dog whistle

no content 7/18

merri ok

term faded in age of trump demonization/ polarization scoail media monetization algorithm deplatform misinfo fail abandon 2 24

maybe expanded to include symbols/ memes that are meant to only make sense to in-group? 14 words?

aha "agenda" means secret (long term) plan to do evil, get control tyranny that takes our freedom sovereignty liberty etc thus conspiracy theory

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an 2 24

florida public school students start learning about communism in 7th grade. That’s too late for some Republicans in the Florida House, who want teachers to instruct students as young as kindergarteners on concepts such as “cultural Marxism.” But what is it?

The House bill moving in the Legislature doesn’t provide a definition for the term, raising questions about how little kids could understand cultural Marxism.

The Senate version of the bill doesn’t include cultural Marxism in its legislation.

Nevertheless, HB 1349, passed in a House committee on Feb. 1. The bill analysis says that starting in the 2026-27 school year, the history of communism must be included in instruction in grades K-12 in Florida’s public schools. (Currently, there are no standards for the history of communism from kindergarten to 6th grade.) The legislation would include “the philosophy and lineages of Communist thought, including cultural Marxism.”

The bill involves a task force — the governor would appoint the members — to come up with age-appropriate curriculum and academic standards for K-12 instruction of the history of communism and its dangers. The task force would report its findings no later than July 1, 2025, and it “must also make recommendations to the Legislature regarding the creation of a Florida Museum of Communist History,” according to the legislative staff analysis.

The House proposal, from Republican Reps. Chuck Brannan and James Buchanan, gained enough support last week to move forward in the Legislature. But Democrats criticized the inclusion of cultural Marxism as one of the things students will learn about. Brannan represents North Florida counties and a part of Alachua, and Buchanan represents part of Sarasota.

From terrorist manifesto to K-12 curricula

Democratic lawmakers pointed to far-right groups’ usage of cultural Marxism in relation to antisemitic beliefs.

“If you look up the term cultural Marxism, what comes up is the term cultural Marxism refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory, so that’s also concerning to me,” Palm Beach Democratic Rep. Katherine Waldron said during the Choice and Innovation subcommittee meeting last week. “I’m all for kids learning about government and political systems. But I would be against this very specific terminology in training or in trying to educate them on this.”

Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow with ADL’s Center on Extremism, said in a statement to Florida Phoenix that antisemites also use the term to reinforce their longstanding antisemitic trope that communism is “Jewish.”

“‘Cultural Marxism’ is a term, typically used by right-wing ideologues, to attack an array of ideas and concepts they oppose, including multiculturalism, globalism, feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights, among others. The term often functions as an antisemitic dog whistle or codeword,” Mayo wrote in the statement.

“Promoters of the term often invoke a conspiracy theory that falsely claims such progressive ideas originated with the so-called Frankfurt School, a leftist intellectual collective active in Germany between the two World Wars. Exploiting the fact that a number of the Frankfurt School intellectuals were Jewish, antisemitic versions of this conspiracy theory link the Frankfurt School, and thus ‘cultural Marxism’ itself, to Jews, claiming that Jews seek to subvert and weaken Western (and Christian) society by imposing their left-wing and politically correct (or ‘woke’) views.”

Over the years, cultural Marxism has gone from being linked with the far-right through terrorists’ manifestos to seeping into the vocabulary of mainstream politicians, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said he views wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism.

“Most of the most violent, the deadliest acts of hate, perpetrated against Jewish people especially in the United States in the last 10 to 15 years have been by far-right extremists. We don’t have cultural Marxists shooting up synagogues. If it were the case, then we should talk about it, but it isn’t,” said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. “You have white supremacists, anti-government extremists who are embracing antisemitism. Of course, antisemitism is on the far-left as well. There has been a rapid, marked increase in antisemitic rhetoric coming out of the far-left as well.”

The terrorist who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011 and another who killed a woman in the attack at the California Chabad of Poway synagogue in 2019 left manifestos denouncing cultural Marxism’s effect on Europe and blaming Jews for coming up with it, respectively.

Groups like the Proud Boys have also used cultural Marxism as a catch-all term for anyone they view as an enemy, Lewis said.

“What we’ve seen in recent years has been an intentional effort, by far-right extremists to launder antisemitism, launder white supremacy, launder anti-LGBTQ narratives and hate speech against everyone who’s not effectively in this in-group, which is largely white, largely Christian,” he said.

Dangers of communism

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a 45-page report in 2022 about how cultural Marxism threatens the U.S. In it, the think tank states cultural Marxists have infiltrated the country through college campuses and public schools. They also credit DeSantis for showing a path to dismantle cultural Marxism.

“Today’s cultural Marxists believe that the reason economic, social, cultural, academic, and health outcomes (to name just a few) show persistent racial disparities is because of a pervasive, systemic racism that can only be eliminated by smashing the system itself,” the report states.

Subcommittee chair Republican Rep. Alex Rizo of Miami-Dade, last week defended the bill, stating that students don’t learn enough about communism.

“When we talk about antisemitism I equate antisemitism a lot with communism. … I love that this bill will come up with some sort of curriculum to start teaching what communism really does other than an economic theory that was brought up by Marx and Engels, two philosophers, and I use that term very loosely, in the 19th century. Because we do have curriculum in almost every single grade level K through 12 that talks about the sins of slavery, that talks about the horrors of the Holocaust, but does not yet really address the over 100 million people who were victimized, murdered, displaced in about 100 years worth of communism in our society,” he said.

