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invasion infection

see metaphor, rhet

MERRI OK

SEE STATE OF EXEMPTION FASCISM XO MILITARIZATION

SEE VOUGHT 2025 BRNOVICH LEGAL bs

see enemy / other us vs them

see racism

see great replacement CONSPIRACY --> mass shooter el paso buffalo

see xeno caravan border BS

SEE HYPE FEAR ANGER

see eliminationalist rhet dirty parasite

aha ish: schemas mesh?   a virgin is pure and virtuous; commie foreign  ideas are infectious; satan/evil is a contagion we get when contact w/ unclean?

UFO's are aliens (lizard ppl qanon)

this is metaphor/ devil term down= dirt = death =immoral

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but got real with plandemic/covid?

trump only action was china travel ban

5/20

aha: qanon origin "fever swamp" then boosted by alex jones

escalator pipeline by 2 biggest FANGs

aha: youtube to facebook pipeline/escalator to everyone's news feed [2 biggest FANGs, synergy? amplifier?]

plandemic

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2020/heres-how-plandemic-went-viral/

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/may/08/fact-checking-plandemic-documentary-full-false-con/

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/23/facebook-posts/no-democrats-arent-pushing-microchips-fight-corona/

For Erin Gallagher, the conspiratorial documentary “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19” came to her attention like it did for myself — a question from her mom about the veracity of the 26-minute video full of coronavirus misinformation.

After hearing about it from more friends and family, Gallagher decided to investigate how the video went viral so quickly.

Gallagher, an independent social media researcher who has been featured in NBC News and Wired, analyzed 37,000 posts containing the word “plandemic” and 24,000 posts with the name “Judy Mikovits,” the former National Cancer Institute scientist whose work has been discredited, yet is the key expert in “Plandemic.”

Using graphs showing the Facebook groups where “Plandemic” was posted, along with the type of link users were sharing, she found a pipeline of how this video went viral: from YouTube to Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members and names like “Chemtrails Global Skywatch,” “OFFICIAL Q / QANON” and “Drain the Swamp.” YouTube links were the most commonly-shared access points for “Plandemic,” regardless of how quickly YouTube removed them.

“Everyone uses multiple platforms to varying degrees now so nothing is ever limited to just one or two,” Gallagher told me this weekend. “But in this case, YouTube hosted the video, and I suspect many mirrors of it once it started getting pulled down, and these large, highly-active Facebook groups were key to spreading it like wildfire and pushing it into all of our families’ Facebook feeds.”

In the “plandemic” keyword data, which was collected between April 8, and May 8, YouTube links posted on Facebook had nearly 200,000 likes and more than 150,000 each of shares and comments.

I reached out to YouTube and Facebook for comment but haven’t heard back. I will send an updated note with tomorrow’s newsletter if either company responds.

“‘Plandemic’ creators encouraged viewers to download the video from the documentary’s website and post it across video platforms,” said Alex Kaplan, senior researcher at the left-leaning Media Matters for America. “And you could see the impact: dozens of reuploads of the video on YouTube — even after they tried to remove the original — and shares of it on other platforms.”

[video 6 min ]

This isn’t the first YouTube-to-Facebook conspiracy video Kaplan has studied. He found some of the most-viewed YouTube videos touting the debunked claim that Bill Gates is pushing a coronavirus vaccine to microchip the public receiving thousands of engagements on Facebook. And a video calling COVID-19 a “false flag” drew 6 million views on YouTube and more than 1 million engagements on Facebook before it was removed. Both videos went viral over the last two months.

“Be really careful about sharing content coming from places you haven’t heard of before just because it gives you some kind of emotion,” Kaplan said. “Take the time to do some research on the person(s) behind it or the claims made in it, and see if someone, like a fact-checker, has debunked it, before sharing.”

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RWW 5 26

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an 6 25

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reportedly requested that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth grant law enforcement powers—including the authority to detain and arrest—to the thousands of military troops President Donald Trump deployed to Los Angeles to suppress anti-deportation protests. Such powers are typically barred under federal law, and experts warn the move marks another step toward the administration invoking the Insurrection Act.

In a memo, Secretary Noem alleged protestors included "invasive, violent, insurrectionist mobs that seek to protect invaders and military aged males belonging to identified foreign terrorist organizations, and who seek to prevent the deportation of criminal aliens,” as the San Francisco Chronicle first reported.

"The military is generally barred under federal laws from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Noem’s request may be a step toward the administration sidestepping those laws by invoking the Insurrection Act, two legal experts said in interviews," the Chronicle added.

RELATED: ‘Looking for an Excuse’: Trump Under Fire for Violent Slogan as He Sends Marines to LA

Syracuse University Professor of Law Emeritus William Banks told the Chronicle that Noem's move is "a grave escalation" that "may presage the invocation of the Insurrection Act.” Professor Banks is an internationally recognized scholar on constitutional law, national security and counterterrorism law, as well as emergency powers and government surveillance and privacy, according to his biography.

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Secretary Noem also requested “drone surveillance support” and weapons and logistics assistance. President Donald Trump has ordered 700 U.S. Marines and federalized up to 4,000 National Guard troops to go to Los Angeles to help tamp down the protests.

The Associated Press on Monday suggested the protest area itself was small: “Protests over the president’s immigration crackdown spared much of Los Angeles from violence. Weekend clashes swept through several downtown blocks and a handful of other places.”

Other experts weighed in as well.

READ MORE: House Republicans Quietly Slip Anti-LGBTQ ‘Religious Freedom’ Clause Into Funding Bill

Vermont Law and Graduate School professor emeritus Stephen Dycus, an expert in national security law and the Insurrection Act, told the Chronicle that "this could be viewed as a preparation for invoking the Insurrection Act, or it could be viewed as part of a larger effort to frighten people who otherwise would exercise their first amendment guarantee of free speech and protest.”

California Democratic state Senator Tom Umberg, a retired Army colonel and JAG officer, "said he found the letter’s requests alarming."

“It looks like a preparation for a military assault,” Umberg said. “This looks like a subterfuge to create some sort of rationale for some sort of invocation of the Insurrection Act.”

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration expert and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council explained that the "reason that there is civil unrest in multiple cities throughout the country is because the Trump administration ordered ICE to engage in near-indiscriminate arrests, rounding up otherwise law-abiding people with no criminal records."

Political scientist Dr. Norman Ornstein, a contributing editor for the Atlantic, wrote, "this is a prelude to invoking the insurrection act and declaring martial law."

READ MORE: ‘Completely Obliterated’: Trump Claims LA Saved From Ruin by His National Guard Action

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rww 05/23/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

Doug Wilson has built a theocratic regime in Moscow, Idaho, where men rule and biblical teachings guide everything. Now he’s taking the model national, with a receptive crowd in the GOP.

If it seems as if there have been a lot of new federal investigations into Democrats and their allies lately, it’s not your imagination.

The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.

Yesterday, during a televised meeting, President Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with a farcical presentation about a “genocide” of white South Africans. But while the claim of a “white genocide” in South Africa is a racist fiction, the white nationalists who spent years pushing it celebrated Trump’s remarks.

Because President Trump deeply values accuracy and integrity in public conduct, he will be mortified to learn that a photo he brandished during his recent Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa perpetrated a massive deception. The photo was supposed to display dead white South African farmers—a Trump obsession—but instead, it showed body bags from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is producing humanitarian horrors.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told Fox News on Thursday that he doesn’t “drink out of a straw” because “that’s what the women in my house do.”

===}:

REF PP

The Trump Administration’s Legal Battle to Cast Immigration as an “Invasion” — ProPublica

The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.

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When top Trump adviser Stephen Miller threatened on May 9 that the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus in response to an “invasion” from undocumented immigrants, he was operating on a fringe legal theory that a right-wing faction has been working to legitimize for more than a decade.

“The Constitution is clear — and that of course is the supreme law of the land — that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller said earlier this month in response to a question about Trump’s threat to suspend habeas corpus, the legal right of a prisoner to challenge their detention. Days after Miller’s remarks, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem issued the same warning when a member of a House panel asked her if the number of illegal border crossings meets the threshold for suspending the right. “I’m not a constitutional lawyer,” Noem said. “But I believe it does.”

Hard-liners have referred to immigrants as “invaders” as long as the U.S. has had immigration. By 2022, invasion rhetoric, which had previously been relegated to white nationalist circles, had become such a staple of Republican campaign ads that most of the public agreed an invasion of the U.S. via the southern border was underway.

Now, however, the claim that the U.S. is under invasion has become the legal linchpin of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-immigrant campaign.

The claim is Trump’s central justification for invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport roughly140 Venezuelans to CECOT, the Salvadoran megaprison, without due process. (The administration cited different legal authority for the remaining deportees.) The Trump administration contends they are members of a gang, Tren de Aragua, that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is directing to infiltrate and operate in the United States. Lawyers and families of many of the deportees have presented evidence the prisoners are not even members of Tren de Aragua.

The contention is also the throughline of Trump’s day one executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” That document calls for the expansion of immigration removal proceedings without court hearings and for legal attacks against sanctuary jurisdictions, places that refuse to commit local resources to immigration enforcement.

So far, no court has bought the idea that the U.S. is truly under invasion, as defined by the Constitution or the Alien Enemies Act, on the handful of occasions the government has used the argument to justify supercharged immigration enforcement. Four federal judges, including one Trump appointee, have said the situation Trump describes fails to meet the definition of an invasion. Tren de Aragua “may well be engaged in narcotics trafficking, but that is a criminal matter, not an invasion or predatory incursion,” U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein wrote. Indeed, Trump’s own intelligence agencies found that Maduro is not directing the gang. The Supreme Court has not ruled on the question but froze any more deportations without due process on May 16.

The Trump legal push has been in the works for years. After Trump left the White House, two of his loyalists, former Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli and his now-two-time budget chief Russell Vought, quietly built a consensus for the invasion legal theory among state Republican officials and ultimately helped persuade Texas to give it a test run in court.

Most legal scholars reject the idea that the wave of undocumented immigration fits the original definition of what an invasion is, but they worry nonetheless. When U.S. District Judge Stephanie L. Haines, a Trump appointee, issued a preliminary ruling earlier this month that allowed Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, she did not label immigrants “invaders.” Instead, she proposed that Tren de Aragua was “the modern equivalent of a pirate or a robber.”

If the Supreme Court ultimately takes up the invasion question, a ruling like Haines’ offers a blueprint for sidestepping the issue while giving Trump what he wants, or for embracing the invasion theory wholesale, legal scholars said.

“All this really comes down to the issue of whether the United States Supreme Court is going to allow a president to behave essentially as an autocratic dictator if he’s prepared to make entirely fictitious factual declarations that trigger monarchical power,” said Frank Bowman, a legal historian and professor emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Law.

Under the Constitution, if the United States is invaded, Congress has the power to call up the militia and can allow the suspension of habeas corpus, the constitutional right that is the core of due process. The states, which are normally forbidden from unilaterally engaging in war, can do so according to the Constitution if they are “actually invaded.”

The Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime law enacted during a naval conflict with France, also rests on the definition of an invasion. It allows the president to expel “aliens” during “any invasion or predatory incursion … by any foreign nation or government.” It has only ever been invoked three times, during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II.

Habeas corpus has likewise been suspended only a handful of times in the Constitution’s nearly 240-year history, including during Reconstruction, to put down violent rebellions in the South by the Ku Klux Klan; in 1905, to suppress the Moro uprising against U.S. control of the Philippines; and in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor in order to place Japanese Americans under martial law. In each of these cases, the executive branch acted after receiving permission from Congress.

An exception was in 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln unilaterally suspended habeas corpus at the outbreak of the Civil War. This provoked a direct confrontation with Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, who ruled that only Congress was empowered to take such an extraordinary step. Congress later papered over the conflict by voting to give Lincoln the authority for the war’s duration.

Today, nearly every historian and constitutional scholar is in agreement that, when it comes to suspending habeas, Congress has the power to decide if the conditions are met.

“The Constitution does not vest this power in the President,” future Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in 2014. “Scholars and courts have overwhelmingly endorsed the position that, Lincoln’s unilateral suspensions of the writ notwithstanding, the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive authority to decide when the predicates specified by the Suspension Clause are satisfied.” Even then, the Constitution only allows Congress to act in extreme circumstances — “when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University who has closely followed these arguments, argues there is virtually no evidence that the drafters of the Constitution thought of an “invasion” as anything other than the kind of organized incursion that would traditionally spark a war.

“The original meaning of ‘invasion’ in the Constitution is actually what sort of the average normal person would think it means,” Somin said. “As James Madison put it, invasion is an operation of war. What Vladimir Putin did to Ukraine, that’s an invasion. What Hamas did to Israel, that’s an invasion. On the other hand, illegal migration, or drug smuggling, or ordinary crime — that’s not an invasion.”

In 1994, Florida Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles Jr. filed the first modern-day lawsuit arguing otherwise. The Haitian and Cuban refugee crises had spawned a new wave of anti-immigration sentiment, and hard-liners accused the federal government of owing states billions for handling immigrants’ supposed crimes and welfare claims. Chiles, who died in 1998, took the concept one step further. He filed a $1.5 billion suit claiming the U.S. had violated the section of the Constitution stating the federal government “shall protect each [state] against Invasion.”

Federal courts slapped down his lawsuit — and a spate of copycat suits from Arizona, California, New York and New Jersey — and the legal case for calling immigration an invasion died out.

In the late 2000s, a group of far-right voices began to revive this approach. Ken Cuccinelli was among the first and most strident. He was an early member of State Legislators for Legal Immigration, part of a powerful network of anti-immigration groups that pioneered efforts like ending birthright citizenship. The organization contended that immigrants were “foreign invaders” as described in the Constitution.

Cuccinelli evangelized for the theory as he rose from a state legislator to an official in Trump’s first Department of Homeland Security.

“Under war powers, there’s no due process,” Cuccinelli told Breitbart radio shortly before his appointment in the first Trump administration. “They can literally just line their National Guard up with, presumably with riot gear like they would if they had a civil disturbance, and turn people back at the border. … You just point them back across the river and let them swim for it.”

Cuccinelli got traction after Trump’s reelection loss. He joined a think tank Vought had founded as its immigration point man. During his time in the first Trump administration, Vought became frustrated that the president’s goals were frequently thwarted. He founded the Center for Renewing America, dedicated to a sweeping vision of remaking the government and society — what ultimately became Project 2025.

In remarks to a private audience at his think tank in 2023, Vought, who is now Trump’s budget chief and the intellectual force behind Trump’s unprecedented executive power grab, said he specifically championed the term “invasion” because it “unlocked” extraordinary presidential powers.

“One of the reasons why we were very, so insistent about coming up with the whole notion of the border being an ‘invasion’ because there were Constitutional authorities that were a part of being able to call it an invasion,” Vought said. Documented and ProPublica obtained videos of Vought’s speech last year. Vought and Cuccinelli did not respond to requests for comment.

In 2021 and 2022, Cuccinelli, with Vought’s help, mounted press conferences and privately urged Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to proclaim that their states were being invaded.

After Arizona’s then-attorney general, Mark Brnovich, released a legal opinion in February 2022 proclaiming violent cartels had “actually invaded” and opened the door for Ducey to deploy the state’s National Guard, Vought bragged to his audience that he and Cuccinelli had personally provided draft language for the opinion. In a previous email to ProPublica, Brnovich acknowledged speaking to Cuccinelli but said his opinion was “drafted and written by hard working attorneys (including myself) in our office.”

Ducey never acted on the invasion theory. But Abbott was more receptive. He invoked the state’s war powers, citing the “actually invaded” clause, in a 2022 open letter to President Joe Biden. “Two years of inaction on your part now leave Texas with no choice,” he wrote. Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesperson for Abbott, said the governor “declared an invasion due to the Biden Administration’s repeated failures in upholding its constitutional duty to secure the border and defend states.”

Abbott ordered the banks of the Rio Grande river to be strung with razor wire and a shallow section to be obstructed by a 1,000-foot string of man-sized buoys and blades and signed a law, S.B. 4, giving state authorities the power to deport undocumented immigrants.

When the Justice Department sued, Abbott’s administration argued in legal briefs that its actions were justified in part because his state was under “invasion.” Twenty-three Republican attorneys general filed a brief in agreement.

“In both scope and effect, the wave of illegal migrants pouring across the border is like an invasion,” their brief read. “The Constitution’s text, the principle of sovereignty in the federal design, and the broader constitutional structure all support the conclusion that the States have a robust right to engage in self-defense. Contained within that right is presumptively acts to repel invasion.”

Texas’ invasion argument did not prevail. The 5th Circuit has blocked S.B. 4., and a lower court and a three-judge panel skewered Abbott’s constitutional argument in the buoy case. In 2024, the full 5th Circuit ruled under another law that Abbott was entitled to leave the floating barriers in place. It avoided ruling on Texas’ invasion claim altogether — but not without one judge dissenting. Trump appointee James Ho argued courts have no ability to second-guess executives about which threats rise to the level of an invasion and justify military action.

In his speech, Vought credited “the massive take-up rate” of the invasion legal theory to his and Cuccinelli’s behind-the-scenes efforts. Now the concept is being taken seriously by the president’s top advisers as they threaten to upend a core civil liberty.

“The definition of ‘invasion’ has broad implications for civil liberties — that’s pretty obvious,” Somin said. “They’re trying to use this as a tool to get around constitutional and other legal constraints on deportation and exclusion that would otherwise exist. But they also want to use it to undermine civil liberties” for U.S. citizens.

Molly Redden is covering legal affairs and how the second Trump administration is attempting to reshape the legal system. You can send her tips at molly.redden@propublica.org or via Signal at mollyredden.14.

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AN 4 25

On Monday, President Donald Trump issued a new executive order just shy of the 100th day of his second term that has some experts and academics sounding the alarm.

Trump's new order, which is entitled "Strengthening and Unleashing America's Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens," makes various declarations about the administration's commitment to supporting law enforcement professionals in the opening paragraphs. However, one section further down specifically mentions the U.S. military and the administration's intent to have enlisted service members participate in civilian law enforcement actions.

"Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of agencies as appropriate, shall increase the provision of excess military and national security assets in local jurisdictions to assist State and local law enforcement ... [and] shall determine how military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime."

READ MORE:'Terrible idea': Republican senator slams Mike Johnson's 'dishonesty'

"The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall utilize the Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) formed in accordance with Executive Order 14159 of January 20, 2025 (Protecting the American People Against Invasion) to coordinate and advance the objectives of this order," the order continued.

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That section in particular prompted Lead Matthew Noe, who is the lead collection & knowledge management librarian at Harvard Medical School, to call the order "legitimately frightening." Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based writer Susan Keiser posted to Bluesky: "Serious Question: Is this martial law[?]" Former criminal defense investigator Andrew H. Sowards responded to the order by simply declaring: "Not good."

