One of the most shocking images from the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Aug. 11 was the spectacle of several hundred young people taking up torches and marching in support of white nationalism.
The avalanche of media coverage that followed the murder of antiracist activist Heather Heyer by far-right member James Alex Fields Jr., the 20-year-old who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, has touched on many reasons for the recent explosion in white supremacist organizing. The dehumanization of marginalized groups, from immigrants to racial minorities to Muslims, has played an increasingly overt role in mainstream conservative media and Republican election campaigns, culminating in the open bigotry of Donald Trump’s presidential bid. Many experts point to backlash against shifting racial demographics, newly won rights for gays and lesbians, and the rising economic power of women as other reasons to explain the growth of racist, far-right organizations.
All of that is true as far as it goes. But the path for radicalization for many young men also has particular roots in the online communities in which they have forged their identities, only recently making the leap to the real-world violence that has lasted all year. The Intercept has investigated the recent phenomenon, exploring the dynamics of race, violence, and online culture in a short documentary that can be viewed above.
In recent years, neo-Nazi groups, once confined to spreading their message through marginal radio programs and small publishing houses, have turned to video gaming forums; websites associated with ironic “alt-right” pranksters, who espouse far-right ideologies grounded in white supremacy; and have blended with the so-called “Men’s Rights Movement” to find new foot soldiers, many of whom are the kind of disaffected young men who are ripe for recruitment into extremist movements around the world. The dark humor that has flourished in these forums, with their blurred and overlapping lines, sanitizes ideas of a race war and genocide, featuring pitched battles between racial identities. This online cauldron has been an important factor in fueling the growth of the “alt-right” and adjacent white nationalist organizations.
Without understanding these cyber terrains, efforts to stymie white nationalism’s growth are badly hindered.
Fields, for example, was photographed carrying a shield from Vanguard America, one of half a dozen newly formed far-right groups organized to bring more young people into the white supremacist movement, with a special focus on recruiting on college campuses. Fields’s Facebook page was reportedly adorned with jokey images about “weaponized autism”; Pepe the Frog, a once kid-friendly meme appropriated by online trolls into a neo-Nazi symbol; and Feels Man, a crudely drawn image originating from the web forum, 4chan, that depicts a sad, bald man as a representation of social isolation and existential dread. The fliers advertising the rally also featured the same playful images from online memes.
4chan, a site that delights in offending modern sensibilities about race, violence, and sexuality, has become a hotbed for this type of white nationalist recruitment. But the site was not always particularly friendly to white nationalism. For much of its history, 4chan simply served as a platform for various online subcultures interested in esoteric Japanese cartoons and dark humor, along with pranks centered on “trolling,” coordinated harassment, often carried out just for the hell of it. Dale Beran, a writer who has studied 4chan, notes that 4chan users would often raid Habbo Hotel, an online children’s game, “for no other reason than that it was an amusing way to pass their near limitless idle time.”
In recent years, however, 4chan’s trolling campaigns have merged with larger political debates about multiculturalism and diversity. The Gamergate controversy, which tapped into the rich vein of misogyny running through 4chan and included aggressive harassment of women online, provided near unlimited fodder for conspiracy-tinged outrage directed at feminists and advocates of progressive identity politics.
4chan users have relished any opportunity to troll what author Angela Nagle has termed “Tumblr-liberalism,” an emerging online discourse on the left that Nagle notes has reached an “absurd apotheosis with a politics based on the minutiae and gradations of rapidly proliferating identities.” This emerging discourse, which Nagle documents in her new book on the online culture wars, “Kill All Normies,” centers on a culture of mass online callouts, public humiliation, and other efforts to penalize anyone deemed in violation of constantly shifting norms of sensitivity around identity.
In one salient example of the absurdities of this style of liberal discourse, Nagle points to an “antiracist” writer who reacted to the death of a child killed by an alligator to ridicule the “white male entitlement” of his parents.
Some on the political right have seized on such attempts to reflexively mock white people by embracing a newly assertive and aggrieved white identity. For sites such as 4chan, which exists to blow past boundaries, the opportunity to present white identity politics was quickly taken to its logical extreme.
The nonstop white power pranks eventually led to the stream being shut down and moved to a discreet location in rural Tennessee, where instead the camera remained fixed upon a flag with the “He Will Not Divide Us” message across it. Again, 4chan delighted in the opportunity to use its hive mind to belittle LaBeouf’s project. Using a mixture of digital sleuthing, the flight route of a plane that briefly crossed over the sky in sight of the stream, and a volunteer who drove around rural Tennessee honking his horn, the horde of 4chan volunteers quickly identified the location and stole the flag.
The exuberant pranks increasingly converged with overt displays of white nationalism. Many arrived at the site to casually post intentionally offensive memes about racial identity. But for some, the jokey memes became a bridge to a formal association with white nationalism. In other words, when users post so many genocide and rape jokes, they become so detached from reality that they become susceptible to the messages of bonafide hate groups, a transformation referred to in forums as “irony poisoning.”
In a recent posting, one 4chan user made the connection between irony-laden jokes and white nationalism fairly explicit. “The Alt-Right is an attempt to rebrand WN,” the user wrote. “Using ironic memes and terms that don’t mean anything to our enemies but normies find funny and actually lead people to develop a race-based political consciousness is what it is all about.”
An archive of 4chan posts show a constant barrage of messages encouraging users to join a range of white nationalist organizations, including the Traditionalist Worker Party, Vanguard America, and Identity Evropa. “If you’re looking for the least autistic organisation, look into Identity Evropa,” wrote one 4chan post, claiming that the group is “actually trying to accomplish radiative realistic goals.” Others, like Andrew Anglin, the founder of the Daily Stormer, a white supremacist propaganda site modeled after the Nazi-era tabloid, Der Stürmer, cited 4chan’s evolution into a hate site as a pivotal moment in their own personal path to radicalization.
Conservative activists began to take note of the emerging online culture wars, and leapt at the opportunity to cast themselves as countercultural figures, willing to challenge gender and racial norms, with the hope that leftists would embarrass themselves by overreacting.
Christopher Cantwell, a widely photographed white supremacist at the Charlottesville melee, was previously a leading “Men’s Rights” activist, as was Mike Cernovich, a prominent “alt-right” leader and early Trump backer. Misogyny, which is more widely accepted in American society than overt white supremacy, particularly among young men struggling to find their way in the dating world, becomes what The Cut referred to as a “gateway drug for the alt-right.” Come for the sexism, stay for the racism.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s recently deposed chief strategist, consciously attempted to forge a bond to the underbelly of 4chan and similar sites. “These guys, these rootless white males, had monster powers,” Bannon discovered, while working at a failed startup designed to monetize virtual currency mining in the online game, World of Warcraft, according to the book, “Devil’s Bargain,” by journalist Joshua Green. When Bannon took the reins at Breitbart News, he moved quickly to harness the online troll army by overtly tapping into the outrage machine sites like 4chan generated. “The reality is, Fox News’s audience was geriatric and no one was connecting with this younger group,” Bannon said. The decision to hire a technology editor named Milo Yiannopoulos, whose specialty at Breitbart was intentionally offensive content, was a deliberate attempt to harness the high-traffic horde of 4chan readers for political gain.
In a piece for National Review, writer Elliot Kaufman notes that conservatives quickly embraced the chance to bait leftists into doing “something silly and destructive,” thus turning conservatives into the victims of leftist overreach and champions of free speech. In other words, trolling liberals became an effective recruiting strategy for young conservatives, especially in college towns where the audience for vulgar humor extends beyond ideological lines. It became such an alluring option that many mainstream GOP groups began inviting “alt-right” personalities, even those with a history of explicit anti-Semitism, racism, and sexism, to college campuses around the country.
In the backdrop of these controversies, there were near-limitless social media incentives for baiting the left. YouTube channels focused on ridiculing the excesses of liberal identity politics — from efforts to ban white people from participating in yoga sessions to endless debates about whether white people were stealing the “intellectual property” of Mexicans by opening a burrito shop — garnered audiences of millions of viewers.
The effort finally led to the first major spectacle of violence inspired by the online culture wars. Yiannopoulos was prevented from speaking at a February event in Berkeley when left-wing activists responded with riots on campus and throughout the city. For many on the left, a shooting at a previous Yiannopoulos campus visit was evidence enough that any such events must be preemptively shut down. An unverified rumor also buzzed that Yiannopoulos would somehow identify Berkeley undocumented students for deportation, though it was unclear whether Yiannopoulos truly had any list of names, or how shutting down the event would prevent Yiannopoulos from unmasking their identities online.
Videos of the Berkeley riot quickly went viral, showing young people perceived as Yiannopoulos fans beaten and pepper-sprayed, along with the story of one bystander allegedly beaten by antifascists because his suit made him “look like a Nazi.”
Far-right personalities, most of whom had gained a broad online following from the Trump campaign, quickly latched onto the news to present themselves as victims of persecution. After years of fairly trivial accusations of left-wing oppression, here was a tangible example that could mobilize those ostensibly aggrieved by political correctness. A call went out to return to Berkeley to fight back, supposedly to defend the principle of “free speech.”
While it’s unclear how many genuine neo-Nazis attended the initial Yiannopoulos event in February, white nationalist organizations made the city a rallying cry, forging an alliance of convenience with other conservative figures also hoping to exploit the opportunity. A mix of militia, libertarian, white nationalist, and thrill-seekers converged over the ensuing months in Berkeley to do battle with the left at a number of so-called “free speech” rallies, all the while wielding weapons and GoPro cameras to record and broadcast their street skirmishes.
But the far-right movement has also exploited and celebrated images of its members violently attacking its leftist adversaries in order to increase its profile — in an ominous harbinger of Fields’s murderous rampage in Virginia.
The street violence, which became fodder for the network of far-right YouTube channels that specialize in promoting “alt-right” content, became a useful lightning rod for white nationalist groups hoping to expand their presence. In particular, Berkeley was a turning point for Identity Evropa, one of the newly formed white supremacist group that recruits primarily on college campuses and online forums.
“We started with about 12 members in March of 2016 and we now have about 625 nationwide,” says Damigo, who attributes his organization’s sudden success to the online attention he received in Berkeley. “It’s really a numbers game,” he adds, noting that the more videotaped confrontations with antifascists, the more attention he receives.
Other stars were born in a similar fashion.
Kyle Chapman, a former club bouncer with a lengthy rap sheet of convictions, similarly became an instant celebrity from videos of him using his a stick to beat leftist activists during multiple confrontations in Berkeley.
Known as a “Based Stick Man” and depicted in dozens of memes and remixed videos glorifying his brawls with the left, Chapman has embraced his new identity, and has encouraged supporters to make common cause with white nationalism. Throughout the year, Chapman and others in this far-right movement have appeared at events across the country designed to stoke similarly livestreamed and meme-able street battles with antifascist groups.
