsing two overt bigots who won their nominations to represent the Republican Party in November's congressional elections Trump has officially made the GOP the party of the internet scumbag.

Mainstream Republicans for the past four years have held their noses during Trump's most embarrassing tantrums, ragestorms, and racist blurts. They've dutifully swallowed their pride and surrendered their spines. In doing so, they've allowed the rot on the fringes of the right to seep further and further into the party's core.

Trump's latest trifecta just puts the stamp of approval on the rot.

Marjorie Green won last week's Republican primary in Georgia's 14th Congressional District. It's a deep-red district, and she is widely expected to be elected to Congress.

Greene is a 9/11 truther and QAnon supporter who posed for a photo with the former Ku Klux Klan leader Chester Doles to help advertise his political group. When asked about the seeming endorsement, Greene said the question was "silly and the same type of sleazy attacks the Fake News Media levels against President Trump."

She wrote in 2018 that "Saudi Arabia, Rothschild and Soros are the puppet masters that fund this Global Evil" referring to the fictitious global pedophile ring that's central to the QAnon conspiracy theory. In 2019, she stalked the halls of the Capitol looking for Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib the first Muslim women elected to Congress to badger them into swearing their oath on the Bible rather than the Quran.

On her own campaign's Facebook page she speculated that "Demon possession" and "military grade intelligence developed weapons like Voice of God technology" could be to blame for school shootings. She's also implied that some school shootings could be fakes, according to Jewish Insider. During her victory speech last week, Greene said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was "a hypocrite, she's anti-American, and we're going to kick that b---- out of Congress."

Trump congratulated Greene on Twitter as a "future Republican star" who is "strong on everything and never gives up a real WINNER!" House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also made it clear Greene was welcome in the House GOP caucus and would be assigned spots on committees.

Separately, Laura Loomer a self-described "proud Islamophobe" who has cheered the deaths of migrants and called Muslims "savages" won the Republican primary in Florida's 21st Congressional District. It's a strongly Democratic district, and the seat is almost certainly not in danger of being won by Loomer.

Though she's well-known in far right and ultranationalist internet cadres, the 27-year-old Loomer is basically a B-list exhibitionist troll in the Milo Yiannopoulos mold. She's just as prodigious as he is at getting barred from every social-media platform, as well as by Uber and Lyft for harassing Muslim drivers but has been unable to even get arrested when flagrantly trespassing.

So embarrassing are her antics that she's even been barred from the Trump cult-of-personality festival CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference).

But rather than ignore this marginal far-right internet performance artist, Trump endorsed her: "Great going Laura. You have a great chance against a Pelosi puppet!" Several GOP congressmen also expressed their support for Loomer.

And on Wednesday, Trump responded to a question about QAnon by calling its supporters "people who love our country" and who "like me very much, which I appreciate."

The FBI has called QAnon a domestic-terrorism threat, and Facebook has barred hundreds of QAnon accounts it's said attempted to incite violence.

Each of these endorsements is a presidential seal of approval on an internet culture riddled with racism, overt calls for violence, and a belief that our "culture war" is just an early stage of a coming civil war.

More consequentially, Trump has stamped that same poisonous culture onto the Republican Party itself. That's how it works: Presidents are the head of the party for the time they are in office.

But president aren't kings, not even of their party.

All Republican lawmakers in Congress need to decide whether losing their seats is too high a price to pay for having principles.

This isn't a partisan issue. This can't be blamed on antifa or the "SJW snowflakes." This is an easy call.

Prominent conservative commentators such as Rich Lowry and Ben Shapiro have expressed disgust at Trump's embrace of QAnon. The former Bush adviser Karl Rove even called for Trump to disavow the "nuts and kooks" of QAnon.

When the partisan commentariat shrinks with embarrassment, it should be a clue to Joe Q. Republican that they could survive sticking their chins out to ensure that they and their political ideals are not associated with racists, bigots, and sadistic liars trying to incite a civil war.

But GOP lawmakers, with rare exceptions, have been either silent or tacitly supportive.

McCarthy stripped the racist Rep. Steve King of his assignments in 2019. Having set the precedent that rank bigotry is unacceptable in the Republican caucus, there's no justification for putting Greene on committees.

Republicans once prided themselves on being the "Party of Lincoln," or the "Party of Business," or the "Party of Limited Government." Failure to condemn racist paranoid internet trolls bearing their party's imprimatur even if it means defying the president is to forever surrender any of the principles for which the party once stood.

When the former Women's March leader Linda Sarsour who has been credibly accused of anti-Semitism appeared as a guest of Muslim delegates on a video call during the Democratic National Convention this week, Joe Biden's presidential campaign swiftly condemned Sarsour's views and reiterated that she had nothing to do with the Biden campaign. There's no reason GOP leaders can't clean up their own backyards, as well.