"We're already a police state," Daily Beast columnist David Rothkopf skeeted (the accepted term for Bluesky posts). "But now, thanks to this EO, moreso."

Deploying the U.S. military within American borders to act as a police force would be a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is a 143 year-old law prohibiting the president from ordering the military to double as law enforcement. As the Brennan Center for Justice explained in 2021, Congress passed the law during Reconstruction in order to prevent the military from being used to enforce Jim Crow laws in former Confederate states after the Civil War. Additionally, deploying the military to conduct law enforcement activity violates parts of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution — which were ratified in direct response to the British military's abuse of colonists prior to the Revolutionary War.

READ MORE:'Destroyed for no reason': Trump fires would-be mom hour after she nabs foster parent slot

Click here to read the full executive order.

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RWW 4 25

...Before introducing Mack, Peters delivered a rant denouncing immigrants as “parasitic criminals” and “savages.” He slammed the Trump administration for not delivering sufficiently on its promise of mass deportations. “Sheriffs have the power to enforce federal immigration laws in their jurisdiction,” Peters said, “and they also have the power to arrest treasonous government officials who allow this country to be invaded.” ...

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STATE OF EMERG --> EL SALV bs

AN 4 25

Trump is authorizing the U.S. military to take jurisdiction over federal lands along the southern border to help enforce his immigration agenda.

On Friday, Trump issued a memorandum entitled "Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions" to the secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security, reports USA Today.

The memo names the Roosevelt Reservation, which lies between Mexico and the states of California, Arizona and New Mexico, as "National Defense Areas.” And it frames immigrants as “invaders” threatening “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the United States.”

READ MORE: (Opinion) Trump is about to target something far more terrifying than tariffs

“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats. The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past,” the memo reads.

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While long, the territory is only about 60 feet wide, "the distance from home plate to the pitcher’s mound,” according to Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America, in Washington, D.C.

Isacson told USA Today the consequences of the Department of Defense assuming control of federal land at the border was not “immediately clear,” but he said it could result in “more severe criminal charges for migrants” unlawfully crossing the border. This is primarily because migrants may qualify as having “trespassed on a military installation” if they set foot on it, and they could potentially face more than the federal misdemeanor of “entry without inspection.”

“In carrying out activities under this memorandum, members of the Armed Forces will follow rules for the use of force prescribed by the Secretary of Defense,” the memo reads.

READ MORE:Could be the last one standing': Trump aims to 'illegally remove' head of bipartisan board

The administration is increasingly pressing migrants to self-deport. Earlier this week the administration asked the Social Security Administration to relist thousands of immigrants as “dead” to remove their ability to legally work in the country and access credit and banking services.

American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posted to Bluesky that Trump's deployment of the military to take over the Roosevelt Reservation could be an effort to "bypass the Posse Comitatus Act," which prohibits the U.S. military from enforcing civilian law. He added that Trump's move was "bad and dumb."

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note abbott? tex gop tries to use invasion as legal justification for fuckery

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AHA DOH INVASION IS A MYTH // GRT VIOL RHET, HYPE FEAR --> MASS SHOOT

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AN 2 25

When it comes to talking about immigrants, the word “invasion” is both explosive and inaccurate, experts and human rights advocates say. Yet with Donald Trump back in the White House, it’s showing up on official orders and other communications — and it’s being echoed by Ohio politicians.

Just in the waning weeks of January, Trump issued two executive orders using the language — “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion” and “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.”

On Thursday, more than 80 civil and human rights organizations sent a letter to congressional leaders calling on them to reject what the groups said was a “false and bigoted conspiracy theory.”

As at times past, numbers of migrants spiked at the U.S.-Mexico border at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and severely strained resources. That led certain politicians on the right — including Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and now-Ohio U.S. Sen.Bernie Moreno — to claim it was an invasion even though migrants weren’t driving tanks, carrying machine guns, or even functioning as an organized group. They don’t even committed crime at rates as high as native-born Americans

“Immigration policy is an important topic that demands congressional discussion and debate,” the groups’ letter to Republican and Democratic congressional leaders said. “We implore Senate and House leadership not to support or fund efforts that are led by a fictional and dangerous conspiracy theory purporting an ‘invasion.’ Congress should not provide the justification for continued attacks on our democracy.”

In Texas, Abbott has tried to portray what has happened at the border as a military invasion as he seeks to take border-security responsibilities into his own hands. Such powers have traditionally been reserved for the federal government because it would create chaos if each of the 50 states was in charge of its own policy and security when it came to dealing with foreign countries.

Also, the places along the border that Abbott claimed were the site of a military invasion are among the safest communities in the country. So, even when immigrants showed up in large numbers, that didn’t amount to the military invasion Abbott claimed in an attempt to get around federal primacy, a judge ruled last year.

“Contemporary definitions of ‘invasion’ and ‘actually invaded’ as well as common usage of the term in the late Eighteenth Century predominantly referred to an ‘invasion’ as a hostile and organized military force, too powerful to be dealt with by ordinary judicial proceedings,” U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra wrote last year as he blocked Abbott. “This Court could not locate a single contemporaneous use of the term to refer to surges in unauthorized foreign immigration.”

After briefly lifting it, the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld Ezra’s stay and is scheduled to hear Texas’s appeal in July.

Meanwhile, many experts have said false claims of invasion have prompted murderous rampages against vulnerable communities. For example, Patrick Crusius in 2019 drove from Dallas to El Paso, posted a manifesto saying he was stopping an “invasion” at the border and went to a Walmart. There he used an AK-47 to murder 23 and injured 22 more.

Some experts say the fact that such false, incendiary rhetoric can be deadly isn’t just incidental, it’s part of the point. It scares immigrants and others from standing up to those who use it, and that serves the political ends of those who use such rhetoric, those experts say.

Not to fight false claims that we’re being invaded undermines democracy, a program director at one of the groups that signed the letter to congressional leaders said in a statement.

“Depicting migrants and refugees as an ‘invasion’ is not only a dangerous and bigoted attempt to fearmonger, it is now the basis of an authoritarian power grab,” said Liz Yates of the Western States Center.

In their letter, all the groups said the harm will only spread unless those in power stand against claims of an “invasion.”

“This bigoted narrative has already been leveraged to promote policies that have and will continue to have a devastating impact on immigrant communities,” the letter said. “It has also inspired a pattern of white nationalist and antisemitic deadly attacks across the nation. Use of this bigoted conspiracy theory as justification for a policy agenda poses a public safety risk not only to the immigrant communities who are targeted for policy enforcement, but also to Jewish, Black, Brown, Muslim, LGBTQ+, AANHPI, Latinx and many other communities who are implicated in this conspiratorial rhetoric. It also constitutes a direct threat to our democracy.” Congress must refuse to further legitimize this bigotry by sanctioning or funding policies in its name.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

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MMA

Laura Loomer takes credit for Trump’s Panama policy

Loomer: Trump “called me” about Panama and he “took my advice, and now you see President Trump calling for the United States to take back the canal” and an “audit of all NGOs”

Written by Alex Kaplan

Published 02/11/25

Far-right activist Laura Loomer, a self-proclaimed “proud Islamaphobe” who has said she is “pro-white nationalism,” stated on her Rumble show that during the 2024 election, she consulted with President Donald Trump on the Panama Canal, migration in Panama’s Darién Gap, and non-governmental organizations. Loomer claimed that Trump then “took [her] advice” on those subjects.

Loomer has a history of promoting virulent xenophobia and anti-Black bigotry, conspiracy theories about mass shootings, and white nationalism. Despite this history, Trump has associated with Loomer, attempting to hire her for his 2024 presidential campaign and traveling with her to both his debate against then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and to a September 11 memorial ceremony. Trump has also repeatedly promoted Loomer’s content online, and Loomer has even claimed that Trump told her, “You’re so smart. ... I read your website every day.” (Trump’s campaign later tried to distance itself from Loomer, though Trump refused to denounce her, calling her a “free spirit” and a “supporter.”)

On her show, Loomer has repeatedly pushed claims that Panama, along with the Darién Gap, is a pipeline for an “invasion” of migrants to America that could lead to terrorism. According to The New York Times, Loomer also traveled to Panama — as did some other right-wing media entities — and she posted reportedly deceptively edited content from her travels, falsely suggesting that “Democrats are encouraging” migration “to create new, illegal voters” and casting international aid organizations as “profiteers making money off human misery.” Trump reportedly reposted one of her videos from the trip on Truth Social.

On February 7, Loomer claimed that Trump “actually called me one day, during the last election season, and was asking me about the Darién Gap, and he was asking me about my videos and my trip to Panama,” and she noted that she urged him to “make it a policy position to take back the Panama Canal” because “the CCP has an enormous presence in the Canal Zone and how they are facilitating illegal immigration, and that’s why we have such an influx of Chinese invaders coming into our country.”

She further elaborated that Trump told her that “he was going to be looking into it” and specifically wanted her “input on the issue of the Panama Canal” and “on the issue of the illegal alien invasion taking place in the Darién Gap and Panama.” She additionally claimed that she “had several conversations with President Trump and also Marco Rubio and other officials in the Trump administration about these NGOs and about the activities in Panama.”

Loomer then claimed that Trump “took my advice,” and boasted, “I’ve been told directly by people who work for President Trump that my videos have played a massive role in opening President Trump’s eyes to NGO corruption and the chaos that is happening down in the Panama Canal Zone.” Last year, Loomer claimed on her show that undocumented immigrants in Panama were being “supported” by NGOs and urged Trump to seize the Panama Canal as a supposed solution.

Ahead of Trump’s second inauguration, he threatened to take back the canal, and Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said that the administration would “shut down” the Darién Gap. In early February, Trump also ordered an audit of federal funding to NGOs.

Video

Citation

From the February 7, 2025, edition of Loomer Unleashed, streamed on Rumble

LAURA LOOMER (HOST): Somebody said the Darién Gap story was only Laura. So on top of all the news with USAID tonight, I was mentioning in my monologue how the NGOs are directly tied to USAID because they’re getting their funding through USAID. Well, as many of you know, I’m close with President Trump. I do not work for President Trump. But when I traveled to the Darién Gap last year, and, of course, we crowdfunded all the expenses for that trip here on Loomer Unleashed, I went to the Darién Gap migrant camps, and I uncovered a lot of fraud and a lot of illegal activity by NGOs, including groups like HIAS, that were giving maps to illegal alien invaders who were coming into our country. And these videos ended up going viral.

And believe it or not, President Trump actually called me one day, during the last election season, and was asking me about the Darién Gap, and he was asking me about my videos and my trip to Panama. And I told the president, I said, “I really think that, in your second administration, you should make it a policy position to take back the Panama Canal.” And he was like, “Oh, well, you know, what makes you say that?” And I explained to him the CCP interference and how the CCP has an enormous presence in the Canal Zone and how they are facilitating illegal immigration, and that’s why we have such an influx of Chinese invaders coming into our country. You see they’re coming in through the Mexican border, but they’re getting to the Mexican border through the Darién Gap, and then they’re making their way up through Costa Rica through these buses.

And long story short, President Trump took my advice, and now you see President Trump calling for the United States to take back the canal. Senator Marco Rubio, who is now the secretary of state, has traveled to Panama and the Darién — and the Panama to have discussions about taking back the Panama Canal. And now President Trump yesterday signed an executive memo calling for an audit of all NGOs. And so it’s really amazing because you’re going to see groups like HIAS now get audited.

…

And I received a phone call from President Trump who said that he was going to be looking into it and wanted my input on this. He wanted my input on the issue of the Panama Canal, and he wanted my input on the issue of the illegal alien invasion taking place in the Darién Gap and Panama. And so I’m proud that I have had several conversations with President Trump and also Marco Rubio and other officials in the Trump administration about these NGOs and about the activities in Panama. And so I was very excited yesterday to see President Trump sign this executive memo, calling for all of the NGOs to be audited. So this is really incredible and it’s exciting.

…

And I’ve been told directly by people who work for President Trump that my videos have played a massive role in opening President Trump’s eyes to NGO corruption and the chaos that is happening down in the Panama Canal Zone.

//

  1. ### Donald Trump and “pro-white nationalism” pundit Laura Loomer: A guide to their relationship

09/12/24

  1. ### Sean Hannity says he would love to see the Panama Canal and Greenland “become part of the United States”

01/06/25

  1. ### Donald Trump refuses to denounce Laura Loomer's extremism, calling her a “free spirit” and a “supporter”

09/13/24

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11/22/2024

by

Kyle Mantyla

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pro pub an 10 24

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

A key ally to former President Donald Trump detailed plans to deploy the military in response to domestic unrest, defund the Environmental Protection Agency and put career civil servants “in trauma” in a series of previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term.

In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions.

He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”

ProPublica and Documented obtained videos of the two speeches Vought delivered during events for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank led by Vought. The think tank’s employees or fellows include Jeffrey Clark, the former senior Justice Department lawyer who aided Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election result; Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting deputy secretary in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; and Mark Paoletta, a former senior budget official in the Trump administration. Other Trump allies such as former White House adviser Steve Bannon and U.S. Reps. Chip Roy and Scott Perry either spoke at the conferences or appeared on promotional materials for the events.

Vought does not hide his agenda or shy away from using extreme rhetoric in public. But the apocalyptic tone and hard-line policy prescriptions in the two private speeches go further than his earlier pronouncements. As OMB director, Vought sought to use Trump’s 2020 “Schedule F” executive order to strip away job protections for nonpartisan government workers. But he has never spoken in such pointed terms about demoralizing federal workers to the point that they don’t want to do their jobs. He has spoken in broad terms about undercutting independent agencies but never spelled out sweeping plans to defund the EPA and other federal agencies.

Vought’s plans track closely with Trump’s campaign rhetoric about using the military against domestic protesters or what Trump has called the “enemy within.” Trump’s desire to use the military on U.S. soil recently prompted his longest-serving chief of staff, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, to speak out, saying Trump “certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.”

Other policies mentioned by Vought dovetail with Trump’s plans, such as embracing a wartime footing on the southern border and rolling back transgender rights. Agenda 47, the campaign’s policy blueprint, calls for revoking President Joe Biden’s order expanding gender-affirming care for transgender people; Vought uses even more extreme language, decrying the “transgender sewage that’s being pumped into our schools and institutions” and referring to gender-affirming care as “chemical castration.”

Since leaving government, Vought has reportedly remained a close ally of the former president. Speaking in July to undercover journalists posing as relatives of a potential donor, Vought said Trump had “blessed” the Center for Renewing America and was “very supportive of what we do,” CNN reported.

Vought did not respond to requests for comment.

"Since the Fall of 2023, President Trump’s campaign made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former staff, represent policies for the second term,” Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said in a statement. She did not directly address Vought’s statements.

Karoline Leavitt, his campaign’s national press secretary, added there have been no discussions on who would serve in a second Trump administration.

In addition to running his think tank, Vought was the policy director of the Republican National Committee’s official platform committee ahead of the nominating convention. He’s also an architect of Project 2025, the controversial coalition effort mapping out how a second Trump administration can quickly eliminate obstacles to rolling out a hard-right policy agenda.

As ProPublica and Documented reported, Project 2025 has launched a massive program to recruit, vet and train thousands of people to “be ready on day one” to serve in a future conservative administration. (Trump has repeatedly criticized Project 2025, and his top aides have said the effort has no connection to the official campaign despite the dozens of former Trump aides and advisers who contributed to Project 2025.)

Vought is widely expected to take a high-level government role if Trump wins a second term. His name has even been mentioned as a potential White House chief of staff. The videos obtained by ProPublica and Documented offer an unfiltered look at Vought’s worldview, his plans for a Trump administration and his fusing of MAGA ideology and Christian nationalism.

A Shadow Government in Waiting

In his 2024 speech, Vought said he was spending the majority of his time helping lead Project 2025 and drafting an agenda for a future Trump presidency. “We have detailed agency plans,” he said. “We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now, and we are sorting out the legal authorities for all of what President Trump is running on.”

Vought laid out how his think tank is crafting the legal rationale for invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that gives the president broad power to use the military for domestic law enforcement. The Washington Post previously reported the issue was at the top of the Center for Renewing America’s priorities.

“We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” he said. Vought held up the summer 2020 unrest following George Floyd’s murder as an example of when Trump ought to have had the ability to deploy the armed forces but was stymied.

Vought’s preparations for a future Trump administration involve building a “shadow” Office of Legal Counsel, he told the gathered supporters in May 2023. That office, part of the Justice Department, advises the president on the scope of their powers. Vought made clear he wants the office to help Trump steamroll the kind of internal opposition he faced in his first term.

Historically, the OLC has operated with a degree of independence. “If, all of a sudden, the office is full of a bunch of loyalists whose only job is to rubber-stamp the White House’s latest policy directive, whose only goal is to justify the ends by whatever means, that would be quite dangerous,” said an attorney who worked in the office under a previous Republican administration and requested anonymity to speak freely.

Another priority, according to Vought, was to “defund” certain independent federal agencies and demonize career civil servants, which include scientists and subject matter experts. Project 2025’s plan to revive Schedule F, an attempt to make it easier to fire a large swath of government workers who currently have civil service protections, aligns with Vought’s vision.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.

“We want to put them in trauma.”

Vought also revealed the extent of the Center for Renewing America’s role in whipping up right-wing panic ahead of the 2022 midterms over an increase in asylum-seekers crossing at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In February 2022, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich released a legal opinion claiming the state was under “invasion” by violent cartels and could invoke war powers to deploy National Guard troops to its southern border. The legally dubious “invasion” theory became a potent Republican talking point.

Vought said in the 2023 speech that he and Cuccinelli, the former top Homeland Security official for Trump, personally lobbied Brnovich on the effort. “We said, ‘Look, you can write your own opinion, but here’s a draft opinion of what this should look like,’” Vought said.

The nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight later obtained an email in which Vought pitched the “invasion” framework to Brnovich.

Brnovich wrote in an email to ProPublica that he recalled multiple discussions with Cuccinelli about border security. But he added that “the invasion opinion was the result of a formal request from a member of the Arizona legislature. And I can assure you it was drafted and written by hard working attorneys (including myself) in our office.”

In the event Trump loses, Vought called for Republican leaders of states such as Florida and Texas to “create red-state sanctuaries” by “kicking out all the feds as much as they possibly can.”

“Nothing Short of a Quiet Revolution”

The two speeches delivered by Vought, taken together, offer an unvarnished look at the animating ideology and political worldview of a key figure in the MAGA movement.