It wasn’t just traditional voices of white nationalism, such as former KKK leader David Duke, who were responsible for the “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville. Damigo, Johnny “Monoxide” Ramondetta, Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet, and other online “alt-right” celebrities who gained a following through their participation at Berkeley rallies earlier this year helped organize and promote the Virginia event. Many clearly hoped to capitalize on the media firestorm, as well as the potential for violence, as they paraded around the streets of Charlottesville with livestreaming equipment.
But does the killing of Heyer, and the media firestorm that followed, represent a turning point? Or has the irony fully curdled to poison?
“The standard online shtick for politically serious members of the alt-right has been to flirt with Nazism but then to laugh at anyone who took these gestures at face value,” notes Nagle, in a post-Charlottesville essay in the Baffler. “But in the wake of James Alex Fields’ alleged terrorist assault in Charlottesville, which claimed the life of antifa protestor Heather Heyer, ironic dodges are foreclosed to the alt-right.”
Shortly after her killing, the Daily Stormer, a leading white nationalist site, posted a perfect distillation of the cocktail of poison, irony, viciousness, misogyny and racism that has come to define the movement online. The headline — “Heather Heyer: Woman Killed in Road Rage Incident was a fat, Childless 32-Year-Old Slut” — was the impetus for GoDaddy.com to finally yank the site off the web.
Leaked chatroom messages from the organizers of the Charlottesville rally appear to show white nationalists celebrating Heyer’s killing, suggesting that more violence is to come.
Heyer’s shocking murder, and the flippant response — the Daily Stormer chalked up the anger to “player hatred” — may drain the enthusiasm from those drawn to the “alt-right” solely to be culturally transgressive. Or maybe not.
>was the impetus for GoDaddy.com to finally yank the site off the web.
Wow, implying that this was something long overdue. Even Glen Greenwald’s site apparently approves of domain registrars closing the doors on sites like The Daily Stormer. This is disappointing, as The Intercept was always about free speech.
Btw, note that GoDaddy was not providing hosting, but domain registration. It’s completely understandable if a webhost doesn’t want Daily Stormer on their servers, but a domain registrar, part of the ideologically neutral structure of the web? That is insane. They have since taken down Stormfront on the same pretext, a site that was up since 1995, and from my understanding banned anyone who advocated violence. Internet free speech is dying before our eyes very quickly, and there is no question that this will eventually be turned in other directions, like people who support Wikileaks.
There are plenty of registars left to try, they have not been censored from the Internet. GoDaddy is entitled to Freedom of Association just like anybody else – that is what the 1A is about, not forcing private entities to interact white supremacists.
BTW – Stormfront got told to take a hike too: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/28/another-neo-nazi-site-stormfront-is-shut-down/
Looky here! Venezuela’s hand-picked committee to rewrite their constitution has discovered an interest in banning hate speech! Starting with … people who hate their public officials. Who would ever have guessed?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-28/venezuela-eyes-censoring-social-media-in-wake-of-public-shaming
Do you mean to say that you actually care about the people in Venezuela? I would be surprised by that.
This was a well-made documentary – thank you.
I love your journalism and read most everything you publish but for the sake of sanity I must ask you to quit with the autoplay videos. It is rude and inconsiderate.
Thanks.
I agree, do the videos some other way.
Michael Signer, the Democratic left’s new great hope:
“At one point, the mayor, vice mayor and three council members fled and two people holding a sign that said “blood on your hands” jumped on the chamber’s dais, NBC affiliate WVIR reported.” http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charlottesville-city-council-meeting-erupts-over-white-nationalist-rally-n794751
Maybe pink running shoes will help.
and a pussy hat
So a couple of council members fled. Por qua?
What are you saying? That he shouldn’t have a approved the permit for your racist pals to have their little shindig?
Then you’d be screaming censorship.
They had their march, but chose to do so violently. Unfortunately, the police did little to quell the situation, so ANTIFA had to step in and put the bullies in their place. Think of how many more injured and dead there would’ve been if the counter protesters hadn’t shut down the cosplaying thugs.
It’s interesting how you cowards think you’re tough when you’re part of a mob, and that you can go on rampage and have people just stand there and turn the other cheek. When they have the audacity to defend themselves, you screech like pussies and play the victim.
Liar. Antifa didn’t even have a permit to protest; they showed up armed with weapons and then the police led the white protestors directly to Antifa, because the whole thing was staged.
Typical Marxist tactics: accuse the victims of what you’re doing.
Steve Bannon ditched the far right and white-nationalists on his way out of the white house.
http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant :
He [Steve Bannon] dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”
“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.
Where they his useful idiots for a while? Will they maintain that Bannon doesn’t know what he is talking about and therefore resorts to slander and smear tactics?
This video clearly takes the side of AntiFa. It is biased, and has an agenda. The Alt-Right emerged not from online culture but as a response to the festering leftist culture under Obama that believes an individual’s freedom from offensive ideas supersedes the right of other individuals to hold those ideas. The Left, simply put, would censor those with unpopular opinions, and understandably the Right reacted by asserting their genuine legal right to hold unpopular and offensive opinions.
The Right has been demonized and censored by the Left, especially under Obama, and we are observing as an allergic response an entire generation of young men that will forever vote conservative in response. You cannot hold legitimate conservative or nationalist views on a college campus in America without being ostracized. The beliefs of Alt-Right twenty-something males emerged NOT from blatant racism like this video would like you to believe but rather their genuine disgust of leftist censorship, and they are taking a patriotic stand to defend their right to hold unpopular opinions. In this case, it is the Alt-Right who has the moral high ground, and should be defended. In America, you have every right to believe whatever you want to, regardless of whether those beliefs are racist, hateful, or offensive. You do not have the right to murder, or harm, but you do have the right to hate someone, and you do have the right to express those views. I will not defend racism, but I would lay my life to defend the racists’ right to express her views. That is what any patriot would do.
Most New Yorkers are not really Leftists by the way. Well some pretend to be, but you got to see their true colors during OWS…. esp rich liberals living near Union Sq or Washington Sq Park. Not a peep from area residents about police brutality complaints. NYPD was given a free reign dealing with OWS. They were thrown to the ground, handcuffed, arrested. All for no reason. Here’s the number to file a complaint. You’ll get a hearing in 2025, yes there’s a waiting list and it’s worse than the one to get into Babbo.
NYC Liberals, at least the True Believers, are mostly white refugees from the Cow States. They used to move to the Village to be hip, now it’s Brooklyn. I’ll have to pop over there one day and see what they’ve done with it. L train to Williamsburg, can’t wait.
Of course the NYC dwellers are. Leftists are simply notorious for internecine carelessness. Very few conscionable people who skew progressive. It’s a very hind-brain philosophy; one of self-preservation at others’ expense.
LOL!
More than half the city enjoys some form of rent stabilization (including yours truly) but otherwise, the place is full of extreme fascists.
But history’s most notorious fascist edited Italy’s premier Socialist newspaper Avanti! (“Forward!”). He led the Bolshevik wing of the Italian Socialist Party. Fascism fits leftism like hand in glove.
Explain why Melissa Mark-Viverito runs the city.
Do you consider rent stabilization Communism?
Don’t you?
I inherited the lease.
You should volunteer to pay market value, Mr. Self Sufficient Conservative. Why accept handouts like a commie peasant?
All this drama brings my thoughts back around to wewelsburg. Very exciting to be living in this pivotal era. This time it’s going to be the maddest of all Witches’s Sabbaths!
Everybody is looking to get piece of these “white nationalists” . Been a bunch of articles in well known websites claiming, you guessed it, Putin is behind it at some level or another. As one would be pundit noted, Putin’s fingerprints are over Charlottesville. After hundreds of years of slavery and apartheid, we as a nation need Putin to encourage our racists?? A bit insulting to think that Americans can’t do that on our own.
Putin is far less likely to be behind them than anti-Muslim Navalny or Commie Nazi Limonov.
_”Analyzing Charlottesville’s Zapruder Film: the Ford Fischer LiveStream“_
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePsK0dpyu4g
Interesting. As always, observations seem more reliable than conclusions. It’s a heck of a coincidence that Ford Fischer got footage of both the killer’s car and the car he would ram five minutes before the accident, and it did seem like he and others were waiting for something … but I’m not quite ready to ride the whole conspiracy train there, with the deep state planning it and all. Something as simple as a vaguely worded tip-off might explain the whole thing. Yes, there’s something fishy there, but it’s hard to say quite what.
In any event, it has since come to light that both protests were orchestrated in order to deliberately create an incident. First of all, what was Jason Kessler doing organizing a “Unite The Right” rally when he’s Jewish? Second, on August 7th, why did Crowds on Demand post on Craigslist looking for actors and photographers for $25 an hour? And then there’s the Charlottesville mayor Mike Singer (Jewish) stating that intolerance isn’t welcome there, yet said nothing against Antifa. Nor did most of the politicians and media pundits, preferring instead to single out “white extremists”. It’s the same old Marxist song and dance. Small wonder that the media’s ratings are in the dump and that the majority of Americans no longer trust them.
I’m not following you. If you think Jews can’t be right-wing … have you noticed Israel’s politics the past two decades? Besides, reading http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/kessler-described-as-one-time-wannabe-liberal-activist/article_c072c0a0-83b8-11e7-ae17-6fb7a9eda079.html it sounds like he was once a liberal, at least outwardly, with a Jewish *girlfriend*; it describes him as “not anti-Semitic” at that time. I suppose if she’d wanted marriage she might have pressed him to convert, but that wouldn’t change his “racial” identity, would it?
Jews play both sides to their own advantage. When they want to push for open borders, abortion, gun control, or portray themselves as advocates for minority groups, they liberals. Then they’re conservatives when they want to send Americans off to die in unjust wars, ramp up the police/surveillance state or give themselves huge tax breaks. But that’s beside the point. What business was it of Jason Kessler to organize a white nationalists to protest the removal of a statue, which led to them being attacked by a bunch of radical leftists? It seems to me that someone higher up set this whole thing up in order to create a pretext to demonize white nationalists.
What’s the difference between a “white nationalist” and a “nationalist” in the US? I’ve heard the criticism that people who believed in free speech, presumeably nationalists, could have joined the white nationalists. What if you aren’t “white” though? What if you are a US nationalist and happen to be black, brown, or especially tan? What if you’re more pinkish than pale white? Which brings up another point, which traditionally white nation is the “correct” white cultural model for US white nationalism? Is it French, Italian, German, English, Belgian, Polish, Estonian, Russian? How far back do white nationalists have to trace back their geneaology to be considered “white”?
And, more to your points you keep pushing, there are Jews who are white, Antifa people who are white, and Marxists who are white. Will you welcome white people of differing backgrounds to join the “white nationalist” movement? Or do they need to pledge fealty to your cultural marxism?
