grievanceBAK
10 25 CAPT TEXT
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an 3 26
Established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was among the many achievements of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society. The EEOC has existed under 11 different U.S. presidents, including Donald Trump — whose critics argue that the agency, under Chair Andrea R. Lucas, is taking a radically different approach from what LBJ envisioned during the 1960s. And according to National Public Radio (NPR), that includes pushing MAGA's obsession with eliminating DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs from the workplace.
NPR's Andrea Hsu, in an article published on March 31, stresses that the Trump-era EEOC is very much "at odds with" its original LBJ-era mission.
"The EEOC was established through Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as Congress sought to remedy the vast racial injustices faced by Black Americans," Hsu explains. "At its peak in the early 1980s, the agency had more than 3000 employees. Today, it's down to about 1740 employees, according to the Office of Personnel Management, with hundreds of departures since President Trump returned to the White House last year…. Under Lucas' leadership, staff members have continued to work through tens of thousands of discrimination complaints, recovering money for women who have been sexually harassed on the job, Black people denied work opportunities and — under the Americans with Disabilities Act — workers denied accommodations by their employers, among other such common cases."
The NPR reporter continues, "But former leaders of the agency say Lucas is also using its increasingly scarce resources to pursue an agenda at odds with its traditions and even its mandate. In addition to the cases challenging DEI, they point to the agency's decision to dismiss multiple lawsuits it was fighting on behalf of transgender and nonbinary individuals, its reversal of earlier decisions establishing protections for transgender workers and the rollback of its comprehensive harassment guidance."
One of Lucas' critics is Charlotte Burrows, who chaired the EEOC under former President Joe Biden and was fired by Trump.
Burrows told NPR that "there's a real radical effort to advance one ideological perspective with the resources" that EEOC presently has — adding, "Civil rights enforcement should never be a partisan political game."
In a video posted on X, formerly Twitter, on December 17, 2025, Lucas declared, "Are you a white male who's experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the EEOC as soon as possible."
Democrat Chai Feldblum, a former EEOC official, said of Lucas' anti-DEI efforts, "It is frightening employers from taking positive actions in their workplaces, and it is failing to help those people whom the law actually requires them to help. This is not helpful in terms of stopping discrimination — real discrimination — in our country."
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GREIVance IN A BIGGER SENSE // STORY 1
AN 12 25
In his New York Times column and frequent appearances on MS NOW, journalist David French isn't shy about attacking President Donald Trump from the right. Like other Never Trump conservatives — from attorney George Conway to MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace to The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson — French believes that Trump and the MAGA movement have been terrible for the GOP and terrible for conservatism.
But French examines MAGA's belief system in his December 14 column for the Times. MAGA, according to French, believes that Trump is fighting to save the United States from a "death spiral" — and that combination of anger and "despair" is one of the things that makes MAGA and the "New Right" so dangerous.
"In this telling," French explains, "the 'strong men' of the American past had created a glorious and powerful nation. Our peace and prosperity had spawned a weak and feckless generation that had squandered America's strength and cultural identity, and now, it was time for hard men to arise to reclaim what was lost. This view of America's glorious past is indispensable to understanding MAGA's appeal — and the extremism of MAGA youth. After all, the slogan, 'Make America Great Again' implies the loss of greatness."
French continues, "This sense of loss provides the intellectual and — crucially — emotional foundation of the right's authoritarian turn. It's hard to overstate how much the New Right idealizes America's past. Online spaces are full of memes and images, for example, of families from the 1950s in idyllic settings, often with the caption, 'This is what they took from you.'"
The New Right, French observes, typically "contrasts its vision of a glorious past with a miserable present."
"Now, combine that hyperbole with smartphones and social media, and you've got a recipe for a nonstop sense of alarm," the conservative New York Times columnist warns. "I can open my Twitter feed and see video after video of outrageous conduct, and no amount of telling myself that these are isolated incidents in a nation of over 340 million people can blunt their emotional impact."
*David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).
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Conservative journalist David French, in his New York Times columns, has often stressed that religion — including Christianity — plays a valuable role in American life. But in his October 16 column, the Never Trump conservative offers a grim critique on the state of U.S. Christianity almost nine months into President Donald Trump's second term.
French, on one hand, laments that many Americans are still turned off to religion in 2025. But he also fears that MAGA converts to evangelical Christianity are embracing a mean-spirited view of faith.
"Despite what you may have heard about the renewal of interest in religion in America," French explains, "we are not experiencing a true revival, at least not yet. Instead, America is closer to a religious revolution, and the difference between revolution and revival is immensely important for the health of our country — and of the Christian church in America. At this point, it's almost beyond debate that something important is stirring in American religion. There is too much data — and too many anecdotes — to ignore."
French argues that "as a Christian who has long lamented the decline of church attendance in the United States," he "should be very happy about" a growing interest in religion on college campuses. But he is worried about MAGA's role in these conversions.
"There is darkness right alongside the light," the conservative columnist warns. "Christians stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Christians have believed and applauded dark prophecies that compare Donald Trump to Jehu, a murderous Old Testament king who commanded the slaughter of the previous queen, Jezebel, and had the severed heads of the previous king's sons brought to him in baskets. Incredibly, Christians are attacking what they call the 'sin of empathy,' warning fellow believers against identifying too much with, say, illegal immigrants, gay people or women who seek abortions. Empathy, in this formulation, can block moral and theological clarity. What's wrong is wrong, and too much empathy will cloud your soul."
French continues, "There was the ReAwaken America tour that crisscrossed America during Joe Biden's presidency, during which angry Christians called for vengeance at sold-out venues from coast to coast. And, as I wrote last month, the (Charlie) Kirk memorial itself mixed calls for love — most notably, Erika Kirk's decision to forgive her husband's killer — with the Trump administration's explicit hate."
French finds the us-versus-them rhetoric of MAGA evangelicals especially troubling.
"Revival begins with the people proclaiming, by word and deed, 'I have sinned,'" French writes. "MAGA Christianity has a different message. It looks at American culture and declares, 'You have sinned.' And it doesn't stop there. It also says, 'We will defeat you.' In its most extreme forms, it also says, 'We will rule over you.' That's not revival; it’s revolution, a religious revolution that seeks to overthrow one political order and replace it with another — one that has echoes of the religious kingdoms of ages past."
David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).
PRIMARY 11 24
disambig (from? white supr? racism?
MERRI OK
see 2024 election latinos POd about help for migrants?!
SEE DEI [AND THUS GUBMUNT HELPS THOSE PPL OF COLOR ILLEGALS BUT NOT ME?]
SEE RACISM
--> PSEUDO-POPULISM // CONSPIR REDUCTIONISM
promote 2nd on ingraham aha
see illegal voter
PROLLY NEGLECT OVERLAP
see affirmative action
see rubber glue false equiv
see HYPE emotion anger
see red pill male macho
see gt replacement
see white grievance 2 = bak?
see identity victim --> white supreme /xian nat'list // true real victim WAR ON XIAN
never got over wound of black prez obama? --> RETALIATION
trumpism is about grievance (mostly all he talks about is who has betrayed him and how he will get revenge; 2024 run is about that only? but trumpistas also grievance about how their country has been stolen from those other bad ppl: ppl of color, secular socialist extremists. = pseudo-populism.
those ppl are jumping in line ahead of me so outcry about immigrants/illegals getting health care?
GLOBALIZATION LOSS OF BLUE COLLAR MFG JOBS? RUST BELT URBAN RURAL POLARIZATION
real populism is solidarity of workers vs powerful greedy rich (psychopaths?)
BAK 10 25
note not xo?
an 8 25
Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) will sign a memorandum ordering colleges and universities to submit information on their admissions to ensure they are complying with a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court order banning affirmative action and gutting race-conscious admissions. The order would expand the current admissions data (https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/07/politics/trump-university-race-admissions) the government collects.
“Admissions data has increasingly become a focus of the Trump administration as part of its effort to change the ideological balance of the higher education system, which the president views as hostile to conservatives,” The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/us/politics/trump-schools-race-data.html) reported.
Several Ivy League schools have agreed to hand over to the Trump administration certain admissions data, including “standardized test scores and grade point averages of all applicants, as well as information about their race, a measure that could profoundly alter the competitive college admissions process,” according to the Times.
READ MORE: Governor Wants Maps to Reflect State’s ‘Christian Conservative Majority’ Says GOP Lawmaker (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/08/governor-wants-maps-to-reflect-states-christian-conservative-majority-says-gop-lawmaker/)
The 2023 6-3 Supreme Court ruling banned public and private colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in its admissions decisions. Schools had said they needed to do so to protect the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissenting opinion (https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1181138066/affirmative-action-supreme-court-decision).
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Bloomberg News (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-07/trump-action-to-require-more-college-admissions-data-reporting?sref=3OTf8B4q) called Thursday’s order “a new and expansive front” in the Trump administration’s “pressure campaign against colleges.”
Angel Perez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, Bloomberg added, “said the data transparency mandate could drive institutions away from the kinds of holistic admissions practices that have helped them increase diversity on campuses.”
“The bottom line,” Perez said, “is that colleges that don’t admit enough White students will be punished.”
READ MORE: Trump Revives Constitutionally Conflicting Census Overhaul Plan (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/08/trump-revives-constitutionally-conflicting-census-overhaul-plan/)
an 6 25
The Supreme Court recent unanimous ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (https://www.google.com/search?cs=0&sca_esv=8a70c10f7ae50c33&q=Ames+v.+Ohio+Department+of+Youth+Services&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiX7Nmq7PuNAxVgAjQIHbyuJykQxccNegQIBBAB&mstk=AUtExfBITrvOJkbO93SvusgDCq-oQWUXBSD-BqWVC2Hpt5qS2PsILQgz4yqJfqC5ctwc3tOLhlE2UZtpRYJZajC-uZbZ8vE2aRS9BgKsLh-FhBqM4j6NkAUjgoVkgMNybyzzsmMuikV3oHfIShJINb0mmhrJF1yQBsALnwYBsotzlhNCTcI&csui=3) hasn’t got nearly the attention it deserves.
On the surface, the ruling seems innocent enough. The Court merely decided that white and straight employees who allege they’ve been discriminated against don't need to meet a higher standard of proof than do Black or LGBTQ+ employees who sue for discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
(Prior to this ruling, some courts had required that white or straight employees demonstrate not only that they were discriminated against but they also worked in a discriminatory environment.)
The Court’s decision in Ames appears a logical extension of the 2023 ruling by its six conservative justices ending race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country.
But seen against Trump’s bigoted agenda and the widening discrepancies between the political power of Black or LGBTQ+ people relative to the power of white straight people, the Ames case should trouble everyone.
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Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) and his lackeys have argued that discrimination against white and straight Americans occurs under the coverof diversity, equity and inclusion. And Trump has gone to great lengths to undo what it calls “illegal D.E.I.” — ousting diversity officials from federal agencies and removing D.E.I. references from government websites.
The Ames ruling could be the death knell for D.E.I. because it makes it easier for white and straight people to argue that a D.E.I. policy at the workplace caused an employer to discriminate against them.
The Supreme Court I got to know in the 1970s when I worked in the Solicitor General’s office understood its responsibility to balance the scales of justice in favor of the powerless — including Black people, women, and gay people.
That Court understood that as majoritarian institutions, Congress and the executive branch could not always be counted on to reflect the needs of people with far less political power than straight white men.
Hence, they assumed that one of the Court’s essential roles in our system of self government — indeed, the core of its moral authority — was to give extra weight to the challenges or aspirations of such minorities.
Even Nixon’s appointees—Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and Warren Burger—seemed to understand this important counter-balancing role. Blackmun wrote the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, and Powell and Burger joined him (as did four Democratic appointees to the Court—William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart).
Douglas, Marshall, and Blackmun were the intellectual leaders of that Supreme Court. Their opinions gave the Court its moral heft. They drew not only from the Constitution as written but also from their understanding of how the nation had evolved, and of the distribution of power.
Like an earlier Supreme Court that unanimously decided in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topekathat separate schooling for Black and white children was inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional, the Supreme Court I argued before understood that America must rely on the Court to protect the rights of the voiceless and the powerless.
Today’s Supreme Court majority doesn’t have a clue about the court’s moral authority or its essential role in counter-balancing a distribution of power disadvantaging Black or LGBTQ+ people.
The Republican appointees to today’s Supreme Court are political hacks intent on entrenching the power of the already powerful.
Five were nominated by presidents who lost the popular vote; three were nominated by a president who instigated a coup against the United States and were confirmed because a rogue Republican Party mounted scorched-earth campaigns to put them on the Court.
The current Supreme Court has no interest in counter-balancing the majoritarian tendencies of Congress and the President. To the contrary, as demonstrated by theAmesdecision, today’s Court is at best the third majoritarian branch of government.
On Juneteenth — the day we commemorate the end of slavery in the United States — it is well to ponder that there is no longer any branch of government dedicated to protecting the life chances of those with less political power due to their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or sexual orientation.
This is deeply unfortunate.
NOW READ:Trump now faces the same terrible choice (https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-now-faces-the-same-terrible-choice/)
*Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
AN 6 25
Just one day after a widely criticized, multimillion-dollar military parade marking both the U.S. Army’s birthday and his own—and amid millions attending thousands of nationwide “No Kings” protests (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/15/how-many-people-attended-no-kings/84219725007/)—President Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) announced on Sunday night a new crackdown (https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114690267066155731) targeting undocumented immigrants exclusively in Democratic-led strongholds, declaring that blue cities “are the core of the Democrat Power Center.”
Some critics also note that the move comes after a suspect, reportedly a Trump supporter, allegedly assassinated a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5v5l4eylyo) and her spouse and gravely shot and wounded another Democratic lawmaker and his spouse on the same day as the anti-Trump rallies in all 50 states.
In a 400-word Sunday night “order” on social media, President Trump claimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) every day face “threats from Radical Democrat Politicians,” as he announced “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” before baselessly claiming voter fraud.
READ MORE:‘Coup’: What DHS Secretary’s ‘Liberate’ Comment Means, According to Experts (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/06/coup-what-dhs-secretarys-liberate-comment-means-according-to-experts/)
“Every day, the Brave Men and Women of ICE are subjected to violence, harassment, and even threats from Radical Democrat Politicians, but nothing will stop us from executing our mission, and fulfilling our Mandate to the American People. ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” the President wrote.
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“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” Trump continued. “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports.”
Critics blasted the President and issued warnings.
“This is illegal on so many levels,” charged (https://x.com/hissgoescobra/status/1934436279153754246) John Jackson, a former trial lawyer. “He’s declaring war on specific areas based entirely on their voter registration, which is a form of speech and protected political choice. It’s ‘vote Republican or I will punish you.’ Incredible. Out in the open. Lawless.”
“2 implications of Trump specifically targeting immigrants in Democratic cities: He’s NOT going after immigrants in places where they are least welcome,” observed (https://x.com/davidbadash/status/1934449759005061250) former Washington Post editor Robert McCartney. “He IS doing what’s most likely to provoke backlash. We conclude that his goal is not to ‘solve’ the problem but to stir chaos.”
“This is the politicization of law enforcement. It’s not about ‘immigration,’ it’s about demonizing cities, harming political enemies and winning elections,” declared (https://x.com/anneapplebaum/status/1934500340763935000) The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum. “Also, those are the cities that had the biggest No Kings protests.”
RELATED: In Reversal, Trump Uses Term Tied to Ethnic Cleansing Amid Renewed Mass Deportation Demand (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/06/in-reversal-trump-uses-term-tied-to-ethnic-cleansing-amid-renewed-mass-deportation-demand/)
Pointing to Trump’s full screed, political strategist Rachel Bitecofer noted (https://x.com/rachelbitecofer/status/1934455192109609087), “Please go study how the Nazis talked about the Jews to whip the public up into accepting restricting them from society, deporting them, and ultimately murdering them. It will sound a lot like this.”
“Trump is going after Blue cities based on nothing more than the crazy, conspiratorial voices in his head,” wrote (https://x.com/DarrigoMelanie/status/1934419297297650019) Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health. “He’s already violating our 1st, 4th, 5th & 14th Amendments, and deploying the U.S. military against citizens in L.A. This is what authoritarianism looks like.”
“He’s openly admitting that he’s politicizing law enforcement,” observed (https://x.com/chucktodd/status/1934427597074563387) Chuck Todd, the former NBC News Chief Political Analyst and “Meet the Press” moderator. “This will not help ICE’s image because he’s asking them to perform a political task. Throw in the decision to shield the red states from law enforcement and he’s clearly hoping to provoke an angry response. At a moment when we need a president to de-escalate, he does the opposite.”
“Trump’s ugly plan is clear: Incite violence in blue cities & blue states only, and then put the military on the streets in those blue cities & blue states only,” warned (https://x.com/WalshFreedom/status/1934597871904715034) former Tea Party GOP Congressman Joe Walsh, now a Democrat and political commentator. “Everything he does is meant to divide us. He is the absolute worst of us.”
“This sort of dehumanizing language about political opponents is exactly what leads to the horrific shootings we saw yesterday, wrote (https://x.com/MeidasTouch/status/1934414116095201715) MeidasTouch News. “Disgraceful and dangerous.”
“One of his crazed supporters just assassinated a Democrat and he continues to instigate division and hatred, noted (https://x.com/SenAnaliseOrtiz/status/1934499301830590617) Arizona Democratic state Senator Analise Ortiz. “We need an adult in the White House, not a dictator hell bent on escalating tensions and political violence.”
Progressive media outlet The Tennessee Holler wrote (https://x.com/TheTNHoller/status/1934416083240489008) that “the president posting that Dems are ‘sick of mind’ and ‘hate our country’ immediately after 2 Dem lawmakers and their spouses were shot in their homes is the opposite of leadership. Gas on the fire.”
“A US president is supposed to be the president of all the people,” wrote (https://x.com/Anne_Arbor/status/1934505343431700577) retired Professor of Law Anne Arbor. “This man instead foments hatred of his own political party against his political opponents. This statement verges on a declaration of civil war against half the country.”
READ MORE: ‘You Don’t Care’: Gay Congressman Blasts Defense Secretary Over LGBTQ Troops (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/06/you-dont-care-gay-congressman-blasts-defense-secretary-over-lgbtq-troops/)
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MMA
May 14, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight
ROB SCHMITT (HOST): A major political party is calling for killing all the white people in the country. This is what asylum is. We have seen thousands of attacks on these people. Your thoughts?
:{:{VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (GUEST): Yeah. It is. And most of the people who were among the ten thousand who came in were not refugees over the last four years. So — and then, you know, ever since the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 that Ted Kennedy helped push through, we've had almost no immigration from Europeans or the former British Commonwealth. They've been mostly people from Latin America, Africa, and China, which is fine. But we've got so acculturated to the idea that so-called white people will not be immigrating to the United States, that we've created this — I don't know what you call it, a covert racism and that gets explicit when it when it actually is actualized.}:
And most of these people who are coming from South Africa were born after the end of apartheid. I mean, we're talking about forty, thirty years ago. And most of them, you know, it's — this idea of collective guilt that every single person there was a member of a racist society is not true. And it's a new South Africa. They passed a law, and as we know last year that said that the government could appropriate farmland without compensation. And then everybody in the West on the left said, well, they're only going to do it for public purposes, but public purposes could cover almost anything. Ss they — and I think what South Africa is looking at is they're looking at Zimbabwe, Rhodesia where they expropriated the land and it went from one of the greatest food exporter per acre in the world —}:
SCHMITT: To famine.
HANSON: Starving.
SCHMITT: Yeah, to starving.
HANSON: Yeah.
SCHMITT: And that's exactly the point. Zimbabwe is — that's 25 years ago. They can't even look that far to see it. The politicians don't understand. I think that the end of apartheid in South Africa is going to end up being a liability. The irony of that for the country. But do you think that the — do you think that the white farmers are largely going to flee the country? Because if that happens, the country collapses?
HANSON: Most of them have been there nine and ten generations. They have been there then the majority of the population that came in, you know, from other countries that were not white. They've been there since the 17th century.
SCHMITT: Right.
HANSON: And I don't think nine generations, a lot of them are not going to leave. They're going to stay to the bitter end. But some of them that are younger probably will that are not tied to the land or they don't own farms or they're in businesses because it's — let's be honest, we went from white racist apartheid to Black racism in South Africa. And everybody knows it's true. And when Don Lemon and the people on The View talk like they do and somebody hears them, they have no idea how they sound, but they sound like utter racists. He's angry because of the color of the skin, of the people who are threatened. And he didn't say a word when 10,000 people came in because they weren't white. So he's a racist and he knows he is. So are the people in The View that have commented on this. I think it's incumbent upon everybody to tell the truth and say that these people are racists.
SCHMITT: Yeah they are. They're just allowed to be — that's the difference. They're allowed to be.
:{:{===}:
AN 4 25
NO LNX
Trump voters are pretending like they were duped. Don't believe it.
(Reuters)
John Stoehr April 06, 2025
The Dow dropped 1,700 points on opening this Friday morning. Thursday, it closed after falling to its worst level since the covid era. JP Morgan Chase said it was raising the odds of a recession to 60 percent.
This is all in reaction to the decision this week by the president to put an average 22 percent tax on all imports. He called it “Liberation Day.”
As I’m watching this unfold, I can’t help thinking about something that may seem unrelated to trade, economics and the harms coming our way, but in fact is central to it all. I’m talking about resentment.
Resentment is usually associated with the right. Time and again, over the last ten years, we were told that the people who voted for Donald Trump are deeply resentful about the state of the nation: about immigrants pouring over the border, about men competing in women’s sports, about the “radical woke agenda.” The list goes on and on.
It was on the strength of this resentment that voters in this country chose for president a convicted felon and failed businessman who promised to hurt everyone in the name of making America great again.
And what I want to say this:
If you thought that was resentment, just wait.
Only five months ago, the head economist for Moody’s said the economy under Joe Biden was the best he’d seen. Mark Zandi said “this is among the best performing economies in my 35-plus years as an economist.”
“Economic growth is rip-roaring, with real GDP up 3 percent over the past year. Unemployment is low, at near 4 percent, consistent with full employment.
“Inflation is fast closing in on the Fed’s 2 percent target.
“Grocery prices, rents and gas prices are flat to down over the past more than a year. Households’ financial obligations are light, and set to get lighter with the Fed cutting rates.
“House prices have never been higher, and most homeowners have more equity in their homes than ever.
“Corporate profits are robust, and the stock market is hitting a record high on a seemingly daily basis.
And now?
On March 30, before this week’s tariff news, Zandi said:
“I’m raising my odds that a recession will begin sometime this year to 40 percent, up from 15 percent at the start of the year. Last week’s economic data were disconcerting, including the slide in consumer confidence, punk consumer spending, and persistently high inflation. The intensifying trade war and DOGE cuts are behind all this and with last week’s announcement of big tariff increases on vehicle imports and the coming reciprocal tariffs, things are sure to get worse.”
How much worse?
The Financial Times: “one of the greatest acts of self-harm in American economic history. [Tariffs’ will wreak untold damage on households, businesses and financial markets around the world, upending a global economic order that America benefited from and helped create.”
The Economist: “The most profound, harmful & unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said — on history, economics and the technicalities of trade — was utterly deluded.”
This is where we are, but never forget: this was a choice.
It was made by people who were so resentful about something something, for now it doesn’t matter what, that they didn’t notice they’re wages were growing, their expenses were falling and they had more power in the workplace than they’d had in their whole lives.
Everything Trump claims to be doing – bringing jobs back home, supporting domestic industries, revitalizing infrastructure and investing in the future — Biden actually did. Most everyone prospered, including all those resentful people. As the former president was fond of saying, Trump talks a good game, but never built a damn thing.
But that wasn’t enough because seeing other people doing well, that is, Black and brown people doing well, hurt their feelings, like something was being taken away from them, which added to the resentment they felt about a government trying to serve everyone and not just them.
The harms coming won’t be an accident. Their cause will be easy to understand. Vice President Kamala Harris saw them. She tried to warn us. Most people didn’t listen. And because these harms were a choice, it’s entirely reasonable for those who didn’t make that choice, but who are now living with the consequences, to be resentful of those who did, especially if they didn’t understand the choice they were making.
They believed an ignorant and stupid story about ignorant and stupid Americans who were resentful of being looked down on for the fact of their ignorance and stupidity. And I’m telling you, if they keep talking about that, they’re going to learn the real meaning of resentment.
Perhaps fear of being held accountable explains why we are now seeing a slew of Trump voters who are whipping up stories about how they had absolutely no idea what he was going to do, they are victims of circumstance, totally innocent, and how they are so disappointed, not so much for themselves but for the country they claim to love.
An anonymous writer at www.betrayedbytrump.com is a case in point. “I didn’t sign up for this. I wanted reform, not cruelty. Strength, not delusion. I’ve been a lifelong Republican, and I know I’m not the only one starting to feel this way. We need to seriously ask ourselves: is this what we voted for, or just what we’ve been sold? It is hard to not feel conned. And I’m angrier than I’ve been in as long as I can remember.”
Oh, you're angry, huh?
Imagine the anger of those who didn’t choose this but are now living with it – the jobs gone, the savings gone, the future prospects gone.
Imagine the anger of those who voted in your interest in the hope of saving democracy, and protecting you from your worst self, and then hearing you moan and groan about how you’ve been done wrong.
Imagine the anger of those who tried to tell you, to reason with you, as if you were a child who doesn’t understand a goddamn thing but who might snap out of it and finally act like a responsible grown up.
Just imagine.
The worst part is there are still some Democrats who are willing to tell the rest of us that we shouldn’t look down on the ignorant and stupid, because looking down on them only makes them feel more resentful, which pushes them further and further into the arms of Trump.
Worst of all is hearing some Democrats choosing not to hold them accountable for their terrible choices in the hope they might one day vote for a Democrat, so that there’s never any downside to being ignorant and stupid, and there’s never any upside to growing up.
