Category Archives: Politically Incorrect

The day after Bernie Sanderss big win in Nevada, Joe Lockhart, Bill Clintons former press secretary, expressed the fear gripping the Democratic establishment: I dont believe the country is prepared to support a Democratic socialist, and I agree with the theory that Sanders would lose in a matchup against Trump.

Lockart, like the rest of the Democratic establishment, is viewing American politics through obsolete lenses of left versus right, with Bernie on the extreme left and Trump on the far right. Moderates like Bloomberg and Buttigieg supposedly occupy the center, appealing to a broader swath of the electorate.

This may have been the correct frame for politics decades ago when America still had a growing middle class, but its obsolete today. As wealth and power have moved to the top and the middle class has shrunk, more Americans feel politically dis-empowered and economically insecure. Todays main divide isnt right versus left. Its establishment versus anti-establishment.

Some background. In the fall of 2015 I visited Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and North Carolina, researching the changing nature of work. I spoke with many of the same people I had met twenty years before when I was secretary of labor, as well as some of their grown children. I asked them about their jobs and their views about the economy. I was most interested in their sense of the system as a whole and how they were faring in it.

What I heard surprised me. Twenty years before, most said theyd been working hard and were frustrated they werent doing better. Now they were angry at their employers, the government, and Wall Street; angry that they hadnt been able to save for their retirement, and that their children werent doing any better than they did. Several had lost jobs, savings, or homes in the Great Recession. By the time I spoke with them, most were employed but the jobs paid no more than they had two decades before.

I heard the term rigged system so often I began asking people what they meant by it. They spoke about the bailout of Wall Street, political payoffs, insider deals, CEO pay, and crony capitalism. These came from self-identified Republicans, Democrats, and Independents; white, black, and Latino; union households and non-union. Their only common characteristic was they were middle class and below.

With the 2016 primaries looming, I asked which candidates they found most attractive. At the time, party leaders favored Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush. But the people I spoke with repeatedly mentioned Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They said Sanders or Trump would shake things up, make the system work again, stop the corruption, or end the rigging.

In the following year, Sanders a 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who described himself as a democratic socialist and wasnt even a Democrat until the 2016 presidential primary came within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed her in the New Hampshire primary, garnered over 47 percent of the caucus-goers in Nevada, and ended up with 46 percent of the pledged delegates from Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Trump, a 69-year-old ego-maniacal billionaire reality TV star who had never held elective office or had anything to do with the Republican Party, and lied compulsively about almost everything won the Republican primaries and then went on to beat Clinton, one of the most experienced and well-connected politicians in modern America (granted, he didnt win the popular vote, and had some help from the Kremlin).

Something very big happened, and it wasnt because of Sanderss magnetism or Trumps likeability. It was a rebellion against the establishment. Clinton and Bush had all the advantages funders, political advisors, name recognition but neither could credibly convince voters they werent part of the system.

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A direct line connected four decades of stagnant wages, the financial crisis of 2008, the bailout of Wall Street, the rise of the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, and the emergence of Sanders and Trump in 2016. The people I spoke with no longer felt they had a fair chance to make it. National polls told much the same story. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who felt most people could get ahead through hard work dropped by 13 points between 2000 and 2015. In 2006, 59 percent of Americans thought government corruption was widespread; by 2013, 79 percent did.

Trump galvanized millions of blue-collar voters living in places that never recovered from the tidal wave of factory closings. He promised to bring back jobs, revive manufacturing, and get tough on trade and immigration. We cant continue to allow China to rape our country, and thats what theyre doing, he roared. In five, ten years from now, youre going to have a workers party. A party of people that havent had a real wage increase in eighteen years, that are angry. He blasted politicians and financiers who had betrayed Americans by taking away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families.

Trumps pose as an anti-establishment populist was one of the biggest cons in American political history. Since elected hes given the denizens of C-suites and the Street everything theyve wanted and hasnt markedly improved the lives of his working-class supporters, even if his politically-incorrect, damn-the-torpedos politics continues to make them feel as if hes taking on the system.

The frustrations today are larger than they were four years ago. Even though corporate profits and executive pay have soared, the typical workers pay has barely risen, jobs are less secure, and health care less affordable.

The best way for Democrats to defeat Trumps fake anti-establishment populism is with the real thing, coupled with an agenda of systemic reform. This is what Bernie Sanders offers. For the same reason, he has the best chance of generating energy and enthusiasm to flip at least three senate seats to the Democratic Party (the minimum needed to recapture the Senate, using the vice president as tie-breaker).

Hell need a coalition of young voters, people of color, and the working class. He seems on his way. So far in the primaries he leads among white voters, has a massive edge among Latinos, dominates with both women and men, and has done best among both college and non-college graduates. And hes narrowing Bidens edge with older voters and African Americans.

The socialism moniker doesnt seem to have bruised him, although it hasnt been tested outside a Democratic primary or caucus. Perhaps voters wont care, just as they many dont care about Trumps chronic lies.

Worries about a McGovern-like blowout in 2020 appear far-fetched. In 1972 the American middle class was expanding, not contracting. Besides, every national and swing state poll now shows Sanders tied with or beating Trump. A Quinnipiac Poll last week shows Sanders beating Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania. A CBS News/YouGov poll has Sanders beating Trump nationally. A Texas Lyceum poll has Sanders doing better against Trump in Texas than any Democrat, losing by just three points.

Instead of the Democratic establishment worrying that Sanders is unelectable, maybe it should worry that a so-called moderate Democrat might be nominated instead.

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It's Not Bernie But the So-Called "Moderates" That the Democratic Establishment Should Be Freaking Out About - Common Dreams

It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump Into Office

by Dale Beran

All Points, 279 pp., $28.99

Sometime in the autumn of 2006, a friend sent me screenshots of a chatroom in Habbo Hotel, a social network for teenagers. Someone had flooded the space with avatars of identical black men with Afros in suits and ties. In one picture, the men were blocking the entrance to a swimming pool, stopping other users from coming in. In another theyd arranged themselves in the shape of a swastika. My friend, an activist, thought this was sinister, particularly since it was happening in a space aimed at young people.

Habbo Hotel looked pretty slick for the Internet of 2006, with public spaces like nightclubs and coffeeshops and private rooms that users could rent and furnish with virtual objects. It was cheerful and brightly colored. But due to a programming glitch, if an avatar blocked a doorway or a corridor, it was impossible for another to get by. Whenever kids asked one of the men what was going on, they were told, Pools closed due to AIDS.

The raid was juvenile and offensive, which was the point. Around that time, there was a fashion for posting Rules of the Internet, expanding on the famous (and profound) Rule 34 that states: If it exists, there is porn of it. One widely circulated list had as Rule 42 Nothing is Sacred, and as Rule43 The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it. The organized invasion of a cheery and wholesome space like Habbo Hotel obeyed these axiomsthe humor of the lists was that they were not so much rules to follow as descriptions of norms, observations about Internet culture. The combination of homophobia, Nazi imagery, and what amounted to blackface was impressively unpleasant, given the constraints of a graphical user interface that had to be delivered at the speed of the 2006 Interneton average about a fifth as fast as it is today. Managing to be offensive at such low resolution, using imagery constructed of simple pixillated blocks, was an achievement of sorts.