Over the last century, Vought said, the U.S. has “experienced nothing short of a quiet revolution” and abandoned what he saw as the true meaning and force of the Constitution. The country today, he argued, was a “post-constitutional regime,” one that no longer adhered to the separation of powers among the three branches of government as laid out by the framers.

He lamented that the conservative right and the nation writ large had become “too secular” and “too globalist.” He urged his allies to join his mission to “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.”

And in one of his most dramatic flourishes, he likened the 2024 election to moments in America’s history when the country was facing all-out war.

“We are here in the year of 2024, a year that very well [could] — and I believe it will — rival 1776 and 1860 for the complexity and the uncertainty of the forces arrayed against us,” Vought told his audience, referring to years when the colonies declared independence from Britain and the first state seceded over President Abraham Lincoln’s election. “God put us here for such a time as this.”

Vought said that independent agencies and unelected bureaucrats and experts wield far too much power while the traditional legislative process is a sham. He extended that critique to agencies like the Department of Justice and the Federal Reserve, whose independence from the White House had long been protected by both political parties.

“The left in the U.S. doesn’t want an energetic president with the power to motivate the executive branch to the will of the American people consistent with the laws of the country,” he said in the 2024 speech. “They don’t want a vibrant Congress where great questions are debated and decided in front of the American people. They don’t want empowered members. They want discouraged and bored backbenchers.”

He added, “The all-empowered career expert like Tony Fauci is their model, wielding power behind the curtains.” Fauci was one of the top public health experts under Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and a key figure in coordinating the national response.

What sets Vought apart from most of his fellow conservative activists is that he accuses powerful organizations on the right of being complicit in the current system of government, singling out the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the conservative and libertarian legal network co-chaired by activist Leonard Leo. The society is widely seen as an instrumental force in cultivating young conservative lawyers and building a bench of future judges whose embrace of legal theories like originalism and textualism have led to decisions overturning abortion rights, environmental protections and social welfare policies.

Yet in his 2024 speech, Vought accused the Federalist Society and “originalist judges” of being a part of the problem, perpetuating the “post-constitutional structure” that Vought lamented by not ruling more aggressively to weaken or dismantle independent regulatory agencies that Vought and his allies view as illegitimate or unconstitutional. CHEVRON DEFERENCE?!

It was “like being in a contract quietly revoked two decades ago, in which one party didn’t tell the other,” he said. “At some point, reality needs to set in. Instead, we have the vaunted so-called Federalist Society and originalist judges acting as a Praetorian Guard for this post-constitutional structure.”

Echoing Trump’s rhetoric, Vought implicitly endorsed the false claim of a stolen 2020 election and likened the media’s debunkings of that claim to Chinese Communist propaganda.

“In the aftermath of the election, we had all these people going around saying, ‘Well, I don’t see any evidence of voter fraud. The media’s not giving enough [of] a compelling case,’” he said. “Well, that compelling case has emerged. But does a Christian in China ask and come away saying, ‘You know, there’s no persecution, because I haven’t read about it in the state regime press?’ No, they don’t.”

Vought referred to the people detained for alleged crimes committed on Jan. 6, 2021, as “political prisoners” and defended the lawyers Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman, who have both faced criminal charges for their role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Federal law enforcement agencies, he added, “are keeping political opponents in jail, and I think we need to be honest about that.”

The left, Vought continued, has the ultimate goal of ending representative democracy altogether. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said, “in which our adversaries already hold the weapons of the government apparatus, and they have aimed it at us. And they are going to continue to aim it until they no longer have to win elections.”

When Democrats called Trump an “existential threat to democracy,” they were not merely calling for his defeat at the ballot box, he said, but were using “coded language the national security state uses overseas when they are overthrowing other governments” to discourage the military from putting down anti-Trump protests should he win.

“They’re making Trump out to be a would-be dictator or an authoritarian,” he said. “So they’re actively working now to ensure, on a number of levels, that the military will perceive this as dictatorial and therefore not respond to any orders to quell any violence.”

Trump, Vought insisted, has the credibility and the track record to defeat the “Marxist” left and bring about the changes that Vought and his MAGA allies seek. In his view, the Democratic Party’s agenda and its “quiet revolution” could be stopped only by a “radical constitutionalist,” someone in the mold of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison. For Vought, no one was in a better position to fill that role than Trump.

“We have in Donald Trump a man who is so uniquely positioned to serve this role, a man whose own interests perfectly align with the interests of the country,” Vought said. “He has seen what it has done to him, and he has seen what they are trying to do to the country.

“That,” he added, “is nothing more than a gift of God.”

}

===

wapo no lnx

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Conservative media is familiar with Buffalo suspect’s alleged ‘theory’

The scene Sunday morning after the deadly shooting Saturday in Buffalo. (Libby March for The Washington Post)

By Paul Farhi

Updated May 15, 2022 at 4:26 p.m. EDT|Published May 15, 2022

The suspect in Saturday’s killing of 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket allegedly wrote a document endorsing “great replacement theory,” a once-fringe racist idea that became a popular refrain among media figures such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News and conservative writer Ann Coulter.

Before the shooting rampage that also left three wounded, the suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, allegedly posted a lengthy document invoking the idea that White Americans were at risk of being “replaced” by people of color because of immigration and higher birthrates.

Gendron, who is White, allegedly indicated that he chose a neighborhood with a large number of Black residents for his alleged attack. In the document that Gendron is suspected to have written, he indicated that he was radicalized online. There’s no indication that he watched Carlson’s program.

The theory was once confined to far-right White extremists, who cast immigration as part of a plot by “elites” to take political and economic power away from White people. It has gained broader circulation in recent years as a talking point among prominent conservative media figures.

On Sept. 22, Fox News host Tucker Carlson misrepresented past immigration remarks by President Biden to suggest the existence of the “great replacement theory.” (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

Carlson, whose weeknight program is typically the most popular on Fox News, has been an especially avid promoter of the thesis. He has mentioned variations on the idea in more than 400 episodes since 2016, according to a New York Times analysis of his program. In April of last year, he said on Fox News that people from the “Third World” are immigrating to the United States “to replace the current electorate” and “dilute the political power of the people who live there” — language that essentially distills the replacement thesis.

He was more explicit in a video posted on Fox News’s YouTube account in September. Carlson said President Biden was encouraging immigration “to change the racial mix of the country, … to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the Third World.”

White nationalists and racists have celebrated Carlson’s endorsement of an idea they have championed for years. At the same time, Carlson’s rhetoric prompted the Anti-Defamation League to call for his firing.

The organization noted that racists have spouted the theory in perpetrating violent attacks, such as the killing of 51 people in mosques in New Zealand in 2019, and the killing of 23 mostly Hispanic shoppers in a Walmart in El Paso the same year.

After he was called out for promoting the theory in April 2021, Carlson said on his show: “I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it. Oh, you know, the white replacement theory? No, no, no. This is a voting right question.”

A Fox News spokesperson on Sunday afternoon pointed to examples of Carlson speaking against violence on his program but had no further comment.

Other Fox News hosts besides Carlson have picked up the theme, giving it a veneer of respectability, at least within the conservative media ecosystem.

Ingraham, another prime-time Fox News host, told viewers in 2018 that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants.” During a monologue on her program last year, she called immigration an “insurrection [that] seeks to overthrow everything we love about America by defaming it, silencing it, and even prosecuting it. This is an organized mob funded by billionaires, it’s supported by celebrities.”

Fox host Jeanine Pirro has also echoed the tenets of the “replacement” idea during an appearance on a syndicated radio program in 2019. She said liberals and Democrats were pursuing immigration policies that are “a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats.”

The same themes have been echoed for years by such prominent conservative media figures as Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and the late Rush Limbaugh.

O’Reilly, who formerly occupied Carlson’s spot on Fox News, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on his radio show in 2020 that undocumented immigration would cause “traditional America to vanish.” Limbaugh said in 2018 that immigration from Central America was intended to “dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture. … This is why people call this an invasion.”

Coulter wrote about the alleged threat to American culture posed by immigrants in a book in 2015 titled “Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.”

Charlie Kirk, a conservative pundit who heads Turning Point USA and sometimes appears as a guest on Carlson’s program, defended Carlson’s “replacement” advocacy last year. After playing a clip of Carlson’s comments on Fox News, Kirk commented: “Nothing he said there is controversial. It’s factual and it’s true.” He later added that he was “so proud” of Carlson for promoting the theory.

Last month, Kirk tweeted: “There is an undeniable War on White People in The West.”

Matt Walsh, a contributor to the Daily Wire, also tacitly endorsed the idea during a program he hosted last summer.

“So we’re bringing in a flood of immigrants across the southern border, non-White,” Walsh said in the video. “We’re putting policies in place with the express purpose of having fewer White people in universities and positions of power. And we’re celebrating the reduction in the White population. I mean, it sounds like [liberals] want to replace White people. So this is replacement, is it not? And you’re happy about it?”

===

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used to be neo nazi stuff?

October 14, 2024, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This election is literally about are we allowed to fight back against invading armed hordes. Let me say that again — this entire election is about are we allowed to fight back against an invading armed fighting force and hordes and swarms of people that want to take our stuff, take women, and loot the entire nation. These are landing parties on the United States of America. Donald Trump's campaign is a rejection and a refutation of the Third World conquering America.

mma

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:

mma 7 24

During the June 27 CNN presidential election debate between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, Trump made false and misleading claims about immigration and migrants seemingly drawn straight from the right-wing media echo chambers.

Trump falsely claimed that Biden “wants open borders” and “wants our country to … be destroyed,” as migrants are supposedly violent criminals stealing American jobs. He also pushed the “great replacement” theory, saying Biden wants to import migrants to vote Democratic.

Below are some of Trump’s debate claims and recent instances of right-wing media making the same points.

Claim: Migrants are stealing jobs from Americans

In the debate, Trump claimed that migrants “are taking Black jobs}: and they’re taking Hispanic jobs. And you haven’t seen it yet.” The New York Times, [6/27/24]|

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rww 2 24

Kyle Mantyla (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post_author/kyle-mantyla/) | February 12, 2024 3:23 pm

Mark Meckler (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/the-dark-money-behind-mark-mecklers-convention-of-states.html) is the president of the Convention of States Foundation (https://conventionofstates.com/) and a leading proponent of the right-wing movement to get state legislatures (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/mike-farris-has-a-plan-to-get-even-blue-states-to-support-a-convention-of-states/) to call for a dangerous (https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/convention-states-constitution/) Article V convention that will consider constitutional amendments to radically alter American government and society by making much of what the federal government now does unconstitutional.

As Right Wing Watch reported (https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/a-modern-fabrication-mark-meckler-spreads-false-christian-nationalist-history/) last year, Meckler appears to be a fan of Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, so it was no surprise when Meckler appeared on (https://wallbuilders.show/2077254/14484098-texas-takes-charge-state-sovereignty-and-the-immigration-crisis?t=0) Barton’s “WallBuilders Live” radio program today. The episode turned out to be part of an interview that co-host Rick Green, founder of Patriot Academy, (https://www.patriotacademy.com/) did with Meckler for his own “The Tavern (https://www.patriotacademy.network/watch/channel/shows/series/NlzmnklZ9LO7-the-tavern/episode/rKUAqlkGYZEn-the-tavern-19?t=0)” program last week.

The topic of the interview was immigration and the southern border, which Meckler said can only be properly solved by the government carrying out military strikes within the United States and then invading Mexico and overthrowing its government.

“I don’t think there’s any way to solve this permanently without military action,” Meckler declared. “[We need a buffer zone] like the DMZ between the Koreas. It needs to be a kilometer of cleared territory that is a no man zone; you come in here and we believe you have hostile intent, we’re going to clear you out.”

“That would require military action,” Meckler added. “I think that we ought to acknowledge that the cartels have declared war on the United States of America. Whether they say it or not, in their actions they’ve declared war on us.”

“They control our border,” he continued. “We have to have operational control and the only way to do it is militarily. I think that the federal government ought to go in and make military strikes against the cartels. We know where they are. We know where they’re headquartered. We know where their people are. We need to do it in this country in a mass coordinated fashion because the cartels are well ensconced in this country, pretty much in every major city and most of the minor cities in this country. We need to round them up, throw them in prison, send them back to Mexico.”

“We need to exterminate the cartels and that means going into Mexico,” Meckler asserted. “Now people would say, ‘You’re violating a sovereign country’s territory.’ Well, Mexico is not a sovereign country any longer. Mexico is a failed narco state. The federal government is not in control of their military. The federal government is not in control of their police Their state governments are not, their local governments are not in control of their police forces. That is a failed narco-terrorist state and so we have to treat it as such.”

“Let’s clean out the cartels,” he said. “Let’s do what has to be done. Prop up a government that is actually a government that is going to be friendly the United States and is going to continue to work with us to limit cartel activity in Mexico. If we don’t do that, we’re gonna have a terrorist state—which we have right now on our border—forever. To me, this is like Gaza. They’re invading our country. They’re invading our country every day. They’re killing our people, and we have to go in and use maximum force to oust them and create a buffer zone along the border. If we do that, we’ll have border security. It’s that simple.”

===

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Fox News host asks if migrants are connected to a case of bubonic plague in Oregon | Media Matters for America

2 24 same day

Jesse Watters says Joe Biden is going to "drop a migrant bomb" on America | Media Matters for America

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mma 2 24

jesse Watters says migrants are “storming the beaches of San Diego like it’s Normandy”

02/01/24

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INVASION HIST

mma 1 24

The bogus premise that migrants entering the United States in search of a better life are conducting an “invasion” of the country has moved from the fringes of the right-wing media to its core over the past decade. The idea of an imminent threat to personal safety and national identity posed by columns of faceless brown masses marching on the border is now a fixture of right-wing commentary, from the depths of the online fever swamps to the talk-radio world of Rush Limbaugh to the heights of Fox News. And this incendiary talking point is now the pretext for a looming constitutional crisis.

Texas and the U.S. government are in a standoff over whether the state’s government can defy orders from federal officials by constructing and maintaining razor-wire barriers along the border with Mexico to prevent migrants from crossing into the country. On January 22, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated an appeals court order which had barred the U.S. Border Patrol from taking down the barriers at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, near the Rio Grande — but Texas officials are still preventing federal agents from entering the area.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in a January 24 statement that due to President Joe Biden’s “lawless border policies,” Abbott had “declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” and that state officials would continue “acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”

Legal experts have skewered Abbott’s contention that his state is suffering an “invasion” and that that overrules the federal government’s constitutional supremacy over immigration policy and the maintenance of national borders. They note that mentions of “invasion” in the Constitution refer not to metaphorical examples like migration but to literal armed incursions by hostile foreign powers.

“The claim that a large increase in the number of would-be migrants gaining entry at the southern border constitutes an ‘invasion’ under Article IV is constitutional nonsense,” University of Missouri law professor Frank O. Bowman III wrote for Just Security. “It cannot be sustained by any reasonable reading of the text of the Constitution, the original understanding of the Constitution, or subsequent interpretations of the Constitution by courts or constitutional scholars.”

Indeed, three different federal appeals courts summarily rejected the idea in the 1990s, as Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted.

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But constitutional arguments be damned, the right wants to increase the salience of a chaotic border (while preventing both bipartisan legislation that would provide more money for border security and increases in legal immigration) because they think that will help Donald Trump win the presidency. Every Republican governor but one and numerous Republican members of Congress are supporting Abbott’s effort, as are the full constellation of right-wing commentators (some of whom are hyping a potential civil war).

It’s impossible to disaggregate the Republican Party’s full-throated adoption of the bogus “invasion” analogy as a constitutional argument from the right-wing media’s use of that rhetoric.

Language once limited to far-right figures like Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, Steve King, and the Minuteman militia has become commonplace among the movement’s demagogues. Right-wing stars like Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson, who strive to terrify their audiences with the prospect of dangerous immigrants, popularized the “invasion” framing in order to gin up support for the GOP and its ethnonationalist wing and to make space for extraordinary measures at the border. Republican Party leaders, up to and including Trump, have followed in their wake. And along the way, armed white nationalists spouting the same talking point conducted a series of massacres, with targets ranging from an El Paso Walmart to a Pittsburgh synagogue.

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Here’s the history, ripped from the Media Matters archives.

2005 — 2012: Pat Buchanan and the “Reconquista”

There is a long American tradition of right-wing bigots warning that immigrants would contaminate and ultimately destroy the country. But President George W. Bush’s ultimately unsuccessful effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation during his second term brought the issue to the fore this century and exacerbated a schism between the right’s pro-business, pro-immigration reform wing and its nationalist, immigration-restrictionist wing.

Right-wing restrictionists used the increasing migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border during that period, an overwhelming majority of which involved Mexican citizens, to claim that the United States was suffering an “invasion” by that country.

“This is an invasion, the greatest invasion in history,” Buchanan wrote in his 2006 book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. “We are witnessing how nations perish. We are entered upon the final act of our civilization. The last scene is the deconstruction of the nations. The penultimate scene, now well underway, is the invasion unresisted.”

Buchanan and his allies, like Michelle Malkin, argued that the migrant influx was part of the “Reconquista,” a purported plot by Mexico’s government and Hispanic politicians in the U.S. to reclaim the American Southwest. “Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents have made clear their intent to take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war,” Buchanan explained. He argued that the “invasion” would cause a “balkanization of America” in which the Southwest “de facto is going to secede from this country.”

The “Reconquista” theory fell out of fashion in subsequent years, as migrants with Mexican citizenship fell from 85% of all border apprehensions to 20%. But even without the involvement of a purportedly hostile foreign nation, “invasion” rhetoric recurred on the right’s fringes whenever the immigration issue returned to the fore — and ultimately spread into its mainstream.

2013 — 2016: Laura Ingraham’s “invasion” talk helps take down Cantor, Breitbart’s lifts up Trump

Immigration reform once more seemed within reach during President Barack Obama’s second term. The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill in 2013 that would have increased border enforcement, expanded legal immigration, and provided a path to citizenship for unauthorized migrants. With Obama promising to sign the bill, the remaining holdup was the Republican-controlled House — and right-wing immigration restrictionists like Laura Ingraham, then a prominent radio host and Fox contributor, demanding that the GOP legislators oppose reform.

But the first months of 2014 saw a near-doubling of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border over the previous year, which experts attributed to a rise in gang violence in Central America. Obama’s June declaration that the surge constituted an “urgent humanitarian situation” requiring the provision of food, housing, and medical treatment for the children triggered a firestorm on the right — complete with claims that the kids constituted an “invasion.”

“The Obama administration has basically put out the welcome mat at the border: ‘Come on in, we'll feed you, we'll house you, we’ll clothe you, we'll get you medical care,’” Ingraham said in a Fox & Friends appearance. “This is an ongoing invasion into our country, and it is horrifying for our sovereignty and our rule of law.”