It's not a terribly high bar Republicans need to reach to ensure their party isn't known for being wholly indecent idiots. They can and should reject these people and ideas.

Sure, rebuking Trump invites the likelihood of retribution, but if you can't stand up to this, you can't stand up for anything.

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Trump has officially turned the GOP into the QAnon Party - Business Insider - Business Insider

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variants: or less commonly alt right

: a right-wing, primarily online political movement or grouping based in the U.S. whose members reject mainstream conservative politics and espouse extremist beliefs and policies typically centered on ideas of white nationalism Welcome to the alt-right. The label blends together straight-up white supremacists, nationalists who think conservatives have sold out to globalization, and nativists who fear immigration will spur civil disarray. Dylan Matthews Rather than concede the moral high ground to the left, the alt right turns the left's moralism on its head and makes it a badge of honor to be called "racist," "homophobic," and "sexist." Benjamin Welton Regardless of who triumphs at the ballot box, the biggest winner of this presidential election may be the alt-right: a sprawling coalition of reactionary conservatives who have lobbied to make the United States more "traditional," more "populist" and more white. Jonathon Morgan often used before another nounan alt-right manifestoSecularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it's also making America's partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of the so-called alt-right movement, whose members see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. Peter Beinart

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Alt-right | Definition of Alt-right by Merriam-Webster

Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-proclaimed leader of the movement, co-wrote a manifesto of sorts about what the alt-right believes. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-proclaimed leader of the movement, co-wrote a manifesto of sorts about what the alt-right believes.

The presidential candidates this week accused one another of racism and bigotry, with Hillary Clinton arguing that Donald Trump's rhetoric and policies are an invitation to the "alt-right" movement.

"This is not conservatism as we have known it," the Democratic nominee said on Thursday during a speech in Reno, Nev. "This is not Republicanism as we have known it. These are racist ideas. These are race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women ideas all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the 'alt-right.'"

So what, exactly, is the "alt-right"?

The views of the alt-right are widely seen as anti-Semitic and white supremacist.

It is mostly an online movement that uses websites, chat boards, social media and memes to spread its message. (Remember the Star of David image that Trump received criticism for retweeting? That reportedly first appeared on an alt-right message board.)

Most of its members are young white men who see themselves first and foremost as champions of their own demographic. However, apart from their allegiance to their "tribe," as they call it, their greatest points of unity lie in what they are against: multiculturalism, immigration, feminism and, above all, political correctness.

"They see political correctness really as the greatest threat to their liberty," Nicole Hemmer, University of Virginia professor and author of a forthcoming book Messengers of the Right, explained on Morning Edition.

"So, they believe saying racist or anti-Semitic things it's is not an act of hate, but an act of freedom," she said.

For that reason, as well as for fun and notoriety, alt-righters like to troll, prank and provoke.

One of their favorite slams is to label someone a "cukservative," loosely translated by the Daily Caller as a cuckolded conservative, or "race traitor" who has surrendered his masculinity.

How does the alt-right movement differ from what we think of as traditional conservatism?

The movement's origins are traced to many conservatives' opposition to the policies of President George W. Bush, especially the U.S. invasion of Iraq (alt-righters are strictly isolationist).

They are also suspicious of free markets, a key tenet of conservatism, as they believe that business interests can often be in conflict with what they view as higher ideals those of cultural preservation and homogeneity.

Two self-proclaimed leaders of the alt-right movement Breitbart's Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos recently outlined a manifesto of sorts for what the group believes and who their allies are and are not. It claimed that "beltway conservatives" hate alt-right adherents even more "than Democrats or loopy progressives."

They see themselves, rather, as "natural conservatives," with an "instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar," Bokhari and Yiannopoulos wrote.

What is Trump's connection to the alt-right?

Last week, the GOP presidential nominee announced that Stephen Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News Network, which Bannon has called "the platform for the alt-right," would be his campaign's new chief executive.

"By putting Brietbart front and center in his campaign," said Hemmer, "Trump has elevated the alt-right."

But Hemmer suspects that Trump and all but a small fraction of his supporters do not pledge allegiance to the alt-right movement.

Yet, the movement has embraced Trump.

"I think they are attracted to Trump [and] see him as a vessel for getting their ideas out there," Hemmer said.

Clinton is likely to continue drawing a link between Trump and the alt-right in the minds of voters.

"She's reminding those undecided voters that whatever the new moderate face of Donald Trump might be, there are the things he has said and here are the implications of the things he said and the people who he's brought into his campaign," Hemmer said.

How do alt-right leaders feel about Clinton's statements?