There are far too many questions regarding the white nationalist movement and their beliefs that they often just pivot and dodge when asked those questions. It’s hard to trust people who say one thing yet do another all the time, even hurting others for their personal gain. There’s a term for those people though: psychos or sociopaths. And they come in all flavors of human.
White = English, German, French, Irish, Polish, Russian, etc. Jews are not white.
Nationalist = Advocacy for national sovereignty and culture.
Thus, a white nationalist is anyone from a Western nation who wishes to preserve their unique heritage and right to self-determination. Just the same, there are black nationalists who also have a vested interest in preserving our nation. The difference is, blacks aren’t being told that they’re a bunch of wicked supremacists just for wanting what’s best for themselves. Only whites are being singled out.
I don’t owe you an explanation anymore than Africans, Indonesians or Peruvians owe you one for maintaining their own nations and heritage. You’re not the final arbiter of anything. Calling white people racist for wanting what’s best for our people is an overt act of racism in and of itself.
Cultural Marxism is the product of the Frankfurt School, which is Jewish from top to bottom. White people are bombarded with virulent hate by these Marxists who on the surface pretend to be victims of unjust hate and persecution but in reality are hateful, subversive and deceptive (just like their father, the devil). Marxists are akin to adult toddlers – always whining, perpetually offended by everything under the sun, be it words, statues, or anything else. This is because they use every perceived offense as a tool to push their radical agenda, such as trying to define “hate speech,” i.e. whatever exposes them.
Fortunately there’s been a mass awakening occurring within Western nations as to who is really behind all of this, and this awakening is only going to continue to grow exponentially. Once awakened, there’s no putting us back to sleep.
Hm. When you replace the word “Marxists” in your penultimate paragraph with any of the other political identities being thrown around now, like Democrats or Nazis, it works just as well. Weird.
It’s funny how much you guys cry about the left and yet demand the exact same things they want. You’re bigger cry babies than them lol
Also, when did Russians become part of the West? You gotta brush up on your anthropology if you want to discriminate on those foundations man.
Amateur Nazis… Err sorry! Amateur white nationalists…
Those St. John the Apostle referred to as “little anti-Christs” are the ones controlling everything, including pushing the anti-white/anti-Christian narrative. You’re one of their ideological supporters. All you can do is use the tired slander which has no effect whatsoever. Me being called a Nazi by a socialist is sheer irony.
I’m white, nationalist and don’t owe an apology to a single person for it. Go ahead and slander me with your Nazi crap. You’re just a bunch of anti-white supremacists yourselves, so it’s water off my back. If you hate being around us white people so much, go live someplace else.
The more that people acquiesce to this Marxist charade, the more emboldened the agitators become, which is why I refuse to give even an inch.
The fact that you’re white shouldn’t bother anybody. It’s that “nationalist” stuff that gets under my skin.
Japanese are nationalists for Japan. Chinese are nationalists for China. Russians are nationalists for Russia. Indians are nationalists for India. Etc.
Do they also bother you?
Yes, nationalism in general does bother me. It’s time to go planetary.
That kind of upgrade should suffice for awhile.
That wouldn’t be an upgrade; that would be world tyranny.
Are you an equal opportunist? Do you similarly go after nationalists from every other nation?
You would find a planetary gov’t to be quite the same as regional or national gov’ts, except for the borders.
Everyone will get together ’round the campfire and sing Kumbaya and We Are The World. Seems legit.
In English? Bwa-ha-ha!
What the right-wing xenophobes call “Cultural Marxism”, everyone else calls accurate historical and scientific research. Yes, the results tend not to agree with Victorian-era social prejudices, nor with the agenda of early 20th century fascism.
Take for example, algebra. Taught in schools everywhere, right? Al Gebra. That’s an Arabic word. And we use ‘Arabic numerals’ Hence, the denial of the role Islamic scholarship imported to Europe played in the European Renaissance is not justified. This is not “Cultural Marxism” – this is just factual history, which the white European Christian supremacists want to ignore. Why is it so hard to admit this?
What it comes across as is fear and insecurity. The fear you’ll get a job some day and find your boss is a black woman. That your kids will make friends with black kids and brown kids and Asian kids, and lord knows where that might lead – mixed-race babies! The horror! The horror!
It’s all so childish. Grow up, already.
Typical Marxist cuck, injecting race into every discussion. All part of the divide & conquer strategy. Don’t think that I don’t see through your tactics.
“We must realize that our party’s most powerful weapon is racial tensions. By propounding into the consciousness of the dark races that for centuries that for centuries they have been oppressed by whites, we can mold them to the program of the communist party. In America we will aim for subtle victory. While inflaming the Negro minority against the whites, we will endeavor to instill in the whites a guilt complex for their exploitation of the Negroes. We will aid the Negroes to rise in prominence in every walk of life, in the professions and in the world of sports and entertainment. With this prestige, the Negro will be able to intermarry with the whites and begin a process which will deliver America to our cause.” – Israel Cohen
On that note, according to the diligent research of Dr. Tony Martin, Jews not only dominated the Transatlantic Slave Trade but were also over twice as likely to own multiple slaves as white people.
“It is in the Jewish interest, it is in humanity’s interest that whites experience a genocide. Until white children are burned alive, white women raped, mutilated, murdered, and all white men who have not been slaughtered watch powerlessly as their people are terrorized; only then will mankind be on equal footing, ready to discuss white privilege and the apparent chip on the shoulder that minorities have.” – Ishmael Levitts
1st comment:
“I’m white, nationalist and…”
2nd comment:
“Japanese…Chinese…Russians…Indians….”
5th comment:
“Typical Marxist cuck, injecting race into every discussion.
(within the same comment)…Jews not only…”
You only have yourselves to blame for constantly bombarding us with white this, white that, trying to guilt-trip us into distancing ourselves from any sort of nationalist movement, because the Marxist tribe is getting nervous that there will be backlash against their communist JWO scheme.
Decadence acts as a stimulant on healthier… organs, shall we say, so you’ll be fine just hang in there : )
Sorry, I don’t speak stupid.
I was paraphrasing Nietzsche, in your favor… just FYI
Ah, that would explain it.
That chip on your shoulder and defensive attitude indicate you care deeply what others think. If you were confident in yourself, you wouldn’t have felt the need to comment at all.
You may refuse to give an inch, but your cybaby conservacuck ass is going to be pushed back several feet, despite your wishes.
Keep telling yourself that.
By the way, I wonder why it was that people such as rabbi Stephen Wise helped found the NAACP. That’s rather, shall we say, opportunistic. And this following the tribe’s heavy involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade + Triangle Trade? I wonder, if either Malcolm X or Henry Ford had founded the ADL, would people suspect something not quite right? Worth pondering.
That’s not a ‘by the way,’ it’s a way-off-the-tracks non sequitur, and a comically anti-Semitic one at that.
So, your heroes, the treasonous Confederates looking to set up their own nation to preserve slavery were Jews? That must create quite the conundrum for you.
I’ve studied up a bit on slavery, though I’m certainly no historian like Dr. Tony Martin was. Interesting that as soon as he began teaching his college students about Jewish involvement in slavery …well, watch and learn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu0vQrZbhQo
You seem to be a fan of pop-psychoanalysis…. I would say you are projecting, ok? since you know zero about Michael. Where did he indicate he cares “what others think” ? Otherwise “he wouldn’t feel the need to comment at all,” i.e, just keep his trap shut. Well, looks like those days are over, LOL
Thanks. It’s just the usual smear tactics which have no effect on me. Once they realize that they’re unable to intimidate me nor browbeat me with their distorted “history,” they usually just walk away out of frustration.
We’re all in a sense “virtual” here, so it’s fun. But the video might be correct in the assumption that it’s spilling over from the online world into the street. My next trip to Florida, I may look into getting a Browning. Sawed-off of course. Just in case….. you know. ha….. good times. We are living in the best possible era!
I think that because they sense impending economic disaster, they’ve become unhinged and are overplaying their hand in a mad rush to try and incite a color revolution. Every little conflict that they manage to stir up is used to keep the public distracted. It’s very telling that they even resort to putting ads on Craigslist in order to hire protestors. Sad state of affairs.
That could very well be. I know a Michael, currently at Marina Real, San Carlos, Sonora, Mx, who exhibits the same tendencies.
Couldn’t be you, could it?
lol No.
I’d recommend travel, but that hasn’t seemed to help Michael in MX.
Could be a fluke, however.
What are your thoughts on AR-15?
You mean the rifle? Don’t have any thoughts on it. Never fired a gun in my life.
Not something you should be ignorant of.
Not ignorance, it’s just that I prefer non-violent approach.
I espouse non-violence too, but it’s good to understand why you should keep your finger off the trigger, and how to check for any chambered rounds.
Emboldened by the fascist agenda of their Fuehrer in chief and his minions it is to no surprise that those who cowardly hid under their rock now emerge to spew hatred. The ideology of fascism is damning. Once someone embraces it it fills their heart. History serves as a hopeful reminder that in the end reason and rational will triumph over hatred and ignorance. Once that happens you can crawl back under your rock.
Pretty soon, communism is going to be completely destroyed. Having a socialist allude to others as Fuehrer is hilarious, seeing as the Nazis were themselves socialist. Throwing out Jewish central bankers from Western nations would probably cause you to go into convulsions. I mean it must be quite a blow to the Rothschilds and their banker buddies to know that countries such as Syria, Iran and North Korea won’t allow them to set up their filthy usury scheme in their countries. Too bad. Furthermore, Venezuela and Cuba are bartering directly with other countries, bypassing the currency manipulators. Oy vey, this cannot be allowed! America must threaten such countries with military force!
An American politician is essentially a fund-raiser, they are completely dependent on wealthy backers to get elected, re-elected and so on. Trump is a bit of a game-changer in that respect. He doesn’t need anyone’s money, which frees him to do startling things. Including (but not limited to) having a lot of Generals running around telling people what to do…. optics alone, very strange. But it’s comforting in that it’s impossible to imagine they are sympathetic to the psychotic Left…..
In a purely bureaucratic set up like Russia, a politician doesn’t need financial backers at all but they have to be major schemers on level we can barely conceive of in the West. Putin is fascinating in that he absolutely has to be one of the trickiest men alive or he wouldn’t be there… I like Vlad. As Dictatorships go, that’s a pretty good one. General McMaster would not approve of that statement, i should probably be more careful….. (3 glasses of wine so far)
Actually, white nationalist groups are in severe decline. More tabloid journalism from the Intercept.
reason,com/blog/2017/08/25/germany-raids-shuts-down-far-left-websit
“Germany Raids, Shuts Down Far Left Website. Will You Stop Praising European Censorship Now?”
What is a reasonable number of posts per person?