Ingraham also blamed Republican Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader and a congressman from Virginia who supported citizenship for young people brought to the U.S. as children, if not necessarily broader immigration reform, for aiding what she described as “an invasion facilitated by our own government.” And she did more than complain about him — she endorsed and campaigned for Cantor’s primary opponent, Dave Brat.

Brat won that June 10 election in a victory widely credited to the anti-immigrant rabble-rousing of demagogues like Ingraham. Cantor’s defeat sent a seismic shock through the GOP, and by the end of the month, House Speaker John Boehner informed Obama that immigration reform would not receive a vote that year. The increasingly powerful right-wing media had exercised its veto over the Republican agenda.

Soon after, immigrant “invasion” rhetoric began gaining traction on right-wing Facebook pages, Media Matters found. Breitbart.com, the far-right website controlled at the time by Trumpist Steve Bannon, sought to capture that fringe-right grassroots energy — and snag market share from Fox — with virulent anti-immigration content. By 2015, the site “became the center of a distinct right-wing media ecosystem,” Harvard researchers reported in a post-mortem on election coverage that cycle.

The right-wing media’s incessant fearmongering over the border eliminated any space within the party for reformers. The ultimate beneficiary was Trump, who launched his presidential campaign claiming that Mexico was sending “rapists” to the U.S. and promised to build a wall and make that country pay for it as his supporters touted his ability to turn back the purported “invasion.”

2017 — 2020: The migrant caravan and the mainstreaming of “the great replacement”

Trump’s ascension to the presidency put his party in control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives and left him ultimately responsible for the border. But as the 2018 midterm elections approached, Trump adopted Fox’s preferred campaign strategy by focusing attention on a caravan of migrants 1,000 miles from the U.S. border with Mexico, an “invasion” he falsely blamed on Democrats.

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The Fox-fueled president’s fevered statements attracted crisis-level coverage from national broadcast shows, cable news networks, and newspapers, though the attention ultimately failed to prevent Democrats from gaining control of Congress.

Trump’s caravan push coincided with a major increase in Fox references to migrants as an “invasion” or “invaders,” a trend that continued even after the GOP’s November defeat, Media Matters found. “Prime-time Fox News hosts and guests used the words to refer to migrants 33 times in the 30 days ahead of the election, up from 25 times in all of 2015, 2016 and 2017,” we reported. “Fox has kept up the attacks in the weeks after the Republicans lost the U.S. House: Prime-time hosts and guests used the terms 48 times between Election Day and the end of November.” A follow-up review found more than 70 Fox references to a migrant “invasion” in the first seven months of 2019.

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As Democrats took power in Congress, Fox commentators began pushing something even darker alongside their constant invocations of a migrant “invasion.” Influential figures like Ingraham and fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson adopted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, a white supremacist talking point which posits that Democrats are deliberately importing brown migrants to “replace” white Americans in order to corrupt the country and increase their own power.

The “great replacement” rhetoric moved from internet fever swamps to the prime-time hours of the nation’s most-watched cable news network — and to the manifestos of white nationalist spree killers bent on stopping the “invaders.”

2021 — 2024: Forever war

The right’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has been more incendiary than ever since Biden took office in 2021. Border apprehensions and expulsions have increased to record levels as migrants flee political and economic instability in Central and South America for the booming post-COVID U.S., and hundreds of thousands have made asylum claims to authorities at the border.

But for the right, “Biden’s border crisis” is a deliberate effort by a president who does not want to stop the invasion.

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Every possible news event, from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the end of Title 42 deportation authority to the upcoming presidential election, brings a new wave of fearmongering over the “invaders” who will “replace” the population. They’re using this rhetoric to argue for extreme measures on the border and to denounce Biden for not pursuing them. As Carlson claimed, “Our military could seal the border with Mexico in days. That would save American lives, it would restore order, and it would end the invasion.”

Texas, with its long border with Mexico and numerous Republican politicians eager for the right-wing media’s spotlight and support, is a natural subject for this coverage. Indeed, over a three-day period in July 2022, Media Matters found that Fox aired at least 20 claims that the state was being invaded by migrants. That period overlapped with a push by county officials to get Abbott to declare an “invasion” under the Constitution in order to seize control of border policy from the federal government.

At the time, legal experts pointed out that the effort was ridiculous and based on “a total mischaracterization of what an invasion is.” But the GOP’s propaganda wing currently wields more influence over the party’s legal policy than its legal experts, and 20 months later, Texas is in a standoff with the federal government based on its “invasion” talking point.

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Amid an ongoing right-wing media panic about a supposed “invasion” of migrants coming across the southern border, a group of right-wing extremists — including members with ties to QAnon, the election denial movement, and anti-vaccine propagandists — have organized a convoy and series of rallies along the southern border. The “Take Our Border Back Southern Border Convoy” has been amplified and celebrated by right-wing media and political figures as posts promoting it have spread across social media.

[vid]

citationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of One America News' In Focus}:

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of Fox Business' The Evening Edit

LIZ MACDONALD (HOST): We have a new, this new news coming in. A trucker convoy is kicking off heading to the border states — we're hearing February 3 — for a multistate rally at the border in Texas, Arizona, and California. And they're calling on active and retired law enforcement, military veterans, elected officials, small business owners, ranchers to join them to rally in protest of what's going on at the border. What do you make of this? More Americans are stepping up.

REP. BETH VAN DUYNE (R-TX): Hey, don’t forget the mama bears that they’re also asking to go down there, who are seeing what’s happening in schools, where their kids are getting kicked out because they’re having illegal immigrants stay in classrooms.

Yeah, I say bring those beautiful, huge semis, those 18-wheeler bad boys down here to protect our border. They need to understand that this is not simply — you know, they can't sweep this under the rug. People are opening their eyes to it, and I hope it is a fantastic convoy, and I hope it does, you know, shed more light on it, and you're seeing people from around the country. I mean, they're even talking about having folks from Canada now come down because they see the damage that is being caused. So yeah, bring those bad boys down to our coast.

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BlazeTV host Steve Deace: "The Supreme Court has told Texas your choices are be invaded or secede" | Media Matters for America

spate of civil was BS 1 24

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Top Oklahoma education official Ryan Walters cheers conspiracy theorist while appearing on her show | Media Matters for America

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters praised conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine during a nearly 25-minute interview on the December 19, 2023, edition of her show. Walters and Lorraine also spread a conspiracy theory about supposed Marxist infiltration in Oklahoma public schools, and Walters touted his efforts “to ensure that we're running the left wing out” in order “to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency.”

Lorraine is a former Infowars host and failed congressional candidate with a long record of spreading outlandish conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate and the QAnon conspiracy theory. (In recent posts, Lorraine said that “Q is the greatest Psyop ever told” and “we’ve been played.”) She also attended the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and has proposed that we “arm our children” to stop school shootings. Her streaming show, Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine, is part of the media network of white nationalist Stew Peters, who has spread extreme and violent rhetoric including calling for the deaths of LGBTQ people, journalists, Democratic politicians, and Catholic charity workers.

As Oklahoma’s state superintendent, Walters has pushed right-wing propaganda into public school curriculum and used far-right media programs to attack the state’s education system and teachers. Walters appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press days before his interview with Lorraine, arguing that he is responding to a “higher education push to drive left-wing, Marxist propaganda into classrooms.” Walters previously suggested that he has taken education policy advice from right-wing media personalities, including the anti-LGBTQ social media account Libs of TikTok and a BlazeTV pundit who disparages public schools as “Satan’s youth ministry.”

In the December 19 Shots Fired interview, Walters claimed that Oklahoma’s “education system has been run by Marxists for far too long” and the host agreed, suggesting there has been a communist plot since the 1950s to take over public education. Lorraine also compared the left to “cockroaches” after Walters claimed that “liberals embed themselves” in government agencies. He referred to the state superintendent’s office under his Democratic predecessor as “a captured entity,” and bragged to Lorraine: “I fired over 100 people from our agency in the first six months, and we are continuing to ensure that we're running the left wing out, and we're going to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency.”

Walters also claimed that George Soros — a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories — has “financed” school boards and “government bureaucratic apparatuses.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the December 19, 2023, edition of Stew Peters Network's Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine

DEANNA LORRAINE (HOST): Ryan Walters, I'm excited to talk about you and all of these great wins under your belt. You are just slaying the Marxist left back and forth. Welcome to Shots Fired, how are you?

RYAN WALTERS: (OKLAHOMA STATE SUPERINTENDENT): Look, I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate the work you're doing. And, you know, I mean, that's the thing in education — to get the education system back on track when it's been pulled so far to the left, we have got to operate with a sense of urgency. And so we're playing offense here in Oklahoma. We're going to be aggressive and we're just getting started. But I'm telling you, this education system has been run by Marxists for far too long. Parents know it, our taxpayers know it, and it's time to get going.

LORRAINE: Oh 100%. And some people somehow still believe that this is sort of some big conspiracy theory that the education systems have been hijacked by the Marxist left and, you know, this all sort of happened organically. No, it's not. It's literally in the communist goals. The 45 communist goals for America way back in the 1950s. They state that they want to hide, they're going to hijack the education systems and schools and transform them into Marxist, communist curriculum. So it's not a conspiracy and it's actually happened, and they've been very successful at it.

…

WALTERS: I think that's so important for your viewers to hear is that we are in a very red state, very red state. Every single one of our counties voted for Donald Trump twice, so we are a very red state. But let me tell you, we also have a teachers union who is very well-financed and continue to block legislation and push legislation at the state capital. They have captured a lot of Republican legislators who listen to them alone. And so we've had to fight back against some of them, some folks in our own party who have fought school choice, fought parents rights. We had a legislator that’s Republican that fought to keep pornography in the classroom. And so we have these pockets of influence the teachers union has. But I'm going to tell you, the other thing that's so important is now that I run the education agency is liberals embed themselves in these agencies. So you've seen this with the way —

LORRAINE: Like cockroaches.

WALTERS: George Soros has financed these district attorneys. They've done the same thing with school boards, and they've done the same thing with the government bureaucratic apparatuses. So when I got here, you know, we would pass laws and it wouldn't be enforced because again, my predecessor, a Democrat, loaded this agency up with a bunch of liberals that were never going to hold districts accountable. They were never going to push back on the teachers union. And frankly, this was a captured entity. I mean, the left had captured the state superintendent. So you can pass whatever laws you wanted, they were never going to be enforced on the schools. So it has been a dramatic shift. I fired over 100 people from our agency in the first six months, and we are continuing to ensure that we're running the left wing out, and we're going to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency. And we're going to continue to fight for parents, and we're going to continue to fight — it’s frankly common sense. We're going to keep fighting for common sense to come back to the classroom.

Lorraine and Walters ended the interview praising each other, with the host telling Walters, “You are on fire. I love what you’re up to. I love what you’re doing. Keep going at it because we need strong fighters like you to fight for our schools and our children.”

Walters replied with effusive praise, telling Lorraine, “I love your show, love what you’re doing,” and “I appreciate you fighting for conservative principles and values and your fight for our kids. So really appreciate the time on the show and thank you for the work you’re doing.”

:{:{Video}:

CitationFrom the December 19, 2023, edition of Stew Peters Network's Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine

LORRAINE: Ryan Walters, you are on fire. I love what you're up to. I love what you're doing. Keep going at it because we need strong fighters like you to fight for our schools and our children. Tell everybody again where they can find you and follow your awesome work and achievements.

WALTERS: Well, I appreciate that. I love your show, love what you're doing.

...

WALTERS: But look I appreciate the time. I appreciate you fighting for conservative principles and values and your fight for our kids. So really appreciate the time on the show and thank you for the work you're doing.

LORRAINE: Thank you so much, Ryan.

Walters promoted the interview on X (formerly Twitter) by reposting a link from Lorraine to the interview with the caption “OK Superintendent of Education is on FIRE slaying the Marxists!”

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  1. ### Oklahoma's top education official has a cozy relationship with BlazeTV host Steve Deace, who likens public schools to “Satan’s youth ministry”

10/06/23 12:18 PM EDT

  1. ### Remarks from Oklahoma public schools superintendent mirror far-right extremist talking points on the Tulsa Race Massacre

07/12/23 12:06 PM EDT

  1. ### Public schools are the latest target of the right’s con culture

09/07/23

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Right-wing media figures exploit anti-immigrant riots in Ireland to demonize migrants and Muslims, and attack legal immigration

Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and others pushed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and falsely portrayed immigrants as threats to public safety

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES, SOPHIE LAWTON & JACK WHEATLEY

PUBLISHED 11/30/23

Right-wing media figures reacted to anti-immigrant riots in Ireland by demonizing Muslims, falsely accusing migrants of being a risk to public safety and attacking the very idea of legal immigration. Their response is an escalation of the xenophobic rhetoric that right-wing media frequently direct at unauthorized migration, and is a clear attempt to push for policies that would drastically reduce legal immigration levels.

The riots in Dublin were sparked after early reports on November 23 that an Irish citizen who allegedly stabbed five people, including three children, was believed to have been born abroad — thus highlighting the suspect’s perceived foreignness. Subsequent reporting found that although the alleged attacker was apparently born in Algeria, he has lived in Ireland for at least 20 years, according to Irish authorities. Numerous studies have found that increased levels of immigration do not cause a rise in crime rates either in the United States or European countries.

This manufactured panic and demonization of a marginalized group echoes a similar episode from last week, when Fox News invented a terrorism scare over a car crash at the U.S.-Canada border and used the nonexistent plot to paint Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, and their supporters as the culprits, only to retract its reporting hours later. Anti-Muslim hate incidents have also skyrocketed during Israel’s bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ attack on October 7.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon exploited the Dublin attack to spread his anti-immigrant message across multiple platforms, including his own War Room podcast as well as Tucker Carlson’s show on X (formerly Twitter) and Donald Trump Jr.’s streaming show on Rumble, a far-right competitor to YouTube. In several of these segments, Bannon and his interlocutors endorsed versions of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that liberal elites are attempting to change the demographics of white-majority countries through mass migration from the Global South to maintain political and economic dominance.

Prior to Fox News’ firing of Carlson, he was the network’s — and perhaps the entire country’s — most visible proponent of the great replacement theory. During Bannon’s appearance on Carlson’s show on November 27, both figures pushed openly nativist bigotry alongside the racist conspiracy theory.

Bannon referred to migrants to the United States and Ireland as “alien invaders,” adding that Irish politicians have “sold out the sovereignty of the Irish” and that the riots were “natural blowback.”

“The Irish government is trying to replace the population of Ireland with people from the Third World, obviously,” Carlson responded. “But why? What's the justification for that?”

“You talk about the great replacement theory and people are — oh, you know, people get very upset when you talk about it, but just look at the math,” Bannon answered.

“It’s not a theory,” Carlson interjected.

“This has happened across Europe,” Bannon continued. “It's happened in Germany.”

“In 100 years, there'll be a minority of Irish people in Ireland,” Carlson said. “That's a big change, and it's on purpose.”

Later in their conversation, Bannon endorsed mass deportations, saying: “I think illegal alien invaders are coming because they've gamed the asylum system. My belief is those people have to go home. They have to be returned, they have to leave our country or we're not going to have a country.”

Later that day, Bannon appeared on Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered to celebrate Hungary’s far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán and Irish mixed martial arts fighter Connor McGregor, who had come under police investigation following anti-migrant social media posts.

Video

CitationFrom the November 27, 2023, edition of Triggered, streamed on Rumble

Former President Donald Trump fought “for the sovereignty, not just of nation-states, but the sovereignty of the individual citizens in those nation-states,” Bannon said. “I think it's inspired Orban in Hungary. I think McGregor in Ireland standing up the other day was inspired by Donald Trump.”

The discussion then turned to the knife attack in Dublin, with the host claiming Arab and Muslim cultures celebrate anti-social violence.

“In their culture, they can stab people in the streets. It's fine. We must allow them to do that to our children,” Trump Jr. facetiously said, adding, “I mean, the government is taking an actively hostile position against their citizens in favor of, like, seemingly savages in many cases.”

Bannon returned to the subject the next day on his War Room podcast, calling for the “deportation of the 9 million — at least 9 million to 10 million — illegal alien invaders coming in the Biden regime.”

“What happened in Ireland — it's all coming here, folks,” Bannon warned ominously. “It’s all coming here.”

His guest the following hour was conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been increasingly embraced by right-wing media in recent years. Jones falsely claimed that “illegal aliens or migrants” are responsible for “the majority of muggings, rape, and murder in every European country."

That evening, Bannon discussed the violence in Ireland in another episode of War Room, where his guest, author Michael Walsh, again pushed the great replacement conspiracy theory.

“This was the spark that set off what’s become a powder keg across the country, which is the notion — widely held among the Irish people — that they’re being replaced by foreigners,” Walsh said. He added that the Irish government “is committed to this program of quiet replacement and has demonized what we would have called Irish patriots,” referring to the far-right mobs.

Several other right-wing media figures also used the riots to spread anti-migrant bigotry.

"Across the West, the status quo has become intolerable,” Loomer added. “The endless waves of immigrants, the devastation of our culture, and the crackdown against anyone who dares to stand against it has all become too much to bear.”

“There can be no doubt that the average person is, at last, awake to the gravity of the situation, and their anger is brewing,” Loomer continued. “White people, in particular, have taken all of this on the chin for the last few decades, but that appears to be coming to an end.”

Following the riots, some observers of the far right argued that anti-immigrant sentiment had become a major issue in Ireland in recent years, and that politicians needed to do more to address the rising xenophobia. Right-wing media figures are determined to stand in the way.

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mma 11 23

Steve Bannon refers to migrants as "locusts" who are "going to destroy everything in their path" | Media Matters for America

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no lnx an 7 23

'Raw political sham': House Democrat torches GOP witness for invoking racist Great Replacement Theory

Brandon Gage July 19, 2023

United States Representative Delia Ramirez (D-Illinois) clapped back at a witness who invoked the controversial and racist "Great Replacement Theory" during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Right-wing lawmakers like House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-New York) have repeatedly referenced GRT — which maintains that white people are being supplanted by foreigners of color — as an excuse to crack down on undocumented immigrants. The conspiracy has also been cited by perpetrators of mass shootings to rationalize murder.

Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing for the removal of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom they allege "created our nation's historic border crisis by implementing intentionally reckless policies, failing to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and ignoring the advice, recommendations, and warnings of experienced law enforcement."

READ MORE: Nebraska Republican invokes racist 'Great Replacement Theory' during debate on six-week abortion ban

Ramirez's remarks came after Chairman Mark Green (R-Tennessee) called on her by the wrong name.