Resentment is usually associated with the right. If there were any justice, that would change. Trump voters would be ashamed and take responsibility for their actions. They never will, of course, meaning no one will ever take seriously the lasting resentment the rest of us feel.
NOW READ: Trump voters got exactly what they wanted — so why are people complaining?
musk bolso chainsaw
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'You have been gaslit': CPAC oozes MAGA's 'male inequality' agenda
People react as U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., February 22, 2025.
Matt Laslo February 23, 2025
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — This just might be the year American men finally overcome centuries of political, cultural and marital oppression that have ravaged the gender and kept guys locked out of key policies, like the Violence Against Women Act.
That’s what one conservative vendor peddled at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. And they’re not alone. The oft-repeated message being subtly driven into CPAC attendees – is that the era of male victimhood is over.
Culture wars are now king.
In years past, the conservative confab focused on fiscal responsibility and cutting federal spending. This year — even as Republicans in Congress and the White House debate trillions of dollars in budget cuts — leaders stoked gendered culture wars.
“Don't allow this broken culture to send you a message that you're a bad person because you're a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you're competitive," Vice President J.D. Vance told CPAC attendees Thursday.
Eradicating diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives may have merely been a stepping stone. Conservatives have rallied behind a new, if antiquated, gospel of manhood as they work to turn back time and eviscerate what they call "wokeness" in real time.
At CPAC, this is truly a man’s world, or will be soon if the resurgent right succeeds.
“Male Inequality”
Masculinity is everywhere here at CPAC. It’s tangible, making this year’s conference feel more like an all-male retreat than the policy-focused escape the annual event was before President Donald Trump remade American conservatism in his image.
In these conservative confines, there’s no gender pay gap (even as statistics show women earn roughly 75 cents for each dollar a man makes). Women’s suffrage, practically speaking, is a fairy tale of a bygone era. While Bibles abound, the Book of Ruth and its strong, central female cast, is an afterthought (if a thought at all).
The real problem is “Male Inequality,” according to the newly launched Men’s Equality Network, or MEN.
‘Areas of Male Inequality’ — a pamphlet MEN are handing out at this year’s CPAC.
At CPAC, MEN seeks to drum up support for the hashtag #genderequalityformen, while also giving away free caps emblazoned with “Watchdog: Stop the gender agenda.”
MEN's tagline succinctly sums up the mission that drives the group: “assuring due process, fairness and equal opportunities for men.” And while they may only be a few weeks old, MEN has already attracted 18 partners, ranging from United Families International to the Child Custody Coalition.
The group is so new, it hasn't held its first meeting. But MEN soon plans to start hosting monthly training sessions with partner organizations, then storm the marble halls of Washington, demanding equality for men.
And MEN has allies in powerful places in Trump’s Washington.
"Our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge, you should try to cast aside your family, you should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place," Vance opined from the CPAC main stage. He, like MEN, provided no evidence to support his contention.
While the group is surely easy to single out, it's far from alone in its drive to restore manhood to its properly patriarchal perch at CPAC but also throughout society.
"Go fu#% yourself Planned Parenthood”
Entering this year’s hall of vendors at CPAC, it’s seemingly impossible to miss the loud magenta “Go fu#% yourself Planned Parenthood” banner next to a cardboard cutout of President Trump.
Defund Planned Parenthood photo (Photo credit: Matt Laslo)
A few rows away, at first blush, the booth for "Date on the Right" seems dedicated to online romance for Republicans. But the material seems more focused on connecting hardline conservatives with their policy dreams.
Instead of promising long-term love, the group’s selling point feels more politically inclined than lifemate: “Dating for conservatives: only two genders – male and female allowed. No pronouns but male or female allowed.”
Other booths are dotted with free swag seeking to uproot political correctness — “I support free speech, not political correctness,” reads one sticker — through slogans like, “God, Guns and Girly Things” or “Woman: an adult human female.”
“We have an entire generation of young men who are smoking weed, watching porn, not getting married — not even pursuing women,” American Principles Project President Terry Schilling told CPAC attendees. “We have this thing called incels — involuntary celibates. It's terrible. And we can't become a great nation again — we can't make America great again — until our men are great again.” //TUCKER MAINSTREAM GRT?
“You’ve been gaslit to high heaven”
For attendees, conservatives are undeniably victims. The thousands gathered at CPAC are set on righting those past perceived wrongs.
“You’ve been gaslit to high heaven every time you picked up a newspaper in the United States,” conservative anchor Megyn Kelly told the crowd. “Every time you’ve turned on CNN. You’ve been lied to. You’ve been bullied — or seen others with lesser power — bullied by the media and the leftist Democrats. You have been a victim of overbearing and controlling leftists who think they are the final arbiters of what’s best for you and your life.”
While this may be MEN's year, conservative women aren’t going quietly.
CPAC may be a man’s world these days, despite all the powerful women in today’s GOP, like White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who, at 27, is the youngest person to ever hold the prestigious role.
On the CPAC stage this week, former White House communications director Mercedes Schlapp — wife of CPAC chair Matt Schlapp who a sheriff wrote up earlier this month for allegedly groping a man — asked Leavitt about being a woman in Trump world.
"Look at the White House and look at the exceptional Cabinet President Trump has put together," Leavitt said. "While we don’t care about identity politics…the president has appointed Susie Wiles, our first female chief of staff in United States history; Brooke Rollins heading up as our secretary of agriculture — look across the entire Cabinet. There are incredible women — Linda McMahon, leading the Department of Education — the list goes on and on."
As for her advice to young women, Leavitt departed from her party’s new man-centric mantra.
"Stay strong, speak the truth and don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t achieve your dream, or you can’t get to that next step. Just believe in yourself, because there will be a lot of people who don’t believe in you, who cast doubt on you, who talk bad about you," Leavitt said. "Screw ‘em. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter."
NOW READ: Whoever tries to tell you that Trump is Christian needs to look up this passage in the Bible
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trUmp xo
SEE MERITOCRACY BS from trust fund nepo babies
AN 1 25
Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) issued an abundance of executive orders after returning to the White House, some of which aggressively attack DEI (https://www.npr.org/2025/01/23/nx-s1-5271588/trump-dei-diversity-equity-inclusion-federal-workers-government) (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs in the federal government. This marks a major reversal from the Biden Administration, which ended when Trump was inaugurated on Monday, January 20.
Two days later, according to NBC News' Megan Lebowitz (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/federal-workers-told-name-dei-colleagues-risk-adverse-consequences-rcna188871), federal government employees received an e-mail "warning that they could face repercussions if they do not report on co-workers who work in diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility positions that might have gone unnoticed by government supervisors."
A January 22 e-mail, Lebowitz reports (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/federal-workers-told-name-dei-colleagues-risk-adverse-consequences-rcna188871), read, "We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language."
READ MORE:'It's a free country' — but some White House staffers are facing these new rules: report (https://www.alternet.org/white-house-staffers-drinking/)
Government employees were also warned (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/federal-workers-told-name-dei-colleagues-risk-adverse-consequences-rcna188871), "There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences."
Meanwhile, reporting from Washington Post journalists (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/23/trump-dei-affirmative-action/) Julian Mark, Taylor Telford and Susan Svrluga details the extent the Trump Administration is going to in its anti-DEI, anti-affirmative action efforts.
"The flurry of executive orders was meant to put a hard stop to diversity, equity and inclusion programs (DEI) throughout the federal government," the Post reporters explain in an article published on January 23 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/23/trump-dei-affirmative-action/). "The (Trump) Administration ordered U.S.-run diversity offices to close and scores of their workers to be put on administrative leave by Wednesday. It also suspended dozens of contracting programs aimed at minorities and women, some of which have been operating for decades."
Mark, Telford and Svrluga continue (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/23/trump-dei-affirmative-action/), "But the orders go far beyond the federal government. Trump also directed agencies to draw up lists of public companies to investigate over their DEI policies — a move that legal experts said could send chills through the private sector."
READ MORE:'I don’t care': Trump ripped for ignoring economy to rant about Biden during Hannity interview (https://www.alternet.org/trump-hannity-reactions/?utm_source=push_notifications)
The Post journalists note (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/23/trump-dei-affirmative-action/) that that Trump even revoked a 60-year-old executive order from the late President Lyndon B. Johnson.
In 1965, LBJ directed federal contractors to take "affirmative action" to end discrimination in their firms.
Noah Feldman, who teaches constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School in Massachusetts, told the Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/23/trump-dei-affirmative-action/), "The Trump Administration is trying to give the death blow to diversity in legal and in political cultural terms."
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alternet
Home | Trump voters need to be held accountable for their choice — here's why
John Stoehr November 24, 2024
For now, I’m not getting involved in the debate over what Kamala Harris did wrong. For one thing, whatever conclusions are drawn now will almost certainly be forgotten by the time of the next election. For another, the debate takes vital attention away from the choice of the majority of American voters, which is to say, their terrible choice.
Why did they break for Donald Trump? Lots of worthy people are going to spend lots of time exploring that question. I won’t, though. What I know is that Trump campaigned on easily proven lies. What I also know is his supporters chose to believe them. What I care about now are the consequences of that choice, and those consequences are going to be bad for all of us, including everyone who voted for him.
This month, the president-elect said among the first things he’s going to do is eliminate the US Department of Education. That agency not only sends federal money to local school districts, it makes sure children are treated equally. This is usually understood in terms of race, but special-education is protected too, and it needs it. There was a time in American history when special-needs kids were told to sink or swim.
My kid is one of those kids, and if the funding and protection she now has disappears, I’m going to take that personally. I’m going to blame everyone who supported Trump. I won’t care if they didn’t believe he’d follow through on his pledge. I won’t care if they didn’t know about it. I won’t care if they were lied to by the rightwing media apparatus. I won’t care if the kids of Trump voters are themselves victims of their parents’ bad choices. I’m going to blame them and I will be right to.
ALSO READ: The end of left-leaning news?
Ignorance is no defense in law.
It should be no defense in politics either.
Trump has also promised to impose punishing tariffs on imported goods from countries like China and Mexico. Tariffs are a tax and every adult knows how a tax works. Yes, some of his supporters pretended not to know that importers pass that cost on to consumers. But whether they did or didn’t is going to be irrelevant to me when I’m paying two or three times more for necessities like food and clothing.
As I’m standing in the checkout at Stop & Shop, sticker-shocked for the umpteenth time, I’m not going to be wondering what Kamala Harris could have done to persuade white working-class Americans to vote for her. I’m not going to feel sympathy for them, knowing that they decided to impoverish themselves out of spite and resentment. No, I’ll be too busy cursing them for the titanic a--holes they are.
Trump has also promised to deport millions of so-called illegal immigrants. He said he’ll only go after “the bad ones” and his supporters, even some Latinos, decided to believe a liar. But I’m not going to care how they came to that decision if the government starts snatching taxpayers out of their homes, arresting and detaining whole families, including US citizens, in the insane belief that doing so is going to make America great again. Why should I care about why they voted the way they did when the consequence of that choice brings chaos to communities, decimates the labor supply and raises prices?
Trump has denied it, but his Republicans are looking forward to taking another crack at repealing the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of Americans depend on Obamacare, including independent businesspeople, like me, who could not do what we do without the law. Voters who supported Trump are included in that number, but again, it does not matter to me whether they knew a vote for him was a vote for abolishing affordable insurance. I tend to lose interest in the reasons behind another person’s choices if those choices ruin me.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump inflamed resentments in order to win. What’s missing from that story is that the resentments are over race, or rather racism. Fact is, lots of white people feel like nonwhite people are taking something from them when they do better for themselves. Trump has made an art form out of getting white people to believe nonwhite people are robbing them, making them poorer, even when the economy is rapidly benefiting those same white people.
Well, when it comes to resentment, you haven’t seen anything yet.
If Trump does what he says, by the time he’s done, America is going to be poorer, sicker, weaker and more chaotic. In some cases, he will have done irreparable harm, as he did last time he was president, including to the people who supported him. And he will have done it because … well, it doesn’t matter. They made their choice and it was terrible.
And the rest of us will be right to resent it.
an 11 24
President-elect Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) and Vice President-elect JD Vance have both upheld Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán's regime as a model for Trump's second term in the White House. One former member of Hungarian parliament who witnessed Orbán's ascent is now pointing out ways Democrats can avoid the mistakes of Hungary's opposition.
In an essay for Politico (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/23/trump-autocrat-elections-00191281), former Hungarian MP Gábor Scheiring noted that there are numerous similarities between Orbán and Trump (https://www.alternet.org/trump-viktor-orban/). Both men are authoritarians bent on expanding executive power and crushing institutional opposition. Both are former presidents who lost elections and then returned to power. And both are strident culture warriors who are intent on dominating the media. Scheiring wrote that Orbán deployed populist "software" and "hardware" that paved the way for his far-right power grab, and alerted readers to watch for certain things that Trump will borrow from Orbán in the coming years.
In describing the "software of autocracy," Scheiring noted that the Hungarian leader exploited a "folksy outsider" label allowing him to pose as a populist hero of the working class, and noted that Trump has done the same on multiple occasions – like donning an apron and working the drive-thru window at a McDonalds restaurant. Orbán and Trump also share an intense anti-immigrant platform, and demonize immigrants as a means of dividing and conquering the working class while simultaneously playing on racist and xenophobic sentiment.
READ MORE:'Betrayal': Trump hosts 'Russian puppet' Viktor Orbán as Biden hosts NATO leaders (https://www.alternet.org/trump-viktor-orban/)
Another critical piece of "software" is "economic nationalism," with both Orbán and Trump combining cultural grievance politics with palpable frustration among their nation's working-class voters about economic insecurity. Scheiring observed that "right-wing populists glorify 'makers' over 'takers,'" which he said resonates with "working-class voters who value hard work."
"This narrative also serves to cement an alliance between plutocrats, billionaires and workers, which might seem paradoxical, but it isn’t," he continued. "They are all portrayed as hard-working value creators as opposed to 'lazy bureaucrats' and 'benefit scroungers.'"
Scheiring explained that the "hardware" of the far-right authoritarian state Orbán built in Hungary is fourfold: Strengthening executive power; disciplining the judiciary; changing election processes, controlling the media and controlling their political party. In accomplishing these four things, Orbán has managed to stay in power consistently since 2010. While Trump is almost 80 years old and is prevented from seeking a third term due to the 22nd Amendment (https://www.alternet.org/trump-term-limits/), Scheiring warned that Trump copying his Hungarian counterpart (https://www.alternet.org/hitler-trump-orban/) could lead to MAGA cementing power for decades. He encouraged Democrats to focus their opposition on litigating Trump's policies in courts, fighting back at the state and local level and waging war in the media by inserting their own narratives.
"Hungary’s key lesson is you don’t protect democracy by talking about democracy — you protect democracy by protecting people," Scheiring wrote. "Only a democracy that works for the people is sustainable."
READ MORE:'Modern-day Hitler': Experts sound alarm over Trump heaping praise on 'autocrat' Orbán (https://www.alternet.org/hitler-trump-orban/)
Click here (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/23/trump-autocrat-elections-00191281) to read Scheiring's full essay in Politico.
mail 11 24
here is a paradox of the 2024 election result: Democrats advanced what they believed to be a profoundly inclusive platform, but they read to many voters as an out-of-touch, elitist party. Meanwhile, Republicans advanced a flagrantly exclusionary agenda, almost exclusively favorably to the richest and most powerful Americans, and they read to many voters as a populist movement friendly to the working class.
There is no point in fact-checking what people perceive. Elections are not math tests. There are no “right answers.” What people hear is all that matters, not what you intended to say.
The.Ink
Some of this paradox is explained, I think, by an underappreciated difference between platform and posture. There is the matter of what you stand for, and the rather different issue of how you stand. We all have that friend who believes all the right and beautiful and just things, but wouldn’t help you in a pinch. We all also have that friend or relative or neighbor who believes awful things but would be the first person to offer to help us move.
For reasons we will still be examining for some time, Democrats have somehow ended up in a situation where their platform is all about openness, but their stance reads to many voters as closed. It feels — and whether rightly or wrongly is beside the point — like a judgmental movement for inclusion and equity. Republicans have, at the same time, chosen a platform devoted to closings — of the border, of the gates of citizenship, of the generosity of the safety net, of fundamental freedoms — but their stance reads to many voters as open, inviting, come-as-you-are. It feels to many like a nonjudgmental movement for exclusion.
Please don’t misread this on purpose. It is not an endorsement of the right’s methods. But I think we need to be straightforward about this paradox. It is a scandal to allow the most exclusionary platform in modern American history to be read as openhearted to so many. It is a scandal that so many of the very people it would degrade feel attracted to the cause.
Share (https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=70374&post_id=151373583&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&action=share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=1n6e6&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyNzYwOTkwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxNTEzNzM1ODMsImlhdCI6MTczMTA3NTE3OCwiZXhwIjoxNzMzNjY3MTc4LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNzAzNzQiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.bG3yNLC1H_sk5I2AVXyeRkY7XHsEwZk75Mn47p4zCVI)
Part of what’s going on here, I think, is the Republicans embracing an ethic that I first heard from progressive community organizers: Meet people where they are.
This is the organizer’s code, the idea behind all other ideas. But when I wrote my book The Persuaders, many of the organizers on the left whom I profiled were sounding an alarm through my book about their own movements turning away from this ethic. They worried about their movements seeming to have prerequisites to join. Linda Sarsour, the progressive activist, described her own movement as being like a prison where you have to enter one gate and have that gate close behind you to cross the next gate. You had to know the right terms, never mess up, not have questions about the right approach to advancing social justice for marginalized groups, and, frankly, silence concerns you might have about the best strategy.
That Republicans have ended up with more of a “meet people where they are” ethic is beyond ironic. Again, I’m speaking of posture, not policy; stance, not substance. But they have managed to create the sense of an open invitation to join this movement of closings. There is a thirst for converts, rather than a suspicion that they may not be aligned with you on every last issue. There is an understanding that a lot of politics is actually about vibes and having your cause be an aspirational brand people want to join; and the Republicans made inroads with many nontraditional voter groups this time around by having the MAGA hat function as a status symbol, allowing people to flex and separate themselves from other members of their own communities, showing people that they are winners who didn’t need the Democrats’ offers of help.
But what turbocharges these differences in stance is a gigantic media ecology on the right that functions as a voter radicalization funnel. Meeting people where they are means that you pull people into that funnel at its very wide end. As they enter, they are merely annoyed by things around them — upset about inflation, frustrated at not being able to own a home, feeling destabilized by the rising status of women and people of color, unsure of their role. And the funnel — consisting of traditional media, newer media like podcasts and video talk shows, social media, and YouTube content — slowly pulls them from annoyance with questions toward ever more radical and pungent certitude. It doesn’t require them to be at the pointy end of the funnel at the beginning. The point of the funnel is to pull in everyone. The movement is self-confident enough to think that it can turn anyone bothered by a pea under their mattress, whether valid or invalid, utterly racist or genuinely born of pain, into a believer.
The pro-democracy movement needs to build its own funnel, now. It cannot and should not be a mirror image of the right’s funnel. It should be grounded in truth, not lies, and generosity, not closedness. But it needs to be a total media ecology that can meet people at any level of annoyance, curiosity, irritation, gripe, doubt, with any question — and move them toward a more humane and magnanimous view of the world. It needs to take lost and lonely boys and men and move them toward a sense of how to be in a gender-equal world. It needs to invite people to see their own story in the story of a pluralist America of the future. It needs to be longer on invitation, shorter on blame. It needs to meet you where you are, and be confident enough to move you, over years even, toward greater consciousness.
There is simply no such media ecology right now, no such organizing infrastructure at the scale required. People who want to build things like this get no help from those who could help them. People sit around and fret about Tuesday but don’t have the vision to help build the mental infrastructure for a different future.
Let’s change that.
mma
Right-wing media falsely insist there is no federal response to Hurricane Helene, while praising Trump for visiting victims in Georgia
The MAGA crowd is claiming that the administration is purposely ignoring Southern Appalachia, despite extensive aid efforts
Special ProgramsClimate & Energy (https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-energy)
Written by Ilana Berger (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/ilana-berger)
Research contributions from Allison Fisher (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/allison-fisher)
Published 10/01/24
Right-wing and MAGA influencers are falsely insisting that the Biden administration is ignoring the millions of Americans who have been impacted by intense flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, while lauding Trump for visiting and bringing aid to those affected in Georgia on September 30.
After Helene made landfall (https://www.weather.gov/ilm/Helene2024) in Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 storm, the Biden administration approved federal assistance to supplement state and local efforts in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia.
Dismissing these efforts, right-wing media have argued that the administration is more interested in giving aid to Ukraine than Appalachia, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is too concerned with equity to handle the aftermath, and that the Biden administration isn’t doing more for hurricane victims because they are primarily white, Republican voters.
The storm has caused mass destruction and killed at least 133 people (https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-helene-north-carolina-asheville-f02869c7d01e68f2d7f0553abb82252f) across six states, while as many as 600 (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/09/30/helene-north-carolina-missing-people-social-media/75454034007/) haven’t been accounted for. In Western North Carolina (https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/09/29/helene-carolinas-tennessee-floods-communication-destruction/), many residents do not have power, cellular service, or drinking water.
Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to visit Georgia (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/01/harris-helene-damage-georgia-north-carolina/75469698007/) on October 2, while Biden said he is planning to visit (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/30/biden-north-carolina-hurricane-helene-damage/75458286007/) North Carolina on the same day.
The Biden administration has approved disaster declarations in affected states and counties that are allowing them to receive additional federal aid.
In North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida, Biden has approved Major Disaster Declarations, making a number of federal assistance programs available to those states. In the most impacted counties in these states, both public assistance and individual assistance programs are available. This could mean up to $750 of federal aid for families or individuals with serious needs like food, shelter, or medication. Public assistance, according to FEMA, is also for “state and local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations for emergency work and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged facilities.” FEMA.gov, accessed \9/30/24 (https://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/factsheets/dad_disaster_declaration.pdf); FEMA.gov, 9/29/24 (https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240930/how-apply-fema-assistance-florida-after-hurricane-helene); SCEMD.org, 9/30/24 (https://www.scemd.org/news/gov-henry-mcmasters-federal-major-disaster-declaration-approved/); FEMA.gov, 9/29/24 (https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240929/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-major-disaster-declaration-north); Alabama Reflector, [10/1/24 (https://alabamareflector.com/2024/10/01/hundreds-missing-in-southeast-states-after-hurricane-helene-federal-officials-say/)]
In North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Virginia, Biden also approved Emergency Declarations that are meant to “supplement state and local efforts in providing emergency services."While Major Disaster Declarations are only for natural disasters, Emergency Declarations can provide more federal assistance for any occasion that governors and the president feel poses a threat to public health, safety, or property. FEMA.gov, accessed \9/30/24 (https://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/factsheets/dad_disaster_declaration.pdf); GEMA.georgia.gov, 9/26/24; (https://gema.georgia.gov/press-releases/2024-09-26/georgia-receives-federal-emergency-declaration-hurricane-helene) FEMA.gov, 9/29/24 (https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240929/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-emergency-declaration-virginia); The Tennessean, 9/28/24 (https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2024/09/28/helene-aftermath-tennessee-flood-rescue-biden-fema-emergency-declaration/75427479007/); FEMA.gov 9/26/24 (https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240927/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-emergency-declaration-alabama#::text=Approves%20Emergency%20Declaration%20for%20Alabama,-English&text=WASHINGTON%20%2D%2D%20FEMA%20announced%20today%20that,beginning%20Sept.%2022%20and%20continuing.); FEMA.gov, 9/27/24 (https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240927/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-emergency-declaration-south-carolina); FEMA.gov, 9/26/24 (https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240926/president-joseph-r-biden-jr-approves-emergency-declaration-north-carolina); FEMA.gov; [9/25/24 (https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240925/biden-harris-administration-makes-emergency-federal-assistance-available)]
On September 29, the Biden administration released a fact sheet outlining the administration’s “continued response efforts to Hurricane Helene,” noting that tens of thousands of state and federal personnel are helping victims of the storm across several states.The administration wrote that 50,000 personnel from across the country and Canada traveled to help fix power outages, 3,300 personnel are helping allocate federal resources and carry out search and rescue, and 200 medical responders are providing health services. Whitehouse.gov, [9/29/24 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/09/29/fact-sheet-update-biden-harris-administrations-continued-response-efforts-to-hurricane-helene/)]
Biden has said he may ask Congress to pass additional disaster aid that was excluded from the recent stopgap spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.According to Politico, the bill, which passed on September 25, did not include “a $10 billion supplemental infusion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency after congressional leaders capitulated to the House’s most conservative fiscal hawks.” The New York Times, \9/30/24 (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/us/politics/biden-helene-congress.html); Politico, [9/26/24 (https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/09/26/hurricane-helene-is-here-more-disaster-aid-is-not-00181214)]
MAGA influencers made the baseless claim that the federal response to the hurricane is lacking.