I was inclined to take the raid less seriously than my friend. Id been digging around on the Internet since the early 1990s, and I thought of myself as a grizzled veteran of online culture. Another rule of the Internet was Nothing is to be taken seriously. Still, I decided to see if there was anything organized behind it, any politics beyond teenage trolling.

This was how I started spending time on 4chan, a message board that had played a part in the organization of the raid. 4chan was a site with a barely designed front page and a list of image boards designated by uninformative letter codes, a format copied from a Japanese site called 2chan. Most boards on 4chan turned out to be devoted to some aspect of Japanese pop culturepictures of giant robots, cosplay (dressing up as a character from animations or computer games), and so on. There was also a lot of gross-out porn and a persistent ironized flirtation with pedophilia, mostly in the form of pornographic anime and winking memes of a character called pedobear, who popped up in all sorts of contexts, lusting after delicious cake. Pedobear imbued a cute cartoon bear with disturbing significance, allowing an innocuous image to signify something transgressiveto those in on the joke. This ambiguitythe wish to defy norms (and their upholders, the normies) while maintaining plausible deniabilitywas a hallmark of 4chan, particularly of a popular board called /b/, a bin for anything that didnt fit the remit of the others.

/b/ had huge traffic, many thousands of posts a day. It was a place with its own highly evolved subculture. Its denizens, who are (according to 4chans advertising page) overwhelmingly young and male, called themselves b/tards, reveling together in an arms race of awfulness, in which everybody and everything was reduced to its most base and abject form for the entertainment of the mob. The raids on Habbo Hotel were an eruption of the culture of /b/ into an unsuspecting normie settlement. On one of the many websites dedicated to archiving the doings of /b/ and its offshoots, you can find a definition of the formation of black avatars Id seen on screenshots of the raid: A SwastiGET is a formation done by Nigras while raiding Habbo. Nigras strategically line up to form a Swastika for shock value and lulz. The fashion for raiding Habbo in blackface even spilled out into the real world, when young Finnish men in suits and Afro wigs marched to the headquarters of Habbos parent company in Helsinki and formed a SwastiGET in front of the building.

On 4chan, threads that received replies were bumped to the top, and old threads were deleted automatically as new ones were posted. There was no archive, no memory. Everything vanished. On high-traffic boards like /b/, the result was a sort of productive churn, a memetic primal soup that spawned jokes and fleeting crazes and outbreaks of unsettling behavior. Other than 4chans sitewide ban on actual child pornography, in 2006 there was no content moderation, at least none visible to the human eye. Posters could remain anonymous, and almost all of them chose to do so, to such an extent that 4chan users termed themselves Anons. This turn toward a collective identity would later drive /b/ and its successor /pol/ into the realm of real-world politics, a wild history that is meticulously and grippingly detailed by Dale Beran in It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump Into Office. As the books subtitle suggests, 4chans future lay far closer to the White House than any reasonable person would have predicted.

One day in 2007 I was (still) on /b/ and came across an image of two crude-looking homemade bombs, with a message saying that they would be detonated the next morning at a Texas high school. Promptly after the blast, wrote the poster, I, along with two ther [sic] Anonymous, will charge the building, armed with a Bushmaster AR-15, IMI Galil AR, a vintage, government-issue M1 .30 carbine, and a Benelli M4 semi. The replies were mostly devoted to best wishes for the projects success and a critique of the choice of bomb-making materials: WTF are you using PVC for a pipe bomb? I looked at the timestamps and realized that I was, remarkably for 4chan, reading a thread that was many hours old. It was so popular that it was still floating at the top of the page, instead of falling down into oblivion.

Gradually, I pieced together what happened. Within fifteen minutes of the initial post going live, an Anon had extracted metadata from the pipe bomb image that included the name of the owner of the camera. Later, a fifteen-year-old boywhod borrowed his dads camera to stage the picturewas arrested as he was getting ready to go to school. The bomb, as the skeptics on /b/ suspected, was fake.

/b/ was split on whether possible lulz (a corruption of lols, itself a corruption of LOL or laughing out loud) had been squandered by the boys arrest. The absolute fungibility of lulz was the driver of /b/s cynical economy. It didnt matter where the lulz came from. If they derived from besmirching some other subgroups special sacred thing, they were particularly excellent. During the period I was lurking on /b/, lulz were being extracted from harrassing the friends and family of a Minnesotan seventh grader who had committed suicide after being bullied at school. According to a New York Times report quoted by Beran, the dead boys family received a stream of prank calls that went on for more than a year.

I found /b/ a depressing place, and there was an element of self-hatred in the way I kept returning to it, forcing myself to look at its bleak picture of human nature. It was, as Beran puts it, like drinking from a concentrated font of misery. But I didnt see evidence of far-right political organizing there, and eventually I drifted away to other things.

I next paid attention in 2008 when all of a sudden my Internet was full of Anons in Guy Fawkes masks protesting the Church of Scientology. This was more than a change in tone. It was an evolution, as if, in my absence, cells had begun to divide in a petri dish left overnight on a lab bench. /b/ had, as Beran writes, accidentally discovered agency.

A battle between Scientology and /b/ was undeniably an interesting proposition. The two were highly asymmetric and oddly complementary, the tight geeky hierarchical organization and the loose geeky distributed network. The Church of Scientology had been at war with the Internet for years. Scientology zealously maintained that it was a religion, while equally zealously maintaining that its scriptures were valuable intellectual property, and that the practice of keeping them secret from outsiders, revealing them to subscribers in a sequence of paid-for initiations, was in no way a multilevel marketing scheme. It was the kind of religiontransactional, based on science fictionthat might have appealed to Anons had it not breached the fundamental rule of the Internet, the old Whole Earth Catalog rule out of which all the other rules sprang: Information wants to be free.

The importance of freedom of information on the Internet was just about the only ethical principle that the fractious populace of /b/ could agree on. Scientology had a record of aggressive action against its critics. It didnt want its information to be free. It wanted its information to be controlled and expensive. The casus belli had been a video of Tom Cruise, in which he appeared to claim to have special powers as a result of his practice of Scientology. To /b/ (and much of the rest of the Internet), Cruises messianic confidence was bizarre. Anons found it lulzy to mock him. The church didnt like being mocked. It attempted to suppress the video. It attempted to take lulz away from /b/.

As an opening salvo, Anons uploaded a video in which what sounds like a text-to-voice program reads out a threatening letter to Scientology, over images of scudding clouds: For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind, and for our own enjoymentwe shall proceed to expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form. It signs off with one of the most memorable slogans of the 2000s Internet: We are anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us. With this, the online activist tactics pioneered in the 1990s by artworld-adjacent groups such as Critical Art Ensemble and the Electronic Disturbance Theater erupted into the global public sphere. In the subsequent decade these tactics have been deployed to all manner of ends by organizations of every size and political persuasion, up to and including nation states.