"Ms. Garcia, you're recognized," Green announced.

"Ramirez. Ms. Ramirez," the congresswoman corrected.

"Ms. Ramirez, I'm sorry," Green replied.

READ MORE: 'Their electoral strategy': Tucker Carlson stokes fear among viewers while blaming Dems for 'Great Replacement' theory

"Thank you," Ramirez continued. "And as I think about the hearing now and hearing the witnesses, I think about just last year how a horrific domestic terror attack at Buffalo, New York supermarket left our nation reeling. My colleagues across the aisle offered up their thoughts and prayers, but they offered no actions to address racially and ethnically-motivated violent extremism. It is not lost on me that before murdering ten people at the supermarket last year, the shooter wrote and I quote, 'We are experiencing an invasion on a level never seen before in history.' However, twisted justification the shooter believed he was repelling an invasion of the United States by immigrants from Latin America. Does that sound familiar?" Ramirez asked retired Department of Justice Special Agent in Charge of Special Operations Division Derek Maltz.

"Mr. Maltz, in your testimony you said, 'I know what's going on in America,' so let me ask you. Do you support the assertion that the United States is experiencing a historic invasion by immigrants? That's a yes or no question," Ramirez said.

"Illegal immigrants. Immigrants from around the world, yes," Maltz responded.

"Yes or no," Ramirez reiterated.

"Yes," stated Maltz.

"So you believe that we are experiencing ahistoric invasionof immigrants?" Ramirez added.

"Yes," Maltz confirmed.

"So despite knowing that the Pittsburgh shooter justified his actions based on the idea of an immigrant invasion to replace white people, despite knowing that invasion ideology was used to justify the shootings in El Paso and Buffalo, you continued to espouse this Great Replacement Theory — an extremist ideology that people like me when my mother crossed the border pregnant with me — don't deserve to be here because we are invading the country?" Ramirez retorted.

"Mr. Chairman, this hearing is not a fact-finding mission," Ramirez concluded. "It's a raw political sham tostoke fear, and it willcontinue to justify the violence against immigrant communities,and I find that unacceptable."

Watch below via Heartland Signal or at this link.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-figures-prepare-spiritual-war-2024-claiming-their-opponents-are-demonic

no lnx many vid

right-wing media figures prepare for “spiritual war” in 2024 by claiming their opponents are demonic entities

Figures have invoked “demonic portals” and the occult to dehumanize LGBTQ people, perceived political enemies, and others

WRITTEN BY PAYTON ARMSTRONG & NOAH DOWE

PUBLISHED 07/05/23

Right-wing media figures are ramping up apocalyptic political rhetoric that literally demonizes LGBTQ people, perceived political enemies, and progressive causes, with some absurdly suggesting that demons are using portals to enter Earth and wage “spiritual war” against humanity.

Rhetoric about “demonic” influence and an existential, “spiritual” war has become a hallmark of right-wing punditry and Republican politics ​​ahead of the 2024 elections, as Christian nationalism grows in popularity among Republican voters.Language that demonizes and dehumanizes political opponents has been a staple of right-wing commentary for years, but these recent accusations are not simple rhetorical flourishes; a number of media figures have begun to warn their audiences about occult rituals from the left and supposed portals to hell from which demons would enter the Earth. Last year, Trump ally and provocateur Roger Stone even claimed that a “Satanic portal” had opened over the White House after President Joe Biden took office. 

This sort of framing, which posits that political enemies are literal “demons” waging a “spiritual war,” stems largely from a right-wing Christian movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. For years, the NAR movement has reportedly sought “to take dominion over politics, business and culture in preparation for the end times and the return of Jesus.” Rolling Stone described the core NAR belief in spiritual war in a profile of one of the movement’s leading figures, commentator and self-proclaimed prophet Lance Wallnau:

NAR followers like Wallnau believe that America is specially anointed by God to project Christianity across the globe. And the NAR movement’s followers view foes of their quest as satanic. This is not metaphorical. They hold that the physical world is enveloped by a supernatural dimension, featuring warring angels and demons, and are convinced that demons afflict their enemies on behalf of the devil. The movement holds that these spiritual battles are reflected in earthly politics. As the late NAR founder C. Peter Wagner explained in a striking NPR interview in 2011: “I believe there’s a lot of demonic control over Congress … that needs to be dispersed.”

Fiery rhetoric of a spiritual war coupled with demonization of opponents has created an atmosphere in which violence appears permissible and justifiable to followers. For instance, the violence at the Capitol on January 6 was largely undergirded and inspired by boisterous cries of spiritual warfare from prominent figures on the religious right — including Wallnau — who have conditioned their audiences to consider political violence a legitimate tactic.

Over the last two years, right-wing media figures have increasingly adopted the scorched-earth rhetoric of movements like the NAR, setting the stage for a potentially dangerous political atmosphere in 2024. Here are a number of examples:

Right-wing media figures have suggested that demons are entering Earth, with some claiming they are using actual “portals” to hell

On several occasions, prominent right-wing media figures have claimed that demons are using “portals” to attack conservative causes or even fearmongered that Satan created a “woke mind virus.”

Right-wing media gadfly Roger Stone — who observers have noted has increasingly adopted rhetoric around “spiritual war” — claimed on Eric Metaxas’ Salem radio show that “a demonic portal” had been visible above the White House since Biden’s inauguration. Stone suggested that through the “portal,”demons began to “populate the Biden administration,” arguing “you can’t tell whether they are men or women.”

Video

Citation From a December 11, 2022, video posted to Eric Metaxas' Rumble page:

Salem media host Charlie Kirk said that “we’re in the midst of the most consequential spiritual war” in millennia because “there is no other way to explain the campaign of arson and destruction against our country other than diabolical, spiritually dark influences that are fighting for dominion over this nation.” He also argued that “witchcraft and the occult is a real thing, and there are portals to darkness and you have to be vigilant about this.” Kirk also alleged that Satan had created “the woke mind virus” to destroy America and called on religious leaders to “excommunicate … the demons of the woke.”

Video  an episode of Real Life with Jack Hibbs, aired on Fox Business Network on May 6, 2023

Conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones warned that the European Council for Nuclear Research had used the Large Hadron Collider for “satanic rituals” which he claimed “definitely has opened up a gate” to hell and let demons into the Earth “like paratroopers.” Jones has also claimed that an “alien offworld force” with demons as its agents is “working against us around the clock because they know we are about to go from our embryonic level to birthing into the next level.” What’s more, in his trial for defamation of the families of the Sandy Hook massacre, Jones attacked the judge and plaintiffs’ lawyers as “committed to occult ideology of the new world order” and implied they were “demonically possessed.”

Video

CitationFrom the April 11, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said of reports of interactions with aliens: “Aliens are just demons for liberals who don't want to admit metaphysical reality."

Right-wing media figures have labeled LGBTQ people, gender-affirming care, and abortion “demonic”

Conservative media figures have also revved up their attacks on trans people, LGBTQ Pride month, and abortion by claiming they are inspired by “demons in our society.”

Knowles — who demanded this year that so-called “transgenderism” be “eradicated from public life entirely” — claimed that trans people are “demonic” and that demons are “always trans.”

Video

CitationFrom the March 14, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show

On her prime-time Fox News show, Laura Ingraham referred to gender-affirming care as “a demonic campaign to destroy the natural biological order.”

Daily Wire host Candace Owens called trans people “demons in our society” and smeared “any actor, actress, individual that supports this” as “demonic.” Owens has also argued that surrogacy is “deeply demonic.”

Video

CitationFrom the February 7, 2023, edition of The Daily Wire's Candace Owens

On Fox, now-former host Tucker Carlson used the Covenant School shooting in Tennessee to falsely claim that “the trans movement is targeting Christians, including with violence,” and denounced the trans community as part of “a deranged and demonic ideology.”

On YouTube, BlazeTV’s Liz Wheeler said that “if you took the three most disgusting, demonic ideologies that you could possibly think of and put them all in one flag you would get the trans flag.”

Doomsday prophet and repeat Trinity Broadcast Network guest Jonathan Cahn recently declared that Biden had put the United States under “demonic possession” at the hands of an ancient goddess of “sexual immorality” by lighting up the White House in the colors of the rainbow for LGBTQ Pride.

Two days after a shooter killed five people in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ club,Infowars host Owen Shroyer ran footage of drag queens and questioned whether “these people are even human,” ranting: “Demon possession is real. Satanic agendas are real. I don’t know how else to describe any of this.”

Video

CitationFrom the November 22, 2022, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show

BlazeTV host Steve Deace partnered with far-right Christian filmmakers Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon to produce a right-wing movie that argued humanity is engaged in a spiritual war against demonic forces such as abortion and LGBTQ equality. On his podcast, in an episode titled “Hot Take: Demonic or Democrats?” Deace said that people who advertise drag story hours are “literally inhabited by a demon” and are “a manifestation of a demonic presence.” 

Salem Radio host Eric Metaxas and his guest John Zmirak proclaimed that Satan himself was behind the LGBTQ rights movement, with Zmirak decrying “blasphemous drag queen rituals, in your church, mocking Christ” and comparing the Pride flag to an inverted pentagram, claiming Satan “wants you to use the pronoun they.” Metaxas then warned his audience that if they did not boycott companies that celebrate Pride Month, they would be comparable to Germans who failed to stop the Holocaust, saying, “The death camps were the result of good people saying, ‘I don’t want to deal with this. Just let me live my life.’”

Christian nationalist pastor Jack Hibbs, whose sermons air on Fox Business Network, declared that transgender people are “satanic,” saying that in “the last days there’s going to be doctrines of demons and deceiving spirits. Wonder what that’s going to be like? You’re in it.” Per Right Wing Watch, Hibbs has also claimed that "demonism” has caused public support for trans rights. 

Christian nationalist influencer and repeat Fox guest Sean Feucht has described abortion and the movement for trans rights as demonic, ascribing public support to “demons” and “the demonic spirit.” Feucht is closely associated with prominent NAR movement leaders and “apostles.” 

Right-wing radio host Jesse Kelly said that “we have a society so full of demons that baby murder is now popular” and also referred to the LGBTQ community as “the LGTBQ demon mob.”

Lance Wallnau, a contributor for The Victory Channel’s Christian nationalist show FlashPoint, has repeatedly invoked demons while discussing LGBTQ people. In an April show, Wallnau said that transgender people represent “a fundamental deception” and that accepting them has made society “sympathetic with evil.” Wallnau said that demons target people to make them trans, saying, “I believe a demon comes along that enters into that confusion that affirms that they are the opposite gender.” Per Right Wing Watch, Wallnau also claimed that people become trans because "Satan has taken 'em over with crazy talk about them being in the wrong bodies.”

Video

CitationFrom the April 13, 2023, edition of The Victory Channel's Flashpoint

Right-wing media personalities have also warned that Democrats and other perceived enemies are “demonic” and “satanic”

Far-right Christian media figures and prominent right-wing commentators have told their audiences that the left is engaged with “satanic worship” and “demonic forces,” rationalizing ideological opposition as a product of the “demon-possessed.”

Fox prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed that viewers should be afraid of “demonic teachers” interested in “turning their classroom into a drag show.”

Carlson warned on Glenn Beck’s show that there are “spiritual forces surrounding” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), calling him “a force of darkness.” 

On a FlashPoint broadcast, contributor and pastor Hank Kunneman told viewers that “we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but principalities, powers, spiritual wickedness in high places — you know, demonic entities.” Earlier in the episode, Wallnau said that tragedies in society such as mass shootings should be understood through a lens where “you don’t deal with current events, you deal with a demonic spin cycle.”

BlazeTV founder and longtime conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck proclaimed that the 2020 election was not contested against Democrats, but against “Satan himself,” which he claimed was prophesied to him in a dream. Beck has an extensive history of linking progressives to “the devil” and warning of “demonic” influence.

Disgraced Trump ally-turned-podcast-host Steve Bannon suggested that Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is “satanic” because he “exudes … pure evil” and “hangs with Satanic Groomers.”

During his Christian nationalist ReAwaken America Tour, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has frequently asserted that there is a “spiritual war” in America. He has also called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) a “demon.”

Right-wing podcast host Benny Johnson attacked the grand jury forewoman investigating Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference in Georgia, calling her “borderline demonic” and “demon-possessed.” He has also claimed that “you can see demonic forces at work" in Schiff's district, claiming that the congressman is “on the side of the demons.” Johnson has previously embraced the rhetoric of spiritual warfare, saying, “This rabbit hole goes down so far into the occult … This is a spiritual battle. This is a battle of possession, and there are stages of demonic possession, and we are in the oppression stage right now.”

Far-right pundit Stew Peters fearmongered about “SatanCon,” an event that is hosted by “a progressive church that doesn't worship the devil but instead uses the word to get attention,” claiming it was evidence of “full-blown satanic worship” in America. His guest, Sean Feucht, insisted that we are witnessing “the total unveiling of this demonic realm, this demonic spirit.” Feucht then warned that these alleged forces of Satan were “agitated and upset and trying everything they can do to intimidate Christians.” 

On his BlazeTV podcast, Deace called the Democratic Party “a demonic construct, a satanically influenced entity, and a death cult.”

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aha recall you cannot negotiate with irrational, so only force violence defend yourself family; rabid dog foams at mouth

not just foreign, black but horde mob is powerful and irrational thus must kill; note hype fear; two scary mysterious tech cell phone [5g] and dna germ [ plus brainwash

https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/alex-jones-says-gang-racist-foaming-mouth-black-people-are-coming-your-family-advises

// an 2 23

Infowars host and chief conspiracy theorist Alex Jones warned on Sunday's show that "foaming-at-the-mouth Black people" would wage war on white populations after they flee "race-specific bioweapons" attacks in Africa later this decade. Jones issued these racist predictions while declaring himself a "vessel" of God.

"They intend on making the world so hellish in the build-up to 2030 that everybody will just 'wink, wink' when they release the race-specific bioweapons starting with Africa that are gonna wipe that continent absolutely out. And you'll be under such invasion from the refugees of the economic warfare in Africa that you will quietly, while you're playing cards with your buddies say, 'well, it had to be done.'And when you go along with that metaphysically, spiritually, culturally, the devil's got your soul," said Jones.

"So I don't like the big giant African hordes being brainwashed against us and the left programming brown people to hate white people. It's all part of a plan, folks. It's all part ofa very sophisticated planand I don't just study history. I don't just study the New World Order," Jones continued. "I have the Holy Spirit. Doesn't mean I'm a perfect vessel, far from it. But I do have deep connection to God and God tells me that if I take part in wiping out the brown people, the Black people, that I will be cut off from God. We’re supposed to lift each other up."

READ MORE: 'I don't tell lies': Alex Jones blabbers of 'self-fulfilling prophecy' after bankruptcy bid blows up in court

Jones then encouraged responding through violence.

"Now that doesn't mean when a gang of racist,foaming-at-the-mouth Black people come to rape, rob, or kill you, which is just, it's out of control right now, that you don't defend yourself and kill every person you need to protect your family if they're attacking you," he suggested.

"That said though, just because they're brainwashed, some of them, and are being part of that doesn't mean we have to fall into the brainwashing either," the right-wing provocateur added. "And they tell you everything they're doing in the movie, the 'Kingsman,' where they send out the program through the cell phones andcell phone towers to make everybody start killing each other. That's what Klaus Schwab talks about, the angrier world, this is part of that plan. And so the Black people that have succumbed to this have succumbed to it through mind control. Doesn't make them any less dangerous."

Watch below via Media Matters for America or at this link.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-host-claims-biden-administration-hopes-rescind-title-42-goal-changing-america-forever

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JEANINE PIRRO (CO-HOST): The amazing thing is, they're saying, “Oh, no, Title 42 is keeping people out. And -- but even if -- when Title 42 goes away, because it's no longer a pandemic, the truth is that we're still going to keep it closed.”

Are you kidding me? You're fighting in the Supreme Court to get Title 42 out so that they can come in. We're seeing people in foil there, those foil blankets, tens of thousands of people, half a million in one sector since October. This country is being invaded.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/marjorie-taylor-greene-gave-interview-white-nationalist-who-has-said-peaceful

mma 11 22

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) did an interview several months ago with a white nationalist commentator who previously said that he thinks “peaceful coexistence” with Black people isn’t “possible” and “the war on whites is escalating very quickly. Plan accordingly.” Greene’s interview, which hasn’t been previously reported, is another example of how the Republican congresswoman has been reaching out to fellow extremists to appeal for support.

Republican House leadership is set to give committee assignments back to Greene and has reportedly told her that it would support her potential investigations.

Before entering Congress in 2021, Greene was a right-wing pundit who pushed conspiracy theories about school shootings, satanic child blood drinking, “Pizzagate,” 9/11, and Jewish people using a space laser to start fires. She has also endorsed violence against politicians, the QAnon conspiracy theory, and bigoted rhetoric.

She has continued to promote toxic rhetoric since taking office, including associating with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, toxic conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and grifting election denier Steve Bannon; and posting on the white nationalist and antisemitic social media haven Gab.

Infowars foreign correspondent Dan Lyman interviewed Greene for his Infowars-affiliated site Border Hawk,where he fearmongers about the supposed danger of undocumented immigrants. Greene’s interview was posted and promoted on Jones’ website, which means that Infowars is monetizing it.

Lyman received a press pass and attended the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in late July, where he interviewed right-wing extremists including Jack Posobiec, Alex Stein, and Greene, calling her “one of our great immigration patriots in Congress.”

During the interview, Greene echoed white nationalist rhetoric by claiming: “It's not just a border invasion. It's an invasion of our entire country because these people are spreading to every single state, all 50 states.” She also said that the Republican-backed House would be “investigating all of the wrongdoing and the corruption” of the Biden administration; claimed that “Democrats don’t want” the U.S. to have “a border any more”; and declared that“we should investigate” the United Nations,nonprofits, and other “globalist groups and networks” for supposedly contributing “to the invasion of America."

[vid]

greene isn’t a stranger to pushing white nationalist talking points regarding immigration. In 2018, she shared an anti-Muslim and antisemitic video that quotes a Holocaust denier claiming that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”

Lyman is a “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist and white nationalist who has repeatedly made racist and anti-Muslim remarks. Here’s a sampling of his rhetoric:

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an 7 222

lt Governor Dan Patrick, a far-right Republican, is comparing migrants crossing the border into Texas to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that killed 2335 people. He is calling it an “invasion” and says that gives the state the right to “put hands on people.”

Patrick, who because of Texas’ unique structure is more powerful than the governor, told Fox News on Tuesday, “we are being invaded, and if we’re being invaded under the constitution I think that gives us the power to put hands on people and send them back. Put hands on people and send them back,” he said repeatedly.

