identity victim

2/19

see wedge

merri ok

see grievance reverse discrimination --> trump pseudo populism?

see tribe us vs them

see great replacement THEY are STEALING OUR COUNTRY

identity politics contested bizzaroworld mirroring?

see invers- perv

those brown ppl shd not organize to demand equality, but fine to defend ourselves by white power / xian identity

see white grievance DEI AA

we white ppl cannot be racist oppressors when we are in fact the victim for affirmative action cases taking our job/ slot in college?

war on xmas --> xian

TP?

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// kamala turned black b/c it is an advantage

an 9 24

LGBTQ activists call out Tucker Carlson’s 'ridiculous' claim Buttigieg isn't really gay

Alex Henderson

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an 2 23 badash?

Rep. 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 Monday morning, barely weeks after calling President Joe 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."

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, 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 from red to blue and held all the others in 2022.)

One Twitter user reminded that Greene is a "key advisor" to Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. Her support of the embattled McCarthy helped put the gavel in his hand, and he has pledged loyalty to her. "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 in response: "This is treasonous. Period."

Others also called it "treason," and still others "sedition."

Ryan Cooper, managing editor of The American Prospect, tweeted, "remarkable how casually these people suggest literal treason."

Another Twitter user observed, "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."

---

mma 12 22

CROWDER (HOST): Look, hey - you're now experiencing astealing of your country.Let me put a fine point on it. Do you believe the United States is a country where those in power support sex with children? If not, there are enough -- not all of them, of course not. But there are enough people in positions of authority who think that that should be a part of the fabric of our country. Let's not talk about an election. You are having your country stolen from you.

---

===

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.)....

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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, 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 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 of the rhetoric used by white supremacists and were embraced and commended by former KKK leader David Duke. Outside of white supremacist circles, however, politicians, activist groups, and other media figures widely condemned the rant.

[david duke praise retweet]

Following the criticism, Ingraham defended 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 and undermined by her history of racist commentary and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Her Fox News show, The Ingraham Angle, is less than 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 asylum claims from Hondurans fleeing violence because, according to her, “it’s not our problem.”
She claimed 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]

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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 Fox News show, former radio show, and, now, new podcast. Ingraham has made scores of racist and anti-immigrant statements, including echoing white supremacists. On numerous occasions, she has propagated the popular white nationalist “replacement theory,” wherein non-white citizens “replace” white citizens. More recently, Ingraham came under fire for defending white nationalist Paul Nehlen. In the past, advertisers have fled from her show after Ingraham mocked a Parkland school shooting survivor and when she attacked the concept of diversity, 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]

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]

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]

Ingraham asked if the cast ofHamilton is 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]

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]

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]

Ingraham mocked and imitated Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-MN) accent, claiming she “doesn't sound like Minnesota” ...[many more]

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-tells-bizarre-lie-traditional-masculine-virtues-are-now-illegal

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cns MRC motto mantra, conservatives are under attack, send $

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lts & pol hunter thompson on proto-nazi hell's angels presage trump grievance

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===

no lnx twt

Conservative maps out the psychology of how Trump’s voter fraud claims became integral to his supporters’ 'tribal' identity

Alex Henderson April 19, 2022

Countless liberals, progressives, centrists, independents and Democrats — as well as some right-wing libertarians and Never Trump conservatives — have wondered why so many Donald Trump supporters are gullible enough to buy into the Big Lie when, in fact, there is zero evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. In an article published by The Atlantic on April 18, Never Trumper and conservative strategist Sarah Longwell analyzes the psychology of MAGA voters who still buy into the Big Lie — and according to Longwell, identity politics are a big part of it.

“Some 35% of Americans — including 68% of Republicans — believe the Big Lie, pushed relentlessly by former President Donald Trump and amplified by conservative media, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen,” Longwell explains. “They think that Trump was the true victor and that he should still be in the White House today…. For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose. They know something nefarious occurred but can’t easily explain how or why. What’s more, they’re mystified and sometimes angry that other people don’t feel the same.”

Longwell adds that she has been holding focus groups in order to “find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie.” And the types of comments she has heard include “I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right” and “something about it just didn’t seem right.”

:{:{}:

“The exact details of the story vary,” Longwell observes. “Was it Hugo Chávez who stole the election? Or the CIA? Or Italian defense contractors? Outlandish claims like these seem to have made this conspiracy theory more durable, not less. Regardless of plausibility, the more questions that are raised, the more mistrustful Trump voters are of the official results. Perhaps that’s because the Big Lie has been part of their background noise for years.”

Longwell continues, “Remember that Trump began spreading the notion that America’s elections were ‘rigged’ in 2016 — when he thought he would lose. Many Republicans firmly believed that the Democrats would steal an election if given the chance. When the 2020 election came and Trump did lose, his voters were ready to doubt the outcome.”

Longwell laments that there is no shortage of MAGA politicians and right-wing media figures who are more than happy to keep promoting the Big Lie to Trump voters.

“The problem is that the Big Lie is embedded in their daily life,” Longwell writes. “They hear from Trump-aligned politicians, their like-minded peers, and MAGA-friendly media outlets — and from these sources they hear the same false claims repeated ad infinitum.”

Longwell adds, “Now, we are at the point where to be a Republican means to believe the Big Lie. And as long as Republicans leading the party keep promoting and indulging the Big Lie, that will continue to be the case. If I’ve learned anything from my focus groups, it’s that something doesn’t have to make sense for voters to believe it’s true.”

---

note rubber glue inverse bizarroworld:

an 2 22

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) recently expressed concern about a new lawsuit referencing his "Stop the Steal" rhetoric which could subsequently impact his chances of re-election in the 2022 midterm elections. After fighting to push Trump's self-serving agenda, now, according to The Daily Beast, the Republican senator claims he's focused on the will of the American people.

On Monday, February 21, Cawthorn appeared on "The Tucker Carlson Tonight" where he shared his disdain of the critics calling him out in his own state.

“I’m sure that you were as puzzled as I was following Jan. 6 when they started saying that we were insurrectionists, seditionists, traitors. I thought they were just trying to get a flashy headline,” Cawthorn said.

However, the lawmaker also explained how this was part of a so-called “plan.”

Per The Daily Beast, the lawsuit focuses on the 14th Amendment, which includes a clause designed to prohibit former Confederates from holding public office. It states that no individual “having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress... to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”

“What is going on here is that they are actually very close to being able to subvert the will of over 700,000 Americans,” Cawthorn claimed.

However, Cawthorn appears to believe every constituent in his district is rallying behind him.

“And make no mistake, Tucker: This is not just about a 26-year-old from western North Carolina in a wheelchair," Cawthorn said. "This is about the future of our very nation. If they’re able to set this precedent in North Carolina, they will be able to keep anybody who had valid and legitimate concerns about what happened in the 2020 election from being able to ever hold office.”

Unsurprisingly, Carlson backed Cawthorn's assessment as he attempted to distort Democratic lawmakers' motives.

“I think your analysis is so smart. You’re exactly right,” the Fox News host gushed. “That’s why they called the rioters ‘insurrectionists.’ And so many conservative officeholders and news organizations have ignored it. They’re so embarrassed. They don’t see what this is really about, which is ending democracy.”

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aha yikes they are monetizing victimization, grievance,polarization, demonization see crensharrrrh vs mtg

mtg huge fundraiser 7m 2/22? demon is flipside of victim: tyranny gazpacho pelosi; likes/donation is a cheap fast hit way to feel you are takking action/stickking it to the woMAN who ids oppressing you, stealing US and ruining Am dr = commie socialist

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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.

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. '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 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."

---

note demographic shift biggest factor in 1/6 jan

aha did not see how imp to bannon and fascist coup:

an ah 1 22

On MSNBC and CNN, coverage of the one-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021 insurrection had a consistently dark tone. That day was portrayed as one of the most disturbing in U.S. history and a full-fledged assault on liberal democracy. But on Steve Bannon’s far-right “War Room” podcast, the mood was totally different; the former White House chief strategist, Never Trump conservative Tim Miller stresses in The Bulwark, was celebrating violent insurrection, not speaking out against it.

