GREAT replacement gt GRT 2
bak 5 22 --> THO 12 23
merri ok
becoming very commonly accepted 4 24 TUCKER MAINSTREAmed
promoted 1 22 on Jan 6
see Border BS truckers convoy 1 24
SEE WATTERS 3 FOX
RACISM
SEE JDV TUCKER
combines with voter fraud eg musk
tucker mainstreamed BAD TRINITY
see conspiracy
see climate refugee immigrant
SEE CLAREMONT FOREIGN POLICY NSS 12 25
see white genocide see mass shooter acceleration radicalization
see grievance rev descrim DEI CRT
see demographic shift/winter
SEE ISLAMOPHOBE XIAN NATL JAKE LANG
see invasion caraVAN XENO
white genocide?!
camp of the saints
trump debate 9 24
SEE MILLER 3
SEE KIRK 5
SEE ILLEGAL ALIEN ON VOTER BS // BIG LIE BANNON TUCKER
HTML @gdnlongread
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tucker by himself mainstreamed THIS?! // megulin ingraham
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BAD POLLS, SHORE UP RED STATE VOTE, REBOOT CARAVAN
AN 10 26
Trump enjoys inciting a crowd with talk, whether or not it has any ground beneath it. Much, of it, say critics, has to do with insulting others. And Trump’s insults came hot and fast in San Antonio, Texas, at a rally with Senate candidate Ken Paxton and House candidate Carlos De La Cruz.
Paxton is running a close race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in one of the highest-profile matches of the midterms. And Trump lit into Talarico and his fellow Democrats by calling them ‘Dirty.”
But not just dirty — filthy in every sense of the word.
No. 1. Dems Dirty Doorknobs.
“Texas has been the state people flee to escape the economic and social collapse of Democrat run California, New York, and other failing blue states, but if Talarico and the Democrats get their way, all of that squalor and misery, poverty, homelessness [will come to Texas],” Trump told the roaring crowd.
“When the blues get in everything becomes dirty,” said Trump. “The streets become dirty. The doorknobs going into stores are dirty. Sidewalks are filthy dirty. Everything becomes dirty and has a bad smell, but we're going to escape all that lawlessness corruption and dysfunction that's coming to destroy your beloved state of Texas.”
Trump added that “a vote for Talarico” will turn Texas into a “dirty, crime-riddled Third World dumping ground, and a vote for Ken Paxton is a vote to save Texas, defend Texas and defend everything that makes Texas great and makes America great. I want you to know the extreme danger of having someone like this Democrat in charge.”...
No. 4: Trump claims Dems will ‘open the floodgates’ to immigrants if they win.
Critics say Trump likes to sell fear from the podium, and the president heaped up the dread of a brown America in San Antonio.
“If [Democrats] get in Congress — because we have a very close majority, we can't let that happen — but if they get in, they will open your borders and let the entire world pour into your country like they did before [under Biden]”
Survey researcher Ronald L. Hirsch says Trump has “failed to deliver on almost all the promises he made to his white working-class and rural base during the 2016 and 2024 election campaigns.”
“Prices are not lower, they are higher. He has not brought jobs back to the U.S. His tariffs have been a disaster for farmers. He has taken many actions that have helped the rich, but precious few that have benefited the average person,” Hirsch said in the Fulcrum.
But what Trump has done, said Hirsch, is target illegal immigrants and eliminated DEI programs. And many of Trump’s white voters cling to him for that reason. Trump’s core base of 37 percent is sticking with him no matter what, and since they’re not voting with their pocketbooks, Hirsch said they’re really voting for those other things.
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mma 9 26
Vice President JD Vance used his keynote address to the GOP’s midterm convention to echo one of Tucker Carlson’s most infamous statements, just one week after publicly refusing to distance himself from the right-wing podcaster.
“Two years ago, we have to remember — our nation, ladies and gentlemen, was tired,” Vance told the attendees in Dallas on Thursday night. After citing factory closures and drug overdoses, he continued: “We were tired of seeing the cartels and the criminals given free rein over our great country. And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous.“
Who was “called racist” for suggesting “our country was becoming dirtier and poorer”? That would be Carlson, who declared that immigrants were the cause.
“Our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this,” Carlson told his Fox News audience during a December 2018 monologue. “We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement.” He then aired footage of what he described as “an endless chain of migrant caravans” in Mexico.
Carlson’s statement that immigrants make the United States “poorer” is incorrect, and his claim that they make it “dirtier” was widely recognized as bigoted. More than two dozen companies dropped their ads on his show in response.
But Carlson refused to back down, repeatedly offering similar remarks and using his Fox show to mainstream other white nationalist tropes and talking points. And a few years later, an enterprising would-be GOP politician adopted the host’s language in a successful effort to win his favor.
On July 1, 2021 — the same day he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate — Vance went on Carlson’s Fox program and told the host that he was running to ensure that his kids “live in the same great country that I lived in. And if we don't do something, if we don't fight back against what's going on in our country, they're going to lose it, they're going to grow up in a country that's much poorer, that's much dirtier, that's much uglier, and where they can't even speak their mind as citizens.”
Carlson fawned over Vance throughout the interview. “I probably shouldn't say this, I'm really glad you're doing it,” he said at its conclusion. “I admire you and I wish you luck, very much. Thank you for doing this. Congratulations.”
Vance would continue to mimic Carlson’s rhetoric on the host’s show, and Carlson in turn backed his Senate campaign on-air — and used his personal relationship with Donald Trump to convince Trump to endorse Vance. Two years later, he helped convince Trump to select Vance as his 2024 running mate.
Since then, Carlson has dived even further into the right-wing fever swamps. He became the nation’s most prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorist; declared that “the defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated”; warned frequently of the influence of “demons”; and hosted a notorious white nationalist and a Nazi apologist for friendly interviews. That last point has triggered calls on the right for Vance to disavow or distance himself from the man who helped cement his political career.
But instead, Vance used a September 3 White House press briefing to portray Carlson as merely a “friend” with whom he sometimes has “political disagreements,” and to attack his critics as un-American.
And last night, Vance gave a wink and a nod to Carlson and his audience on the biggest stage available to him.
// mma
Tucker Carlson helped make JD Vance. The VP refuses to condemn his antisemitism.
09/01/26 3:11 PM EDT
JD Vance’s wildly disingenuous response to his Tucker Carlson problem
09/04/26 11:47 AM EDT
09/11/26
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mma reboot?
Jack Posobiec: “They're taking white areas, and they're importing Muslims and Somalians and Africans into them”
09/02/26
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AN 8 26
Great Replacement conspiracy theorist and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang brought his racial grievances and “Christian Crusader March” to Dearborn and its city council meeting on Tuesday, where the right-wing provocateur told council members Muslim people are “looking to outbreed” white people and “steal our wealth.”
Dearborn, home to the largest Arab American population in the country, has long been the target of anti-Muslim rhetoric from people outside the community. Lang had spread his anti-Muslim message in the community as recently as August 2, when he was reportedly assaulted by a Dearborn resident. The Arab American News reports the resident, Abbas Abdoush, was later detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“The Muslims are being used by the Democrats to instill socialism in America,” Lang said during the city council meeting as the crowd lingered outside. “Once the Muslims have power in this county, then they will start throwing homosexuals off the roofs.”
The protest before the city council meeting was defined by diametrically opposed groups of Christian nationalist and counterprotesters screaming to drown out the sound of each other.
A line of police in riot gear kept the peace by standing between Lang’s group of provocateurs and the rest of the crowd that had gathered outside the Henry Ford Centennial Library, where the council meeting had been moved for safety reasons. Michigan Advance estimated the crowd size peaked at roughly 2,000 people.
“Here is to staying free from the Muslim Brotherhood takeover” yelled Lang ally Jayden Scott in a megaphone as he stood behind the police line separating him from the crowd. “We must fight back. This is a Christian nation. A Christian nation it shall remain.”
A throng of supporters answered with chants of “U.S.A, U.S.A.,” while a man with a megaphone of his own yelled “Jake Lang, repent”, saying Lang doesn’t follow the teachings of Jesus.
Lang organized the protest with the help of Detroit Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, a supporter of President Donald Trump who was criticized for attempting to enrich himself through a cryptocurrency scheme after speaking at Trump’s second inauguration. Sewell is also a member of the Faith Coalition Leadership Team of Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Rogers, who faces Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim, in November’s election.
“Michigan families deserve a Senator who will stand up to hate rather than enable it,” El-Sayed campaign spokesperson Cole Wozniak said in a press statement issued just prior to the rally. “Mike Rogers must immediately disavow this rally, his affiliation with Jake Lang and January 6th terrorists, and explain why his campaign’s faith advisor is rallying alongside out of state agitators against Michigan faith communities.”
A request for comment was made to the Rogers campaign, but was not returned. This story will be updated when a response is received.
Democratic elected leaders including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Secretary of State and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson, U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin and U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit) all condemned Lang’s protest as an attempt to stir hatred that could directly harm Dearborn’s Muslim community.
“Islamophobic racists are yet again marching in Dearborn to terrorize a whole faith community,” Tlaib said. “Dearborn is a beautifully diverse place, home to a vibrant, loving Muslim community, and our families do not deserve to be subjected to such hate and bigotry.”
At several moments, it seemed as if the clash between Lang’s Christian nationalist supporters and counterprotesters, mostly Dearborn residents, could turn violent. A small segment of the two groups — almost all men who appeared to range in age from their late teens to early 40s, some wearing masks or hoods to hide their faces — spewed much of the vitriolic rhetoric and tried to provoke each other into physical confrontations while denouncing the other side’s beliefs and defending their own.
“These (are) fake Christians!” One young Dearborn man yelled at a man in a U.S. Navy hat.
“Go back to your country!” The man responded.
Both men ignored an interview request from the Advance.
Muhammad al-thihabawi in his own words.
The unity he describes here is a little pollyanna. There were some real tense moments and anger. But he says he found unity amongst people of different religious and ethnic groups who believe in the “amendments” and that Dearborn isnt bad pic.twitter.com/CK9yGQbum9
— Tyler Scott (@T_Scotttttt) August 19, 2026
A significant portion of the crowd was uninterested in violence. The Advance observed several women urging their male partners to “shut the f---- up,” and stay calm out of concern that “you’re going to get arrested.” Some seemed only interested in observing Lang’s promised spectacle or trying to keep the peace. Most of the animosity seemed verbal. Dearborn police said information about arrests or violent altercations was not immediately available.
At the end of the city council meeting’s public comment period, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, who was recently the target of death threats by an Alaska man, addressed the crowd saying that word of Lang’s return to the city sparked fear across the city, with some businesses deciding not to open Tuesday. Hammoud said he met a young boy who asked “if the crusaders were going to kill him.”
Of the Christian nationalist protestors Hammoud said, “they are attacking the idea that everyone can belong to America at the same time.”
Donna Brandenburg, gubernatorial nominee of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, attended the protest and said the whole event seemed orchestrated to stoke political resentment.
“It seems like a big act,” Brandenburg said. “It’s trying to divide people. People in Dearborn want peace. They don’t want the fighting. I saw more American flags in Dearborn than I did in Byron Center. People need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid.”
Despite the palpable tension and verbal hostility that dominated the evening, Dearborn resident Muhammad Al-Thibabawi said he felt “unity” with people of different ethnic and religious groups and that most of the Christian nationalist protestors were uninformed about what Dearborn is.
“I spoke to a lot of these guys who are like ‘dude we got here and this is just a normal city that practices their amendments to the fullest’” Al-Thibabawi said. “We take pride in what we have. We love America.”
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MMA
Jesse Watters: “They're using migration as a weapon against us”
Watters: “This is demographic destruction”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 06/30/26
Video
Citation
From the June 30, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
JESSE WATTERS (HOST): Alito said we blew it. He said in his dissent, this was one of the most important cases the court's ever seen and we blew it. He and Thomas were basically like yeah, this devalues and degrades U.S. citizenship because it opens it up for anchor babies and for birth tourists. Now, the Chinese communists could take their pregnant wife to Guam, have a baby, fly the baby back to Beijing with a U.S. passport and then that baby, when he's older, can get U.S. welfare, he can vote. Technically, when he's 35, he could become president of the United States. That's the stupidest thing anyone ever thought of. Literally, the guy, the senator who put this out in the 19th century said it shouldn't involve foreigners, aliens, or families of ambassadors.
Everybody agreed at the time. The guy that sponsored it, the guy that initiated it, the architect of this 14th amendment. The AG, the president at the time, Grant, all said, yeah, no foreigners, no visitors. Well, this was also before airplanes. So, no one could imagine enemies of the United States flying here to have babies that 18 years later they could use against us to sway elections, soak up welfare, and then steal our defense technology. Because that's what they do. They steal it. So, I'm annoyed. And they're using migration as a weapon against us. And the court didn't protect us. And the Democrats are in cahoots with this. They like it because they like it for money and power, so obviously, we have to agree with the court's decision. Congress, not going to do anything about it. And I think the DOJ has to ramp up prosecutions of birth tourism fraud and Trump's got to deport even more because this is demographic destruction.
//
[## JESSE WATTERS SAYS HAITIAN IMMIGRANTS ARE PART OF A PLOT “TO OVERTHROW THE COUNTRY” 06/26/26
JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): So the Democrats sued to keep the Haitians here. Now, why are we suing to keep Haitians? Because they make money off Haitians. It grows the welfare state. It helps the nonprofits. The Haitians have babies, they become American citizens. They're cheap labor. That's what this is all about. They want to overthrow the country and we caught them and they're going home. I'm not feeling that bad about it.
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reboot?
mma Jesse Watters on New York elections: “This is what happens when you import the third world”
06/24/26
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MMA
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ref mma
bill Melugin is Fox News’ top anti-migrant reporter}:
Melugin plays the role of a straight journalist, but he uses Border Patrol talking points to push an anti-immigrant agenda
Written by John Knefel
Research contributions from Justin Horowitz
:{Published 05/17/22
Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin and his fans in right-wing media want their audiences to think he’s a straight news reporter -- the kind of dispassionate journalist who follows the facts wherever they take him. In reality, Melugin is a far-right propagandist masquerading as a neutral, disinterested voice.
“You know what I love about him, he just calls balls and strikes,” Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz said in December. “Bill, you do excellent work and we’re going to continue to follow your investigative reporting,” former NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch claimed on her podcast in 2020. “God bless Bill Melugin for seeking the facts,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said on a recent episode of Fox & Friends. “He’s one of the only journalists in this country covering the undeclared invasion of the United States,” Fox News prime-time host Tucker Carlson gushed on January 26.
This explanation of his job is similar to how Melugin describes himself. “The reason why I was an investigative reporter for six years before I started at Fox News is because I like shining light where others don’t want it,” he told Chafetz in December, adding, “My job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” This framing allows him to launder pro-cop, anti-immigrant propaganda into the news cycle with a veneer of objectivity.
:{Melugin is ubiquitous on Fox News, having logged 421 segments since he became an official Fox News correspondent in April 2021, according to Media Matters’ internal database. As the network’s lead voice at the southern border, he will likely only appear more in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections as Republicans recycle their predictable anti-migrant fearmongering.
He has appeared on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show at least 58 times and played a prominent role in the Season Two premiere of Tucker Carlson Originals on Fox Nation. Prior to joining Fox News full time, he was a reporter at Fox Television Station’s KTTV channel in Los Angeles, and he has been making regular appearances on the cable network since at least January 2020. His job at both outlets has been to frame immigration issues and reform of the criminal punishment system in a sensationalistic way, adopting wholesale the opinions and concerns of law enforcement and restrictionist, anti-migrant activists.}:
But unlike the unhinged anti-immigrant monologues of opinion hosts on the network like Laura Ingraham and Carlson, Melugin’s contributions to the Fox News propaganda machine are news packages and live standup shots at the border. He plays the straight man to Carlson's and Ingraham’s howling comedians, and his presence on the border and posture of journalistic impartiality give his words — and therefore Carlson’s and Ingraham’s — more weight than they would otherwise have. As the old vaudeville saying goes, comedians are a dime a dozen, but if you've got a straight man you've got an act.
The terminally online may remember Melugin from his stint as Twitter’s main character in the summer of 2020 after he credulously reported that a Starbucks employee had placed a tampon into a Los Angeles police officer’s coffee cup. The cop’s claim was ludicrous from the outset, as Melugin’s own post made clear. The foreign object looked nothing like a tampon. But for Melugin, all that mattered was that a cop told him it was. A subsequent LA sheriff's department investigation found the offending object was a cleaning cloth, not a tampon.
This episode isn’t just an embarrassing example of a journalist getting a story wrong. Even the most diligent reporters need to issue corrections over the course of their career. Instead, this screw-up is a microcosm of Melugin’s entire approach to reporting. He acts as a mouthpiece for law enforcement, thereby ingratiating himself into its ranks, even at the expense of his own professional reputation. By his own admission, if he wasn’t in journalism, he would go to law school to become a prosecutor. He excels at manufacturing what left-wing activists call copaganda, and he has been handsomely rewarded for it.
The Del Rio bridge story
Melugin’s primary beat is the southern border, a region he consistently portrays as lawless, dangerous, and porous as a result of liberal politicians’ fecklessness. Migrants in his stories appear as threats — either as vectors to spread COVID-19, or as terrorists, criminals, or undesireables who will be a drain on society. In Melugin’s coverage, the U.S.-Mexico border is not simply a demarcation between countries. It is a line that divides the civilized world from the uncivilized, order from chaos, producer from parasite, deserving citizen from undeserving alien. It’s a region where under-resourced Border Patrol agents must heroically stave off invasion from unrelenting hordes of criminals-in-waiting, all while being persecuted by the Woke Industrial Complex back home.
Melugin was the key driver of one of the biggest immigration stories of 2021, the perceived crisis of Haitian migrants who had established a small camp under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. There was a crisis, but it was for the Haitians who were relegated to extreme deprivation, humiliation, and stigma — not for the residents of Del Rio or for the United States more broadly.