The Florida Department of Education standards related to communism include the evaluation of economic systems in seventh grade and the identification of political ideologies (communism and totalitarianism) that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy in high school.

Lawmakers also discussed last week how the material would be taught in an age-appropriate manner to younger students. Republican Rep. Thad Altman of Brevard said his wife, a first-grade teacher at a Catholic school, teaches kids through hands-on simulations.

“I think these kids understand capitalism and communism more than a lot of college students, especially if they go to an Ivy League,” he said.

Other things students would learn about through the House bill or analysis include atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism, the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, the communist policies of Cuba, and the spread of communist ideologies throughout Latin America.

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5 22

Liberals still take right-wing propaganda too literally. This is partly because we are liberal. We are often annoying pedants. If there’s an error in one’s thinking, liberals can be trusted to rush in and correct it.

That’s usually as far as it goes, alas.

Consider the reaction among liberals to the latest bit of incoherence by the Republican National Committee. It tweeted: “11,007 pounds of methamphetamine was seized at the southern border in April alone!”

It’s a variation on a familiar theme. “Joe Biden has created the WORST border crisis on record,” the account said last month. Also: “234,088 illegal immigrants were encountered crossing the border in April.”

The RNC says these facts are evidence of a “border crisis” that the president – as well as the vice president – are ignoring. We are not told, but expected to understand, that this “border crisis” is part of a leftwing “open border policy” that’s bent on “replacing Americans.”

What was the reaction among liberals?

Pretty typical.

Rightwing word-power

If immigrants are being apprehended and detained at the border, that means they didn’t get away with breaking federal immigration law.

The law is working as it’s supposed to.

Ergo, there is no border crisis.

If the border patrol is seizing drugs and contraband at the border, then law enforcement officers are doing what they should. So … what crisis?

Among liberals, the question appears to be: Why do Republican propagandists keep saying there’s a crisis at the border when the evidence they present to prove a border crisis proves the opposite?

I don’t think anyone is satisfied, because virtually no one has gone beyond the fact that claims of a border crisis are self-evidently bunk.

Worse is when liberals are content with pointing out the flaws in logic. Liberals, as is their wont, confuse liberal virtue for liberal politics.

And liberals lose.

To the rightwingers, language is about power. It’s not about meaning or coherence or sense-making or freedom of speech or thought.

Why would they use language everyone understands when such a social, democratic and equitable approach to language undermines their goal of protecting and defending the natural order of things?

Instead, they use words that everyone else thinks they understand fully but that only the natural and chosen in-group fully understands.

Liberals should presume their word-power is a fetish.

Fetish? Yes, fetish

I do not mean an obsession.

That’s a common understanding of the meaning of the word “fetish.” To be sure, a fetish can be an obsession, but it’s not only that.By “fetish,” I mean a thing that’s really a stand-in for another thing. It’s a blank line that Republican propagandists know rightwingers will gladly fill in.

I mean there’s no there there.

The principle there is the one that isn’t there.

A man with a foot fetish isn’t not aroused sexually by feet or the visual representation of feet. Feet are a stand-in for something else. Feet are a vessel into which fetishists pour associations with sexual pleasure.

Once liberals see the there that isn’t there, they can react effectively. Instead of meeting righting politics with liberal virtue, as they usually do, they can meet it with equal and opposite liberal politics.

Abortion isn’t about abortion. Immigration isn’t about immigration. Gun rights are not about guns. I have explained all this before.

What I haven’t explained is that laws at the center of these “hot button issues” is not the right-winger’s principal concern. It can’t be.

The closer you look, the clearer it is that “the law,” “lawlessness,” “law-abiding” and “the rule of law” are not what they seem to be.

The law is supposed to apply equally to a people created equally. When right-wingers say “the law,” they can’t mean equal treatment under law.

Equal treatment undermines their goal.

“The law” is, therefore, a fetish, a blank line, an empty vessel.

“The law” is a stand-in for “white power.”

Rightwing politics, liberal virtue

A Senate subcommittee held a hearing last week about a proposed federal law similar to a Connecticut statute permitting police to seize guns owned by perpetrators of domestic abuse and violence before they have a chance to murder women fleeing their abuse and violence.

US Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, is on the panel. He said:

If the objective is to stop violent crime, what is effective is targeting actual violent criminals. The approach of today’s Senate Democrats is to try to go after the firearms of law-abiding citizens instead of targeting the violent criminals that are the real threat. Firearms, yes, are used by violent criminals but they are also used over and over and over again by victims of violent crimes to defend themselves.

In response, US Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said:

Congress … should have eliminated the loopholes that leave women in the crosshairs of violent spouses and partners with guns a long time ago. What we’re talking about, I say to my colleague from Texas, is not going to take away gun rights for law-abiding citizens.

Wyden is correct. No law-abiding citizen would be affected by a federal version of Connecticut’s “Lori’s Law.” It would instead affect citizens who have committed criminal acts of domestic violence.

But Wyden did what most liberals do when confronted by statements that are not intended to make sense. He took them literally. Cruz’s words are mistaken, he said, before “correcting” Cruz’s word-power.

Wyden met rightwing politics with liberal virtue.

He failed to see the there that isn’t there.

White is the law is a gun

When Cruz talks about “law-abiding citizens,” he’s not talking about law-abiding citizens. That’s a fetish, a blank line, an empty vessel.

It’s a stand-in for white men, for white power.