3, 5, 8?
at what point is the practice of flooding comment sections with 20, 30, 40 posts worthy of curtailing?
Crapflooding and sockpuppetry are, by now, well documented exploits to manipulate and control public discussion.
I think reasonable limits enable all to contribute.
the principle that money=speech is a pathogen to the body politic in a democratic society.
have more money? have more speech, more representation, more rights.
Now why would a pro libertarian support that concept?
The logical extension of that fallacy is concentrated power by a tiny enormously wealthy cabal.
Hardly utopia
You could learn what posts (and posters) should just be ignored. Or at the very least, laughed at.
I think the criteria for which posts are reasonable and which are not should depend on whether the person has a good-faith intention to contribute to a reasonable discussion. I try not to post excessively on any one thread.
Since you mentioned the issue of money in politics and the term “libertarian”, I’d like to give the libertarian perspective on this issue.
Libertarians do not think “democracy” is a good or noble ideal for organizing society. The concept of democracy and individual rights are incompatible.
The cure for the problem of money corrupting politics is to eliminate the State. Therefore, there would be no political process to corrupt with campaign contributions.
A large, centralized State is always going to serve the very rich at the expense of nearly everyone else. It is a protection racket for the powerful. The tactic of trying to bring democratic reforms to a large, central State in order to redistribute the wealth more equitably will never ultimately be successful, because those with wealth inside the beltway always have the upper hand in manipulating politics to their benefit.
As State power is restricted, the rich are forced to rely on the whims of the market, dictated by consumer demand, in order to make their money.
It is far better for the consumer, and society as a whole, for the rich to have to try and sell you a product that improves your standard of living in order to make money, than for them to bribe politicians and game the system to the detriment of consumers and smaller competitors.
Sorry. eliminate “the State”?
just stop.
You would replace it with concentrated private wealth with no check or balance on power.
Libertarianism is not a viable precept, at its core is a contradiction in means, ends and outcomes.
You’ve already basically conceded that our current large, centralized government is not serving as a check on corporate power. It’s plain to see that large corporations bribe politicians to write regulations that are favorable to them, hurt their competitors are grant them un-earned monopolies.
The State evidently does not check corporate power, so how about we stop pretending that it does?
In an actual laissez-faire market economy, consumers direct capital through their purchasing habits. This is the ultimate democratic vote, as consumers dictate which companies survive and which go bankrupt.
This system is regulated through contract law and private property rights. Simple, clear laws that recognize each person’s equal self-ownership rights.
Competition is better than monopoly from the perspective of the consumer, right? The only effective way to create a monopoly is to capture the political process and regulate your competitors out of business. Thus businessmen, in particular a small group of the wealthiest oligarchs, are always behind growth in government.
I’m an anarchist and I don’t shy away from insisting that absence of a monopoly State is the only moral and consistent position one could hold, yet I’d argue that a much smaller State, or many smaller competing States would yield greater liberty and more prosperity for everyone. Not the ideal, but a huge step in the right direction.
Suppose instead of one, large centralized Federal Government, the United States was broken up into one hundred small, autonomous political units. Do you suppose the problem of Wall Street corruption and corporate power would be more or less of a problem?
I’d contend that it’d be much less of a problem. If anyone could drive one hundred miles and be in an entire different country (for all intents and purposes), this competition among political jurisdictions would keep corruption to a minimum.
Why wouldn’t competition among political jurisdictions be better for the average person than a large, central monopoly on political power?
Given how the values articulated in the Declaration have been trampled on, from open borders to militarized society, I think it might be time for things like California leaving the USA. They would be true to principles than the CSA.
It really looks like the neo-Nazis want to have a conversation when they bring their over-the-top armed militias with them to rallies. Sure, I’d want to talk to them.
It’s necessary to be an extremist, just to get noticed. Today’s Nazis, once they have posted their latest U-Tube video, go out for a drink with their friends from Antifa and BLM. Then someone takes out a cell phone, and they go back to fighting each other for the cameras.
The people who are really dangerous are the moderates. They’re the ones sending American soldiers to fight in pointless wars. For them, the staged protests are useful; you have to give extremists a pressure release valve, otherwise the extremists might start to rebel against conventional society.
Benito
Hope you are well and in satire mode. Endless war, to include drug wars, mass surveillance, monopolized medicine, diet, education and economy and life opportunity to serve a minority of elites is the real dangerous extreme, nothing to do with moderation. There are a lot of US moderates who are not happy campers.
The right and left violent groups are mostly as you say just howling at the moon. Part of divide and control politics as You suggest. Only about 5% of these folks are really scary and they would be dangerous if they only belonged to girl or boy scouts. Still the center is where the mass of America reside and if ever provoked to action the parties are over. In that time I hope prudence and wisdom prevail. I hope for peaceful progress. Extremes and abuse can come from any direction left, right or center. Sadly the center also has its 5%er dangerous folks there are just a whole hell of a lot more of them. When successful reform or revolutions happens it spring from the center not the edges. The center is what the elites real fear because resistance would be futile. Radical change has been pushed upon the center, fasten your set-belts when they push back. The hard left and right whamming hell out of each other is great for TV and popcorn time. The center is the eye of the storm with the really strong winds circling. Yes, “The people who are really dangerous are the moderates” critical mass.
Science is not the same as National Science. They’re totally different. They call themselves scientists.
“…if only the Police kept them apart.”
That’s the rub. A group of assholes over there and the anti-assholes over here, each yelling , insulting, carrying signs and wearing costumes – all free speech kind of stuff – but then they clash and not a cop was there to separate them, not a one. Had cops done their job the assholes would have then gone back to their computer games, back to the sparsely attended hotel ballroom gatherings, the biker Nazis back to their bars and the anti-assholes would then go back to their computer games, classrooms, and coffee shops. But there were no cops to stop the violence.
The violence is orchestrated allowed to happen so that the populace appears divided. Pick as side, hell no, neither dress up group are US. Another group of extremists have turned America into a money machine, their personal piggy-bank for their personal family businesses. If course correction is not forthcoming and soon this ends badly for them and US, the real National divide will splinter. To big to fail has become too big to hind behind a bunch of Kabuki dancers.
There’s a new Antifa cell–the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM). How would you like to be governed be these nutjubs:
https://www.infowars.com/antifa-recruiting-one-step-closer-to-revolutionary-political-movement/
Alex Jones doesn’t describe them all that glowingly? Lol!
https://revolutionaryabolition.org/
Indian Motorcycles logo was the first thing I noticed when I seen this article.
Intercept staff, please change the picture for this article. Indian Motorcycles has nothing to do with either side.
I personally dislike both sides and think they should keep themselves busy doing something more constructive with their time.
Yes Sir, a lot of idiots can not tell Logos from Colors, scary looking jackets. There is a hell of lot more cell phone than buck knife bikers. Lots of folks just like to ride and if your ass ever literally hits the road, been there done that, your leathers are your friend.
I’ve been wondering what has happened inBerkekey since that speech. Why hasn’t this received any other media attention?
If the left would be left instead of left when they like and right when it suits them. You know, like when a Muslim Imam cites the quran in which it asks to kill the last Jew. When this is done there is no outcry from the socalled left. Left is left in every case, not only when it comes to white supremscists. The love between left and Islamists is why the Alt right is getting support, certainly in Europe. It has nohting to do with black or brown or Asian people. All got to do with a socalled religion which endorses killing of the non-believer.
damn straight. did you see all those demonstrations and rallies with the rabid muslims marching through the streets of Boise and Sacramento, yelling, “Jews will not replace us!”?
yeah. me neither.
No me neither, but I did see the demonstration in the middle of London, where there is a Muslim Major and a large Muslim community. They (the Muslim protestors) were dragging their beloved flag of Hizbolah and Hamas shouting dead to USA, Uk and Israel. You remember that one?
no, i didn’t see that. in fact, i’m not at all aware that your characterization of such an event is accurate.
regardless, Hamas and Hezbollah, you’ll notice, are in open and armed conflict with the US, UK and Israel due to both colonialist and neocolonialist policy and aggression. the same can’t be said for US white supremacists, nor can a similar context be applied. incitement to violence and oppression based on religious extremism ought to be opposed as stridently as it is for any other nationalist or sectarian ideological reasons.
but opposition to US white supremacists doesn’t put anyone here on the hook for whatever comes out of the mouths of an Islamist. that’s rather obvious.
Well my description is pretty accurate. And please note that it weren’t Hamas and or Hezbollah fighters in the street of London, it was its so-called integrated Muslim population. Now off course opposing White supremacists does not put anyone on the hook for whatever comes out of the mouth of the an Islamist, however that’s not what’s happening here. You talk about colonialism, neocolonialism and aggression, as the key factors of the bloodshed nowadays, yet you refuse to mention the Islamic colonialism of almost every country in the Middle east. Of Spain, Greece, Georgia, Armenia, Bulgaria, India, etc. etc. So that is not colonialism right? That would mean that people from these countries should blow up bus stations all across the Islamic world, right? They have been expelled and butchered and murdered, their cultures have even been annihilated, yet according to you the only victims in history are the Muslims and the only perpetrators are Europeans.
I am not from European descent, so I most certainly do not defend the vile history of the Europeans, but that being said, I also condemn the vile history of the Arabs and their so-called religion of peace. When Timor conquered Delhi, he justified the killing of 100000 Hindus by reading qur’anic scripture, where it states that the killing of polytheists is not only condoned, but actually inspired.
If that would have happened citing from the Bible, this atrocity would be thought in every western school and rightfully so.
If you’re Left minded than you should be left minded in every case not just when it suits you.
i left out the Mongol invasions, too.
you’re babbling.
thr irony is you’ve made ny point for me.
don’t be so modest. given the number of positions you attributed to me, the number of words you put in my mouth, i’d say that was all you.
This video is misleading. It conflates independent right-leaning journalists like Lauren Southern and comedian Gavin McGinnis with the White Nationalist movement and the Alt-Right. This is pure propaganda “other”ing. Additionally, why isn’t there any mention of the fanaticism from the left? Movements such as BAMN or Yvette Falarca have certainly done their fair share of provoking these awful events. AntiFa is portrayed a little too heroically in this video and not much is made of their underlying, misguided agenda.
did you really just take exception to ‘”other”ing’ in defense of Southern and McGinnis?
I hope Gavin does well. I gather it’s something big like Howard Stern on Sirius… we’ll know Sept 15
You didn’t have to live down the block from OWS (as I unfortunately did) to know: the Left is violent, subversive and insane…. and has been since the French Revolution. The Eternal Left.
Any effort to contain the excesses of the envelope-pushing Left, is of course…. fascism! Reactionary implies a response to something, right? Well, what is that something? Obviously the psychotic Left. So Dictatorship comes along to clean up the mess democracy has made of the world….
Read Evola on Totalitarianism, he’ll bring you up to speed in vivid detail.