Melugin initially used an airborne drone to cover the story, later appearing on Tucker Carlson Tonight repeatedly to discuss his footage. When the Federal Aviation Administration instituted a two-week flight restriction over Del Rio, the Texas Department of Public Safety allowed him to embed in an agency helicopter to continue his coverage. The FAA later gave Fox clearance to fly the drone again, which Melugin did, keeping the manufactured crisis in the headlines.
The Del Rio bridge story is a point of pride for Melugin, a story that forced national news outlets to cover a topic he believes they regularly ignore. “What we’re doing with the border right now — there’s no other national networks down there,” Melugin told Chafetz during an appearance on his podcast. “The only time they showed up was with the Del Rio bridge situation, with all the Haitians, and the only reason they showed up is because we were down there with the drone.”
As much as Melugin wants to portray himself as a straight reporter, he clearly favors a restrictionist approach to immigration that’s heavily reliant on criminalization of border crossing. “I’ll be frank with you, I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall,” he told conservative radio host and Fox News contributor Guy Benson in January. “I don’t know what else I have to show to wake people up. It almost seems like half the country wants to plug their head in the ground and pretend it’s not happening.”
This bias often shows up in subtle ways, like when Melugin internalizes Border Patrol lingo. He regularly refers to families as “family units,” the official, and dehumanizing, term used by the Department of Homeland Security. His reports often sound like he’s on safari, hunting prey. “Just a short time ago we had a group of runners come zipping right by us,” he said in November. “We found two of those runners hiding in a bush. Very difficult to see them.” Later in the segment, Melugin referenced a “remarkable” video published by far-right website Breitbart that showed a man trying to sink rafts migrants were using to cross the Rio Grande.
He often speaks about “got-aways,” that is, human beings who crossed the border without authorization that Border Patrol failed to apprehend. “A very, very high-level DHS source told me that since October, there have already been more than 220,000 known got-aways,” Melugin said in March. The term increased in popularity with conservatives following a September 2020 Border Patrol propaganda video called “The Gotaway,” reportedly inspired by Trump advisor and white nationalist Stephen Miller, that falsely presented immigrants as dangerous, criminal threats. More responsible reporters will occasionally use “got-away” to reference Border Patrol statements, but with Melugin the sinister connotations are just below the surface. “Just in the last six months alone here at the border there have been more than 300,000 known got-aways,” Melugin said during a segment that framed migrants as potential terrorists. “Former ICE Director Tom Homan says these terrorist numbers, these guys caught at the border last year, are a major concern.”
Melugin’s restrictionist approach frames his entire body of work, which treats increased levels of border crossing as inherently negative, and naturalizes prejudice against people from the global south. “Migrants just walking across the river, illegally entering the state of Texas,” Melugin said in March. “Border agents tell us you can expect this to get a whole lot worse if and when Title 42 drops,” he reported, referring to a racist Trump-era policy that allows officials to immediately expel asylum-seekers. He treats the release of single adult migrant men as inherently scandalous, implying that they are invaders disappearing into the shadows, lying in wait to commit violence. “We’re watching bus after bus after bus dropping off 50, 60 adult men at a time, sometimes with ankle monitors,” Melugin reported in January. “They get on a bus, they call a taxi, they go to the airport, and they’re gone.”
At the height of the interest in the Del Rio bridge story, Melugin used his on-the-ground presence to run interference for Border Patrol and sow confusion about its mistreatment of the migrants there. An iconic photograph taken by Paul Ratje appeared to depict a Border Patrol agent on horseback whipping a Haitian migrant, prompting national outrage, including from President Joe Biden. “I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” Ratje told local Texas TV station KTSM several days after it went viral. “[The agent] was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”
Melugin tweeted out that interview, claiming the photographer said “he and his colleagues never saw agents whipping anyone and the photos are being misconstrued. However, the false narrative is off and running.” Melugin’s tweet, which told a straightforward story of a photographer unequivocally distancing himself from how his work was being interpreted, was later picked up by The Federalist in a piece attacking the Biden administration for criticizing Border Patrol. The narrative that Biden was lying about the mistreatment of Haitian migrants at the border took hold and continues to be a story among anti-immigrant news outlets and organizations.
The reality of the situation, and Ratje’s feelings about his photo, are far more nuanced. Ratje told Time magazine in March that after his initial comment to KTSM saying he never saw the agents use their reins as whips, he was “portrayed” as giving the agents “a pass.” He tracked down the man in the photograph, Mirard Joseph, who attested in court documents that Border Patrol “lashed at” him. But more broadly, Joseph described his contact with Border Patrol as humiliating and dangerous and said the day the photo was taken was one of the worst of his life. Ratje’s determination to present Joseph and his family as fellow human beings, deserving of dignity and respect, stands in stark contrast to Melugin’s own coverage.
Groundwork for Carlson’s and Ingraham’s racism
The way Melugin’s coverage gets operationalized on Fox News is just as important as the coverage itself. The network’s two most open bigots — Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham — are, not coincidentally, two of Melugin’s biggest fans.
Beyond giving Melugin a central role in his paranoid documentary, Carlson regularly has Melugin on his show or otherwise references him and praises his work. Melugin’s coverage in some cases has served as the foundation for Carlson’s most extreme white nationalist programming, specifically his repeated endorsements of the racist “great replacement” theory, which holds that there is an international conspiracy by global elites to bring nonwhite people to the United States and Western Europe to seize political and cultural power through immigration.
Although Melugin had been appearing on Fox News regularly since at least early 2020, it was in September last year, during the Del Rio bridge story, that Melugin and Carlson's symbiotic relationship fully developed. Over the course of three nights, Carlson became progressively more racist, culminating in his embrace of the great replacement theory. Carlson aired a report from Melugin on the first show, and Melugin appeared as a guest on the following two nights. His dispatches over this period laid the foundation for some of Carlson's most xenophobic, openly racist rhetoric to date.
On Monday, September 20, Carlson played some of Melugin’s weekend footage from the bridge. “Bill Melugin has been on this story like nobody else,” Carlson said while introducing the footage. In the prerecorded segment, Melugin described the number of Haitians crossing the river as a “never-ending stream,” saying that the situation “is insane” and that the “federal government has to wake up.” Carlson then conspiratorially asked “how did they afford it,” the implication being that George Soros-aligned organizations were footing the bill for the migrants’ travel. He then claimed the Border Patrol chief had said only the single adult men among the migrants will be deported. “Yeah, right,” he exclaimed. “The rest will be processed and released into what you thought was your country but turns out isn't.”
On Tuesday, Melugin appeared live on Carlson’s show in the lead segment, arguably the most important real estate in all of cable news. “Look, it's hard to believe that this camp over my shoulder is actually in the United States,” Melugin said gravely. “It's more reminiscent of somewhere from the Third World, and law enforcement out here is on record as saying that.” Later in the segment, Carlson said the Haitians are “eager for the free health care, the education, the housing vouchers, food stamps, and much more that Joe Biden has promised them.” He warned his audience that “the people you just saw on your screen could very well be choosing your president at some point” and invoked the great replacement theory in all but name, saying, “This is an attempt to change the demographics of the United States in order to give permanent power to the Democratic Party.”
On Wednesday, Carlson invited Melugin back, again fueling one of his most overtly white-supremacist segments to date, as he fully endorsed the great replacement theory. “What Joe Biden is doing now will change this country forever, so again, why is he doing it? There's only one plausible answer. You're not allowed to say it out loud,” Carlson said. “In political terms, this policy is called the great replacement, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far away countries.” Around the same time, other Fox News personalities began pushing the racist conspiracy theory as well.
From this period onward, there is no shortage of examples of Carlson using racist, dehumanizing, or otherwise bigoted language when discussing Melugin’s reporting. On December 17, Carlson argued that “demographic change underway right now in the United States” is a “direct assault to democracy,” before tossing to Melugin.
In January, Carlson used the word “invasion” multiple times in conjunction with Melugin’s reporting. The following month, Carlson suggested that the Biden administration is allowing fentanyl smuggling across the border because opioid overdose deaths are harming white people, and “their deaths may have helped the equity agenda by changing the demographics of the country in a way that benefits the Democratic Party.” He then went to a report from Melugin from the border, sourced to law enforcement, to underscore his point.
The dynamic is the same when Melugin appears on The Ingraham Angle, which he’s been on at least 15 times. “Every crime they commit, every tax dollar they consume, every disease that is spread, every cartel member that's enriched, all of it is on Joe Biden,” Ingraham said on September 20, at the height of the Del Rio bridge panic, after she cited Melugin’s reporting. Earlier that month, channeling the great replacement theory, Ingraham said Biden saw migrants as “fodder for cheap labor and easy votes.” She often characterized migrants as a public health risk, as on January 25, when she said in response to a Melugin segment, “Presumably many unvaxxed illegals can just get free rides to wherever they please.”
Fox News' coverage has clearly had an effect. A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that “about 1 in 3 U.S. adults believes an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.” The consequences of popularizing that racist conspiracy theory have been disastrous. On May 14, an 18-year-old man shot 13 people, killing 10, in Buffalo, New York, in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Most of his victims were Black, and in his manifesto he espoused racist, antisemitic, xenophobic, and explicitly fascist views.
Although he wrote that he had been radicalized on extremist message boards during the pandemic, the shooter’s alleged manifesto repeatedly cites the great replacement conspiracy theory popularized and embraced by Tucker Carlson, which has in turn been widely embraced by mainstream elected Republicans. In that way, the massacre mirrored racist attacks carried out in El Paso, Texas, and Christchurch, New Zealand. Fox News, and Carlson specifically, have taken this once-fringe idea and normalized it. Melugin's alarmist border dispatches are an indispensable element of the network's formula, and he bears significant responsibility for the mainstreaming of the racist great replacement theory and the consequences it entails.
The terrorist threat that wasn’t
For Melugin, people who cross the border without authorization pose an urgent danger, especially if they can be tied to the underground drug economy, or, even better, associated with the threat of terrorism. Reactionaries have promoted the idea that the southern U.S. border is a ripe avenue for terrorists to enter the country since the 9/11 attacks. That myth has been repeatedly debunked, but Melugin has been happy to resurrect it to further stigmatize migrants.
On April 18, Melugin co-wrote an article for Fox News’ website with an alarmist headline warning that Customs and Border Protection had “stopped 23 people on terrorist database at southern border in 2021.” As Media Matters documented, that story served as the basis for seven segments that day on Fox News and was picked up by far-right network competitors Newsmax and One America News Network as well.
The Terrorist Screening Database, which Melugin’s story referred to, is notoriously unreliable as an indicator of past, present, or future violent acts or tendencies. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, responded to Melugin’s article by laying out how easy it is for people to be added to the database through nothing but a chain of unrelated telephone calls. The government regularly keeps people in the database even after they’ve been cleared of wrongdoing, and experts have called for the judiciary to rule the database unconstitutional based on the fact that it’s arbitrary, shrouded in secrecy, and overly broad in its data collection and retention. In other words, the fact that 23 of the people CBP stopped were associated with that database could be, by itself, almost entirely meaningless.
Still, for Melugin, the arbitrary number 23 could be even further abstracted into fuel for xenophobic paranoia. “Those are only the ones they caught, only the ones they know about,” Melugin told Carlson on the evening his story was published. “That's a major concern, because CBP officials tell us in the last six months alone here at the border, there have been more than 300,000 known got-aways.”
Wow, what a big number. What a big number that means absolutely nothing.
The Los Angeles beat
Melugin’s secondary beat is Los Angeles, specifically crime and disorder. Like the southern border, the Los Angeles of Melugin’s coverage is a violent, dystopian land where a small band of champions — police and prosecutors, in this case — fight against all odds to preserve the thin line between civilization and a total societal collapse.
Melugin is heavily featured in the two-part Season Two premiere of Tucker Carlson Originals — one of Carlson’s Fox Nation imprints — titled “Suicide of Los Angeles.” Carlson’s Originals seem like documentaries but serve as fascist propaganda, and Melugin acted as his well-coiffed Virgil, shepherding the viewer through the hell that is modern Los Angeles. Carlson’s antagonist is LA District Attorney George Gascón, a moderate criminal justice reformer who — according to Melugin — has transformed the county into a living nightmare. “All of my best sources in all of LA are deputy DAs within the DA office, dozens of them,” he intoned dramatically. “I typically know what happens in that office before the ink dries on something, because people are so pissed off about what’s going on.” Gascon, a former police officer himself, now faces a recall election as a result of right-wing pressure.
Obviously, having sources inside the DA’s office or the police department is crucial for a beat reporter. The problem arises when a journalist’s reporting becomes indistinguishable from the press releases of those organizations. Melugin continues to rely on a stenographer model of “reporting,” running with whatever cops feed him, regardless of the truth. In 2020, for example, when Melugin was still with Fox’s local LA outlet, he tweeted out information about Los Angeles City Council member Mike Bonin that aligned with a smear campaign the LA police union had just initiated against Bonin, which Bonin called “demonstrably false.”
For years, Melugin has been happy to pass along the subjective, unfalsifiable claim that, as a result of some relatively modest reform, morale at the various law enforcement agencies he covers has never been lower. At ICE, the “morale is as low as it gets,” Melugin said on January 27. “Everybody is feeling super down and morale is in the toilet,” Melugin said again three days later on a Fox News radio show. “Morale has never been this bad. They see it as absolutely rock bottom,” Melugin said about the Los Angeles Police Department in a June 2020 radio interview. “One prosecutor told me the way it feels working for George Gascón right now, he likens it to what he imagines it felt like at the end of the Vietnam War,” Melugin said in “Suicide of Los Angeles,” which was released in April.
Unsurprisingly, this is the exact same line law enforcement officers and unions take when their power is challenged even moderately. Again, reporting that a union has issued a statement is one thing, but when the reporter privileges anecdotal concerns of cops over every other detail in the story, including the voices of activists, public defenders, immigrants, and prison abolitionists, it is stenography, not reporting. In Melugin’s reporting, public defenders and defense attorneys are dangerous radicals, and left-wing activists are coddled by the criminal punishment system. It’s not clear that Melugin has ever written a story about police or prosecutorial misconduct. (Melugin’s labor sympathies appear to be restricted to law enforcement, as he was willing to cast the LA teacher’s union in an extremely negative light during negotiations to resume in-person classes.)
On the rare occasion that he does present a perspective other than that of the police, he typically undercuts it immediately. In a radio interview on April 2, Melugin said Black Lives Matter activists were pleased that Gascón was planning to disband, or at least downsize, the Hardcore Gang Unit, because they felt the unit engaged in racist policing. “One of the prosecutors I talked to in that unit says that argument is BS,” Melugin immediately clarified.
Melugin has been lavishly rewarded by law enforcement for his copaganda. He is a regular beneficiary of leaks, including for the Tucker Carlson Originals episode. The fact that he’s able to obtain privileged or classified information, and then disseminate it, further perpetuates his reputation as an investigative journalist. It just so happens that virtually every leak he gets paints cops in a positive light and reformers or activists in a negative one.
Melugin’s bad data
No one would confuse Melugin for a rigorous statistician or political scientist, but his misrepresentation of data is egregious even by cable news standards. He’s happy to omit research when it doesn’t fit his predetermined, anti-immigration narrative, as one example from last year illustrates.
On September 22, Melugin reported that a Border Patrol source told him the migrants under the International Bridge at Del Rio were being processed and released with “notices to report,” rather than the stricter “notice to appear.” Melugin then tweeted: “When those migrants never show up to immigration/court dates, there is no more law enforcement interaction, no way to track them. They are gone into the shadows in the U.S.” As Media Matters noted at the time, all the available evidence contradicted Melugin’s innuendo that migrants skip out on their hearings. As the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted in response to Melugin’s tweet, from 2008 to 2018, 83% of migrants appeared for their hearings.
Melugin is also happy to present data, or leaked government documents, stripped of context to convey a similar sense of danger and foreboding that migrants present. In February, Melugin claimed there had been a “huge surge” in Border Patrol encounters in Del Rio when compared with January 2021. Reichlin-Melnick responded to that tweet as well, arguing that Melugin’s framing was misleading, that numbers were not in fact surging, and that the year-over-year comparison served only to manufacture a perceived crisis.
“You look like a white supremacist”
In the aftermath of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, protests against rising fascism and racist institutions erupted throughout the country. Melugin, still a reporter at the local KTTV channel, covered an August 2017 march in LA and was accused of looking like a white supremacist by the demonstrators. To be fair, in the video Melugin just appears to be doing his job, and although he wasn’t wearing his own press credentials, his photographer was. Melugin grew understandably upset at the accusation, countering, “You know nothing about me.”
It’s a fair point, and, sartorial missteps notwithstanding, the protesters that day were ungenerous to Melugin. Had they been able to see what his coverage over the next 4 ½ years would look like, they may have been on firmer ground. Either way, if Melguin doesn’t want to be characterized as a white supremacist in the future, he should probably stop working for a company run by them.
*Correction (5/19/22): This piece originally stated that the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally was in Charlottesville, North Carolina, rather than Virginia.
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February 3, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): Democrats are saying this is the greatest voter suppression movement in history. Here's the reason, Minnesota shows you this, New York City shows you this, if they don't have illegal aliens voting, if they don't have these phony migrants that are here on these phony programs that are at the polls — and you're damn right we're gonna have ICE surround the polls come November.
We're not gonna sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen. And that's why I'm so proud of what President Trump is doing and people are doing. Caroline Wren, your thoughts on that before I go to Brad?
CAROLINE WREN (GUEST): I think what you said about ICE is very much related to this, because in fact, Senator Mark [Warner] said in an interview, he said, we don't want ICE agents showing up at the polling stations. That's what this is all about. That's why they're trying to defund ICE, that's why they're trying to, you know, go after and target ICE and shut it down.
Why would you care if ICE shows up to polling stations because illegal aliens are not allowed to vote in this country. Except for the problem is they do, and they do in these, they're not blue states, I was gonna say blue states. Minnesota is a deeply red state that is held hostage by illegals voting and it is — the minorities have taken over there, and by minorities I mean the minority party, the Democratic Party there, and that is due to allowing illegals to vote. And so that is what this outrage by the left is against ICE.