White men are “the law” by dint of being white men. No one else can be the law. If nonwhite people try to enforce the law equally, white men are under no obligation to respect their effects, because the law, when it’s prosecuted by nonwhite people, isn’t legitimate. It’s lawless.

Cruz accused President Barack Obama of being “the most lawless president in the history of the United States.” He said it was because the former president refused to enforce federal immigration law.

What he really meant was that “the law” and “a Black man” are incompatible terms in America. A Black man is subject to “the law” – to white power, yes. He is not, however, enforcer of “the law” – of white power. That can’t be. That would be a perversion of the natural order.

Indeed, “the rule of law” was seen as “rule by a Black man.”

After the reelection of the first Black president, and after 20 school children were shot to pieces at Sandy Hook, the GOP made sure to right the wrong of “rule by a Black man.” They passed laws allowing white men to take “the law” into their own hands – with a gun.

Legal is white, illegal is not white

The Senate subcommittee hearing occurred the week after a law-abiding citizen legally purchased a semi-automatic rifle, drove 200 miles to the East side of Buffalo and shot to pieces 10 Black people.

The Democrats wasted a chance to see the there that’s not there – that “law-abiding” is a stand-in for white power, that it’s an empty vessel into which a white-power terrorist by the name of Payton Gendron poured meaning in order to take “the law” into his own hands.

Liberals should pay less attention to what right-wingers say and more attention to what they mean. Liberals should presume the principle there is the one that isn’t there. And they should spell it out for normal people in order to ask if this is the kind of country they want to live in.

You can’t beat right-wing politics with liberal virtue.

You can with liberal politics.

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/how-the-plot-to-kidnap-whitmer-fits-into-right-wing-extremists-violent-rhetoric-around-the-2020-election/

analysis

Adam Fox was worried about a rat. In thedark and cluttered basement, Fox gathered the men’s phones in a bin and took them upstairs to the main floor of the nondescript vacuum store in Grand Rapids, Michigan—a measure meant to avoid surveillance. After he returned through the trap door normally hidden by a rug, the group of men began discussing how they would storm the state capitol in Lansing, Michigan, counter law enforcement who arrived on the scene, and throw Molotov cocktails at their vehicles. It was June 20. Six days earlier, Fox had explained in a call that they’d need “200 men” to storm the capitol and take hostages, including the governor. They would try her for “treason,” he said—and they would carry out their plan before the November presidential election.

The FBI arrested six men on Oct. 8—including Fox—for conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and overtake the state government. Through FBI informants and FBI agents, we know how those meetings went, spelled out in detail in anFBI affidavit. The men, in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, belonged to Wolverine Watchmen, an anti-government, anti-law enforcement militia group. Prior to the arrests, the group had surveilled Whitmer’s summer home, discussed bombing a bridge to block law enforcement response, and at another point, considered simply shooting Whitmer. On Tuesday, the FBI revealed the group had also considered kidnapping Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia.

Whitmer has been thetarget of extremistssince she implemented a series of public health measures, including a stay-at-home order, in March, acting swiftly to slow the spread of the coronavirus in Michigan. In May, protesters and anti-government groups, some heavily armed, protested the restrictions at the state capitol, where they demanded to be let in and compared Whitmer to Hitler. Among the protesters were members of the Wolverine Watchmen.

In addressing the conspiracy to kidnap her, Whitmer was quick topoint out President Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric at the first presidential debate: how he tried to skirt condemning white supremacists and then told the Proud Boys hate group to “stand back and stand by.”

“Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke but as a rallying cry, as a call to action. When our leaders speak, their words matter. They carry weight,” Whitmer said.

Right Wing Watch has seen an increase of violent rhetoric across different right-wing subgroups—from conspiracy theorists and religious-right activists to white nationalists and anti-government groups. In some instances, extremists call for civil war, the use of force against Black Lives Matter protesters, and for government leaders to be tried for treason and executed.

Trump has no doubt ushered in more radical proclamations from extremists—this is the man, after all, whowon’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election. But the right-wing media ecosystem is a two-way street, where fringe figures influence the president, and the president influences the boldness of fringe figures and their prominence in the conservative mainstream.

Conspiracy Theorists and Radical Right-Wing Commentators: Fear-Mongering, Violent Language, and Anti-Government Sentiment

[pix Radical right-wing conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles blamed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for the plot to kidnap and potentially murder her.]

On the day the arrests of the Wolverine Watchmen members were announced, Rick Wiles, a conspiracy theorist whose TruNews conspiracy outlet claims to offer news and analysis from a conservative, Christian worldview,took to his program to put the blame on Whitmer for the plot to kidnap and potentially murder her.

“Did you at all stop and think, what are you doing that drives middle class, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens to think about kidnapping you?” Wiles said. “What are you doing? Are your policies so extreme, so radical that you’re pushing people over the line to say we have to get that woman out of the governor’s office?”

While the claim is shocking, especially for an outlet that has been granted White House press credentials as recently asJanuary, it’s in keeping with Wilesfear-mongering about government overreach—much of it anti-Semitic—which includes claiming that liberalsintend touse the power of government toround up conservative Christians, place them inconcentration camps, andkill them.

And it’s not surprising for the ranks of conspiracy theorists and radical right-wing commentators who distrust news reports and the government—save for Trump—and imagine a “deep state” or globalist “New World Order” that wants to take away constitutional rights, get Trump out of office, and impose their will on the people.