In the action they called Op[eration] Chanology, Anons had access to a software tool called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (named after a particularly destructive weapon in a science fiction war game called Command & Conquer). This allowed them to sit in comfort in front of a nice dashboard and conduct a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, flooding Scientologys servers with requests and causing them to crash. Anons (now calling themselves by the collective name Anonymous) also held real-world protests in dozens of cities around the world, bringing several thousand people onto the streets wearing Guy Fawkes masks, which were being produced in large quantities to promote a film adaptation of Alan Moore and David Lloyds V for Vendetta, a graphic novel about a masked vigilante. Video of the New York protest shows a happy crowd chanting, Dont drink the Kool Aid, and (obscurely to anyone not on the Japanese cat Internet), Long cat is long.

Anonymous didnt dismantle the Church of Scientology, though they dented its public image, and opened the way for legitimate criticism that had previously been stifled about the veracity of its teachings, its aggressive behavior toward its critics, and the exploitation of its adherents. The Low Orbit Ion Cannon was then deployed in support of WikiLeaks, a group that, like Anonymous, had inherited the techno-libertarian ethos of early West Coast hacker culture. At the time, WikiLeaks was an organization with a high reputation among journalists, having published credible information about a number of matters of public interest, including corruption in Kenya, toxic waste dumping off the coast of Cte dIvoire, and the revelation that some prisoners at Guantnamo Bay were being kept hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross. When WikiLeaks started posting the highly consequential series of Iraq leaks and became the target of sustained US government pressure, Anonymous retaliated, turning the cannon against banks and payment entities that were throttling the ability of WikiLeaks to fundraise. As Beran writes, this turned Anonymous against the same countercultural enemies as the 90s hackers: the institutional powers of corporations and the state.

The result was a number of arrests, and a split between the hacktivists of Anonymous and anons, who began to use lower case to distinguish themselves from the political faction. The anons went back to the traditional business of 4chan, forming romantic attachments to My Little Pony figures and yelling plot spoilers at children lining up to buy the latest Harry Potter book. Anonymous, meanwhile, accidentally pulled on a thread of scandal that only began to unravel when the Cambridge Analytica affair broke several years later, revealing in early 2018 that the company had used the personal data of millions of unwitting Facebook users to microtarget voters with inflammatory and potentially misleading messages. In 2010 a security consultant named Aaron Barr was foolishly trying to drum up corporate and government business by claiming to have infiltrated Anonymous. He severely overestimated his skills and found his company servers and backups wiped and 68,000 company e-mails dumped on the open Internet. This (Rule 26: Any topic can be easily turned into something totally unrelated) opened up questions about the work Barr and other contractors (including Peter Thiels Palantir) were discussing in those e-mails, and the use of private security consultants by governments and corporations to engage in dirty tricks and criminality against their critics.

By 2010 4chan was one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Its owner, Christopher Poole, known as moot, then a gaunt twenty-two-year-old, gave an awkward Ted talk in which he emphasized the fun-loving and socially responsible side of /b/, showing slides of cute memes and the Scientology protests and receiving applause from the attendees of the Davos of the mind as he told a story about /b/ doxxing (publicly identifying) a man who had posted a video of himself abusing his cat. This was probably the reputational high-water mark of the chan culture.

Beran recounts the confluence of circumstances that led to 4chans lurch to the extreme right the following year. Though the chans had spawned all kinds of scenes, the incel (involuntarily celibate) subculture that took hold on parts of 4chan was particularly bitter and violent, incubating a vicious misogyny that came to wide attention, in 2014, after a twenty-two-year-old who called himself the perfect gentleman drove around with a gun near the UC Santa Barbara campus, shooting at young women like those he felt had rejected him, killing six people and wounding fourteen others.

A population of thwarted, angry young men was ripe for radicalization. After Anons raided the leading neo-Nazi site Stormfront, various curious fascists had become converts to 4chan, andproving my activist friend right and me wrongwere organizing on a board that moot had created as a news section for 4chan. Moot deleted it, but the Nazis just relocated to the international (/int/) and weapons (/k/) boards, and finally he decided to corral all the extremists into a new board he called /pol/ (politically incorrect). This was a fateful decision. As Beran writes, the board didnt get crowded out in the marketplace of ideas. Rather, 4chans new neo-Nazi section thrived.

Then came Gamergate, which to an outsider looked like just another one of the plagues or manias that occasionally burned over the chans. Billed by its zealous converts as a crusade for ethics in computer game journalism, it started as revenge against a female game developer by a jilted ex. The avid gamers of 4chans /v/ board (inevitably known as /v/irgins) joined with the fascists of /pol/ and self-identified subhuman robots from an incel board called /r9k/ to unleash a slew of threats and harassment against the woman, Zoe Quinn, whose crime was to have created a well-reviewed game called Depression Quest. Quinns game used the medium to simulate the experience of depression, precisely the real-world state that anons were trying to escape by playing games. They interpreted the lack of high-definition escapism in Depression Quest, according to their limited aesthetic standards, to mean that it was objectively bad; thus the only sufficient explanation for its favored status among the media gatekeepers had to be corruption. Soon Quinn was being accused of trading sexual favors for positive reviewsthe sort of cynical power move that incels suspect is going on among the sexually active, proof of the worlds unfairness and fuel for their sense of otherness and resentment.

Gamergate gathered steam and acquired additional targets, moving across the Internet like a relentless misogynist jackal pack. Someone dropped a trove of celebrity nudes on /b/ (an event known as The Fappening, after the fap fap sound effect that indicates masturbation in manga), and the combined legal wrath of dozens of Hollywood stars started beaming down on moot, who had become increasingly alienated from his horde of anons. Once hed been their herothey even hacked a Time magazine poll to put his name at number one. Lately theyd turned on him, accusing him of being a hated SJW (Social Justice Warrior), no better than the various women who were ruining gaming. Rule 30: There are no girls on the Internet.

Moot dealt with the situation by banning all discussion of Gamergate sitewide. Outraged, Gamergaters defected from 4chan and looked for other homes, eventually reassembling on 8chan, launched as a free speech alternative. Along with Reddits r/The_Donald, 8chan and /pol/ became major drivers of far-right content into the mainstream media. After Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2012, a user called Klanklannon hacked the dead teenagers e-mail and social media accounts, changed the passwords to racial slurs, and posted a set of slides to /pol/. These slides showed proof of the hack and doctored screenshots of Martins messages, under titles like Trayvon Martin Was a Drug Dealer and Trayvon Martin Used Marijuana Habitually, fueling a narrative that percolated up through the right-wing media ecosystem. During the Black Lives Matter protests, /pol/ produced a constant stream of memes framing the protests as if they were a race war. Like a bolus of food passing through some awful human centipede, the notion of a great replacementthe conspiracy theory that white Europeans are being deliberately replaced with a nonwhite population through mass migration and a declining white birth ratehas made its way from the salons of the French far right into the chans, and out again to Fox News, informing the Trump administrations staging of the so-called border crisis (a term that is often enough repeated uncritically even by members of the so-called fake news media). Fox host Tucker Carlson was, according to a study by the monitoring group Media Matters, mentioned over 19,000 times on the chans in the first seven months of 2019, with many proposing him as a presidential candidate.