“In the week leading up to the first anniversary of January 6, I dove into ‘the War Room’ to see how the OG ‘Stop the Stealers’ were processing the fallout from their botched putsch,” Miller explains in an article published by The Bulwark on January 11. “What I found was that their effort to overthrow the government has been undeterred by the initial setback of Joe Biden being inaugurated. While Republican elites try to minimize the events of January 6, ‘the War Room’ and their minions have continued to take the coup both literally and seriously.”

Miller continues, “In their view, the Biden ‘regime’ is illegitimate, and the regime’s medical establishment has covered up nearly a half a million deaths from the COVID ‘vaccines.’ In 2022, they aim to put so many of their people in positions of power throughout state and local governments that next time, there will be nothing anyone can do to stop their quest for power. And this crusade is infused with an unmistakable religious fervor and appeal to a quasi-Christian nationalism that calls its devotees into action. As crazy as their show may sound on its face — and let me tell you, it seems very crazy — anyone who cares about American democracy should take that prospect very seriously indeed.”

During Bannon’s January 3-6 shows, Miller observes, his guests included awho’s-who of MAGA extremists — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, former Donald Trump adviser Peter Navarro and Trump lawyer/former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Miller warns that while Bannon’s show comes across as a theater of the absurd, that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

“If it weren’t for the domestic terrorism and the threat to democracy,” Miller writes, “the whole thing would be an over-the-top laugh riot…. Put it all together, and what you have is a show that offers Trump supporters a fascistic MAGA cosplay where they are the main characters, and the aggrieved victims, and also the all-powerful heroes…. From this vantage, the uprising that led to the January 6 riot is not a thing of the past, but an exercise to be learned from in their ongoing effort to ensure that they gain enough power so that next time the Democrats, and the establishment Republicans, and the Never Trumpers won’t be able to deny them total victory — and it’s part and parcel with their broader effort to tear down not just the government, but any American institution that might threaten their ability to control the levers of power.”

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an 12 21

...Bombarded with criticism for his childish stunt, the 35-year-old Schmeck told the Oregonian, “Now, I am being attacked for utilizing my freedom of speech.” And Obeidallah slams Schmeck for painting himself as a victim.

“Schmeck is now doing the cliché conservative move of saying he's being unfairly criticized because people have slammed his ‘joke’…. Aww, poor ‘victim’ Schmeck,” Obeidallah argues. “Apparently, he thinks he should be able to tell Biden to basically go f**k himself while on a family-friendly holiday call, but no one should be able to take issue with his actions. Sorry, that's not how freedom of speech works.”

Obeidallah continues, “If you want to troll a president to apparently make others on the right happy, you can expect criticism. If you don't want criticism because you are painfully thin-skinned, then don't say ‘Let's go, Brandon’ on a live Christmas Eve special. It's as simple as that.”...

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/conservative/

no lnx

The conservative urge to be a victim: Here’s why right-wing victimhood is spreading so fast

Sophia A. McClennen and SalonDecember 27, 2021

In late November a new variant of COVID-19 was detected by researchers in Botswana and South Africa. Within days, the omicron variant had reached California, marking the first documented case in the United States. By the end of December, omicron had not only become the dominant strain in the U.S, but it had also rapidly spread to push daily case counts well above the recent delta surge.

One of the greatest risks of omicron is the high degree of breakthrough infections, where vaccinated individuals still contract the virus. While the vaccinated, especially those who are boosted, tend to have much milder symptoms, if any at all, they still have the capacity to spread the virus. In only a few weeks, omicron has ripped through the country, stressing hospital capacity, canceling flights, disrupting holiday gatherings, and, most importantly, threatening lives. According to Johns Hopkins University data, between Dec. 1 and Christmas, over 39,000 Americans died of the virus

By all accounts, the principal reason why omicron is causing such havoc in the United States is our low rate of vaccination. The United States, at slightly over 61 percent full vaccination, is among the lowest of the developed world. Cuba has over 84 percent fully vaccinated. Even Brazil, under anti-vaxxer President Jair Bolsonaro has almost 67 percent fully vaccinated. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has been skeptical of the threats of COVID from the start. Yet, he took Trumpian irrationality to a whole new level, claiming a year ago that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine "could turn people into crocodiles or bearded ladies" — and even his country is more vaccinated than the United States.

While there remains much to be learned about omicron and its consequences to public health, one thing is clear: The only reason why the nation is at such extreme public health risk is because the GOP weaponized the pandemic for political gain, convincing their supporters to distrust science and resist any policy, no matter how reasonable, if it came from a Democrat.

We've spent time analyzing the head-scratching right-wing ploy of sowing distrust in vaccines within the GOP constituency, a move which has literally killed off supporters and occasionally GOP leaders and pundits as well. But what we haven't done is recognize that the right-wing response to the pandemic is part of a larger political practice: Victimized Bully Syndrome.

Some of you will be familiar with DARVO, an acronym for deny, attack and reverse victim and offender. DARVO describes the behavior of psychological abusers when they are being held accountable for their behavior.Donald Trump and his supporters clearly exhibit DARVO habits. Rather than accept blame for anything they do, they turn around and accuse those blaming them of creating the problem. Victimized Bully Syndrome (VBS), as I'm describing it, though, is slightly different from DARVO. With DARVO the abusive behavior comes first and DARVO only emerges if the attacker is asked to take responsibility. But with VBS the cries of being victims come first and are used to justify the underlying bullying behaviors. The bully under VBS is always already acting in self-defense.

Take this example: In a recent interview with Fox News, Dr. Mehmet Oz, candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania suggested that Americans had been victimized by President Biden's "one-size-fits-all" COVID-19 "rules that limit our freedom." According to Oz, U.S. citizens "want government to get out of their way to stop scaring them into submission."

If we set aside the sheer stupidity of a doctor suggesting that we need "as many different approaches as possible" to the pandemic, the critical takeaway is Oz's claim that Biden's policy is designed to victimize the public by scaring them, taking away their freedoms, and destroying their dignity. According to this logic, refusing to wear a mask, get vaccinated, or support public health policy is a valid defense, rather than bullying behavior that puts everyone in peril.

And lest there be any doubt, the right isn't just refusing to be vaccinated and to follow public health guidelines; in the face of the pandemic they have chosen to respond with aggressive bullying: engaging in violent confrontations over masking policies, attacking teachers, threatening school board members, violently trolling scientists who speak to the media about COVID, and more. In fact, the violent far-right has exploded in the United States along with COVID-19.

Similar to the "sore winner syndrome" we saw emerge in the wake of former President Trump's election, VBS posits that those on the right are all the time being victimized by their government and that it makes perfect sense to respond aggressively.

:{:{}:

It is this exact same logic that was the backdrop to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and we can see the same logic in play in right-wing responses to the House investigation into the attack. Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich claimed, "Democracy is under attack. However, not by the people who illegally entered the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, but instead by a committee whose members walk freely in its halls every day." That's right, according to Budowich the real threat to our democracy are those elected officials investigating what happened on January 6, not the actual people who attacked the Capitol. Those people were, according to this twisted logic, simply victims of election fraud.

It gets worse.

The victim card was at the heart of the Kyle Rittenhouse case as well. Rittenhouse claimed he shot three men, two fatally, with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle in self-defense. In his testimony, Rittenhouse stated the only reason he even went to Kenosha, Wisconsin on the night of the shootings was to provide first aid to people in need. Rittenhouse, then, was no average vigilante. Instead, he was an already victimized one, prepared to claim self-defense if he attacked anyone. In a post-verdict statement issued by the victims' parents, they nail the dangers of Rittenhouse's VBS. The verdict, according to them, "sends the unacceptable message that armed civilians can show up in any town, incite violence, and then use the danger they have created to justify shooting people in the street.

VBS, then, isn't only being used by the right to foster a public health catastrophe, it is literally being used to justify armed murder and armed insurrection. As long as we allow the right to continue to describe themselves as victims who have been harmed, injured, threatened and therefore need to act aggressively in self-defense, the closer we get to civil war. In fact, a recent Public Religion Research Institute poll showed that 30 percent of Republicans believe that "true American patriots" might need to resort to violence in order to save the country. Nearly 40% still think the election was stolen.

So as long as the victimized bully syndrome pandemic is transmitted across the right-wing community, it will continue to surpass any threats to our nation from any new variants to the COVID-19 pandemic. Until we address the real threats to our nation, we not only won't stop COVID-19; we will allow the true risks to our health and the health of our democracy to continue to spread.