They seem to be loving the attention. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in Slate:

"The white nationalist Richard Spencer was on vacation in Japan when he learned that Hillary Clinton was planning to give a speech about Donald Trump's ties to the so-called alt right, and he was thrilled. 'It's hugely significant,' Spencer told me by Skype from Kyoto. 'When a presidential candidate and indeed the presidential candidate who is leading in most polls talks about your movement directly, I think you can safely say that you've made it.' "

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What You Need To Know About The Alt-Right Movement : NPR

You would think that the National Museum of African American History and Culture would be dedicated to fighting the scourge of racism, particularly vicious caricatures and stereotypes of African Americans.

Yet toward the end of May the institution posted one of the most racist documents Ive ever seen, as part of a web page about whiteness. This graphic didnt gain widespread notice until last week, at which point the museum promptly yanked it down.

But the Internet is forever, so here it is:

As of this writing, the museum has not pulled down its link to the source document on which the infographic was based.

Which just goes to prove my theory that the harder you try to be progressive, by todays standards, the closer you get to the alt-right.

What does that infographicand the supposed anti-racist theory on which it is basedtell us?

It tells us that the distinctive characteristics of whiteness and white culture include:

And by implication, its telling us that black people are not characterized by any of these traits.

When I saw this graphic it gave me an immediate, creepy feeling of dj vu. Specifically, it brought me back to that period in late 2015 and early 2016 when all of the white nationalists and alt-right types migrated out of the comments sections at Stormfront and descended upon Twitter.

Do you remember what those people kept insisting? Exactly what the National Museum of African American History and Culture is telling us: That all of these desirable characteristics are distinctive and unique to the white race.

What I remember most vividly from that moment four years ago was seeing two new racial slurs: dindoo and gibsmedat.

Thats dindoo as in dindoo nuffinI didnt do nothing, but rendered in a caricature of a black dialect. The same for gibsmedata caricatured version of give me that. You get the idea. The crude stereotype that was supposed to lodge in our brains is that black Americans refuse to take personal responsibility, want government handouts instead of work, and are incapable of speaking grammatical English.

And now were getting this slime from the dregs of white nationalist Twitter echoed back at us by the Smithsonian Institution.

What the hell happened?

It should go without sayingthough in these confused times I suppose we have to say itthat none of these caricatures is remotely true.

I get why the white nationalists would want to promote them. For the alt-right, its a form of unearned self-flatteryan attempt by a bunch of pathetic losers to puff themselves up as exemplars of hard work and responsibility (which must really take the sting out of living in your moms basement). What seems incomprehensible is why black museum curators would want to denigrate themselves. Worse, why would they want to boost the careers of white academics such as Robin DiAngelo and Judith Katz (the source for that infographic) to spread these vicious stereotypes in corporate anti-racism seminars across the country?

The key to the answer is one item on that list of allegedly white characteristics: individualism.

It is now a standard part of anti-racism to describe individualism and universality as the key components of racism and white supremacy.

It is really quite a spectacular feat, when you think of it, to so completely invert the meaning of a concept. In reality, individualism and universality are the opposites of racism. To view each person as a unique individual is to reject caricatures, stereotypes, and prejudices based on race. To regard ideas and values as universal is to reject the claim that physical differences create an inherent conflict or incompatibility that overrides our shared humanity.

These ideals may be hard to implement fully in practice, but to the extent they are achieved, individualism and universality are anti-racism.

So what is to be gained by turning this on its head? Who benefits by promoting a relentless racial collectivization and building up the artificial divisions between people of different skin tones and ancestral origins?

Sadly, there is political hay to be made out of herding people into separate and irreconcilable interest groups and pitting them against each other.

As one activist put it, while explaining why it is important to capitalize the word black, the idea is to emphasize that this is a specific group of people with a shared political identity. How convenient.

For the profiteers of a tribalistic, us-versus-them politics, the worst threat is the person who sees him- or herself as an individual.

But herding people into collectives requires that we invent inherent differences between them, which requires carving up various attributes of human character, ability, and culture and assigning them to one group or another. One of those groups is always going to end up being assigned the least desirable characteristics.

In a way, though, I suppose todays progressives are going full circle. Recent debates over the legacy of Woodrow Wilsonthe president who brought segregation back to federal hiringhave reminded us all that the first batch of progressives were barking mad racists obsessed with eugenics and steeped in racial caricatures.

Lets not allow their successors to drag us back to those days while insisting that theyre moving us forward.

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Where Progressives and the Alt-Right Meet - The Bulwark

President Donald Trump has a symbiotic relationship with white nationalists.

Its been a constant in nearly every element of his presidency: The white nationalist violence in the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was followed by a pronouncement that there were some very fine people on both sides.

The election of Congresss most diverse class in 2018 ever was met with tweets demonizing women progressives of color, telling them to go back to the crime infested places from which they came. Even Covid-19, a disease spun out of the animal kingdom, has been cast as a foreign foe that was at best the fault of and, at worst, created by nonwhite people, with the president insisting on using racist language around it. And Trump arguably launched his political career by appearing on shows like Fox Newss The OReilly Factor in 2011 to speculate that maybe President Barack Obamas birth certificate says he is a Muslim.