Wiles’ penchant for violent rhetoric is well documented by Right Wing Watch: In the past year alone, Wiles hasrejoiced in Trump’s use of the military to forcefully clear protesters from a church to take a photo op with a Bible, vocalized his hope that Trump will round up liberal activists andtorture them, and gleefully claimed that special op forces were going tohunt down and shoot commies—which to Wiles apparently includes Black Lives Matter, antifa, and Right Wing Watch. During the impeachment of Trump in December 2019, he claimed to have been stockpiling ammunition to prepare for a “violent civil war” between the “pagan left” and “religious right.”

While the enemies in the minds of right-wing conspiracy theorists are many, the hate directed at government officials who oppose Trump, particularly those who are women or people of color, in right-wing networks is particularly noteworthy.

Josh Bernstein, a radical right-wing commentator with a penchant for calling for people to be executed, took to his YouTube channel earlier this month to call for Rep. Ilhan Omar to be charged with treason and executed. Omar has faced racist, xenophobic attacks from right-wing activists and the president himself as recently asSeptember. Bernstein, who hassaid that Omar has earned every death threat she’s received, followed up on Trump’s attacks just days later.

“I believe that the FBI and the Department of Justice should charge Ilhan [Omar] with sedition, treason, marriage fraud, voter fraud, illegal campaign contributions, immigration fraud, and aiding and abetting our enemies,” Bernstein said,adding, “this bitch should be executed.”

Last year, Bernsteinurged Trump to become a “dictator for patriotism” andclaimed that members of the Trump administration watch his broadcasts.

He’s not the only one talking about killing opponents to his extreme right-wing world view or calling for civil war. Claiming his warnings about a globalist “New World Order” takeover were coming true, radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones told his listeners of his “Infowars” conspiracy show in August to wage war against academics and “the establishment perverts and pedophiles that run it,” adding that “the best thing to do in a defensive way is kill as many of them as quickly as possible.” In February, radical right-wing conspiracy theorist Chris McDonalddeclared that government officials who testified in the impeachment hearing against President Donald Trump are traitors and are “lucky they’re not hanging from nooses,” and in June during the protests against racism, McDonald andfellow QAnon conspiracy theorist Mark TaylorclaimedBlack men were hanging themselves to start a civil war. “They’re trying to start a civil war in this country, a race war,” Taylor said.

Among those fear-mongering and calling for violence against Black Lives Matter and antifa—shorthand for anti-fascist activists—is John Guandolo, adisgraced former FBI agent turned right-wingconspiracy theorist. In June, Guandolo, who has made a new career out ofpeddling anti-Muslim law enforcement trainings,said, “we should round up the leaders and execute them for trying to revolt and overthrow the government. And if this doesn’t happen soon, we will lose this.”

Religious Right Calls for Civil War

[ pix Robert Jeffress speaking at Values Voters Summit in 2017. In 2019, he claimed on Fox News that “removing the president” would “cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.”]

Like right-wing conspiracy theorists, some religious-right activists and pastorssee the 2020 election as a civil war coming to America and warn that Christians need to wake up. They paint the current political climate as a spiritual battle, and Trump’s opponents are frequently depicted as “demonic.” Such messages have been promoted through “The Jim Bakker Show,” influential pro-Trump Pentecostal-oriented media outfit Charisma, andnetworks of prominentdominionist “apostles” and “prophets.”

Rick Joyner has beenwarningfor years that civil war is coming to theUnited States and that the country is headed towardmartial law. In September, the right-wing pastor spoke to televangelist Jim Bakker on “The Jim Bakker Show,” where hetold viewers that God had seeded the country with military veterans experienced in urban warfare, citing a “prophetic” dream.

“We’re in time for war. We need to recognize that. We need to mobilize. We need to get ready. I’m talking to law enforcement, talking to people. One of the things I saw in a dream I had related to our civil war was that militias would pop up like mushrooms. And it was God. These were good militias.” Joyner, who heads up Morningstar Ministries, said. “If God’s people don’t become a part of the militia movements, the good militias, the bad people will take them over.”

Who are “the bad people”? In September, Joyner pointed to Black Lives Matter,declaring that Christians must take a stand against the organization because it’s “the KKK of this time.” And during the impeachment inquiry, Bakker and Joyneragreed that efforts to impeach Trump were satanic and treasonous.

Bakker, himself,warned in August that if Trump is not reelected, “we’re gonna have a revolution” with right-wing Christians taking to the streets.

At the 2019 American Priority Festival and Conference, an annual pro-Trump conference held at Trump National Doral Miami resort held in October,calls for civil warwere loud and clear. “I need you to know that 2020 is a civil war that will change the face of America forever,”Joshua Feuerstein, a former pastor turned evangelical internet personality, said on the same stage Don Trump Jr. would later speak on. “And it’s God, ladies and gentlemen, it’s God that calls the qualified, that qualifies those that are called, that are willing to step up in the moment that matters, that has greatness thrust upon them. And tonight, together here in this place to say that we are willing to fight, we may think ourselves insignificant, but that we will stand together in 2020, and we will win the war that will change the face of America.”

Earlier in the evening at the conference (known colloquially as AMPfest), televangelistMark Burns called for war. “We’ve come to declare war!” he yelled, with attendees in the back of the ballroom echoing his call, shouting “War! War!” in response.

This summer,Frank Pavone, a Catholic priestwho runs an advocacy group committed to abolishing access to abortion in the U.S.,declared that the 2020 election “is a spiritual battle and no less than a civil war.” Pavone held advisory positions in Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, only resigning in July at thedirection of Roman Catholic Church authorities.