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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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, “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 employee Drew Hernandez warned OAN viewers 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, explained 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, 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) for his ties to white supremacist groups, claimed 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, “if you’re happy about Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal, you’re apparently a white supremacist too.”

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aha: we can't be oppressors b/c we are actually the victim/the oppressed

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, 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.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/fox-news-fascism/

Since well before Donald Trump's election, Fox News has served as one of his movement's most powerful and effective propaganda outlets. In numerous ways both large and small, Fox News has mainstreamed fascist and authoritarian talking points, circulated Trump's thousands of lies and massaged, minimized or falsified the events of Jan. 6 and the ongoing coup against American democracy.

On a near-daily basis, Tucker Carlson and other Fox News hosts amplify white supremacist lies about the "Great Replacement"— even if they don't use that precise term — claiming that white people are the victims of a genocidal plot to "replace" them with nonwhites. New public opinion research shows that this type of white supremacist stochastic terrorism has been internalized by tens of millions of white Americans — specifically white Republican and Trump voters — to such an extreme that many of them are willing to condone or participate in acts of political violence in to overthrow Joe Biden's presidency and American democracy.[when do we get to use the guns, corp medical tyrrany? "]

More than 700,000 people have died in the United States from the coronavirus pandemic -- and this is a low estimate. More than a million Americans are expected to die before the virus is brought fully under control.

Public health experts have documented the direct role that Fox News and other right-wing media have played in encouraging their audience to not be vaccinated against the coronavirus. This is part of a much larger pattern of behavior, in which Fox News hasconsistently fueled and amplified coronavirus denialism. In total, Fox "News" has been a public health threat, and bears both direct and indirect responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Because Fox News has such pernicious influence control over its public that it has caused discord, chaos and other forms of dysfunction — almost certainly including interpersonal violence — within families, among friends and across entire communities. When and if American democracy finally succumbs to authoritarianism, its obituary should include Fox News for helping to kill it.

For almost a decade, Jen Senko has been documenting the personal impact of Fox News on the American people. In her 2015 documentary "The Brainwashing of My Dad," she showed in painstaking detail, how Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine transformed her father into an angry, paranoid, bigoted, political extremist. Her father is only one of the millions of Americans who have fallen under the spell of Fox News and the right-wing hate machine — and by doing so became the base of support for Republican fascist movement.

In her new book, also called "The Brainwashing of My Dad," Senko continues to explore the damaging influence of Fox News and the larger right-wing echo chamber in America's worsening democracy crisis.

In this conversation, Senko details how Fox News functions like a type of cult that uses anger and fear to seduce and control its audience. She also explains how right-wing media creates an alternate universe that offers meaning, community and friendship for the confused, alienated and lonely people — predominantly older white men — who are its primary audience. Senko shares more personal anecdotes about how Fox News and its allied media have destroyed loving relationships,. She also warns that Fox News is priming its audience for political violence to support Donald Trump and the Republican-fascist ongoing coup attempt.

With your documentary, you tried to warn the American people that Fox News and the right-wing media are an extreme danger to the country. But here we are several years later, with America's democracy crisis continuing to escalate as the right has increasingly embraced fascism. How do you feel watching this disaster?

Right now, I'm very, very frustrated. When I made the documentary, I was naïve. I thought to myself, "I'm going to save the world. I'm going to save America." It was cathartic for me to make "The Brainwashing of My Dad."

Now the American people are like the frog in the boiling water. It was lukewarm at first, nice and comfy, and they were all just splashing around a little bit. Then the water gets hotter, and they don't notice. By the time they notice, it's too late and they're boiling.

Given all that has happened and is happening with Trump and the Republicans, my feelings are now panic and despair. I always still have a seed of hope. There are many more people now who did get the message that I was trying to explain about Fox News and where the country was headed. I also have hope because it seems that more Americans are organized to resist.

What do people outside Trump World and the MAGAverse — or who are just generally in denial about the existential threat the country is facing — not understand about what's happening?

Too many people still do not seem to get that what the Republicans and Trump are doing to undermine democracy was long in the planning. It is all like an octopus and it has many tentacles. The head of the octopus is the media.

As fast as perhaps the FBI can catch those who are working to betray the country and commit treason, Fox News is everywhere. There truly is a vast right-wing conspiracy, as Hillary Clinton described it back in the 1990s. This is true whether you like it or not.

Basically, a bunch of oligarchs, evangelicals, racists, mega-corporations and right-wing libertarians got together and planned how they could get rid of government and any policies that serve the public good. What they want is no public schools, no libraries, no post office, no Social Security, no public health option. These right-wing forces want privatization across the board so that they can make as much money as they want, unrestrained, and won't have to pay taxes. Then these same forces got control of the media, and could inject their message right into the public's collective mind.

This right-wing movement also did other things too, such as running for school boards and in other local elections. They used gerrymandering and created a panic about nonexistent voter fraud. But it is the right-wing media that drives the campaign. What shocks me the most is that most Americans still do not understand the big picture.

In your documentary, you showed in painful detail how Fox News and the right-wing machine literally changed your father's personality into a person you no longer recognized. Other Americans have experienced this — perhaps millions of them. What is your dad an example of? How do we understand what Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber did to him as representative of a much larger phenomenon?

My father was seduced by the anger and the excitement. People know that something's wrong, that the system is rigged somehow, but they don't give much thought to how. My father was also retiring from his job, and he found the right-wing media. This gave him something to occupy his mind and thoughts.

Now, suddenly, there's all this excitement in his life. There is some right-wing media person telling him that the government is in his personal business too much. There are very persuasive big personalities pushing my father's buttons and those of the audience in general. And you know what? That feels good. There is an addictive quality to anger like that. It was exciting for my father. It also provided him a group to belong to.

I believe that a lot of white men feel like, "Well, what am I supposed to do? And who am I?" They needed help in figuring themselves out, and the right-wing media and that world provided it. Too many such men developed a victim mentality, telling themselves, "I'm a victim, I'm mad, I've always wanted to fight back."

How was Fox News and the right-wing media machine able to take people such as your father and get them to a point where they would support a coup or political terrorism or conspiracy theories like QAnon? Were they always prone to such behavior or did Fox News and the right-wing machine make them that way?

On Twitter, a lot people will say to me, usually Democrats or liberals, "Oh, these people, they were always like that. They're just finding a port to park their boat in now." I do not believe that is necessarily true.

My dad hadn't been racist. He hadn't been anti-"illegal immigrant." After listening to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, he got brainwashed. When I made the documentary, I did not know if I believed in brainwashing. Now I know that brainwashing does exist, it is real.

There's the brainwashing that happens through force, what we were all familiar with from movies. But what Fox News and the larger right-wing are doing is brainwashing by stealth. I believe this to be more insidious. There's only one type of information going into the brain. There's isolation. There is repetition. That is how they brainwash their public.

I feel like there has been a massive brainwashing campaign, something unlike anything we've ever seen before in this country. That's what's happened in America through Fox News and the right-wing media and movement.

Through your website and other outreach, many people have contacted you about how Fox News and the right-wing media machine have impacted their relationships. What are some of the common themes you are seeing?

One of them is anger. The relative, the loved one, the friend, whoever it may be, suddenly is angry more and more, it's their predominant mood. These people also become very argumentative. Many of these people who are watching Fox and are part of the right-wing echo chamber are incapable of having conversations that somehow do not turn to politics. They become obsessed with this new right-wing way of thinking. It becomes the person's mission. It is all of who they are.

What are some personal stories that jump out at you?

A woman recently shared with me how her husband was a good, sweet guy and a really quiet person. Right before Trump ran for office and became president, he started watching Fox News and his personality completely changed. He would yell at her and their child more. He would criticize her, his wife, because she was a Democrat, yell at her, yell at her kid, start criticizing her. The husband was becoming emotionally abusive.

The woman who reached out to me was afraid that it was going to traumatize her child and that she might have to leave her husband. She was really sad about it because she had once been very much in love with him.

Another person who contacted me lost several members of her family to COVID. Her father still wouldn't get the vaccine. He got COVID, and still wouldn't get the vaccine — or said he wouldn't — and he died because Tucker Carlson and other people on Fox News were telling people like him not to get vaccinated.