Of course, fascist radicalization on the chans is not just a question of a battle of ideas. The manifesto of the Christchurch mosque attacker, who murdered fifty-one people and wounded forty-nine in March 2019, blends 8chan in-jokes with material that reflects exposure to European far-right thinking. In his last message posted to 8chan, he wrote, Time to stop shitposting and make a real life effort post. Then he began to livestream his attack, wearing a tactical vest bearing a patch of the Sonnenrad, or black sun, an occult Nazi symbol. His weapons were painted with a palimpsest of names and references, many of them to historical figures associated with the Crusades and other Christian wars against Muslims.

The descent down the golden escalator of the orange-hued candidate whom /pol/ dubbed God Emperor was the catalyst for the underemployed proto-fascist Gamergate army to form itself into an effective political force. As Beran writes, to the cynics and self-identified losers of 4chan, Trump embodied their beliefs in how the world workedas a series of flickering, promotional lies. He was a losers bitter caricature of a winner, a boorish, brash serial liar, a holder of grudges, proof that you could run for the most powerful political office in the world and still be a small man. He was, in effect, a human shitpost, calculated to stir up trouble among the normies. His opponent was symbolically (and literally) a mom. Electing Trump would annoy Mom and bring on race war. So Trump became the candidate of the chans.

The story of 4chan is often treated as a sort of grotesque sideshow to the growing populism of recent politics, but Berans book shows how central it was to the changes that have taken place as Internet natives reshape political discourse. Stephen Miller, the thirty-four-year-old white nationalist who runs US immigration policy, is clearly a product of the chan culture. The recent chaos at the Iowa Democratic caucus was exacerbated by eager Anons responding to a 4chan call to clog the phone lines, making it difficult for precincts to report results. The origin of Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta were running a child sex ring out of the basement of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., betrays 4chans longstanding compulsion to make jokes out of child pornography (or cp). Denizens of /pol/, Beran writes, saw references to cheese pizza in Podestas emailand noted the initials of Comet Ping Pong, the rest of the tale wrote itself.

During the 2016 election campaign, the raiding party of hyperactive anons found it all too easy to sow panic among a demographic new to the Internet, older people who lacked the skills or discernment to assess the sources of the news they were consuming. Research has suggested that older Internet users are more likely to get trapped in filter bubbleschains of websites that prevent them from seeing opposing viewsand this tendency made them perfect targets for disinformation.

The question of causality preoccupies anons, many of whom believe they were instrumental to Trumps victory. /pol/ promoted Trump relentlessly, never missing an opportunity to go on the offensive against his enemies. On October 13, 2015, Trump acknowledged his far-right fans by tweeting a picture of himself as their cartoon alter-ego Pepe the Frog, a louche figure whod been appropriated from a comic by Matt Furie, and had been through a complicated life as a meme, ending up as a vehicle for jokes about gas ovens and SJWs being thrown out of helicopters. Now Pepe was going to be president, and the scent of lulz was in the air.

On election night in 2016, I had /pol/ open on my phone. I found the anons professing to believe (ironically, of course) that through meme magican occult system elaborated with a theology incorporating an ancient Egyptian frog god and a 1980s Italian synth-pop recordthey were actually willing into being a Trump victory. Many posts were variants of God Emperor take my power!, as if we were in the final scene of an anime whose heroes channel energy into some cosmic weapon or vessel. When Trump did in fact win, there was a moment of stunned incomprehension at this unprecedented intrusion of the real into the world on the other side of the screen. Or was it vice versa? Then the board set about celebrating by memeing pictures of crying Clinton supporters.

Link:
For the Lulz: The Politics of 4chan | by Hari Kunzru - The New York Review of Books

Ben Affleck has gone through a fascinating evolution over the past twenty-five years. He came from humble beginnings with indie films like Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Good Will Hunting, the latter of which made him the youngest screenwriter ever to win an Oscar. As Affleck went Hollywood with films like Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, though, he became blinded by the limelight. By the time he starred in Daredevil, Gigli, and Surviving Christmas, it seemed like Affleck was destined to live out the rest of his career as a punchline. Once Affleck got behind the camera, however, he pulled off one of the industrys most impressive comebacks with Gone Baby Gone, The Town, and Argo. Afflecks acceptance speech when Argo won Best Picture remains one of the most uplifting moments in Academy Awards history, reminding us that anyone can find their way back.

Whether it was intentional or not, The Way Back is an eerie reflection of Afflecks highs and lows, both as an entertainer and as a person. Affleck plays Jack, a former basketball player who everyone thought would go the distance. Somewhere down the line, however, Jack lost himself to the bottle. When he isnt at the bar, Jack is emptying a fridge full of beer at home. Hes grown distant from his family and has been separated from his wife (Janina Gavankar) for over a year. Jacks life is given purpose again when hes asked to coach his old high school team, which hasnt made it to the playoffs since he was a student in the 90s. While the team doesnt look like much, some tough love from their new coach just might take them to the big leagues while giving Jack a shot at redemption.

The Way Back does admittedly sound familiar on paper. The setup is not only reminiscent of other sports dramas, but another movie starring another Affleck: Manchester by the Sea. In that film, Casey Affleck also played a depressed loner whos driven away from his wife and finds new meaning when hes asked to care for a teenage boy. Theres even a revelation in the second act of The Way Back that ties into the central theme of Manchester. For all the familiarity, though, there is a fair deal that sets The Way Back apart from the rest.

Its refreshing to see a sports drama that was made for adults. Jacks players dont talk like the sanitized teenagers youd see in a Disney sports movie. They talk like the foul-mouthed, politically incorrect teenage boys youd find in any real high school. Jack isnt afraid to speak their language either, demonstrating that he can trash talk as well. Its not the excessive swearing that makes The Way Back an adult sports movie, though. The screenplay tackles serious issues, from alcoholism to loss, and much of it rings true. Every time it seems like the film may cop out with an inspirational sports clich, it rebounds with a brutal dosage of reality.

Although Jacks life improves through his coaching duties, winning a few games cant erase the sins of the past or the demons within. The ending in particular is far more bittersweet than triumphant. That may be the best way to describe Affleck right now. While Affleck has come a long way as of late, hes still had the occasional professional setback like Live by Night and Batman v Superman. Hes also endured his fair share of personal struggles, finalizing a highly publicized divorce in 2018 and opening up about his history of alcoholism earlier this year. Affleck draws on much of his own experiences here, but not to the point that it becomes self-indulgent. This is an emotionally raw, deeply personal performance from Affleck that ranks among his absolute best. Whatever lies on the horizon for Affleck, The Way Back is a testament to how far hes come as an actor and leaves us all feeling more optimistic.