Newsmax host and MAGA influencer Todd Starnes has repeatedly claimed that the federal government has abandoned those impacted by Hurricane Helene, saying that “many towns and cities have yet to see any disaster relief.” He also suggested that the so-called lack of response is because those impacted are mostly Republican, saying that “Western North Carolina is just too Conservative and too Caucasian for FEMA to care” and asking if the reason the government hasn’t done more is “because most of the people there are not Haitians or … because they are mostly are Republicans?” Twitter/X, \9/30/24 (https://x.com/toddstarnes/status/1840758590455308430), 9/30/24 (https://x.com/toddstarnes/status/1840797296981610737), [9/30/24 (https://x.com/toddstarnes/status/1840768361719837125)]
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and former Fox News writer Blake Neff told viewers that Harris would favor Black communities in disaster recovery and promoted speculation that “the feds are doing nothing” because the voters affected are Republican. Neff, who was fired from Fox for posting racist and sexist content online, falsely said that Harris “believes that the aid that you offer should be doled out, as you say, based on characteristics like skin color rather than destruction.” Kirk then said, “It’s tempting to say the federal government’s doing nothing — I mean, they’re doing something. They did issue some warnings. However, this is definitely being underplayed by the media.” Finally, Kirk read a message purportedly from a “friend in North Carolina” who claimed that the “feds are doing nothing.” The message also noted that “90% of the impacted voters here are Republican voters. Makes you wonder if they’re being forgotten for a reason.” Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, \9/30/24 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4024364); CNN, [7/11/20 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/media/tucker-carlson-writer-blake-neff/index.html)]
Attacking a photo of Harris shared by her campaign along with a response to the devastation in North Carolina, InfoWars host Owen Shroyer wrote on X: “This photo is the epitome of the Biden Harris Hurricane response. Blank pieces of paper, headphones not plugged in, a halfass photo opp to appear like they're doing something when they really aren't.” Twitter/X, [9/30/24 (https://x.com/OwenShroyer1776/status/1840772753177063755)]
Right-wing account Libs of TikTok suggested that the federal response to Helene “has been a disaster” because on FEMA’s website, the agency lists as one of its goals instilling “equity as a foundation of emergency management.”“In case you’re wondering why the response to Hurricane Helene has been a disaster… Fema’s goal 1 is to instill equity as a foundation of emergency management. This is real.” Twitter/X, [9/30/24 (https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1840637517172768777)]
The X accounts RNC Research and I Meme Therefore I Am shared a video clip falsely suggesting that the Biden administration was not providing federal aid to victims.The post suggested that when asked about additional aid for those impacted, Biden simply said, “No.” In reality, he approved aid and also said, “We have pre-planned a significant amount of it even though they didn’t ask for it yet.” Twitter/X, \9/29/24 (https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/1840580469009661960), 9/29/24 (https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1840589073989128616), [9/29/24 (https://x.com/patriottakes/status/1840601673573519482)]
On X, the Trump War Room account falsely claimed Biden “told reporters today that the people impacted were not going to receive any additional aid from the government.”The account wrote: “Kamala Harris addresses the horrific damage of Hurricane Helene from a campaign stop 2,000 miles away in Las Vegas. Joe Biden told reporters today that the people impacted were not going to receive any additional aid from the government. Absolutely disgusting.” Twitter/X, [9/29/24 (https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1840589082201669890)]
Right-wing influencer Raw Egg Nationalist suggested on X that “victims of Hurricane Helene aren’t getting the aid they need” because “Kamala Harris thinks that aid for floods, hurricanes, tornados, & fires should be distributed based on race.”The account was amplifying a post from End Wokeness, which featured a clip of Harris talking about disaster aid and equity. Twitter/X, \9/30/24 (https://x.com/Babygravy9/status/1840689292349165692), [9/27/24 (https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1839649759365128696)]
Referring to a 2023 fire on the island of Maui that left 100 people dead, far-right conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich claimed that “North Carolina is being abandoned like it’s Maui.” He added: “This is the Biden administration at work. Kamala Harris wants it to continue for four more years.” Twitter/X, \9/29/24 (https://x.com/Cernovich/status/1840490329100968288); The New York Times, [2/6/24 (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/us/maui-fire-investigation-deaths.html#::text=Six%20months%20after%20a%20firestorm,island%20town%2C%20killing%20100%20people.)]
Cernovich also wrote, “They let Maui burn, they let Asheville drown, can the country survive four more years of this?” Twitter/X, [9/29/24 (https://x.com/Cernovich/status/1840503901679911408)]
Former Trump adviser and frequent Fox News guest Stephen Miller: “Kamala used every available government resource to airlift and evacuate 500 thousand Haitian illegals to the United States. But she couldn’t lift a finger to rescue drowning Americans in Asheville.” Twitter/X, [9/29/24 (https://x.com/StephenM/status/1840513958001914180)]
Far-right commentator Jack Posobiec shared a video depicting the damage caused by Hurricane Helene, asking, “Where is the military in any of these videos to help the people of North Carolina?” Twitter/X, [9/30/24 (https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1840722713997951403)]
Posobiec also wrote, “Maybe the mayor of Asheville, NC can put on a green sweatsuit so the Harris-Biden admin actually sends them some aid,” referring to an outfit donned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he visited Congress in 2022.Twitter/X, \9/29/24 (https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1840603447399211349); The New York Times, [12/22/22 (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/style/volodymyr-zelensky-washington-army-green-clothes.html)]
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh wrote: “Unfortunately the North Carolina flood victims are citizens of the USA, not Ukraine, so the Biden Administration sees no reason to help them.” The post has a community note labeling it false. Twitter/X, [9/29/24 (https://x.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1840516075462558110)]
Right-wing MAGA and conspiracy account End Wokeness complained that Biden has “no more aid for Hurricane Helene,” ignoring the aid that has been approved. It posted: "$2.4 billion aid to Ukraine" vs “No more aid for Hurricane Helene” - 3 days apart.”Twitter/X, [9/29/24 (https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1840597990760649031)]
Sharing a video of a wreckage in North Carolina, Truth in Media founder Ben Swann wrote on X: “How quickly do you think we could rebuild North Carolina and Tennessee if the nearly $400 BILLION we’ve sent Ukraine could be spent here in America instead?” Twitter/X, [9/29/24 (https://x.com/BenSwann_/status/1840595167075528895)]
QAnon-supporting Telegram account BioClandestine, which is run by conspiracy theorist Jacob Creech, claimed, “The US Government are willing to send trillions of our tax dollars to fund conflicts all around the globe. But when the American People desperately need aid, the Biden regime are nowhere to be found…Anyways, here is a completely unrelated painting from the French Revolution.”Telegram, \9/30/24 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4024407); Vice, [4/12/22 (https://www.vice.com/en/article/ukraine-biolabs-war-clandestine-tucker-carlson/)]
A post on the far-right social media platform Gab claimed that North Carolina has received “$0” while Israel and Ukraine have received billions. Gab, [9/30/24 (https://gab.com/PatriotsDotWin/posts/113226396285791136)]
Right-wing media praised Trump for visiting Georgia and criticized Biden and Harris for not going.
Meanwhile, emergency management experts say that when politicians swoop in directly after a disaster, it’s disruptive and diverts media attention and key resources. In 2016, when Trump visited Baton Rouge after major flooding, Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator at the time, told CNN, “We still have response operations going on. To move the president into a disaster area actually takes away some time from the response and the focus on” saving people. Emergency management expert Samantha Montano wrote on X, “When the president comes to town (even on a good day) everything has to shut down -- air space, roads, etc. First responders & other officials are reassigned to secure & facilitate the president's arrival. In a disaster that means search & rescue stops, help to survivors stops.” Twitter/X, \9/30/24 (https://x.com/SamLMontano/status/1840729577779347661); Politico, 8/19/16 (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/john-bel-edwards-trump-louisiana-visit-227194); Fortune, [8/19/16 (https://fortune.com/2016/08/19/donald-trump-baton-rouge/)]
On Fox News’ The Five, co-host Jesse Watters criticized Harris for not going to North Carolina and said because of Trump’s visit to Georgia, “when they ask in these polls which candidate cares more about people like you, he has completely closed the gap.”“She should have been in North Carolina,” said Watters of Harris. “Donald Trump is down there looking and occupying the presidential space. He is saying the right things, he’s delivering goods and services, he’s even calling on Elon Musk to restore the internet.” Fox News, The Five, [9/30/24 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4024382)]
On Newsmax’s The Right Squad, former Trump White House official Mercedes Schlapp called Trump the comforter-in-chief for going to an impacted area in Georgia:“And I think for Donald Trump to basically say we're going to put politics aside. He joined forces with Rev. Franklin Graham from the Samaritan Purse to bring supplies and to really be what I call the comforter-in-chief. That is a critical role for a president. And I think the one thing you see with Kamala Harris and with Joe Biden, time and time again, is that they are completely out of touch with the American people." Newsmax, The Right Squad, [9/30/24 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4024383)]
Fox’s Sean Hannity praised Trump for going to Georgia while criticizing Biden and Harris for not being in the disaster zone. He said, “This is by every measure a national emergency and today Donald Trump, he flew to Valdosta, Georgia, to witness the devastation up front and personal and firsthand and meet with disaster relief specialists from Franklin Graham himself and Samaritan’s Purse. … Noticeably missing on the ground, the current president, Joe Biden, vice president, Kamala Harris." Fox News, Hannity, [9/30/24 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4024384)]
On Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller suggested that because Trump went to Georgia, “for millions of Americans, President Trump is still the leader of this country.”He added: “It's not Joe Biden. He's at the beach. It's not Kamala Harris. She's in San Francisco at a fundraiser, raising money. The person who showed up, partnered up with Franklin Graham and Samaritan's Purse, fantastic organization, someone who is actively helping to raise money online for these victims right now, is President Trump. We need a leader back in the White House.” Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, [9/30/24 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4024385)]
Fox’s Laura Ingraham claimed that Trump is the real leader for going to Georgia while Biden and Harris managed the crisis from afar.“Harris couldn't give up a day on the trail to pretend to care. Yet hours after Trump showed up with truckloads of supplies, speaking to responders and volunteers, Kamala showed up at work. …Of course, the government should be mobilized to help. But that does not change the fact that Biden and Kamala Harris were not at the White House driving our federal preparedness.” Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, [9/30/24 (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4024386)]
note jnz says they stole the election from O
US
charlie Kirk’s Turning Point connects far-right extremists with the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign
The Turning Point event this past weekend featured a number of extremists, with at least two speakers using the phrase “Christ is king” — an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by the white nationalist “groyper” movement
WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/john-knefel)
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MADELINE PELTZ (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/madeline-peltz), SOPHIE LAWTON (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/sophie-lawton) & ALEX KAPLAN (https://www.mediamatters.org/author/alex-kaplan)
PUBLISHED 06/18/24
Several right-wing extremist figures spoke at a weekend event organized by conservative radio host Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action, which is partnering with the Republican National Committee and former President Donald Trump's campaign. At least two speeches included the phrase “Christ is king,” an antisemitic dog whistle long favored by white nationalists.
Speakers at The People’s Convention included right-wing pundit Candace Owens, who has a history of making antisemitic remarks (https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/right-wing-and-far-right-media-throw-their-support-behind-candace-owens-amid-her) and appears to be associating (https://x.com/BenLorber8/status/1801987749412536696) herself with Holocaust denier (https://www.mediamatters.org/candace-owens/holocaust-denier-nick-fuentes-celebrates-candace-owens-she-has-been-full-fledged-war) Nick Fuentes; neo-Nazi collaborator (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jack-posobiec) and Pizzagate conspiracy theory peddler Jack Posobiec; and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones). The presence of these figures is not surprising, given the significant ties Kirk and Turning Point have to right-wing extremists (https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-and-tpusa-are-fueled-far-right-extremism) and white nationalists (https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/turning-point-usas-history-racism-and-white-nationalist-ties).
The three-day summit illustrated how Turning Point Action and its affiliate Turning Point USA have come to serve as a bridge between official Republican Party institutions and the more openly bigoted and extremist elements of Trump’s movement. Over the weekend, CNN reported (https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/15/politics/trump-campaign-turning-point-charlie-kirk/index.html) that the Trump campaign is working with Turning Point Action. Politico wrote (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/15/turning-point-trump-battleground-states-00163563) that Turning Point “has become a central player in the party apparatus,” as “part of recent collaborations between the \Trump] campaign, RNC and outside groups.” In May, The Washington Post [reported (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/10/trump-gop-field-operation/) that the RNC was adopting a “leaner” approach and was considering outsourcing much of its voter outreach to TPUSA and other right-wing organizations.
Speaking directly after Kirk on the event’s opening day, Owens opened and closed her speech with the phrase “Christ is king” — a slogan long (https://x.com/BenLorber8/status/1773090211037098264) used by Fuentes’ “groyper” movement that has gained antisemitic connotations (https://newrepublic.com/article/180250/candace-owens-ben-shapiro-christ-king-fight-whiteness) through its use in far-right-wing contexts. Last November, Owens used (https://x.com/BenLorber8/status/1773090208201789495) the phrase to troll Ben Shapiro, her then-colleague at The Daily Wire — one flare-up in a monthslong feud (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/04/candace-owens-ben-shapiro-daily-wire-antisemitism-israel-jews.html) between the two. The Daily Wire and Owens “ended (https://www.mediaite.com/news/breaking-candace-owens-out-at-the-daily-wire/) their relationship” in March, according to CEO Jeremy Boreing.
“When you do come together and you do start a family, for the love of God, put Christ first,” Owens said, prompting an audience chant of: “Christ is king.”
“Correct, and we’re going to lead out on that chant,” Owens responded.
Owens then claimed that Democrats and liberals are bringing “the full weight of the government” against Trump, but that “Trump is just one step — they’ve always been after Jesus Christ.”
“Christ is king,” Owens said in closing.
Video
CitationFrom the June 14, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Convention
On the third day of the event, Posobiec echoed Owens.
“We understand this is a war against the demonic, this is a spiritual war!” Posobiec shouted, raising a rosary in his clenched fist. “We can only defeat a spiritual war with Christ as king because Christ is king.”
“Christ is king,” he repeated.
That phrase wasn’t the only example of the groypers’ influence on Turning Point. In 2021, Chet Hanks attempted to manufacture (https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/04/chet-hanks-white-boy-summer) a viral moment for himself by calling for a “white boy summer,” but the phrase was quickly adopted (https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2021/07/01/white-boy-summer-nazi-memes-and-the-mainstreaming-of-white-supremacist-violence/) by neo-Nazis and other extremists, including followers of Fuentes. On Sunday, Posobiec took the stage next to a banner reading “WHITE BOY SUMMER” and tossed hats branded with the slogan to the crowd.
Video
CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference
Posobiec then introduced Jones, appearing fresh off a court order (https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/06/14/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook-liquidate/) to liquidate his assets in order to pay surviving members of the Sandy Hook massacre whom he’d repeatedly defamed by claiming the shooting was a false flag.
“The answer to 1984 is 1776,” Jones said before attempting to lead the crowd in a “1776” chant — a dog whistle that signifies opposition (https://www.cjr.org/opinion/1776-keyword-squatting-right-wing-media.php) to the anti-racist 1619 Project.
“Just three or four days ago, the great folks at Turning Point Action invited me on here. I’m very blessed and honored to be here,” Jones said before pushing an election denialist conspiracy theory (https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-9961890106). “We are in the very center, the TCF Center, where almost four years ago, in the dead of night, they stole the election not just from our amazing president, but from us.”
Later in his speech, Jones repeated another conspiracy theory he’d helped (https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/maga-movement-and-trump-assassination-plot-wasnt) spread in May when he falsely claimed President Joe Biden had hatched a scheme to kill Trump. “They are going to try to assassinate President Trump, make no mistake about that,” Jones said.
Video
CitationFrom a June 16, 2024, Rumble livestream of Turning Point USA's The People's Conference
Posobiec, standing next to Jones, praised his career. “Alex Jones has spent 30 years being the loudest voice for freedom, for liberty, and for anti-war that this world has seen,” Posobiec said.
Other notable speakers included anti-LGBTQ extremist James Lindsay (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/james-lindsay) and QAnon conspiracy theory (https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/updated-rep-elise-stefanik-partnering-qanon-conspiracy-theorist-scott) peddler Scott Presler (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4021066), who was present (https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/pennsylvania-republicans-are-working-stop-steal-and-qanon-conspiracy) during the January 6 attempted insurrection and previously worked at anti-Muslim hate group (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/act-america) Act for America. In March, RNC co-chair Lara Trump said (https://www.mediamatters.org/lara-trump/lara-trump-still-touting-qanon-conspiracy-theorist-scott-presler-rnc-job) she was interested in hiring Presler to be “part of the team” to help with “the largest legal ballot harvesting operation in the entire country,” which will be “started by the RNC.”
an 6 24
when a predominantly white mob of far-right Donald Trump supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, some of them were carrying Confederate flags (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/kevin-seefried-confederate-flag-capitol-jan-6-sentenced-rcna69784).
Many Trump critics, from liberals and progressives to right-wing Never Trump conservatives, have pointed to those flags as evidence that the assault on the Capitol was more than a riot — it was an outright insurrection.
According to a newly published study (https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/racial-resentment-fueled-jan-6-rebellion-and-opposition-house-probe-scholars-find) conducted by David C. Wilson of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and Darren Davis — a political science professor at Notre Dame University in Indiana — there was another component in the January 6 attack: "racial resentment."
READ MORE: Republicans have invented these 5 reasons to 'reject any verdict against Trump': conservative (https://www.alternet.org/trump-verdict-bulwark-republicans/?utm_source=push_notifications)
The Guardian's Alice Herman reports (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/05/racial-resentment-january-6-2021-poll), "Angered over the claim, promoted by Trump and his closest allies, that heavily Black cities had rigged the 2020 election in favor of Democrats, white voters — some affiliated with white-nationalist groups and militias, and others acting alone — stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election."
The study is titled "Stop the Steal: Racial Resentment, Affective Partisanship, and Investigating the January 6th Insurrection." (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00027162241228400)
According to Herman (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/05/racial-resentment-january-6-2021-poll), researchers "relied on a national survey of adults in the U.S. conducted in 2021."
Herman notes that (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/05/racial-resentment-january-6-2021-poll) the researchers draw a distinction between "racial hatred" and "racial resentment."
READ MORE:GOP hardliners pressure Johnson on vote that would seal 'their allegiance to' Trump: report (https://www.alternet.org/mike-johnson-republicans-trump/)
According to Herman (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/05/racial-resentment-january-6-2021-poll), "Wilson and Davis also point to the fact that while a slew of polls show the general public split somewhat evenly over the legitimacy of the (January 6) House Select Committee, Black Americans overwhelmingly supported the Committee's work, while white poll respondents generally opposed it…. Distinct from racial hatred or prejudice, racial resentment, Wilson argues, is a particularly powerful motive to action because it stems from a sense of injustice. The psycho-social phenomenon can have consequences for democracy, Wilson said."
In the report, Wilson and Davis explain, "Many of President Trump's supporters believed they were being victimized by election fraud in the 2020 election, but they also believed that whites were being victimized more generally — the American way of life for them was changing and they were being disadvantaged by African-Americans and other minorities."
READ MORE:['Fantastical' claims: Trump’s lawyers who argued he won in 2020 are getting punished
*Read The Guardian's full article at this link (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/05/racial-resentment-january-6-2021-poll).
another jrnl fail (foreign migrant shoplifter//
After Fox News promoted a hoax about homeless veterans being “evicted” from New York hotels to house migrants last year, some of the network’s anchors said they would provide viewers more information “as we get it.” That promise was apparently disingenuous: Fox has yet to report that the originator of the bogus story now faces federal fraud charges.
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged (https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2024/05/02/charity-founder-in-homeless-vets-hoax-charged-with-fraud-stolen-valor/) Sharon Toney-Finch, an Army veteran whose Yerik Israel Toney Foundation claims (https://www.yitfoundation.org/) to “help homeless and low-income military service veterans in need of living assistance,” with multiple counts of fraud. They alleged that she raised funds for the group by falsely claiming to have received a Purple Heart after surviving a terrorist attack and spent the group’s money on personal expenses. They also alleged she received “hundreds of thousands of dollars in disability benefits” by falsifying her military discharge paperwork to match her story.
Toney-Fitch drew notoriety as the source for a May 12, 2023, New York Post report (https://nypost.com/2023/05/12/homeless-vets-are-being-booted-from-ny-hotels-to-make-room-for-migrants-advocates/) in which she alleged that nearly two dozen homeless veterans her organization had been helping were kicked out hotels in upstate New York to make room for migrants.
The story became a cause celebre (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-figures-ran-bogus-ny-post-story-pitting-migrants-against-veterans) for right-wing commentators seeking to demonize migrants and attack Democratic politicians. But Toney-Smith’s tale collapsed within days, as local news outlets reported that she had fabricated her story and the homeless veterans had never existed.
Fox, which relentlessly portrays migrants as dangerous criminals (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/study-fox-news-ran-nearly-400-weekday-segments-migrant-crime-first-10-weeks-2024) conducting an “invasion (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/brief-history-right-wing-medias-incendiary-border-invasion-talking-point)” of the United States, picked up (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/timeline-how-fox-news-promoted-hoax-about-homeless-veterans-smear-asylum-seekers) Toney-Fitch’s hoax the day after the Post published its initial story. Fox News and Fox Business gave the story, which Fox claimed to have “confirmed,” more than an hour (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/dont-call-it-retraction-watch-multiple-fox-hosts-read-same-update-hoax-story) of credulous coverage over six days.
“This is pretty infuriating, homeless vets who served our great country, they’re being put out on the street and replaced by illegal immigrants,” prime-time star Sean Hannity alleged in one such segment.
But as the story unraveled, Fox personalities began backtracking and admitting they had been duped. On May 24, 2023, several Fox anchors read an on-air statement (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/dont-call-it-retraction-watch-multiple-fox-hosts-read-same-update-hoax-story) which said in part, “We've since learned that veterans advocates misled local officials, and it now turns out those eviction claims were false. We want to update you on this story, make sure the record was set straight, and we’ll get more to you as we get it.”
Apparently the “veterans advocate” behind the story facing criminal charges after allegedly faking a Purple Heart and defrauding the government of hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits wasn’t worth mentioning.
aha 2: boogie man atwater said you cant say N!N!N anymore so dog whistle eg law and order; but this // white greivance, THOSE ppl are jumping the line or unfairly getting something that REAL AM white ppl do not eg obamaphone.
assumption is that felons are POC, maybe violent, but do not deserve vote, or if they do vote, that will further disadvantage real white Am.
SOME RUBBER GLUE DEFLECTION FROM TRUMP COUP J6?
TRUMP SPoUTS bs W/ [SOME]PPL ARE SAYING? SHE GOES WITH UNNAMED REPUBLICANS
AN 4 24
Fox News Business host Maria Bartiromo is promoting the thoroughly debunked claim an executive order signed by President Joe Biden allows “illegal immigrants” and “felons” to vote.
Bartiromo, in pushing the false claim, told Fox News viewers, “Republicans are warning that there’s a Biden order, executive order, which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”
There is no such order.
“It doesn’t appear that Joe Biden can win on his policies,” Bartiromo said Wednesday. “A Wall Street Journal poll this morning shows Trump leading Biden in six out of seven swing states, that’s Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, the two are tied in a head-to-head matchup. So how does Biden win? Republicans are talking about the potential of an election that is tampered with. Republicans are warning that there’s a Biden order, executive order, which allows illegal immigrants and felons to vote.”
READ MORE: Jack Smith’s ‘Blistering’ Response to Judge Cannon Could ‘Remove Her From the Case’: Experts (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/04/jack-smiths-blistering-response-to-judge-cannon-could-remove-her-from-the-case-experts/)
The conspiracy theory appears to have come from Mississippi’s Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson three years ago, a conspiracy theory Watson himself resurfaced last month.
Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-red-state-official-demands-answers-biden-executive-order-attempting-register-illegals-vote) several weeks ago reported Watson had sent the U.S. Dept. of Justice a letter “asking it to stop enforcing a Biden executive order that he warns is being used to attempt to register ineligible convicts and illegal immigrants to vote.”
“As you are aware, on March 7, 2021, President Biden issued Executive Order No. 14019 which sought to turn the Department of Justice agencies from their historical missions of law enforcement to voter registration and get out the vote operations,” Watson wrote, according to Fox News. “These efforts are an intrusion into state matters and are a misuse of federal revenue and resources. In addition, it appears that these efforts have led to agencies under your charge attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”
The fact-checking website Verify (https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/elections-verify/no-bidens-executive-order-doesnt-allow-ineligible-people-to-vote/536-6191ec71-bdd3-4ea3-9753-a39e49017224) makes clear: “No, Biden’s executive order doesn’t allow ineligible people to vote.” It also says it’s “not true” that Biden’s order “would make it easier for ineligible people to vote.”
READ MORE: ‘Says You!’: Kirby Smacks Down Doocy (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/04/says-you-kirby-smacks-down-doocy/)
A USA Today (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/03/19/biden-immigrant-convict-voting/73019603007/) fact check arrives at the same conclusion: “No, Biden didn’t (and can’t) allow immigrants in US illegally to vote.”
“Experts said the claim is nonsense. Biden has issued no such order, and he does not have the power to decide who votes.” Also, the paper notes, “in 1996, Congress made it illegal (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611) for non-citizens to vote in federal elections.”
When he was a state lawmaker Watson voted against making it easier for college students to register to vote, and in 2021, as Mississippi Secretary of State, Watson said “he is worried that the nation will suffer if more ‘woke’ and ‘uninformed’ college students become registered voters,” the Mississippi Free Press (https://www.mississippifreepress.org/11009/mississippi-elections-chief-warns-biden-may-register-uninformed-woke-college-voters) reported at the time. The news outlet took a deep dive into Watson’s extensive claims, also debunking them.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber in 2021 highlighted Watson’s remarks (https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1379933434949337088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1379933434949337088%7Ctwgr%5E5f6fd8537aed67e033a7ea902bf95e537d8ca3d0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wlox.com%2F2021%2F04%2F09%2Fsos-michael-watson-under-fire-voter-registration-comments-made-wlox%2F), and called them, “just one of many occurrences of GOP officials unintentionally revealing they don’t want everyone to vote.”
Watch Bartiromo below or at this link (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/04/debunking-bartiromo-no-biden-order-doesnt-allow-illegal-immigrants-to-vote/).
fox Business’ Larry Kudlow claims Biden tax policy is “DEI” and "racial warfare against white folks”](https://www.mediamatters.org/larry-kudlow/fox-business-larry-kudlow-claims-biden-tax-policy-dei-and-racial-warfare-against-white)
04/30/24
MMA 2 24
// OBAMA PHONE?
New York City is trying to streamline its spending on migrants. Fox News hypes false claim that it's giving them “prepaid credit cards.” | Media Matters for America (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/new-york-city-trying-streamline-its-spending-migrants-fox-news-hypes-false-claim-its)
WELFARE QUEEN?