What is going on, emotionally and cognitively, where someone would listen to a person on TV who is telling them to do things that will cause them personal harm, that will hurt their family members, friends and other people they care about?

They're not thinking rationally. The part of their brain called the amygdala has been hijacked. That is the fight-or-flight part of the brain. When it is activated, the cerebral cortex is not functioning 100 percent. These people are responding from panic. In that moment, they go to the source that they have learned to trust. That source, in this case Fox News, is telling them, "You can only trust us." That source is angry all the time. It tells its public that the government has screwed them over and the politicians that have screwed them over. The response to Fox News and the right-wing machine actually becomes something physiological.

How does Fox News make friends with its viewers? Because what Fox News and other right-wing propaganda outlets are doing on a fundamental level is establishing an intimate relationship with their public.

There is a feeling that there is an in-group and an out-group. Fox and other parts of the right-wing media make their audience feel special, like they are in on something special. It is a very seductive feeling. Being part of a tribe makes people feel safer. That dynamic is also an example of groupthink.

Many Fox viewers and people who consume that right-wing media just want to belong to the group, to think the same way as everyone else in the group. You trust your people. You don't want to doubt them. They are your friends.

Are the people who watch Fox News awake, or are they asleep?

I think they're in a trance. They are definitely not awake. They're almost on autopilot. They are going to accept anything they are told by Fox.

Why would anyone listen to Fox News, or the right-wing echo chamber more generally, telling them to hurt people, to engage in violence? Why would a formerly reasonable person listen to these commands? What has gone wrong with them?

Because they are in such a rage. They are primed to take that next step. They're in such a rage because they believe, in their heart of hearts, that the 2020 election was stolen away from Trump. They really believe that their country is being taken over illegitimately.

Mix that in with the rage that they already have, where for example they truly believe, "Democrats are horrible, they're the devil's spawn. Anything that's wrong in my life is because of them. Now they're stealing the election, they stole my guy who speaks to me, who's like me." They're just ready to fight.

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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, 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".

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.

---

rww 921

several Republican members of Congress, North Carolina state legislators, various candidates for office, and radical religious-right activists gathered at Temple Baptist Church in Mount Airy, North Carolina, last weekend for the North Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Salt & Light Conference.”

Among the politicians in attendance was Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who used his time in front of his home state crowd to declare that he is waging a “spiritual battle” in the supposedly “evil and vile” Washington, D.C., against people like Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her “cold, evil eyes.”

“I believe that the power of prayer will save this country in the coming decades,” Cawthorn. “When I’m in Washington, D.C., I know a lot of you consider the place to be evil and vile, and I am here to tell you with first-hand knowledge, it is evil and vile. But I will tell you when I’m there, I don’t feel an overwhelming sense ofdarkness as if the devilhas complete dominion of that area because I feel a spiritual battle going on on Capitol Hill. And patriots like all of you in this room, on your knees, praying that we have the cover within the spiritual fight is what it will take to save this country.”

“I have to look Nancy Pelosi in her cold, evil eyes every single day,” he continued. “She just passed a bill yesterday trying to say that we can abort babies on demand all the way up until right before the day of birth. When we hear this, when we hear the fact that if a baby comes through a botched abortion alive, sitting there on the table, they then still have the right to murder that child, we realize that when I quip and say, ‘I look her in her cold, evil eyes,’ it’s not a joke. These people hate us.”

“I will tell you, the only way that we take our country back is when strong, God-fearing patriots decide it is time for us to stand up and say, ‘No’ to your tyranny,”Cawthorn declared. “It is time for the American Christian church to come out of the shadows, to say no longer are we going to allow our culture to be determined by people who hate the things that we believe in. We are going to stand valiantly for God’s incredible, inerrant truths that predate any version of government. Because my friends, if we lose this country today, if we bend the knee to the Democrats today, our country will be lost forever, and our children will never know what freedom is. It’s our duty to stand up. I encourage you—let us stand united as men and women of faith to fight for our country!”

---

qanon and trumpista pseudo-populism on sterpois/runaway mode? cascade doom hype fear anger soc med

der volk is pseudo-populism?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/maga-nazi

hnn

William A. **Galston's recent essay "The Bitter Heartland" begins, "We are living in an age of resentment .. . [that] shapes today's politics." The more I read of it (and more about it later), the more the great resentments of Hitler's followers came to mind. They resented rich Jews, the victorious Allies who in 1919 had imposed the "unfair" postwar Versailles Treaty [TPP clinton trade deal mex cda] upon them, civilian German politicians who had signed the treaty, communists, who had taken over in Russia and were a rising force in Germany, and the "decadent" godless ways of Berlin, as hinted at in the play and film Cabaret.

The Versailles Treaty forced Germany to give up land to their west and east and also their overseas empire. It also imposed strict limits on its armed forces and weapons. But perhaps most bothersome of all to the average German was the imposition of war reparations, which many Germans believed contributed to their great financial agonies. This was especially true during the great inflation of 1923 – by then a loaf of bread could cost billions of Reichsmarks – and the Great Depression. Historian Peter Fritzsche notes that "between 1929 and 1932, one in three Germans lost their livelihoods. At the same time, young people had no prospect of entering the labor force . . . German farmers suffered terribly as commodity prices slumped."

Fritzsche also relates some of Hitler's early tactics like boycotts that "relied on entrenched resentments against allegedly wealthy, rapacious, or tricky Jews," and he writes that "the Nazi leader appealed to popular fears and resentments and transformed them into final judgments and the promise of direct remedial action." Moreover, Hitler used a we-versus-they approach, "pitting patriotic Germans against subversive Communists, Aryans against Jews, the healthy against the sick, the Third Reich against the rest of the world."

Almost a century after Hitler came to power in 1933, some of Donald Trump's followers remind us of Hitler's crowds. On at least one occasion, after Hitler ranted about the "November criminals" (German politicians who negotiated the war-ending armistice of 1918), the audience cried out, "Hang them up! Bust their ass!" In both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Trump crowds (in response to their hero's words about Hillary Clinton) shouted "lock her up."

Already during the 2016 campaigning, writer George Saunders observed some of the resentments of Trump supporters. Many believed "they'd been let down by their government . . . and [were] sensitive to "any infringement whatsoever on their freedom." Many suffered from what Saunders labeled "usurpation anxiety syndrome," which he defined as "the feeling that one is, or is about to be, scooped, overrun, or taken advantage of by some Other with questionable intentions."

In Galston's 2021 essay "The Bitter Heartland" he cites a 2016 poll that indicated that 65 percent of whites without college degrees "believed that America's culture and way of life had changed for the worse since the 1950s." But more than that poll, his essay dissects the continuing Trumpites' resentments much more thoroughly.

Like some before him, he indicates or hints at where the Trump resentful are mostly found: in small towns and rural areas, and among older people, non-college graduates, groups once dependent on manufacturing and mining jobs, and "social conservatives and white Christians." The resentful are more provincial and traditional and many of them "lack access to high-speed broadband."

"They have a sense of displacement in a country they once dominated. Immigrants, minorities, non-Christians, even atheists have taken center stage, forcing them to the margins of American life." They believe that the big-city elites, the professionals, and the government—before Trump came along—all failed to help them achieve their share of the American Dream. They resent professionals and liberals telling them how to live, calling them racists, or limiting their freedoms—e.g. to buy multiple guns or go about maskless during our present pandemic. "President Trump was at his best, they say, when he ignored the experts and went his own way."

Like Saunders earlier, Galston thinks that many of the resentful feel they are "being treated unjustly, unfairly, or disrespectfully." The appearance of Trump and discovery of like-minded people—via the Internet and the person-to-person contacts of smaller towns—help overcome feelings of powerlessness. Feeling more powerful, some "people merely want a remedy for the injustice they have experienced. But others—typically those who experience disrespect—want more than redress; they want revenge."

Galston closes his essay with some suggestions for dealing with Trumpite resentments, but they are less compelling than his analysis of them. Partly this is because, while some are legitimate, others—like the reluctance of many white Christians to grant equal rights to all ethnic and religious minorities—are not. As we learned from examining the supporters of Hitler, understanding the difficulties of people and even sympathizing with their plight (e.g., being jobless) does not mean condoning resentments that lead to hateful behavior like victimizing Jews.