They're desperately trying to shut down the DHS funding bill. They don't want ICE funded because they don't want ICE at the polling stations to stop illegals from voting.
BANNON: The ask here on the Save Act, and Make Elections Great Again Act are pretty basic. A legitimate ID to show who you are to vote. It is to clean up the voter rolls. We've had Tom Fitton on here, there are millions, there are tens of millions, particularly in places like Georgia, but all over the nation there are tens of millions of people on voter rolls that should not be, they have to be cleaned up, and the blue states are the ones that are fighting the Justice Department.
And then the last is, you've got to go back to the basic law. If you're gonna have mail-in ballots, you have to have signature verification, you have to have the double envelopes, you have to have everything so we can't have a 2020 and the Democrats don't want to play with that because they know how to steal elections.
Let's just, let's put you on notice again. ICE is going to be around the polls in the 2026 midterm elections because we are never again going to allow your business model because — I think Jesse Kelly is right, 20% of the country probably votes for Democrats, you know, the credentialed class and of course the abject poor that they keep on these social welfare programs and never let them off it. That's the Democratic Party base with a handful of oligarchs, the super wealthy, that's who controls the Democratic Party.
The way that they continue to win elections is they cheat. If they don't cheat, they can't win. And now they're sitting there saying President Trump is a fascist. These are very basic things, and they're not — we're going to find out today, Chip Roy is going to come on. As hard as Anna Paulina Luna and people have been working I'm not so sure the Save Act even comes to a vote.
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MMA
Tucker Carlson: “The defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated”
Carlson: “White and non-white benefit alike from systems created by whites because they're more humane, they're more just, they're more fair, and they're more — much more efficient and, and cleaner, obviously”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 01/22/26
Video
Citation
From the January 19, 2026, edition of The Tucker Carlson Show,posted on YouTube
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): I keep going back to this, but I'm just, I am a little bit confused because this is the defining fact of our lives is that whites around the world are being eliminated, and I would like to know why. Do you have any guesses?
PETER BRIMELOW (GUEST): As I say, I think, Tucker, I think it derives from emotion rather than any kind of rational calculation. I mean, if you look at what's happened in South Africa, or for that matter, in every big American Black city — that's majority Black. I mean, they can't want it to be able to get into a situation where the water is putrid and nothing works and all that kind of thing. But they do. You know, the purpose of a system is what it does.
CARLSON: That's right.
BRIMELOW: And the purpose of, you know, non-white government is to produce non-white government and non-white results. Unless, of course, you're Chinese. I mean, because Singapore's run Japanese, they're, they're run very efficiently.
CARLSON: They are. It's just interesting that people move here because it's a white country and we —
BRIMELOW: They seem to run it into the ground. Yes.
CARLSON: Well, all of us benefit, white and non-white, benefit alike from systems created by whites because they're more humane, they're more just, they're more fair, and they're more — much more efficient and cleaner, obviously.
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AHA DOH INVASION IS A MYTH // GRT VIOL RHET, HYPE FEAR --> MASS SHOOT
AN 2 25
When it comes to talking about immigrants, the word “invasion” is both explosive and inaccurate, experts and human rights advocates say. Yet with Donald Trump back in the White House, it’s showing up on official orders and other communications — and it’s being echoed by Ohio politicians.
Just in the waning weeks of January, Trump issued two executive orders using the language — “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion” and “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.”
On Thursday, more than 80 civil and human rights organizations sent a letter to congressional leaders calling on them to reject what the groups said was a “false and bigoted conspiracy theory.”
As at times past, numbers of migrants spiked at the U.S.-Mexico border at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic and severely strained resources. That led certain politicians on the right — including Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and now-Ohio U.S. Sen.Bernie Moreno — to claim it was an invasion even though migrants weren’t driving tanks, carrying machine guns, or even functioning as an organized group. They don’t even committed crime at rates as high as native-born Americans
“Immigration policy is an important topic that demands congressional discussion and debate,” the groups’ letter to Republican and Democratic congressional leaders said. “We implore Senate and House leadership not to support or fund efforts that are led by a fictional and dangerous conspiracy theory purporting an ‘invasion.’ Congress should not provide the justification for continued attacks on our democracy.”
In Texas, Abbott has tried to portray what has happened at the border as a military invasion as he seeks to take border-security responsibilities into his own hands. Such powers have traditionally been reserved for the federal government because it would create chaos if each of the 50 states was in charge of its own policy and security when it came to dealing with foreign countries.
Also, the places along the border that Abbott claimed were the site of a military invasion are among the safest communities in the country. So, even when immigrants showed up in large numbers, that didn’t amount to the military invasion Abbott claimed in an attempt to get around federal primacy, a judge ruled last year.
“Contemporary definitions of ‘invasion’ and ‘actually invaded’ as well as common usage of the term in the late Eighteenth Century predominantly referred to an ‘invasion’ as a hostile and organized military force, too powerful to be dealt with by ordinary judicial proceedings,” U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra wrote last year as he blocked Abbott. “This Court could not locate a single contemporaneous use of the term to refer to surges in unauthorized foreign immigration.”
After briefly lifting it, the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld Ezra’s stay and is scheduled to hear Texas’s appeal in July.
Meanwhile, many experts have said false claims of invasion have prompted murderous rampages against vulnerable communities. For example, Patrick Crusius in 2019 drove from Dallas to El Paso, posted a manifesto saying he was stopping an “invasion” at the border and went to a Walmart. There he used an AK-47 to murder 23 and injured 22 more.
Some experts say the fact that such false, incendiary rhetoric can be deadly isn’t just incidental, it’s part of the point. It scares immigrants and others from standing up to those who use it, and that serves the political ends of those who use such rhetoric, those experts say.
Not to fight false claims that we’re being invaded undermines democracy, a program director at one of the groups that signed the letter to congressional leaders said in a statement.
“Depicting migrants and refugees as an ‘invasion’ is not only a dangerous and bigoted attempt to fearmonger, it is now the basis of an authoritarian power grab,” said Liz Yates of the Western States Center.
In their letter, all the groups said the harm will only spread unless those in power stand against claims of an “invasion.”
“This bigoted narrative has already been leveraged to promote policies that have and will continue to have a devastating impact on immigrant communities,” the letter said. “It has also inspired a pattern of white nationalist and antisemitic deadly attacks across the nation. Use of this bigoted conspiracy theory as justification for a policy agenda poses a public safety risk not only to the immigrant communities who are targeted for policy enforcement, but also to Jewish, Black, Brown, Muslim, LGBTQ+, AANHPI, Latinx and many other communities who are implicated in this conspiratorial rhetoric. It also constitutes a direct threat to our democracy.” Congress must refuse to further legitimize this bigotry by sanctioning or funding policies in its name.”
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.
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an 12 25
In a newly released 33-page document called "the National Security Strategy of the United States of America," the Trump Administration details its foreign policy objectives — including its views on Europe, which Trump officials claim is in danger of "civilization erasure."
Salon's Andrew O'Hehir analyzes the document in an article published on December 7, attacking the Trump White House's arguments as an "unhinged" and deeply racist blueprint for "making Europe white again."
O'Hehir draws a parallel between the arguments in the National Security Strategy (NSS) document and arguments of the Clairmont Institute, which was once a mainstream conservative think tank but has, in recent years, taken a far-right MAGA turn.
"To be fair, the poison-steeped Claremont Institute pseudo-intellectuals behind the Trump regime might well argue that their NSS is not contradictory in the least, since it can be boiled down to a straightforward message: Tyranny is awesome, but democracy sucks," O'Hehir warns. "OK, it doesn't actually say that, but it's hard to imagine how else to reconcile its Great Replacement-fueled fanboy enthusiasm for far-right parties in Europe and its high-minded refusal to lecture autocratic regimes in the Middle East and Asia about 'democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.' Understandably enough, it's the unhinged and unconcealed racist panic shoveled out in the Trump NSS that has generated international headlines."
The Salon journalist continues, "Europe, the document warns, is losing its historic cultural identity and faces the 'stark prospect of civilizational erasure.' Exactly what is meant here by 'identity' and 'civilization' is only barely left unsaid, and the Great Replacement rhetoric is not so much borrowed as copied and pasted: It is 'more than plausible,' we are told, that in coming decades, 'certain NATO members will become majority non-European,' and may no longer 'view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way' they used to."
The "point" of the NSS, O'Hehir laments, is to "rip the liberal democracies of the EU a new one for their perceived wokeness."
"If we try to map the NSS claims onto the realm of reality," O'Hehir writes, "they fall apart. But that's hardly the point: It is not, in fact, plausible that any European nation will have a Muslim-majority population, or a mostly nonwhite population, or anything close to that, in the foreseeable future. Second and far more important, what message is being sent when the government of a multiethnic democracy built on three centuries of immigration — roughly 99 percent of the U.S. population has ancestral ties to other continents — makes the official claim that 'immigrants will corrupt the values of the societies they move to,' as The Economist puts it?"
According to O'Hehir, the NSS "is dangerous because no American president, whether good, bad or indifferent, clear back to roughly the days of Andrew Jackson, would have published such blatant racist fiction as an official statement of U.S. foreign policy."
*Andrew O'Hehir's full article for Salon is available at this link.
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MMA
08/04/25
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AN 6 25
Just one day after a widely criticized, multimillion-dollar military parade marking both the U.S. Army’s birthday and his own—and amid millions attending thousands of nationwide “No Kings” protests—President Donald Trump announced on Sunday night a new crackdown targeting undocumented immigrants exclusively in Democratic-led strongholds, declaring that blue cities “are the core of the Democrat Power Center.”
Some critics also note that the move comes after a suspect, reportedly a Trump supporter, allegedly assassinated a Democratic Minnesota lawmaker and her spouse and gravely shot and wounded another Democratic lawmaker and his spouse on the same day as the anti-Trump rallies in all 50 states.
In a 400-word Sunday night “order” on social media, President Trump claimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE) every day face “threats from Radical Democrat Politicians,” as he announced “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” before baselessly claiming voter fraud.
READ MORE:‘Coup’: What DHS Secretary’s ‘Liberate’ Comment Means, According to Experts
“Every day, the Brave Men and Women of ICE are subjected to violence, harassment, and even threats from Radical Democrat Politicians, but nothing will stop us from executing our mission, and fulfilling our Mandate to the American People. ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” the President wrote.
“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” Trump continued. “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports.”
Critics blasted the President and issued warnings.
“This is illegal on so many levels,” charged John Jackson, a former trial lawyer. “He’s declaring war on specific areas based entirely on their voter registration, which is a form of speech and protected political choice. It’s ‘vote Republican or I will punish you.’ Incredible. Out in the open. Lawless.”
“2 implications of Trump specifically targeting immigrants in Democratic cities: He’s NOT going after immigrants in places where they are least welcome,” observed former Washington Post editor Robert McCartney. “He IS doing what’s most likely to provoke backlash. We conclude that his goal is not to ‘solve’ the problem but to stir chaos.”
“This is the politicization of law enforcement. It’s not about ‘immigration,’ it’s about demonizing cities, harming political enemies and winning elections,” declared The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum. “Also, those are the cities that had the biggest No Kings protests.”
RELATED: In Reversal, Trump Uses Term Tied to Ethnic Cleansing Amid Renewed Mass Deportation Demand
Pointing to Trump’s full screed, political strategist Rachel Bitecofer noted, “Please go study how the Nazis talked about the Jews to whip the public up into accepting restricting them from society, deporting them, and ultimately murdering them. It will sound a lot like this.”
“Trump is going after Blue cities based on nothing more than the crazy, conspiratorial voices in his head,” wrote Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health. “He’s already violating our 1st, 4th, 5th & 14th Amendments, and deploying the U.S. military against citizens in L.A. This is what authoritarianism looks like.”
“He’s openly admitting that he’s politicizing law enforcement,” observed Chuck Todd, the former NBC News Chief Political Analyst and “Meet the Press” moderator. “This will not help ICE’s image because he’s asking them to perform a political task. Throw in the decision to shield the red states from law enforcement and he’s clearly hoping to provoke an angry response. At a moment when we need a president to de-escalate, he does the opposite.”
“Trump’s ugly plan is clear: Incite violence in blue cities & blue states only, and then put the military on the streets in those blue cities & blue states only,” warned former Tea Party GOP Congressman Joe Walsh, now a Democrat and political commentator. “Everything he does is meant to divide us. He is the absolute worst of us.”
“This sort of dehumanizing language about political opponents is exactly what leads to the horrific shootings we saw yesterday, wrote MeidasTouch News. “Disgraceful and dangerous.”
“One of his crazed supporters just assassinated a Democrat and he continues to instigate division and hatred, noted Arizona Democratic state Senator Analise Ortiz. “We need an adult in the White House, not a dictator hell bent on escalating tensions and political violence.”
Progressive media outlet The Tennessee Holler wrote that “the president posting that Dems are ‘sick of mind’ and ‘hate our country’ immediately after 2 Dem lawmakers and their spouses were shot in their homes is the opposite of leadership. Gas on the fire.”
“A US president is supposed to be the president of all the people,” wrote retired Professor of Law Anne Arbor. “This man instead foments hatred of his own political party against his political opponents. This statement verges on a declaration of civil war against half the country.”
READ MORE: ‘You Don’t Care’: Gay Congressman Blasts Defense Secretary Over LGBTQ Troops
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mma
06/10/25 2:01 PM EDT
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06/10/25 9:24 AM EDT
06/09/25 7:55 PM EDT
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06/09/25
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an 5 25
Michigan House Democrats on Tuesday came out in support of a resolution put forth by state Rep. Sharon MacDonell (D-Troy) aiming to censure Rep. Josh Schriver (R-Oxford) for “racist statements” made on the House Floor earlier this month.
Schriver, who wasstripped of his staff, funds and committee assignment by former House Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit) last year for promoting the racist Great Replacement Theory on social media, spoke out on a set of policies intended to crack down on sanctuary cities and counties during the chamber’s May 1 session.
In his testimony, Schriver quoted former Presidential Advisor Patrick Buchanan’s book, “The Death of the West”, telling fellow lawmakers “The chasm in our country is not one of income, ideology or faith, but of ethnicity and loyalty.”
“Illegal aliens undermine our national sovereignty. The largest population transfer in history is coming from all the races in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and they are not acclimating, they are not melting and they are not reforming to the American way of life,” Schriver said. “This is something that needs to be addressed.”
MacDonell told reporters on Tuesday that while it’s not surprising to hear Schriver oppose sanctuary cities, his testimony had focused on criticizing people rather than policy.
“Schriver blamed naturalized citizens and their descendants for America’s ills…I think any rational person can agree that it’s one thing to have strong opinions on immigration policy in Michigan. It’s fully another thing to claim that all immigrants, including naturalized citizens, are bad people. Even worse to claim that all people of certain ethnicity that he doesn’t like, or a certain national origin that Schriver doesn’t like, are bad people,” MacDonell said.
House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton), whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India, called Schriver’s comments “deliberate, disgusting, dangerous and disgraceful.”
“They were an attack on families like mine, and an attack on the very spirit of inclusion and the progress that our state is making. His remarks were rooted in ignorance and prejudice and they do not reflect the values of House Democrats or the values of the Michigan people,” Puri said.
“Rep. Schriver also specifically singled out countries whose people are overwhelmingly Black, brown and non-white, not once mentioning European nations or white immigrants. That’s not a coincidence. That’s racism, plain and simple. He didn’t just invoke racist tropes, he leaned into the dangerous Great Replacement Theory suggesting that immigrants of color are here to erase American identity. That’s not policy, that’s paranoia rooted in white supremacy,” Puri said.
During a May 13, 2025 press conference, House Democrats gather in support of Rep. Sharon MacDonnell’s (D-Troy) resolution to censure Rep. Josh Schriver (R-Oxford) for “racist statements” made on the House floor. | Screenshot
He also raised concerns that members of the Republican Caucus hadn’t spoken out against Schriver’s remarks, calling on House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) and other Republicans to denounce Schriver’s “hateful rhetoric.”
“When white supremacy echoes in the chambers and you say nothing, you’re not neutral, you are complicit,” Puri said.
When asked about Schriver’s remarks at a press conference earlier on Tuesday, Hall said he hadn’t seen Schriver’s comments, before noting that Schriver had been reelected by his constituents.
Video of House Session shows Hall on the House floor as Schriver requests permission to testify on the bills, though he is not visible on video when Schriver’s speech concludes.
“What I really appreciate about representative Shriver is that he’s, you see a difference, I think, between him last year and this year and, you know, we gave him his staff back… what I’m doing is I’ve got him as a member of our caucus, and you know what I’ve tried to do is put him in positions to succeed, and he’s on some of these oversight subcommittees. I think he’s doing a very good job there. And you see him really voting with our caucus on a lot of issues,” Hall said.
“I appreciate how he’s working with our members as a team, and even though we might have differences at times in how we talk and how we communicate, and I’ve expressed some of those in the past where him and I disagreed,” Hall said, with the Speaker previously stating that Schriver’s resolution calling on the United States Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell V. Hodges, which requires all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, would not move forward.
When asked if Schriver’s far-right views were shaping legislation coming from the House Republican Caucus, Hall pointed to Schriver’s vote in support of bipartisan policies like legislation to create a Public Safety Trust Fund to support local law enforcement and community violence intervention initiatives.
Schriver’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the proposed resolution.
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Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.
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PFAW
no lnx
:{Alternet
Social media shows Antioch shooter was influenced by Holocaust deniers, white nationalists
Antioch High School.
Jordan Greenand Raw StoryJanuary 23, 2025
The 17-year-old who killed a female student at a high school in Nashville before taking his own life was an African-American Reserve Officers' Training Corp member who hated Black people and identified as involuntarily celibate, according to a manifesto apparently posted by him online.
A document outlining the views was posted to the X account of the shooter, Solomon Henderson, along with a photo of a handgun in a backpack that appears to have been taken in a bathroom before he walked into the cafeteria at Antioch High School and opened fire around 11 a.m. Central Time. Henderson’s X account was still active, with the link at the time of publication.