My own view: we are in a pre-Fascist state (Corporate System with a Progressive cover story) — this is making way for something else that doesn’t have a name yet.
thanks this is quite accurate.
Stars Hollow is a fringe movement that thinks that Hitler did not commit suicide but hides inside a star.
It is not clear how he handles air-conditioning.
Many at the Intercept normalized white supremacy by excusing it from their savior:
“Today our country has lost a true American original, my friend and mentor Robert C. Byrd.”
– Crooked Hillary on KKK Grand Wizard, Senator (D) – West Virginia
The owner of the Intercept was actually involved in the Ukrainian coup, where Obama armed Nazi groups:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/12/u-s-house-admits-nazi-role-in-ukraine/
Obama then put Joe Biden’s sleazy son, Hunter, on the board of the largest gas company there:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/14/hunter-bidens-new-job-at-a-ukrainian-gas-company-is-a-problem-for-u-s-soft-power/
These groups were waving both Nazi and Confederate flags after Obama’s coup.
So stop projecting your fake concern for hate groups until you clean up your own house. You were silent when your party armed Nazis and you twiddled your thumbs when a KKK Grand Wizard become the president of the senate. If a KKK statue is bad, then a real breathing powerful senator must be worse.
Byrd recanted, but the rest is spot-on. I am no fan of Nazis marching in the USA, and am no fan of Nazis marching in Kiev, Odessa, and Lviv.
By the way, the US should also rename the Larry Thorne Headquarters Building at Fort Carson. We don’t need to give military honors to SS members.
Are protesters and other social justice reformers aware that the National Science Foundation is pushing National Science?
The progressive Democratic Party still can’t shed the elitism that allowed eugenics to thrive under it.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This applies to everyone….everyone.
No, no and no. It’s the Leftist MSM that has been pushing the false narrative, that the Alt Right is being taken over and lead by White Supremacists.
In an attempt to discredit and invalidate any opposition to free speech and the victimhood culture that is rife in the Alt Left.
Yes admittedly and regrettably, they have become part of the movement. But are certainly not representative of it, as a whole…
The MSM wouldn’t call all feminists, FemiNazis.
But they’re happy to callout all proponents of the AltRight as Nazi’s..
It’s ridiculous.
maybe you better find a new name for yourselves then. because running around with swastikas and quasi-nazi symbols and stars-and-bars flags, yelling “blood & soil” to preserve monuments to slavery and the civil war kinda gives the game away.
The MSM is leftist? Are you high? The mainstream media is a collection of right-wing institutions whose sole purpose is pushing pro-capitalist and pro-war narratives. The leading socialist organizations get no coverage in mainstream journals and TV stations. Even Facebook and Google discriminate against the actual left. You need to overcome your conditioning and educate yourself.
Interesting. I bet you think Mao was a centrist.
I’ve not seen any evidence to suggest Mao was a centrist, however I’ve also not seen any evidence to suggest he was a socialist. Socialism’s central thesis is workplace democracy. If you can provide evidence that the production and distribution of goods and services in Mao’s China was organized and administered democratically, then I would have no choice but to accept he was a socialist. I’ve had this debate with quite a few credentialed researchers. None of them have been able to provide such evidence and the discourse has always devolved into the realm of pseudo-science and speculation. I’ve come to the conclusion that the majority of people who’ve been awarded authority on topics of politics and economics are thoroughly conditioned to believe in ideology presented as science. Those are the people who inform policy decisions. Those are the people who frame public discussion with consistent access to mainstream media forums. You just have to swallow your pride, be honest with yourself and admit you’ve been indoctrinated by a sophisticated propaganda framework.
….swoosh….
You’re even provided a history lesson that illustrates to you that eugenics was an intrinsic part of mainstream left-wing labor and socialist public policy in the time of the Socialist Workers Party, National as in National Public Radio.
Even into the 1970s.
All hail Godwin’s Law!
You’re denying history because you’re afraid to face that your very identity movement-a proven leftist one–promoted eugenics in the first 7.5 decades of the 20th century. From Planned Parenthood’s founder, into the 70s.
You have no idea what my “identity movement” entails.
When misguided or opportunistic socialists joined the fascists or nazi’s they were not socialist any more, they became fascists or nazi’s. So, what is presented here (in the comments) as a great revelation, i.e. that socialism and fascism an national-socialism are the same or similar, is just a confusion of concepts.
What defines national-socialism is Social Darwinism. Even when it has ‘social’ in its description, it was a just pseudo-scientific exploitation of Darwinism for political reasons.
History’s most notorious fascist edited Italy’s premier Socialist newspaper Avanti! (“Forward!”). His name was Mussolini, and he ran the Bolshevik wing of the Italian Socialist Party.
His blackshirts were founded by the Fabian Socialist Oswald Mosley.
Socialists are socialists. The German Socialist Workers Party–National as in NARAL, NOW, NPR, National Science Foundation, NFL, NBA– attracted leftists exclusively because “Socialist” and “Workers Party” don’t attract anybody other than progressives.
Be as embarrassed as you want about that.
Evola left the world an amazing critique of fascism, both german and italian, and you might find it interesting: Men Among the Ruins and Revolt Against the Modern World.
What he did not anticipate (how could he?) that the Corporate World would appropriate a Progressive cover story. But i doubt it would surprise him… his essay on “Machiavellianism” describes USA to a T, also helps to understand why a Totalitarian system is right around the corner. I see no reason to believe the charade of Democracy can’t go on into infinity….. flying rainbow flags etc
I really feel like all this alt-right vs antifa business, and the cloud of less active people hovering around it, is at least encouraged and appreciated, if not actually planned, by the powers-that-be as a means of keeping us all divided and all the more easily conquered as a result. Pretty difficult to keep an eye on the actions of government officials and huge corporations when you’re fixated on a bunch of bullshit identity politics and embodying your hiveminded eagerness to micro-manage the personal lives of other people (regardless of the side of the political spectrum from which you do it).
Socialists and Labour and Democrats ever trying to scrub their 20th century history. Lolz.
“What we as eugenicists have got to do is to ’scrap’ the old Poor Law with its indiscriminate relief of the destitute as such and replace it by an intelligent policy of so altering the social environment as to discourage or prevent the multiplication of those irrevocably below the National Minimum of Fitness.” -socialist and labour reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb
“Those who are in every way a burden to their parents, a misery to themselves and in my opinion a menace to the social life of the community” Fabian Socialist Archibald Church
“Fabian socialists provided the intellectual justification for the eugenics policy that led to the stolen generations scandal.” The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/feb/14/australia
I wonder if desperate confusion over the value of historical facts in making fallacious arguments falls under the rubric of “menace to the social life of the community”?
Where do you think the above is false? Where are you confused by it?
I get that socialists are historically pretty shitty in their actions and the applicability of their ideas, but are you pointing that out (if that’s the point of this comment – correct me if I’m wrong about that) as an explanation for the recent surge in internet alt-right circlejerking? I can see some people with severe reactive tendencies freaking out about socialism and joining the other hive-mind on the opposite side of the spectrum, but I have trouble believing that all of these people see it as the ONLY alternative to the sort of thinking that you pointed out there. If that IS the case, that just kind of discredits them even more, because that’s an asinine assumption to make.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fabian+socialism&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIgLH_8PTVAhUMSiYKHfUmCZYQ_AUICygC&biw=1295&bih=59090
Gamergate was, genuinely, about ethical games journalism and a struggle against censorship and evangelical politicisation. It was primarily a left/lib group.
Check out Brad Glasgow’s work on this, the FBI and WAM reports which contradict the narrative given here, or my book: https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Gamergate-Social-History-Revolt-ebook/dp/B074PC6318/
Gamergate was bitter consumers annoyed that “their” websites and products didn’t pander to their narrow world-view anymore. It was an issue of brand loyalty vs market expansion and the conditioned consumer psychology that follows those. The kids can drop the products and entertain themselves in other ways, they choose to identify with their hobbies to such a degree they actually believe marketing messages meant to bring more customers to the table. It’s capitalism they’re angry about.
Whatever business or supposeded ethical discussions attached afterwards were just that. It was a stupid stunt that got turned into some kind of scandal by the bored teenagers who are addicted to videogames and are trying to turn it into some sign of masculinity.
I guess you’re taking advantage of the bitter white male market by pandering your book to them though.
All these supposed political issues are just economic issues.
TLDR: Left wing extremism gave birth to right wing extremism.
Every Human on this planet
originated from the same group of Africans
These “white” guys ALL have Black Ancestry
I laugh out loud every time I witness this ignorance
Poor Poor Lost babies
While I agree that the neo-Nazis and white supremacists are reprehensible, their numbers and the threat they pose have been vastly exaggerated. Lee Fang is not nearly hard enough on the violent Left, in particular Antifa, BAMN, and some elements in Black Lives Matter.
The correct position in my view is to reject both and resist the temptation to align with any of these extremist groups.
Antifa and BAMN are based on the core principle that it is moral to use violence to silence speech they disapprove of. And they don’t limit their ire towards actual neo-Nazis like those who gathered in Charlottesville. Like many on the left, they have the habit of continuously expanding the definition of white supremacy and Nazism.
Many disparate groups are lumped together without careful distinctions or mediated by any coherent definitions. And, according to the militant Left, all of these people don’t have a right to free speech and any efforts to speak can and will be met with actual violence.
This is a reprehensible view. It further needs to be said that most, if not virtually all, Antifa members are literal communists.
It could be argued that if Antifa saw their vision for society brought to fruition, it would cause just as much human misery if not more so than would the views of neo-Nazis.
This modern dynamic really is a throwback to the 1930s when National Socialism (Nazis) and International Socialism (communists) waged a war for influence over Europe. Even the moderate Left seem unwilling to criticize communists with the same zeal that they criticize fascists even though they are equally deserving of scorn.
There is data that puts all of this in perspective:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/20th-century-death/
This graph shows the major causes of human death in the 20th century. The leading ideological cause of death during the last century was communism.
94 million people were killed by communist regimes, which is more than homicides and genocides put together.
Fascism killed 28 million people during this same time period.
I agree with pretty much everything in this article as it pertains to neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Yet Lee Fang, not unlike many liberals, seems to have a blind spot for the danger posed by the extreme Left.
It is common practice to place Adolf Hitler on the extreme Right and Joseph Stalin on the extreme Left, but this is not very correct.
The correct ideological spectrum would place both on the extreme, authoritarian Right. The polar opposite of both Fascism and Communism is classical liberalism, libertarianism and anarchism.
A good essay that corrects our historical misunderstanding of the political spectrum is Murray Rothbard’s Left, Right and the Prospects for Liberty:
https://mises.org/library/left-right-and-prospects-liberty-1
Jacob wrote;
“And, according to the militant Left, all of these people don’t have a right to free speech and any efforts to speak can and will be met with actual violence.”
don’t conflate free speech with the response it invites. come right out in the light of day and say what you have to say. but you’re responsible for the shit that comes out of your mouth, for the violence you incite when demonstrating openly for the violation of other people’s right to simply be full and equal participants in society.