The preceding comparison between two phenomena of group resentment, separated by almost a century, in two different countries and political cultures, omits many contrasts and nuances. In addition, we know how Hitler and German Nazism ended. The ending of the Trumpite culture of resentment is still unknown. Will it gradually decline? Will the Biden administration successfully address many of the Trumpite grievances? Will Republicans continue to stoke them? Will Trump run again in 2024? None of us know for sure. But thanks to the writings of Galston and others--he mentions Katherine Cramer and Arlie Hochschild--we better understand the resentments, and that's a start.

Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University, a Contributing Editor of HNN, and author of A History of Russia. 2 Vols.For a list of his recent books and online publications click here.

---

recall 80's new right BS we are the true student radicals, revolutionaries; trump is a disrupter which gets morphed into rebellion; 1776 Minute men were white wasp manly yeoman farmers who were going to solve problem with muskets; pseudo-populist US little ppl real Mercan vs gubmint/"establishment"

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/qanon-revolution/

When a mob of far-right extremists violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, some of them were invoking the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s and 1780s and equating themselves with the colonies that overthrew British rule long ago. But author John Patrick Leary, in an article published by The New Republic on February 5, explains why that analogy and the far right's obsession with the word "patriot" are deeply flawed.

"The Capitol rioters invaded the Senate, looking for traitors [THOSE PPL WHO ARE MAKING US VICTIMS, TAKING AWAY OUR GOD GIVEN RIGHTS/SOCIAL STATUS/WAY OF LIFE CRISCO-NACHT] and crying out, 'Hold the line, patriots,'" Leary observes. "The right often seems to be reenacting an action movie fantasy of the Revolutionary War, folding a language of "patriotism" into their every leaflet and banner. It's there in the yellow Gadsden flag waved by the Tea Party, and in the names of dozens of militias active in practically every state, from Alabama's American Patriots Three Percent to Wisconsin's III% United Patriots."

Leary goes on to lay out some reasons why the far right badly misunderstands the word "patriot."

"A patriot is a good citizen, lover of order — and an insurgent, an unruly subject," Leary explains. "Given all of these confused loyalties, perhaps the real meaning of 'patriot,' what really fuels the sense of attachment it carries, is not the various positive meanings it is occasionally given, but its opposite: not 'love of country,' in other words, but hatred of the 'traitor.' The Ku Klux Klan, for instance, always pledged its service to civil government, the Constitution and 'pure patriotism,' even when the group waged war on federal and state governments and anyone else who betrayed its notion of 'purity.'"

Leary continues, "Whatever their stated political convictions — open White supremacy, anti-tax zealotry, or QAnon delirium — what appears to nourish Trump fetishists is a boundless sense of betrayal and a bottomless well of self-righteousness. It's a toxic, ridiculous combination."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Fox News worked to portray Luther as a martyr to stay-at-home orders.

Luther reopened her salon on April 24 in defiance of the state’s stay-at-home order. On April 28, District Judge Eric Moyé issued a temporary restraining order against Luther. On May 5, after she refused to follow that order, Moyé found Luther in contempt of court and sentenced her to seven days in jail, though she would be released less than 48 hours later.

The order Luther violated was issued by Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and came with a maximum penalty of $1,000 in fines and 180 days in jail. Moyé offered Luther the opportunity to avoid jail time if she would acknowledge that she had broken the order and agree to shut down her salon until the stay-at-home order was lifted, but she refused. Luther claimed that she needed to keep her salon open to feed her kids, even though she had applied for and received $18,000 in financial aid through the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program. And given that a GoFundMe page had been set up for her a day before she first reopened, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a public relations stunt; thanks to Fox News, it would be a very successful one.

Abbott, along with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, criticized the judge for enforcing Abbott’s own executive order. Fox News quickly hosted Patrick multiple times on the network , where he advocated for Luther and accused Moyé of making “a giant overreach.” (Luther, for her part, has advocated for who is up for reelection this year.)

On May 6, Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity interviewed Luther’s boyfriend, Tim Georgeff, and compared Luther’s punishment to the Mel Gibson character's execution for treason in the movie Braveheart. Prime-time host Tucker Carlson invited Luther’s attorney Warren Norred to appear on Tucker Carlson Tonight the same day and said that he hopes Luther’s story “awakens people.” In the interview, Norred criticized “tiny tyrants” in government and complained that the judge treated Luther as a “heretic” and demanded that she “bend the knee.” Luther herself appeared on the May 8 edition of Hannity after she was released, and Hannity again compared her ordeal to that of William Wallace in Braveheart.

Fox News devoted 2 hours and 48 minutes of coverage to Luther’s story between May 5 and 2 p.m. EDT May 8. To put this in context, Fox News covered the high-profile killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot in Georgia while out for a jog, for only 47 minutes between May 3 and 2 p.m. EDT May 8.

Fox News is using an old playbook to turn a public health emergency into a battle in the culture war.

For years, Fox News has propped up conservative figures as heroes in a war against big government. In 2014, Fox went all-in on Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his protests that led to an armed standoff with the federal government. Fox did the same in 2014 as it worked to portray Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson as a martyr when A&E temporarily put the show on hiatus after he made anti-LGBTQ comments. Similarly, in 2015, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets rallied around Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage certificates for same-sex couples.

The strategy of portraying conservatives as thevictims of liberal policies-- even when, as was the case for Luther, the policy being violated was implemented by a Republican -- makes sense as part of Fox’s political messaging, as it furthers a narrative of conservative oppression.

In addition to Luther, Fox has recently taken to elevating other anti-lockdown activists. An Arizona sheriffnamed appeared onTucker Carlson Tonight to discuss his decision not to enforce the state’s stay-at-home order. Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside County, California, appeared on Fox & Friends. Three other sheriffs who’ve made recent Fox News appearances to decry stay-at-home orders have ties to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an extremist group. Business owners Eliot Rabin, Juan Desmarais, and Rick Savage have all appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss their decisions to defy stay-at-home orders by keeping their businesses open.

In April, Fox News helped uplift the anti-lockdown protests with an overwhelming amount of coverage. In just over one week, Fox News ran 91 segments about those protests, amounting to roughly six hours of programming. As the pandemic stretched into May, Fox began attempting to shift focus away from the mounting death toll and the president’s lagging approval ratings on his handling of the disaster, limiting what pandemic-related stories it aired to pieces about conservatives who were supposedly harmed by stay-at-home orders. The raging pandemic is starting to become an afterthought on the network, and Fox is moving on to topics like the Department of Justice’s decision to drop charges against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and the phony “Obamagate” scandal. With its coverage of Luther’s case, Fox has found a way to portray conservatives as the real victims in this public health crisis.

Conservatives keep fighting their culture war amid a deadly pandemic.

While a certain intellectual gladiator of the right may claim that “facts don’t care about your feelings,” Fox News knows this isn’t quite right. The network needs to downplay the pandemic to protect President Donald Trump. But you can't convince an audience that a deadly pandemic is just an acceptable fact of life with #facts and #logic; you need to sell them on it by playing to their emotions, giving them a hero to cheer for and a villain to rage against.

Taking Luther’s story as an example, a rational analysis of what happened would show her as a person who didn’t think the law the rest of us are expected to follow should apply to her, who was given an opportunity to avoid jail after violating the law and refused, who applied for and received government assistance, and who raised nearly $500,000 from a GoFundMe page started before reopening the business. To convince an audience that the victim in this situation is the salon owner -- especially an audience that likes to think of itself as supporting “law and order” -- you have to appeal to their emotions to override the massive amounts of cognitive dissonance involved.

A pandemic is no time for culture war gamesmanship, but as Fox News’ latest cavalcade of conservative martyrs shows, it’s the only game the network knows how to play.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/an-amped-up-war-on-christmas-why-trumps-evangelical-fans-think-god-wants-them-to-defy-lockdowns/

rAW STORY

Many of President Donald Trump’s evangelical Christian supporters believe that it is their God-given duty to defy lockdown orders during the coronavirus pandemic, as they believe obeying restrictions will result in the establishment of an anti-Christian dictatorship.

Daily Beast columnist Eleanor Clift**writes that pandemic restrictions have become yet another heated culture war for evangelicals who distrust scientists and who believe it’s part of abroader conspiracy to take away their religious freedom.