Fox Business’ Charles Payne blames poor people buying Louis Vuitton items for the death of the American dream | Media Matters for America (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-business-charles-payne-blames-poor-people-buying-louis-vuitton-items-death-american)
10 22 showing up a lot lately?
// SARAH HUCKABEE REPLY TO SOTU BUT NOT SO CODED/ JARGONY // DAD STUMP RALLY RAMBLE?
an 1 24
eric Trump (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=%22Eric+Trump%22) broadcast a barrage of fabrications and falsehoods about America, Democrats, and President Joe Biden, while promoting blatant propaganda supporting his father, Donald Trump, as voters went to the polls Tuesday to cast their ballots in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
“You know there’s an all out war on family in this country,” Eric Trump declared while speaking to Newsmax. “There’s an all out war on God and religious freedom in this country. There’s certainly an all out war on freedom of speech and [the] First Amendment, you know, in this nation you guys have seen that, you’ve covered it probably every single day for the last three years.”
“People are sick and tired of nonsense,” Trump continued, offering up no examples to support his claims. “People want our economy back. They want low gas prices again, they don’t want World War Three to break out all over the world. They want to be able to, you know, worship God and speak freely and not be censored and not be de-platformed, and not have war waged against them and their their quality of life every single day. People are sick and tired of the games, and you know, they want to be able to live the American dream and that’s what my father did.”
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Speaking to Ben Bergquam on the far right wing website Real America’s Voice, Eric Trump claimed, “they have weaponized the system so viciously, so nasty, that they thought he would actually drop out,” referring to Donald Trump’s presidential race.
Donald Trump is facing 91 criminal charges across four cases in three jurisdictions. He is also facing civil cases involving business fraud and defamation, and is now an adjudicated rapist, according to a judge.
READ MORE: Nikki Haley Dodges and Deflects When Asked if Kamala Harris Is ‘More Dangerous’ than Trump (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/01/nikki-haley-dodges-and-deflects-when-asked-if-kamala-harris-is-more-dangerous-than-trump/)
“That was always their intent, you know, make it so painful for him that he didn’t want to stay in the race that he wanted to drop out that, you know, he realizes that his life and Mar-a-Lago would be exponentially nicer and more comfortable and everything else and give it back to the political elites in DC and, frankly, he did the exact opposite.”
He also claimed, “they weaponized every AG [attorney general] and DA [district attorney] in the country to go after him similarly, civilly and criminally.”
“It’ one sham after another,” Trump said, referring to efforts in multiple states to implement the 14th Amendment’s automatic, self-executing requirement that insurrectionists cannot hold office.
“And frankly, I think he’s made a lot of Americans really question their government, which is necessary, certainly in the world that we live in now, it’s so apparent what they’re doing. It’s also very sad because you would expect that America would be a lot better than that.”
“Democrats spent 20 years weaponizing every single system of government that we had, they weaponized the military, they weaponized DOJ, they weaponized the FBI, they’ve, they’ve weaponized all of it,” Eric Trump claimed.
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Eric Trump also spoke with right-wing British politician turned broadcaster, Nigel Farage, in a Great Britain News (https://www.gbnews.com/news/us/eric-trump-president-dad-usa) interview, saying, “being president is the last thing that Donald Trump needs,” and claiming his father “can be living a much better life than getting indicted for nonsense because they want to weaponize the entire system.”
READ MORE: ‘No Labels Is a Lethal Scam’ Warns Top Constitutional Law Attorney (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/01/no-labels-is-a-lethal-scam-warns-top-constitutional-law-attorney/)
“Every single one of us. We get subpoenaed every day. We get this,” Trump declared. “Donald Trump’s better life is not in politics, and he does it every single day because he loves it. He loves his country, he loves the Western world.”
Also on Real America’s Voice, Eric Trump declared, “Joe Biden is the worst president that we’ve ever seen.”
Speaking to NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Eric Trump claimed the enthusiasm in New Hampshire is the best he’s ever seen. Some journalists have said the enthusiasm is not there.
AN 1 24
During a December 19 campaign event in Iowa (https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/trump-holds-rally-in-iowa-moments-after-colorado-supreme-court-blocks-him-from-ballot-transcript), 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump promised far-right white evangelicals that if he returns to the White House in January 2025, he will set up a Christian nationalist task force within in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
Trump told the crowd, "As soon as I get back in the Oval Office, I'll also immediately end the war on Christians. I don't know if you feel it. You have a war. There's a war…. Upon taking office, I will create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice that's fair and equitable. Its mission will be to investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment and persecution against Christians in America."
MSNBC's Sarah Posner, in an opinion column published this week (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-2024-christian-right-truth-social-rcna132082), slams Trump's proposal as yet another example of Trump's "authoritarian" mindset and his emphasis on "the theme of Christian persecution."
Posner, author of the 2021 book "Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind," (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605774/unholy-by-sarah-posner/) explains, "In recent campaign stops and on social media, Donald Trump has reprised lies aimed at inciting his Christian Right base against Joe Biden. These tirades, centered on the false charge that the Biden Administration is persecuting Christians, aren't just Trump's typically dubious claims. Much like Trump's lies about a stolen election, they are designed to immerse his loyalists in a grievance-laden alternative reality in which Trump alone can rescue them from an evil government threatening their freedom."
Trump, Posner warns (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-2024-christian-right-truth-social-rcna132082), will continue to "feed the Christian Right’s persecution complex."
"One needs to look no further than Trump's efforts during his first term, combined with his 2024 pledges to govern like a dictator, to see the authoritarian steps he is taking when it comes to 'protecting' his base's religious freedom," Posner writes (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-2024-christian-right-truth-social-rcna132082). "He is leaving little doubt that he will do whatever it takes to retain the loyalty of the base that has stood by him through an insurrection, two impeachments, and now, multiple criminal indictments. He is saying loudly and clearly that as part of his broader disparagement of the rule of law, he would shred everyone else's rights in the name of his loyalists' 'freedom.'"
READ MORE:'I won the election and he was the loser': Biden torches Trump (https://www.alternet.org/biden-trump-2666883123/)
*Read Sarah Posner's full MSNBC column at this link (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-2024-christian-right-truth-social-rcna132082).
Charlie Kirk: "Why are whites taking this? Why are we just sitting idly by and allowing corporate America to give all the jobs to nonwhite people" | Media Matters for America (https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-why-are-whites-taking-why-are-we-just-sitting-idly-and-allowing-corporate)
Charlie Kirk: "We've allowed our beautiful cities to just be captured by the cult of anti-racism" | Media Matters for America (https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-weve-allowed-our-beautiful-cities-just-be-captured-cult-anti-racism)
Right-wing media outlets resurface long-debunked myth that all migrants get $5,000 debit cards from the government | Media Matters for America (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/right-wing-media-outlets-resurface-long-debunked-myth-all-migrants-get-5000-debit-cards)
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/jesse-watters-suggests-looters-and-shoplifters-not-being-arrested-establishments-way
How the border-cop-to-pundit pipeline fuels anti-immigrant coverage | Media Matters for America (https://www.mediamatters.org/tom-homan/how-border-cop-pundit-pipeline-fuels-anti-immigrant-coverage)
for Tom Homan, the answer is always simple, no matter the question: Harsh punishment and brutal tactics get the job done. As a lifelong cop and former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who has found a new career as a Fox News pundit, Homan deals in absolutes, regardless of his job title.
“Look, when it came to zero tolerance, it worked,” Homan said in a May 2020 interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4012608), explaining and justifying the Trump administration’s family separation border policy, which he'd been advocating (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-contributor-tom-homan-intellectual-father-family-separation) for since his time in the Obama administration. “Law enforcement uses zero tolerance across this country all the time, whether it’s drug enforcement or prostitution.”
:{:{Homan is one of three prominent border cops turned right-wing pundits who exert considerable influence in conservative media and policy circles. Along with Todd Bensman and Jaeson Jones, both former officers at the Texas Department of Public Safety, Homan pushes his hardline nativist messaging to any and all audiences that will have him. He and Bensman are both fellows at organizations founded by John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center describes (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/john-tanton) as “the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement.”}:
...?
As ex-cops, Homan, Bensman, and Jones speak with a practitioner's authority. Their claimed expertise, supposedly gleaned from firsthand experience, allows them to mask xenophobia as hard-won knowledge about public safety. They provide a faux-empirical justification for anti-migrant policies, giving viewers a sense that they’re getting the unvarnished truth from people who have lived it. (In reality, border officers are frequently ignorant (https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1699588332529856768) about basic immigration facts.) But the role these three play isn’t to inform; it’s to reinforce existing anti-immigrant prejudices and provide scaffolding for new laws and policies restricting immigration.
Tom Homan: From family separation architect to Fox News stardom
Of this cop-turned-pundit trio, Homan is the most influential. He has made at least 357 appearances on weekday Fox News since becoming a contributor in August 2018, affording him a massive platform to influence conservative thinking about immigration. Homan’s history in border enforcement — which dates back to 1984, when he became a Border Patrol agent and later joined the Immigration and Naturalization Service — is integral to the authority he commands among conservative activists, politicians, and audiences.
One Fox appearance from 2019 shows how Homan uses his sway to legitimize outlandish proposals — in this case, sending the U.S. military to Mexico to target drug cartels. In late November of that year, then-President Donald Trump floated (https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/27/politics/donald-trump-mexican-cartels-terrorist-organizations/index.html) the idea of designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, which could potentially facilitate operations into the country. Days later, Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade interviewed (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/foxs-tom-homan-urges-us-combat-mexican-drug-cartels-so-central-american-asylum-seekers) Homan and asked about a recent mass shooting in Mexico that left 21 people dead.
“Tom, I know you say we should go help — but don’t we need to be asked?” Kilmeade said to begin the segment.
“Well, yeah. I think that would be great, and I think the Mexican president is going to ask,” Homan replied. “He has proven he can’t handle it. Mexico has failed at handling these cartels for the last three decades. They can’t succeed without us.”
Homan then approvingly referenced the U.S. invasion of Panama to oust its then-leader Manuel Noriega before arguing that Mexican drug cartels should be formally designated as terrorist organizations to empower federal law enforcement — and presumably the U.S. military — to wage war against Mexican drug cartels on their home soil.
“If we declare them [Mexican drug cartels] a terror group, what changes?” Kilmeade asked. “What does that legally let us do?”
“I think that helps the U.S. do some out-of-the-country operations to attack these organizations,” Homan responded.
If there was any confusion about where Homan stood, in its write-up (https://www.foxnews.com/media/homan-mexican-cartel-violence-us-forces) of the interview, FoxNews.com characterized Homan’s remarks as “agreeing that the cartels should be designated as a terror organization by the U.S."
Homan wasn’t the only conservative pushing that idea, but he was an early adopter. Just as importantly, his years of appearances since then on Fox News have helped solidify the racist ideas used to justify the proposed terrorist group designation: that the United States is being invaded (https://www.foxnews.com/video/6311064192112) by migrants, and that those migrants are responsible (https://radio.foxnews.com/2023/02/22/homan-more-fentanyl-is-coming-in-between-ports-of-entry-along-the-border/) for bringing a majority of the fentanyl that arrives in the country — which is factually incorrect (https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1191638114/fentanyl-smuggling-migrants-mexico-border-drugs).
Trump eventually backed off his threat to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations. But the idea of using such designations to confer authority on federal authorities to bomb or invade Mexico has essentially become a consensus (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/mexico-border-war-fentanyl/) position on the right (https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-new-border-plan-send-military-into-mexico-42121a5e). Nearly every candidate in the Republican presidential primary, for instance, sounds indistinguishable (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/us/immigration-republican-debate.html) from Homan on immigration policy, with each of them pushing for hardline restrictionist policies that are justified by dehumanizing language about immigrants “invading” the southern border.
Nearly every candidate in the Republican presidential primary sounds indistinguishable from Homan on immigration policy.
Homan's hawkishness has been rewarded, as the conservative media and policy ecosystem has warmly embraced him since his departure from the Trump administration. In addition to his employment at Fox News, he was named (https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-welcomes-tom-homan-former-acting-ice-director-new-visiting-fellow) a visiting fellow at the influential Heritage Foundation in 2022. He’s also a senior fellow (https://irli.org/our-team/thomas-d-homan/) at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the nonprofit legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a branch of the Tanton network that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/federation-american-immigration-reform) as a hate group.
Given Homan's association with that Tanton-founded organization, it’s not surprising that he has repeatedly (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3989682) pushed (https://twitter.com/DecodingFoxNews/status/1663997162160631811) the great replacement theory, the racist idea that liberal elites are bringing people of color to the United States to replace white people. On October 11, Homan appeared (https://www.mediamatters.org/tom-homan/fox-news-contributor-tom-homan-appears-hitler-praising-antisemites-show-and-pushes-great) on the show of a Hitler-praising antisemite where he claimed that the Biden administration is trying to purposely destroy the country by opening the borders to bring in “millions” of “future Democratic voters.”
Homan has pursued commercial endeavors as well. In 2020, Hachette Book Group published Homan’s Defend the Border & Save Lives, complete with a front-cover blurb from his Fox News colleague Mark Levin. He is a featured speaker (https://www.jlwilkinsonconsulting.com/tom_homan_speaker) at JL Wilkinson Consulting, a right-wing talent agency that also represents far-right cops Sheriff David Clarke (https://www.mediamatters.org/david-clarke) and Sheriff Mark Lamb (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/arizona-sheriff-mark-lamb-builds-his-right-wing-media-brand-he-considers-senate-run).
Homan also founded Homeland Strategic Consulting (https://homelandstrategic.com/), which pulled in over $83,000 in consulting fees for services provided to Arizona businessman and failed Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, according (https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?recipient_name=homeland+strategic+consulting&data_type=processed) to Federal Election Commission filings. Money began flowing Homan’s way just four months after he publicly endorsed (https://www.axios.com/2022/02/03/payments-endorsements-key-races) Lamon’s candidacy. (Homan denied that the endorsement was related to the consulting contract.)
Homan has extensive links to extremist organizations and individuals, beyond his affiliation with the Tanton network. Earlier this year, Homan spoke virtually (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/foxs-tom-homan-and-sara-carter-are-honoring-dominion-smartmatic-and-seth-rich-conspiracy) at an event honoring Mel K, a QAnon influencer (https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/apple-podcasts-has-allowed-multiple-qanon-shows-its-platform-despite-its) and conspiracy theorist who has spread lies about the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich and denied the results of the 2020 election.
In March 2022, HuffPost reported (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cpac-afpac-white-nationalists-republicans-maga_n_6217fd24e4b0ef74d72d36d1?d1) that Homan had been scheduled to speak at an event organized by white nationalist Nick Fuentes (https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/white-nationalist-nick-fuentes-brags-charlie-kirk-has-adopted-his-messaging). When confronted by HuffPost about his appearance at the racist conference, Homan blamed his assistant for arranging the appearance and the fact that “so many names of conservative groups sound the same."
Homan then claimed that he left the conference after reading that Fuentes was supportive of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but he stopped short of criticizing the openly bigoted group. “I’m not saying this is a bad group,” Homan said, referring to Fuentes and his racist supporters, known as groypers (https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/instagram-allowing-network-white-nationalist-groypers-promote-nick-fuentes-racist-ideology). “I’m saying I don’t know."
Later that year, HTom Trento (https://islamophobia.org/islamophobic-individuals/tom-trento-the-united-west-founder-and-director/)oman co-founded (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/11/03/former-ice-chief-taps-anti-muslim-hate-group-help-run-border-focused-project) an anti-immigration organization that bears the same name as Homan’s book, Defend the Border & Save Lives (https://defendtheborder.org/), with fellow Islamophobe . In addition to helping Homan pilot the new group, Trento, who once told (https://web.archive.org/web/20140428053413/https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130911/ARTICLE/130919922) an audience at a 9/11 commemoration in 2013 that the goal of “all Islam” is to “get every single one of us to convert to Islam,” also runs an organization called The United West, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/anti-muslim) as an anti-Muslim group.
This March, Homan was named (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tom-homan-joins-the-america-project-as-ceo-301773612.html) CEO of election denialist (https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/election-denial-movement-and-trump-have-become-increasingly-intertwined) organization The America Project, founded by far-right multimillionaire Patrick Byrne. In addition to his duties as CEO, Homan also heads (https://border911.com/about/) the group’s Border911 initiative, which has sponsored anti-migrant events throughout the country. The organization frequently posts videos of its rallies on Rumble, an extreme right-wing YouTube clone. Newsmax’s Jaeson Jones is also part of Border911, and he spoke alongside Homan at many (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/border-911-tour-happening-on-october-15th-in-long-island-ny-301629952.html) of (https://herbergertheater.org/events/border-911/) the group’s (https://americaproject.com/video/live-border911-town-hall-in-alpine-texas-saturday-february-25th-2pm/) recent events.
Homan frequently denies that he has any political agenda, instead couching his preferences (https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1033044592768282624) simply as apolitical enforcement of existing laws enacted by Congress. In 2018, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked (https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1009209622689968128) Homan if ICE’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy, a policy Homan was overseeing at the time, was “humane."
“I think it’s the law,” Homan replied.
“It may be the law, it may be the policy, but is it humane?” Blitzer asked again.
“I think it’s the law, and I’m a law enforcement [officer],” Homan reiterated. “I must follow the law.”
But for Homan, not all laws are meant to be followed. In April, he headlined (https://americaproject.com/event/tom-homan-the-america-project-presents-cocktails-and-dining-w-special-guest-donald-j-trump/) a Border911 fundraiser with Donald Trump at the former president’s residence and club Mar-a-Lago to raise money for families of people who participated in the January 6 insurrection. Speaking to the crowd, Homan reminisced (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4012672) about an early conversation in which Trump told him to “enforce the laws, that's all I'm asking you to do.”
“We kicked ass,” Homan reflected. “We kicked ass.”
Todd Bensman: Not an expert on immigration, by his own admission
Like Homan, Bensman has leveraged his history in law enforcement into a new career as an immigration restrictionist pundit and writer. Most of his work appears on the website for the Center for Immigration Studies — another branch of the anti-immigrant Tanton network — but he’s also written two books, and has published pieces at The Daily Wire, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, and other prominent conservative news outlets. He’s been on Fox News and Fox Business combined at least 27 times since 2017, according to a search of an internal Media Matters database and Bensman’s official website.
As Media Matters previously reported (https://www.mediamatters.org/center-immigration-studies/prominent-anti-migrant-conservative-pundit-todd-bensman-has-ties-qanon), Bensman has also appeared on extremist streaming programs as well. In June, he appeared (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011143) on The Stew Peters Show, whose eponymous host (https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/guide-stew-peters-violent-rhetoric-white-nationalism-anti-lgbtq-bigotry-and) is a white nationalist. He’s also been on at least three programs or platforms with ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory, including: The Mel K Show (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011149), Making Sense of the Madness (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011173) (hosted by QAnon supporter (https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/trump-campaign-adviser-urges-viewers-qanon-show-go-be-part-our-campaign) Sean Morgan), and The Debbie Aldrich Show (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011174), from Creative Destruction Media (https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/robert-f-kennedy-jrs-super-pac-paying-thousands-dollars-fringe-outlet), an outfit that in addition to endorsing QAnon also posts racist and anti-LGBTQ content.
In 2018, the Center for Immigration Studies brought Bensman on as a senior national security fellow. From his first days at the organization, Bensman stoked fears about terrorist “infiltration (https://web.archive.org/web/20180813064800/https://cis.org/Report/Terrorist-Infiltration-Threat-Southwest-Border)” at the southern border, a framing he regularly returns to despite evidence that conservatives wildly overstate (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/fox-news-dishonestly-fearmongering-about-terrorism-southern-border) the perceived threat as a way to demonize migrants.
In mid-September, Bensman spoke at a conference (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011472) that also hosted John Eidsmoe, a retired Air Force officer who once spoke (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/15/leap-of-faith-ryan-lizza) at a conference organized by a white supremacist group (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/council-conservative-citizens) and has praised Confederate leader Jefferson Davis and pro-slavery advocate John C. Calhoun. QAnon-promoter Alex Newman (https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/days-being-indicted-jeffrey-clark-appeared-qanon-supporting-channel) was also a featured speaker at the event.
A granular look at how Bensman’s misinformation traveled is instructive.
Bensman frequently adopts a flood-the-zone style of content production, using his Center for Immigration Studies-sponsored trips to the border to create images and videos that confirm the bigoted prior assumptions of his intended audience. One of his recent successful operations was seeding a myth that the Biden administration was providing all migrant families with $2,200 monthly cost-of-living checks. Experts fact-checked (https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1699588332529856768) the claim as false in real time, and news organizations have long debunked (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/02/10/fact-check-comparison-refugee-payment-social-security-old-hoax/4380525001/) earlier versions of the persistent rumor, (https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/05/fact-check-do-refugees-get-more-benefits-than-social-security-recipients/5948233001/)but a granular look at how Bensman’s misinformation traveled is instructive.
On September 6, Bensman posted (https://twitter.com/BensmanTodd/status/1699404547188253054) a video on X purportedly showing a Border Patrol agent saying migrant families “get a check every month” of “about $2,200.” Bensman characterized the imaginary program as a “scam,” but acknowledged that he would have “to independently confirm” its existence, which he did not do. Instead, Bensman repeated (https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1700862693878456324) the false claim three days later, even while admitting the accusation was “short of details” and “unverified.”
In the meantime, the conspiracy theory-amplifying pipeline kicked into overdrive. The same day he first posted on X about the supposed checks, Bensman went on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and continued to spread the myth.
Video
CitationFrom the September 6, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
“The government gives them cost-of-living checks, for one family per month: $2,200. So if the father brings one of the kids and the mother brings another of the kids, and they just act like two families, they’re pulling in $4,400 a month, according to that Border Patrol agent,” Bensman told Bannon. Bensman again acknowledged he hadn’t confirmed whether it was true or not, but that didn’t stop him from spending more than two minutes spreading the misinformation.
ESCALATOR:]
On September 7, junk news site The Gateway Pundit picked (https://web.archive.org/web/20230907132113/https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/09/outrageous-border-patrol-agent-reveals-biden-regime-gives/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=outrageous-border-patrol-agent-reveals-biden-regime-gives) up the story, citing Bensman as its primary source.
The same day, Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy parroted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011625) Bensman’s conspiracy theory, telling Fox’s audience that the Biden administration was “paying $2,200 per family."
Republican politicians spread the myth even further. “We are literally subsidizing our own invasion,” Rep. Matt Gaetz said on X, reposting The Gateway Pundit’s story. Former Trump official and Christian nationalist Russ Vought (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/center-renewing-america-preparing-next-republican-administration-govern), a well-connected (https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/house-gop-reportedly-relying-christian-nationalist-and-right-wing-media-darling) policy adviser on Capitol Hill, then reposted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011626) Gaetz.
Rep. Lauren Boebert repeated (https://twitter.com/laurenboebert/status/1700205060213428592) the $2,200-per-month claim on X/Twitter without any sourcing. When asked by local 9News Denver where she got her information, Boebert’s press office sent a link to the Gateway Pundit story. (9News’s ruling on Boebert’s statement? “Not true (https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/debunking-boebert-claim-migrants-government-money-colorado/73-135f7de9-7ab0-41a7-8cd1-26b0033ae402).”)
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On September 10, Bensman obliquely (https://twitter.com/BensmanTodd/status/1700966905144615036) walked back his initial claim, without clearly admitting he was wrong. He later defended (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/21/lauren-boeberts-migrant-misinformation-trail-winds-back-canada-2006/) himself to The Washington Post, saying: “I was hoping to get to the bottom of it. Maybe an expert would send a link or explain it.”
At least one element of Bensman’s story is true. As he inadvertently acknowledged, he is not an expert. He is a propagandist, and his distortions are all the more potent in right-wing media because of his history as a cop.
Jaeson Jones: Bringing the war on terror to Mexico
On May 19, Newsmax border correspondent Jaeson Jones posted a promotional video (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011668) for The America Project and Border911 to his Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/p/CscWvQTAXyG/) account. In the video, Jones, sitting alongside Homan, directly addresses Border Patrol agents.
“I’m Jaeson Jones, retired captain from the Texas Department of Public Safety, and someone who’s out there on the border every day working with you guys to try to get out what you’re going through to the American people,” Jones said.
No viewer would expect Newsmax, which has sought to outflank (https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/newsmax-shamelessly-tries-profit-tucker-carlsons-ouster-fox) Fox News from the right, to adhere to journalistic standards of neutrality and balance, but it’s still remarkable that Jones would openly admit that his goal as a correspondent is to show what his fellow border cops are “going through” rather than gather facts. By his own admission, he’s not covering a story — he’s “working with” the Texas Department of Public Safety and Border Patrol agents.
When Jones, Homan, and Bensman speak, they are speaking on behalf of border cops and law enforcement writ large, acting as representatives of what journalist Jessica Pishko describes (https://twitter.com/JessPish/status/1638552176808153088) as a “baronial class” of public employees who enjoy special rights and privileges. These ex-cops are pushing the ideological and material interests of that class, with the end result of expanding law enforcement budgets and political influence. The explosion of federal spending (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/the-cost-of-immigration-enforcement-and-border-security) on immigration and border enforcement stretches back for decades, but the fearmongering that Homan, Bensman, and Jones push has the predictable effect of directing ever more public funds to this repressive apparatus.
That dynamic explains, in part, why — like Homan — Jones has repeatedly called for the U.S. government to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Such a move would almost certainly open up vast resources for state and federal border officers, in addition to conferring more political power and legal authority on those departments.
In fact, Jones advocated for designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations well before Trump ever publicly floated the idea.
Jones advocated for designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations well before Trump ever publicly floated the idea.
During a June 18, 2019, interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011771) with Lou Dobbs on Fox Business, Jones described cartels as “global violent networks who are acting as terrorist organizations around the world.” He added that several cartels had “gone through a quantum leap in capabilities,” in part because of “what they’ve learned from the FARC, which is a designated terrorist organization."