In a question-and-answer section in the document, Henderson indicated the attack was motivated by “hatred” of Black people referenced through a racial slur. Europeans, according to the shooter, “need to be protected because they are conquerors, inventors and revolutionary’s [sic] thinkers.” It goes on to accuse Jews of subverting Europeans and imperiling their existence, echoing the racist Great Replacement theory.
ALSO READ: Trump's MAGA America revives a Confederate nightmare
The final page of a diary that was also posted on the shooter’s X account shows a photograph of Henderson, accompanied by the inscription: “God I am ugly. 4 hours to go.”
An entry in the position document on Henderson's opinions of Black people includes a litany of shockingly dehumanizing and ultraviolent descriptors of murder and atrocities.
Henderson credited less than a dozen internet personalities, mostly far-right influencers with radicalizing him.
The list includes Candace Owens, a Black conservative who left the Daily Wire website founded by Ben Shapiro last March following a string of increasingly antisemitic comments. In 2019, Owens testified before a House subcommittee hearing on white supremacist terrorism as a witness for the Republican minority. Owens lashed out at another witness during the hearing, saying, “The audacity of you to bring up the Christchurch shooting manifesto and make it seem as though I laughed at people that were slaughtered by a homicidal maniac is in my opinion absolutely despicable.”
Henderson wrote: “To expand on this, Candace Owens has influenced me above all. Each time she spoke I was stunned by her insights and her own views helped push me further and further into the belief of violence over the Jewish questions.”
Henderson also said he was influenced by Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier who dined with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, and Ethan Ralph, a far-right podcaster who helped stoke the Gamergate controversy, a culture war flashpoint in 2014 that proved to be a staging ground for a misogynist backlash against women’s participation in gaming and other male-dominated spaces.
Henderson describes himself as a "Groyper incel," using terms that respectively refer to Fuentes followers and the involuntary celibate, or incel, movement.
Fuentes responded to the shooting by acknowledging that Henderson called himself a 'groyper,' but distanced himself from the attack in a post on X.
The document also credits the rapper Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) with inspiring his violence and extremism.
Henderson's position document pays tribute to an array of white supremacist mass murderers, including Patrick Crusius, who carried out a massacre targeting Hispanics in El Paso, Texas, in 2019; Brenton Tarrant, who killed Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019; and Anders Breivik, who murdered young people at a youth camp in Norway in 2011.
Henderson's document expresses support for neo-Nazi ideals, which he described as "a better, neater, cleaner world by eliminating all undesirables." He added, "We must aid the Aryans regardless of our race."
Henderson’s diary indicates that he had initially planned to attack on Thursday, but decided to move it up to Wednesday because he wanted “to speed things up.” He said he was “scared of failing to kill myself and then going to jail,” and that his “goal was to kill at least 10 people.”
He wrote on X that he had saved money for a GoPro camera "but it was hard to explain to my parents why I needed it so I couldn't buy it." Henderson's X account includes a link to the streaming platform Kick.com, where three videos documenting his attack were posted. The videos have since been taken down from that site, although Henderson's X account remains active.
Henderson’s X account re-shares posts from four other accounts that promote violence, self-hatred, white supremacy and the incel movement. Some of the accounts show pictures of the users making the A-OK hand signal and writing, “Goodbye everyone.”
The similarities suggest some degree of coordination, although it is unclear whether the other account owners carried out attacks of their own.
Henderson said he had "connections" to some of the other shooters, although "only loosely via online messaging platforms."
In a section of his position document, Henderson paid tribute to what he called "new gen cases," including Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old girl who fatally shot two students at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, last month.
YIKES OMG
aHA trump sorta leapfrogged over GRT with poison blood?
10 24 badash
A massive new study finds a large number of Republicans, Trump supporters, and conservatives support violence under the guise of saving the country or ensuring the “rightful” leader is put in the White House.
Three in ten Republicans (29%) believe “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” according to the nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization PPRI’s “2024 American Values Survey.”
Nearly one in four MAGA Republicans (23%) “say that if Trump loses the election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.” That view is also held by nearly one on five (19%) Republicans overall, including those who do not support Trump.
MAGA Republicans, or “Republicans who view Trump favorably are three times as likely as those who hold unfavorable views [of Trump] to support political violence (32% vs. 11%).
RELATED: ‘Zero Remorse’: Trump Doesn’t Condemn Gunman Who Allegedly Threatened FEMA Workers
More than one in five Republicans (22%) agree that “if the 2024 presidential election is compromised by voter fraud, everyday Americans will need to ensure the rightful leader takes office, even if it requires taking violent actions.”
The study also looked at the politico-religious component of support for political violence, and found one-third (33%) of “Christian nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers” agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.”
Additionally, one-third of Latter-day Saints (33%) and nearly one in three white evangelical Protestants (28%) “agree that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.”
Where Americans get their news appears to be a factor in their views on issues including violence and immigration.
“Americans who trust conservative news outlets are the most likely to support political violence (41%), followed by 30% of those who most trust Fox News, 18% of those who do not watch any TV news, and 13% of those who most trust mainstream TV news.”
READ MORE: ‘God, Religion and Teaching of the Commandments’: Eric Trump Says Dad Saved ‘Christmas
Six in ten Republicans (61%) agree that “immigrants entering the country illegally today are poisoning the blood of our country,” PRRI’s survey finds, along with a “majority of Americans who most trust far-right news (70%) or Fox News (65%).”
Similarly, nearly two-thirds of Republicans (65%) support the “Great Replacement Theory,” and agree that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” PRRI also finds that the “vast majority of far-right news (83%) and Fox News viewers (66%) agree with this theory,” as do the majority of Christian nationalism Adherents and Sympathizers (63%) and white evangelical Protestants (62%), as well as half (50%) of Latter-day Saints.
“Nearly eight in ten Republicans (79%) favor putting undocumented immigrants in encampments,” PRRI also found. “The vast majority of Americans who most trust far-right news (91%) or Fox News (82%) favor militarized encampments for undocumented immigrants.”
“White evangelical Protestants (75%) are most likely to favor militarized encampments for undocumented immigrants, followed by the majority of white Catholics (61%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (58%), and Latter-day Saints (56%).”
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and these answers … are keeping me up at night,” PRRI president and founder Robert P. Jones told Axios. “It’s all pretty dark and worrisome.”
Axios had reported: “The growing number of Republicans willing to shun democratic norms — and possibly embrace violence — comes as Trump continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen from him and is saying the 2024 election is already rigged.”
“Jones said those supporting the loser of the election doing whatever it takes to assume office are essentially endorsing a coup against the United States.”
Last week, Jones told MSNBC’s Joy Reid (video below), “there are [survey] questions that we have had to write during the Trump era as social scientists that I never thought we would have to write.”
“So to write that question and put it on a public opinion survey and say, we actually need to know what the American people think about this statement, that whether immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country, right, is just, I think we just pause for a minute, to say how astonishing that is.”
He added, “we’re all taught to kind of not be knee-jerk and kind of use the Nazi analogy…but like, ‘poisoning the blood’ — Mein Kampf uses the word blood 150 times,” referring to Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto.
“That’s Hitler’s word, right? And it’s often, it’s almost always used in this way, this kind of idea of purity and defilement, contamination, and it’s a politics of disgust that we’re really seeing here.”
Watch Jones on MSNBC below or at this link.
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wapo no lnx
Democracy Dies in Darkness
Conservative media is familiar with Buffalo suspect’s alleged ‘theory’
The scene Sunday morning after the deadly shooting Saturday in Buffalo. (Libby March for The Washington Post)
By Paul Farhi
Updated May 15, 2022 at 4:26 p.m. EDT|Published May 15, 2022
The suspect in Saturday’s killing of 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket allegedly wrote a document endorsing “great replacement theory,” a once-fringe racist idea that became a popular refrain among media figures such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News and conservative writer Ann Coulter.
Before the shooting rampage that also left three wounded, the suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, allegedly posted a lengthy document invoking the idea that White Americans were at risk of being “replaced” by people of color because of immigration and higher birthrates.
Gendron, who is White, allegedly indicated that he chose a neighborhood with a large number of Black residents for his alleged attack. In the document that Gendron is suspected to have written, he indicated that he was radicalized online. There’s no indication that he watched Carlson’s program.
The theory was once confined to far-right White extremists, who cast immigration as part of a plot by “elites” to take political and economic power away from White people. It has gained broader circulation in recent years as a talking point among prominent conservative media figures.
On Sept. 22, Fox News host Tucker Carlson misrepresented past immigration remarks by President Biden to suggest the existence of the “great replacement theory.” (Video: Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)
Carlson, whose weeknight program is typically the most popular on Fox News, has been an especially avid promoter of the thesis. He has mentioned variations on the idea in more than 400 episodes since 2016, according to a New York Times analysis of his program. In April of last year, he said on Fox News that people from the “Third World” are immigrating to the United States “to replace the current electorate” and “dilute the political power of the people who live there” — language that essentially distills the replacement thesis.
He was more explicit in a video posted on Fox News’s YouTube account in September. Carlson said President Biden was encouraging immigration “to change the racial mix of the country, … to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the Third World.”
White nationalists and racists have celebrated Carlson’s endorsement of an idea they have championed for years. At the same time, Carlson’s rhetoric prompted the Anti-Defamation League to call for his firing.
The organization noted that racists have spouted the theory in perpetrating violent attacks, such as the killing of 51 people in mosques in New Zealand in 2019, and the killing of 23 mostly Hispanic shoppers in a Walmart in El Paso the same year.
After he was called out for promoting the theory in April 2021, Carlson said on his show: “I mean, everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it. Oh, you know, the white replacement theory? No, no, no. This is a voting right question.”
A Fox News spokesperson on Sunday afternoon pointed to examples of Carlson speaking against violence on his program but had no further comment.
Other Fox News hosts besides Carlson have picked up the theme, giving it a veneer of respectability, at least within the conservative media ecosystem.
Ingraham, another prime-time Fox News host, told viewers in 2018 that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants.” During a monologue on her program last year, she called immigration an “insurrection [that] seeks to overthrow everything we love about America by defaming it, silencing it, and even prosecuting it. This is an organized mob funded by billionaires, it’s supported by celebrities.”
Fox host Jeanine Pirro has also echoed the tenets of the “replacement” idea during an appearance on a syndicated radio program in 2019. She said liberals and Democrats were pursuing immigration policies that are “a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats.”
The same themes have been echoed for years by such prominent conservative media figures as Coulter, Bill O’Reilly and the late Rush Limbaugh.
O’Reilly, who formerly occupied Carlson’s spot on Fox News, told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on his radio show in 2020 that undocumented immigration would cause “traditional America to vanish.” Limbaugh said in 2018 that immigration from Central America was intended to “dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture. … This is why people call this an invasion.”
Coulter wrote about the alleged threat to American culture posed by immigrants in a book in 2015 titled “Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.”
Charlie Kirk, a conservative pundit who heads Turning Point USA and sometimes appears as a guest on Carlson’s program, defended Carlson’s “replacement” advocacy last year. After playing a clip of Carlson’s comments on Fox News, Kirk commented: “Nothing he said there is controversial. It’s factual and it’s true.” He later added that he was “so proud” of Carlson for promoting the theory.
Last month, Kirk tweeted: “There is an undeniable War on White People in The West.”
Matt Walsh, a contributor to the Daily Wire, also tacitly endorsed the idea during a program he hosted last summer.
“So we’re bringing in a flood of immigrants across the southern border, non-White,” Walsh said in the video. “We’re putting policies in place with the express purpose of having fewer White people in universities and positions of power. And we’re celebrating the reduction in the White population. I mean, it sounds like [liberals] want to replace White people. So this is replacement, is it not? And you’re happy about it?”
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an 10 24
Vice presidential hopeful JD Vance recently took the stage at an event organized by the most influential far-right pastor you’ve never heard of. His name is Lance Wallnau and he popularized a doctrine that calls for Christians to conquer every sphere of society from the government to professional sports.
Wallnau is a self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist who preaches that leftists aren’t even people, just vessels for demons. He accused Vice President Kamala Harris of witchcraft. He prayed for God to kill Trump’s enemies. Wallnau’s message is a mishmash of Bible memes and conspiracy theories. He preaches the Big Lie as gospel truth, fusing Christian nationalism and election denialism.
In 2020, Wallnau gathered the faithful for the insurrection of January 6th. Today, he’s responsible for a good chunk of the Trump campaign’s Get Out the Vote effort. He rails against George Soros, the globalists, the World Economic Forum and vaccines. He hypes quack stem-cell therapies and Donald Trump figurines as fervently as he hypes Jesus.
Most importantly, Wallnau preaches that Donald Trump is a modern-day King Cyrus, a heathen anointed by God. The upshot is that no matter how immoral, blasphemous or criminal Trump is, it doesn’t matter because he’s God’s instrument to impose Christian dominion. If you’ve ever wondered why evangelicals don’t care that Trump is a philandering felon, Wallnau’s King Cyrus meme explains a lot.
JD Vance is not an evangelical, but he seemed at home at the Courage Campaign. At least, he seemed as comfortable as he gets in the presence of actual voters. And why not? Vance is the interface between the C-suites and the fever swamps of Magaland. It’s why he spends so much time on weird podcasts. As a Yale-educated US senator, he legitimates the fringe. As a rightwing podcast bro, he shores up the Trump ticket’s bona fides with the supplement-slurping conspiracist base.
One of Vance’s key functions is to validate all the factions of the maga conspiracist coalition.
Conspiracism is the overarching ideology of the maga movement. The three pillars of the maga platform are the Deep State, the Big Lie and the Great Replacement, and Vance eagerly expounds on all three.
Moreover, Vance moves effortlessly among integralist Catholics, protestant New Apostolic Reformation types, and the more secular Silicon Valley contingent exemplified by Elon Musk.
Vance’s other role is to reassure the more staid elements of the conservative coalition that unchecked conspiracism is politically useful. In 2021, Vance exhorted the future leaders of the conservative movement tomake common cause with Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other raving conspiracy theorists. According to Vance, the conservative movement is doomed unless it makes common cause with lunatics.
“Believing crazy things is not the mark of whether somebody should be rejected. Believing important truths should be the mark of whether we accept somebody, and if they believe some crazy things on the side, that's fine," Vance said. "Doesn't mean you have to defend their craziest views. But by all means, if this movement is going to survive, we need to speak for truth.”
The truth, according to Vance, is that an international cabal of financier sex perverts is ruining our society. This is the closest thing Vance has to an ideology. Like Wallnau, Vance is willing to use flawed instruments. As long as someone’s willing to affirm the core conspiracy premise, Vance is flexible about whether it’s dressed up in religious lingo, or whether his brother- or sister-in-paranoia also believes in Jewish space lasers or a federal plot to turn the frogs gay.
===
October 1, 2024, edition of Resolute Protector Foundation's The Bill Walton Show
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): The pattern is that Democrats are basing their political future on noncitizens. That is part of their national global plan for their political power. And why? If you cannot sell your policies and your proposals for the country to turn America into a Marxist, one world country, destroy our sovereignty, well, what do you do if you can't persuade a majority of the electorate? You just change the electorate. That's what this is about. It is by design. It is not an accident.
BILL WALTON (HOST): Well, we've been shouted down when we say the great, we talk about the great replacement theory. But listening to this and everything else, it's a fact. I mean, this is the strategy. It's the great replacement scheme.
===
mma 9 24
Fox News raises false alarm about noncitizen voting
This narrative, which has saturated Fox News, was echoed by Donald Trump on the debate stage
Written by Alicia Sadowski, Isabella Corrao & Jane Lee
Research contributions from Pete Tsipis, Sage Hodil & Casey Wexler
Published 09/16/24
At the September ABC News presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Trump falsely claimed that there are “illegal immigrants coming” and that “they’re trying to get them to vote” in United States elections. Trump’s “great replacement” racist conspiracy theory echoes a far-right dog whistle blown repeatedly by Fox News hosts, contributors, and guests in recent months.
Even though noncitizen voting is both illegal and rare, Fox News has attempted to instill panic by suggesting that droves of noncitizens are voting as a result of the Biden administration’s immigration policies and political strategy and the legal ability of noncitizens to acquire driver’s licenses.