“This is an amped-up version of the War on Christmas theme that conservatives trot out every year,” Clift explains. “Trump gave voice to it recently when he said without any evidence that Muslims celebrating Ramadan, which which begins on Thursday, would not be facing the same restrictions that Christians did on Easter.”

In fact, notes Clift,Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Matt Staver this week compared Christians living under stay-at-home orders to Jews living in Nazi Germany.

“This happened before in history,” he said. “We’ve seen people being targeted with a particular symbol that you have to wear. And then you get targeted with your business, you get terminated from your job, and eventually you get ghettoized.”

Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at People for the American Way, tells Clift that Trump-loving evangelicals see Trump’s potential loss this fall as an existential threat to their livelihoods, and they want to do everything in their power to deflect attention from his bungling of the crisis.

“They’re concerned about this crisis and his mismanagement of it and they’re going to do everything they can to support his efforts to deflect attention from his failings, to smear his critics and shift blame to governors and elsewhere — and re-elect the guy God put in charge for this moment,” he said.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-hunt-is-a-fantasy-for-the-conservatives-who-want-to-believe-they-are-victims-not-victimizers/

no lnx

‘The Hunt’ is a fantasy for the conservatives who want to believe they are victims — not victimizers

Written by Matthew Rozsa March 16, 2020

The following contains spoilers from “The Hunt,” which you might as read anyway because it’s time better spent than watching the movie.

President Donald Trump’s supporters aren’t victims, they’re victimizers. Shame on “The Hunt” for pandering to one of their most cherished fantasies – that they are persecuted.

I felt the need to begin this article with those two sentences because “The Hunt,” a new horror film directed by Craig Zobel (“Compliance,” “Z for Zachariah”) and written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof (“Lost,” “Star Trek Into Darkness”), tells the story of liberal elites who kidnap 12 conservatives — heavily implied to be Trump supporters since they’re often referred to as “deplorables” — in order to hunt them for sport.

There isn’t much in the way of plot in “The Hunt.” The Trump supporters are picked off one by one until only two survivors remain (played by “GLOW” star Betty Gilpin and Wayne Duvall) and they turn the tables on the liberal elites (the leader is played by Oscar winner Hilary Swank). There are a couple of plot twists thrown into the narrative to give the illusion of cleverness, but the film’s entire story could otherwise fit on the back of a postcard. None of the kills are particularly memorable, all of the characters are two-dimensional stereotypes, and the pacing is so brisk that the movie feels like it’s over before it has had a chance to start. Even if “The Hunt” were completely apolitical, it would still be mediocre and forgettable.

Alas, “The Hunt” is very much about politics — namely, validating right-wingers who desperately want to believe they are among the wronged of the world. While Zobel has said that the movie’s goal is to “poke at both sides of the aisle equally,” there are three problems with that statement. The first is that an early draft of the script reportedly depicted working-class conservatives as the heroes, suggesting that the film always had a pro-conservative agenda. (Although, it should be noted that Gilpin’s character Crystal, is actually an apolitical schmoe who was hapless enough to get mixed up in this business because of liberal incompetence.)

The second is that the film’s attempt at “balance” is to reveal near the end that there this brutal hunt never actually existed until right-wing conspiracy theorists incorrectly accused several liberal elites of participating in one, thereby inspiring them to actually create it. It’s a “twist” that still manages to make the liberals into monsters and the conservatives into, at worst, fear-mongering fools . . . and is also the only significant shade thrown at the pro-Trump side in this story.

The third, and by far most important, problem with Zobel’s statement is that it reduces politics to a game, cheapening the real-world issues that impact people’s lives and making it all seem like so much pointless bickering.

Take the issues cited by the film’s liberal elite bad guys. As I watched the film I made amental list of the most prominent issues that they cited as justification for conducting a hunt: Gun control, global warming, anti-racism, immigration, gay rights. These are not issues in which each side is morally equal.Wanting to save lives from gun violence is not equal to perverting the Second Amendment to satisfy right-wing delusions. Striving to stop climate change from destroying civilization is not equal to denying it because conservative dogma demands you to do so (and note how Trump’s anti-science agenda has exacerbated the COVID-19 outbreak in this country). Being horrified by how Trump has stoked the flames of bigotry in this country is not equal to being okay with or outright supporting it. Empathizing with undocumented immigrants is not equal to persecuting them. Supporting gay rights is not equal to the bogus claims of “religious freedom” cited by those who hate the LGBTQ community.

These are only a handful of examples from the film. The movie also references issues like cultural appropriation, anti-Semitism, the AIDS epidemic, abortion rights, atheism, and food safety concerns, and has characters use partisan nomenclature like “cuck,” “snowflake” and “deplorable.” (Even Fox News host Sean Hannity, the ultimate deplorable, gets a shout-out). The writers seemed to believe that merely acknowledging that something exists is tantamount to making a meaningful observation about it, a problem with much of modern American satire. Unfortunately, because most of these boxes from the Trump-era zeitgeist are checked for the sole purpose of giving the villains a motive for hunting the heroes, the message winds up being that liberal political concerns are nothing more than an excuse for putting one group of people in Team A and another in Team B.

Yet the difference between the pro-Trump and anti-Trump camps is not Coke versus Pepsi, Tweedledee versus Tweedledum. By telling a story based on that premise, and then have the liberals take things too far by actively hunting Trump supporters, the writers of “The Hunt” encourage right-wingers to believe something they yearn to convince the world is true — namely, that they are the victims in modern America.

It doesn’t take much intuition to glean why they want to feel this way. Most people don’t want to view themselves as bullies and aggressors, so when their beliefs lead to malevolent results, they have to come up with rationalizations that justify them. This is why conspiracy theories like QAnon and Pizzagate remain so popular in right-wing circles. It is why white nationalists claim that they are being “replaced” by non-whites rather than admit that they aim to recreate explicitly white supremacist social hierarchies. It is why Trump depicted himself as the victim of a deep -tate conspiracy — to thunderous applause — when he was investigated after his campaign colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and did so again after he was impeached for trying to extort Ukraine into helping him defeat Joe Biden in 2020.

It is why conservatives, when trying to vilify liberals, love to depict them as out-of-touch, wealthy elitists, even though right-wing ideology blames the poor for their own poverty and diminishes or outright denies how in modern America, the rich oppress the working class, white people oppress non-white people, cishet people oppress the LGBTQ community, men oppress women, and Christians oppress non-Christians. No one wants to believe that they are the bad guy in the movie of life, and what better way to convince them of this than to release a movie in which they are blameless victims literally hunted for their conservative convictions?

In retrospect, it is poetically fitting that the very assumptions encouraged by “The Hunt” nearly lead to the film’s own undoing. When the movie was supposed to be released last year, it was swiftly attacked by Trump himself, who said it was intended “to inflame and cause chaos,” claimed it was made by people who “like to call themselves ‘Elite,’ but they are not Elite,” and said it proved that Hollywood is racist and “full of great Anger and Hate!” He also implied that the movie would provoke violence, and after the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, Universal Pictures decided to cancel its release at the time. While the movie executives would like us to think it was because of the fear of mass shootings or respect for the victims, the fact that the release was canceled so shortly after Trump denounced the film as dangerous makes it difficult to believe that his opposition wasn’t a crucial factor.

To be clear: I do not support censorship. As reprehensible as “The Hunt” is, I do not question the filmmakers’ right to create it. I also do not wish harm on anyone who disagrees with me. The point of this article is not to say that “The Hunt” shouldn’t have been released, even ifI can’t help but smirk at the irony of Trump trying to suppress a movie without realizing that it’s a love letter to his supporters.The point is that if you want to watch a thought-provoking, socially responsible horror movie, you can check out “The Invisible Man” or “Midsommar” or “Get Out.”

“The Hunt” isn’t satire; it is propaganda of the lowest sort. If you agree with this movie’s message, there is something seriously wrong with your soul. Its only value is in helping dispel the myth of Hollywood’s supposed liberal bias.

“The Hunt” is currently playing in theaters.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/last-years-gun-massacres-put-the-kibosh-on-a-movie-about-liberals-hunting-deplorables-six-months-later-no-problem/

chic trib

the satiric thriller “The Hunt” sure as hell didn’t look like a satiric thriller in its original trailer seven months ago. Right-wing commentators, including our president, couldn’t believe Universal backed a film about scummy, murderous liberals hunting “deplorables” for sport. And the movie apparently sided with the liberals! Sheer depravity.