As president, Trump energizes white nationalists on two levels: with his rhetoric and through his staffing and policy choices. In turn, many have given him their support. In doing so, Trump has given an overt platform to white nationalists in a way that is unprecedented in the modern political era.

The issue isnt just Trumps rhetoric. His administrations immigration policy has led to the separation of families, to children facing risk of exposure to disease like Covid-19 in detention facilities, and to the deaths of immigrants seeking asylum in the US. His criminal justice policy has led to a more punitive criminal justice system and to the weakening of police oversight, all of which disproportionately affect communities of color.

His economic policies have rewarded those already holding wealth (a mostly white group), and his much-vaunted greatest economy was not as great for people of color particularly Black Americans, whose unemployment rate has been at least 2 percentage points higher than the general unemployment rate for the entirety of Trumps tenure. In fact, a kinship with white nationalist ideas can be found in just about any part of the Trump administrations policy, from health care to foreign affairs.

All of this is not to say that the Trump administration has run the country exactly as the leader of a white nationalist group would. But they are doing a lot of things that are ideologically compatible, Kathleen Belew, a University of Chicago historian and author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, told Vox. And I think it creates a road toward political action for a movement that might not have seen one in an earlier historical moment.

The white nationalist movement is a complex one, and it overlaps with other ideologies, particularly those of white power and white supremacy, that are brought up in discussions of racism, history, and the misguided belief that white people are superior to people of color. But the terms white nationalism, white power, and white supremacy each mean something different. And to understand how the Trump administration relates to white nationalism, its important to understand what white nationalism is and what it is not.

Nationalism typically refers to strong support for a country akin to patriotism, as in the nationalists who want to put America first. But nationalism can also refer to self-determination, such as the Scottish nationalists who want an independent Scottish state.

White nationalism has more in common with this latter form of nationalism: It advocates for a physical or spiritual white state.

The nation in white nationalism is imagined as the Aryan nation, Belew said. White nationalism is the idea that white people are going to unify together as one national polity either in a white homeland or a white nation or even in a white world through the violent killing or exclusion of other people.

There are many routes to accomplishing this vision, but Belew stressed white nationalists generally are not interested in the United States as a nation. Instead, they aspire to replace the United States with something like the white state imagined at the end of The Turner Diaries, a central white nationalist text describing a war against people of color.

This is why, Belew said, When we think about white nationalism, its important to remember that it is a deeply revolutionary and deeply anti-democratic project.

The overall white power movement, on the other hand, goes beyond questions of statehood and has little regard for borders. As Belew told my colleague Jane Coaston, it is what connects New Zealands Christchurch shooter to white nationalists in the United States, and is primarily a social, rather than strictly political, movement that she says is incredibly diverse in all ways other than race.

The white power movement is a broad-based social movement of interconnected groups of people that includes the Klan, Neo-Nazis, radical tax protesters; it includes some segments of boogaloo now; it includes some segments of militia groups, Belew said. Its all across the country: Its urban and suburban and rural; it has men and women and children in it, and people across class backgrounds.

As that list would suggest, white power is a movement that provides a home for white supremacists people who, as political scientists Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith write in Stay Woke: A Peoples Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter, believe that white people are inherently superior to people of color and should dominate over people of color.

This definition, Lopez Bunyasi told Vox, captures the ideological portion of white supremacy, but she noted there is also a structural facet.

Structurally, Lopez Bunyasi and Smith write, white supremacy is the systematic provision of political, social, economic, and psychological benefits and advantages to whites, alongside the systematic provisions of burdens and disadvantages to people who are not white. White supremacy isnt just an ideology; it is an actual system that has been used to build government and create policy in the real world.

Its this sort of white supremacy, Stony Brook University sociology professor Crystal Fleming told Jene Desmond-Harris in a 2016 piece for Vox, that has been a constant throughout history. The concept provided for the enslavement of Black people, the genocide of Native Americans, and the overall allocation of resources in manners that benefit white Americans. And it is a system that still exists today, keeping people of color out of jobs, universities, and political power. Which means everyone regardless of whether one subscribes to white supremacist beliefs lives in a white supremacist system.

Trump has embraced this system and has glorified some of its uglier moments, like its production of the Confederate States of America. He does not advocate for the sort of white nationalism depicted in The Turner Diaries, but his rhetoric has certainly elevated white Americans and sometimes white supremacists and nationalists over Americans of color. And as Belew notes, when it comes to the idea of white power, there is a lot of very concerning evidence that, if not Trump himself, there are people in his administration who really do understand what it means.

Its not only Trump who gives a voice to white nationalists. Key people in his administration champion their beliefs. Chief among them is White House senior adviser Stephen Miller.