- ## Noncitizen voting is a nonissue
- The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 bars noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Violators of the law face possible fines and imprisonment for up to a year, as well as deportation. While some districts allow noncitizens to vote in local elections, no state allows noncitizens to vote in statewide elections. Communities that allow noncitizens to vote in local elections “maintain processes to ensure that a registered noncitizen voter cannot receive a ballot for state or federal races.” The Associated Press, [9/2/24; Bipartisan Policy Center, 3/13/24]
- Voting by noncitizens is extremely rare.The Brennan Center for Justice conducted research in 2017 on noncitizens voting, reviewing 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 election, and reported that, of 23.5 million votes cast, “election officials only found about 30 cases of potential noncitizen voting that they referred for prosecution or further investigation.” NPR, [3/13/24; The Associated Press, 9/9/24, 10/19/22; Brennan Center for Justice, 5/5/17]
- There are many measures in place to prevent noncitizens from voting.Election administration experts have said that reviewing voter rolls has successfully helped to “flag noncitizen voters” and explained that states are “required to conduct regular list maintenance to remove ineligible voters from the rolls.” Brennan Center for Justice, [3/1/24; The Associated Press, 9/9/24]
- There is no evidence that large numbers of unauthorized migrants are registering to vote or that expanded license eligibility for noncitizens increases fraudulent noncitizen voting.Election officials in Arizona, Texas, and Pennsylvania have debunked claims that Social Security Administration data shows a surge in the number of voters registering without a photo ID. As far as the impact of expanded license eligibility is concerned, according to the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, 17 states and the District of Columbia have expanded license eligibility and “have not reported non-citizens being illegally permitted to vote.” The Associated Press, [4/4/24, 10/17/22]
- Congressional Republicans argue the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility — or SAVE — Act will put an end to noncitizen voting, even though the issue is virtually nonexistent. The bill has been described as the “‘great replacement’ theory … in legislation form.” Civil rights groups have also condemned the bill, saying it “seeks to intimidate members of immigrant communities and communities from exercising their lawful right to vote.” The Washington Post, [7/9/24; Media Matters, 9/4/24]
- Even data compiled by The Heritage Foundation shows that noncitizen voting is not a major problem. The Heritage Foundation maintains a database of 1,546 “proven instances of voter fraud.” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick examined the database for Immigration Impact and found that most involve U.S. citizens. “A close review of the cases in Heritage’s database reveal that the organization has documented just 68 total cases of noncitizen voting going back to the earliest cases documented in the 1980s. That’s less than 5% of the cases in their database, total. The remaining cases all involve U.S. citizens.” Immigration Impact, [8/1/24]
- ## Fox News pushes a false narrative that illegal immigrants are coming in droves to vote in United States elections
- Fox host Laura Ingraham and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) discussed the SAVE Act’s supposed purpose of preventing the “very serious problem” of noncitizen voting.Ingraham said, “Illegal immigrants pouring into the country — like we've lost that story in the last couple of weeks — but millions have come in, and let's say even a small, small percentage manages to vote — because they think they can, reasonably believe they're allowed to.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [7/10/24]
- Host Sean Hannity claimed that in “states where you don't need proof of citizenship to get a license,” you “never have to require proof of citizenship” to register to vote. Former Trump adviser and frequent Fox guest Stephen Miller responded: “This is a conscious choice to let illegal aliens vote.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [7/10/24]
- Miller alleged that the Biden administration has “resettled” undocumented immigrants in “American cities and towns” to “interfere in the electoral process of the United States.”Miller further called it a “conspiracy” to “undermine the franchise rights of every American as the Biden administration fights relentlessly against verifying the citizenship of voters.” Fox News, *Life, Liberty & Levi*n, [7/7/24]
- Fox News host Maria Bartiromo cited a debunked video she claimed “reveals 14 percent of illegal immigrants admitted that they are registered to vote.” The video, posted by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, was described by The New York Times as “one of several misleading videos that the Heritage Foundation has pumped into social media feeds this year.” Despite the video’s claims, the Times reported that “state investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [8/4/24, Twitter/X, 7/31/24; Brennan Center for Justice, 9/10/24; The New York Times, 9/7/24]
- Ingraham, Miller, and Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich complained about Tim Walz signing a bill expanding driver’s license eligibility to undocumented immigrants, claiming it was a campaign strategy to receive more votes. Miller ranted, “When he talks about a legal pathway, what he is talking about is bringing in millions of illegal aliens with full amnesty, full government benefits, free health care.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/6/24]
- Hannity asked: “If you have illegal immigrants given legal driver's licenses like Walz will give illegal immigrants in the sanctuary state that he loves of Minnesota, and free health care and free college education and you can get a license — once you have a legal license, can’t you register to vote?” Fox News, *Hannity*, [8/7/24]
- Fox News co-host Jeanine Pirro baselessly claimed that migrants are “lining up to vote right now, given driver's license, which is a point of identification where you can register to vote, and there are jurisdictions that actually want them to vote.”Fox News, *Hannity*, [8/9/24]
- Ingraham spread “great replacement” theory rhetoric, claiming that the Biden administration was naturalizing immigrants as citizens quickly in the hopes that they would be “repaid” by new citizens who “end up voting Democrat.”When asked about “the real objective” of the Biden administration, guest Stephen Miller stated, “Maximum migration with maximum speed. Their hope is that having a massive amount of unvetted migration into this country, it will tilt the scales to the left.” Miller then accused the Biden administration of naturalizing “criminal illegal aliens,” declaring, “They want illegal aliens to vote.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/14/24; Media Matters, 9/11/24]
- On his Premiere radio show, Hannity speculated about whether Democrats allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses in Minnesota would “also allow them perhaps to maybe use that as ID to go and register to vote.”He also asked, “Why would any one major political party not want proof of citizenship? Because you need proof of citizenship for everything else in life.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [8/21/24]
- Host Jesse Watters exaggerated the supposed threat of migrant voting by citing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-VA) and Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) respective announcements that they had purged voter rolls of thousands of ineligible voters in their states, complaining, “They keep saying it's illegal and it doesn't happen. But now Virginia and Texas have just found thousands of them.”In Virginia, after Youngkin signed an executive order that removed 6,303 noncitizens from the voter rolls, he did not clarify whether that number represented “noncitizens who actually voted or if there was an error and they later turned out to be citizens.” In Texas, Abott claimed to have removed 6,500 noncitizens, but as the Houston Chronicle noted, “Many of the governor’s 6,500 ‘potential noncitizens’ are most likely new U.S. citizens who didn’t verify their new status with the county’s election office within 30 days.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [8/26/24; NBC News, 8/23/24; Houston Chronicle, 9/4/24]
- Fox Business host Sean Duffy claimed, without evidence, that “there's been reports of illegals registering to vote, and there's help coming from the federal government, the state government, and NGOs.”Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller responded by pushing “great replacement” theory rhetoric: “And if you wonder — people always say, ‘Why did Kamala Harris allow 20 million illegals into the country?’ It's to try to get to this and to have them vote. Keep in mind, Sean, that in a lot of places around the country, Democrats are pushing to allow noncitizens to actually go and vote in local elections.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [9/1/24]
- Miller declared that the “illegal voting issue” was “a national crisis.”Miller claimed, “In all 50 states, illegal aliens can vote by checking a box on a federal form that says, ‘I'm a citizen.’ That attestation is not validated in any way — not with ID, not with a nationalization record, not with a birth certificate, not with a passport, not with anything. It is on the honor system.” Fox News,*One Nation with Brian Kilmeade*, [9/7/24]
- After 198 Democrats voted against the SAVE Act, Trump campaign senior adviser and Fox News guest Alina Habba stated: “The Democrats can't win lawfully, so they're trying to make sure that they turn their cheek the other way instead of enforcing the laws that require citizens to vote.” Fox News, *Sunday Morning Futures*, [9/8/24]
- Outnumbered co-host Emily Compagno suggested that undocumented immigrants are voting, saying, “And if you’re illegal, you’re voting a million times, too.”Fox News, *Outnumbered*, [9/11/24]
- After host Sandra Smith called the SAVE Act “pretty reasonable,” Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz inaccurately cited Texas to claim that “there have been thousands of instances” of noncitizen voting. In response to guest and former New York Democratic state senator David Carlucci noted that noncitizen voting is extremely rare, with even the right-wing Heritage Foundation documenting only 25 instances of prosecution for voter fraud in the last 20 years, Chaffetz cited Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) controversial removal of alleged noncitizens from the voter roll. Abbott did not provide any evidence that the alleged noncitizens had voted. Fox News, *America Reports*, [9/12/24; CNN, 9/12/24; Houston Chronicle, 8/26/24]
===
MMA
Trump pushed replacement theory during the debate. Mainstream media fact checks sanitized it.
Written by Gideon Taaffe
Published 09/11/24
As presidential nominees Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debated, Trump claimed that “illegal immigrants” are “coming in” while Democrats are “trying to get them to vote.”
While some news outlets fact-checked the remark, The New York Times tepidly noted just that the conspiracy theory “lacks evidence,” and the Times and other outlets failed to highlight the extreme origins of the lie that Democrats are trying to replace white people with politically supportive nonwhite immigrants, otherwise known as the “great replacement” conspiracy theory.
The failure to highlight this context is another instance of the media “sanewashing” Trump’s remarks.
- ## Trump pushed replacement theory during the presidential debate
- During the presidential debate Donald Trump claimed, “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they’re trying to get them to vote.” Trump made the remark in response to a question about whether he lost the 2020 election. ABC, [9/10/24]
- Claiming immigrants are being imported into America in order to vote in elections is a part of the white nationalist conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement.” The theory alleges that nonwhite immigrants are “replacing” the votes of white Americans in order to undermine white interests, and that Democrats are supporting this effort. Media Matters, [3/4/24]
- ## Mainstream media failed to link Trump’s comments to the far-right conspiracy theory
- The New York Times claimed Trump’s response “lacks evidence” and failed to mention his comment was an offshoot of “great replacement” beliefs, even though the paper has previously reported on the conspiracy theory.Instead, the Times focused only on the lie about noncitizen voting, writing, “In recent months, Trump and other Republicans have frequently made the false claim that there’s a major crisis of noncitizens illegally voting in federal elections.” The Times had previously thoroughly reported on great replacement theory, and in particular former Fox host and Trump ally Tucker Carlson’s role in “stok[ing] white fear” and mainstreaming what the paper called a “racist conspiracy theory.” The New York Times, [9/10/24, 4/30/22]
- Other outlets also succeeded in calling out Trump’s lie about noncitizen voting but failed to highlight its link to replacement theory. NPR, The Washington Post, NBC News, and MSNBC all highlighted the slim likelihood of migrants voting in the election, but stopped short of highlighting the claim’s racist origins. NPR, [9/11/24; The Washington Post, 9/11/24, 9/11/24; NBC News, 9/10/24; MSNBC, 9/11/24]
- Some in mainstream media ignored the response altogether and did not mention it in their online fact checks. ABC News, CBS News, and CNN ignored the former president’s remarks on migrants voting. ABC News, [9/11/24; CBS News, 9/11/24; CNN, 9/11/24]
- ## This failure follows a broader trend of mainstream media “sanewashing” Trump’s comments
- The New Republic argued that mainstream media have been sanitizing Trump’s comments by simplifying and laundering them to seem like more mainstream political statements.Parker Molloy (who previously worked at Media Matters) highlighted several instances of sanewashing, including CNN simplifying a Trump social media rant and The New York Times ignoring Trump’s comment supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s misinformation on autism and failing to report on Trump’s spread of anti-trans conspiracy theories. The New Republic, [9/4/24]
- Columbia Journalism Review’s Jon Allsop called the premise of sanewashing “persuasive” in his piece, titled “Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump?”Allsop also noted mainstream media are also downplaying Trump’s more violent and extreme comments on immigrant gangs and election misinformation: “If sanewashing the incoherent things Trump says is a problem, then so is failing to proportionately cover his all-too-coherent threats.” Columbia Journalism Review, [9/9/24]
- Many mainstream media outlets recently sanewashed a speech Trump made to The Economic Club of New York, failing to inform audiences about his incoherent response to a question about child care policy. Media Matters, [9/10/24]
- On MSNBC, Joy Reid highlighted the sanewashing impulses of the mainstream media, warning that Trump’s and Harris’s debate performances would be held to different standards. Reid: “His answers are sure to be sane-washed by much of the media immediately after the debate and in the days to come to ensure that he continues to be taken seriously by American voters.” MSNBC,*The Reid Out*, [9/9/24]
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an 6 24
when a predominantly white mob of far-right Donald Trump supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, some of them were carrying Confederate flags.
Many Trump critics, from liberals and progressives to right-wing Never Trump conservatives, have pointed to those flags as evidence that the assault on the Capitol was more than a riot — it was an outright insurrection.
According to a newly published study conducted by David C. Wilson of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley and Darren Davis — a political science professor at Notre Dame University in Indiana — there was another component in the January 6 attack: "racial resentment."
READ MORE: **Republicans have invented these 5 reasons to 'reject any verdict against Trump': conservative**
The Guardian's Alice Herman reports, "Angered over the claim, promoted by Trump and his closest allies, that heavily Black cities had rigged the 2020 election in favor of Democrats, white voters — some affiliated with white-nationalist groups and militias, and others acting alone — stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election."
The study is titled "Stop the Steal: Racial Resentment, Affective Partisanship, and Investigating the January 6th Insurrection."
According to Herman, researchers "relied on a national survey of adults in the U.S. conducted in 2021."
Herman notes that the researchers draw a distinction between "racial hatred" and "racial resentment."
READ MORE:**GOP hardliners pressure Johnson on vote that would seal 'their allegiance to' Trump: report**
According to Herman, "Wilson and Davis also point to the fact that while a slew of polls show the general public split somewhat evenly over the legitimacy of the (January 6) House Select Committee, Black Americans overwhelmingly supported the Committee's work, while white poll respondents generally opposed it…. Distinct from racial hatred or prejudice, racial resentment, Wilson argues, is a particularly powerful motive to action because it stems from a sense of injustice. The psycho-social phenomenon can have consequences for democracy, Wilson said."
In the report, Wilson and Davis explain, "Many of President Trump's supporters believed they were being victimized by election fraud in the 2020 election, but they also believed that whites were being victimized more generally — the American way of life for them was changing and they were being disadvantaged by African-Americans and other minorities."
READ MORE:['Fantastical' claims: Trump’s lawyers who argued he won in 2020 are getting punished
*Read The Guardian's full article at this link.
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an 5 24
at Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare]
(https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platform/)" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
SAN ANTONIO — From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.
For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGTBQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.
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From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”
Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.
Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates — as well as judges — who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.
Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.
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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.
“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”
Controlling elections
The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.
The 2024 convention went a step further.
It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders:{, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.}:
“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”
(https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/_X93OkVqWjKf0MF0YqIovXarXM4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/37d777dfbb61f282f112bd04a575cbbc/0523%20GOP%20Convention%20EH%20TT%2055.jpg)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, R-McKinney, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures — which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.
Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots — including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.
“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law — which is straight-up judicial activism.”
The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.
Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles" — as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”
“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”
The “rabbit hole”
Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.
“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.
Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.
Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools and the Democratic Party.
Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.
The culprits behind the ploy differed — Democrats, socialists or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.
At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.
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Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”
For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.
“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy — rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”
In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."
Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years — particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.
"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism — it’s the people pulling the strings.”
Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration — despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."
“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.
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Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.
Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.
Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”
David Barton
Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.
Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.
“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”
He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”
Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars — many of them also conservative Christians.
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David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012. Credit: Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune
Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.
This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.
Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.
“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty — it’s Christian dominance.”
As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.
He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.
“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”
Nancy Leclerc poses for a photo in front of a GOP elephant statue during the Texas GOP convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024. Credit: Eli Hartman/The Texas Tribune
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platf
April 25, 2024 rww
- Yvonne Wingett Sanchez @ The Washington Post: Meadows, Giuliani and other Trump allies charged in Arizona 2020 election probe
An Arizona grand jury on Wednesday indicted seven attorneys or aides affiliated with Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign as well as 11 Arizona Republicans on felony charges related to their alleged efforts to subvert Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, according to an announcement by the state attorney general. Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn and former campaign aide Mike Roman.
- Pema Levy @ Mother Jones: The GOP’s “Election Integrity” Lawyer Was Just Indicted for Election Subversion
Christina Bobb tried to overturn the 2020 election, and Arizona just charged her for it.
- Kate Briquelet @ The Daily Beast: Bogus Furry Panic Overtakes Utah School District
Group chats viewed by The Daily Beast reveal that parents were involved in planning students’ anti-furry protests—and securing right-wing media attention.
- Angry White Men: Heather Mac Donald: ‘The Great Replacement Theory Is Real’
On The Megyn Kelly Show, Heather Mac Donald endorsed the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Mac Donald, a fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, declared that the “Great Replacement theory is real,” and that we’ve “decided to destroy our birthrate” and “flood our country with cultures” that are “not compatible.”
- Media Matters: Trump ally Laura Loomer: “You are an enemy to this country if you do not vote for Donald Trump”
Loomer: Jews who support Democrats “might as well just go put yourself in a gas chamber yourself if this is how you’re gonna behave.”
- Nikki McCann Ramirez @ Rolling Stone: Trump Lawyer Says Having Political Rival Killed Could Constitute ‘Official’ Presidential Act
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Thursday on the former president’s bid to secure sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution.
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ymail judd 4 24
in October 2022, Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter. He then dramatically changed the algorithm to boost his own tweets. The new algorithm, according to a February 2023 report by Platformer, "artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed."
Musk is now using his dominant presence on the social network, which he has renamed X, to convince people that the 2024 presidential election is rigged. His efforts dovetail with the lies of Donald Trump, who recently claimed that Democrats are "allowing" undocumented immigrants to enter the country and "signing them up to vote."
Musk promoted a post from @EndWokeness, a popular account that promotes bigoted conspiracy theories, that claimed to have uncovered "data" showing that hundreds of thousands of "illegals" have registered to vote since the start of 2024. Musk shared @EndWokeness' post with his 170 million followers and called it "extremely concerning."
According to X, thanks to Musk's promotion, over 100 million people have viewed the claims in this post. The only problem is that the entire thing is bunk.
To begin, "illegals" cannot get a Social Security number. Most people who have Social Security numbers are citizens. In some instances, non-citizens can receive a Social Security number — usually in connection with a work authorization — but only if they are legally present in the United States. The idea that using a Social Security number to register to vote is evidence of undocumented status makes no sense.
Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) is part of a process that allows people to register to vote by providing their Social Security number, name, and date of birth. That information is then passed from the state Department of Motor Vehicles to the Social Security Administration, which checks to make sure that the information is valid and that the individual is not deceased.
Critically, every "transaction" using the HAVV process does not equate to a newly registered voter. A November 2010 report by the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General "found that 2.4 million (32 percent) of the 7.7 million HAVV transactions submitted by 25 States related to the same voter data being re-submitted 10 or more times." In 2008, according to the report, "Ohio submitted the same voter information 1,778 times during the year for a 77-year-old man who died in December 2005." Then, in 2009, "Ohio continued to submit this applicant’s information 13,824 times." On one day in 2008, Illinois submitted the same voter to HAVV 342 times.
This helps explain why the numbers cited by @EndWokeness dramatically exceed the total number of newly registered voters in 2024 in each state. According to the Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, as of April 3, "voter rolls have increased by 57,711 voters since the beginning of 2024." That represents all newly registered voters — not just the much smaller number that registered to vote without a drivers license. There are similar discrepancies in Arizona and Pennsylvania.
Even if a non-citizen were able to register without a driver’s license in Texas, Pennsylvania, or Arizona, that would not enable them to vote. All three states require voters to present identification that establishes their citizenship and state residency. (In Pennsylvania, this is only required when voting for the first time.) The entire conspiracy theory is incoherent.