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The Way Back Review - Flickreel

Whether we like it or not, we are captive to our prejudices and theres no arguing about it. We are made in such a way that we need more than evidence to change our minds. As Pascal put it, the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

The most recent films by Clint Eastwood and Roman Polanski not only show the lucidity that can be maintained when one is in its 80s, but they also reveal the tragedy of individuals condemned by the majority, without a better guarantee of justice than the prejudices of their accusers.

The parallel system of justice established by the media the press at the time of Dreyfus and Jewell, now replaced by social media works in such a way that it is no good to demonstrate a persons innocence in court. Once tarnished by accusation, that person will continue to be guilty in everyones minds.

Many are trying to brush aside the evident significance of these two films, which evoke Eastwoods conservatism and Polanskis legal problems. However, both of them provide a sober and plain case for our incapacity to overcome prejudice.

I am always amazed at the complacency with which we all get involved in the public lynching of an individual. At my stage in life, I have little to hope from the justice of this world and it is ever more evident that the strength of prejudice is such that it cant just be argued away.

HERO OR VILLAIN?

It still surprises me how easily some peoples love can turn to hate. This can be seen in the bitterness caused when a couple separates. But it doesnt just happen in personal relationships, its also in collective ones. The hero sometimes becomes a villain, as in the case of Richard Jewell. Such is the fickleness of human beings

In a heroic feat, similar to that of pilot Sully landing a passenger plane on the Hudson River in 2009, a security officer at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games discovered a bomb that could have caused a tragedy. However, as Eastwood observes, they both went from being the object of praise to being regarded as suspects. In a public opinion that is heavily influenced by the media and the FBI, Jewell goes from saviour to terrorist.

The compassion with which Eastwood treats this solitary man with psychological problems contrasts with the way in which he is seen by everyone else. His possession of arms and inferiority complex brand him as a menace. The timid personality of a person well portrayed by Paul Walter Hause who cannot look another in the eyes and is excessively submissive to the police runs counter to the man of straw image created by the media, before they destroyed him. We see how easily public opinion could be swayed, even before the rise of social medial and fake news.

THE DREYFUS AFFAIR

Although the title of the film in English is An officer and a spy, its original French title is Jaccuse (I accuse), after the article that writer Emile Zola published in defence of Dreyfuss innocence.

Alfred Dreyfus was an artillery officer who was accused of spying on account of the prejudices that abounded in nineteenth and twentieth century France, during the period of the Third Republic. To tell his story, Polanski takes the perspective of Picquart, the lieutenant colonel who was appointed chief of the armys intelligence section. At the beginning of his investigation, the character played by Jean Dujardin who looks just the part for the period is influenced by the anti-Semitic prejudices that sent Dreyfus to life imprisonment on Devils Island (French Guiana).

Those who understand Polanskis film as a justification of the accusation of rape that led to him leaving the United States, ignore the fact that the film follows on from a continuous theme in his work. In this film, he goes back to collaborating with Robert Harris, the British novelist who adapted The Ghost Writer (2010) for me, one of the best films of the last decade . On this occasion, the director of Rosemarys Baby (1969) and Chinatown (1974) produces something more classic than ever.

For some it will seem tedious, but I was impressed by its exactitude and austerity at a time when its mainly all about fireworks. It received a prize at the Mostra di Venezia, despite the opposition of the President of the jury, the Argentinian Lucrecia Martel which, in my mind, gives it added value.

While Eastwood is the subject of polemic due to his reactionary ideas, Polanski is targeted because of his immoral behaviour when he was younger. They are both now old politically incorrect men in a society that has little tolerance for what departs from the standard discourse on either side of its polarized world.

Eastwoods nationalist conservatism is as problematic as the insane perversion of Polanskis characters. At bottom, I think that they are both fascinated by the mystery of evil something that people prefer not to get into too much in this age of humanitarian idealism, whether Right or Left wing.

CAPTIVE TO OUR PREJUDICES

It is worth remembering that a petition was made in 1985 to erect a statue of Dreyfus in the courtyard of the Military School in Paris. The petition was rejected by the Army, which relegated it to a corner of the Tuileries garden. Why was this? Most likely, a mere question of pride, the same as the pride that motivates Picquart, as we see in his final clash with Dreyfus as to the reasons for which he has defended his innocence. That is the reason why we maintain our prejudices, to be true to ourselves, come what may.

Polanskis Picquart is an ambiguous figure, as we all are. He has a sense of justice, but he acts out of personal interest, as we all do. In fact, Dreyfus is no more than an excuse, as are the majority of things that we argue about on a daily basis. We realise that, no matter the sophistication of the intellectual argument used, it is to no avail. People do not change their minds because of what you say. It is a question of pride. That is the locus of personal identity and self-esteem.

The Gospel faces a greater barrier than all the intellectual objections that the non-believer may have. It is a problem of the heart. And this isnt a purely emotional concept, but the centre of our being, for it is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23), deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9).

We need a new heart (Ezequiel 36:26). Therein lies the problem. If the heart does not change, we will remain captive to our prejudices.

See the article here:
My prejudices and I - Evangelical Focus

It seems counter-intuitive to claim that the re-election of the free-speech champion, the notorious politically incorrect jackhammer, Donald Trump, would pave the way to greater censorship rather than greener pastures.

Let me be clear: Im saying if a Democrat wins in 2020, the first wave of censorship would have proven to be not only an effective political strategy, but it would achieve what Project Veritas has exposed as Silicon Valleys desire to change the way people think. The digital book burners, modern-day tyrants, and behavioral re-educators, could take pause, needing only to tweak the successful model to be re-deployed in future elections, and set on autopilot.

What happens when the king senses his power is fading, and control is slipping from his grasp? Typically, they double-down on the very behavior that makes him the tyrant in the first place. If the past is prologue, then the re-election of Donald Trump will be the breaking point in 2020. The first wave of censorship would be deemed a failure, requiring retaliation and a second wave of expurgation. Unfortunately, what is even more chilling is that the political excommunication will worsen, and Donald Trump will do nothing about it.

According to a recent press pool report, the president applauded the so-called MAGA club. For 144 days, we set a record stock market. It means 401Ks, it means jobs. Four trillion-dollar companies: Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft. You have MAGA. The trillion-dollar club. Perhaps, he may be more concerned with the flattering numbers of financial success rather than the staggering numbers of banned or demonetized patriots: Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, Steven Crowder, Laura Loomer, and the list is literally endless.

Within minutes at the Social Media Summit, intended to highlight big tech censorship and biases, the president began to compliment the stock market and skyrocketing 401(k)s. Great, slow hand clap.Unfortunately, Trumps showmanship on censorship wont repair the harm done to those banned online, many of which depended on their conservative activism for a living, and ultimately assisted the president in his electoral success.