A trove of more than 900 emails Miller sent to the alt-right publication Breitbart in 2015 and 2016 both while an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and a member of the Trump campaign suggests Miller has deep ties to the white nationalist movement.

The emails, which were analyzed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, touched on race or immigration. Some of the messages included links to white nationalist articles, while others included white nationalist slang. Miller also promoted The Camp of the Saints, a white supremacist book that casts immigrants of color as savages who subsist on feces, as well as praise for the nativist, hard-line immigration policies of the 1920s.

Those emails saw Miller citing in particular the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act. Historian and author of The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas Monica Muoz Martinez notes that act had quota systems to restrict immigration from nations deemed to have populations that were racially undesirable. Those quotas allowed more immigration of people from Western Europe and fewer people coming from other nations, while banning immigration from Asia. As Muoz Martinez explains, these policies were designed by eugenicists and are admired not only by Miller but by the Ku Klux Klan and Adolf Hitler.

Miller has emulated those eugenicists in his crafting of the Trump administrations immigration policy, and hes doing so with Trumps blessing. Muoz Martinez told Vox, One hundred years ago, Mexicans were called murderers and rapists and bandits, and now, Trump says Mexicans are murderers and rapists and drug dealers.

As Voxs Nicole Narea has explained, Miller designed the public charge rule that allows immigrants to be excluded from the US based on whether they are likely to end up relying on public benefits in the future.

More recently, Miller was reportedly involved in creating the executive order that froze certain green card applications and family reunification initiatives due to the coronavirus. That order was followed in June by another that blocked entry for a wider variety of foreign workers, as well as a Supreme Court decision allowing for expedited removal of immigrants seeking asylum.

But ties to white nationalism go beyond Miller to include figures like Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist and Trump campaign CEO who led Breitbart, described in 2016 by Voxs Zack Beauchamp as a leading light of Americas white nationalist movement accused of using misogynistic, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and barely hidden racist language throughout his professional life.

Bannon was fired in August 2017, but in his brief tenure, he seeded the White House with his economic nationalism philosophy, which has been criticized as rebranded white nationalism. And he helped develop the policies that defined Trumps early days most notably the Muslim ban. Bannons ideas about immigration remain entrenched due to figures like Miller, and his divisive rhetoric on domestic and foreign policy continues to come out of Trumps mouth.

Bannons thoughts on matters like staffing still hold weight. For instance, he has helped usher in his ally Michael Pack to run the US governments global news agencies, which include Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. We are going hard on the charge, Bannon told Voxs Alex Ward.

Pack, Ward notes, began his tenure by firing four top officials (after two others quit to protest his hiring) and by mandating the agencies promote editorial content that reflects the presidents worldview, leading to fears his tenure will see official US news networks become mouthpieces for the sorts of white nationalist-adjacent content that populated Breitbart.

Bannon is not the only former official whose ideology remains influential. Perhaps no fired member of the administrations presence is still felt as strongly as that of Millers old boss, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose tenure atop the Justice Department was marked by the enactment of policies that spoke to the line of thought laid out in The Turner Diaries.

Pursuing a tough on crime approach, Sessions crafted policies that actively endangered the lives and liberty of Americans of color, particularly Black Americans. These included mandating federal prosecutors to push for maximum punishment for low-level drug crimes, which Black Americans are disproportionately more likely to be charged with. He also pushed a failed attempted to have federal prosecutors more aggressively pursue marijuana cases. Black Americans are more likely to be arrested for possession than white Americans nationally, again despite marijuana usage being about equal across racial groups.

Sessions successfully limited federal oversight of police departments found to have engaged in civil rights abuses as well as discriminatory and violent policing and, like Miller and Bannon, pursued an aggressively restrictive immigration policy.

He, too, has spoken fondly of the 1924 immigration act, in discussing increasing immigration with Bannon on Breitbart Radio in 2015 while still a senator, saying, it was good for America.

Once in the Trump administration, Sessions emulated the policies of the 1920s by using every power he possessed as attorney general to ensure that the scales of justice tip toward punishment of unauthorized immigrants as often as possible, as Dara Lind wrote for Vox.

As is the case with Miller, Sessionss policies have achieved exclusionary white supremacist aims and fed white supremacists narratives about the dangers of Black people. Through Miller and through other former allies still in the administration like Kathy Nuebel Kovarik, who is currently the chief of staff of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Sessionss ideas live on in the administration despite his departure. His policies survive as well.

Trump tweeted that the phrase Black Lives Matter is a symbol of hate weeks after overseeing armed forces gassing peaceful protesters demanding equality for Black people and other people of color.

When these actions and all the other things Trump has done that align with white nationalist thought and values are taken together, the president begins to appear as someone able to unify traditional forms of white supremacy and more modern modes of white power and white nationalism.