Jones was referring to the Colombian guerilla group that the United States designated (https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10613) as a foreign terrorist organization from 1997 to 2021, and the reference wasn’t incidental. In the early days of the war on terror, the group served a crucial role for another federal organization, the Drug Enforcement Agency.
As journalist Trevor Aaronson has described (https://theintercept.com/2023/06/28/intercepted-podcast-flaviu-georgescu-dea-cia/), in the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government began funneling money into any project that could be described as counterterrorism. With Washington focused on global terrorism, the DEA, a key combatant in the previous generation’s war on drugs, found itself sidelined and relatively starved of federal funds. To bolster its raison d'être, the agency invented (https://twitter.com/search?q=trevoraaronson%20farc&src=typed_query) a new category of crime — narcoterrorism — and used the FARC, a designated terrorist organization funded in part by drug trafficking, as a pry-bar to access all the counterterrorism money sloshing around Washington at the time.
Under the DEA’s new mission, agents and their informants pretended to be members of the FARC and engaged in elaborate sting operations targeting purported terrorists. Given the FARC’s designation as a terror group, the DEA could claim that it stopped a would-be terrorist if its undercover agents convinced FARC rebels to act on their behalf. (Nevermind that they would have manufactured those would-be terrorists.) With federal resources on the line, fighting terrorism was as much a bureaucratic turf war as it was about waging any other kind of war.
As a former counterterrorism official at Texas Department of Public Safety, Jones likely would have known that specific history. More broadly, he surely understood how the federal funding game is played, and he kept pushing the new line. In a July 2019 interview (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011777), also on Lou Dobbs Tonight, Jones was even more explicit in calling for cartels to be labeled terror groups, and again referenced the FARC.
“These are terrorist organizations that are no longer just drug trafficking organizations,” Jones said. “They have evolved into something much larger."
“The U.S. government has not transitioned yet to look at them as terrorists and to designate them as terrorists but yet, they employ the FARC — that is a designated terrorist organization,” he added.
Jones repeated his calls that August (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011784), September (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011786), October (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011787), and November (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011788) — when Trump publicly contemplated moving forward — and then again the following December (https://twitter.com/bad_takes/status/1202027908602179585), February (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011789), March (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011790), and June (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011791), all on Lou Dobbs Tonight. In the September segment, Jones told Dobbs he had lobbied four members of Congress, “trying to get this foreign terrorist designation.” In 2021, he appeared (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011803) on Tucker Carlson Tonight to push for the change, and he continues (https://twitter.com/chiproytx/status/1636484620362432515) to agitate (https://twitter.com/jaeson_jones/status/1631863159777644544) for it from his new perch at Newsmax.
The once-fringe idea is now largely accepted as conventional wisdom on the right. Jones and Homan played a significant role in normalizing it, specifically by appealing to their identities as former cops. If their pitch is successful under the next Republican administration, their former agencies would almost certainly benefit handsomely from their advocacy.
The porous border between the hard-right and mainstream media
Homan, Bensman, and Jones are not the only former cops in the right-wing media and think tank ecosystem. One of Bensman’s colleagues at the Center for Immigration Studies, Jon Feere, is a former ICE and DHS official whom NPR quoted (https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183528143/four-immigrants-who-sought-sanctuary-in-churches-no-longer-face-deportation-fine) in June. Randy Clark (https://twitter.com/RandyClarkBBTX?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor), a writer at Breitbart, is retired from Border Patrol. Mark Morgan (https://border911.com/team-member/mark-morgan/), former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protections, is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and is a member of Homan's Border911. The list goes on. These figures agitate for nativist immigration policies, channeling reactionary law enforcement attitudes into content served up in conservative media. The answer for them is always zero tolerance, harsher punishments, and more funding and discretion for cops.
The cop-turned-pundit pipeline isn’t unique (https://www.mediamatters.org/cnn/new-cnn-chiefs-first-major-hire-retired-cop-who-recently-lied-about-nypd-spying-muslims-after) to conservative outlets, but these figures loom especially large in their reactionary ecosystem given the centrality of nativist politics in the age of Trump. The programs where they appear, especially on Fox News, often set the tone (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/right-wing-media-ecosystem-has-dominated-national-immigration-narrative) for how mainstream outlets (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/cnn-following-right-wing-medias-playbook-how-fearmonger-about-immigration) frame immigration, as mainstream outlets frequently adopt language that there is a “crisis” at the border.
One recent example perfectly illustrates how the Tanton network’s reactionary messaging seeps into mainstream news coverage. In mid-September, Washington Post columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria called (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/15/immigration-democrats-errors-voters/) for the president to “use the power he has in existing law to suspend entirely the admission of asylum seekers while the system digests the millions of immigration cases already pending."
To support this extreme and seemingly illegal (https://twitter.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1702714186059424061) position, Zakaria cited Nolan Rappaport, a former (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolan-rappaport-6250333b/) Department of Homeland Security official who now writes xenophobic op-eds (https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4171403-are-bidens-immigration-policies-allowing-dangerous-diseases-into-our-country/) at The Hill. Zakaria identified Rappaport only as “a longtime congressional expert on the issue,” but there’s much more to the story.
One recent example perfectly illustrates how the Tanton network’s reactionary messaging seeps into mainstream news coverage.
Rappaport, as it turns out, appears to be profoundly influenced by the organizations that employ Homan and Bensman. Rappaport blurbed (https://www.toddbensman.com/americas-covert-border-war/) Bensman’s first book, has cited him in at least (https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4192224-biden-doesnt-have-a-long-term-plan-for-migrant-surges-at-the-southwest-border/) three (https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/3999068-soldiers-will-not-prevent-a-border-crisis/) recent op-eds (https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4171403-are-bidens-immigration-policies-allowing-dangerous-diseases-into-our-country/), and cited the Center for Immigration Studies in another (https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4034157-why-birthright-citizenship-may-not-apply-to-children-of-undocumented-immigrants/). Rappaport frequently directs (https://twitter.com/search?q=%28cis%29%20%28from%3Anolanr1%29&src=typed_query&f=top) his stories, which he posts on X, at the Center for Immigration Studies’ policy director by tagging her username and at the account for Immigration Reform Law Institute, where Homan is a legal fellow. The Immigration Reform Law Institute then regularly reposts (https://twitter.com/search?q=%40irlilaw%20nolanr1&src=typed_query&f=top) Rappaport’s stories to its own feed.
The pipeline from the Center for Immigration Studies and Bensman, and the Immigration Reform Law Institute and Homan, to Rappaport to Zakaria is invisible to the average reader. But Homan, for his part, sees it clearly.
“Please support CIS,” Homan said (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4011363) at the end of the conversation where he defended zero tolerance punishment against sex workers, people who use drugs, and families who crossed the southern border. He was speaking with Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “When I was the director of ICE, even when I was running ERO — Enforcement and Removal Operations, number three in ICE — CIS was a great help to the rule of law and helping ICE do their job."
“And they’re on the right side of the argument, folks, and we’re in a fight for our — we’re in a fight for our lives right now,” he continued. “We’re in a fight for this country. CIS gets it. They’re on the right side of the issues and they’re helping shape immigration in the future. So please support them.”
an 8 23 no lnx
The fascist who doesn’t want America to think
'A harasser and an abuser': Donald Trump seethes at special counsel Jack Smith
Robert ReichAugust 27, 2023
I want to talk about symbols, images, and fascism.
Here is Trump’s mug shot from his arraignment yesterday in Georgia. It’s a look of defiance — which I’m sure he practiced repeatedly beforehand — intended to make his supporters and his Republican base feel defiant, too.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, this is Trump’s thousand-word response to Wednesday night’s Republican debate, which he declined to attend.
He timed his arraignment in Georgia for yesterday so that it — and this photo — would dominate Thursday’s and Friday’s news, rather than anything or anyone emerging from the debate.
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But a defiant photograph isn’t “news.” It’s a symbol, an image. Which is exactly what Donald Trump is. He has no political platform, no specific policy agenda, no new ideas,and no plan for what he’ll do if he gets a second term.
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He exists as a symbol for the anger, discontent, bigotry, and vindictiveness he has unleashed in America.
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He is as close as America has come to a fascist leader, who doesn’t want his followers to think or analyze. He wants them only to feel.
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Trump’s lackeys fell in line, expressing the defiance Trump projected in his mug shot.
On Newsmax, Sarah Palin called for civil war.
Fox’s Laura Ingraham told viewers that Trump’s arrest was proof that government officials are trying to “take them out.”
Fox’s Sean Hannity said the Department of Justice will target Republicans “until there’s nothing left of the party.”
All brainless bile.
Last Thursday, Trump complained that Fox News “purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me, especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back. They think they are getting away with something, they’re not. Just like 2016 all over again … And then they want me to debate!”
Of course he’s angry. For the man who’s all symbol and image and without substance, a photo like the following conveys a brainless buffoon. It must drive him crazy.
But Trump is not a brainless buffoon. He’s a cunning marketer, a diabolic manipulator of the public, a sly producer of his own daily reality show. His lead in the GOP’s presidential sweepstakes has grown. He will almost certainly be the Republican candidate for president next year — even if he’s in jail.
How to debate a symbol? How to take on an image? How should Biden and the Democrats, and everyone who cares deeply about this country, respond to a demagogue who obsesses over what he projects rather than what he stands for? How to deal with a fascist who doesn’t want followers to think but only to feel rage?
Expose him for who he is.
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-greg-gutfeld-claims-98-accusations-racism-are-false
// BTB rush BO white kids will get beat up now
https://www.mediamatters.org/five/fox-news-host-greg-gutfeld-says-joe-biden-has-put-target-whites
mma 5 23
right-wing media figures uncritically amplified a now-debunked New York Post story to demonize immigrants and attack Democratic lawmakers.
On May 13, the New York Post published a story alleging (https://nypost.com/2023/05/13/outrage-grows-over-vets-evicted-from-hotels-to-house-migrants/) that a group of 20 homeless military veterans had been “evicted” from two upstate New York hotels to make room for immigrants who had settled in New York City. The Post claimed the supposed migrants were part of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ plans (https://www.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/322-23/mayor-adams-program-provide-shelter-option-asylum-seekers-already-care-in) to secure temporary housing for immigrants entering the city.
After the New York Post published its story, local outlet the Mid Hudson News (https://midhudsonnews.com/2023/05/18/questions-remain-as-to-if-vets-were-displaced-from-hotel-by-asylum-seekers-2/) spoke with hotel management and service providers the Post claimed were involved in the removals. On May 18, the paper reported that not only had no homeless veterans been removed, but they were never there to begin with — one hotel manager “had never heard of” the veteran's group supposedly involved, while another said it “had not put any veterans in the hotel for ‘a long time.’” The report also discredited a receipt presented by State Assemblyman Brian Maher as supposed evidence that the group representing the homeless veterans had paid for the rooms. The Post later reported (https://nypost.com/2023/05/18/advocate-lied-about-vets-getting-kicked-out-of-ny-hotels-for-migrants-pol/) that the group’s longtime advocate had lied to the newspaper about the entire situation, and today the Mid Hudson News uncovered that 15 homeless men were paid to pretend (https://midhudsonnews.com/2023/05/19/homeless-men-recruited-for-veteran-hotel-scam/) they were veterans who had been staying at the hotel.
[twt]
by the time the story fell apart, right-wing media had already latched onto the now-debunked narrative and immediately weaponized the shoddily reported story as part of their ongoingfear campaign (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-laura-ingraham-biden-administration-encouraging-border-crossings) over a so-called “invasion” (https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/right-wing-media-accuses-immigrants-invading-us-title-42-expires) of migrants coming across the southern border.
Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt said (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005901) it was “astonishing that some of these hotels are getting migrants” and having to cancel other reservations, adding, “There are two couples that booked rooms for their wedding … and 20 vets also were in that hotel, they all had to move out because these migrants moved in.”
Later on Fox & Friends, guest co-host Will Cain claimed (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005902) that a “flood of illegal immigrants” are taking up hotel rooms and other resources in New York. Cain went on to remind viewers “about homeless veterans booted from a hotel so that rooms could be given to illegal immigrants,” with Earhardt adding that “Eric Adams says they’re gonna stay there for four months, so 20 veterans had to move to another hotel.”
Fox anchor Harris Faulkner claimed (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005903) the story showed “the disgraceful treatment of our military veterans played out in Orange County, New York,” as the nonexistent group of “at least 20 homeless veterans, some reportedly suffering from PTSD, had to give up their hotel rooms for illegals.” Fox contributor Johnny “Joey” Jones added a jab at the Biden administration, stating, “A president that would leave Americans stranded in Afghanistan probably doesn't see the onus to take care of 20 veterans in a hotel. And I hate to say it, but that's just the absolute truth of it.”
Outnumbered co-hosts Emily Compagno and Kayleigh McEnany expressed outrage (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005904) over the New York Post story, with Compagno claiming “America's heroes are now paying the price” for the “Southern border crisis.” McEnany lamented, “I can't help but notice the contrast when you have a 24-year-old — a veteran, had been in Afghanistan — kicked out of his hotel room as an Afghan national on the terror watch list is crossing the border in San Diego.”
Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum complained (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005905), “You’ve got the hotels in New York that are having to take folks in. You had one in Newburgh, New York, where they had to cancel a wedding and kick out some homeless veterans to make room for incoming migrants.”
Conservative moving company (https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/business-booming-blue-line-moving) owner John Rourke appeared on One America News and ranted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005908), “It just drives me nuts when we have veterans sleeping on the streets of this country and committing suicide in record numbers … and here we are filling up hotel rooms with illegal aliens, giving them cell phones, giving them medical attention, giving them food and water, and then putting them on planes.”
On Twitter, Donald Trump Jr. used the story to attack Democrats, stating (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005906), “Honestly, this is just infuriating! Homeless vets are being booted from New York hotels to make room for migrants. Fuck Democrats & their bullshit policies! America last isn’t hyperbole it’s their goal.”
Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier tweeted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005907), “Unacceptable. Nearly two dozen struggling homeless vets have been booted from NY hotels… So illegal immigrants can have space. WHAT?!”
Conservative radio host Bo Snerdley tweeted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005909), “This is about as ruthless, coldblooded, and incredibly heinous as anything Biden and Democrats have ever done. Kicking American veterans out of their lodging to make way for illegal immigrants? What country IS this?”
Newsmax contributor Tony Shaffer later tweeted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005911), “This tells you everything you need to understand about the progressive left cult - they are out to expand political power and a permanent underclass that will vote for them even if it means sacrificing veterans.”
Fox News contributor and former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005912), “What could be more backwards than putting illegal immigrants ahead of American veterans? An insult to American sovereignty.”
2024 Republican presidential candidate and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley tweeted (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4005913) a link to the New York Post’s story, adding, “Liberal insanity at work.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-says-new-racial-slur-white-women-being-called-karen
ref 2 musk
no lnx pix bad code hero date?
https://freebeacon.com/media/yes-the-media-bury-the-race-of-murderers-if-theyre-not-white/
Yes, the Media Bury the Race of Murderers—If They're Not White
Free Beacon analysis shows how homicide coverage downplays the race of minority offenders
Brooklyn shooting suspect Frank James / Getty Images
Charles Fain Lehman
April 14, 2022
Frank James, the man arrested for Tuesday's New York City subway shooting, is a black nationalist and outspoken racist who railed against whites, Jews, and Hispanics. A careful reader of the New York Times could be forgiven for overlooking that. In a nearly 2,000-word article on the attack, James's race is not mentioned. The same is true for the coverage offered up by Reuters; the Washington Post only mentioned James's race in relation to his condemnation of training programs for "low-income Black youths."
Media critics on the right say that the conspicuous omission of James's race from these news reports illustrates a trend among prestige papers, which deemphasize or omit the race of non-white criminals while playing up the race of white offenders. But is it a real pattern?
Yes. A Washington Free Beacon review of hundreds of articles published by major papers over a span of two years finds that papers downplay the race of non-white offenders, mentioning their race much later in articles than they do for white offenders. These papers are also three to four times more likely to mention an offender's race at all if he is white, a disparity that grew in the wake of George Floyd's death in 2020 and the protests that followed.
The Free Beacon collected data on nearly 1,100 articles about homicides from six major papers, all written between 2019 and 2021. Those papers included the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, and Minneapolis's Star-Tribune—representatives of each paper did not return requests for comment for this article. For each article, we collected the offender's and victim's name and race, and noted where in the article the offender's race was mentioned, if at all.
The data suggest an alarming editorial trend in which major papers routinely omit information from news reports, presenting readers with a skewed picture of who does and doesn't commit crime. These editorial choices are part and parcel with the "racial reckoning" that swept newsrooms in the wake of Floyd's murder, which saw journalists dramatically overhauling crime coverage to emphasize the view that the criminal justice system is racist at the root—perhaps at the expense of honesty about individual offenders' crimes.
The chart above indicates that papers are far quicker to mention the race of white murderers than black. (Those two races account for 92 percent of mentions in the data, so others are not shown.) Half of articles about a white offender mention his race within the first 15 percent of the article. In articles about black offenders, by contrast, mentions come overwhelmingly toward the end of the piece. Half of the articles that mention a black offender's race do not do so until at least 60 percent of the way through, and more than 20 percent save it until the last fifth of the article.
Of course, journalists choose not only where in a piece to mention an offender's race, but also whether to mention it at all, and omissions can skew a reader's perspective.
To measure these choices, we identified the race of the offender in roughly 900 stories where his name, but not his race, was mentioned, first by looking at the race of people with the same name in Census data, and then hand-confirming race based on mug shots or other images published in local news stories.
Doing so permits an estimate of how often journalists highlight an offender's race—or don't. Again, the skew is startling: White offenders' race was mentioned in roughly 1 out of every 4 articles, compared with 1 in 17 articles about a black offender and 1 in 33 articles about a Hispanic offender.
This effect is driven in part by a handful of major news stories involving white perpetrators, though the attention paid to these stories is also an editorial choice. But even after omitting reports about white offenders Kyle Rittenhouse, Derek Chauvin, and the killers of Ahmaud Arbery, the race of white offenders is mentioned in 16 percent of cases, two to three times the rate at which the race of black offenders is mentioned. (Middle Eastern offenders were labeled as Asian in this analysis, but labeling them as white results in only a small change to the race mention rate.)
This disparity widened following George Floyd's murder. Before May of 2020, papers were roughly twice as likely to mention the race of a white (13 percent of stories) versus a black perpetrator (7 percent). After May of 2020, the numbers were 28 percent and 4 percent, a ratio of seven to one. Even omitting the above-mentioned stories, papers still mentioned race in 23 percent of stories about white killers post-Floyd, a six-to-one ratio.
It could be that there were more stories in which a white offender's race was relevant after Floyd's death than before. But it is also easy to see how the increased attention to white murderers represents a change in what reporters and editors thought it was, and was not, important for their readers to hear about, particularly after they publicly committed to revamping their crime reporting following Floyd's death.
Newspapers across the country—including the Inquirer—stopped publishing mugshot galleries in part because, two Florida newspapers wrote, they "may have reinforced negative stereotypes." Others committed to overhauling their language, substituting phrases like "formerly incarcerated person" for "felon" to respond to what the Poynter Institute described as an "inextricabl[e]" link between reporting on crime and "race and racism." And the Associated Press amended its style guide to discourage the use of the word "riot," which allegedly has racist connotations.
At the same time, major newsrooms have prioritized"racial justice" coverage, part of a push for what the journalist-cum-activist Wesley Lowery called "moral clarity" over "objectivity": writing news reports that take the sides on contested issues with the goal of advancing a political objective.
Such "moral clarity" may mean downplaying black crime and emphasizing white crime. In the case of offenders like James, it means leaving readers in the dark about an important element of the story—journalistic malfeasance that is, of course, in service of the greater good.
Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
Published under:Crime , Media , Media Bias , Murder , New York Times , Racism , The Washington Post , woke
biden all in on "ej"
mma 4 23 note victim rev discrim BS
GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): What does environmental justice mean? AOC laid out perfectly: the environment is now tied to racism, which is what they did with ESG -- environmental social governance. It's a scorecard, another scorecard that takes measures on how companies act responsibly. So, they marry the environment to race because it couldn't be believed alone, the numbers weren't working. The projections weren't working. But you know what works? Being scared of being called a racist.
So, environmental justice, if you do not agree with it, if you don'tswallow the climate agenda, if you don't agree with AOC, you probably don't just hate the planet, you probably hate non-white people as well.
And the consequences of that, we've talked about it before, with every aspect of life being filled with racism or injustice. The roads are racist we found out this week. Pollution is racist, we just found out. Cheap energy, fossil fuels, that's racist because it hurts non-white people. If you don't want to be looted, that's racist, too, because looting is mere redefinition of justice.
Basically, you're telling people that they can -- you're sanctioning crime. You're sanctioning riots. That's why the politicians in Chicagosaid as much and said that this was their way of evening the score. Because when you tell everybody, and you program their brain with this language that the world sucks and it's this group of people behind it, now it's in climate. Now it's in climate.
aha jeff sharlet guk: the root of greivance is grief, loss mourning --> // anger thus retribution The Storm:
amazed not ... hasn’t been more violence. I think we’ve had a shield from that violence for a long time and now that shield … I sound like Jerry Falwell saying the hand of God is being removed from America.
Adam Fleming Petty at the Washington Post called the book a “form of travelogue”. This is likely due in strong part to The Undertow, the long title chapter about Ashli Babbitt (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/09/ashli-babbitt-capitol-mob-trump-qanon-conspiracy-theory), the pro-Trumpveteran who died on the day of the storming of the Capitol. How did you write this section?
Because of my heart condition I’d been tucked in during Covid, and I live in a rural area. I remember sitting there at my kitchen table, watching January 6 on the computer, texting furiously. We heard about a white woman being killed. It was very soon after that we knew the cop was Black. And I thought, holy shit, it’s The Birth of a Nation [a 1915 movie that justifies organized white-on-Black violence with a racist depiction of Black people, including them being sexually predatory toward white women; such accusations were the pretext for lynchings for decades, with echoes remaining today]. They just did a live re-enactment of their fantasy!
They would say Babbittwore an American flag, but it’s not true. She wore a Trump cape, which is the new American flag. They would say she’s unarmed, but it’s not true. She was carrying a knife. There’s a photo of [Babbitt’s knife] on the cover of the book. You could say, well, it’s a small knife. Really? That knife is plenty big enough
this is my little piece of power: I can tell the story
You write that, almost immediately, the right tried to diminishBabbitt’s agency, to make her younger, smaller, quieter. It reminded me of Terri Schiavo (https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/look-back-in-history-terri-schiavo-death/) [the 26-year-old woman who was found unconscious in 1984 and was the subject of a family battle for her medical decision-making, which became a national debate dominated by the Catholic church and the religious right until her death in 2005]. We see the efforts on the right to project a childlike acquiescence on to the adult woman.
Yes! Ashli Babbitt’s “martyrdom” is tied up in her remaking as an innocent. You realize that the gun and the fetus, it’s an innocence cult. It’s not a death cult, people misunderstand this. It’s an innocence cult, which is to say, it’s also the erasure of history. It says, “No, no, no, there’s no original sin in American history. We were always good.”
Babbitt was hurting. She was in her mid-30s, after serving eight tours of duty. She was in massive debt. And she fell in love with Trump.
Babbitt resolved her grief by getting certainty. She could not mourn.
You mean she was angry, hurting – but not reckoning with her circumstances, embracing her condition. What did she want? She wanted justice?
She just wanted to be a person and serve her country.
So what we’re talking about is a whole lot of unrealized pain, and about how we metabolize pain in different ways. You write in the prelude that“loss sometimes curdles into fury and hate or denial and delusion. Especially delusion.”
Yes. I’ve been thinking about how we metabolize pain, about my own ability to metabolize pain. My new therapist is trying to figure out why I do the work I do. She thinks it must be so bad for me. But no, it’s fucking sustained me! It gives me agency. States everywhere, the forces of darkness, are moving against you. You are not imagining it, they are real. And I do not have any power.
But this is my little piece of power: I can go tell the story
an extreme flavor of pseudo-populism? // qanon storm punishes
Kelly McClure @ Salon (https://www.salon.com/2023/03/05/i-am-your-retribution-says-in-his-cpac-speech/): “I am your retribution,” says Trump in his CPAC speech.
an 2 23 badash?
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Marjorie+Taylor+Greene) (R-GA) celebrated Presidents Day by calling for red and blue states to separate in a "national divorce."
"We need a national divorce," Greene tweeted (https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1627665203398688768) Monday morning, barely weeks after calling President Joe Biden a "liar" (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/02/former-gop-congressman-calls-for-marjorie-taylor-greene-to-be-censured-after-calling-president-biden-a-liar/) in the nationally-televised State of the Union. "We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this."
Greene also called Democrats "traitorous," and angrily accused them of shoving down Republicans' throats "sick and disgusting woke culture issues."
"From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat'straitorous America Last policies, we are done."
OR ELSE WHAT? NOW WHAT?
Some blasted Greene's choice to make her remarks on the national holiday, officially Washington's Birthday, some noted she sits on the Homeland Security Committee, whileothers noted blue states contribute more to the federal coffers than red states (https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2022/01/22/blue-states-pay-more-than-their-fair-share-here-are-the-receipts-column/), which are more likely to be supported by blue states. (The "red" and "blue" state descriptors are not only somewhat subjective, but fluid, as Democratic voters flipped two states (https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/nov/10/democrats-flip-2-governor-races-prevail-in-others/) from red to blue and held all the others in 2022.)