Non-citizen voting is extraordinarily rare
Musk is trying to convince people that non-citizen voting is a severe threat to democracy. The truth is that it almost never happens. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice evaluating 23.5 million votes across 12 states in 2016 found 30 incidents of suspected non-citizen voting, 0.0001% of the 2016 vote in those jurisdictions. A 2022 audit of Georgia voting rolls found about 1600 noncitizens attempting to register to vote over a 25-year period, and no non-citizens were actually allowed to register or vote.
The issue of non-citizen voting is connected to the racist Great Replacement theory, popular with white supremacists, that falsely claims that Democrats are allowing non-citizens to illegally enter the country as part of a plot to seize political power. Musk has repeatedly endorsed the Great Replacement theory on X.
In March, Musk accused Biden of committing "treason" by chartering flights full of undocumented immigrants with the intention of registering them to vote. The flights did not exist.
Musk's absurd approach to fact-checking
Musk promotes X's Community Notes feature as a way of identifying misinformation. Community Notes allows users to flag misinformation and write a correction. In certain cases, the Community Note is appended to the post itself.
But Musk's post about HAVV and his other false claims do not feature any publicly available Community Notes. That's because Musk has designed Community Notes to make it virtually impossible for his posts to be fact-checked.
Musk has a cult following on X who agree with his reactionary politics and defend his claims, no matter how outlandish. Community Notes are displayed publicly only if there is a consensus among people who normally disagree. That means, even if thousands of people agree that Musk is lying, a Community Note will not be displayed unless Musk's loyal supporters also agree it should be displayed. Here is how X describes its approach:
To find notes that are helpful to the broadest possible set of people, Community Notes takes into account not only how many contributors rated a note as helpful or unhelpful, but also whether people who rated it seem to come from different perspectives.
Community Notes assesses "different perspectives" entirely based on how people have rated notes in the past… If people who typically disagree in their ratings agree that a given note is helpful, it's probably a good indicator the note is helpful to people from different points of view.
The practical impact of this policy is that very few Community Notes are displayed publicly, especially not on political posts by Elon Musk.
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alternet- no lnx
Home | Trumpsters who want a civil war hope they can create enough chaos to fulfill their fantasies
How to reverse 'democracies being taken over by far-right ideologies and conspiracy thinking': author
Thom Hartmann
February 21, 2024
America is under assault, and, in the 9th year since Trump burst on the political scene, it’s happening so often now that it’s becoming normalized. This is a very real danger to the survival of our republic.
And they’re getting more brazen: this past weekend a group of mask-clad Nazis marched through downtown Nashville complete with swastikas and racist chants. The media treated it like “just another day.”
Republicans who run Texas are in open defiance of the US Supreme Court and the federal government over who has legal responsibility for enforcing our immigration laws and protecting our borders. It’s the most significant challenge to federal authority since the Nullification Crisis of 1832 that led us straight toward the Civil War.
And, indeed, it’s stirring up pro-new-civil war rhetoric among the racist base of the GOP. Televangelist Andrew Wommack, a big Republican supporter who called COVID a hoax “hyped by liberals as an opportunity to come against Trump,” on his Truth & Liberty podcast recently promoted the idea, along with replacing the US Constitution with the Christian Bible:
“I’ve actually had people say that if Trump was to be elected if we got a conservative Congress, that they fear that we would have another civil war,” Wommack told a caller. “And you know what? I don’t want a civil war, I don’t know anybody that does, but would it be worth it? To turn this nation back? I believe it would.”
Having been caught in the middle of a civil war years ago in Uganda (and having had one of my colleagues killed in it by stray gunfire into our refugee camp), I can say with a pretty high level of certainty that anybody who’s pushing civil war here in America has never experienced one.
Nikki Haley has been swatted twice, been physically attacked on stage, and is now being stalked at campaign events by Putin-loving Trump followers who are outraged that she’s calling for more military aid for Ukraine.
Jacob Ware, author of Guns, God, and Sedition: Far-Right Terrorism in Americaand a consultant to the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC):
“I think intent to commit violence is high across the political spectrum, but especially on the far right. And in the United States, we always have the capability to conduct violence because of our gun laws. There’s a very poisonous mix being brewed with the great potential for violence in 2024 and beyond.”
Just days after Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows ruled that Trump had committed sedition and therefore couldn’t be on that state’s ballot, she was swatted at home. Judges Tanya Chutkin and Arthur Engoron have also been targeted by fascist Trump followers.
A Trump devotee armed with a hammer broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and tried to beat her husband, Paul Pelosi, to death; on the campaign trail, Trump regularly refers to the incident as if it was some sort of victory for him and his people, joking about it in a way that some interpret as encouragement for future similar attacks on Democrats.
Another apparent Trump follower, just last month, murdered and decapitated his own father because he was a federal employee and, therefore, part of the “deep state” that Trump has repeatedly called on to be destroyed.
An October survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that fully 23 percent of Americans agree with the statement that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.” The Institute’s CEO, Melissa Deckman, told the CBC:
“You have political leaders like Donald Trump who are not willing to ratchet down that rhetoric — in fact, they're doing the very opposite. In that context, I’m not surprised to see that Nikki Haley is asking for more security.”
When The Washington Post looked into the problem, they found that people running for Congress increased their spending on security by over 500 percent between the time Trump lost in 2020 and last November’s midterms.
The Brennan Center for Justice questioned over 1,700 state and local elected officials in all 50 states and found that fully 40 percent reported being threatened or physically attacked in the three years since Trump lost. Ninety percent said they’d been “harassed, intimidated, or stalked,” and one in ten state legislators reported that a person with a weapon had tried to intimidate them on one or more occasion.
Fascist Republicans are apparently getting what they want out of these intimidation tactics: one-in-five state officials, and almost half of local elected officials report that because of the threats they’re less willing to involve themselves in any way with “controversial” issues like abortion, immigration, or gun control.
Last year, Republican anti-abortion extremist Philip Buyno loaded his car with a hatchet, flares, matches, and bottles and cans filled with gasoline, then drove to the offices of an Illinois reproductive care clinic, Affirmative Care Solutions.
He repeatedly rammed his car into the front entrance of the building, destroying the main entrance and damaging the building’s foundation, and told police that when he got out of jail he was going to “finish the job.”
Buyno told police he was a member of a “rescue group” along with Matt Trewhella and Dan Holman; Trewhella signed the “Justifiable Homicide Statement” supporting people who murder abortion doctors, while Holman has defended using murder as a way to stop abortion.
Last week an openly Nazi group marched in front of the home of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. In Idaho, a group of 31 hateful white supremacists had the case against them dismissed because FBI agents and local prosecutors had “accidentally” bungled evidence and interrogations.
Last week, a Tennessee man was arrested for trying to participate in a plot with two Texas men to visit the southern border and murder Border Patrol agents along with any immigrants they could find. One of them was in possession of six semiautomatic firearms, over 20 magazines, and around 1,800 rounds of ammunition.
The border has been inundated with immigrants ever since Speaker “Moscow Mike” Johnson held a press conference to inform people in South and Central America that “the US border is wide open.” NPR reported on it, noting in their headline, “The border crisis is helping to mainstream a dangerous conspiracy theory.”
Johnson has openly promoted that hateful and antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” that says wealthy Jews are funding the entrance of millions of Hispanics into our country so they can illegally vote for Democrats.
“If you’re scratching your head,” Johnson told his followers, “you’ve seen the video, you see droves of people, 2.4 million people coming over the border illegally, the president allowing it, the Democrats in charge of Congress are allowing it. The deal is they're going to turn them into voters.”
The Great Replacement Theory, a warmed-over reboot of Hitler’s theories about Jews and Gypsies, now has a huge following in the Republican Party and among Trump supporters.
Recently a “convoy” of armed white supremacists calling themselves “God’s Army” made its way to the southern border, echoing Trump’s (and Hitler’s) rhetoric that dark-skinned immigrants “poison the blood” of a country and intend to “replace” white men in the workplace and bedroom.
The FBI had to evacuate the Border Patrol processing center in Eagle Pass because of threats; a few days later Paul Faye Sr., identified as a “militia sniper,” was arrested for planning to murder Border Patrol agents. His hope was it would cause what he called a “domino effect” in which white men all over the country would take out their weapons and begin a mass slaughter of federal employees, much like the scenario from the novel Turner Diaries that inspired Tim McVeigh.
Faye credited the Great Replacement Theory as his main inspiration, as did the Trump followers and racists who murdered Jews in Pittsburgh, Black shoppers in Buffalo, and Hispanics in El Paso. The Theory was also the basis for Republicans’ impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a detail rarely mentioned in our media.
As the pro-democracy, pro-immigration group America’s Voice noted last month:
“Speaker Johnson, who was an instrumental supporter of Trump’s attempted coup, is far from alone as a Member of Congress promoting the conspiracy meant to undermine the faith in the democratic process.
“America’s Voice has identified 120 Members of Congress who amplified the replacement and invasion conspiracy in their official capacity just this last year.
“We identified over 1,040 times top GOP candidates, officials, or outfits that pushed the bigoted fiction in just the last year. We also identified this disturbing practice more than 700 times in 2022.
“In 2023 the Republican House majority also brought 13 witnesses to Congressional hearings who had promoted replacement and invasion conspiracies and even one witness who participated in Jan. 6 was asked by the Republicans to serve as a witness on one of their anti-immigrant hearings.”
Even candidates for the Senate are getting into the act, as American Journal News noted with their headline about the man who wants to take on Bob Casey for the US Senate this November:
“Republican David McCormick invests millions in website that platforms Holocaust denial.”
The Michigan House of Representatives just stripped Republican Representative Josh Schriver of his committee assignments for publicly promoting the Replacement Theory. Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist, a regular guest on my radio program, said:
“Rep. Schriver’s peddling of the racist ‘replacement theory’ is a deplorable demonstration of his fear of a dynamic and diverse Michigan future where all of our people in every community can succeed.”
Rolling Stone has discovered that fascist street gangs (“militias”) are embracing a new tactic, showing up on the scene of mass shootings and other mass casualty events to do their recruiting. Trace reporter Sonny Sone lays it out:
“According to geolocated footage reviewed by the magazine, members of a right-wing militia called Patriots for America — whose volunteers patrol the southern border with long guns and regularly espouse conspiracy theories targeting migrants — were on the scene, and spent almost 10 minutes beyond the police line, while law enforcement responded to the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022.
“Last fall, armed neo-Nazis responded to the mass-casualty gun rampage in Lewiston, Maine, and gained access to the shooter’s registered address.”
The highly publicized mass shooting at Joel Ornsteen’s megachurch last week was allegedly committed by a woman steeped in antisemitic writings. That same week, the FBI arrested a Minnesota man who was a member of the Aryan Freedom Network, an openly Nazi group of Trump supporters, for conspiring to modify semiautomatic weapons into full automatic mode for the “coming race war.”
Two weeks ago, police in Massachusetts arrested a second man in connection with four fires set at Jewish community centers and Jewish-owned businesses. Rabbi Avi Bukiet, one of the victims of the attacks, said the fires were, “a domestic terror attack fueled by antisemitic motivations.”
In Maine, a man and his son were arrested last week for painting swastikas on public street corners. In Dallas, a Jewish city councilwoman’s home was defaced with antisemitic and anti-abortion graffiti. Two days later the Hillel Center for Jewish students at Brown University in Rhode Island was on the receiving end of threats of violence. White supremacy stickers popped up on street signs in Stillwater, MN.
In Cheyenne, Wyoming, residents woke up to find White Lives Matter flyers in their mailboxes. The hateful screeds quoted America First leader Charles Lindbergh and mentioned an “anti-white trend” that “will continue to increase unless White people come together to Defend and support their common interests.”
The screed demands, the Rocket Miner newspaper reports:
“[T]hat white people ‘band together to preserve their European blood’ and ‘guard against dilution by foreign races’ because ‘harmonious coalescence is virtually impossible. America’s founding population has gradually been overtaken by a wave of immigration from all around the world which share no connection with American heritage, culture and history.”
In Ashville, NC a white supremacist shut off the power to a local restaurant and left racist material for people stumbling out to find on the front porch, provoking County Commissioner Al Whitesides to say:
“What concerns me is not just what’s alleged here but what you see in America going on all over the country. If you’re African-American, if you’re Jewish, we’re living in an environment in 2024 that I didn’t think in the ‘60s that I would see today.”
In Austin, Texas last week a white supremacist named Bert James Baker stabbed a victim because of the color of his skin or his national origin. Mustafaa Carroll, the interim executive director for CAIR, told reporters:
“Baker repeatedly screamed the N-word and other obscenities, opened a passenger door, pulled one of the victims out of the car and physically attacked him.”
The father of the victim told reporters: “We came into the U.S. after the American dream. And my dream, and our dream, was not a big house or a big car. We want to live in peace and tranquility. We want to be able to cast our opinion without being jeopardized of being killed or shot or even harassed.”
Meanwhile, here in Portland, Oregon a man tried to set several people of color on fire, screaming racial epithets at them.
Almost everything in this article is from the past two weeks or thereabouts: the racist Trump followers who want a second civil war call this an “acceleration,” and hope they can create enough chaos that they can finally fulfill their adolescent fantasies about fighting in a “noble” civil war.
Will they get the conflict they so desperately want (and thought they were getting on January 6th)? I’m skeptical: to paraphrase President Eisenhower, their numbers are small and they are stupid.
Nonetheless, we must be vigilant if America is to survive as a pluralistic, multiracial society…
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Amid an ongoing right-wing media panic about a supposed “invasion” of migrants coming across the southern border, a group of right-wing extremists — including members with ties to QAnon, the election denial movement, and anti-vaccine propagandists — have organized a convoy and series of rallies along the southern border. The “Take Our Border Back Southern Border Convoy” has been amplified and celebrated by right-wing media and political figures as posts promoting it have spread across social media.
- ## A group of right-wing extremists are organizing a convoy along the southern border to protest the supposed migrant crisis
- The Take Our Border Back convoy aims to “call on our government to TAKE ACTION and SECURE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER.”The convoy is set to start from Virginia and travel across various locations on the southern U.S. border from January 29 through February 3, with a series of rallies planned along the way. A GiveSendGo fundraising campaign in support of the convoy has already received over $36,000 in donations. TakeOurBorderBack.com, accessed [1/24/24, GiveSendGo, accessed 1/25/24]
- The convoy's organizers and sponsors include far-right podcasters, online influencers, and conspiracy theorists. In a video posted to the convoy’s Rumble channel, podcast host Kim Yeater said that she, Noél Roberts, Pete Chambers, Robert Agee, and Mark Anthony are members of the group’s “steering committee.” Yeater’s Take Your Power Back podcast, Robert's “Patriot Mom 007” account, Chambers’ website, Agee’s right-wing billboard company, and Scotty Saks’ Sovereign Radio program are also listed as sponsors of the convoy. Rumble, *We The People*, [1/19/24; TakeOurBorderBack.com, accessed 1/25/24]
- Yeater, Chambers, and other organizers have used extreme rhetoric when talking about the southern border, frequently claiming that there is an “invasion” of migrants and pushing the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. In an interview uploaded to Rumble on January 20, Yeater claimed that migrants at the border are part of a “Trojan horse” of “fighting age men crossing our border.” During a January 24 appearance on Infowars’ The Alex Jones Show, Chambers claimed that “globalists” are using immigration to destabilize the U.S., saying, “This is ‘we’re going to take over your country from within’ stuff,” echoing the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that migrants are being purposefully brought to the U.S. to replace white Americans as a new electoral majority. Rumble, *The Alex Stone Show*, [1/20/24; Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/24/24; Southern Poverty Law Center, 5/17/22]
- ## The Take Our Border Back convoy is being organized and promoted by anti-vaccine figures, conspiracy theorists, and vehement election deniers
- Kim Yeater, one of the convoy organizers who has promoted it in a media appearance, has a history of promoting election denial efforts.Yeater is a radio host and the CEO of Take Our Elections Back, which aims “to restore the integrity of America's voting system.” She has also promoted multiple events held by election denier Mike Lindell. On an episode of her radio show, Yeater said there is “not even a question anymore, there’s election fraud. Period,” adding that it would be “a problem” if voting machines were used in future elections. Yeater has worked with many of the other convoy promoters in the past and seemingly mingled with multiple far-right figures. KimYeater.com, accessed [1/25/24; Rumble, accessed 1/26/24; Instagram, accessed 1/25/24, 1/25/24, 1/25/24; Salem Radio Network, Take Your Power Back, 8/21/23]
- At least two sponsors of the convoy have referenced the QAnon conspiracy theory. Right-wing billboard company Banners 4 Freedom, a sponsor of the convoy run by organizer Robert Agee, has shared the “WWG1WGA” hashtag associated with the conspiracy theory. Agee himself has used the QAnon slogan on social media, including during an X Space about the convoy. Scotty Saks, host of Sovereign Radio which is another convoy sponsor, has also used the slogan on social media. Telegram, [1/7/23; Banners4Freedom.com, accessed 1/25/24; Twitter/X Space, 1/23/24, 1/23/24; Twitter/X, 10/10/18]
- Discussing the federal response to January 6, convoy organizer and promotor Mark Anthony expressed that the convoy would be heavily protected and only going to places where local law enforcement is “on board.” In an interview uploaded to Rumble, Anthony stated that “January 6, that scared the hell out of everyone. I mean scared them to the point they feel like they didn’t want to do anything because they’re scared about the government coming after them.” Anthony added, “Every place that we have, we’ve gotten in with the sheriffs, we’ve gotten in with the local police departments, and these people are on board. Even Border Patrol.” Rumble, [1/19/24]
- Convoy organizer Peter Chambers, a former Green Beret who claims he retired because of “the mandates for the vaccines,” is also sponsoring the convoy through his Remnant A-Team ministry.Chambers became an anti-vaccine figure during the COVID-19 pandemic and appeared in the anti-vaccine propaganda film Died Suddenly, produced by conspiracy theorist Stew Peters. He was part of a lawsuit attempting to block the military from mandating COVID-19 vaccines, and he has also spread the 5G conspiracy theory. Chambers has also claimed that he “developed friendships all along the border with Border Patrol guys that really want to do their jobs, you know, Department of Public Safety, Texas Rangers.” Rumble, [11/4/23; Mother Jones, May 2023; Arizona Mirror, 10/20/23]
- Noél Roberts, a right-wing podcaster known online as “Patriot Mom 007,” has frequently appeared alongside fringe figures and election deniers. Roberts has interviewed extremist Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb, right-wing lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, and Turning Point USA influencer Benny Johnson, among others. PatriotMom007.com, accessed, [1/25/24, 1/25/24; Media Matters, 2/9/23]
- Joshua James, who self-identifies as a “De Jure Sheriff” of Bexar County, Texas, has frequently promoted the convoy on social media and also posted the QAnon slogan. James claims to be “constitutional sheriff” in Texas, but actually is a self-identified “de jure sheriff” -- a term that seemingly flows from the sovereign citizens movement, which holds that local sheriffs are the supreme law of the land and that the federal government of the United States is illegitimate. Instagram, [10/31/20, 1/11/24; Facebook, accessed 1/25/24; Twitter/X, accessed 1/25/24; Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed1/25/24, Sovereign Citizen Watcher,5/21/22]
- ## Right-wing media and political figures have celebrated the convoy as part of an ongoing attack against the Biden administration’s border policies
- Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) promoted the convoy on X (formerly Twitter), saying “The time is NOW to take action and secure our borders!”Self provided specific dates and locations of the convoy and included a screenshot of the poster advertising it. Twitter/X, [1/22/24, 1/22/24]
- Chambers appeared on a recent episode of Infowars’ The Alex Jones Show to promote the convoy and fearmonger about “an invasion” happening along the southern U.S. border. During the segment, Chambers claimed that “this is an invasion, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. We briefed Gov. Abbott two years ago on the invasion that was taking place on the border.” Discussing what the “feds” are “going to try next,” Jones suggested, “Maybe they send a shooter down to shoot some of the illegals to make us the — make them the victims.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*, [1/24/24, 1/24/24]
- Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon mentioned the convoy when discussing the “pure insanity” he claims is going on in Europe, saying that “it’s coming here to the U.S. This is why you’re seeing the farmers and the truckers are going to have a convoy to go to the southern border.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [1/24/24]
- One America News host Alison Steinberg promoted the convoy, showing its flier during the January 25 episode of In Focus. Steinberg also said that the convoy would be “adding to the escalation,” asking, “Is this a constitutional crisis? Could this be a match that ignites a civil war?” One America News, *In Focus*, [1/25/24]
[vid]
citationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of One America News' In Focus}:
- In an appearance on Fox Business, Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) welcomed the convoy to her state, saying: “Bring those beautiful, huge semis, those 18-wheeler bad boys down here to protect our border. … I hope it is a fantastic convoy.” When discussing the convoy with Van Duyne, host Liz MacDonald said “more Americans are stepping up.” Fox Business, *The Evening Edit*, [1/25/24]
- Video file
:{Video
CitationFrom the January 25, 2024, edition of Fox Business' The Evening Edit
LIZ MACDONALD (HOST): We have a new, this new news coming in. A trucker convoy is kicking off heading to the border states — we're hearing February 3 — for a multistate rally at the border in Texas, Arizona, and California. And they're calling on active and retired law enforcement, military veterans, elected officials, small business owners, ranchers to join them to rally in protest of what's going on at the border. What do you make of this? More Americans are stepping up.