“These people are a danger to America,” Patrick said in a rant. It was unclear if he was referring to migrants or President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

READ MORE:

The Lt. Governor, who has hawked the racist “great replacement theory” repeatedly, and used the term “invasion” repeatedly, told Fox News that Texas is now spending $4 billion annually on the border, while Texas National Guardsmen and Texas Rangers complain of being called up to serve, having to abandon their regular jobs, for no apparent reason.

“This is the biggest danger we have, to your family,” Patrick says of the fentanyl crossing the border. “It’s all on Biden,” he claimed.

Last week Texas Governor Greg Abbott drew extensive criticism for using thedeaths of more than 50 migrants packed into an 18-wheel tractor-trailer as a political opportunity to attack President Biden. Even some conservatives attacked Abbott for his inhumane remarks..

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bannon/putin disinfo to destabilize, erode civil society to the pt --> authoritarian fascism // orban

no lnx

'To defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan': The scary truth about modern right-wing misinformation

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/right-wing-misinformation/

John Stoehr January 13, 2022

Death threats will change a person. During previous testimony before a Senate panel, the nation’s top infectious disease expert was calm and deferential. This week marked a break from the past. Enough is enough, apparently. Dr. Anthony Fauci was no longer in the mood.

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas kept pressing the question of financial disclosures, implying that Fauci was benefiting from the effort to vaccinate the country against the covid pandemic.

Fauci, as head of the White House pandemic response, is a public servant. By law, he must disclose financial information. So of course he didn’t understand Marshall’s question, because his “financial disclosure is public knowledge” and has been for more than three decades.

Two things. Marshall knew this and was pretending not to or he didn’t know this, which should be embarrassing for a sitting senator. Either way, Marshall said his staff could not find the document. Well, it’s here. Ultimately, he was pandering to believers of rightwing misinformation.

READ: One sentence from the Supreme Court's ruling against an OSHA vaccine rule reveals its upside-down logic]

After a heated exchange in which Marshall kept insisting Fauci was hiding something and Fauci kept insisting he’s not – “all you have to do is ask” for the disclosure – Fauci said, “What a moron! Jesus Christ!” (He said this to himself, obviously, not realizing his mic was still on.)

Is Fauci showing us how to handle rightwingers? That’s what I asked Sara Aniano on Wednesday. She’s a Monmouth University graduate student studying rightwing rhetoric and conspiracy theories on social media. She co-authored a new report for the Global Network on Extremism and Technology analyzing QAnon trends a year after J6.

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}:

She said Fauci’s pushback felt good, but in the end, it probably doesn’t help. “The reality is pretty dire,” she said. Propaganda, conspiracy theory and misinformation have “already infected the population.” It’s too late even for the Washington press corps to do much about it.

The way Anthony Fauci talked to the Republicans is how everyone should talk to rightwing extremists. Am I on to something?

READ: A right-wing talking point about Jan. 6 just completely collapsed after indictment of the Oath Keepers]

Absolutely. For a lot of people on the left, Fauci's pushback was refreshing.People are tired of the pandering, and of watching misinformation be lumped into the category of “free speech.”[ = wht priv?]

While Fauci’s “moron” comment was indeed a great moment of transparency, we should also consider his ability to humanize the situation with the anecdote about his own harassment.

The left is often considered "soft” in contrast with the alleged "hard truth" attitude of the GOP. While Fauci's position is not about partisanship, anti-vaxx movements have unfortunately aligned with the right and the far-right. So it feels like Fauci is speaking for us, even though he's really speaking on behalf of everyone.

It seems to me speaking for everyone is often interpreted as soft. In other words, acting for the benefit of the common good immediately marks you as an enemy by rightwingers.

READ: DOJ unveils explosive sedition charges against the Oath Keepers for the Jan. 6 attack]

:{:{}:

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For a party that increasingly demonizes collectivism, it's in their best interest to continue promoting "individual responsibility,” as it works for their messaging politically. But for the extreme far-right, it's more sinister. In their minds, there is a war going on between good and evil. And if you're not on their side, their black-and-white thinking places you into the "enemy" category.

The irony is that they are actually collectivists, too, no?

I hear that a lot. In comparison to other countries, America is not a collectivist culture. In my opinion, anyone who pushes extreme nationalism here is also pushing extreme individualism.

As a leftist researcher of far-right misinformation, I admit to a certain level of bias. But January 6 marked a clear turning point in how we view partisanship, I think, and we can't discard that.

READ: Michigan Republicans who circulated fake 'Electoral College' documents are being investigated by the Jan. 6 committee: report]

Why is it a turning point? We turned from what to what?

For a lot of us studying far-right extremism and misinformation, we couldn't help but feel this collective "we told you so" when January 6 happened. For the first time, we had a visual manifestation of far-right conspiracism that wasn't limited to social media or fringe news programs. In other words, everyone saw people act on the ideologies that misinformation researchers sift through every day.

Of course, how people interpret what they saw is what's shaping their opinion now.

Which is where misinformation comes back, right?

Here's something I tweeted on the anniversary of the insurrection: “By the end of January 6, 2021, Americans were left with the most damaging relic of all: Yet another unfathomable event, born of hate and delusion, for far-right conspiracy theorists to contort into a self-serving narrative that unfairly demonizes the innocent.”

I want to cry.

A lot of us can relate to that.

To what extent is anti-vaccination about purity of blood? To what extent is anti-vaccination cover for plain old white supremacy?

It's interesting, because even if anti-vaxxers don't realize it, the "pure blood" characterization of the unvaccinated has roots to eugenics, which of course has roots to white supremacy.

But to go back to the idea of "infiltration," I think vaccine skepticism ties into that too.

Please go on.

I've been thinking about what types of infiltration the far-right finds most threatening. So far I've come up with three categories: 1) member infiltration, 2) spiritual infiltration and 3) bodily infiltration.

Member infiltration seems to stem from a fear of the "other" hiding in plain sight, trying to live among them but with heinous intentions. We see that a lot with paranoia about Antifa, the feds, Jews or journalists "posing" as patriots.

Spiritual infiltration has a lot to do with "demonic forces" among us. Satanic panic stuff. With QAnon, we see allegations of Satanic rituals in Hollywood or even reptilians wearing skinsuits to pass as humans.

Physical infiltration is a lot about co-opting "my body my choice" messaging to push back against the vaccine, which many think is the mark of the beast or a 5G transmitter or radioactive or a microchip. A lot of crossover with pseudo-science.

There is so much overlap that it's hard to make exclusive categories, but you get the idea.

We haven't talked about religion. What does your research say?

Yes, religion or spirituality is inextricable from far-right narratives overall. My thesis, currently in progress, focuses on QAnon Instagram comments in the week leading up to J6.

Rhetoric that pushes a higher power is always mixed in with far-right narratives, and overwhelmingly, that's Christianity. A lot of people who believe election fraud theories in QAnon circles genuinely think that Donald Trump was anointed by God – he is the chosen leader to usher in "the storm" and defeat the evil Democrats, once and for all.

In their minds, to defy Trump's wishes is to defy God's plan. I wouldn't say that this is ubiquitous across the right, to be clear. That's a pretty extreme version. But religion presents itself across far-right rhetoric in general, even when it doesn't involve Donald Trump.

Trump abruptly hung up on Steve Inskeep after the host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” challenged him repeatedly on the big lie? Are such challenges what a democratic republic needs?

I think Inskeep did a great job, although many were upset with NPR for bringing Trump on in the first place. Your question is a hard one. People asked the same thing during and after the 2020 election when Trump alleged fraud on TV before the ballot counting was even complete. Some networks cut his speech off, while others aired it.

Any time we platform misinformation, especially when we can see it coming, we must provide context and a good reason for showcasing it. If we can shut it down in the meantime, then yes, we should.

But if I'm being honest, I think that ship has sailed.

I don't know if it matters anymore if we cut off conspiratorial rhetoric from Trump and others when it's already infected the population.

Are you suggesting the press can’t really mitigate the spread?

Once Trump normalized discourse that was hateful, xenophobic, conspiratorial and sexist, he made it more mainstream. People who previously self-censored those thoughts felt free to not only think them, but say them – particularly on social media, where anonymity removes accountability. That hasn't really changed.

I guess my point is – the press should do what it can to mitigate misinformation, of course, but the reality is pretty dire.

There's a serious epistemological crisis going on, and that's gonna require systemic change.[// heated pod occupy sunrise guy too late to stop authoritorian, congress paralyze so only prez can at,crisis will give opening]

Again, I want to cry.

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omfg parasite = cockroaches = exterminate  vermin carry disease dirty

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/rittenhouse-2655770737/

no lnx pix req

Rittenhouse verdict championed on right-wing social media as green light for killing protesters

[Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally. Far-right Oath Keepers patrol Emancipation Park. Credit: Anthony Crider]

David Neiwertand Daily Kos November 21, 2021

The exultation on right-wing social media following Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal has been sickeningly predictable: Mainstream conservatives loudly valorize Rittenhouse as a "hero," while more extremist voices, applying the same logic, demand that more Americans follow his footsteps—urging the likeminded to take to the street now to begin using guns to "be like Kyle." They have even appropriated his name for their future plans, voiced in numerous celebratory threads: Any leftist protester shot by a right-wing "patriot" henceforth will have been "Rittenhoused."

As we forecasted, the acquittal is now a beacon-like green light granting permission to violent right-wing extremists to openly wage the kind of "civil war" against "the left"—which ranges from liberal Democrats like Joe Biden to the "antifa" bogeyman they have concocted—that they have been fantasizing about for the past decade. In the words of Charlie Kirk's interlocutor, it's the signal that now they "get to use the guns."

The bloodlust has been palpable. Online trolls celebrated that "it's Open Season on pedo-commies" and boasted that the verdict means "there's nothing you can do about it." A neo-Nazi channel on Twitter urged readers to "let this win fuel your rage." A fan of pseudo-journalist Andy Ngo commented in a retweet: "Every one of these anarchist criminal thugs should be shot in the street like the worthless dogs they are."

Far-right maven Ann Coulter posted a meme showing a gantlet of [marvel nazi nerd wet dr]  comic-book superheroes bowing to Rittenhouse. On Facebook, Ben Shapiro framed any future violence as being left-wing: "The Left accepting the verdict in a peaceable manner remains the sizable elephant in the room."

The white-nationalist site VDare also extolled Rittenhouse's heroism:

This much is true: Kyle Rittenhouse is the hero we've been waiting for throughout the turbulent summer of 2020, where a Black Lives Matter/Antifa/Bolshevik revolution has our country on the brink of total chaos.

[Coulter-RittenhouseMeme.jpeg]

Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire blamed the media for there even having been a trial:

The verdict is right and just but Kyle Rittenhouse never should have been on trial at all. Now themedia will go to work, like the demonsthey are, to ensure that Kenosha burns because they did not get their blood sacrifice.

Walsh then added:

I hope Rittenhouse bankrupts all of you dirtbags in media who smeared him as a white supremacist. [sue for libel based on verdict? // charlottesville ~ KKK case finished ] I hope he ruins your life. I want you to suffer. It's what you deserve. It's justice.

Idaho legislator Tammy Nichols, a Republican, posted a meme featuring the Gadsden-flag "Don't Tread On Me" design, but with a graphic of Rittenhouse firing from a seated position as he did in Kenosha.

The Gun Owners of America (GOA)—a gun-rights extremist group headed by far-right militia figure Larry Pratt—joined in the celebration by announcing it was giving Rittenhouse a new gun.

Alert: GOA will be awarding Kyle Rittenhouse with an AR-15 for his defense of gun rights in America. Join us in saying THANK YOU to Kyle Rittenhouse for being awarrior for gun rights and self defense rights across the country!

Other "Patriot" Movement extremists saw the verdict as vindication for vigilantism and militia organizing. The "Washougal Moms," a militia-friendly group from eastern Washington state, opined:

Today the jury and legal system has reaffirmed our rights as citizens. The second amendmentin all aspects, to form a well regulated militia, the right to bear arms in self defense, and against enemiesboth foreign and domestic!

Kurt Schlichter, the right-wing troll with over 380,000 followers, taunted MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, who had expressed concern about the double racial standard that the verdict reflects, on Twitter.

Your pain delights me. Kyle Rittenhouse killed two leftistcatspawsand bisected the bicep of another and there's nothing you can do about it.

A white-nationalist Twitter account called "Based Teutonic" celebrated the verdict by posting a fantasy that Rittenhouse would now embark on an action-hero-like mission—with the help of Judge Bruce Schroeder, who oversaw the trial in markedly biased fashion.

About to exit court room

Judge yells from behind:

Rittenhouse turns around

You forgot this

Tosses him his AR15

Credits roll, Eye of the Tiger plays

"Based Teutonic" wasn't alone in celebrating Schroeder's role in the verdict. On Telegram, a commenter in a Proud Boys channel observed:

Kyle's case shows how important is to have your guys in power on a local level. One vaguely conservative boomer judge made all of the difference in a monumental trial.

Other Proud Boys were more focused on their long-anticipated civil war. "There's still a chance for this country," wrote one. Another wrote: "The left wont stop until their bodies get stacked up like cord wood."

The Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights monitored a number of far-right chat forums (particularly Telegram) following the verdict, and found an outpouring of extremist bile, much of it anticipating the ability to inflict lethal violence on "leftists," as well as Black "parasites" and, of course, Jewish people. A user called The Western Chauvinist commented: "The parasites are planning multiple 'protests' across the United States."

One user calling himself "Proud Boy To Fascist Pipeline" replied to one of these comments mocking Black leaders protesting the verdict as "parasites": "Your 17 year olds are already armed and terrorizing our neighborhoods, n----er."

Fittingly, Charlie Kirk fans—following the example of his Idaho audience member—were focused on the violence: "Arm up and tell them f**cking bring it!" one replied to predictions of leftist protests after the verdict. "Shoot these phukers," commented another.

Nick Fuentes' "Groypers" were also unbridled in their anticipation of gunning down their opponents. "The most American thing you can do is Killing Commies," opined one on the white-nationalist forum Gab.

Another Gab user exulted with a meme showing Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker, dancing: "When you find out it's officially Open Season on pedo-commies." Mocking "wannabe street thugs upset with the verdict," another Gab user replied, "you're gonna get Rittenhouse'd. Bitch."

Gab-OpenSeason.png

"Getting Rittenhoused" became a popular way of threatening leftists. After Ngo posted a handful of tweets from leftists angry about the verdict, hundreds of his fans piled on, making threats of violence against them. "Someone will Rittenhouse them too," one responded. Another replied: "I came here to say that!"

Antisemitism also was a common theme. Right-wing troll Keith Woods, who has 23,500 followers on Twitter, declared after the verdict: "Huge L for the Jews." His followers piled on; one responded with a GIF meme of Gollum and the text, "Curse you goyim." Another replied, "hopefully they take an L in Charlottsville trial too. WHITE BOY WINTER!"

White nationalist Eric Striker was more explicitly antisemitic, as well as strategic, in his commentary:

Beating the Jews to the narrative as incidents unfold is more important than anything that happens in court.

Once you frame a story with the facts (and the facts have to be 100% accurate) and disseminate it with an effective propaganda network, Jews will struggle to challenge it once it's cemented.

Notorious white nationalist and antisemite Mike "Enoch" Peinovich put out a statement through his National Justice Party: "This victory for Kyle Rittenhouse over the cosmopolitan elite forces that plague the nation isn't only a victory for the young man himself, it's a victory for justice and for all White people who take a stand," Peinovich said.

On Telegram, a white nationalist commented: "The victory of Kyle Rittenhouse over thejewish forces that plague the nation isn't just a victory for the man himself, it's a victory for justice, and for the masses of disenfranchised White people which populate the globe.

The neo-Nazi group White Lives Matter had this advice for its white-supremacist followers:

Don't let this one victory lull you back to sleep. That's what they want. They know small "victories" can placate the angry masses more than anything else. Instead let this win fuel your rage.Never forget the simple fact that this clear-cut self-defense should never have gone to trial in the first place. Muslim, Hispanic, and African invaders have raped millions of our women, WHITE women. Their time ofterrorizing our People with 0 consequences is coming to an end. The Rittenhouse verdict is a single tick in the scoreboard on our side. Our enemy doesn't have a scoreboard big enough for their victories. Fight harder, stronger, fiercer, and with the same remorse they have shown us. None. Get going, White man.

"This might be interpreted across the far right as a type of permission slip to do this kind of thing or to seek out altercations in this way, believing that there is a potential that they won't face serious consequences for it," Jared Holt of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council told NPR. "I worry that that might end up being interpreted by some people as a proof of concept of this idea that you can actually go out and seek a 'self-defense situation,' and you'll be cheered as a hero for it."

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critics denounce Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick's 'invasion' rhetoric on immigration

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/dan-patrick/

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3/21

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body politic must be purged: 

lots of analysis 321 an; meme remix? prphet/profit grift for non xian?  ghost dance?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/trump/

salon

Lorie Laddgazes into the camera with glossy eyes, a look that mimics the long stare one gets after meditating. She's about to give one of her sermons, one of the "most challenging" ones she's ever had to make, she explains. Ladd says she's received a message that needs to be shared from "higher dimensional consciousnesses," what she refers to as the "Galactic Federation of Light." But before revealing the message, Ladd, a self-described "ascension teacher," advises her viewers to shed the stereotypes that have been "programmed" into them — "polarities," she calls them, like "Democrat" and "Republican" — and listen to her message: Donald Trump is a "massive and powerful lightworker."

"To say that I was shocked was an understatement," Ladd tells her nearly 139,000 YouTube followers of her revelation. "I have been digesting information from my guides about what this lightworker in human form looking like Donald Trump has been doing for the human collective; this man has more charge around him than any other human on the planet right now."

Ladd goes on to explain that her video isn't a "political one," but a "consciousness one," and that she's not talking about "voting," but "ascension." Trump, as she explains in the next half hour, is here to help assist humans in what many in the New Age and spiritual communities refer to as a great "awakening" of consciousness. The idea behind the awakening is that human consciousness is approaching a "fifth dimension," which will eventually bring humans closer to the "Source."

A lightworker, as defined by well-being magazine Happiness, is someone who feels "an enormous pull towards helping others." The term, they say, can be interchangeable with "crystal babies," "indigos," "Earth angels" and "star seeds"; "these spiritual beings volunteer to act as a beacon for the Earth, and commit to serving humanity," the story continues. The magazine states that the term was first coined by the New Age author Michael Mirdad.

This rhetoric might sound cultish, but these phrases don't belong to any one specific religious sect. Indeed, such belief systems are part of a larger, more diffuse New Age culture embraced by the ever-increasing number of Americans leaving organized religion in droves — or who were never religious in the first place — and turning to conspirituality by way of many self-described spiritual and wellness influencers online.