READ MORE: Florida Teacher Who Posted Viral Video of Empty Library Shelves Fired Day After DeSantis Claimed It Was a ‘Fake Narrative’ (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/02/florida-teacher-who-posted-viral-video-of-empty-library-shelves-fired-day-after-desantis-claimed-it-was-a-fake-narrative/)
One Twitter user reminded that Greene is a "key advisor" to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=Kevin+McCarthy). Her support of the embattled McCarthy helped put the gavel in his hand, and he has pledged loyalty to her (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/01/i-will-never-leave-that-woman-mccarthy-vows-to-will-always-take-care-of-marjorie-taylor-greene-his-friends-say/). "I will never leave that woman," McCarthy reportedly said after becoming Speaker. "I will always take care of her."
attorney, journalist, and SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah had just four words (https://twitter.com/DeanObeidallah/status/1627679519917187073) in response: "This is treasonous. Period."
Others also called it "treason," and still others "sedition (https://twitter.com/search?q=sedition%20https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fmtgreenee%2Fstatus%2F1627665203398688768&src=typed_query&f=top)."
Ryan Cooper, managing editor of The American Prospect, tweeted (https://twitter.com/ryanlcooper/status/1627677896465694721), "remarkable how casually these people suggest literal treason."
Another Twitter user observed (https://twitter.com/FinkDrinks/status/1627674166676664320), "This is a member of Congress, who sits on Homeland Security Committee, calling for secession. We fought a war over this once and 160 years later the losers still can't let it go."
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-and-jack-posobiec-claim-concern-about-equity-reminiscent-apartheid-south
CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): And Jack, here's one of the tragedies – it will create more bigotry and more stereotyping. So,
JACK POSOBIEC (GUEST): Of course.
KIRK: So if you areboarding a United Airlines flight and you see a Black pilot, they are conditioning you to think, I don't know if he's there because he's a wonderful pilot, and that's not good. I don't want to live in that country. I don't want to have that kind of lens. But that will be a rational thought that someone will have because of, now, the hiring quotas and because of the way that we are now putting people in positions of authority and power. They are changing medical licensing exams. I hope everyone knows this. They are changing medical licensing exams so that it is pass-fail because different scores were used to award residencies and those were, of course, racist. One minute, Jack.
JACK POSOBIEC (GUEST): You remember this famously came up with Mindy Kaling's brother. So the famous actress Mindy Kaling came out in 2015 and says, I faked being Black, and that's how I got into medical school. This can't be – obvious they're of Indian descent, but he decided to fake being Black, was able to get into medical school, was able to go all the way through and say, there's no way that you can choose – there's no way that you can threaten me.
So, Charlie, I think the way out of this really is for everyone to just go ahead and identify with whatever you feel works for you –
KIRK: That's terrible.
POSOBIEC: If you want to identify as multiracial, as quasi racial, pseudo race, whatever. Go for it. Because who is actually going to question this? How are they going to --
KIRK: I mean --
POSOBIEC: It would be one way to break the system.
KIRK: What they call equity, is they want to create a world where you are in a deficit if you are white. That is that is the world they're trying to create. And it's really cruel to say that. But when they say equity, they're trying to make it where you have a structural disadvantage through hiring –
POSOBIEC: Almost like apartheid.
KIRK: Of course it is.
POSOBIEC: It almost sounds like apartheid.
KIRK: But that is what South Africa did. South Africa took the awful, kind of, immoral approach to apartheid and they just flipped it upside down. They just said, ok, now we're going to extract revenge on the colonizers because now we're in charge. And South Africa is not a functioning country.
right-wing media weaponize the East Palestine train derailment to claim white conservatives are being persecuted
an 2 23
rubber glue? false balance
For the second time in as many weeks, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) compared Ashli Babbitt to victims of law enforcement brutality and insisted that Babbitt – who was fatally shot in the head by United States Capitol Police during the January 6th, 2021 insurrection inspired by then-President Donald Trump – was denied justice.
Greene's claim is false. The USCP explained (https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/uscp-completes-internal-investigation-january-6-officer-involved) following its investigation into the matter that "USCP's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) determined the officer's conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer's own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury."
Yet Greene is still promulgating her unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.
READ MORE: 'Performative disgrace': Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed for defending Ashli Babbitt while misspelling her name (https://www.alternet.org/performative-disgrace-marjorie-taylor-greene/)
"And I wanna, I wanna go a little bit further. You know, we hear all of this talk nonstop about George Floyd, right? But yet no one cares about Ashli Babbitt. Nobody cares about her," Greene said at a town hall this week.
"I do," a man in the audience shouted.
"And I, and I see the video of when she was shot and what, what our mainstream media and what our Democrats refuse to acknowledge is if you watch that video, Ashley Babbitt was fighting people and trying to stop them from breaking the windowand, and going further where they were going," Greene continued.
"That's right," the same individual exclaimed.
READ MORE: Mother of slain Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt says January 6th was a 'patriotic day' ruined by the FBI (https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/ashli-babbitt-mother-january-6th)
"She was an unarmed veteran," Greene added.
"That's right," the incensed constituent reiterated.
Babbitt, Greene declared, "was murdered. Murdered. That's the word. Murdered. And the [black] man that shot her is walking around free. He has never been charged. There's been – there was justice for George Floyd."
Observers on social media speedily struck back.
sandi bachom (https://twitter.com/sandibachom/status/1625563249885253651?s=20&t=yUjdSZ4JoQnJcyBvNSxSZQ): "My friend was standing next to her she was a screaming maniac and dove through the window. She committed suicide"
Larry Melman (https://twitter.com/LarryBMelman/status/1625553454956437504?s=20&t=yUjdSZ4JoQnJcyBvNSxSZQ): "Ashli Babbitt died breaking into a US Government building. Not just 'a' US Government building, the Capitol building. Does anyone believe we all have the right to break through a door, climb in any US government building we want, as long as we call ourselves 'patriots'?"
Paul the other one... (https://twitter.com/paulcshipley/status/1625524620215590912?s=20&t=yUjdSZ4JoQnJcyBvNSxSZQ): "Ashli Babbitt died because a silver-spooned frat boy couldn't stand being a loser."
Shana Schwartzberg (https://twitter.com/shanasspring/status/1625547907737829403?s=20&t=yUjdSZ4JoQnJcyBvNSxSZQ): "George Floyd was a victim of police brutality. Ashli Babbitt was a domestic terrorist, killed by law enforcement while breaking into a Federal Building during an official proceeding. She was warned to stop. He begged them to stop."
Peter Brown (https://twitter.com/SydneyEditor/status/1625618066041356289?s=20&t=yUjdSZ4JoQnJcyBvNSxSZQ): "Narrator: This is the perfect example of a false equivalency."
Watch below or at this link (https://www.alternet.org/mtg-ashli-babbitt-george-floyd).
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-says-ohio-train-derailment-part-war-white-people
CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): Not a single member of the Biden regime would dare to go to this portion of Ohio and breathe in the air because they know it's dangerous. They know that it is actively poisoning the citizens of eastern Ohio. So, why is it that they kind of shrug their shoulders and they say, yeah, okay, whatever? It's very simple. It's because the war on white people continues. Why would you care for the white working class voters in eastern Ohio? You haven't cared about them in other reasons or other portions.
And I will prove it to you. If this train derailment happened in downtown Atlanta in the densely populated Black neighborhoods, this would be the number one news story. It would be Flint water crisis 2.0. There would be clamoring and activism and talks for reparations. And Buttigieg, meanwhile, is out there saying, listen -- while this derailment is happening, while the act of poisoning is happening, he's saying, look, the problem is that workers are too white.
...
Buttigieg is out talking about how workers are too white. For the last couple of years, I have been warning about this crusade against white people. And people shrug their shoulders, say, oh, Charlie, why does that matter? I could tell you why it matters -- when there is a crisis now and the leaders hate working class whites, they're not going to scramble to save your life. They'll lie to you and tell you to go back home while you're poisoned.
aha? fear is flipside? THEY deficient blk ppl THINK they have been wronged, so will be violent retaliate against us so we must DEFEND ourselves
https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/alex-jones-says-gang-racist-foaming-mouth-black-people-are-coming-your-family-advises
an 12 22
Basketball star Brittney Griner is back in the United States after her December 8 (https://www.alternet.org/brittney-griner-u-s-basketball-star-caught-up-in-russia-crisis/) release from a Russian prison. Griner, who spent almost 10 months imprisoned in Russia, was serving a nine-year sentence on a drug smuggling charge but was released as part of a prisoner exchange; the United States agreed to release Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for Griner’s release.
Civil libertarians all over the world described Griner’s arrest and imprisonment as politically motivated, as it came during a time of considerable tensions between the United States and Russia. On February 17, Griner was detained after Russian customs officials found less than a gram of medically prescribed hash oil in her luggage. And in August, Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Griner’s release was applauded by countless civil libertarians and critics of the War on Drugs. But a long list of MAGA Republicans, on the other hand, are furious that the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) player was released. And libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young vehemently calls them out in a biting article published by The Bulwark (https://www.thebulwark.com/right-wing-creeps-claim-bringing-brittney-griner-home-was-woke/) on December 16.
READ MORE: James Carville: Right-wing ire over Brittney Griner is because she 'is not white and is not straight' (file:///C:/Users/breas/OneDrive/Documents/Windows%20Files%20%28PC%29/AlterNet%20Folder%202022%20%28PC%29/James%20Carville:%20Right-wing%20ire%20over%20Brittney%20Griner%20is%20because%20she%20'is%20not%20white%20and%20is%20not%20straight')
“Since just about everything is potential fodder for culture wars these days,” Young argues, “it’s no surprise that the return to the United States of basketball player Brittney Griner, detained in Russia on a drug charge earlier this year, turned into another such skirmish. What is notable, though, is the extent to which American far-right punditry has been almost literally reciting Kremlin propaganda talking points — and putting identity politics over basic solidarity with a fellow American.”
Young describes Griner as a former “hostage” of the Kremlin.
“Bringing American hostages home — and there is little doubt that Griner, arrested days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was being held hostage — is surely a cause for patriotic celebration,” Young writes. “But many commentators on the right touted the trade as evidence that the Biden Administration was Woke Central: Griner is Black and gay — gay-married, even! — and spoke out against the American anthem being played at WNBA games during the summer 2020 racial justice protests. That two other Americans, ex-Marine Paul Whelan and history teacher Mark Fogel, still remain in Russian prisons — the former on spying charges, the latter in a marijuana-possession case very similar to Griner’s — became further evidence of wokeness run amok, or a decision based on ‘DEI’ (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) policies.”
Young cites specific examples of anti-Griner comments from the far right. On December 8, Donald Trump, Jr. (https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1600869858689679360) tweeted, “The Biden Admin was apparently worried that their DEI score would go down if they freed an American Marine.” And Matt Walsh (https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1600877109827710977), that same day, tweeted, “Unfortunately Marc Fogel and Paul Whelan made the mistake of being white men. The rules of intersectionality dictate that the black woman gets freed first. That's one of the primary factors driving this, whether we want to admit it out loud or not.”
READ MORE:Tucker Carlson pushes bizarre, racist theory about Britney Griner’s release from a Russian prison (https://www.alternet.org/tucker-carlson-2658910168/)
Newsmax’s Benny Johnson (https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/newsmaxs-benny-johnson-attacks-brittney-griner-drug-addict-america-hating-criminal-who) said of Griner and the Biden Administration, “They knew they had to appeal (to) the left-wing, woke wing of their party. They wouldn’t allow a Black woman, lesbian woman, drug addict, America-hating woke, to be kept in prison in Russia. One of ours. Not the Marine. Not the person who served this country. No, no. One of ours. Somebody on the identity-politics spectrum who’s notched every single victory that you could ever hope for inside of the vector of woke politics.”
Young points out that similar rhetoric has been coming from the Russian media. For example, RT’s Margarita Simonyan (https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1601038359626805249), during an appearance on Russia’s TV-1 program “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov,” commented, “I found it very amusing, though not surprising, that Bout was finally traded for Griner, not Whelan…. (Whelan) is a hero, a decorated Marine covered in medals. He only has one — no, two — no, three, problems. First problem: He’s white. Second problem: He’s a man. Third problem: It seems he’s hetero. This is something that just can’t be forgiven these days…. American voters were given a choice: A hero who suffered in the service of his country…. or a black lesbian hooked on drugs who suffered for a vape with hash.”
Young also notes that in the prisoner exchange, the Biden Administration didn’t choose Griner over the other American prisoners being held in Russia; the Kremlin’s offer was “Griner or no one” — a fact that “right-wing propagandists in the United States” overlooked when they “recycled Kremlin talking points.”
“Also not mentioned: Trevor Reed, another former U.S. Marine and one-time Russian prisoner who happens to be white, male, and heterosexual,” Young writes. “Despite these three strikes, Reed — detained in Moscow in 2019 on probably bogus charges of assault on two police officers — was freed in late April in a swap for Russian pilot and convicted drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko, a highly inconvenient fact for the ‘woke points’ narrative…. For the overwhelming majority, Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan are both Americans. You’d think the ‘All Lives Matter’ gang could grasp that.”
READ MORE:Adam Schiff warns Americans risk being captured and 'used as a political chip' in Iran, North Korea, Russia (https://www.alternet.org/adam-schiff-americans-political-chip/)
https://www.mediamatters.org/steven-crowder/blazes-steven-crowder-launches-vile-personal-attacks-brittany-griner-shes-not-best
https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/newsmaxs-benny-johnson-attacks-brittney-griner-drug-addict-america-hating-criminal-who
“Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander claims he was “offered a job at Twitter in 2018”
12/09/22 9:03 AM EST
Tucker Carlson claims Joe Biden wants Paul Whelan to remain imprisoned in Russia because he's white
12/08/22 9:03 PM EST
Fox News host says hostage exchange for Brittney Griner “should never have been made, ever”
12/08/22 8:01 PM EST
Washington Post columnist criticizes hostage exchange that freed Brittney Griner, claims it will “create more hostage-taking”
12/08/22 7:37 PM EST
Elon Musk reinstates Twitter accounts of proud Islamophobe Laura Loomer and bigoted conspiracy theorist Roger Stone
12/08/22 5:57 PM EST
Matt Walsh: Brittney Griner will “return to us more committed to her ownself-victimization and personal resentments than ever before”
12/08/22 4:49 PM EST
Timcast contributor gives full-throttle endorsement of Ye for president
12/08/22 3:29 PM EST
Dana Loesch: If other American prisoners in Russia “were as anti-American as Brittney Griner” then “maybe they'd be released a hell of a lot quicker”
12/08/22 3:24 PM EST
Charlie Kirk: “If you're a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States Marine?”
12/08/22 2:40 PM EST
Right-wing media praised Herschel Walker’s decision to double down on anti-trans attacks before he lost the Georgia Senate election
12/08/22 2:25 PM EST
Climate deniers gain traction on Elon Musk's Twitter
12/08/22 2:15 PM EST
The Blaze's Steven Crowder launches vile personal attacks on Brittany Griner: “She's not the best among us”
12/08/22
https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-there-deliberate-and-venomous-anti-white-campaign-our-country
an 10 22
Conservative Washington Post columnist (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/20/gop-maga-trump-racism-white-grievance-strategy/) Michael Gerson penned a piece Thursday in which he said he was wrong to think that Republicans weren't really racists when it came right down to it.
He recalled working in the White House when then-Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) endorsed Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) as a Republican ideal. At the time, working for George W. Bush, Gerson said that he thought statements like that were just blunders that came from ignorance.
"The general goodwill of the GOP on racial issues could still be broadly assumed," he wrote. "This is among the worst errors of moral judgment I have made as a columnist. I tended to view bigotry as one of America’s defects or failures. The historical works I read often tried to defend the best elements of the American ideal as dramatically outweighing the worst moments of its application."
He argued that even after all these years, the kidnapping, murder, abuse, raping and racism still aren't fully resolved with many launching renewed white supremacy and "Klannish violence."
"This is the environment into which the MAGA movement is pumping a toxic discharge of bigotry,"he continued. "Former president Donald Trump recently employed his own (supposedly) lighthearted treatment of racism’s cruelest epithet. 'The n-word!' he told a campaign rally (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/08/trump-n-word-rally-dangerous/?itid=lk_inline_manual_17). 'Do you know what the n-word is?' The crowd certainly did, when given permission to use it by Trump. 'It’s — no, no, no. It’s the ‘nuclear’ word.' This was not a dog whistle; it was a Confederate trumpet."
Gerson recalled Trump telling White women that “low-income housing would invade” their neighborhoods. Now that he's thinking about running in 2024, Trump is telling his followers he wants “to take back that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white.”
Trump and the GOP are now handing MAGA exactly what they want.
“They want crime,” Gerson quoted Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) talking about Democrats at a Trump rally (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/tuberville-reparations-crime-black-americans/?itid=lk_inline_manual_21). “They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparations because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
The implication is that Black Democrats are trying to steal from the White Republicans.
"In MAGA world, the incitement of white grievance isthe strategy," explained Gerson. "Such appeals are inseparable from racism. And they reopen a wound that nearly killed the patient before. It is politics at its most pernicious."
Read the full column at the Washington Post. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/20/gop-maga-trump-racism-white-grievance-strategy/)
no lnx twt
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-weaponized-vice-president-kamala-harris-climate-equity-comments-push
Right-wing media weaponized Vice President Kamala Harris' climate equity comments to push a white grievance narrative
Special PROGRAMS
CLIMATE & ENERGY
WRITTEN BY EVLONDO COOPER
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ALLISON FISHER, ALICIA SADOWSKI & KATHERINE ABUGHAZALEH
PUBLISHED 10/03/22
Update (10/4/22): This piece has been updated with additional segments from Fox News’ evening and prime-time programming.
On September 30, as public officials assessed the catastrophic devastation Hurricane Ian caused to large swaths of southwest Florida, Vice President Kamala Harris was asked to discuss global socioeconomic disparities in climate change impact during theDemocratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum. As part of her response, Harris remarked: “It is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making.”
Since then, right-wing politicians and media figures have been lying about the context of her remarks to falsely imply that the Biden administration planned to deny disaster relief to white victims of Hurricane Ian.
This white grievance narrative is inherently divisive and denies the reality that low-income communities and communities of color are on the frontlines of the climate crisis and have far fewer resources to adapt, evacuate, and rebuild before and after devastating disasters. These inequities are often compounded by discriminatory practices in receiving federal aid.
This narrative also denies the reality that a large number of poor, white Americans stand to benefit from an equity-focused approach to disaster relief. As NewsOne succinctly stated:
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, communities across Florida were slammed by the fierce storm. And without the express commitment to equity in the recovery process, flooded communities like an Orange County low-income housing complex that flooded or a North Fort Meyers trailer park might not actually get the support they need.
Everyone who suffered losses due to Hurricane Ian must be provided with the resources they need to rebuild and recover. Although Harris’ remarks were not specifically about the federal response to Hurricane Ian, her response cuts to the core of what equity is designed to achieve: Equity is not about exclusion; it's about ensuring that the most vulnerable populations are fully included in disaster relief and future climate adaptation and mitigation planning.
:{:{}:
}:
But the right doesn’t do nuance. And weaponizing the vice president’s anodyne comments about climate equity allows right-wing media to downplay or deny the role global warming is playing in extreme weather events, while running interference on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, the primary driver of the climate crisis. It also allows the network and its media allies to further rile up their viewership with culture war narratives ahead of the upcoming midterm election.
And both of those moves fit into Fox News' larger playbook. For much of 2022, the network has led the right-wing mediasphere in pushing a series of unrelenting narratives that sought to undermine the Biden administration’s climate actions, while absolving the fossil fuel industry from any wrongdoing.
Below is a non-exhaustive catalog of Fox News personalities and guests and other right-wing media figures advancing this false and cynical narrative:
Fox News contributor Charlie Hurt: “It's pretty disgusting.” Appearing on The Ingraham Angle, Fox News contributor Charlie Hurt attacked Harris’ equity comments, asserting, “I think it's completely transparent and people see right through it. And when you have Democrats trying to politicize a natural disaster like this, whether it's by trying to justify their crazy power scam that they want global warming to provide them, or in their effort to try to trash their political opponents, using a tragedy like this, it's pretty disgusting.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 10/3/22]
Fox host Tucker Carlson:“She has a new plan to distribute relief, of course, on the basis of race. … So this is immoral.” Fox host Tucker Carlson claimed that Harris planned to “distribute relief, of course, on the basis of race,” before continuing, “So this is immoral. Not one thing ever in American life should be distributed on the basis of race. Ever. However, as long as we’re becoming a two-tiered society with a privileged class and an underclass, how about rewarding good behavior? Why not give priority to Americans who pay their taxes? Follow the law? Raise decent children who don’t join gangs or sell drugs or spray paint things or shoot people?” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 10/3/22]
Fox host Bret Baier:“President Biden and his team are trying to clean up – at least rhetorically – from a self-inflicted wound by Vice President Kamala Harris.” Fox host Bret Baier accused the White House of trying to spin the vice president’s “self-inflicted wound” before adding, “She made a comment that most interpreted as her saying that federal aid to hurricane victims should be distributed through the prism of race and equity to make up for injustices in years past.” [Fox News, Special Report, 10/3/22]
Fox host Jesse Watters:“Kamala Harris picking the wrong time to go woke after Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on Florida. … Is the vice president saying white Floridians should get their hurricane relief last?” During October 3, 2022, episode of The Five, co-host Jesse Watters accused the vice president of “using this tragedy to push her radical ideology'' and later claimed that “the White House is trying to clean up her mess.” The discourse further devolved into a panel discussion that featured co-host Greg Gutfeld waxing philosophical about equity. [Fox News, The Five, 10/3/22]
Fox host Kayleigh McEnany: “At a time when America came together — perhaps one of the most unifying times in our country is after a natural disaster, when the whole country comes together — she chooses to invoke such hateful, divisive, race-based rhetoric.” During the intro to Outnumbered, host McEnany attacked Harris for her comments on equity and falsely claimed she “invok[ed] such hateful, divisive, race-based rhetoric.” Later, during a panel discussion, co-host Harris Faulkner added, “Because what she’s doing is she is following Biden's footsteps in terms of dividing us along a racial line for votes.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 10/3/22]
Fox host Harris Faulkner: “Vice president Kamala Harris willing to do the unthinkable, divide Hurricane Ian victims by race. Was she trying to say she would prefer to help the ones she chooses first?” Before running down the damage Hurricane Ian did to Florida, Faulkner falsely claimed that Harris “was willing to do the unthinkable, divide Hurricane Ian victims by race.” This led to a longer segment that collected right-wing reaction to Harris’ statement about equity, which correspondent Peter Doocy described as “race-based relief.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 10/3/22]
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC): “It is incredibly racist. Can you imagine someone saying the exact opposite, that only whites and men should get hurricane resources first? I mean, that’s crazy town.” Appearing on Sunday Night in America, Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace responded to a loaded question about Harris’ equity comments by calling her statement, “incredibly racist” and added, “The fact that the vice president of the United States is making those kinds of comments shows a lack of leadership. … We shouldn’t see it through the lens of color like the vice president does.” [Fox News, Sunday Night in America, 10/2/22]
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL): “Now is not the time to be talking about who gets what based upon where you started. It's about helping people, making sure they get the resources they need to them as quickly as possible, helping them recover as quickly as possible. That's what matters. That other stuff can wait for another day.” In response to a question about Harris’ equity comments from Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo, Republican Florida Rep. Byron Donalds claimed that now was the wrong time to discuss who has access to disaster recovery. “That other stuff can wait for another day. Obviously, we're going to have elections about that stuff in about a month or so,” he said. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 10/2/22]
Fox host Will Cain: “Unfortunately, for many of those in power, relief isn’t going to be something equally distributed, because of course now our focus is not on equality but is on equity. In other words: racism.” During the October 1 episode of Fox & Friends Saturday, host Will Cain claimed that “equity” is another word for “racism.” Later he expounded upon his understanding of equity: “What she went on to say is we want to distribute funds essentially according to — I don’t know exactly how she defined equity, underprivileged communities. In essence, what she would say — what she is saying — is Brown and Black. What she is saying is hurricane relief needs to be distributed according to the color of your skin.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends Saturday, 10/1/22]
:{:{}:
}:
Daily Caller: “Kamala Harris Says Disaster Relief Should Be ‘Based On Equity.’”
The Daily Wire: “Kamala Harris Blasted For Pushing ‘Racist’ Policy In Response To Hurricane Damage.”
FoxNews.com: “VP Kamala Harris says hurricane recovery should take 'equity' into account.”
The New York Post:“VP Harris slammed for saying Hurricane Ian aid will be ‘based on equity.’”
Newsmax.com: “VP Harris: Hurricane Ian Aid 'Based on Equity' and Race.”
One America News’ Caitlin Sinclair:
Conservative media figure Sadanand Dhume:
Right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong:
Right-wing personality Ryan Fournier:
Entrepreneur Elon Musk:
an 8 22
During 2008’s Republican presidential primary debates (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/us/politics/04transcript.html), the candidates were mocked for constantly mentioning President Ronald Reagan — who, at 93, had died four years earlier in 2004. The word “overkill” was used by pundits to describe the ways in which those candidates found a way to work Reagan’s name into the conservation whether they were discussing national defense, terrorism, the federal deficit or infrastructure. But times have changed; in the 2022 midterms, the person who countless Republican candidates are wrapping themselves around isn’t Reagan, but former President Donald Trump — whose “dark” outlook and obsession with “fear, grievances and hate,” according to Never Trump conservative Peter Wehner, now motivates most of the Republican Party.
In an article published by The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/trump-america-first-speech-analysis-gop/671004/) on August 2, Wehner argues, “For all the defects Donald Trump has as a politician, he does possess certain skills, among them an almost preternatural ability to tap into the sensibilities — the id — of the American right. More than any other Republican candidate in 2016, Trump was in sync with the base of the party. He still is, as he prepares for what looks like another run for the presidency.”
Wehner continues, “Returning to Washington, D.C. for the first time since he left the White House in the aftermath of the violent assault on the Capitol, Trump gave a speech last Tuesday to the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) (https://www.c-span.org/video/?521940-1/president-trump-speaks-america-policy-institute-summit). It was billed as a policy address on public safety. But everyone knows that policy doesn’t interest Trump in the least. What he cares about is the performative part of politics, inflaming people’s passions, creating chaos and conflict. Politics is a stage on which his disordered personality plays itself out.”