The Klan would wrap themselves in Christianity, Nell Irvin Painter, a Princeton University historian and author of The History of White People, told Vox. (Painter is also a signee of a letter criticized, in part, because of its association with prominent anti-trans figures and themes.) And in the American flag as well. So they were patriots and they were Christians in their own eyes. I dont see any contradiction in Trumps embrace of Confederate monuments and his embrace literal of the American flag.

As the Klan did, the president has cloaked himself in the symbols of Christianity. He posed with the Bible. He highlighted virtual church services on Sundays throughout the pandemic. And he has endeavored to signal he is an ally to Christians across the nation, from promising to prioritize Christian refugees to taking strong positions on matters from the celebration of Christmas to abortion, even though he has few personal ties to Christianity or religion in general.

Similarly, Trump has worked to use the flag sometimes even hugging it as well as other American symbols like Mount Rushmore, to signal that his policies, white nationalist aligned or not, are American. And to argue criticism of those policies is anti-American.

Even the presidents rabid defense of Confederate statues many of which were erected during periods of Black activism and serve as warnings to people of color to stop striving for equality is revealing. This is not to say that Trump is using the monuments as part of a campaign of terror and intimidation. But positioning himself as a champion of America allows him to cast their concerns as unpatriotic extensions of a left-wing cultural revolution that wants to overthrow the American Revolution.

In connecting and conflating white men who tried to destroy the United States with prominent Revolutionary figures like Thomas Jefferson, the president highlights the thing that connects them: the barbaric ways they treated nonwhite people.

There is a kind of white nationalism thats about infusing whiteness into the nation, Belew said. For the activists that are taking to the streets and training in paramilitary camps, the nation isnt the United States; they are not at all interested in defending the United States. They want to defend the white nation. And they want to do that, often, by overthrowing the United States.

This impulse mirrors the goals of the radical white nationalists of the Confederate States of America and is reflected in the presidents policies particularly around immigration and in tendencies his critics would call anti-democratic. To the extent that that ideology has actually crept into governance, its shocking, Belew noted. Because its a revolutionary thing that is attempting to undo the very government where they sit.

Trumps immigration policy is notable not just for the ways it excludes people of color but for how it deems white immigrants the right type of immigrants.

In 2018, Trump said hed like the US to have fewer immigrants from shithole countries in Africa and the Caribbean instead, he wanted immigrants from the majority-white Norway. In practice, he has put up barriers to immigration for citizens from countries with majority people of color populations, including those with Muslim majorities, while casting them as some of the most vicious and dangerous people on earth.

In June, Trump announced a temporary ban on green cards and the suspension of several work visas that are often used by immigrants of color, particularly those from India. Other countries that have been especially affected by Trumps immigration policy include Vietnam, China, Mexico, and South Korea. Stuart Anderson, the founder of the immigration think tank National Foundation for American Policy, noted those four countries saw drastic reductions in immigration during Trumps first two years in office, with immigration from China falling about 21 percentage points in that period.

Amid these declines, Trump reportedly hoped to find ways to fast track immigration from Europe with former US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland assigned in 2018 to work on the plan with Miller and Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Through exclusion and the push to recruit white immigrants, the Trump administration has advocated for a rigid border policy for nonwhite immigrants and a more porous, generous one for those who are white. This advances the aims of white nationalism that transcends border and that suggests the sovereignty of US borders matters less when the Trump administration is thinking of the role the country might play in advancing the global white nation than it does when thinking of the country as a discrete entity.

White nationalist goals can only be achieved by dismantling the US government, and there, too, Trump has appeared to align with a violent element, like when he called on armed groups to liberate their states.

There are countless other examples, but the point is, Trump has contributed to the political unraveling of the United States some modern white nationalists see as necessary to achieve their goals. He has not done so by violently overthrowing the government. But he has taken steps in the direction these white nationalists want to go.

As much as he has embraced it, Trump has made some attempts to distance himself from white supremacy and white nationalism. Following a racist mass shooting in El Paso (one perpetrated by a shooter whose manifesto mirrored some of Trumps rhetoric on Latinx immigration), Trump said, In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America.

But words like these are nothing more than language uttered in between statements hewing closely to white supremacist and white nationalist ideals.

Just weeks before the El Paso shooting, Trump called the majority-Black district of former lawmaker Rep. Elijah Cummings a dangerous & filthy place and a rat and rodent infested mess, adding, No human being would want to live there. Its language that mirrors the characterization of people of color in The Camp of the Saints, and it not only casts a popular Black leader as inept, it implies he and his constituents are somehow less than human.

In the weeks directly after, Trump tweeted a campaign video featuring a logo associated with the white supremacist group VDARE, employed the anti-Semitic dual-loyalties trope in speaking about the political opinions of Jewish Americans, and claimed at a rally that sanctuary cities were releasing hardened and horrible criminal aliens ... directly into your neighborhoods.