Conspirituality, the term that defines this movement, was coined by researcher Charlotte Ward. She describes conspirituality as "a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fueled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews." There is no official indoctrination video, no book to read; the hundreds of thousands of people who embrace these New Age-like beliefs find them on YouTube vlogs like Ladd's, as well as Instagram and Facebook. Recently, conspiritualists have begun to overlap with the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon.

This notion that Trump is a lightworker shares obvious parallels with the belief, held by some evangelicals, that Trump is comparable to Jesus; similarly, some QAnon followers believe that Trump is the "world leader" whose mission is to "save the children."

Yet what makes the lightworker theory especially odd is that it has emerged from a demographic that would have previously been described as apolitical, or even far-left.

However, as the January 6 insurrection on the Capitol showed, QAnon and Trump adherents are no longer just middle-aged, conservative white men like the Republican Party of yore. Many of those who embrace right-wing fringe beliefs are yogis, and love-and-light types, too. Take Jake Angeli for example, the so-called "QAnon Shaman" who donned a horned hat and spear-tipped American flag as he stormed the Capitol building on January 6. The 33-year-old, who identifies as having "shamanistic" beliefs, was recently granted the right to be fed an all-organic diet in jail in line with his religious practice.

Ladd's declaration that Trump was a lightworker sent shockwaves through conspiritual and self-help communities. (Salon reached out to Ladd for comment, but did not receive a response.) Some spirituality and consciousness bloggers vehemently disagreed. But many influential figures in the community thought Ladd was onto something, including Christiane Northrup, a physician and best-selling author who has been spreading anti-vaccination rhetoric and has embraced QAnon.

Matthew Remski, a co-host of the Conspirituality podcast and a cult dynamics researcher, described Northrup as a "conspirituality aggregator" who feeds what she finds most interesting to her followers, of which she has many.

"What I think is really brilliant about this particular iteration of QAnon — or 'soft' or 'pastel Q,' you could call it — is that it's really effective at evading content moderation," Remski said. "To only really say something positive about the person who's at the head of QAnon mythology and sort of soft-pedal all of the aggression and triumph that is going to be involved in his mission is a really good way of brand-washing QAnon for the wellness set."

Indeed, while social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have suspended many accounts sharing QAnon-related disinformation, the wellness influencers remain. Dr. Ronald Purser, a professor of management at San Francisco State University and the author of "McMindfulness," said that in uncertain times, societies see a rise of "occultures," meaning "groups of people who are attracted to strange occult and esoteric ideas, mixing them in unforeseen ways with political movements."

"A common theme in such movements is the need for purification, purifying and purging unwanted elements – toxins, impurities, or anything foreign or other,"Purser said. "This is why we see so many New Age yoga practitioners seduced by QAnon."

Purser said there are parallels between the rise of "occultures" now and the role spirituality and mysticism played in Nazi Germany. Notably, the Third Reich appropriated the swastika, a symbol used by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains; the word means "well-being" in Sanskrit.

"Consider Hitler, who was obsessed with the occult, was a vegetarian, used astrologers [and] oracles," Purser said. "The Nazi Heinrich Himmler, head of SS, was enamored with Eastern mysticism, and he sent an expedition to Tibet in search of lost remnants of a secret and pure Aryan race; Hitler was seen as a 'light worker' [as in someone who's saving humanity] that would purge Germany of Jews."

Purser added that Trump and his enablers have "mastered the ability of weaponized mass delusion through social media."

"Many of the New Agers drawn to QAnon are probably suffering from unresolved trauma – like many in Trump's base as well," Purser said. "It's easier to look to a savior and to find scapegoats than to face one's own fears and pain."

When asked about the term lightworker, and where it derives from, Remski said he first heard it when he was in a "Course in Miracles cult" from 1999 to 2003. The name is a reference to a book, titled "A Course in Miracles," that was published by Helen Schucman in 1976; Schucman claimed the book had been spoken to her via "inner dictation" from Christ. Remski said the word "light" appears in the text frequently.

"Light is not only the sort of keynote of this Manichaean universe in which things are either light or shadow, they're either good or bad, it's also like schizotypal as a universe, it is given this materiality as well," Remski said of Schucman's book. "Light is said to be something that can fill a person up, it can blow a person apart, it can enter a person, and I think it probably overlaps with some pre-modern ideas like prana or ch'i —those kind of folk medicine ideas of vital force — but it's also associated with an absolute truth, an ontological transformation . . . like once once light enters into you, you are forever changed."

Remski believes the conspiritual rhetoric around "light" started after the book was published. While the book "A Course in Miracles" doesn't include the term "lightworker," the theme of light itself runs throughout. "The key is only the light that shines away the shapes and forms and fears of nothing," a typical passage reads.

One prominent figure who was deeply influenced by "A Course in Miracles" is former presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. In 1996, Williamson wrote a book, "A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of 'A Course in Miracles,'" that was structured as a reflection on the original text. Williamson, too, has used the term "lightworker" before; in a 2013 Facebook post, Williamson wrote, "A light-worker is not someone who ignores the darkness; it's someone who transforms the darkness."

Obviously, Williamson and Trump are political opposites; Williamson, a Democrat, came down hard and repeatedly on Trump's policies during her 2020 campaign. Salon asked Williamson what she thought about the term "lightworker" being used to describe Trump. She replied via email: "I think it's insane. . . . Like many others, I don't understand it but I find it deeply disturbing."

When asked why he believes people have been so eager to embrace this belief that Trump is a "lightworker," Remski said that it is because it can "offer all of the benefits of the conspiratorial mindset, without a lot of the drawbacks."

"Because you're saying something kind about him," Remski said, "as the social psychologists basically repeat over and over again."

Remski believes conspiracy theories are attractive because they "satisfy epistemic needs." "Like, 'I'm now I'm going to know something that nobody else knows,' or 'I'm going to meet my survival needs, meaning this information is going to help me tolerate what's happening, but also maybe even preserve me from danger,'" he said.

But as the social media spread of the "lightworker" theory illustrates, conspiracy theories also open up their adherents to communities of people that they can hang out with, Remski mused.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

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aha metaphor of invasion? fluoride gubmint put something scary/myst in your body by force or stealth // virginity fortress?

1220

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/tucker-carlsons-history-pushing-vaccine-conspiracy-theories

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ebola, baltimore vermin, "filthy" vetting process that let Somali refugees in

==

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an 520

cdv stanley

Trump and his news media and representatives are consistently using the language of “war,” and describing Trump as a “war president” during this pandemic. Most mainstream commentators and analysts have failed to understand the true meaning and origins of that language. “War president” is another example of a logic where democracy no longer applies. Carl Schmitt — a political theorist and jurist whose thinking was foundational for the Nazi regime — described thiscondition as one of “exception,” where the leader can ignore the rule of law and other norms. How can we better explain what Donald Trump and his agents really mean when they talk about him as a “war president”?

You are absolutely correct. When an authoritarian or like-minded leaders and regimes want to suspend democracy, they use the language of “war.” Trump calling himself a “war president” enables him to do drastic things such as rushing bills through Congress without proper debate, hearings and public scrutiny.  An emergency is a very dangerous time, and the fact that the coronavirus pandemic is a real emergency makes matters much more perilous and complicated.

Trump, the Republicans and many of their supporters have argued that older people and others who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus should be willing to face death as an act of “loyalty” and “patriotism” to save “the economy.” How does this relate to authoritarianism and fascism?

This coalition of the business elite, right-wing Christian evangelicals, and white nationalists and other white supremacists is very dangerous. Fascism is ultimately a death cult.

Social Darwinism is the heart of fascism as well as the heart of capitalism. With the pandemic, and the way capitalism is a type of religion in America,the Darwinian idea of “survival of the fittest” is made even more central. The notion that “Life is always a struggle, the weak will die” is central to fascism. That idea is also common to certain ways of thinking about capitalism. Remember, Adolf Hitler’s book was called, “My Struggle” — that “struggle” was survival of the fittest. That is exactly what we are seeing in this moment with Trump, the Republican Party and the coronavirus pandemic.

Crisis is an opportunity for Donald Trump. Several weeks ago, Donald Trump announced via Twitter that the United States was ending all legal immigration because of the coronavirus emergency. Of course, that is part of Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s white supremacist agenda.

Notice Trump’s verbiage when he describes the coronavirus: He calls it the “invisible enemy”. That language is an allusion to Jewish people. For centuries anti-Semites and other hate mongers for centuries have used such eliminationist, conspiratorial language. Trump’s announcement “banning” legal immigration — which was likely written by Stephen Miller — was also made on Hitler’s birthday. Miller has repeatedly signaled through his policies, language, emails and use of codes such as “14” and “88” in government documents and announcements a deep affinity with Nazis and other neo-fascists. [irony alert: wife vpence spox infected]

It is obvious that the Trump administration was going to move from stopping “illegal immigration” by nonwhite people and other stigmatized groups to then finding a way to stop legal immigration. Now Trump and Miller are using the coronavirus as an excuse to do just that. That Trump announced such a change on Hitler’s birthday should have been much bigger news. That the news media did not pick up on that date and the announcement, quite frankly, is shocking to me....

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https://www.mediamatters.org/60-minutes/fiona-hill-tells-60-minutes-about-receiving-death-threats-after-she-was-targeted-roger

lESLIE STAHL (60 MINUTES CORRESPONDENT): When you took the job, I know that there were some of your friends who had urged you not to. I wonder if any of your friends stopped talking to you.

FIONA HILL: There were some people in the professional circles in which I move through certainly took, let's just say some took offense, frankly, at the fact that I had-- decided to give this. They had given me counsel not to do the job.And they, you know, actually did believe that I would be aiding and abetting something nefarious by joining the administration. I felt very strongly, however, that we were in a situation where we were to a confrontation with Russia that someone like myself, who was not political, someone who was an expert should step up and try to do something.

STAHL: Right after you started at the White House, there was a smear campaign against you. Public. Distressing I'm sure. What was that all about?

HILL: Well, I'm still trying to get to the bottom of some of that, to be honest.

(CLIP BEGINS)

ALEX JONES: He's got a major Soros mole discovered in the White House, breaking now--

(CLIP ENDS)

STAHL: May 2017, right-wing conspiracists launch an online campaign to discredit her.

(CLIP BEGINS)

ROGER STONE: George Soros has penetrated the Trump White House. A woman named Fiona hill

(CLIP ENDS)

HILL: I have to say that the scale of this did take me by surprise.

STAHL: This was Roger Stone--

HILL: I was, Roger Stone, Alex Jones. And I did think--

STAHL: So from the right?

HILL: "Why me?"

STAHL: Were there death threats?

HILL: There were death threats. There was-- quite a number of them, especially online.

STAHL: She found it disturbing. And she doesn't rattle easily.

...

STAHL: In becoming an overnight public figure, she found herself contending with the anxieties of her 13-year-old daughter. How did she absorb all of this?

HILL: Initially, she was, you know, somewhat concerned about the whole thing.

STAHL: She must have been worrying all that time?

HILL: But she also helped me put things into perspective. Because on the day before I was meant to testify in public, and obviously I was trying to prepare myself for this, she was preparing for a big test. And she was having me quiz her in the car when I was driving her to school. And she was getting quite anxious. And, you know, I was kind of trying to pull rank on this one and said, "Look, put it into perspective. You know, Mommy, tomorrow has to, you know, kind of testify before congress and millions of people might be watching. And, you know, I mean, this is a test. And she just looked at me and she said, "This is much worse." And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, you just have to tell the truth."

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  1. ### Fiona Hill testified on the dangers of the “fictional narrative” of Ukrainian collusion -- the same conspiracy theory Fox News has relentlessly pushed for years

11/21/19 1:37 PM EST

  1. ### Former NSC staffer Fiona Hill testified about receiving death threats after being labeled a “Soros mole.” It started with Roger Stone.

11/08/19 5:38 PM EST

  1. ### Alex Jones presses on with Roger Stone’s smear campaign against Fiona Hill

11/25/19 3:30 PM EST

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==

According to a report published by The New York Times, Donald Trump once suggested during a meeting in the Oval Office that soldiers at the U.S. southern border should shoot migrants.

This is not the first time Trump has suggested shooting unarmed immigrants at the border. Last November, Trump had said U.S. troops on the border should shoot immigrants who throw rocks. At a Florida rally this past May, Trump laughed when a crowd member said the U.S. can stop migrants from approaching the border by shooting them, saying, "That's only in the panhandle could you get away with that statement."

Shooting unarmed migrants at the border is an idea that has been circulating in the right-wing media landscapefor a long time -- it’s part of the dehumanizing anti-immigrant narratives that have thrived among right-wing outlets and on social media for years.

In 2015, Fox’s Laura Ingraham suggested the U.S. threaten to shoot deported immigrants who approached the border.

Racist right-wing columnist Ann Coulter called for migrants to be shot on Twitter, arguing that the National Guard should “shoot the illegals” at the border because “just standing there doesn’t do a thing.”

Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren suggested that U.S. citizens may need to shoot immigrants to “defend” themselves. Lahren stated that guns are necessary to protect “the people in Texas, the people in South Dakota, the people in the middle of this country” from immigrants.

On right-wing Facebook pages, memes asking if the U.S. military should shoot migrants at the southern border have frequently gone viral. These memes, published by vehemently anti-immigrant pages, pose loaded questions to their pro-Trump audiences, such as asking if users are OK with shooting immigrants “to kill.” Some users also justify violence at the border by echoing a right-wing talking point about immigrants using government resources and repeating white supremacist dog whistles about a migrant " invasion" of the United States.

==

ref on memes quite good pix

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/how-facebook-right-wing-propaganda-machine-works

==

Appearing Friday on Fox Business to discuss the Democratic debate the night before, Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren suggested that Americans may have to shoot immigrants, saying “The people in the middle of this country, we are going to be armed and ready, because we have to have a means to defend ourselves from — who knows who's coming in?”

Guns were a main topic in right-wing media after former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) called for a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and AK-47s. Shortly after, a Texas state rep. tweeted that "My AR is ready for you Robert Francis.” Many right-wing media figures defended the obvious death threat, and the representative was even feted on Dana Loesch's radio show and on Fox News.

Elsewhere on Fox News, Fox host Jesse Watters suggested that a buyback program, similar to what Australia has done, would result in gun owners in America murdering police officers. Others on Fox have made similar remarks.

==

baltimore and shithole countries are dirty. diseased , vermin (tho only women are "nasty")

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-seizes-on-homelessness-for-divide-and-conquer-tactics-led-by-fox-news/

no lnx

Trump seizes on homelessness for divide-and-conquer tactics — led by Fox News

Written by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos September 11, 2019

Donald Trump is apparently so pleased with the reception his migrant detention centers are getting that he’s looking into forcing homeless people into federal hands, too. Trump is specifically targeting homelessness in California, because Fox News has been harping on it and because portraying a heavily Democratic state as hopelessly dirty and in need of federal intervention is likely to appeal to his base.

“Administration officials have discussed using the federal government to get homeless people off the streets of Los Angeles and other cities and into new government-backed facilities, according to two officials briefed on the planning,” The Washington Post reports, adding that “it is unclear how they could accomplish this and what legal authority they would use.”

It’s the Trump administration. Lack of legal authority has never been an issue for them—and Trump’s pet Supreme Court justices would doubtless discover sweeping new federal powers to imprison people should he demand it. But it’s likely that the goal here is less to accomplish anything than to spread the message that liberals are dirty. As aWhite House spokesman put it, “Like many Americans, the president has taken notice of the homelessness crisis, particularly in cities and states where the liberal policies are combining to dramatically increase poverty andpublic health risks.”

Most of the states with the highest poverty rates are red, but you don’t hear Trump aides talking about what Mississippi and Louisiana are doing to “dramatically increase poverty.” And California ranks just outside the top 10 on public health measures. Details, details. There’s a blue state to be smeared through association with homelessness.

So no, Donald Trump is unlikely to succeed at forcing California’s homeless population into federal camps anytime soon. But the fact that he’s talking about it shows where his 2020 campaign is going to take the nation.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/texas-governor-busted-sending-racist-call-to-arms-a-day-before-el-paso-attack-take-matters-into-our-own-hands

no lnx

Texas governor busted sending racist call-to-arms a day before El Paso attack: ‘Take matters into our own hands’

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story August 23, 2019

On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) tweeted out a message of unity and promised to work to reduce violence in his state, in the wake of the shooting in El Paso that left 22 dead and dozens more injured:

Today we had hearings responding to the tragic shooting in El Paso.

We focused on community healing, combating domestic terrorism, reducing hateful ideologies, & keeping guns out of hands of deranged killers while respecting 2nd Amendment rights.

We’ll keep TX safe.#txlege pic.twitter.com/ymct4aiSgK

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) August 22, 2019

But this was decidedly not the attitude Abbott had just one day before the shooting took place, when, according to the Texas Signal, he sent out a letter peppered with racist attacks on Hispanic immigrants — and a menacing, violent suggestion that Texans “take matters into our own hands.”

“Just three weeks in June, 45,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended crossing the Mexican border into Texas!” said the letter. “That amounts to the entire population of Galveston – every three weeks. In just six months, we’d add the population of Arlington!

“If we’re going to DEFEND Texas, we’ll need to take matters into our own hands,” the letter continued. “Theproblems of illegal immigration never reach swanky limousine-liberal neighborhoods in New York and California!”

The El Paso shooter’s manifesto made it abundantly clear that he was motivated to kill by a hatred of Mexican migrants, who he saw as invaders. He drove hours across the state to reach the border city for his massacre.

Republicans have relied on increasingly warlike rhetoric to describe undocumented immigrants and lawful asylum seekers, encouraged by President Donald Trump.

==

==

mma

Multiple figures on Fox News are echoing the hateful rhetoric warning of an immigrant invasion, even though the gunman in El Paso, TX, cited this inflammatory rhetoric as his motivation for killing 22 people, most of whom were Hispanic.

Minutes before the gunman opened fire on a Walmart in El Paso, he published a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto online. He wrote of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and warned that immigrants were replacing America’s white population, drawing from the white supremacist theory of “great replacement.” The gunman’s rhetoric in his manifesto can be regularly heard on Fox News. A Media Matters study found that in 2019 alone, Fox News referenced an invasion of migrants over 70 times; Fox personalities have also repeatedly warned that immigrants are coming to“replace” Americans.

Since the shooting, the network is clearly not offering much self-reflection. While an anchor at one point pushed back on a guest's use of the term “invasion,” others on the network have continued to use that rhetoric -- including a different guest speaking with the same anchor. Some have also defended their prior use of the term and denied that such language had anything to do with the El Paso shooting, insisting instead that it is simply a factual description of what is happening at the border.