“It could be argued that if Antifa saw their vision for society brought to fruition, it would cause just as much human misery if not more so than would the views of neo-Nazis.”
fascists and white supremacists must be opposed. if you have a problem saying that, any comment you make about human misery is a lie.
Fascists and white supremacists must be opposed. Agreed.
Yet, opposition must be peaceful. If a white nationalist group wants to peacefully demonstrate, they should be allowed to as long as they remain peaceful, however reprehensible their message may be. Peaceful counter-protests ought to be encouraged, but violence ought to be used only in self defense.
Antifa beflieves in initiating aggressive violence against even peaceful hate speech. I vehemently disagree. Abhorrent speech ought to be protected but may be peacefully opposed through non-violent demonstrations.
I don’t conflate free speech with the response it invites but I believe strongly in the non-aggression principle which states that it is immoral to initiate aggression against peaceful people regardless of their views and/or speech. The only justified use of violence is in self-defense.
Opposing bigoted speech does not require the initiation of violence in any case. Their views are paper thin and counter-speech is more than a sufficient weapon to combat abhorrent views.
My point is that Antifa and violent Leftist groups ought not to be supported even as a weapon against white nationalists and fascists. Of course I’m opposed to white supremacy and Nazism, but that shouldn’t compel a person to endorse literal communist groups. Both ideologies ought to be opposed with equal zeal.
the proposition that white supremacists marching with weapons will only become violent when physically attacked, while antifa are inherently violent because of an assumed endorsement or embrace of “communism,” leading them to attack first isn’t a good look.
I know that white supremacists and neo-Nazis use aggressive violence. I already agreed with you that these groups are abhorrent and need to be opposed. Many people are making the argument that even their peaceful speech should be shut down through aggressive violence and this view is wrong.
there is no peaceful form of white supremacism. by definition. no utterance or action. it may not be your decision to engage their violence with your own, but the idea that the shitheads who showed up to Charlottesville with Nazi banners and slogans intended anything other than violence is false on its face. your equivocation on that simple matter – apparently predicated on the premise that, well, violence exists and is pursued in other places for other ideological causes – thus concluding that white nationalists are being unjustly maligned, improperly portrayed and having their rights impinged is fairly tortured logic.
people who gather en masse, in public, under a Nazi banner need to be told, and shown, they’re wrong and won’t be tolerated. not by government or police, but by everyone.
The reason that the ACLU defended the right of neo-Nazis to organize is because the legal precedent for curbing free speech always comes in instances of unpopular or abhorrent speech. As Glenn Greenwald recently pointed out, legal battles over this vital principle are almost exclusively fought in this area.
The problem with this debate is that it is framed in a way where a principled defense of free speech or criticism of Antifa is interpreted as a tacit endorsement of neo-Nazis. Most reasonable people have nothing to do with either extreme.
Some on the left are expanding and distorting the actual definition of the term “Nazi” to include many, many people for whom such a label is just slander. This creeping political activism, combined with sloppy definitions without relevant distinctions, is dangerous in it’s own right. Actual neo-Nazi skinheads are few in number, thank god.
Many, but not all, participants in the alt-right demonstrations in Charlottesville were fully willing or planned to participate in violence. But we also don’t have to pretend that Antifa didn’t show up with the intention of initiating violence either.
I just want to be very clear when violence is appropriate. If we start blurring these lines, this leads down a slippery slope where all manner of non-politically correct speech can be curtailed through violence.
Mr. Fang and Mr. Woodhouse:
This article hits the nail on the head. However, this is, i believe, is just the tip of the iceberg.
The full “festering” of this country, even this world, will not come to fruition until between 15 to 20 years from now, when the current generation of online, alt white racist/nazi/trolls gain wealth and positions of power in society, and the next, even worse, potentially more dangerous generation of young, online, white male trolls/nazis/misogynists comes.
i have to agree with Bannon on this one, this demographic has monstrous powers.
It will be interesting to revisit this article over the coming years. Please keep revisiting this topic. We are in to a dangerous sociological phenomenon.
In short, keep up the great work!
ps: its also intersting to note that this division among the lower masses, so to speak, serves the logical intersts of oligarchs, and should get worse as income inequality becomes worse, in the US and the world.
When society starts to collapse, the masses grasp for more extreme ideologies in a desperate attempt to make sense of their condition.
I predict that the pendulum will swing back in the opposite direction within the next decade though. The reaction to Donald Trump and the alt-Right will be equally extreme in the opposite direction. Democrats might attempt to prop up another extreme centrist like Hillary Clinton, but I feel the masses will migrate to someone at least as far to the left as Bernie Sanders.
This would not be an improvement in my view. It would be awful in different ways.
I’m trying to get people to consider the anti-State libertarian alternative, which really provides the only answers to our current problems.
The Anti-state alternative leaves you with no flushing toilets!
Why??? You don’t know how toilets work??
Very shoddy journalism to label Heather Heyer’s death a murder at this point.
There is video evidence that, at the very least, raises the possibility that James Fields may have panicked when he was attacked by antifa thugs.
Since every major political figure had condemned the actions of Fields as “terrorism” with a few sprinkles of “evil,” there is no need for a trial, and any such trial that occurs will be one of foregone conclusions.
Regardless of his motives, the kid is toast.
The video you’re speaking of shows counter protesters beating on his car as he was trying to run people over. He may have killed more than one person if his rampage wasn’t hampered as it was.
Maybe it isn’t simply the rise of White Nationalism. Maybe the country is breaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaV-nGQ5yqw
Yes, just a tool to grasp to try to redress an imbalanced economy..and getting worse.
Most of these right-wingers are toy soldiers–look at the stylish reactionary in the main picture that accompanies this article. You think that guy is going to sacrifice his “lifestyle” for anything outside of a photo-op?
Americans need to celebrate the freedom fighting Aniti-Fa! They are America and represent the ideals we fought and died for in WWII. How different might this world be if anti-fascists had fought Hitler’s thugs with with the same zeal? Well America fought one of its few good wars back then and has learned the lesson I hope. Freedom of speech is not freedom for mass crowds to carry arms and demonstrate in regions that are intended to incite violence to promote a media narrative. That is the only reason Nazi type whites choose Berkeley. The wanted to piss off leftists and start violence to promote their cause via the Alt-Right media propaganda machine.
And let me add thanks for Lee Fang, whom I have disagreed with on his pro drug war articles, and to his co-writer Leighton Woodhouse for this powerful enlightening article. Great work”
Antifa is fighting against itself. Hitler’s Nazis were progressive leftists: Socialist. Workers Party. (National as in National Public Radio.)
OMG…If I had a dime for every time someone said what you just said. Well, it’s wrong.
They called themselves socialist for the simple reason it sounded less scary than National Fascist Party…but that is what they were.
You’re attempting to deploy the same post-Nuremberg playbook that embarrassed leftists always try after they’re abandoned by a disapproving public–most recently with Obama.
You know conservatives wouldn’t be found anywhere near a Socialist or Workers Party, never mind both. The left, however,….
Giving two-sentence exegeses of Ann Coulter books is not really an argument, now is it?
Wouldn’t know, I’ve never read an Ann Coulter book. It’s common knowledge that leftists always try to paint their failures as conservative after public rejection. Most recently Obama.
I’ll remind you history’s most notorious fascist edited Italy’s premier Socialist newspaper Avanti! (“Forward!”).
His blackshirts were founded by the Fabian Socialist Oswald Mosley.
And why do you call yourselves socialist now?
Neither the original assumption nor the “correction” are correct. Hitler’s party became National Socialists not because he was a Socialist nor because he wanted to sound less threatening. The reason was because Hitler was an infiltrator for the German Army, much like COINTELPRO operatives in the U.S. (or ADL, which has been known to adopt similar tactics). Hitler went into a small run-of-the-mill socialist party, got some key people on his side, and changed it from telling workers they were being exploited by capitalists to telling them they were being exploited by Jews. If you need to learn more about parties going from left to right, look at how the HUAC, Nixon, McCarthy refounded the Republicans in the 1950s.
Wnt, Hitler founded/i the German Workers Party. Who joins Workers parties?
Hitler went into a small run-of-the-mill socialist party, got some key people on his side, and changed it from telling workers they were being exploited by capitalists to telling them they were being exploited by Jews.
Then tell your audience why no name change from Socialist. (Surely to attract conservatards.)
Who’s joining Working Families Party? Who’s joining workers.org?
Wnt, Hitler founded the German Workers Party. Who joins Workers parties?
Then tell your audience why no name change from Socialist. (Surely to attract conservatards.)
Who’s joining Working Families Party? Who’s joining workers.org?
And tell your readers why Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger’s eugenics program was lauded by the left, including by Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
There is indeed some continuity of thought from Socialism to National Socialism. The former expresses the idea that the long-suffering proletariat that does all the work is oppressed by a parasitic cabal of bankers and bureaucrats. The latter expresses a similar idea at a national or race level: that a long-suffering master race that is the only one capable of doing anything great is oppressed by a parasitic cabal of Jews and other races that are just drains on their productivity. A solution both have proposed is violent revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat/master race, which in either case means dictatorship of the _vanguard_ of that movement, and ultimately, of one man.
That said, the transition of National Socialists from left to right also involved corruption, as such transitions generally do – I would compare the transition of American “Libertarians” from a movement for individual liberties toward being more of a slogan for rich people looking (alone) not to pay taxes. I commented on this a bit at https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/atlas-network-alejandro-chafuen-libertarian-think-tank-latin-america-brazil/ The question of who is worse is not always that easy – Stalin did, after all, murder millions. However, there are other Socialists like Mitterrand and Bernie Sanders who do not seem exceptionally harmful and grope their way toward higher principle, whereas National Socialism is so fundamentally false at the theoretical level that it really has little purpose save to serve as a vehicle of dictators.
Say what? Wrong, dude, all wrong.
Is the DPRK democratic because they call themselves that? Hitler’s “Socialism” was only for the Master Race. Corporations. The gifted.
Who represents real Socialism? Marx. Hitler murdered Marxists. Spengler hated Marxists.
This thing about Hitler being a Leftist is really quite comical. The Right is continually turning history on its head to achieve some measure of absolution, even if it is bogus.
As democratic as Democratic Kampuchea, and as was the German Democratic Republic, and as is the DNC.
You’re not calling yourselves Socialist because you’re trying to attract conservatives. Stop trying to pretend otherwise whenever the public sours on your organizations.
Mussolini headed the Bolshevik wing of the Italian Socialist Party, which purged ‘moderate’ and reformist socialists. Upon assuming power he was congratulated by letter from V. I. Lenin.