Then came the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which proved too much for anyone’s comfort. “The Hunt” would have to wait on the shelf for a while.

Now it’s here. At the risk of blowing its central twist, Universal rethought its approach and issued a [semi\-insane new trailer ](last month. This isn’t a movie lionizing bloodthirsty liberals; audiences now learn they’re the bad guys, see? The new trailer hints at opaque story elements dealing with a vicious “deplorables” joke that gets out of hand, and the price paid for that joke. It’s worth watching these trailers, both new [and old](

“The Hunt” itself hasn’t changed, unfortunately. It’s a lame and weaselly thing, made strangely more frustrating by some excellent performers.

The script by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, who worked on “The Leftovers,” jabs at liberals, conservatives, the Twitterati, cancel culture, climate crisis deniers, every side of every sociological issue. That may sounds promisingly small-d democratic. But the movie can’t stop congratulating itself for its cleverness long enough to take off as a movie.

On the other hand: Betty Gilpin. The breakout star of “Glow,” whose wry comic timing doesn’t stick with any one time zone, does a lot here. Too much, sometimes; at times, she’s mugging like she’s getting paid by the facial expression. But she’s a fearsome action presence as well as a screwball heroine under wraps. She periodically saves “The Hunt” from itself.

Unlike the new trailer, let’s not laundry-list the narrative devices formerly known as “twists.” In a location undisclosed at the start, a dozen strangers from Mississippi, Wyoming, New York and elsewhere wake up to realize they’ve been drugged and dropped into an outdoor game of catch and kill. They’re being hunted by a cabal of sniffy, insufferable, painfully woke liberals with guns, grenades, land mines and bows and arrows. Hilary Swank, as the icy queen bee of The Manor, remains off-screen for much of the set-up, while Gilpin, her glowering adversary, takes care of business.

Tone problems, first off: “The Hunt” tries to get laughs with grenades down someone’s pants and then, 20 seconds later, it’s taking the maiming and the impaling seriously. Then it’s a joke again, then seriousjokeseriousjoke. It’s neither very funny nor very scary. It’s merely very gory.

Flashbacks lurch into the story framework around the midpoint, reorienting our perception of what’s going on, and why the game of ideological Twister is being played at all. For those who enjoyed [“The Cabin in the Woods,”](or the more recent tricked-up bamboozler [“Bad Times at the El Royale,”](

At one point Gilpin’s character, a Mississippi belle of the brawl, speculates on her survival odds against a cabal of well-armed elites. “It depends,” she says, “whether they’re smart pretending to be idiots, or idiots pretending to be smart.” “The Hunt” is a little of both.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-identity-politics-has-left-us-vulnerable-coronavirus

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-its-obvious-sanders-hates-country-he-seeks-lead

aha: trump base is ghost Dance, they know their st'd of living (ntbcw vibrant resiluient local community) declining and they want to blame someone. Trump says he alone is the strong man who can save them, stand against the forces [structures?] that betrayed them; a bit like Rambo, the only explanation for am military defeat by peasant in PJ.s is bureaucrats sold us out ("do we get to win this time?"). Trump is a billionaire, so he's smart, tough negotiatior, successful, and he's willing to turn against the politician/bureaucrats he used to pay off to do his will (a deal) and clean up corruption/drain the swamp [build the wall/ lock her up, HC being one of the corrupt pols with her hippie boomer pot smoking womanizing husband], crooked hill based in Ark Pjt Bossie].

Coastal elites do not care about Xian flyover cty, pander to urban ppl of color [tucker sez ca burns b/c of gays]; all the jobs went to china, and trump promised to punish them and get factories back; bring back coal.

dems managed to create a coalition of ppl of color [= ID vics] (and unions), aka affirmative action cases who also took our jobs; SO white ppl are the real victims

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mma 1219

For fifteen years now, Fox News has warned of a War on Christmas. This victimization narrative has only metastasized in the time since.

Parker Molloy examined how the War on Christmas started, why Fox News loves it, and how it has evolved in the years since, from claiming that Democrats like John Kerry wanted to abolish Christmas, to deciding that Santa Claus must be a white man, to declaring that Donald Trump has personally saved Christmas. As Molloy writes: "The War on Christmas is the backdrop for a world in which 'political correctness' will be forever running amok, the left’s goal will always be to 'destroy everything that is wholesome in our country and in our Judeo-Christian civilization,' and Democrats will be stuck in a perpetual state of trying to ban your favorite hobbies and foods. Of course, none of this is true. The slightest resistance to right-wing culture creep will always be framed as a direct assault on their way of life, even if that resistance is just a defense of the status quo."

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fox News’ Tucker Carlson smears Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an ‘unapologetic bigot’ toward white people

Matthew Rozsa / Salon

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no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/why-conservative-ideology-is-based-in-the-belief-white-people-are-the-true-victims-in-american-society/

Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities has been called “the quintessential novel of the 80s” in satirizing the racial and class politics of New York City during the era, which saw the city severely divided after multiple incidents where white and black people had different perspectives about what was right and what was wrong. The novel, which depicts a clusterfuck of awful people using a car accident involving a wealthy, white bond trader and a young African-American in the Bronx to advance their various agendas, both hits upon ideas about white fears of being around black people and the exploitation of that racism for wealth and fame.

Bonfire also reiterates similar themes present in a lot of Wolfe’s work as a journalist and writer, mainly the idea of appearing concerned about an issue while really using it for personal gratification. Wolfe coined the term “radical chic” after composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia hosted a fundraiser for the Black Panthers in the Bernsteins’ Park Avenue apartment, implying the assorted group of rich, white liberals cared more about looking “fashionable” in their association with Black Panthers than actually doing something about the underlying causes which created the group. Wolfe, who passed away last year, became more vocal in these conservative sentiments as he got older, stating in 2004 he supported George W. Bush because of “resentment” against a liberal elite who want to impose their “East-Coast pretensions” on the rest of society.

Whether Wolfe’s writing or The Bonfire of the Vanities are worthy of the acclaim they’ve gotten over the years is a question I’ll leave for another time. But what I’ve found interesting is how the views surrounding the novel speak to the current mindset of conservatives and alt-right fascism about the impact of racism, progressive ideology, and objective truth. I’ve written in the past about how the most vocal Republican voters are presenting themselves as the true victims of American society.

The essential nature of the past 50 years of the conservative movement is predicated on re-purposing white people as the victims of liberal agendas who need to be saved by Jesus and freedom to be made great again. The reason manufacturing jobs have disappeared is not mismanagement or corporate greed, but “libtard” regulations which care more about unions and spotted owls than “working people.” The problem with public schools or why one’s kid couldn’t get into a good college has nothing to do with shitty parenting or the subjective merits of the academic system, but Title IX taking Jr.’s football dreams away to give funds to little girls, and affirmative action and its “reverse-racism” against whites wrongly valuing diversity as a strength. And racism is bad, but liberals are just so “mean” for saying it.

All of these are rationalizations for why it’s okay to be an asshole and not give a shit. This leads to people claiming all the sides suck and are out to fuck everyone, so why should anyone care about anything? And it all becomes a big joke. Because, if there’s anything conservative trash excels at, it’s the ability to devalue people into concepts and things, even when their value is self-evident, because we can rationalize being terrible to “things” with little to no moral consequence.

This leads to some interesting observations about the current controversy surrounding actor/musician Jussie Smollet, and whether the alleged racist and homophobic attack against him by Trump supporters is actually a hoax.

At least at present, Smollet maintains his story. But as the scrutiny about Smollet’s story has increased, the number of cracks in his version of events has become bigger and bigger as unnamed sources and rumors have dominated the news. Conservative media has latched onto this incident as an example of “fake news,” reporters and activists jumping to conclusions because of a bias against everything Trump, and a reason why Republicans will not believe reports of Trump’s lies and abuses. Similar to how some conservatives interpret the meaning of Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities as being about a “palpable yearning among the liberal establishment for guilty white people they could put on trial” to answer for cultural sins, it is now a certainty within right-wing circles that Smollet’s allegations are not only not true, but evidence which discounts all allegations of this sort. Because, as we all know, truth and the facts have mattered so much to conservatives over the years.