These messages from Trump’s religious-right boosters have reached the president. Days after Congress launched its formal impeachment inquiry last September, megachurch pastor and ardent Trump supporter Robert Jeffress claimed on Fox News that “removing the president” would “cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.” Apparently viewing the segment was Trump, whotweeted Jeffress’ quote.

Far-Right Militant Groups: ‘Awaiting the Green Light’

[pix]

when the militant group the Oath Keepers saw Trump’s tweet of Jeffress’ comments on Fox, they responded in turn. “This is the truth,” read apost from the group’s Twitter account. “We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859.”

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The Oath Keepers, conceived as a group of “patriots,” law enforcement officers, and former military members who would defy orders they didn’t like in opposition to a deep state members saw as conspiring to declare martial law, have now sided with Trump and see their role as ensuring law and order.

Other militia groups have done the same. Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated this sentiment; by forgoing a federal response, Trump has continued to receive the support of anti-government groups, while state and local governments have been left to issue piecemeal restrictions and face the ire of such groups.

It’s amid this violent rhetoric, fear-mongering about government overreach, and calls for civil war that militia groups and white supremacist organizations are feeling emboldened—and Trump’s language has given these groups tacit, if not explicit, approval.

In April, Trump sent off a series of tweets calling for states led by three Democratic governors, including Whitmer and Northam, to be liberated from supposedly draconian public health measures. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” hetweeted, followed by “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

Michael German, a former FBI agent who infiltrated neo-Nazis in the 1990s, is not surprised the Michigan governor was targeted by these groups following Trump’s message.

“These are groups that are used to listening fordog whistle affirmation among the powerful, and so when they get that affirmation spoken out loud, indirectly, it takes on a completely different meaning,” said German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program. “You know, something like ‘liberate Virginia‘ and ‘liberate Michigan‘ would be taken as ‘OK, this is a green light from the highest levels of our government. We should start planning.’”

In August, German published areport with the Brennan Center detailing the militia groups that have law enforcement and former military members, though “only a tiny percentage of law enforcement officials are likely to be active members of white supremacist groups.” An investigation inThe Atlantic details these connections in the Oath Keepers, which recruited thousands of police, soldiers, and veterans.

As protests erupted in the days following George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, members of extreme right-wing movements followed Trump’s lead in identifying common enemies among police and far-right militants, demonizing Black Lives Matter, anarchists, and antifa.

“We’ve been through a lot of these protests, and [police] seem to have a less antagonistic and violent response when it’s far-right militants who are engaging in protest violence,” German said. “And I think that’s because the messaging that they’re receiving about who is the enemy of state, as the president is identifying these groups as the enemy of state and suggesting that there are friendlies among the far-right, white supremacist groups. That sends a pretty clear message both to the groups and to the police about who should be the target of their violence.”

“So when these groups feel like they have the authority granted by the state to engage in this kind of behavior, they’re more likely to do it,” German said. “These groups operate on margin where their violence is reinforcing state action and state violence often, right—that the groups that the far-right militant and white supremacist groups target are the same groups that law enforcement targets disproportionately.”

In August, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who considers himself a militia member, fatally shot two demonstrators and injured a third at a protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Much has been said about how, minutes prior to the shooting,police thanked the group for their presence and offered Rittenhouse water.

Creating the Justification for Right-Wing Violence

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After Trump’s Proud Boy comments at the presidential debate, the hate group took to the social media platform Telegram where they took the president’s wordsas a command. “Standing by sir,” Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio wrote.

Two days later, Tarriotold conspiracy theorist and failed congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine—who in June had urged conservatives to form militiaswhile awaiting the “green light” to take back the streets—that his group had gained 2,000 to 3,000 new followers.

Violent rhetoric and civil war chatter among extremists is nothing new. But as we’ve approached the 2020 elections, the confluence of violent rhetoric among the extremists Right Wing Watch covers seems to have taken a frenzied pace, with different subgroups of the right-wing acting as an echo chamber, radicalizing each other and the president and vice versa. Trump, himself, has cultivated that echo chamber, creating a megaphone for his messaging.

Trump has refused to say whether he will step down peacefully should he lose the election. And since 2016, Trump and his team has pushed the narrative that Democrats and the deep state worked tirelessly to prevent him from becoming president in 2016 and, when they failed, conspired against him to prevent his reelection. By fear-mongering about voter fraud through mail-in voting and engaging with far-right conspiracy theories, Trump has insisted that any election he loses will have been fraudulent—creating justification for right-wing violence should he lose.

Tags: Chris McDonald Donald Trump Frank Pavone Jim Bakker John Guandolo Josh Bernstein Joshua Feuerstein Mark Burns Mark Taylor Rick Joyner Rick Wiles Robert Jeffress Antifa Civil War conspiracy theories Oath Keepers Trunews Wolverine Watchmen

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/tracing-the-roots-of-city-boy-trumps-racist-suburban-dream-nonsense-all-the-way-to-rush-limbaugh

no lnx twt many

It’s no surprise that the current occupant of the White House is running for reelection on racism. Given his track record, it would be a surprise if he weren’t. Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric has always centered on fearmongering around crime, going back not just to the start of his presidential campaign in 2015, but back to the 1980s. Now he’s at it again, this time with a focus on the suburbs and, in anachronistic language that evokes June Cleaver or Carol Brady, ”suburban housewives.”

Based on his rambling, Trump seems to think the suburbs are still filled with white women in aprons making their kids PB&J on Wonder BreadTM with the crusts cut off, dutifully fixing after-work martinis for their husbands. Trump thinks he can scare those white-lady aprons right off with tales of Black and brown criminals descending upon their neighborhoods, and present himself as the white (orange?) savior who will keep their neighborhoods safe by keeping them white. This particular dog whistle is not one Trump invented, of course. Among others, Rush Limbaugh has been blowing it for years.