REP. BETH VAN DUYNE (R-TX): Hey, don’t forget the mama bears that they’re also asking to go down there, who are seeing what’s happening in schools, where their kids are getting kicked out because they’re having illegal immigrants stay in classrooms.
Yeah, I say bring those beautiful, huge semis, those 18-wheeler bad boys down here to protect our border. They need to understand that this is not simply — you know, they can't sweep this under the rug. People are opening their eyes to it, and I hope it is a fantastic convoy, and I hope it does, you know, shed more light on it, and you're seeing people from around the country. I mean, they're even talking about having folks from Canada now come down because they see the damage that is being caused. So yeah, bring those bad boys down to our coast.
- “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec shared an image of the convoy flier to X asking, “So, how many fed will be at this?” Yeater replied to the post saying that there should be “NO FEAR” because “GOD IS WITH US.” Twitter/X, [1/25/24]
- Far-right blog The Gateway Pundit shared information about the convoy and claimed, “This message is being sent all over social media.” The post also claims that “good Americans have had enough of Biden’s destruction of the country.” The Gateway Pundit, [1/25/24]
- On X, right-wing outlet The Leading Report shared the convoy’s flier. The post also highlighted the convoy’s “opposition to the open border disaster under the Biden administration.” The Leading Report, [1/22/24]
- An article posted to the website The Politics Brief claimed that the convoy was in protest of “the recent Supreme Court decision that will allow Border Patrol agents to cut razor-wire fencing installed by Texas National Guard personnel.” The article also highlighted Self’s endorsement of the convoy, and former Fox News associate producer Kyle Becker shared the article on X. The Politics Brief, [1/24/24; Twitter/X, 1/24/24]
- Right-wing outlet Conservative Brief published an article celebrating that the convoy will “draw more attention to President Joe Biden’s lax immigration enforcement policies.” The Conservative Brief, [1/24/24]
- Conspiracy theorist Lara Logan shared a post on X about truckers going to the border, saying, “This is one to watch.” Other users replied to her post with further information about the Take Our Border Back convoy. Twitter/X, [1/23/24]
- ## Social media users have also promoted the convoy has across various platforms
- A public Telegram group for the Texas Three Percenters militia directed members to the convoy website for details.The post also threatened “legal action against non-affiliated individuals posting inaccurate, non-approved, offensive, provocative or aggressive content” in relation to the convoy. Telegram, [1/22/24]
- On Telegram, QAnon promoter Defender of the Republic shared the link to the convoy’s website, stating: “Digital soldiers, it’s time to work.” Their message opened with an appeal to other QAnon followers, reading, “If you’re a follower of Q, the white hats have been asking you to get involved.” Telegram, [1/23/24; Substack, 12/30/23]
- On X, far-right streamer Ryan Augustine Sánchez shared information about the convoy, claiming that it would be part of a “standoff against Federal troops.”He also stated that the convoy would be in support of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas National Guard. Twitter/X, [1/23/24]
- Responding to an X post from right-wing account Merissa Hansen discussing the border, one user shared the convoy’s website.The post also mentioned a planned stop along the route where the user states that they plan to join the convoy. Twitter/X, [1/23/24]
- Right-wing influencer account “Trucker Jake,” who claims that he will be joining the convoy, has repeatedly shared the link to the official website. In one post discussing the convoy, the account claimed that migrants coming across the border “are not economic refugees. They are all criminals, and they all need to go back.” Twitter/X, [1/19/24, 1/24/24]
- On fringe social media platforms Truth Social, Gab, and GETTR, users have widely shared the link to the convoy’s website. Truth Social, Gab, GETTR, accessed [1/25/24]
- Details of the convoy have also been posted to a number of public and private Facebook groups. One post celebrating the convoy stated that it was “Doing the lord's work!!!” Facebook, accessed [1/25/24]
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// poison
Donald Trump Jr. says immigrants “dilute” the American population | Media Matters for America
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see eugenics scam to demonize family fdn trying to do the right thing: eg
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CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): Here's what's upsetting to me, Heather, is if I'm dealing with somebody in customer service who's a moronic Black woman, I don't -- I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because affirmative action? It almost creates thought patterns that are not necessarily wholesome. It creates resentment, doesn't it, Heather? This is not a way to design society.
HEATHER MAC DONALD (GUEST): Yeah. We have to stop being scared by the race hustle. We have to stop --
KIRK: Yes --
MAC DONALD: Being called a racist and just say, sorry, the facts are these. You cannot have racial proportionality and excellence at the same time, not because necessarily there's any inherent difference that -- we don't -- we can put that question aside for now, but just because if you look at the fact that 66% of all Black 12th graders do not possess even partial mastery of the most basic math skills defined as doing geometry -- doing arithmetic or reading a graph, 66% of Black 12th graders don't possess even partial mastery of that. It is absurd to think that if you look at a air traffic control room, which depends on being able to do very fast calculations, being able to handle a lot of data on an instantaneous basis. If that isn't, you know, 13% Black, it's because somewhere there's discrimination going on, that is completely fallacious. It is against what is the obvious fact of the world that we live in, and yet I'm just stunned. Like, when is this gonna end?
:{:{So, at some point, it's gonna end -- especially when young white males say we are not gonna be canceled any longer. We know the facts. We know the fact that this is a society now that has done a 180 degree about face from a period where it was, in fact, white supremacy. When it was, in fact, an apartheid state, when it treated Blacks with gratuitous cruelty, heartlessness, heartbreaking nastiness and sadism, that was the reality, but we are not gonna cop to that reality today.}:
We have to stand up against this, Charlie, because white -- there's no other civilization like Western civilization that is engaged in this deliberate self-immolation. No other culture has turned on itself with such fury. You don't see this happening in China. You don't see it happening in Africa. You don't see it happening in India where those cultures are saying, oh, because we have historically been Chinese or African or Indian, we must be a colonialist, oppressive, apartheid state. No. It's only happening in the West out of some perverse instinct that if we get to the heart of it, we would understand much about Western civilization. But right now, it is a totally suicidal instinct.}:
KIRK: It is. And so, about a minute and a half remaining here, Heather. I was having difficulty persuading somebody who is more in the middle over this because they said, yeah, I don't like the woke stuff, but I don't understand why they're doing it. There must be a good reason. Can you just elaborate in about a minute here, Heather? This is suicide. This is I don't want this to exist any longer.
MAC DONALD: There is something about European civilization that is highly susceptible to blackmail. We are now being blackmailed. The reality is Black privilege, not white privilege. It used to be white privilege. I am not denying that. But for some reason, white civilization has decided to engage in the great replacement theory, and to go down without a fight. And I'm gonna fight, you're gonna fight, Charlie.
KIRK: Yes.
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12 23 MMA
After a Minnesota commission unveiled its finalist pick for a new state flag to replace a racially offensive design, right-wing media insisted that the new design resembled one from a state in Somalia. Conservatives used the redesign to promote the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that Minnesota has been “conquered” by Somali immigrants. Right-wing media claimed the design’s green and white stripes, which a state commission ultimately chose to remove from the final design, resembled Somalia’s flag.
Minnesota’s new flag design incorporates the state's shape, motto, and natural resources, replacing an old “genocidal” design
- The selected flag design incorporates Minnesota’s shape, motto, and natural resources. Minnesota Public Radio reported that the winning entry from a group of finalists includes an eight-point star in the design to reflect the state’s motto “L’etoile du Nord” (“Star of the North”), as well as an “abstract shape of Minnesota at the flag’s left edge.” The Minnesota resident who submitted the winning design also explained to MPR: “Each color was chosen to symbolize a different important aspect of Minnesota and its identity. For the stripes, white represents snow/winter, the green stripe represents our beautiful nature and the importance of agriculture and the light blue stripe represents the several significant meanings of water to our state: as the land of 10,000 lakes, the birth state of the Mississippi River and the origins of our state’s name —which came from the Dakota language— which translates to ‘a place of sky-tinted water.’” A separate report from Axios noted that “various elements, such as colors, the shape of the star and the number of stripes, could still change.” Minnesota Public Radio, [11/28/23; Axios, 12/15/23]
- The final flag design eliminated the white and green stripes. MPR published an updated article describing the final design selected by the State Emblems Redesign Commission: “A new flag with a shape that resembles — well, itself — along with an eight-point North Star and a single, light blue block to the other side.” According to the article, “a pair of designers” recommended eliminating the stripes on the right and limiting colors to shades of blue and white, suggestions which the commission accepted. Minnesota Public Radio, [12/19/23]
- The old Minnesota state flag has white nationalist overtones. MinnPost described Minnesota’s state seal, which is displayed on the current state flag, as including “many images, but the central theme is of a farmer tilling a field with a Native American on horseback riding in the distance.” The article added, “While the pre-statehood-designed seal and flag might be subject to interpretation, a poem written by the wife of the designer says this about the image: ‘We claim his noble heritage/And Minnesota’s land/Must pass with all its untold wealth/To the white man’s grasping hand.’” MinnPost, [6/8/23]
:
- The state lawmaker who was the prime sponsor of a bill to replace the Minnesota state flag and seal called them “a cluttered genocidal mess.” MinnPost additionally reported that the currently existing Minnesota state flag ranked close to last in a survey of state flags and “falls into the grouping that populates the bottom of most rankings.” MinnPost, [6/8/23]
- ## Right-wing media claimed that the new flag resembles a Somali flag and that Minnesota has been “conquered” by Somali immigrants
- Conservative radio host Charlie Kirk and guest, former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), ranted that the new Minnesota flag shows that Somali immigrants are “conquering” the state: “It is a great replacement.” Kirk and Bachmann went on a racist rant about Somalis, claiming they have “a fraud culture” and that Muslims are “conquering” Minnesota and want to turn it into ”Minnesota-stan" and an “Islamic state.” Kirk asked, “Why are we allowing ourselves to be replaced by third world Muslim foreigners?” and later said that Democrats will use immigration to “change the body politic. ... It is a great replacement by other means.” Salem Radio Group, *The Charlie Kirk Show,* [12/18/23]
- YouTube streamer Tim Pool alleged that the new flag “looks an awful lot like the flag of Jubaland in Somalia.” Pool added: “When … they make it look like a flag of Somalia, and it’s the state with the largest Somali population, a lot of people are going to feel like you are being subverted, that your cultural values are being taken away from you by minority populations and non-American populations.” *TimCast IRL*, [12/18/23, via Twitter/X]
- Pool posted in response to a post about the flag: “Yall are conquered.” Twitter/X, [12/17/23]
- Antisemitic streamer Stew Peters wrote on X, “Somalia is raising its flag over Minnesota” adding that the state “has officially been conquered by double digit IQ savages.” Twitter/X, [12/18/23]
- Right-wing influencer account End Wokeness wrote on X: “Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the West. Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) is from Puntland. Minnesota just unveiled their new flag. I'm sure this is just a coincidence.” Twitter/X, [12/17/23]
- Right-wing social media personality Amuse suggested on X that “an entire US state had been conquered,” citing the new Minnesota flag design. The account posted: “What if we woke up on day and realized an entire US state had been conquered? Take a look at the new flag Minnesota is considering. It looks a lot like the Somali flag (MN has the highest percentage of Somali refugees thanks to Obama).” Twitter/X, [12/17/23]
- PJ Media published an article declaring that “the new flag’s adoption of Somali flag colors strongly implies that this community of new Minnesotans … is in the driver’s seat.” The article lamented that “instead of expecting the new Somali arrivals in Minnesota to become American … the new flag appears to be signaling that Minnesota has become Somalia,” and “the North Star state is likely to get more and more Somali as the days and years inexorably pass.” PJ Media, [12/18/23]
- Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty said on Wake Up America: “So the new flag, it is very similar to the flag of Somalia. And just so you know, 43,000 Somalians live in Minnesota.” Finnerty continued, “This flag is directly to appeal to the Somalian population in the state of Minnesota. And by the way, something like 60,000 Somalians across the southern border under Joe Biden's time in office.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [12/19/23]
- Newsmax host Rob Schmitt stated that the flag redesigning commission “was a big conglomerate of who can be the wokest. And they said, ‘You know what? Let's get really, really woke and turn Minnesota's flag into the Somalian flag.’” He also used the story to call Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar an “America-hating refugee.” Newsmax, *Rob Schmitt Tonight*, [12/18/23]
- One America News host Kara McKinney claimed on her show that Minnesota — “the conquered state” — had spent thousands of dollars to “spit on their cultural heritage and to instead seemingly raise a foreign flag above American soil.” McKinney cited a racist X post that suggested that Somali immigrants had “conquered” Minnesota, which the post described as “a state with historic Scandinavian ties … and generous welfare on offer.” McKinney also said the new design reminded her of an incident in which “a gang of migrant youth” reportedly attacked a man dressed as Santa Claus in Germany, before claiming that “large, roving migrant rape gangs preying on young women and girls, no-go zones, and rampant terror attacks” had turned “historically safe parts of Europe into dangerous hellholes.” She added, “Can’t wait to see what Middle East or African-inspired flags their historical flags get morphed into.” One America News, *Tipping Point with Kara McKinney*, [12/18/23]
- Far-right X account Right Angle News Network on the flag design: “We are being replaced and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.” The account added: “We must resist guys. It’s not racist to want to exist.” Twitter/X, [12/17/23]
- Conspiracy theory website World Net Daily suggested that “Somalis living in Minnesota … have brought their flag with them.” The article was titled “American state's new official flag looks like one from terror hotbed.” World Net Daily, [12/18/23]
- The Western Journal wrote: “The similarities between it [the proposed flag design] and the state flag for the Somalian state of Puntland are certainly undeniable.” Western Journal, [12/17/23]
- The Gateway Pundit published a story headlined “Revamped Minnesota State Flag Looks a Lot Like the Jubaland Somalian Flag for Some Strange Reason.” The Gateway Pundit, [12/18/23]
- Headline from TheBlaze: “Redesign of Minnesota state flag draws controversy as some say it resembles Somalian state flag: 'Yall are conquered.'” TheBlaze, [12/18/23]
- ## Right-wing media have long record of pushing racist “great replacement” rhetoric
- Right-wing media figures have spent years pushing the “great replacement” theory, which warns of a nefarious plot to erode the political power of white people by replacing them with nonwhite immigrants. The blood-soaked conspiracy theory has inspired a number of horrific events, including: the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; the 2019 El Paso, Texas, shooting; the 2022 shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and others. Media Matters, [6/30/22]
- Some right-wing figures have echoed the “great replacement” theory in their rhetoric attacking the Somali community in Minnesota. In 2020, the now-defunct right-wing group Project Veritas falsely accused Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and the Somali community in Minnesota of engaging in a “pay-for-votes” scheme. In 2021, former Trump official Ken Cuccinelli said “the Somali experience in Minnesota is not a good one for America.” Media Matters, [10/7/20, 9/16/23]
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an 12 23
In a new column, MSNBC host Jen Psaki is warning that a conspiracy theory popular with the most far-right fringes of society has now become standard conservative orthodoxy.