READ MORE:Democrats are 'playing with fire' by pushing MAGA extremists in Republican primaries: conservative (https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/democrats-are-playing-with-fire/)
Many polls have been showing Republican primary voters moving away from Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/focus-groups-find-missouri-republicans-turning-away-from-trump/) where the 2024 presidential election is concerned. They are coming to the conclusion that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would be better able to take on a Democratic presidential nominee, be it President Joe Biden or someone else. But here’s the caveat: Those voters haven’t abandoned Trump’s ideas or the MAGA movement. The decidedly MAGA DeSantis, a far-right culture warrior, is often described as a younger, more focused and disciplined version of Trump.
Wehner stresses that regardless of whether or not Trump runs for president in 2024, his “undisciplined” AFPI speech (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/trumps-america-first-speech-revealed-a-plan-for-power/670963/) in Washington, D.C. vividly illustrates the mindset of today’s GOP.
“Despite the speech’s unruliness,” Wehner explains, “certain themes in it are worth examining, because they signal what a Trump campaign might look like. And even if he doesn’t run, they reveal the mindset of the American right. These are the pillars of the GOP.”
The Republican “pillars” that Wehner is referring to are “fear, grievances and hate.”
READ MORE:Maryland GOP governor accuses Donald Trump of 'colluding' with Democrats to block successor (https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/maryland-governor-donald-trump-successor/)
“If the hallmarks of Ronald Reagan’s speeches were optimism, hope, and a sense of limitless possibilities, Trump’s speeches are the antithesis,” Wehner warns. “Trump is a genius at tapping into fear. In his AFPI speech, for example, he portrayed America not as a great nation facing significant challenges, but as a dystopia, hellish and desolate — a ‘cesspool of crime’ on the edge of extinction. Trump spoke about streets ‘riddled with needles and soaked with the blood of innocent victims,’ a nation being terrorized by ‘drugged out lunatics’ and ‘sadists who prey on children.’ He invoked violent gangs ‘laughing as they bludgeoned the life from their helpless victims’ and described a woman being repeatedly stabbed and ‘bleeding to death in her own bathtub.’ He claimed that America’s largest cities are ‘literal war zones.’”
The “American carnage” theme that Trump used during his inaugural speech on January 20, 2017, according to Wehner, was present during his AFPI speech — only this speech was “bleaker, its portrait of America more terrifying.”
Trump told the crowd, “We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once unthinkable, because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout America. Our country is going to hell.”
“In the world according to Trump,” Wehner writes, “the choice is a stark one: Support him, and you defend civilization — oppose him, and you invite savagery…. Whether Trump wins or not (in 2024), he has left an imprint on the Republican Party. In 2016, Trump was the outlier, a political freak. Today, his inclinations, his enmities, his style of politics define the GOP.”
Wehner continues, “Even the person widely seen right now as the most formidable challenger to Trump, Florida Gov.Ron DeSantis, is ‘diet Trump,’ in the words of one
(https://youtu.be/tajgN8DRZV4). Whoever leads the Republican Party in the years ahead,the fear, grievances and hate Trump poured into the cauldron won’t dissipate anytime soon.”
READ MORE:How Trump made Arizona’s gubernatorial race a vendetta against Doug Ducey (https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/how-trump-has-made-arizonas-gubernatorial-race-a-vendetta-against-doug-ducey/)
aha: her basic schtick is grievance, inversion of true victims (white xian)
women for thomas --> IWF (funded by old white MEN]
...The IWF’s Elizabeth Larson, in the organization’s Women’s Quarterly magazine, called sexual harassment an issue drummed up by “a growing number of women, many spurred on by Anita Hill’s example … [who] find it more profitable to litigate than to work.” After the 1994 passage of the Violence Against Women Act—spearheaded by then-Sen. Joe Biden in what was widely seen as atonement for his mishandling of the Thomas hearings—the IWF argued that the legislation should be repealed or receive zero funding; IWF spokeswoman (and ’90s right-wing It Girl) Laura Ingraham referred to VAWA as feminist “pork” with a “tear-jerker” title. The group also took on affirmative action, headlining a Women’s Quarterly article on the topic “That’s No White Male, That’s My Husband”—a phrase that revealed a lot about IWF constituents’ racial identities and loyalties. (“You can’t have white guys saying you don’t need affirmative action,” Ledeen told the Washington Post when asked why the anti-feminist IWF had organized as women in the first place.)....
https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/here-are-52-examples-laura-ingrahams-racism
News’ Laura Ingraham has drawn widespread rebuke following a racist anti-immigrant rant on the August 8 edition of her Fox show. During her far-from-subtle diatribe (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/08/08/laura-ingraham-massive-demographic-changes-have-been-foisted-upon-american-people-and-they-are/220944), Ingraham bemoaned “massive demographic changes, … changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like,” and complained, “In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn't exist anymore.” Later in the program, she questioned (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/08/08/laura-ingraham-black-black-crime-bigger-problem-community-just-racism-you-claim-criminal-justice/220945) whether “Black-on-Black” crime is a larger issue for the Black community than the racism that infects the criminal justice system. Her comments are a nearly perfect parallel (https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/08/09/laura-ingrahams-anti-immigrant-rant-ripped-white-supremacists/220951) of the rhetoric used by white supremacists and were embraced (https://www.thedailybeast.com/david-duke-praises-laura-ingrahams-anti-immigrant-rant-one-of-the-most-important-monologues-in-history) and commended by former KKK leader David Duke. Outside of white supremacist circles, however, politicians (https://twitter.com/SenDuckworth/status/1027600770861092867), activist groups (https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1027414717126594561), and other (https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1027906462503395330) media (https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/1027555830454001664) figures (https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1027400249612988417) widely condemned (https://twitter.com/search?q=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fndrew_lawrence%2Fstatus%2F1027380439420420101%20filter%3Averified&src=typd&lang=en) the rant.
[david duke praise retweet]
Following the criticism, Ingraham defended (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/08/09/laura-ingraham-claims-her-racist-warning-about-demographic-changes-had-nothing-do-race-or-ethnicity/220956) her comments, arguing that the goal of her monologue was “to point out that the rule of law, meaning secure borders, is something that used to bind our country together.” Ingraham’s deflection, however, is disingenuous (https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1027922493032554496) and undermined by her history of racist commentary and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Her Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, is less than (http://press.foxnews.com/2017/09/laura-ingraham-to-host-the-ingraham-angle-weeknights-at-10pmet-on-fox-news-channel/) a year old, but Ingraham has already turned it into a racist, extremist cesspool.
It isn’t difficult to find examples of Ingraham’s boundless hostility toward immigrants and her obvious apathy towards non-white communities. Here are just a few highlights from over the years (seriously, there are many more):
Ingraham has spent years demonizing and mocking immigrants.
On The Ingraham Angle, she dismissed (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/04/27/laura-ingraham-dismisses-asylum-claims-hondurans-fleeing-violence-its-not-our-problem/220064) asylum claims from Hondurans fleeing violence because, according to her, “it’s not our problem.”
She claimed (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/08/01/laura-ingraham-children-not-yet-reunited-families-are-being-protected-trump-their-drug-abusing-child/220886) that children torn from their parents as a result of the Trump administration policies and who were not yet reunited with their families were being protected by the administration because, “due to domestic or drug abuse, many of these parents are now deemed unfit to care for their children or dangerous for their children.” [many more]
2019
https://www.mediamatters.org/laura-ingraham/hate-lies-and-misinformation-laura-ingraham
ingraham has a long history of spreading hate speech, from her prime-time (https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/09/11/what-you-need-know-about-laura-ingraham-who-fox-news-reportedly-giving-show-prime-time/217908) Fox News show, former radio show, and, now, new podcast (https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/02/25/laura-ingrahams-new-podcast-total-disaster/222957). Ingraham has made scores of racist (https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/08/10/Here-are-52-examples-of-Laura-Ingrahams-racism/220966) and anti-immigrant statements (https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/03/12/video-years-laura-ingraham-s-anti-immigrant-commentary/223057/), including echoing (https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/08/09/laura-ingrahams-anti-immigrant-rant-ripped-white-supremacists/220951) white supremacists. On numerous occasions, she has propagated (https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/04/30/how-fox-news-tries-mainstream-white-supremacist-conspiracy-theory/223586) the popular white nationalist “replacement theory,” wherein non-white citizens “replace” white citizens. More recently, Ingraham came under fire for defending white nationalist (https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/05/31/laura-ingrahams-history-promoting-hate-and-white-supremacy/223843) Paul Nehlen. In the past, advertisers have fled (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/04/09/after-20-advertisers-remove-ads-following-her-attacks-parkland-student-laura-ingraham-calls-boycott/219897) from her show after Ingraham mocked a Parkland school shooting survivor and when she attacked the concept of diversity (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2018/08/08/laura-ingraham-massive-demographic-changes-have-been-foisted-upon-american-people-and-they-are/220944), saying, “Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don't like.” Melissa Joskow / Media Matters
Racism, race-baiting, and other race-based statements
Ingraham called Planned Parenthood “butchers” responsible for what her guest termed a “Black holocaust”
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): We are calling you on the hypocrisy of saying “Black Lives Matter,” when many in your leadership do not believe that, because they countenance what Planned Parenthood has done, in selling this lie of abortion to the African American community. Selling this, as some type of solution, when it's ended up slaughtering African Americans who could be leading great lives today.
So, when people say “Black Lives Matter” -- you bet, you bet they matter. So, why allow these -- these butchers into your communities? Why let them do this to you? Of course, why -- white people -- why, any of these people? Big money. It's about big money in politics, and their PACs, their political action groups, all -- they rake in money.
RAYMOND ARROYO (AUTHOR) A lot of Black pastors will tell you they are incensed by this. There is an awakening in the Black community, particularly in the Black churches in the inner city, and they are outraged that other leaders in the past have not only been embraced by Planned Parenthood, but embraced them back, and actually supported their work in the community.
And now they realize what -- what many of these Black pastors have told me, is a Black holocaust. They see this as a Black holocaust in their community, a Black genocide. [4/4/19 (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/04/04/laura-ingraham-and-co-host-call-planned-parenthood-butchers-responsible-black-holocaust/223345)]
Ingraham claimed former Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-GA) called out racism against her because of her “entitlement mentality”
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Stacey Abrams was on Morning Joe, and she's claiming now that people dismiss her for one reason.
…
It's not about the issues, it's about “Look at me, this is me, my truth” -- it's that same thing with “my truth.” It's a -- well, a kind of -- it's a -- you know, it's an attempt at coming across as confident, but underneath that is an insecurity, in my view.
…
That's entitlement. That's an entitlement mentality.
…
“I'm a -- I'm a Black woman with a sturdy build” -- I literally don't think anyone I know even cares about that, at all. [4/4/19 (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/04/04/laura-ingraham-and-co-host-claim-stacey-abrams-entitlement-mentality-reason-she-called-out-racism/223344)]
Ingraham told Democrats to concentrate on white voters
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Wages for most Americans are going up now, not because of government mandates, but because of Trump's policies. What are they? Lower taxes, less regulation, pressure on China trade cheating, and a tighter labor market for all working people. So, the Democrats' answer is higher taxes, more regulations, more low-wage laborers flooding into America.
That's exactly the opposite of what most working-class voters want. Oh, oh, for those liberals who put all their hopes in being saved by changing demography, well, here's a news flash: This is the percentage of white non-college graduate voters in a handful of key states.
In Iowa, they make up 62% of the population. In Michigan, 54% of the population, Ohio, 55%, Pennsylvania, 51%, and Wisconsin, 58%.
Trump does really well with that group, obviously.
...
Today's radicalized Democrat Party has moved further away from the voters they need to win in 2020. They still have no clue. It's unbelievable, really -- how to speak to the working-class white voters, let alone how to get their votes. They look down their elitist noses at all working people of all backgrounds. And their values? Come on. [4/8/19 (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/04/08/laura-ingraham-mocks-democratic-outreach-minority-voters-suggests-they-concentrate-white-voters/223377)]
Ingraham asked if the cast ofHamiltonis guilty of cultural appropriation for playing white people
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Is that not that culturally appropriating the other race? Like if it’s, if it’s just about cultural appropriation, does it only go one way? That's interesting. I didn't think about that Hamiltonthing until just now. I love Hamilton. See, I think it's fine, I think it's all cool. [2/7/19 (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/02/07/laura-ingraham-asks-if-cast-hamilton-guilty-cultural-appropriation-playing-white-people/222800)]
Ingraham: “Because you're a minority, you get special standards, special treatment”
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): This is what was referenced as minority privilege last week by yours truly. What do I mean by that? That because you're a minority, you get special standards, special treatment in the eyes of some. And it's not fair to other people. [1/23/19 (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/01/23/laura-ingraham-because-youre-minority-you-get-special-standards-special-treatment/222619)]
Ingraham said America is plagued by “white-aphobia”
LAURA INGRAHAM (HOST): Well, back to the collectivism mindset. But she forgot Christophobia and I guess white-aphobia -- we're running out of phobias and isms here, Dr. Steele. I'll let you take a swing at that one. So you can't talk about identity politics -- another way for them to shut conservatives up.
SHELBY STEELE (AUTHOR): They're on the defensive because identity politics are inherently racist. They divide us up by color, by ethnicity, by gender and so we're automatically set at odds. I mean, identity politics is every bit as divisive as segregation was, as racism of old was. [2/28/19 (https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/02/28/laura-ingraham-says-america-plagued-white-aphobia/223014)]
Ingraham mocked and imitated Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-MN) accent, claiming she “doesn't sound like Minnesota” ...[many more]
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-colorblind-constitution-what-abigail-fishers-affirmative-action-case-is-r
when the NAACP began challenging Jim Crow laws across the South, it knew that, in the battle for public opinion, the particular plaintiffs mattered as much as the facts of the case. The group meticulously selected the people who would elicit both sympathy and outrage, who were pristine in form and character. And they had to be ready to step forward at the exact moment when both public sentiment and the legal system might be swayed.
That's how Oliver Brown, a hard-working welder and assistant pastor in Topeka, Kan. (http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/brownvboard/brownaccount.html), became the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that would obliterate the separate but equal doctrine. His daughter, whose third-grade innocence posed a searing rebuff to legal segregation, became its face.
Nearly 60 years after that Supreme Court victory, which changed the nation, conservatives freely admit they have stolen that page from the NAACP's legal playbook as they attempt to roll back many of the civil rights group's landmark triumphs.
In 23-year-old Abigail Noel Fisher they've put forward their version of the perfect plaintiff to challenge the use of race in college admissions decisions.
Publicly, Fisher and her supporters, chief among them the conservative activist who conceived of the case, have worked to make Fisher the symbol of racial victimization in modern America. As their narratives goes, she did everything right. She worked hard, received good grades, and rounded out her high school years with an array of extracurricular activities. But she was cheated, they say, her dream snatched away by a university that closed its doors to her because she had been born the wrong color: White.
The daughter of suburban Sugar Land, Texas (http://www.sugarlandtx.gov/), played the cello. Since the second grade, she said, she dreamed of carrying on the family tradition by joining her sister and father among the ranks of University of Texas at Austin (https://www.utexas.edu/) alumni.
And the moment for her to lend her name to the lawsuit might never be riper: The Supreme Court has seated its most conservative bench since the 1930s (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/us/25roberts.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&). The Court is expected to issue a decision any week now in what is considered one of the most important civil rights cases in years.
On a
(https://youtu.be/sXSpx9PZZj4) posted by Edward Blum (https://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/04/us-usa-court-casemaker-idUSBRE8B30V220121204), a 1973 University of Texas graduate whose nonprofit organization is bankrolling the lawsuit, she is soft-spoken, her strawberry blond hair tucked behind one ear. Not even a swipe of lip gloss adorns her girlish face.
"There were people in my class with lower grades who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skin," she says. "I was taught from the time I was a little girl that any kind of discrimination was wrong. And for an institution of higher learning to act this way makes no sense to me. What kind of example does it set for others?"
It's a deeply emotional argument delivered by an earnest young woman, one that's been quoted over and over again.
Except there's a problem. The claim that race cost Fisher her spot at the University of Texas isn't really true.
In the hundreds of pages of legal filings, Fisher's lawyers spend almost no time arguing that Fisher would have gotten into the university but for her race.
If you're confused, it is no doubt in part because of how Blum, Fisher and others have shaped the dialogue as the case worked its way to the country's top court.
Journalists and bloggers have written dozens of articles on the case, including profiles of Fisher and Blum. News networks have aired panel after panel about the future of affirmative action. Yet for all the front-page attention, angry debate and exchanges before the justices, some of the more fundamental elements of the case have been little reported.
Race probably had nothing to do with the University of Texas's decision to deny admission to Abigail Fisher.
In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university's Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent (https://www.justice.gov/crt/about/app/briefs/fisher_appellee_brief.pdf) of the in-state spots.
Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/supreme-court-to-hear-case-on-affirmative-action.html?pagewanted=all) universities selected students "solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it." But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.
She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores (https://www.justice.gov/crt/about/app/briefs/fisher_appellee_brief.pdf). One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and "special circumstances." Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student's school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn't spoken. And race.
Those two scores, combined, determine admission.
Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show (https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/Brief%20for%20Respondents.pdf) her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university (http://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-1572-University-of-Texas-at-Austin.html). The school's rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.
As a result, university officials claim in court filings that even if Fisher received points for her race and every other personal achievement factor, the letter she received in the mail still would have said no.
It's true that the university, for whatever reason, offered provisional admission to some students with lower test scores and grades than Fisher. Five of those students were black or Latino. (https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/Brief%20for%20Respondents.pdf) Forty-two were white. (https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/Brief%20for%20Respondents.pdf)
Neither Fisher nor Blum mentioned those 42 applicants in interviews. Nor did they acknowledge the 168 black and Latino students with grades as good as or better than Fisher's who were also denied entry into the university that year. Also left unsaid is the fact that Fisher turned down a standard UT offer under which she could have gone to the university her sophomore year if she earned a 3.2 GPA at another Texas university school in her freshman year.
In an interview last month, Blum agreed Fisher's credentials and circumstances make it difficult to argue — as he and his supporters have so ardently in public — that but for her race Fisher would have been a Longhorn.
"There are some Anglo students who had lower grades than Abby who were admitted also," Blum told ProPublica. "Litigation like this is not a black and white paradigm."
Blum started his one-man nonprofit, the Project on Fair Representation (http://www.projectonfairrepresentation.org/), in 2005. The organization is funded by deep-pocketed conservatives to, according to its website, influence "jurisprudence, public policy, and public attitudes regarding race and ethnicity" in voting, education, contracting and employment. To do so, Blum — who is not a lawyer — helps arrange pro bono representation to fight race-based policies that were meant to address inequalities.
According to a Reuters profile (https://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/04/us-usa-court-casemaker-idUSBRE8B30V220121204), Blum has brought at least a dozen lawsuits against such programs and laws — including four that made it to the Supreme Court. He has two on the current docket, Fisher and the Shelby County, Ala., case challenging a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/shelby-county-v-holder/).
In the Fisher case, while the young woman may have lent her name to the lawsuit, the case before the Court has very little to do with her. Her name appears just five times in the thousands of words that make up the body of the complaint. She has already gone on to graduate from Louisiana State University, her second choice, and is working in finance at a firm in Austin.
Asked by a news reporter what harm she had suffered, she cited only her inability to tap into UT's alumni network and possibly missing out on a better first job. If she wins, Fisher seeks only the return of her application fee and housing deposit — a grand total of $100 in damages.
So while the Fisher case has been billed as a referendum on affirmative action, its backers have significantly grander ambitions: They seek to make the case a referendum on the14th Amendmentitself (https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/14thamendment.html). At issue is whether the Constitution's equal protection clause, drafted by Congress during Reconstruction (http://www.howard.edu/library/reference/guides/reconstructionera/default.htm) to ensure the rights of black Americans, also prohibits the use of race to help them overcome the nation's legacy of racism.
The Supreme Court has never ruled that the Constitution bars any and all laws and government programs that consider race. But Blum and his supporters, seeing an opening with the current Court, seek to overturn more than a century of precedent.
The true crux of the suit is not Fisher's failed application, but that government officials violate the constitutional rights of white Americans when they consider race in a way that might help African-Americans and Latinos.
"An argument can be made that it is simply impossible to tease out down to the last student who would have been admitted, and who would have not been admitted, had they been a different skin color," Blum said. "What we know is skin color is weighed and ethnicity is weighed by the University of Texas in their admissions process, and that alone is enough to strike down the plan."
Blum and his supporters say the reasoning is simple. The Constitution is colorblind and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits the government from treating people differently because of race.
It's an argument first successfully championed by the NAACP and other civil rights groups, most notably in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the Supreme Court declared the notion of "separate but equal" to be a fallacy.
"In its history, colorblindness has this progressive, anti-racist push behind it," said Ian Haney-López, a constitutional scholar at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
But following the Brown decision, the very groups that had ardently — and violently — defended laws mandating separation by race used the notion of a colorblind Constitution to challenge court orders to integrate schools.
"They began to say, yes, the Constitution is colorblind, and so the state cannot distinguish between races when it tried to remedy segregation," he said.
As a result of Southern resistance, it would take six years after Brown before 6-year old Ruby Bridges (http://www.rubybridges.com/story.html), wearing crisp white socks and black-bowed shoes, became the first black student to attend a white elementary school in the South. The image of the diminutive brown-skinned girl who needed U.S. marshals to protect her from an angry white mob inspired Norman Rockwell to preserve the moment in a painting that now hangs in the White House occupied by the first black president.
Initially, the Supreme Court unambiguously knocked those arguments down. In a 1971 ruling (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0402_0001_ZO.html), it said that government could not mandate colorblindness when doing so would defeat the integration requirement of Brown v. Board of Education. A few years later, in a ruling on affirmative action (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0438_0265_ZS.html), Justice Harry Blackmun wrote, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take race into account. There is no other way."
But as the Supreme Court's make-up has grown more conservative, it has taken up a steady stream of so-called reverse discrimination cases (http://www.doi.gov/pmb/eeo/cases/reverse.cfm), in which white plaintiffs have argued that race-specific measures born of the civil rights movement discriminate against white Americans and violate the 14th Amendment.
Supreme Court decisions have eroded programs and laws that use race to remedy inequalities, but not eliminated them altogether. And in a 2003 opinion written by centrist Sandra Day O'Connor, the justices narrowly upheld affirmative action in college admissions when it is the only means to ensure diversity.
But the Court's make-up changed in what scholars consider a significant way when Samuel Alito, considered the third most conservative Supreme Court justice since 1937, replaced O'Connor in 2006. Since then, several justices have made their constitutional disdain for race-conscious programs known. In a controversial 2007 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts sent a clear message when he used the equal protection argument at play in Brown v. Board of Education to strike down voluntary desegregation plans in schools.
Evoking a colorblind Constitution, Roberts said, "The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race, is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
And just last month during oral arguments over the constitutionality of a key aspect of the Voting Rights Act, Justice Antonin Scalia derisively called what's considered the most successful civil rights law in history a "racial entitlement." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/27/voting-rights-act-supreme-court_n_2768942.html)
Public opinion on race has changed over time as well. In the 1950s, surveys show, most white Americans believed that black Americans faced substantial discrimination but that they themselves experienced little. Today, despite gaping disparities between black and white Americans in income, education, health care, homeownership, employment and college admissions, a majority of white Americans (https://now.tufts.edu/news-releases/whites-believe-they-are-victims-racism-more-o) now believe they are just as likely, or more likely, to face discrimination as black Americans.
Blum chose the University of Texas to mount what could be a decisive challenge to affirmative action in college admissions because it already had what was regarded as a "race-neutral" process — the Top 10 program. Since many Texas high schools remain segregated, taking the top 10 percent of students (http://www.texastop10.princeton.edu/reports/forthcoming/capitalizing_on_segregation.pdf) from black and Latino high schools ensured a substantial population of students of color at the UT.
As a consequence, Blum believed he could challenge whether the additional use of race to fill out the entering class passed constitutional muster.
To get standing in court, Blum needed a victim. That's when he started looking for a version of the Brown family, someone who could represent the arguable hurt caused when public officials used race.
This approach, too, mirrors an NAACP tactic from half a century ago. Then, knowing the Supreme Court was unlikely to throw out segregation in one fell swoop, the civil rights group brought a narrower challenge to segregated school facilities first.
One of those cases, ironically, targeted the same university as Blum — the University of Texas at Austin. The university, which had been closed to black students since its founding, denied the law school application (https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jrs01) of Heman Marion Sweatt because the state constitution required that black and white students attend separate schools.
Because Texas had no black law school, the NAACP sued, arguing that the state violated the constitutional mandate to provide equal facilities for black and white students. The Supreme Court ruled that the hastily put together black law school created to avoid admitting Sweatt could not possibly be equal. It ordered Texas to admit Sweatt as its first black student in 1950.
That suit launched the stone that would shatter separate but equal just four years later when the Court struck down segregation in schools in Brown.
Blum and his supporters hope to use the Fisher case, and the 14th Amendment challenge to the Voting Rights Act that Blum is also behind, in the same way.
According to Blum, the Constitution sees affirmative action policies — in college, in contracting, in employment — and Jim Crow laws as twin evils.
"I don't see the distinction," he said.
But several constitutional scholars interviewed for this piece dispute this notion. Neil Siegel of Duke University called this interpretation of the 14th Amendment "perverse." Georgetown law professor Girardeau A. Spann called it "discriminatory."
While the 14th Amendment doesn't mention race, the drafters went on to pass race-specific legislation (https://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Fisher-v-2.-UT-Austin-PDF.pdf) aimed at helping former slaves and other black Americans overcome more than a century of racial oppression.
Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said that the concept of colorblindness holds great rhetorical appeal but that "there is no basis for concluding that the 14th Amendment equal protection clause requires colorblindness." In drafting the 14th Amendment, he said, Congress recognized "an enormous difference between a white majority disadvantaging minorities and a white majority acting to remedy past discrimination."