Is it financial success if the next 50+ years are consumed by technological oppression? None of the major players banned were in attendance even though they are widely credited for the presidents election. Why, are they too controversial? Would it detract from the summits purpose? On the contrary, it would have reinforced its objective. But, we as conservatives have allowed the left to designate what is considered fringe within our own party; meanwhile, the radical left runs rampant with no guardrails or moderators, only having drunken cheerleaders on the sidelines.

The left has lost the battle through the judicial system, and they have been unable to materialize hate speech as a legal definition. Consequently, leftist technology companies are embracing the concept of hate speech by creating community guidelines and banishing violators from their platforms.

Recently reported byThe Post Millennial, Censored.TV, founded by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes, has been banned on Facebook and Instagram and it is literally impossible to send links to his channel through private communication or DMs. The leftist behavioral re-educators not only want to control what you post in public and in private, they seek to control how you think about issues through conditioning and intimidation.

According toStatista, 59 percent of the earths population is plugged into the world wide web, approximately 4.54 billion people. More than ever these social media platforms and applications are an essential component in our social environment and establishing itself as the modern public square. Ignoring the phenomena of digital gulags would hinder controversial, provocative, and inquisitive thinkers from ever reaching an audience, and without radicals, we wouldnt have Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Jr., or the other Martin Luther.

Out of fear of violating conservative orthodoxy and the idolization of free-market absolutism, we are afraid to take meaningful steps in reigning in the political targeting and digital assassination exhibited by those who control information. YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, is the second largest search engine, and many of the conservative firebrands have been de-platformed and deprived of access to a market that many leftist radicals continue to reach and enjoy.

If the right doesnt take action on censorship in fear of advancing the tentacles of big government, then the Trump phenomenon will fade; meanwhile, the burgeoning tentacles of big tech will strangle conservatism into a slow death, and there are only so many missteps one can make before the fall becomes fatal. Behold America, a new tyranny is amongst us. A citizen-tyranny where fellow Americans report you not to the government, but to a soy-pounding drone tech employee, sifting through content and complaints made for your improper and impure thoughts (posts).

How would the great architects of Western civilization see todays frenzy of censorship? We have inherited the worlds greatest tradition and we are squandering it to pathological political knuckle-draggers. Aristotle famously said, Man is by nature a political animal with the gift of contemplation and the power of morality. It is indisputable that those who have been targeted for censorship are not the hate-mongers theyve been falsely accused of being. The real hatemongers are hiding in plain sight, like David Duke, Richard Spencer and radical Islamic terrorists. Strangely, they all have been graced with the privilege of maintaining Twitter along with other various social media accounts. Perhaps, it serves the lefts purpose to raise certain individuals to prominence while degrading true conservatives into obscurity.

Aristotle would have probably agreed, to deny a man his political voice, is to deny him his humanity.

View post:
FAKE NEWS: Global spreads disinformation while trying to 'fact check' Trump - The Post Millennial

I got up with a terrible backache this morning. I could barely stand.

Something was horribly wrong. My shoulders slumped and refused to straighten up. My head resisted when I tried to hold it high. Since I am one of those crazies who regularly speaks to various body parts, I decided to start with the uncooperative spine. Whats wrong with you, spine? Come onbehave yourself. I hate stooping!

The spine snarled, You are lucky you still have a spine And the spine was right. I still have a spine. But am I using it? I look around me, and I am shocked to see millions of co-citizens managing without one. My possessing a spine suddenly seemed like a huge divine blessing! But what use is this spine of mine, if I cannot employ its services to the fullest? Why am I sitting here in Mumbai, moaning and groaning about aches and pains, when thousands of fellow citizens in Delhi are being torched and targeted? A mosque was burned in Ashok Nagar. Where was my spine when BJP MLA Abhay Verma led a march in Laxmi Nagar, east Delhi and said, Police ke hatyaaron ko, goli maaro saalon ko? When BJP MP Parvesh Verma was quoted in an interview saying, These people will enter your houses rape your sisters and daughters, kill them, did I forget I possessed a spine?

Muslim families in droves are packing up their belongings, their children, and fleeing to their hometowns. Grief-stricken family members are organising burials of loved ones. Bodies are being fished out of drains and gutters. Despite these atrocities and in the absence of police, the people of Yamuna Vihar used their spines to stand by one another, regardless of religious differences. They formed a human chain to protect school-going kids. The Dalit community in Seelampur blocked routes and prevented rioters from entering their locality. Had their spines let them down there might have been another horrific bloodbath. At last count, 38 citizens had been killed and over 200 injured in northeast Delhi which saw the worst outbreak of communal violence since 1984. Some called it a reprise of the Gujarat Model, referring to Godhra 2002. Shivers went down millions of spines, hearing those chilling, ominous words.

Not too far away from the carnage, a lavish presidential banquet was being enjoyed by a visiting American president and his entourage. As good hosts, our humble President and his gracious wife had organised a modest dinner for the dignitaries thats Indian hospitality, citizens were told. We have to look after our mehmaan. We did so very nicely, going by the extravagance of the evening a menu that boasted of delicacies the average citizen can only fantasise over, when s/he is not worrying about his next meal. Raan alishan in rogani gravy anyone? No? Cannot swallow? What a wonderful world, was played while the VVIPs dined in splendour. It was followed by We are the world, and Wonderful tonight minus any irony. How come? Because most of the posh invitees in the room had left their spines and self-respect at home.

After all, bade bade shahron mein you know the rest. Riots happen. People die. Homes get burnt. Children are orphaned. The police look the other way, or actively encourage aggressors to go ahead and do what they are paid for by their political bosses. No worries. Once the damage is done, a flag march can be organised. And Ajit Doval is always ready to assure weeping, traumatised victims that his government is there to ensure safety of innocents. Again, zero irony. Nothing will happen, he stated. No sir, nothing will happen. Because what had to happen, had already happened! Mr Doval and his spine are his business. But for those of us whose spines still exist at least on paper it is about time we put them to good use. That moment is now. If we back off at this critical stage bow and scrape and crawl and beg our spines will be systematically broken, leading to collective paralysis across India. No point going for expensive spinal surgery later. These impacted/compromised discs are surgery-proof! Thank god, at least a few spines are chorusing, Stand up and be counted!

At least we know one person with a sturdy spine and thats Justice Muralidhar. The learned judge was issued transfer orders within hours of him blasting the Delhi Police for their poor response to the rioting (not their fault at all the obedient top cops had to flank Ajit Doval as he toured Jaffrabad). As normalcy (such as it exists) gets restored to the capital, an urgent national spine audit is required. Lets give this top priority before we become a nation of spineless, gutless pawns, murderously exploited by ruthless netas just to keep one political party in power at whatever the cost! My spine just gave me a high five. Do check yours!