Let’s accept as a given there’s something to be said in examining evidence before believing every story, and that if Smollet is lying his actions are both deeply repugnant and extremely damaging to other victims. Maybe this should give the media and blogs pause in drawing broad conclusions about what things mean until some facts are known and established, since it only hands ammunition to these pricks if the story turns out to have holes.

However, let’s also examine this hypocritical bullshit for what it’s worth.

As Doctor House said: “Everybody lies.” The extent and severity of those lies among individuals, and the context in which they’re told, distinguish them. Lies which waste resources that could be used for real crimes, make it harder for real victims to be believed, and done for someone’s own personal aggrandizement should be sharply condemned and severely punished.

However, just because there are more than enough lies to go around, and too many horrible people telling them, doesn’t invalidate the concept of objective truth or mean the issues which surround them are invalidated. It does not mean because one can point at mistakes, silly demagogues, and awful charlatans that reality becomes whatever one wants to believe it is and there are no real victims

Beyond this basic common sense there’s the fact this criticism and rationalizing might have more weight if it wasn’t coming from a group of lying hypocrites. The same people who claim to be the victims of bias and half-truths are the one who put their faith in a liar as their champion. And not only a simple liar: a liar who lies about everything every day, that they then lie to protect.

EVERY. GODDAMN. DAY.

AtLeastBeHonest

@FalsusInOmnibus

Feb 18, 2019

Replying to @FalsusInOmnibus and 2 others

#RedStateLies

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Tony Shaffer

@T_S_P_O_O_K_Y

Nice try, Butthurt Snowflake...you list people who are not "reporters" - they are pundits with opinions...you are typical of (sigh) the liberal left - even now lying.

Really - you are just another idiot...go away

1:27 PM - Feb 18, 2019

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From Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

From their point of view … It reveals a culture where white men are acceptable targets of hate who deserve no sympathy and no due process, and where the left-wing mob wields tremendous power through its command of the public sphere.

That view connects to a broader assumption shared by many conservatives: that white Christian men are a persecuted minority in modern America.

To non-conservatives, this sounds absurd. White men are the country’s most powerful and privileged citizens. The party they dominate currently controls two and a half branches of government, and they sit in a disproportionate number of powerful seats in the private sector. But in this argument, conservatives follow a maxim generally attributed to the late provocateur Andrew Breitbart: “Politics is downstream from culture.” By this, Breitbart meant that the balance of power in day-to-day politics is determined, in the long run, by the cultural ideas that shape the way people approach politics.

With liberal elites largely in charge of the country’s entertainment and higher education, in the Breitbart-conservative view, that means they control the commanding heights in our society.

The concept of white men being the persecuted in America largely comes down to being told they’re wrong, or freaking out over nothing when they’re told it’s something by the right-wing outrage machine. And within the “commanding heights,” whether it be scientists, Hollywood, the media, or Democrats, calling stupid ideas stupid has somehow become “elitist” and evidence of bias. It’s one of the most bitter ironies that the people who bitch and moan about political correctness and wear shirts saying “fuck your feelings” are the ones whining about respect whenever a TV show or movie has a story which steps on their toes, or a science article actually advocates … you know, science which goes against one of their beliefs.

It’s as if we are trying to placate children who want people to hold their hands and play along while they wish really hard for unicorns to be real.

From Reeeves Wiedeman at New York Magazine:

After work one day in January 2007, Scott McConnell left his office at the magazine The American Conservative in Arlington, Virginia, and walked to a nearby Thai restaurant that was hosting a panel discussion about the Duke lacrosse scandal… McConnell and his magazine had largely ignored the scandal; identity politics weren’t top of mind for conservative media then, and most outlets weren’t especially interested in defending a group of rich jocks who had hired a stripper. But by January, the case was imploding. The accuser had changed her story more than half a dozen times, one of the players had a well-documented alibi, and DNA tests found no match with any member of the team, a fact the prosecutors initially hid from the defense. McConnell was reminded of The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe’s novel about 1980s New York in which an overzealous prosecutor, the media, and the city’s liberal elite rushed to condemn an innocent white man accused of killing a black man. “There was this palpable yearning among the liberal establishment for guilty white people they could put on trial,” McConnell said, of the lacrosse case.

McConnell and one of his editors, Michael Dougherty, went to the Thai restaurant panel hoping to find someone to write about the case. They knew most of the speakers — an economics professor, an editor at the WashingtonTimes, a men’s-rights blogger — but their talks were so boilerplate that neither McConnell nor Dougherty could recall much about them. The fourth speaker, however, was a Ph.D. candidate in Duke’s history department who delivered a blistering critique of the Duke faculty’s rush to prejudgment. “Scott and I both thought, Here’s a young guy, he presents himself well, and his talk was the most interesting of the night,” Dougherty said recently. “God, I hate to think that we were part of creating this.”

Richard Spencer, the fourth speaker, is now America’s most famous self-identified white nationalist. “In this funny chain of events, the Duke lacrosse case changed the course of my career,” Spencer told me recently. “My life would not have taken the direction it did absent the Duke lacrosse case.” The speech at the Thai restaurant — “Ironic, isn’t it?” he said — pushed him from an academic track toward a more activist one. McConnell commissioned Spencer to write a piece for The American Conservative about the case, and, by the end of the semester, Spencer had dropped out of school to work at the magazine full-time. A year later, he coined the term “alt-right.” … It not only launched Spencer’s career, but that of White House adviser Stephen Miller, too. On the morning of Spencer’s talk at the Thai restaurant, Miller — who was then a senior at Duke — published a column in the student newspaper titled “A Portrait of Radicalism,” just a few days after he appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News show to chastise Duke’s faculty. Donald Trump didn’t have much to say about the scandal at the time; he hadn’t yet joined Twitter and was devoting his cable-news appearances to his simmering feud with Rosie O’Donnell. But Miller seemed interested in little else. He had become known to some at Duke as the “Miller Outrage Machine” for his willingness to take controversial stands in his biweekly “Miller Time” column, which he wrote for the campus newspaper as a way, he says, to “defend the idea of America.”

This sort of behavior is also present in conservative women.Recent research and ponderings attempting to identify why white women support Republicans and conservative policies more than their non-white sisterhood have largely explained the difference through gender roles and subservience to their partners. For example, during the recent hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Republican women (who are for the most part white) were the only demographic among which support for Kavanaugh increased as the process went along.

Why is that?

Republican women are “loyal to party” rather than caring about any criticisms about sexism, threats to women’s rights, or discrimination against females as a group. Taking all of this into account, conservative women seem to interpret criticisms of Republicans and conservative interests as a larger part of the believed victimization of (white) America.

For instance, in 2008, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin set the example of the strong Republican woman who could raise five children, maintain a professional career, and hold her own in the combative world of politics. She called herself a “hockey mom” and “Mama Grizzly” who would protect her cubs at any cost.

During the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, Donald Trump provided a culturally acceptable “out” along these lines for conservative women who wanted to support the Republican judge but worried that doing so might be seen as a betrayal of female survivors of sexual assault.

Despite the fact that studies conducted in the past 12 years indicate that false reporting for sexual crimes is rare, Trump constructed an imaginary choice, urging Americans to protect their sons against “false accusations” by women. Pretending to be a wrongly accused son about to lose his job, he said, plaintively, “Mom, what do I do? What do I do?”

Republican women who wanted to support Kavanaugh could stand firm in their roles as mothers and, just like Palin’s “Mama Grizzly,” fiercely protect their cubs (sons), in this case against “false accusations.”

Now, whether these points explain Republican women’s behavior is a matter of debate. But the central problem with all of this is hypocrisy.

I can’t feel sorry for someone who thinks I’m their victimizer just because I ask them to treat people fairly. Why should I reach out to people who think I’m a demon because I’m a Democrat and I vote for people who have a (D) next to their name? The reason many of us feel antipathy to the point of outrage is because the other side is wrong. We know they’re wrong, and they piss on our feet and call us liars for saying it’s not rain. We know they’re wrong, and they enjoy the suffering their wrongness causes. And then they believe themselves to be victims? If it causes “libtard” tears, then it must be good for some of these nuts.

So … sympathy for these sons of bitches for feeling persecuted? Never.

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