Just a little over a month after saying hate has no place in America, Trump said of the gang MS-13, which was started by Salvadoran immigrants: They take young women. They slice them up with a knife. They slice them up beautiful, young.

All these things, which happened in the span of less than two months, ticked many white supremacist and nationalist boxes Jewish people as untrustworthy, people of color as predators with a predilection for young women, and Black people as subhuman rendering the presidents rejections of various white power ideologies meaningless.

Its a cycle Trump has trapped himself in, and one that continues even now.

After these atrocities, like when the George Floyd video came out, he didnt say anything for a long time, Painter noted. I mean, he said, Oh that was terrible, and then in the next breath, he went back to his race-baiting.

And it is a cycle that is difficult to escape. As Muoz Martinez said, We are living in a nation that was inspired by the principles of white supremacy.

So ingrained are those ideas, she pointed out, that even the first presidential administration run by a Black American reflected them, particularly with respect to immigration, with policies that incarcerated children in harsh conditions that spawned lawsuits.

We have to remember that the policies that the Trump administration created, and the kind of inhumanity that we see, built upon the infrastructure that had already existed, Muoz Martinez said, adding that white nationalist and white supremacist ideals shaped our society and shaped our institutions, and shaped our public societies and laws, our policing mindset. And we havent replaced that.

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What is white nationalism? Take a look at Trumps agenda. - Vox.com

The letter Why Support Biden? (July) echoes the disinformation and alt-right conspiracy theories common on social media, shock-jock talk radio programs like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones and repeated on Fox News by Sean Hannity and Judge Jeanine Pirro, and, sadly, by the president.

These are not news outlets. They are entertainment broadcast media that mirror supermarket tabloids and traffic in sensationalist journalism.

Their stories dont have to be true; someone just has to have said it was true.

These outlets use "experts" to provide credibility for a story, even if that person has no credentials or subscribes to fringe beliefs. The more outrageous, bizarre and controversial the story, the better.

Many of those stories closely skirt the libel laws.

Apparently, there are a lot of gullible people who will believe anything without question and cant be bothered to evaluate what they read or hear in order to determine the truth for themselves.

Unfortunately, these people also vote.

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Letter to the Editor: Alt-right conspiracies common on social media, talk radio and Fox network - Tulsa World

This piece is a commentary, part of The Appeals collection of opinion and analysis.

In the fall of 2019, the governing board over Mississippis eight public higher education institutions, the states Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL), appointed a new chancellor at the University of Mississippi (UMiss) in Oxford. The new chancellor, Glenn Boyce, had previously worked at three predominantly white private schools known as segregation academies and was paid by the IHLs Board of Trustees to be a consultant for the chancellor search process, in which he was ultimately selected. To announce the appointment, Boyce was set to speak at a news conference held by the Board.

In response, a coalition of faculty and students organized a protest to call for more democratic university leadership. Hundreds of people, including students, faculty, and alumni, showed up in support. As students held signs reading Abolish IHL and Students and Workers Run This School, Ray Hawkins, the chief of the universitys police department (UPD) picked me up and wrestled me out of the room. This physically violent act was followed by members of the alt-right and neo-confederates harassing me for months. But it was not the first time that UPD forced a student into the frontlines of white supremacist violence and, as long as the department exists, it will not be the last.

Fifty years earlier, in 1969, Black students at UMiss officially chartered the Black Student Union (BSU). Unbeknownst to the students, months after charter, the FBI was surveilling them. Because of a recent Freedom of Information Act request by UMiss assistant professor of history Garrett Felber, we now know that the FBI worked closely with UPD to document the activities of Black students across campus. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover even recommended that the local FBI office take immediate steps to develop member informants in the BSU.

Over the course of the 1969-70 school year, Black students protested racism at UMiss and released a list of 27 demands, including a condemnation of the racist attitude and statements of members of the Board of Trustees, and a minimum wage for campus employees. In February 1970, the international singing group Up With People performed on campus. In an effort to have their demands met, Black students took the stage and raised their fists in a Black Power salute.

During and after the concert, 89 people were arrested. Some students were taken to a local county jail, while others were held at the notorious Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, home to the states death row.

A local prosecutor later dropped criminal charges against the protesters, but eight students were expelled. We did not have any weapons, and our protest was completely nonviolent, Linnie Willis, one of the expelled students, told the New Yorker this year. I went to jail in my hometown, not at Parchman; that was worse, since I became a marked person and could never be employed in Oxford. Willis had completed all the requirements for her degree when she was expelled, but UMiss did not give her a diploma for 50 years.

In the last five years, theres been another wave of student organizing on campus. In 2015, Dominique Garrett-Scott, then an undergraduate, was one of the leaders of the fight to remove the Mississippi state flag, which included the Confederate emblem, from campus. Their fight was successful: That year, the flag was taken down. (In late June of this year, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed a bill to retire the flag). The backlash, however, included hyper-surveillance and counter-protesting from neo-Confederates. In 2017, a student running for student government included the Mississippi state flag on his campaign sign. Taia McAfee, then a freshman, painted over the Confederate emblem with BLM and was later arrested by UPD.