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Original post:
Wanted: People who have the spine to confront hate-mongers - Economic Times

Nikki Haley

(Screenshot)

Capitalism is freedom, and Americans should celebrate it, instead of apologizing for it, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Wednesday.

Many American, even some conservatives, are ashamed of capitalism but, when they should be singing its praises because of the prosperity and progress it provides, Haley said in a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.:

This country has lifted up more people, unlocked more progress and unleashed more prosperity than any other country in history. This is America. And, the American system is capitalism.

Many people avoid saying that word, including some conservatives and business leaders. Some think its a politically-incorrect word.

But, we shouldnt be ashamed of capitalism - its another word for freedom. And, it springs from Americas most cherished ideals.

What good are our rights, if our homes and savings can be taken? Are we really free if we own nothing and the government owns everything? Haley asked, noting that the nations founders understood that economic freedom, just like freedom of speech and freedom of religion, is an essential human right:

We all know the most famous phrases from the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. But, while we know these words, we often forget their meaning. Yes, they mean freedom of speech, freedom of religion and other fundamental rights - but, the Founders knew that economic freedom was also essential.

What good are our rights, if our homes and savings can be taken? Are we really free if we own nothing and the government owns everything? Of course, not.

So, while the Founders never used the word, they gave us capitalism in all, but the name.

Everywhere capitalism takes root, people do better. We should celebrate this, not apologize for it, Haley said, explaining how its adoption has lifted much of the world out of extreme poverty:

But, its not just us. Capitalism has transformed the world. Two hundred years ago, 94 percent of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today, its ten percent. Much of this drop happened in the last 40 years. After Soviet communism collapsed in Russia and Eastern Europe, and after communist China adopted sweeping market reforms.

See the article here:
Nikki Haley: We're Not Actually Free 'If Our Homes and Savings Can be Taken' - CNSNews.com

Upon winning the Nevada Caucuses on Saturday, Senator Bernie Sanders, a socialist from Vermont, declared on 60 Minutes his admiration for Cuba under the late dictator Fidel Castro.

This romanticizing of socialism by the current frontrunner of the Democratic presidential race is dangerous and delusional. I know, because I have experienced firsthand the human tragedy of socialism in China. Real socialism is cruel, dehumanizing and even deadly; there is absolutely nothing romantic about it.

I was born in 1963, under the reign of Mao Zedong. Sanders and his intellectual comrades, such as New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, like to invoke socialism as the cure to economic inequality in America. Under real socialism in China, however, I saw equality firsthand -- everybody lived equally in extreme poverty.

All economic activities were controlled by the government in Maoist China. Private enterprise and market transactions were banned. Profit incentives did not exist. As a result, technological progress stagnated and the economy collapsed.

This is because the state thought it knew how to allocate resources better than the market, but it did not. In Chinese cities, rice, meat, vegetable oil, and even clothing for citizens was rationed. Each urban citizen only had one or two pounds of meat to eat for an entire month. There were frequent supply shortages. On numerous occasions, I had to rise at 4 oclock in the morning to wait in line for hours to buy meat.

From 1958 to 1962, Maos Great Leap Forward, a gargantuan collectivization movement, led to mass famine and more than 20 million dead. Born in the aftermath of this disastrous social experiment, I escaped famine and death, but I could not escape another core element of socialism: political control and repression.

When I was three, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution. He mobilized tens of millions of naive college and high school students and called them Red Guards. They labeled Maos political adversaries as traitors to socialism and at times tortured them to death.

In order to suppress opposition, Mao intensified a nationwide class struggle by dividing Chinese people into two groups: the poor against the rich, revolutionaries against counter-revolutionaries. Classified as an counter-revolutionary, my father was persecuted for five years. He endured torture, public humiliation, and forced labor. He lost his personal freedom. My family could only see him a couple of times each year. Subsequently, my grandparents and I were forced to move out of our hometown -- a city with relatively fair living conditions -- to a poor remote village where there was no tap water, no electricity and no medical clinic nearby. A few months after moving to the village, my grandmother passed away from a heart attack.

During that time, China only allowed one type of ideology: socialism and the near-worship of Mao. People were not allowed to say anything politically incorrect, or they risked being arrested. Ancient wisdom was trashed, as most historical temples were destroyed, including those of Confucius, the greatest sage of Chinese history. Worse yet, the state put ideology above practical results and peoples concrete needs. One political slogan read: We prefer producing socialist weeds to capitalist rice.

In other words, there was no freedom to pursue a happy life, let alone think differently. Chinese citizens suffered immensely as a result. By 1978, even socialist China decided that it did not want the equality and tragedy delivered by socialism. Upon Mao's death, the country shifted, embarking upon a path toward market reforms, liberalization, and international trade. Over the last four decades, those policies propelled China from abject poverty and misery to become the second largest economy of the world.

Unlike Mao in China, Sen. Sanders and other socialist politicians of the Democratic Party believe in peaceful, democratic implementation of their policies, not state violence. Nevertheless, in their proposals of Medicare-for-All, free college for students and jobs for everyone, and in their rhetoric maligning the rich versus the poor, Americas socialists sound a lot like socialist dictators of the 20th century. They advocate for massive government control of resources and industries to solve economic inequality, all the while ignoring incentives for efficiency, entrepreneurship and innovation.

Meanwhile, radical progressives in America act very much like Maos Red Guards in one way: They use political correctness as a weapon, suppress different viewpoints and assault Americas founding principles. Those with whom they disagree are no longer fellow citizens with whom to have a civil discussion, but bad people who must be attacked, at times violently.

These developments are appalling and alarming. Sanders and his socialist colleagues in the U.S. Congress have never lived under real socialism; I have. My personal experience in China tells me that the social experiment advocated by Sanders will only lead to human disaster. That's why I was heartened when President Trump declared at last years State of the Union address, America will never be a socialist country.

My experience in America has convinced me that the key principles of democratic capitalism private ownership, free market competition, the rule of law, equal opportunities, and freedom of speech are essential for human beings to prosper and succeed.

Yukong Zhao is a Republican candidate for Florida's seventh congressional district.

Continued here:
What Bernie Sanders doesn't tell you: The devastation of 'real socialism' - Washington Examiner

Still from Call of the Wild.

The problem with Jack London has always been that while he was a compelling storyteller with a vivid imagination, he was also a racist, or at least a writer who embraced racial ideas about the superiority of Anglo Saxons and the inferiority of African Americans, Asians and Latinos. Most of the racism thats embedded inThe Call of the Wild, Londons 1903 best selling novel, has been expunged from the latest cinematic version starring Harrison Ford as John Thornton, the prospector in the Yukon who cares more for the wilderness and dogs than he does for gold.

Indeed, the 2020 film, which has a computer-generated canine hero, is as politically correct in its own way, as Londons story is politically incorrect at least by todays standards. Still, no criticism of the movie will prevent London fans from watching it and raving about it, flaws and all. To the faithful, London can do no wrong. He might have clay feet, but hes still their god.