Also: Similar to our own findings, a massive New York Times report found that right-wing media figures echoed this rhetoric for years leading up to the mass shooting. Right-wing media predictably reacted to the report by lashing out at the Times.

==

ref mma 819

no lnx many

Fox News has called immigration an “invasion” multiple times since El Paso

The shooter that killed 22 people in El Paso wrote that he was motivated by “the Hispanic invasion of Texas”

WRITTEN BY COURTNEY HAGLE

PUBLISHED 08/15/19 4:07 PM EDT

Some on Fox News are refusing to back down from using hateful rhetoric warning of an immigrant invasion, even though the gunman in El Paso, TX, cited this inflammatory rhetoric as his motivation for killing 22 people, most of whom were Hispanic.

Minutes before the gunman opened fire on a Walmart in El Paso, he published a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto online. He wrote of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and warned that immigrants were replacing America’s white population, drawing from the white supremacist theory of “great replacement.” The gunman’s rhetoric in his manifesto can be regularly head on Fox News and from others in conservative media. A Media Matters study found that in 2019 alone, Fox News referenced an invasion of migrants over 70 times; Fox personalities have also repeatedly warned that immigrants are coming to “replace” Americans.

Since the shooting, President Donald Trump and Fox News have faced broad accusations of mainstreaming white supremacy. Still, the network is clearly not offering much self-reflection. While anchor Sandra Smith at one point pushed back on a guest using the term “invasion,” others on the network have continued to use that rhetoric -- including a different guest speaking on America’s Newsroom alongside Smith.  Some have also defended their prior use of the term and denied that such language had anything to do with the El Paso shooting, insisting instead that it is simply a factual description of what is happening at the border.

Three days after the shooting in El Paso,Fox host Laura Ingraham defended calling migration an “invasion,” saying that “a lot of people have called it an invasion over the years.” Her guest Michael Meyers, president of the New York Civil Rights coalition, agreed that “it is an invasion.”

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03:28

CitationFrom the August 6 edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle:

Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade insisted that using the term “invasion” isn’t “anti-Hispanic. It’s a fact.”

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01:12

CitationFrom the August 6 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

Fox Nation host Todd Starnes insisted that “we have been invaded by … a rampaging horde of illegal aliens,” adding that he thinks “that’s a fair description.” He compared the perceived “invasion” of immigrants to “Nazis invading France and Western Europe.”

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CitationFrom the August 14 edition of Fox Nation's Starnes Country

Frequent Fox News guest Brad Blakeman insisted that “there is an invasion on our southern border” and complained that “Democrats are trying to weaponize that word.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/rush-limbaugh-and-other-conservative-media-dismiss-ny-times-report-showing-el-paso-shooter

Conservative media figures dismissed an analysis from The New York Times showing hundreds of instances in which they used the same sort of anti-immigration rhetoric as the manifesto of the gunman who shot and killed 22 people in El Paso,TX, in early August.

El Paso mass shooter’s white supremacist manifesto echoed language used by prominent Fox News figures and other conservative media personalities

Multiple Fox News personalities have pushed rhetoric that white Americans are going to be “replaced” by non-white immigrants -- the same white supremacist conspiracy theory referenced by the El Paso shooter. The shooter wrote in his manifesto that he wanted revenge against “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and warned of “cultural and ethnicreplacement.” Media Matters showed that multiple Fox News personalities, including prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, had spread similar rhetoric on the channel. Media Matters, [8/5/19]

NY Times: “There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by” the shooter. The New York Times conducted its own analysis of the manifesto written by the El Paso shooter and found that his numerous references to an “invasion” by Hispanics and cultural “replacement” of white people overlapped in hundreds of instances with comments from prominent Fox News and other conservative media personalities, including Carlson and Rush Limbaugh.

Tucker Carlson went on his prime-time Fox News show in April last year and told his viewers not to be fooled. The thousands of Central Americans on their way to the United States were “border jumpers,” not refugees, he said. “Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time,” he asked, “or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?”

When another group approached the border six months later,Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, offered a dispassionately violent suggestion about what could be done to stem the flow of migrants: “You can shoot invaders.”

A few days after, Rush Limbaugh issued a grim prognosis to his millions of radio listeners: If the immigrants from Central America weren’t stopped, the United States would lose its identity. “The objective is to dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture,” Mr. Limbaugh said, adding: “This is why people call this an invasion.”

There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary. But his post contains numerous references to “invasion” and cultural “replacement” — ideas that, until recently, were relegated to the fringes of the nationalist right.

An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer’s written statement — a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.

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At the start of the El Paso suspect’s screed, he refers to the “great replacement,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory based on a French book that claims the migration of minority groups can lead to a “genocide” of white culture.

The El Paso suspect, who confessed to the mass shooting last week, claimed in the document he posted to be defending against a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The words “invasion” and “invaders” appear six times in the text, a stark parallel to the language heard on conservative television and talk radio today. The New York Times, [8/11/19]

Conservative media respond by attacking NY Times and mocking concern over white supremacist rhetoric

Radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested a 14-year-old quote from then-Sen. Barack Obama was as incendiary as his own language. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed of the New York Times story that “they worried about me because I called this invasion a ‘flood’” and then played an audio clip of remarks then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made in December 2005 in which he used the phrase “flood of illegals” to distance his own rhetoric from the shooter’s. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]

Limbaugh: NY Times story is just the latest attempt to sabotage me. During his second segment responding to the Times story, Limbaugh said it’s the latest in a long line of attempts to discredit him specifically and conservative media in general.

RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): I appreciate the emails that you have sent that I caught during the first breaks here in the program about not taking this thing in The New York Times today apparently seriously enough.

You know, when I know that there isn’t any truth to it, then that’s the primary reason I’m able to laugh at it. And I know the motivation behind it. They simply -- folks, they cannot defeat us on ideas or debates of ideas, in the arena of ideas.

It’s been a constant attempt by the left since I started this program to discredit me,to impugn me. And their purpose has been to make sure I don’t acquire an even larger audience. They are trying to poison the minds of people who don’t listen into never trying the program. That’s the objective of it, and that’s always been the objective.

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Now we have an obviously deranged lunaticwho is just part of the crowd that has been influenced, but only influenced, by conservative media. This guy apparently, according to The New York Times, was immune to being influenced by anybody else. He was incapable of making up his own mind or coming to his own deranged conclusions on his own. And this has been the baseline, or foundational, attack on me and all of conservative media since it began.

It’s actually an attack on all of you.That you’re dumb, uninformed hicks who don’t know anything and don’t think anything every day until you get marching orders after listening to this program or as a result of listening. This has always been absurd. And I think it’s always been a very weak and very, very telling admission on their part, and that is they hold average people in contempt. Average people are not smart enough to think on their own. They’re not smart enough to live life the right way. They’re not smart enough to make the right decisions, even with their own money.

So I don’t get worked up by it anymore because it’s been a feature of 30 years. And I’ll tell you this. By righteously opposing it and standing here -- sitting here -- pounding my fists on the table and acting out is not gonna stop it, either. I just mock it. I just try to make fun of it. And then I welcome other people to the montage. Now they’re adding -- you know, it used to just be me. Now they’re throwing a bunch of other people into it because conservative media has expanded and become so big that now their efforts to destroy conservative media go beyond me. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro dismissed those linking conservative media rhetoric to the El Paso shooter as a “conspiracy theory.”

BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Again, I don’t like the language of “invasion,” and I don’t believe I’ve used it. If I had, I’m sorry I did, because I don’t think that it is correct. But I’m fairly certain I never did, because I never considered it a quote-unquote “invasion” when illegal immigrants cross our southern border. But -- and I certainly don’t believe in the idea of quote-unquote “racial replacement,” because I literally do not care about the races of people who live in America. I care about their ideas and their ideology.

But The New York Times decides that because there is language that sounds similar to stuff that Tucker Carlson has said, they’re now going to attribute this shooter to Tucker.

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Again, this is a conspiracy theory:{. And a conspiracy theory, this one, is deliberately designed in order to link together basic conservative tropes about immigration with white supremacism. The Daily Wire, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:*The Ben Shapiro Show*:{, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:[8/12/19:{]}:

Breitbart News Daily's Alex Marlow: NY Times story is “such bad journalism,” and “they’re going to have blood on their hands” for taking the shooter’s manifesto seriously.

ALEX MARLOW (HOST): This is where I’m obsessed with this story from yesterday, where The New York Times had five bylines on how the El Paso killer echoed the incendiary words of conservative media stars and they cited something like 50 or 60 examples of [unintelligible] -- almost everyone on Fox News personalities using the term “invasion.” And this assumes so much -- it's such bad journalism because it is, it assumes a couple of key things.

First of all, it assumes that because the -- it takes the manifesto seriously, which I keep saying is a mistake that only will encourage more serial killers or more mass shooters. These are lunatic ravings that are designed to give attention. And to give attention to it, and to take it literally, it means that all you have to do is write something and then shoot people, and then you get a platform forever for whatever insane ideas you have. So I think the media taking these manifestos literally is actually going to -- they’re going to have blood on their hands if they keep doing this. But this has been the tactic of most of the media, to take the manifesto of the El Paso shooter seriously.

And the implication that if you used the word “invasion,” it means that you’re culpable for violence from one lunatic, who again, his idea of stopping the invasion was going to a Walmart and shooting a lot of people who were not invaders. That was his way of dealing with the invasion. So, it is -- and this just prints five bylines here. The New York Times. It takes five people to go through Fox News and say, “They used invasion,” the implication being this is why this guy shot people at a Walmart. It’s so stunningly irresponsible, even for The New York Times. Sirius XM Patriot, *Breitbart News Daily*, [8/12/19]

Conservative blogger and pundit Erick Erickson mocked the Times’ analysis, saying it “blames the dictionary for El Paso shooting.”

Oh how awful. The shooter in Texas used the same language the President and Rush Limbaugh have used to talk about the caravans of illegal aliens flooding our southern border.

The particular word is “invasion.” That’s what the President called it. That’s what Rush Limbaugh called it. That’s what the dictionary calls it.

I realize many journalists and progressives will seal clap this story. They’ll get excited by it and might even go blind in the bathroom stall while reading it. But the technical term for a horde of people crossing the border without permission is “invasion.”

...

Has there been incendiary rhetoric? Absolutely. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the United States of running a concentration camp and a leftwing radical used that same language to justify his firebombing of an ICE facility.

Most of the media has willfully ignored that.

They’d rather blame Rush, Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and Donald Trump.

They might as well blame the dictionary. The Resurgent, [8/12/19]

Conservative radio host Mark Simone deflected to the Dayton, OH, shooter’s support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), calling the NY Times “a total joke.”

MARK SIMONE (HOST): Hey, the fake news has been -- you know, it’s been fake news for two years. Michael Goodwin wrote an incredible piece about The New York Times, how it went from being -- they used to call it the “Gray Lady,” the paper of record -- to being the sleaziest fake news organization ever. In fact, he’ll be with us later this hour and we’ll talk about it. But if you look at today's New York Times, they have an article, front page, above the fold, and it's a photograph of the El Paso shooter's manifesto with certain words underlined. It's a big -- right above the fold on the front page. The biggest place they could put it, and it's all about how look how the El Paso shooter's manifesto says similar things to the right-wing talking points. This is the big story. Now, nowhere in the paper does it mention that the Dayton shooter, his manifesto was all Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren stuff. The Dayton shooter a huge supporter of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, quoting their stuff left and right. You think we'll see that article tomorrow? You think we'll ever see that article? This is why The New York Times has become a total joke. WOR-AM, *Mark Simone Show*, [8/12/19]

Philadelphia talk show host Dom Giordano defended using “invasion” to describe the border situation and pushed the white supremacist “replacement” theory.

DOM GIORDANO (HOST): All right, the word of the day, according to The New York Times, front and center, is “invasion.” You can't say “invasion” anymore. Now they're going after not just Fox News, but talk radio, and they talk about how talk radio hosts and callers and others use this word “invasion.” Now, in fairness, I might start using it more now. I don't think I've used it enough. That's exactly what it is that's going on at the border. The numbers are staggering. It's a perfectly legitimate word.

Now the word they allege that the El Paso gunman used -- and they claim is being used a lot -- I guess Tucker Carlson -- and I see Tucker most nights -- is replacement. That’s the one you’re going to start to hear more. In other words, this plays into the big narrative that white working-class people believe they’re being replaced by people the Democrats, mainly open-borders crowd, want to bring into the country. And there are books, there are conspiracy theorists out there that this is an organized effort to do that exactly. Versus an outcome that comes out of this invasion. I mean, these people that were arrested in Mississippi -- did you see the outcome of this now?

…

Now these companies are going to be holding job fairs to have to replace these workers that were here illegally. And the theory is, and there seems to be some evidence of that, they’re going to have to up the wages and benefits. Bingo. So is that not a case of replacement, where they’re able to replace low-skilled high school graduates, or not even, that are in these tough jobs, meatpacking, and all that?

...

And by extension, even though I don’t think it’s a planned thing, it’s just an economic thing, they were replacing American workers in these industries. WPHT-AM, *The Dom Giordano Show*, [8/12/19]

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...References to an immigrant “invasion,” according to the Times, have appeared on “more than 300 Fox News broadcasts.”

One right-wing media figure who finds the frequent use of the word “invasion” troubling is neocon Bill Kristol, formerly of the now-defunct Weekly Standard. Kristol, a major critic of President Donald Trump, asserted that what was once the language of the lunatic fringe has become everyday discourse in today’s right-wing media.

“It’s a bit of a vicious cycle,” Kristol told the Times. “Something is said on Fox News, and Trump repeats it, and that legitimizes it — and then, someone else goes a little further…. The use of what once would have been viewed as really extreme and inappropriate and sometimes conspiratorial, sometimes dehumanizing language is really striking.”

The Times reports that back in the 1990s, Buchanan’s “notion of immigrants as a national threat” was controversial on much of the right and “ran counter to the Republican Party’s efforts to make itself more appealing to Hispanics.” But these days, according to the Times, that type of rhetoric is the exception rather than the rule in right-wing media

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trumps-unapologetic-campaign-refuses-to-end-ads-featuring-invasion-rhetoric-%e2%81%a0-even-as-the-president-visits-el-paso/

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/trump-and-right-wing-media-are-peddling-an-apocalyptic-ideology-of-a-civilizational-conflict/

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Trump and right-wing media are peddling an apocalyptic ideology of a civilizational conflict

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly August 6, 2019

It has been seventeen years since John Judis and Ruy Teixeira published their book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. One of the central themes of the book was to cite demographic data about the so-called “browning of America” and note that it was the left that was positioned to benefit from the fact that non-Hispanic whites would eventually become a minority in this country.

In the years since the book was published, a lot of liberals (including one of the authors) came to question the premise that “demography is destiny.” While those on the right have publicly panned the book’s analysis, there is a way in which it has become the foundation of what we are witnessing from Donald Trump and his enablers.

Two years ago, I wrote about the connection between the president and white supremacists, including this quote fromRichard Spencer.

“Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have – that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon.”

More than a year before Trump was elected, Spencer—a spokesperson for white supremacists—explained that the “Trump phenomenon” was based on the fear white people have about the changing demographics in this country.

As Courtney Hable explains, the El Paso gunman was inspired by “the white supremacist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory that white people are being systematically ‘replaced’ by people of color through mass immigration.” She goes on to document how Fox News has been pushing that narrative relentlessly.

The subtle shift in how this narrative is being presented is that personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have re-framed the demographic changes away from being the inevitable destiny of this country so that they can blame it on immigration. The El Paso gunman caught on and described immigrants as “invaders” flooding into the United States.

Thomas Kaplan documents how that is exactly the language being employed by the Trump campaign on social media.

President Trump’s re-election campaign has harnessed Facebook advertising to push the idea of an “invasion” at the southern border, amplifying the fear-inducing language about immigrants that he has also voiced at campaign rallies and on Twitter.

Since January, Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign has posted more than 2,000 ads on Facebook that include the word “invasion” — part of a barrage of advertising focused on immigration, a dominant theme of his re-election messaging.

I would not normally read an article titled, “White Terrorism Shows ‘Stunning’ Parallels to Islamic State’s Rise” because it sounds exploitative. But Max Fisher, who has a reputation as a thoughtful and serious journalist—especially on matters related to terrorism and propaganda—is the author. Here is what he wrote.

Many scholars of terrorism see worrying similarities between the rise of the Islamic State and that of white nationalist terrorism, seen most recently in the carnage in El Paso, Tex.

“The parallels are stunning,” said Will McCants, a prominent expert in the field.

And they are growing more notable with each new attack.

Experts say that the similarities are far from a coincidence. White nationalist terrorism is following a progression eerily similar to that of jihadism under the leadership of the Islamic State, in ways that do much to explain why the attacks have suddenly grown so frequent and deadly.

In both, there is the apocalyptic ideology that predicts — and promises to hasten — a civilizational conflict that will consume the world. There is theatrical, indiscriminate violence that will supposedly bring about this final battle, but often does little more than grant the killer a brief flash of empowerment and win attention for the cause.

There are self-starter recruits who, gathering in social media’s dark corners, drive their own radicalization. And for these recruits, the official ideology may serve simply as an outlet for existing tendencies toward hatred and violence…

The feedback loop of radicalization and violence, once triggered, can take on a terrible momentum all its own, with each attack boosting the online radicalization and doomsday ideology that, in turn, drive more attacks.

The apocalyptic ideology of a civilizational conflict is being peddled by the president of the United States and his enablers in right-wing media via the great replacement conspiracy theory. The use of indiscriminate violence as a response travels around the underbelly of social media in places like 8chan.

Americans who don’t pay attention to right-wing media and have no exposure to radicalized social media forums have no idea this kind of thing is happening. They simply wake up one day to see that yet another mass shooting has taken place. When Democrats point the finger of blame at Trump and his enablers, it can appear as if it’s just another example of the politicization of tragedy.

That’s why it is important for people to learn about what’s going on. The use of the word “invasion” over 2,000 times on Facebook by the president’s re-election campaign is no accident. It is a calculated strategy to incite the kind of reaction we just witnessed in El Paso.

As Fisher notes:

It is nearly impossible to eradicate a movement animated by ideas and decentralized social networks. Nor is it easy to prevent attacks when the perpetrators’ ideology makes nearly any target as good as the next, and requires little more training or guidance than opening a web forum.

It will take time and a concerted effort to deal with those decentralized social networks that have developed. But it all begins by exposing the president as the man behind the curtain who is inflaming the situation.

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