But they weren’t real socialists were they, Larry. Mao hated Jiang Qing. Vietnam hated the Khmer Rouge. UNITA hated the MPLA. Shining Path the Túpac Amaru because they weren’t real Marxists.
Internecine socialist rivalry in the name of real Marxism is as old as 1848.
I’m afraid I must respectfully disagree because, as Ms. Nagle stated, they did as you suggested, and all it did was cause regular people on the sidelines to clamor for the Nazis to chop off their heads and restore order. Machiavelli’s famous words about freedom and security in people’s minds apply here.
Lee and Leighton didn’t show you exactly how LaBeouf’s (yet another Disney mess) flag was found the first time (4chan later found it again and again elsewhere):
https://www.infowars.com/internet-sleuths-sabotage-shia-labeoufs-latest-anti-trump-exhibit/
It’s the difference between thinkers and an idiot left.
Can you say in words what is the difference between thinkers and an idiot left?
I want to understand what is your main point.
Excuse me? Is “4chan’s evolution into a hate site” a direct quote from your source there?
Is Rebel Media–in your clip–a “hate site” too? Gavin McInnes–founder of Vice Media (i.e., Vice.com) also “hate”?
Or did you just lose the narrative?
I think this is actually quite easy. We have three relevant questions to answer, and we can generalize the answers along “sides” as follows:
1) Is nazism a vile ideology, repugnant to everything the west stands for, that deserves our utter condemnation and disgust?
2) Should those who use violence in order to achieve political goals through terror, as is Antifa’s stated goal, be utterly condemned as terrorists, even if their victims are people we find repugnant?
3) Do those who hold repugnant beliefs, still nonetheless deserve equal treatment&protection under the law and their full rights including their right to defend themselves, and should they be free to have their beliefs as long as they don’t actually break the law? That is, are we free to have our political beliefs?
The Right, with very few exceptions, agrees on all three points. It’s the Left that widely refuses to state two of these. But I believe almost everyone on the Left would agree on all three as well. Sadly, they are captivated by an insanity that if you agree with all three, somehow you must be disagreeing with #1. I have no idea how that logic is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, the media’s best interests is getting a race war, because that’ll be amazing for ratings. So it should be no surprise to see the establishment media supporting Antifa’s violence and advocating the removal of rights from nazis, which anyone would recognize is a combo that will lead to more violence, until the Right decides to actually start using those guns.
Okay. Done. Let’s see if some people are gonna insist on proving me right.
4chan has always been a hive for insecure white boys desperate for meaning and direction. I remember my college room mates wasting countless hours on casual racism memes and trolling complete strangers. They mocked people who were searching for an identity because they were either cowards with nothing to do or they were so hopeless and lacked creativity they needed a hive-mind to join to find some kind of meaning. These are the the white suburban version of street gangs. These ones hide behind screens and enjoy causing others pain and chaos from the comfort and safety of a computer screen. They do it cause they’re bored, their parents aren’t interested in their lives, they did well enough to not be noticed for being bad or exceptionally good, and then they wonder why they aren’t treated like special snowflakes like everyone else. Essentially, they’re jealous they aren’t being treated special like all those snowflakes they claim to hate. Really, they’re just as desperate for the attention as the leftist kids are.
It’s funny how they claim to hate the “culturial Marxism” of the left by joining an online hive-mind dedicated to the exact same thing, just with different labels.
At least their fighting is entertaining. They just gotta throw a Cops label on it and we’re back to the 90s.
Take a look at what John Kenneth Galbraith had to say about left-right politics in 1956:
The historical ignorance of the alt-right is pretty pathetic – what they don’t realize is that in the case of a real fascist dictatorship (which is best described as the rise of a state-corporate alliance), they’d be sacrificed as ‘undesirable elements’ after serving their purpose. They’re like the Brownshirts, who served as Nazi shock troops in street battles from 1930-1934 – and who were then liquidated in the Night of the Long Knives, to the general applause of the German public, who saw Hitler as “restoring law and order” – with his SS Blackshirts, the “polite, neatly dressed, reasonable Nazis” then taking over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
These sad pathetic clown-people have been around forever – the American Nazi Party of the 1950s, for example, who went around claiming that everyone had been lied to about the Nazis, who were, quote, “just good Christians who were opposed to race mixing”, or the skinhead rejects from the punk rock era of the 1980s (aka “Reagan Youth”, not a label they liked), the Aryan Brotherhood prison gangs, etc. A collection of sad societal rejects who find a sense of community in their manic little hate groups. Some of them might grow out of it, some will sink into even more bitterness and end up screaming at the sky all day.
The only thing to watch carefully is who their billionaire sponsors are, and what corporate interests they’re tied into – that’s what fascism really is, that state-corporate partnership. It was actually a much, much bigger threat during the Bush Administration, with the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove pushing it. This current iteration is pretty pathetic in comparison. Gets lots of media play since Trump is such a buffoon, however.
Whatever. I’m going to go help some more undocumented immigrants get citizenship papers while teaching them about the joys of Cultural Marxism and Race Mixing and Atheist Ideology, cheers!
Skoal!
> The street violence, which became fodder for the network of far-right YouTube channels that specialize in promoting “alt-right” content, became a useful lightning rod for white nationalist groups hoping to expand their presence.
Noam Chomsky: Antifa is a ‘major gift to the Right’ :
“As for Antifa, it’s a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were,” Noam Chomsky told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant.” . . .
Chomsky said, “what they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally self-destructive.”
“When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it’s the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is,” said Chomsky . . . “That’s quite apart from the opportunity costs – the loss of the opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism.”
You should look into how much of this can also be attributed to reddit, which refuses to shut down white nationalist subreddit pages. When you consider reddit is viewed by a much larger portion of the Internet, it becomes clear that 4chan isn’t the sole (and possibly isn’t the largest) source of racist gatherings.
You call everyone who voted for Trump a Nazi, screech at them, attempt to get them deplatformed, doxxed, or fired, then wonder that people keep moving to the right. CNN reiterated it Wednesday.
David Duke did NOT organize Unite The Right, but that is too good to fact-check, like Jackie’s rolling stone rape story.
The KKK, Richard Spencer. Christopher Cantwell, Baked Alaska, Based StickMan, and the ordinary Trump voter are now all “Nazis”. No distinction. No discussion.
Elsewhere you ask why our government doesn’t negotiate with “terrorists”, but you don’t label countries who have sponsored or harbor terrorists with that label. Yet you label all Trump voters “white supremacists” and all but say that no negotiation is possible.
That is why there will be a civil war, a race war. You excuse Antifa and Black Lives Matter violence and there is so much video of them – Ferguson, Baltimore, Berkeley. Yet UniteTheRight would have been peaceful without Antifa there with their clubs, pepper spray, and other weapons, if only the Police kept them apart.
You are telling people they must side with Antifa/BLM violence or be grouped with the Nazis. They must choose Af/BLM or you will assume they are a Nazi. Don’t think people won’t choose Nazi when forced to choose.
“The KKK, Richard Spencer. Christopher Cantwell, Baked Alaska, Based StickMan, and the ordinary Trump voter are now all “Nazis”. No distinction. No discussion.”
First, all the folks you named are violence promoting racists who subscribe to a technically facsiest world view.
“You are telling people they must side with Antifa/BLM violence or be grouped with the Nazis. They must choose Af/BLM or you will assume they are a Nazi. Don’t think people won’t choose Nazi when forced to choose.”
If you’re facing Nazis, you don’t have to really like the people to the left and right of you just as long as everyone’s opposing Nazis.
No one is ever “forced ” to become a Nazi – that’s a voluntary and reprehensible personal choice.
Sounds to me like you’re trying to rationalize or justify some bad personal choices.
If you’re facing nazis and stalinists fighting, you can join the nazis, or you can join the stalinists.
Or you can stay with the liberals. Hell you can be entirely apolitical. You’re doing a “with us or against us”.
Then again, if you claim all the Trump voters are violence promoting racists fascists, then you’re so filled with delusional hatred that I have no idea how to even begin having a conversation.
(queue me being wrongly accused of voting for Trump :P)
tz wrote;
“You call everyone who voted for Trump a Nazi, screech at them, attempt to get them deplatformed, doxxed, or fired, then wonder that people keep moving to the right.”
how many women on the planet, or in this country, have been called, “feminazi”?
of that number, how many showed up in Charlottesville with Nazi flags and tiki torches, shouting white supremacist chants?
yeah, none. pull your socks up and own your own shit.
“What will we die for?” A twisted and broken ideology. In other words, nothing.
IMHO, the only real thing that has changed in the last 20 years is the acceleration of the message of racism with fuel from the internet. Where mass marketing took place in the form of television advertising and commercialism, the internet only has amplified what was already out there and allowed the Neo-Nazi groups to quickly reach their audience in the same manner as any other advertiser.
The Republican party has always been the party of racism and white supremacy or been its advocate. Back the 90s they used to call it Playing The Race Card. With the election of Trump, he’s now playing that same game, only he’s doing it 52 Card Pick Up style.
For anyone who hasn’t played that game as a kid, 52 pickup is a game where you simply take a deck of cards and spray all 52 of them at your opponent. That’s Trump. He’s spraying every racist card he has in his deck straight at his target audience using Twitter or his stump speeches.
The Republican party has always been the party of racism and white supremacy or been its advocate
The “Always” in your statement makes you look ridiculous.
Go back and read a history book. Lincoln was a Republican…. against the slave holding Democrats
Yes. Then, beginning in the 30’s, the Democrats began changing. The African-American vote became more in play. As a result, some Republicans (Like Nixon, Thurmond, and Reagan) shifted to the right.
Further, there is quite a bit of documentation of how Nazis (not neo-Nazis, original Nazis) were welcomed into the Republican party and used for reaching out to Eastern European. (See Chip Berlet’s research on the subject.)
On the other hand, Trump is not the only one who deserves calling out for supporting Nazis. After all, Samantha Power voted against anti-Nazi resolutions at the UN at least THREE times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery
Lincoln, at best, was not as pure as you’re rose plowed glasses would seem to suggest. Perhaps you should change them and read some more.
I hate 52 pick up, our Dad would do that to us all the time – that and driving up all the way to Disneyand when it first opened – I think that was ’55? Anyway being so excited then getting there and he would say, “Well here we are, we saw it, let’s go home.”
I just think we really need to refer to Trump’s rallies or stump speeches, but especially the rallies from now on please as “Nuremberg Rallies”.
These are all just cos-play nerds that the media and organizations like SPLC and ADL built up as an enormous boogey man to tar Trump and soak Hollywood airheads for donations. Trump being an idiot fell right for it, but it’s ridiculous to pretend these hot dog vendors and Wal-Mart are about to set up a 1000 year reich. Richard Spencerand his organization made 13K in 2015, that’s pocket change for the guys at SPLC.