Conservatives challenging these types of programs purport to champion the legacy of the civil rights movement, Haney-Lopez said, but the historical roots of their efforts are much more cynical.
"I think that is incredibly important that people realize that today's proponents of colorblindnesspretend that they are the heirs to Thurgood Marshall and John Marshall Harlan," he said. "But that is a lie. They are the heirs of Southern resistance to integration. And the colorblindness arguments that they use come directly from the Southern efforts to defeat Brown v. Board of Education."
Ilya Shapiro, a senior constitutional studies fellow at the Cato Institute, which filed an amicus brief supporting Fisher, thinks otherwise.
"I am not going to speak to anyone else's motives. It is unfair to paint people with the Jim Crow brush because they have those kinds of arguments," he said. "I don't like people being judged based on the color of their skin." If a program "treats people different because one has a different skin color, I find that offensive and I think the Constitution does as well."
But when asked why the drafters created programs targeted to black Americans if they did not intend the Constitution to allow the government to use race to help minority groups, Shapiro said, "It was a curious period."
At the same time Congress drafted the equal protection clause, he said, it also "voted for segregated schools in the District of Columbia."
That example is the very same one that segregationists Strom Thurmond and Richard Brevard Russell used when they drafted the 1956 Southern Manifesto (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/sources_document2.html) urging officials to resist the Supreme Court's use of the equal protection clause to overturn school segregation.
The impact of a ruling that bans all racial considerations by universities, employers and governments "could have devastating impact on the ability to overcome past inequalities," Siegel said.
Few experts think Blum and his supporters are apt to win that big a victory in the Fisher case. And so he will likely be on the hunt again for another case, and another perfect plaintiff.
Nikole Hannah-Jones covered civil rights and fair housing for ProPublica. Previously, she covered governmental issues, the census, and race and ethnicity at The Oregonian.
Nikole.Hannah-Jones@propublica.org
@nhannahjones (https://twitter.com/nhannahjones)
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-tells-bizarre-lie-traditional-masculine-virtues-are-now-illegal
https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/trump-s-recent-rallies-suggest-he-is-taking-his-base-down-an-even-darker-path-than-before/
Former President Donald Trump may no longer be active on social media but he is still managing to effectively reach his base. In fact, a new analysis published by NPR explains why Trump's latest disturbing message could take his supporters down a darker conspiratorial path and cause more harm than his previous time in office. (https://www.npr.org/2022/02/01/1077166847/trump-escalates-racist-rhetoric-plays-on-white-grievance-at-recent-rallies)
To reach his base, Trump has resorted to holding campaign-style rallies again with more extreme racist rhetoric. NPR's Domenico Montanaro pointed out that the former president is once again attempting to spin circumstances by offering distorted views of what is really happening. From bashing the federal prosecutors investigating him to offering empty promises to Capitol rioters currently facing charges for their role in the insurrection, Trump made a number of disturbing claims.
"Trump alleged during a rally in Texas over the weekend that Black prosecutors investigating him are 'racist,' and he is again flirting with mob violence, calling for mass protests if they do anything he deems to be 'wrong or illegal,'" Montanaro wrote.
Montanaro also highlighted Trump's remarks at a recent rally in Arizona writing: "Here's how Trump distorted what New York is doing at a rally in Arizona earlier this month: 'The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies,' Trump said (https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-rally-trump-claims-covid-19-treatment-is-anti-white-people-2022-1). 'You get it based on race. In fact, in New York state, if you're white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical help. If you're white, you go right to the back of the line.""
The former president also suggested he would pardon Capitol riot suspects charged for storming the federal building. Montanaro added, "And after teasing a 2024 run — 'to take back that beautiful, beautiful house that happens to be white' — he said one of his actions as president could be to pardon those convicted as a result of their actions during last year's insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. More than 750 people and counting have been charged (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965472049/the-capitol-siege-the-arrested-and-their-stories) with crimes."
Trump also suggested that Capitol rioters are not being treated fairly despite their roles in the insurrection. "If I run and I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly," Trump said. "We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly."
However, Trump didn't stop there. Montanaro also noted that much of his rhetoric focused on "white grievances" as he attempted to motivate his supporters with the use of "race-based anger" and the conspiratorial "white replacement theory."
12 21 joe rogan pelosi head witch coming for you // war on xian, anti-gubmint take your guns
On One America News Network, three champions of right-wing media -- former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, and acquitted vigilante gunman Kyle Rittenhouse -- have become focal points ofOAN’s take on a traditional conservative victim complex.
Conservative media have inculcated deep fear of persecution in millions of people, claiming social media companies enforcing their policies against misinformation and calls for violence is like the Holocaust (https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/conservatives-want-everyone-know-theyre-real-victims-january-6-insurrection), an antisemitic mass shooting by a far-right conspiracy theorist is a generic attack on all “people of faith (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/10/29/how-trump-and-republicans-wield-the-politics-of-victimhood/),” the FBI investigating threats against school board members is a sign that parents who oppose critical race theory will be treated as “domestic terrorists (https://www.mediamatters.org/critical-race-theory/conservative-media-falsely-claim-activist-parents-will-be-labeled-domestic),” and (an annual favorite) there's a war on Christmas (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/us/war-on-christmas-controversy.html) and those who celebrate.
Now, OAN wants the same audience to know that if the Democrats can politically persecute Bannon, O’Keefe, and Rittenhouse, they will get you next.
Bannon surrendered (https://www.npr.org/2021/11/15/1055832976/steve-bannon-surrenders-contempt-of-congress-charges-jan-6) himself to an arrest warrant for contempt of Congress after refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House’s January 6 investigation. O’Keefe’s home was searched (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/us/politics/james-okeefe-project-veritas-ashley-biden.html) by the FBI as part of an investigation into a diary allegedly stolen from President Joe Biden’s daughter. And Rittenhouse was acquitted (https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/11/19/us/kyle-rittenhouse-trial) of multiple murder charges at trial after he shot three Black Lives Matter protesters, killing two and alleging self-defense.
On OAN, all three men are simply conservative patriots being politically persecuted by Democrats.
OAN’s attitude toward the legal predicaments of these three men mirrors a common refrain from right-wing media during the many investigations of the Trump administration: If they can do this to him, they can do this to you. And like with Donald Trump before them, there’s infinitesimally little to suggest that Bannon, O’Keefe, and Rittenhouse are simply being persecuted for their conservative politics, and even less to suggest that random conservatives should fear government persecution simply because of their beliefs.
The conservative media industry runs on grievance, fear, and victimhood, and OAN is using these three men to churn up even more resentment.
Steve Bannon
On the November 16 edition of OAN’s The Real Story, host Natalie Harp accused the federal “Injustice Department” of prosecuting Bannon as part of “yet another witch hunt.” Harp’s guest, Bannon’s War Room co-host Raheem Kassam, warned Republican officials (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982648) that “if you don’t think that after they’re done with somebody like Bannon that they’re coming after you, you’ve got another thing coming.”
Bannon attorney David Schoen told Real America that “every American citizen ought to be scared to death by” his client’s prosecution, and OAN host Dan Ball claimed the former Trump strategist was the victim of “a politically motivated witch hunt.” According to (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982650) Schoen, Bannon did not comply with the subpoena because he thought he had to follow Trump’s invocation of executive privilege. Schoen claimed that the Department of Justice chose to criminally prosecute Bannon “vindictively, out of revenge, to punish” him. Ball concurred that the Biden “regime” is using the Justice Department “to go after political enemies to get payback.”
Tipping Point host Kara McKinney linked the murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the killing of George Floyd to other “prosecutorial attacks” on conservatives like Bannon. McKinney’s disorganized rant (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982651), which also touched on O’Keefe, Rittenhouse, and anti-critical race theory parents as victims, posited that these cases are “all related” as examples of “political persecution.” The relation appeared to be that two members of the House January 6 commission, Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Bobby Rush (D-IL), were formerly involved in Black radical politics. “So bring this up anytime someone tries to tell you that what's happening to Bannon, and to really the rest of us, is anything less than political persecution,” McKinney concluded.
On Tipping Point, far-right podcaster Millie Weaver said the Bannon indictment “is the left-wing regime going after their political opponents and weaponizing the American justice system to do so.” Weaver also added (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982652) O’Keefe to her list of victims, claiming both cases are actually about unnamed enemies seeking “the media hit pieces and the psyops that can result” from their arrests. After extensively lying that left-wing agitators were responsible for January 6, Weaver complained “only the political opponents of the Biden administration” are being subpoenaed for the attack on the Capitol. McKinney complained (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982653) that the “January 6 political prisoners,” including “military veterans” and “MAGA grandmas,” are being held on “heinous charges” and “force-fed critical race theory,” asking if their plight was “just part of the re-education really that the left is using against you and I, the patriots of America?”
James O’Keefe
In Focus host Stephanie Hamill: “It might be James O’Keefe today, but it could easily be me or somebody else tomorrow.” Hamill was speaking to (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982655) far-right commentator Dinesh D’Souza, a staunch Trump ally who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud in 2014 but was pardoned by Trump in 2020. D’Souza dishonestly added that “Republicans would never dream of doing \this] to their critics. It would be unthinkable for example of Trump, or earlier Reagan or Bush, to go after left-wing journalists in this manner,” an obvious omission of Trump’s [extensive (https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/trump-administrations-war-press) war on the press.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told OAN the O’Keefe raid “shows the FBI has been weaponized by the Biden administration, and this gives every American reason to fear the government” and signals the rise of communism in the U.S. Greene said (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982657) the investigation was evidence that “the Democrat Party is the Communist Party of America” because “this is what communists do in many other countries. They want to silence their enemies, anyone that’s going to reveal the truth,” such as O’Keefe. The GOP representative warned viewers that they will “see these tactics over and over and this is why Americans, you need to get ready. You need to be able to stand up firm against these fear tactics from the Democrat Communist Party, and not allow them to rear this head of communism.”
Real America’s Dan Ball on O’Keefe investigation: “If we don’t stand up to the tyrants currently running this administration, it could be you or me they target next.” Ball concluded (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982659) the segment by telling viewers to “remember what 45 always said. ‘They’re not coming for me, they’re coming for you.’ [O’Keefe] was just in the way.”
Ball: “This is an example of what’s to come. … Like Trump used to say, they’re not coming after him, they’re coming after you.” Ball continued (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982660), “Don’t think they won’t come for other journalists, and you, next. They’re willing to literally tear down everything our institutions stand for and use the DOJ and the FBI as a political weapon.” Guest Harmeet Dhillon, who is an attorney for Project Veritas, claimed that “this is an existential threat to the First Amendment and to our liberties and to our future, and every American … should recognize that. It’s loud and clear.”
Kyle Rittenhouse
OAN guest: “Today it's Kyle Rittenhouse. Tomorrow it’s you." Defense witness and Real America’s Voice (https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/website-far-right-broadcaster-real-americas-voice-full-qanon-content) employee (https://www.wisn.com/article/theyre-very-slanted-prosecution-questions-credibility-of-defense-witness-in-rittenhouse-trial/38228842#) Drew Hernandez warned OAN viewers (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982661) that “what they're clearly doing, especially in the mainstream media, is not only are they trying to paint responsible gun owners as the villains, but they're probably even trying to discourage future gun owners from even attempting to buy a firearm to defend themselves, because, hey, we did this to Kyle. We can do this to you.” OAN’s Stephanie Hamill agreed, adding that Americans were watching the trial’s outcome to see if they “have the right to defend themselves” from “Black Lives Matter rioters and looters.”
Larry Klayman: The “reverse racism” against Rittenhouse was “maybe a lesson for the American people at large too.” Klayman, a right-wing conspiracy theorist (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/larry-klayman), explained (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982662) that the apparent lesson was “if somebody shoves a gun in your face, don’t take it lightly. Kyle [Rittenhouse] did not.” Klayman suggested that the Biden administration and the mainstream media would only make society more hostile to gun owners, advising people “to exercise their Second Amendment rights, their right to bear arms, because it’s only going to get worse” under the Biden administration.
Tipping Point’s Kara McKinney: The Rittenhouse trial shows that “the left can set your city on fire” and “have convicted pedos chase you down,” but “if you try to defend yourself against it, you’re still somehow the bad guy.” McKinney continued (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982664), complaining to Dinesh D’Souza that “the idea that they can destroy your life and everything with it and you have to sit there and take it and you’re not allowed to have self-defense” is “almost setting the stage” for Black Lives Matter to “destroy our cities and you and I, we’re not allowed to fight back.”
Revolver News’ Darren Beattie asked OAN viewers to “consider the larger context” of a “vindictive and politically motivated” prosecution and “how fragile this justice system is in the United States and how weaponized it is politically,” despite Rittenhouse’s acquittal. Beattie, a former Trump White House aide fired (and later rehired (https://www.businessinsider.com/darren-beattie-trump-speechwriter-white-nationalist-ties-rehired-holocaust-memorials-2020-11)) for his ties to white supremacist groups, claimed (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982666) that a conviction would have “destroyed” Rittenhouse’s “entire life over nothing for doing something that, frankly, any upstanding citizen would do, and that is protect his community from rioters and looters,” suggesting that any viewer who would do the same could also face a murder trial.
OAN host Stephanie Hamill: According to the media (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/3982678), “if you’re happy about Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, you’re apparently a white supremacist too.”
an 11 21
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has prompted a social media firestorm with controversial argument suggesting Democrats are making an "attempt to give us a world beyond men."
During an appearance at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Fla., the Republican senator insisted "manhood" was "under attack" as he urged men embrace tradionally masculine positions (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/01/josh-hawley-feminism-men-pornography-video-games), reports The Guardian.
"The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic," he said. "They want to define the traditional masculine virtues – things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness – as a danger to society."
Hawley also discuss a seemingly baseless claim about the connection between males and pornography.
"Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?" Hawley said.
"While the left may celebrate this decline of men, I for one cannot join them. No one should."
In addition to his claims about pornography, Hawley attempted to connect toxic masculinity to a number of other issues.
"For centuries, lovers of liberty have praised these qualities as the highest standard of manhood. That's not to say that women don't possess them. But it is to say that these virtues are the bright side of the aggression and competitiveness and independence that psychologists, no less than philosophers, have long observed in men." he said.
"Assertiveness and independence are strengths when used to protect and empower others."
Hawley's remarks quickly led to blowback on Twitter as many users dismantled his arguments and his claims about the characteristics of manhood.
"In the good old days, uncriticized American men fucked real top-heavy silicone queens and machine-gunned their way through actual space aliens on a daily basis," David Simon tweeted. "Also, don't shake the junior Missouri senator's hand until you see him wash it.
https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/white-christianity/
cdv
since at least the 1980s, the conservative movement has increasingly been governed by faith, which can be described as a belief in things that cannot be proved by empirical means. In practice, this means that the Republican Party and the larger right-wing movement's policies and ideology across a range of issues — the economy, the environment, science, health care, democracy and the rule of law — have little if any basis in fact.
In the Age of Trump, movement conservatism has metastasized or devolved into its purest form: American fascism, a form of religious politics taken to its most illogical extreme. Facts, truth and even the conception of reality itself are being replaced with lies, fictions, and fantasies that serve the American fascist movement and its leader.
As public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown, white right-wing Christians, especially Protestant evangelicals, have pledged their loyalty to Donald Trump and his movement. Many view him as a literal prophet or savior: His evident immorality has been rationalized as somehow necessary to his prophetic role.
Violence is a key feature of the new American fascism, as dramatically illustrated on Jan. 6 but also at many other moments. Trumpists and other Republican fascists, many or most of whom identify as Christian, have widely embraced political violence, including outright terrorism, as a necessary measure to "protect" their "traditional way of life" against "radical socialist Democrats, Black and brown people, Muslims, LGBTQ people and pretty much all Americans who still believe in the constitutional separation of church and state and the rule of law.
Together, these forces exist in a state of collective narcissism and shared malignant reality. In that relationship, white right-wing Christianity is a nexus or type of glue.
To discuss this profoundly disturbing phenomenon, I recently spoke with Anthea Butler (https://antheabutler.com/), professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a guest on MSNBC, CNN, PBS and the BBC, and her essays have been featured in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Religion News Service and MSNBC. Butler's new book is "White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America (https://bookshop.org/a/2464/9781469661179)".
In this conversation, she discusses the phenomenon of "white Christianity" and its role in the Age of Trump and America's current crisis of democracy. She also explores the specific role this phenomenon played in the events of Jan. 6 and the ascendant fascist movement, and its crucial role in legitimating and normalizing the society-wide moral crisis catalyzed and empowered by the Age of Trump.
Toward the end of this conversation, Butler warns that too many white people have erroneously convinced themselves that racial privilege will protect them from escalating right-wing Christian terrorism and related political violence.
This conversation has been edited, as usual, for clarity and length.
Imagine that American democracy is a patient in the hospital. If you were a type of religious figure — a priest, an imam, a rabbi or the like — what counsel would you be offer that patient in this dire moment?
I will answer that question in the context of the Catholic tradition. In that faith tradition there is something called "extreme unction." This is when you are on your deathbed, and they come to you to give you a prayer. Before the changes of Vatican II, the priest also carried a little kit, which had what would be used for communion and other needs. If I were diagnosing democracy right now in America, it is in a state of extreme unction. American democracy is in its last moments and it is going to need a miracle to get up from that deathbed. I would whisper in that patient's ear right now that you had better decide to fight back or you are dead in the next 15 minutes. Your 15 minutes are about up.
What would penance look like?
Continuing with the Catholic tradition. Most of the time the penitence, in the old Catholic tradition, would involve beating oneself. Self-flagellation. There would be bloodletting. You would not want someone else to make the bloodletting happen for you.
In the case of American democracy, especially with the Democratic Party, they are holding on to some old, tired notion that they are still in power and that the things that they have counted on before will work for them in this moment of crisis. The Democrats are counting on Black folks standing in line for 20 hours to vote. They are counting on Black people to ignore the fact that the Democrats have not done much for them. The Democrats are counting on the good Black Christians to come and save them, once again, from themselves.
There are all these political leaders and others who claim to be Christians and say that America is supposedly a "Christian nation." But there is little talk of the many forms of evil both summoned and empowered by the Age of Trump. How is this being reconciled?
There are two primary reasons, as I see it. Half the time they do not believe that there is in fact a devil. Moreover, many of these Christians are the devils at work in this society. Two, if you don't believe in the devil, then you don't have to deal with anything that is evil.
Instead, you use language such as "people are misguided" or "they have the wrong idea" or "they didn't really mean to lie like that." Evangelicals of the 1950s, and even the '60s and early '70s, would have looked at Donald Trump and said that he was the Antichrist. Now evangelicals worship him. To be clear, I am not offering a position on whether not I believe that Trump is the Antichrist or whether he should be worshipped. I'm just telling you what is happening.
Donald Trump, his regime and the Republican fascist movement are objectively evil. How do white Christians explain away such behavior?
Because they're in a bubble. Their pastor is reinforcing these messages. The people they live around are reinforcing these messages. They listen to Fox News. Their other information sources reinforce the same message.
Let's be frank: I don't care how many times they carry a Bible. Half of them are not reading it anyway. One may think that these people are evangelical Christians and therefore they know scripture. Yes, some of them do. These evangelicals may know it very well. But even though these evangelicals say, "I'm living by scripture," the reality is that they are living by the scriptures that are written by their politicians and their pastors.
The Jan. 6 coup attempt and attack on the Capitol was an act of white right-wing Christian terrorism against multiracial democracy. Given the Christian iconography and behavior seen on Jan. 6 — that huge cross, the prayers, the horns, and other examples — why do mainstream news media and others refuse to state such obvious facts?
It's intentional. They cannot come to grips with the fact that the Christianity of America is just like any other fundamentalist religion that gets weaponized in order to hold on to power. Therefore, they have to continue to tell themselves that everything that happened on Jan. 6 was an aberration and not something religious in nature. Those people are not "Christians" like us.
But the reality is that those people are you. And not only are those people you, they sat with you in the pews. They prayed with you. And if they had succeeded on Jan. 6, you would be right there on their side. And you would say that God must have blessed them to be able to overthrow the United States government.
Can you explain more about the horns and specific prayers that were used on Jan. 6?
They had horns, what are known as the ram's horn or theshofar,which appeared in the Old Testament. Those horns were blown before the walls of Jericho came down. It was like a battle. Those horns were used in rituals in ancient Judaism. That horn is also used in Jewish rituals today to mark certain kinds of events, whether that's Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. The blowing of the horn means that we are going into battle — in this context, that God is going with us into the Capitol.
The kinds of prayers we saw on Jan. 6 at the Capitol are called "imprecatory prayers." There are the kinds of prayers used when you want your enemy to die. On Jan. 6 they believed that they were on a mission from God to go into the Capitol and get Nancy Pelosi, Mike Pence and other people they saw as enemies.
And that huge Christian cross?
They used that cross to be like the crusaders during the European Middle Ages.
Tate Reeves, the Republican governor of Mississippi, recently said that Christians are not afraid of the coronavirus because they believe in "eternal life." How did you process his assertion? The country is in the midst of a deadly plague, and right-wing leaders are summoning God and their faith to encourage people not to take proper health precautions.
Those words are a claim that "we" are not afraid of death because we Christians. It is a claim of certainty on going to heaven. It will all be fine, because if you die from the coronavirus then you are going to see Jesus. Well, what if Jesus is not there? What if there's no Jesus? What if you just drop straight down into the pit of hell?
I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, but the way in which the governor of Mississippi spoke about the pandemic was as though if you die, then it is all going to be all right. What kind of sense does that make?
As a matter of public policy, Christian nationalists, dominionists and other Christian fascists are trying to impose their End Times eschatological fantasies onto secular America in opposition to the Constitution and the separation of church and state. These are fantasies of death and destruction. These white right-wing Christians literally seem to be seeking out death.
They do in fact appear to be seeking out death. They have this huge desire to live the way they want to live without restraint. At some point it is death for you, but it is not death for them.
One of the dimensions here that many people do not understand is that when the pandemic started and many of these red-state and other right-wing leaders were telling people not to wear masks, they were kind of hoping that the "right people" would die. We know who the "right people" are.
Now, people in red states are dying and those Republican and other right-wing leaders can't get out of the spiral of telling people not to get vaccinated. They were hoping that all the people of color were going to die. But now in the red states, it's a lot of white folks dying. A lot of white children are going to die, and they still are doubling down on the same thing. It hasn't changed.
What is "White Christianity"?
White Christians tend to do very different things than Black Christians or Asian American Christians or Latino Christians in this country. You can be a Black Christian and believe in white evangelicalism. You can be Black and a Christian and be bought out and sold out to white evangelicalism or white Christianity because you accept the premises of what these white preachers are telling you, especially about how you're supposed to love America for example.
There are Black Christians, and others, who are not being discerning about what is Christianity, as opposed to what is better described as White American Christianity.
For some Christians, the question becomes, "Well, I'm a red-letter Christian," which basically refers to how the words of Jesus are red in the Bible. "I believe what Jesus says." My intervention there is: If that's the case, great. That means you have to be for the poor and all that comes with that.
White Christianity is a Christianity that is based on the following: Jesus is white. Jesus privileges white culture and white supremacy, and the political aspirations of whiteness over and against everything else. White Christianity assumes that everybody should be subsumed under whiteness in terms of culture and society.
White Christianity assumes that it does not have to look at poverty. We see this in the form of the so-called prosperity gospel, and that any blessing you get from God is because God favors you. If anybody else is out of favor, let's say some poor kid in Northwest Philadelphia who doesn't have enough to eat, well, that's just too bad because they're not blessed of God.
When suffering happens, it's blamed on anybody else but God.
As part of the right-wing culture war narrative there is a martial language that includes Christianity. There is talk of "Christian struggle" and "Christian war." What are the connections between such militant language and actual right-wing violence?
That language has a long history in this country. There's war imagery all through Biblical scripture. There are war songs that people sing in churches. This idea about battling for the Lord, whether we're talking about the Crusades or the Civil War or fighting communism and everything else, is embedded in our history. That language of war and fighting is being used to incite people now.
Most people in America do not want such violence to happen. The problem is that if you've got enough people who want such an outcome, who can make it hell for everybody else, and there are people in power who want to use the public to create decay and destruction, such violent language is going to be used to that end. Donald Trump knows how to push every one of these buttons.
How do you explain the role of white Christianity in the right-wing disruptions and threats of violence at local school board meetings about "critical race theory," vaccinations and other topics?
It is as though nobody remembers the 1950s, when white people were standing outside yelling and screaming and cussing Black children who were actually integrating these schools. These were Christians who were in churches, who were out there yelling and spitting and screaming. Women especially. Evangelicalism and harsh rhetoric have always been part and parcel of this.
We need to quit talking about evangelicalism as though it is some type of coddling religion and understand it for what it has been and what it is doing.
The language of "religious freedom" is central to the power of white Christianity in America. Other religions are rarely able to make such claims and have them accepted as normal or reasonable by the public, or especially by the Supreme Court and political leaders. In practice, the "freedom" of white Christianity is something unique in America. Muslims, for example, are rarely if ever afforded such protections and special rights.
The rhetoric of freedom is being used to elevate "freedom" for white Christians and to suppress freedom for everyone else. In order to remain on top, the freedom of everybody else is being suppressed. These types of white Christians want you to do what they want you to do. In turn, you will be controlled by them. Limiting women's reproductive freedoms is a way to keep everybody in check.
What is the role of white privilege in explaining why so many white Americans are able to deny the serious dangers embodied by white Christian fascist violence?
White privilege convinces many white people that they will not personally have to deal with the violence. They believe that, unlike other people, they will just be able to melt away into the background when the violence happens and nobody is going to shoot people who look like them.
White privilege has convinced them that nobody's going to take their home away from them. Nobody's going to kill their kids. Nobody's going to march them out as an example and shoot them. White privilege has convinced them that they can take some type of loyalty oath or pledge and they will be safe.