I saw the movie in Sonoma, California, where London is a local hero and can do no wrong. Not many members of the audience had readThe Call of the Wild. Also, they dont know much about London himself, but they think they know that he was a great writer.

This is not the first time thatThe Call of the Wildhas been transposed from the page to the big screen. The 1935 version stars Clark Gable, Loretta Young and Jack Oakie. The 1973 remark features Charlton Heston. The 1996 version has a voice over by Richard Dreyfus and stares Rutger Hauer. Each movie carves out a territory of its own, and reflects the era in which it was made. None are true to LondonsWeltanschauung,which he forged from his own rough-and-tumble life in Oakland and from his reading Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx.

The latest version offers a fairy-tale for our own era of global warming and environmental disaster. It describes a world with near pristine wilderness, the abundance of wild species, and little if any degradation of the natural world. Its unreal. In the Yukon in 1898, London witnessed the wanton destruction of the landscape by mining and miners digging, tearing and scouring the face of nature. At the same time, London argued that the Yukon offered unparalleled opportunities for capital and labor to work together to create wealth and jobs.

Screenwriter Michael Green and director Chris Sanders are two savvy moviemakers. While their version is a remake, its also a critique ofThe Call of the Wild.In the novel, Indians kill the prospector, John Thornton. In revenge, Buck kills some of Indianshes an Indian killerand enjoys the slaughter. Monsieur Perrault, the French Canadian mail courier, has been turned into a jolly African-American. His female companion on the trail looks like she might be a Native American, or at least a half-breed, as London would have called her. In 50 books, London never created an African-American character, though an African-American ex-slave raised him and he called himself a white pickaninny. He was cheeky.

On screen, Harrison Ford looks and acts like an old explorer. Hes no longer a youthful voyager in outer space, nor an intrepid archeologist. As John Thornton, he plays everyones favorite uncle who spouts words of wisdom. Youre not my pet, he tells Buck. Do what your want.

Teddy Roosevelt, who was no fan of Londons work, would probably be bored out of his mind with the latest movie. More than a century ago, he accused London of faking it as a nature writer. London took the bait, rose to the occasion and defended the veracity ofThe Call of the WildandWhite Fang.

I endeavored to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution, he insisted. I hewed them to the mark set by scientific research. While he staked his career to pseudo-science, he also touted empire and fumed about the savages of the colonial world. Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, formed The Anti-Imperialist League. London never joined. Others founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). London insisted that colored people had never advanced, that African Americans were closer to apes than humans. 1903, the year that saw the publication ofThe Call of the Wild, also saw the publication ofThe Souls of Black Folkin which the author, W. E. B. Du Bois, observed,The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of thecolor-line.

Ironically, though London is best known for his embrace of the wild, he lived like a highly civilized country squire with servants and field workers on a vast estate he called Beauty Ranch where he ruled the roost paternalistically. In an essay titled The House Beautiful, he argued that he had to have servantsthey were a necessity but that their rooms would have light and fresh air and not be dens and holes. He added, It will be a happy houseor else Ill burn it down. It burned down, anyway, either by accident or arson. By the age of 40, London had burned himself up, but not before he made a fortune as a writer and became world famous on the back of the dog, Buck.

No twentieth-century American fiction writer poured out prose more beautiful than London, and no writer was more attached to the notion that someone had to be the top dog. No wonder that his own daughter, Joan, thought that if he had lived into the 1920s he would have become an admirer of Mussolini. The London faithful will have none of it.

ScreenwriterGreen and director Sanders have made a beautiful movie, and, though its not true to Londons political and social ideas, it does honor the spirit of adventure that pushed him to the Arctic and the South Seas.Moviegoers might enjoy the scenery and the special effects that make Buck look and sound like a real dog almost.

Jonah Raskin is the editor of The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution.

Link:
The Call of the Wild (2020): A Cinematic Fairy Tale for the Age of Environmental Disaster - CounterPunch

Hank Azaria, the prolific voice actor best known for his multiple roles in "The Simpsons," admitted that wants to "make up" for voicing the controversial character Apu and that he decided to stop doing so because "it just didn't feel right."

"What happened with this character is a window into an important issue," Azaria told "The New York Times" in an interview published on Tuesday. "It's a good way to start the conversation. I can be accountable and try to make up for it as best I can."

Azaria came to this realization after watching the 2017 documentary "The Problem with Apu," in which comedian Hari Kondabalu explores how "The Simpsons" character is used to perpetuate negative stereotypes aboutAmericans of South Asian descent.

"Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn't want to participate in it anymore," Azaria admitted. "It just didn't feel right."

In the interview Azaria discussed how he drew inspiration for the character from a Peter Sellers brownface performance in the 1968 Blake Edwards comedy "The Party." The Emmy Winning-actor admitted that basing his characterization off of Sellers was "a real blind spot," as he had not been aware that many Indian Americans were offended by Sellers' performance, and acknowledged that he was "joyfully basing a character on what was already considered quite upsetting."

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Although Azaria initially resisted hearing negative feedback about Apu, he drew from his own Jewish heritage to better understand why Kondabalu and others were upset by his performance.

"I started thinking, if that character were the only representation of Jewish people in American culture for 20 years, which was the case with Apu, I might not love that," Azaria explained.

Although the executive producers of "The Simpsons" have not announced what they plan on doing with the character, they supported Azaria's decision to stop voicing him, explaining in a statement that "we respect Hank's journey in regard to Apu. We have granted his wish to no longer voice the character." In 2018 "The Simpsons" announced that they were not writing any current scripts containing the character, and that same year released an episode titled, "No Good Read Goes Unpunished" in which, through the character of Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith), the writers argued that "something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?"

In "The Problem with Apu," Kondabolu described himself as a fan of "The Simpsons" who was disheartened by the show's problematic depiction of Indian Americans. He pointed out that, for many non-Indian Americans, Apu was the only representation of Indian Americans that they encountered in popular culture. As a result, his catchphrase "Thank you, come again," became a derogatory slur for Indian Americans, and allowed Americans to reduce the richness of Indian American culture to a single offensive stereotype.

In addition to exploring his own feelings and unsuccessfully attempting to interview Azaria, Kondabolu reached out to other Indian Americans including Aasif Mandvi, Aparna Nancherla, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, Maulik Pancholy, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Kal Penn for the documentary.

"Whatever happens with the character, to me, is secondary," Kondabolu told "The New York Times" regarding Azaria's change of heart. "I'm happy that Hank did the work that a lot of people wouldn't have. I feel like he's a really thoughtful person and he got the bigger picture."

In addition to his work on "The Simpsons," Azaria is best known for his roles in the films "The Birdcage," "The Smurfs," "The Smurfs 2," "Anastasia," "Mystery, Alaska" and "Godzilla," as well as TV shows like "Friends" and "Free Agents."

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Hank Azaria wants to make up for his racist voicing of Apu on The Simpsons - Salon