I’m glad to see reasonable people around.
The FBI says that nationally there are 2500 people who identify as NeoNazi or KKK.
I think we can move back to real problems now.
If me and a couple guys get together in a park in togas and start mumbling things in Latin, is the media going to report “It looks like the Romans are back! Will they reestablish the empire?”
nigrum novum pantherae
lol its funny and cute. so thanks for that.
at the same time, not the same. now that we’ve tried out “it’s nothing” let’s also play “why it’s significant, not nothing” When you look, you will find a lot.
Lost my comment..it may be en route. The kettle is at a high simmer. Noticed yesterday up in the States people seemed pensive and uneasy; the ones I did speak with including a CBP officer were thinking the situation is bad and will get worse. One man we always talk to out in Eastlake predicted what is coming in the USA will make Mexico look like a cakewalk, which gave me pause. Locally still no coverage of this crisis in the Mexican press, zero.
Democracy Now ! has good coverage of the anti-fascists, and you have to admit they have good points- nip fascism in the bud, period. Maybe someone else already posted this:
Part One: Antifa- A Look at the Anti-Fascist Movement Confronting white Supremacists in the Streets
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/16/antifa_a_look_at_the_antifascist
Par Two:Antifa – a Look at the Anti-Fascist Movement confronting white Supremacists in the Streets
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/16/part_2_antifa_a_look_at
We’ll see what happens in San Francisco this weekend.
Read a little and learn about history and you’ll see that antifa is exactly what they claim to be against. Violence against anyone who disagrees with them. Just do a simple YouTube search and you’ll see countless acts of violence against women and old men. These white nationalist are the scum of the Earth, but Antifa is right there with them. Why do you think they cover there faces.
Says who? Herr Jerk Off Bannon? You mentioned the youtube videos – so link them. Any in there of them running down crowds of people and killing and seriously injuring them?
I would imagine knowing there are cameras up the ying yang and anticipating infiltration of police and other law enforcement agencies who would have access to these videos or photos they are covering their behinds. Remember dear, historically he nazis killed the resistance/partisans when and if they caught them.
Still, the only killing I see being done is by the coward neo-fascists. They kill, burn down churches and homes then they run and hide like packs of rats, cowards. Gawd, don’t forget in Oakland just a short while back the big fat brave neo-fascist slob who punched out a little tiny less than 115 pound young woman. Wow, what a man, what a man !
Keep your head in the sand and ignore reality. They’ve been doing disgusting acts for a year and half now. Sad when an adult doesn’t want to comfort truth. Just go on youtube and you’ll see countless videos of these scum fascists.
Nah, I’m starting to like the anti-fa mas y mas.
It is utterly absurd to imagine Berkeley students ready to set the campus on fire because Milo Yiannopoulos wants to talk … while John Yoo, who authorized the torture of Iraqis, is a professor there.
It is unreasonable to be astonished that people would turn their backs on anti-racist positions … while loading them down with unrelated agendas like unlimited immigration, special privileges for successfully-undetected illegal immigrants, and not criticizing the Islamic religion.
It is also perhaps foolhardy for an Antifa activist to appear in a mask beside his unmasked canine. I don’t know if the NSA has a dog facial identification database that it cross-indexes with data it has collected on the owners (if I were rich I’d patent the thought and make so much money). But I’ll bet the local cops recognize that dog somewhere on their video.
Being on the right side doesn’t make you right, if you do things the wrong way.
A “left” that can’t bear to hear a ludicrous figure like Milo open his mouth but which doesn’t organize a damn thing about honest to goodness war criminal John Yoo; a “left” that supposedly cares about racism but doesn’t peep when the imperial war machine rains death on brown people around the world; a “left” that spots neo-nazis under every bed in the U.S. but isn’t able to notice them shouting (and shooting) from the rooftops in Ukraine
looks like a really really really effective contemporary right establishment.
Hear! Hear!
Ironically, back in the 2000s, 4chan used to champion good social causes like the raids on Scientology, corporate interest on censoring the Internet (MPAA), support for the Arab Spring and even attacks on homophobic organizations like the Westboro Baptist Church. All of this under the name “Anonymous”, which people often confuse for a hacker organization but it was really more of a symbol and an internal joke, reference or “meme” of the imageboard culture. ( See more on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) )
Of course, things like gore and even child pornography were still posted there and more frequently and less moderated than today, but it was people just being edgy and trying to get reactions, it was the Zeitgeist of the Internet. But things eventually changed when, at the turn of the decade, the original user base grew up and move on from the site and a new generation of teens fell for the infamous Poe’s Law.
There’s no need to said that things have gone too far and that, what they were once a group of young pranksters, is now a political nest for hate groups.
The kettle is boiling over. I noticed yesterday up in the States people seemed
Lost comment, to be continued, sorry.
Racist ranting was normal – and much more serious – back in the 90s on Usenet. Before that there were racist BBSes. Before that there were Hell’s Angels with their swastikas and SS badges.
Like it or not, racism is part of our society. Imagining you can wave a magic wand and make it “abnormal” would be noble, if it weren’t ridiculous. Blacks are up to nine times more likely to go to jail as whites despite not being more criminal. That’s not all just police profiling – some of the police have been pretty responsible about trying not to do that – it’s about phone calls to them when “suspicious people” are seen, it’s about who the store detectives follow, it’s about who the neighbors are watching. It is also about where the CIA flies in its dope and who Freeway Rick sells to, and a lot of other stuff.
Racism is a growth industry. Facebook has patented a whole new way to discriminate without discriminating ( https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/04/facebook-patents-technology-to-help-lenders-discriminate-against-borrowers-based-on-social-connections/ ), by totting up the credit scores of everyone you know, to turn races from skin color defined things into recognized blighted groups of people, with the associations of every single last person in each group known to their all-seeing eye. It won’t just be the machines, and it won’t ignore skin color forever — people will learn to think twice before “friending” random acquaintances with similar interests, looking for better credit, and when all they have is some posts and a screen name and a profile photo, which will they learn to use? I think it was Microsoft that is good at programming racist AIs to join in the “irony poisoning” on Twitter … remains to be seen whether anyone can program a non racist AI. I mean, nobody knows how they work, and we’re supposed to trust the company that evolved their thought processes. Machines without morals, doing whatever sells best in the market … you think there might be more racism coming?
But participating in ironic racism — that IS normal. Because it is all around us. It may seem out of place to throw manure at someone for a joke, but I bet if you work in the manure pile all day you start tossing it like snowballs at coworkers to break the tension. And for God’s sake, a meeting of a few hundred or even a few thousand racists drawn from all over the country is not a demonstration of strength — it’s a demonstration of weakness. Not when you recognize how widespread the practice is, compared to those willing to defend it as rational.
The question is, what do you do about it? Do you let racists speak their piece so you can say how they are wrong, or do you ban their demonstration, five minutes to leave or be arrested, then make them wait in traffic behind waves of unpermitted marchers wandering around in the middle of the road saying “whose streets? OUR streets!” Do you let racists post anonymously on half-comic sites online, or do you make them schedule in-person meetings to trade banned newsletters like Cubans passing “El Paquete”, and maybe some assault rifles and tips about vulnerable minorities nearby in the process? Do you respect democracy and civil liberties, or do you try to suppress racism by force, a tactic which has worked precisely never in the history of man? Germany banned Hitler from speaking – didn’t help them.
The defeat of racists was a miracle — a miracle whose most important parts happened while racist epithets were on every other pair of lips. It was a miracle accomplished with SCLC volunteers, Freedom Riders, that Protestant saint Martin Luther King, Jr., by the noble mourners at the Baptist church in Birmingham … but above all, it was a miracle, and miracles come from God. When a generation of atheistic black-clad pseudo-anarchists take to the streets and imagine that racism ever was conquered by force, claim that defeating it was an act of man and could be an act of man, they stand like dying Moses at the river Jordan. For their failure of understanding, the promised land has been denied to them, and all of us, for a generation to come.
Just quickly here because I’m pulling out sweet peas and putting in mums – but truthfully now, racists were not defeated, there was no miracle – if they had been there would not be zillions of them today.
It’s no imagining that that racism was ever conquered by force, but I imagine that was the same thing the geheime staatspolizel and other nazis said about the partisan uprisings throughout Europe, not to mention the Warsaw Ghetto uprising right ?
The U.S. (but mostly Russia) did defeat Germany by force, it is true. But in that violence we miss the more important transitions.
First, remember the U.S. of 1933 was itself profoundly racist. It practiced eugenics, it practiced Jim Crow, it was a hotbed of the Ku Klux Klan! So how exactly did a racist country defeat racism by force???
Second, remember that Germans did not go back in 1945 to sulk in a hotbed of racial anger and promises to rise again someday. To the contrary, they took to a renewed democracy like ducks to water in the West, and even in the East they certainly did not stick with Naziism, whatever else happened.
So there was this huge war and it made a huge difference in crushing the machinery of occupation (and replacing it by another, especially in the eastern parts of former Germany) … yet it practically does nothing to explain the fall of racism itself.
Further, I feel this video and article is sensationalist by rhetorically asking if a Civil War is coming. That is not a serious question, and is moving attention away institutions that actually create such phenomena.
I wonder why the ANTI-FA aren’t fighting Capitalism and Oligarchical Corporatism, but simply half-witted racists? This is all about distraction while the Autocracy rapes both sides with their social/cultural puppeteering.
The defining moment of Antifa here in America was the Battle of Seattle at the WTO Meetings in Seattle in 99; there was also significant presence in Occupy Wall Street, and I would guess the vast majority of antifascist counter protesters are in organizations that are anti-capitalist, if not outright anarchist or socialist in character.
It’s kinda interesting that part of 4chan is back on the streets again. Last time it was for anonymity and free speech. Now it’s free speech with white nationalism. It’s kinda a follow up I would say.
Nice work, Lee. Is this why the left put you on a blacklist?
HOW WHITE NATIONALISM BECAME NORMAL ONLINE – with the extraordinary efforts of the media and divisive sock puppet comments theatre.
This exactly.
“Let’s call everyone we don’t agree with Nazis”… then “How white nationalism became normal”.
Genius. They’ve created and documented the history of their narrative.
Don’t get so distracted that you don’t glean some value.
Hagiography, American Exceptionalism, The Pledge of Allegiance (Formerly accompanied by this…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute)
This IS the United States of America.
The powers-that-be have _always_ used identity in the most cynical ways possible to keep the subjugated fighting each other instead of the real threat, those who perpetuate monopoly and dynasty.
I concur
Howard Zinn’s book People’s History spells this out rather well. Racial segregation was invented long ago when national unity became a threat to the rentier classes.
Everyone should read that book, especially the chapter titled: “The Revolt of the Guards”.