Let’s start with Trump’s current campaign. On June 30, President Shitgibbon tweeted that he was “studying the AFFH housing regulation that is having a devastating impact” on the suburbs. He also claimed that his opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, wants to make things “much worse”—correction: “MUCH WORSE.” Trump added that he “may END!” the AFFH.

The AFFH refers to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, enacted in 2015, under the Obama-Biden administration. Barack Obama’s AFFH rule updated a previous regulation governing discrimination in housing and real estate, which wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do as required by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

What Obama did was mandate that local governments that received federal money to build housing must “identify and address patterns of racial segregation outlawed under the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by creating detailed corrective plans.” In other words, he simply wanted to make sure that cities and towns followed existing law. Radical, I know. To clarify, the AFFH would not destroy, abolish, or even fundamentally alter the nature of housing in the suburbs. It’s just a boogeyman Trump’s using because he thinks it will scare the white ladies of Westchester County and beyond into voting for him.

A few weeks after the initial tweet, on July 23, this appeared on Herr Twitler’s feed.

Less than a week later, on July 29, the White House announced that it was revoking the AFFH. This formal revocation came on top of action Trump took in January 2018, which de facto blocked the rule from taking effect by pushing back its effective start date to at least November 1, 2020. The Trump administration has taken numerous other steps to hamstring the federal government’s efforts to enforce fair housing and desegregate neighborhoods.

The same day the rule’s revocation was made public, Trump followed up with a tweet that, as many have noted, said the quiet part out loud.

That same day, Trump echoed his tweet in remarks to an audience in Midland, Texas. “There will be no more low-income housing forced into the suburbs,” he declared, adding that “it’s been going on for years. I’ve seen conflict for years. It’s been hell for suburbia.”

Whereas Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson and his minions have portrayed the gutting of Obama’s fair housing rules as merely making things simpler by reducing unnecessary paperwork, President Charlottesville just came right out and revealed the real motivation for these changes. He’s vowing to make sure the people he considers undesirable from “low-income housing” projects can’t move in next door—and assuming it’s an effective strategy.

Apparently, Trump convinced himself that his previous tweets were too subtle. He decided that it would help if he named someone who would supposedly help Joe Biden take aim at the suburbs if he was elected. Since President Barack Obama is no longer on the ticket, the Orange Julius Caesar must have figured he needed a substitute of a similar hue.

[twt]

When pressed on what he meant by that tweet, Trump, as The New York Times put it, “told on himself.”

“They’re going to, in my opinion, destroy suburbia, And just so you understand, 30 percent-plus of the people living in suburbia are minorities,” Trump rambled. “African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic American—they’re minorities. Thirty percent. The number is even higher, it’s—they say 35, but I like to cut it a little bit lower. You know why? That way I can never get myself in too much trouble with the fake news.”

Women of all races have been calling Trump out on this hate-filled nonsense. “I think people may make assumptions,” one white Kentucky stay-at-home mother of three told the Daily Beast. “And I think that’s something the president has done, unfortunately, is make assumptions that all white women are going to support him. And we’re not.”

Writer Ally Henny, on the other hand, was explicit in her explanation of why Trump is choosing his words so carefully.

Most recently, perhaps having decided that race-baiting the suburbs from Trump’s own mouth and tweets needed some fleshing out as a campaign strategy, the impeached president and his HUD secretary “wrote” an op-ed piece, placed behind The Wall Street Journal paywall. It’s a bit more subtle, and makes passing mention of Americans of color also living in the suburbs, but this slick product can’t unsay what the racist-in-chief already put out there.

As Media Matters laid out, Trump’s racist suburban shtick strongly echoes the work of right-wing author and commentator Stanley Kurtz. In 2012, Kurtz published a book called Spreading the Wealth: How Obama is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. If you’re wondering whether Kurtz has spent a lifetime studying housing policy, don’t bother. His previous book was 2010’s Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. There is something that is definitely not “expertise in housing policy” running through both tomes.

Back to 2020. On the morning of June 30, Kurtz published a National Review piece claiming that if Biden won the presidency, he would go beyond the AFFH and adopt a policy advocated by Cory (not “Corey”) Booker; he further asserted that Biden’s true intention is to “abolish the suburbs.” Trump’s tweet saying the same went live about 12 hours later. Media Matters’ Bobby Lewis pointed out the connection between Kurtz’s article and the Trump tweet.

Stanley Kurtz leads us to the other right-wing blowhard mentioned at the beginning of this post, namely the man with whom Trump defiled the Medal of Freedom: Rush Limbaugh. In doing research for my recent book, I analyzed multiple examples of Limbaugh slamming Obama over his policies regarding the suburbs—most of the time citing Kurtz. A week before Kurtz’s book came out in 2012, Limbaugh started talking about it, quoting from it, and using it to paint President Obama as anti-suburban and, in so many words, anti-white. This went on for the remainder of Obama’s time in office.

On July 26, 2012, Limbaugh offered lengthy quotations from the Kurtz book, which regaled its readers with lies about Obama’s “lifelong hostility to the suburbs.” The 44th president apparently had it in for suburb dwellers, whom he supposedly believed “were just greedy racists who didn’t want to share their tax money with the urban poor.” We know exactly which group of people Limbaugh means when he talks about “the suburbs,” and who he means when he talks about “the urban poor.” This is the very same dog whistle Trump is blowing now, eight years later, when he’s fighting to keep the presidency.