Connecting multiple generations of activists at UMiss is the fight against the entrenched white supremacy and those who protect it: the police. Over several decades, this has not only subjected students to police violence, but also takes resources away from campus workers. In the 2019-2020 school year, UPD had an annual budget of over $3 million, and its chiefs salary was $114,130. At the same time, as the coronavirus pandemic began, dozens of workers at UMiss struggled to buy groceries and pay rent, which compounded the fact that an estimated 20-25 percent of workers at UMiss do not make a living wage.

Campus policing not only invites overt police violence, but by taking resources that could go to students and workers, inherently contributes to other acts of violence across campus. Between 2016 and 2018, there were 49 on-campus rapes reported, but excluding UPDs security report, support for sexual assault survivors is virtually nonexistent. In 2019, UMisss Violence Intervention and Prevention Office, which provided support for survivors, merged with another office, and the campus counseling center started limiting student appointments to 10 per academic year. University administrators have been consistent in what they have communicated to students and workers for the last 50 years: They care more about policing us than taking care of our needs.

This past month, as activists and city governments took down statues down across the countryincluding the removal of several Confederate statues in Richmond, Virginia the IHLs Board of Trustees unveiled their plans to renovate a Confederate cemetery and relocate the Confederate statue that sits in the middle of campus. The price tag for the proposed project is $1.1 million and includes security cameras around the premises for constant surveillance by UPD.

As UMiss continues to increase its investment in the police and promoting and protecting white supremacy, the coronavirus pandemic continuesand many workers at school struggle to make ends meet. This contradiction existed long before the global pandemic, but the level of suffering in our communities has been exacerbated by administrators continuing to prioritize capital and policing as the virus has spread. The funds for maintaining white supremacy at UMiss should be redirected to providing workers a living wage, to sexual assault prevention, and to the general well-being of people in our community. It is time to build on calls, begun in 1970, to defund UPD.

Cam Calisch is a graduate student and community organizer at the University of Mississippi.

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It's Time To Defund The University of Mississippi Police Department - The Appeal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Militia groups regularly coordinate with police.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservative political cartoonist Ben Garrison has sued the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for allegedly defaming him by labeling one of his cartoons anti-Semitic, reported Newsweek on Tuesday.

The lawsuit, filed last Friday, seeks $10.35 million in damages.

It claims that the ADL caused Garrison insult, embarrassment, humiliation, mental suffering, anguish, injury to his name and professional reputation, and loss of business by alleging anti-Semitism in a 2017 cartoon featuring liberal Jewish philanthropist George Soros, a frequent figure of scorn by the Garrison claims additional anguish when an invitation to a 2019 White House social media event was rescinded after the ADL alerted the administration to the charge of anti-Semitism.

Described in Newsweeks report, the cartoon in question depicts Soros as a puppet being controlled by a green-tinted hand emerging from a curtain labelled Rothschilds, an apparent reference to the wealthy Jewish family that has long been central to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Former General David Petraeus and H.R. McMaster -- Trumps former national security adviser who was forced out of his position after a tumultuous tenure that included criticism from the right and policy disagreements with Trump -- both appear as puppets being controlled by Soros.

The cartoonist is an avid supporter of President Donald Trump, with several of his cartoons depicting the 74-year-old Trump as a noticeably more youthful figure who often boasts a bodybuilder-like physique while vanquishing his political opponents with ease.

The ADL published an article on its website criticizing the cartoon, describing it as blatantly anti-Semitic after it appeared on a website titled McMaster Leaks run by alt-right commentator Mike Cernovich.

"The anti-Semitic theme of the Garrison cartoon is impossible to miss and individuals on social media complained about it," the ADL wrote, before mentioning that Cernovich later posted an edited version of the cartoon that cropped out the "Rothschild" reference.

The lawsuit claims that "The ADL is engaged in a targeted campaign of defamation to destroy Garrison's reputation and livelihood. ADL operatives throughout the country have excessively published the false and defamatory statement that Garrison is anti-Semitic." It also defends the cartoon by insisting that the conspiracy theory it depicts is, in fact, true.

Of note, Newsweeks post said that Garrisons cartoons have remained popular among conservatives regardless of claims of anti-Semitism and links to evidence-free conspiracy theories.

On Monday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Scavino Jr. shared a Garrison cartoon seemingly disrespecting infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci as "Dr. Faucet" for advocating preventative measures to counter skyrocketing COVID-19 cases, that has drawn the ire of some conservatives.

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Pro-Trump cartoonist sues Anti-Defamation League for calling him anti-Semitic - PennLive