Limbaugh did this over and over again. The next day he claimed that suburbanites were Obama’s “real enemies,” and six days after that, Limbaugh predicted that the first Black president would “abolish” the suburbs. In September 2013, the racist host said that President Obama would “destroy the suburbs,” and in July 2014, Limbaugh spouted off about “Obama’s war on the suburbs”—during a segment where he specifically went after the AFFH rule Trump so desperately hates, which was then under consideration. In a July 2015 master class on race-baiting, the host tied his suburbia-based attacks on Obama to “forced busing,” as well as to “attacks on the South” and “attacks on the Confederate flag.”

This went on and on. In addition to the examples above, Limbaugh threw out similar suburban dog whistles during the Obama presidency here, here, here, here, here, and here—each “here” represents a different day’s broadcast. And of course, Limbaugh is still at it in 2020. He even blew his dog whistle during his reaction to Rep. John Lewis’s funeral.

Thanks to reporting from New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, we know that Trump got many of the specific topics for his race-baiting rhetoric from talk radio. In the run-up to the 2016 campaign, onetime top Trump aide Sam Nunberg did a “deep dive into talk radio”—listening for “thousands of hours” and then giving “reports” to Trump on what was really motivating the right-wing base. Limbaugh has the largest audience in talk radio, and has for as long as such ratings have been measured. Trump’s recent dog whistles on the suburbs and Biden are wholly unoriginal: They’re virtually a carbon copy of Limbaugh’s language on the suburbs and Obama—language which itself was cribbed from Stanley Kurtz.

When it comes to the suburbs, and other policies that relate to race and economics more broadly, Limbaugh and Trump have sought to win over middle- and working-class white Americans by falsely claiming that former President Obama and future President Biden want nothing more than to take away what they have earned—whether it’s money or safe neighborhoods—and give it to Black and Latino Americans who supposedly don’t deserve it.

Playing to racial anxieties and ginning up fear and hatred are the only ways the Limbaugh-Trump Republican Party can get the support of those voters, given that GOP policies actively work against their economic interests while favoring those of the real elites—the top 1%. To defeat Trump and the Republican Party made in his image, Democrats must help these voters recognize that Republicans are spewing hate in order to keep white Americans and Americans of color from coming together on the basis of shared interests.

One way to do so is to point out what the Trump party actually does when it gains power. The Trump presidency’s singular legislative accomplishment is a multibillion dollar tax giveaway to millionaires and billionaires, that does little to nothing for the average American of any race. The other major legislative effort undertaken by Trump & Co. was repealing the Affordable Care Act, which expanded coverage to tens of millions of Americans. Thankfully, that effort failed, but it too would have mostly helped the wealthy by giving them a tax cut, and harmed the folks—again, Americans of every race—earning around or just below the national median income who had gained coverage.

Republicans can’t sell their economic policies to middle- and working-class white voters, so all they have left to peddle is hate. That’s why Trump is now trying to scare white suburbanites with tall tales about poor people moving in from cities, or, as he did just a few days ago, revisiting some of his worst rhetoric from the 2016 campaign about immigrants and crime.

When thinking about where Trump comes from, most people associate him with the city. Trump Tower, his erstwhile home, sits in midtown Manhattan. He claims to have “built” skyscrapers, but mostly he just got paid to place his name on other people’s buildings. However, he grew up in 1950s Jamaica Estates, a neighborhood that, although it was located in Queens, New York City, much more resembled a wealthy suburban enclave. It was, according to a New York Times article, “an exclusive and nearly all-white place, resistant to outsiders and largely impenetrable to minorities.” Trump himself described it as “safe” and “an oasis” when compared to other parts of Queens, which he viewed as “rough.”

This mindset—the idea of a suburban environment as a place where white people with enough money to escape the inner city’s poor neighborhoods of color, as well as enough power to keep non-whites from moving in—is at the core of Trump’s race-baiting on the suburbs. Trump understands, and hopes to exploit in this year’s election the very racist fears that once motivated the white flight from American cities in the 1950s and ‘60s. So does Rush Limbaugh, whose racist rhetoric throughout the Obama presidency laid out the blueprint that Trump is now using to attack Joe Biden.

Two months before Election Day, it appears that the white suburban women who elected Trump in 2016 (and to whom Trump thinks this hate-filled nonsense will appeal) are not responding to his dog whistle, at least not in large enough numbers to reelect him. Perhaps they’ve evolved in terms of their fears and prejudices. Or perhaps they’ve simply come to realize that The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote poses a far greater danger because of his manifest unfitness to lead our country.

Making sure they remember that and come out to vote for the Biden-Harris ticket is one thing we can all help to make happen.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

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OK symbol a fake/ lulz that became real? layers of irony? busted --> just kidding retreat?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/don-jr-posts-photos-of-his-assault-rifle-bearing-ancient-symbol-of-war-with-islam-now-used-by-white-supremacists-experts/

aha trump boys mantly men who kill endangered species, hunters, // coal rolling?!

aha 2: the opposite of virtue signalling? just "different" virtues?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/fox-news-host-accuses-rashida-tlaib-of-having-a-hamas-agenda/

no lnx

Fox News host accuses Rashida Tlaib of having a ‘Hamas agenda’

Written by Matthew Rozsa / Salon July 30, 2019

“Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Pete Hegseth has accused Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., of having a “Hamas agenda” following her criticisms of Israel.

Fellow Fox News colleague Sean Hannity began a segment of his eponymous primetime show Monday by denouncing the so-called “squad” of four liberal Democratic congresswomen, which in addition to Tlaib includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. The group has recently found itself the target of racist Twitter attacks from President Donald Trump.

“Nobody in the Democratic team of hopefuls for 2020 is talking about Nancy Pelosi’s policies,” Hannity told his viewers. “They’re adopting ‘the squad’s’ policies.”

Hannity continued by engaging his colleague Hegseth over the accusations of “radicalism” and “virulent anti-Semitism” he levied against “the squad” earlier in the segment.

“Pete: To me they’re going to help in the end, because it seems like everybody is afraid of them. And they’re soradical and so extreme, and frankly a number of them are quite bigoted,” Hannity told Hegseth. “And I don’t think it’s going to work very well to call America a garbage country; or compare the concentration camps in Nazi Germany to the treatment we’re giving people in facilities down at the border; or to say that Israel has hypnotized the world, and we want to boycott Israel just the way we boycotted the Nazis. I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/pence-leads-under-the-radar-attack-on-unions/

Since he took office, Vice President Pence has been working with high-level Trump backers to develop a comprehensive strategy to weaken labor unions. The strategy he is developing revolves around so-called “right to work” laws that have already been rammed through numerous state legislative bodies. Among the GOP bright lights attending the closed-door sessions with Pence have been Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Pence’s role as architect of a new federal assault on unions is one of the topics tackled recently in an excellent article* in the March/April issue of The Voice of the ILWU, published by the union’s local 142 in Hawaii. The article, entitled “Trump backs attack on union,” delves into the history of “right to work” and how it has been used to bash workers and their unions.

After a January 28 meeting with Pence and Gingrich, it is noted, Walker bragged that he showed how “bits and pieces” of what he did in Wisconsin to “reform” union law and civil service, can be “applied at the national level.”

The advice Walker gave to the Trump administration is to begin the attack on labor by first going after public workers and their unions.Pence and Trump are likely to oblige that advice since they had already promised to do just that during their campaign.

“So-called right to work laws are designed and funded by big business to weaken unions,” the Voice article says. “They force unions into an impossible situation by making them legally responsible for representing all workers in a shop, while stripping the union’s ability to collect enough fees to cover those representation costs. Strong union shops where everyone is a paying member would be outlawed under the proposed law and replaced with ‘open shops’ where division, disunity and financial hardship weaken the union and leave workers with lower pay, meager benefits and little say over working conditions.”

Perhaps the most powerful feature of the piece is a hard-hitting section on the “ugly origins of right to work.”

The first “right to work” laws, it is noted, were instituted in 1936 by a Texas organization, “the Christian American Association.” The Voice describes the group as a racist outfit run by Southern oilmen and Northern industrialists. Today, their work is continued by organizations like ALEC.

“A top associate of the group once explained her hostility toward workers by criticizing what President Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, had done to help workers, especially African Americans: “…Roosevelt stands for a $15 a week salary for all n****** house help, Sundays off, no washing, and no cleaning upstairs,” adding, “My n***** maid wouldn’t dare sit down in the same room with me unless she sat on the floor at my feet!”

The first right to work laws, the article points out, were passed in 1944. The first two states to approve them were Arkansas and Florida and by 1947 they were law in some 14 southern states. That was the same year that the GOP-controlled Congress passed the infamous Taft-Hartley law which removed from unions and workers numerous rights they had gained under the Wagner Act, passed during the tenure of President Roosevelt. “The anti union laws were popular in the South,” the ILWU article says, “where segregationists warned that union shops and civil rights would lead to ‘race mixing and communism.’”

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. waged a campaign against right to work laws in the 1960’s. He is quoted: “We must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and our job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone. Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights.”

Another interesting part of the article is how it treats the conservative and right wing reaction to the civil rights gains of the 1960’s including the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, drawing the connection between the attacks on civil rights and the attacks on labor rights:

“Richard Nixon won in 1968 with a ‘Southern Strategy’ that used racist code language, including talk about ‘welfare, less government, violent criminals and states right,’ to win white votes in the South – plus blue collar votes from whites in the Midwest and Northern industrial cities. Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldemann, explained: ‘You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really Blacks. The key is to develop a system that recognized this while not appearing to.’ Ronald Reagan’s campaign strategist, Lee Atwater, explained how racist appeals had won white votes:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, “n*****, n*****, n*****,” By 1968 you can’t say “n*****”- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff…”

“This is how,” the ILWU article concludes on this point, the term “right to work” became one of the many racist code words that white politicians used to communicate bigotry and win elections; beginning in the South, and now throughout much of the country.”

We all know all too well that, unlike Las Vegas, what happens in the South does not stay in the South. As of today 28 states, a majority of the states in the country, have “right to work” laws on the books. And we have Vice President Pence working hard on a strategy to make “right to work” national law.

The ILWU’s president, Robert McEllrath, remains undaunted, however. Interviewed for the article in the Voice, he said, “Workers and unions have never gotten anything handed to them on a silver platter, because progress only gets made by pushing the powerful to do what’s right. That’s the way it has always been. And that’s what we need to be doing now and in the future.”

[Mie Omori, the editor of the ILWU Local 142 newspaper The Voice,informed PW that the article that appeared in The Voice is actually from the Dispatcher, ILWU’s headquarters’ newspaper. Roy SanFilippo is the editor of the Dispatcher and most likely wrote it. — Eds]