On Saturday, Psaki remarked on a comment uttered by businessman Vivek Ramaswamy that went relatively unnoticed during the fourth Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, in which he baselessly suggested that the so-called "Great Replacement Theory" is "a basic statement of the Democratic Party's platform (it isn't)." That theory posits that Democrats seek to have immigrants and refugees "replace" the white population, with the overall goal of having them become registered voters to sway elections.
"The great replacement theory is definitely not a part of the Democratic Party platform. It is a conspiracy theory — one touted by neo-Nazis and avowed white supremacists," Psaki wrote. "The scary part is that it has become mainstream in Republican politics. There’s Donald Trump’s comments that immigration from the southern border was 'poisoning the blood of our country.' In the same vein, House Speaker Mike Johnson said in May that Democrats are 'intentionally' encouraging undocumented immigration to 'turn all these illegals into voters for their side.'
"It's all a part of a movement on the right wing to foment outrage and seize power by playing up the fear of the 'other,'" she added. "And it's not a strategy that is going away."
The "Great Replacement" conspiracy theory has also been popularized by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who frequently alluded to it on his primetime Fox News program to millions of nightly viewers. By the Guardian's count, Carlson mentioned it in approximately 400 episodes. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) have also been criticized for promoting the "replacement" conspiracy theory.
The growing prevalence of that conspiracy theory has led to violent and tragic outcomes. In 2022, the perpetrator of the mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York grocery store mentioned it in the manifesto he wrote prior to massacring 10 people and injuring three others at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood. While he didn't specifically name Fox News, he did admit to being radicalized on the forum 4Chan.
Neo-nazi Andrew Anglin, founder of the white supremacist website The Daily Stormer, called Tucker Carlson "literally our greatest ally" and lauded him for "dropping the ultimate truth bomb on his audience" in reference to the "great replacement" theory.
READ MORE:'Safety is disappearing': Racist 'Great Replacement' theory targets Fargo's Liberian immigrants
//
- fact check highlights House speaker hopeful Jim Jordan’s 'vocal' support of Trump’s 2020 election lies ›
- Jen Psaki swats down Peter Doocy: 'We do something new here and allow DOJ to act independently’ ›
- 'Are you good?' Jen Psaki mercilessly mocks Ron DeSantis’ crumbling campaign ›
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Right-wing media figures exploit anti-immigrant riots in Ireland to demonize migrants and Muslims, and attack legal immigration
Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and others pushed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and falsely portrayed immigrants as threats to public safety
WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES, SOPHIE LAWTON & JACK WHEATLEY
PUBLISHED 11/30/23
Right-wing media figures reacted to anti-immigrant riots in Ireland by demonizing Muslims, falsely accusing migrants of being a risk to public safety and attacking the very idea of legal immigration. Their response is an escalation of the xenophobic rhetoric that right-wing media frequently direct at unauthorized migration, and is a clear attempt to push for policies that would drastically reduce legal immigration levels.
The riots in Dublin were sparked after early reports on November 23 that an Irish citizen who allegedly stabbed five people, including three children, was believed to have been born abroad — thus highlighting the suspect’s perceived foreignness. Subsequent reporting found that although the alleged attacker was apparently born in Algeria, he has lived in Ireland for at least 20 years, according to Irish authorities. Numerous studies have found that increased levels of immigration do not cause a rise in crime rates either in the United States or European countries.
This manufactured panic and demonization of a marginalized group echoes a similar episode from last week, when Fox News invented a terrorism scare over a car crash at the U.S.-Canada border and used the nonexistent plot to paint Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, and their supporters as the culprits, only to retract its reporting hours later. Anti-Muslim hate incidents have also skyrocketed during Israel’s bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ attack on October 7.
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon exploited the Dublin attack to spread his anti-immigrant message across multiple platforms, including his own War Room podcast as well as Tucker Carlson’s show on X (formerly Twitter) and Donald Trump Jr.’s streaming show on Rumble, a far-right competitor to YouTube. In several of these segments, Bannon and his interlocutors endorsed versions of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which holds that liberal elites are attempting to change the demographics of white-majority countries through mass migration from the Global South to maintain political and economic dominance.
Prior to Fox News’ firing of Carlson, he was the network’s — and perhaps the entire country’s — most visible proponent of the great replacement theory. During Bannon’s appearance on Carlson’s show on November 27, both figures pushed openly nativist bigotry alongside the racist conspiracy theory.
Bannon referred to migrants to the United States and Ireland as “alien invaders,” adding that Irish politicians have “sold out the sovereignty of the Irish” and that the riots were “natural blowback.”
“The Irish government is trying to replace the population of Ireland with people from the Third World, obviously,” Carlson responded. “But why? What's the justification for that?”
“You talk about the great replacement theory and people are — oh, you know, people get very upset when you talk about it, but just look at the math,” Bannon answered.
“It’s not a theory,” Carlson interjected.
“This has happened across Europe,” Bannon continued. “It's happened in Germany.”
“In 100 years, there'll be a minority of Irish people in Ireland,” Carlson said. “That's a big change, and it's on purpose.”
Later in their conversation, Bannon endorsed mass deportations, saying: “I think illegal alien invaders are coming because they've gamed the asylum system. My belief is those people have to go home. They have to be returned, they have to leave our country or we're not going to have a country.”
Later that day, Bannon appeared on Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered to celebrate Hungary’s far-right authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán and Irish mixed martial arts fighter Connor McGregor, who had come under police investigation following anti-migrant social media posts.
Video
CitationFrom the November 27, 2023, edition of Triggered, streamed on Rumble
Former President Donald Trump fought “for the sovereignty, not just of nation-states, but the sovereignty of the individual citizens in those nation-states,” Bannon said. “I think it's inspired Orban in Hungary. I think McGregor in Ireland standing up the other day was inspired by Donald Trump.”
The discussion then turned to the knife attack in Dublin, with the host claiming Arab and Muslim cultures celebrate anti-social violence.
“In their culture, they can stab people in the streets. It's fine. We must allow them to do that to our children,” Trump Jr. facetiously said, adding, “I mean, the government is taking an actively hostile position against their citizens in favor of, like, seemingly savages in many cases.”
Bannon returned to the subject the next day on his War Room podcast, calling for the “deportation of the 9 million — at least 9 million to 10 million — illegal alien invaders coming in the Biden regime.”
“What happened in Ireland — it's all coming here, folks,” Bannon warned ominously. “It’s all coming here.”
His guest the following hour was conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been increasingly embraced by right-wing media in recent years. Jones falsely claimed that “illegal aliens or migrants” are responsible for “the majority of muggings, rape, and murder in every European country."
That evening, Bannon discussed the violence in Ireland in another episode of War Room, where his guest, author Michael Walsh, again pushed the great replacement conspiracy theory.
“This was the spark that set off what’s become a powder keg across the country, which is the notion — widely held among the Irish people — that they’re being replaced by foreigners,” Walsh said. He added that the Irish government “is committed to this program of quiet replacement and has demonized what we would have called Irish patriots,” referring to the far-right mobs.
Several other right-wing media figures also used the riots to spread anti-migrant bigotry.
- BlazeTV’s Steve Deace defended the mob, arguing that “the Irish Proud Boy wannabes” are “not the villain here,” suggesting they “have had enough” and feel like “I’ve already lost my culture to Islam. Now our daughters are getting raped and assaulted” by the “rape-fugees we brought in.”
- “Concerned citizens in Dublin, Ireland look on helplessly as busloads of undocumented migrants are brought into their community,” anti-LGBTQ social media account Libs of Tik Tok posted on X (formerly Twitter).
- Salem Media’s Charlie Kirk questioned “how Ireland allowed so many foreigners and Third-Worlders into the beautiful country of Ireland?"
- Self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer blamed the attack on a “Muslim migrant."
"Across the West, the status quo has become intolerable,” Loomer added. “The endless waves of immigrants, the devastation of our culture, and the crackdown against anyone who dares to stand against it has all become too much to bear.”
“There can be no doubt that the average person is, at last, awake to the gravity of the situation, and their anger is brewing,” Loomer continued. “White people, in particular, have taken all of this on the chin for the last few decades, but that appears to be coming to an end.”
- Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis argued that regardless of the suspect’s citizenship status, he “was an immigrant nonetheless,” claiming the incident was further evidence that “Europe is at the precipice of falling."
Following the riots, some observers of the far right argued that anti-immigrant sentiment had become a major issue in Ireland in recent years, and that politicians needed to do more to address the rising xenophobia. Right-wing media figures are determined to stand in the way.
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https://www.alternet.org/nebraska-republican-great-replacement-theory/ abortion?
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WAIT WHAT?!
mma 4 23
[part amic, no goodbye]
...Carlson has been a singular force driving Fox News’ extremism to new lows, single-handedly introducing the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory into mainstream American politics and becoming a kingmaker in the Republican Party as a result. A 2022 New York Times investigation found that Carlson “amplified the idea that Democratic politicians and others want to force demographic change through immigration” in more than 400 episodes.
Since the November 2016 launch of his prime-time show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, he has been a hero to hardcore racists and extremists for repeatedly hosting guests with ties to white supremacy and defending the QAnon conspiracy theory. He has also been the vanguard of January 6 conspiracy theories on the network.
As a result of Carlson’s success, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch made him the face of Fox's streaming service. Murdoch backed Carlson every step of the way, repeatedly defending his bigotry and conspiracy theories, even as advertisers fled.
Media Matters has extensively documented Carlson’s extremism, including examples of white supremacist commentary going back to 2004, and he was named Misinformer of the Year in 2022, which included a non-comprehensive research file featuring over 350 examples of his misinformation. In 2019, Media Matters unearthed racist and misogynist comments by Carlson on the shock jock radio program Bubba the Love Sponge. Media Matters’ years of coverage drove a massive advertiser exodus from his program.
Below is just a small sampling of the worst of Carlson on Fox News over the years.
- In September 2017, Carlson claimed that striving for diversity “gets you to civil war.”
- December 2017: Carlson fearmongered that Democrats want “demographic replacement” with a “flood of illegals” to create “a flood of voters for them.”
- In July 2018, Carlson characterized“hate speech” as “a made-up category designed to gut the First Amendment and shut you up.”
- In September 2018, Carlson said America “was a better country” when it was less diverse.
- Carlson warned his audience about threats of white “genocide” in October 2018.
- In December 2018, Carlson said immigration makes America “poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.” He subsequently doubled down on the comments, even as advertisers began to flee his program.
- Carlson has repeatedly defended Infowars’ Alex Jones. Carlson was a guest on Infowars in 2015, when he claimed then-President Barack Obama was pushing “Nazi” racial politics, and the former Fox host also sourced stories on Tucker Carlson Tonight from the conspiracy theory network.
- In December 2019, Carlson labeled children separated from their parents at the border as “people who have no right to be here.”
- After the murder of George Floyd, Carlson’s coverage of protests and victims of police brutality hit a new low. In June 2020, he said it’s a “good question” to ask why he is “required to be upset about” Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer. Two days later, Carlson dedicated his opening monologue to showing photos of unarmed Black people killed by police and smearing them to justify their deaths.
- On June 4, 2020, Carlson and his guest agreed the time for “vigilante justice” against protesters is near. He also told his audience that Black Lives Matter protests are “definitely not about Black lives. And remember that when they come for you.” Carlson lost nine major advertisers as a result of his commentary.
- In January 2021, Carlson warned his audience they could be thetarget of a “war on white supremacists.”
- The following month, Carlson claimed President Joe Biden would release MS-13 gang members “into your neighborhood.”
- September 2021: Carlson describedBiden’s immigration policy as “the great replacement” and “eugenics.”
- In January, Carlson accused Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) of “blood libel” against white people.
- In March, Media Matters reported that texts revealed in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News showed Carlson had shared a column a Holocaust denier had written for a white nationalist website.
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no lnx an 7 23
'Raw political sham': House Democrat torches GOP witness for invoking racist Great Replacement Theory
Brandon Gage July 19, 2023
United States Representative Delia Ramirez (D-Illinois) clapped back at a witness who invoked the controversial and racist "Great Replacement Theory" during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Right-wing lawmakers like House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-New York) have repeatedly referenced GRT — which maintains that white people are being supplanted by foreigners of color — as an excuse to crack down on undocumented immigrants. The conspiracy has also been cited by perpetrators of mass shootings to rationalize murder.
Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing for the removal of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom they allege "created our nation's historic border crisis by implementing intentionally reckless policies, failing to enforce the laws passed by Congress, and ignoring the advice, recommendations, and warnings of experienced law enforcement."
READ MORE: Nebraska Republican invokes racist 'Great Replacement Theory' during debate on six-week abortion ban
Ramirez's remarks came after Chairman Mark Green (R-Tennessee) called on her by the wrong name.
"Ms. Garcia, you're recognized," Green announced.
"Ramirez. Ms. Ramirez," the congresswoman corrected.
"Ms. Ramirez, I'm sorry," Green replied.
READ MORE: 'Their electoral strategy': Tucker Carlson stokes fear among viewers while blaming Dems for 'Great Replacement' theory
"Thank you," Ramirez continued. "And as I think about the hearing now and hearing the witnesses, I think about just last year how a horrific domestic terror attack at Buffalo, New York supermarket left our nation reeling. My colleagues across the aisle offered up their thoughts and prayers, but they offered no actions to address racially and ethnically-motivated violent extremism. It is not lost on me that before murdering ten people at the supermarket last year, the shooter wrote and I quote, 'We are experiencing an invasion on a level never seen before in history.' However, twisted justification the shooter believed he was repelling an invasion of the United States by immigrants from Latin America. Does that sound familiar?" Ramirez asked retired Department of Justice Special Agent in Charge of Special Operations Division Derek Maltz.
"Mr. Maltz, in your testimony you said, 'I know what's going on in America,' so let me ask you. Do you support the assertion that the United States is experiencing a historic invasion by immigrants? That's a yes or no question," Ramirez said.
"Illegal immigrants. Immigrants from around the world, yes," Maltz responded.
"Yes or no," Ramirez reiterated.
"Yes," stated Maltz.
"So you believe that we are experiencing a historic invasion of immigrants?" Ramirez added.
"Yes," Maltz confirmed.
"So despite knowing that the Pittsburgh shooter justified his actions based on the idea of an immigrant invasion to replace white people, despite knowing that invasion ideology was used to justify the shootings in El Paso and Buffalo, you continued to espouse this Great Replacement Theory — an extremist ideology that people like me when my mother crossed the border pregnant with me — don't deserve to be here because we are invading the country?" Ramirez retorted.
"Mr. Chairman, this hearing is not a fact-finding mission," Ramirez concluded. "It's a raw political sham to stoke fear, and it will continue to justify the violence against immigrant communities, and I find that unacceptable."
Watch below via Heartland Signal or at this link.
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not 1st x
https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/fox-news-host-jesse-watters-pushes-great-replacement-theory
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fargo?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/great-replacement-theory-liberian-immigrants
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no lnx twt
https://www.mediamatters.org/vdare/white-nationalists-embrace-fox-news-bill-melugin
White nationalists embrace Fox News’ Bill Melugin
The network’s top reporter at the US southern border has been promoted and celebrated by anti-immigrant racists
WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL
PUBLISHED 12/20/22
White nationalists and other far-right extremists have embraced and celebrated Fox News’ Bill Melugin, the network’s primary correspondent at the US southern border. His reporting is regularly mentioned and praised on racist, anti-immigrant websites including VDARE, Infowars, and other extremist outlets, highlighting the ideological overlap between so-called mainstream conservatism and its more openly racist fringes.
Melugin is a fixture on Fox News, regularly appearing both in supposed straight news programming and during primetime opinion shows. He has been on Fox at least 427 times in 2022, including at least 30 segments on the network’s flagship program, Tucker Carlson Tonight. (Data on Melugin's appearances is current through December 19, 2022, at 12:40pm.)
Drawing clear distinctions between mainstream conservatism and white nationalist extremism is not easy. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, for example, has fully embraced the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, once a fringe position only pushed by overt racists. Melugin has played a key role in much of Carlson’s mainstreaming of that xenophobic idea, so it is not a surprise that his coverage would also appear in far-right media venues.
Bill Melugin / Tucker Carlson / caravan
CitationFox News
One of the racist sites that has embraced Melugin is VDare, a white nationalist outlet founded by Peter Brimelow,a reclusive conservative publisher who straddles the line between the conservative establishment and overt white supremacy. Brimelow endorsed “racial nationalism” at CPAC in 2018, and one year later argued that when it came to immigration policy, “Western elites” were only interested in “repressing the white host nations,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In a column for VDare in 2012, white nationalist John Derbyshire argued that, “White supremacy, in the sense of a society in which key decisions are made by white Europeans, is one of the better arrangements History has come up with,” also as reported by the SPLC.
Brimelow recently attended the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala in Manhattan.He was photographed next to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, host of the War Room podcast, further illustrating the porous boundaries between supposedly respectable conservatism and its explicitly racist fellow travelers.
Over the last year and a half, VDare has used Melugin’s reporting as the basis for at least 31 blogs or videos on their site. While it’s true that an individual reporter can’t control what happens to their journalism once it’s out in the world, the pattern that emerges from VDare’s commentary on, and aggregation of, Melugin’s work is clear. The stories Melugin tells, and the way he frames them, fully align with VDare’s white nationalist agenda.
VDare celebrates Melugin’s reporting
On December 12, conservativeedgelordand Twitter owner Elon Musk approvingly responded to a typically sensationalistic tweet from Melugin. “Wow,” Musk replied to a video purporting to show over 1,000 migrants crossing the Rio Grande river without authorization. Musk’s interaction with Melugin’s post amplified its reach significantly. Later that morning, VDare’s official twitter account retweeted Melugin’s original tweet, again signaling the close proximity between conservative provocateurs like Musk and more overtly racist outlets.
BREAKING: A huge migrant caravan of over 1,000 people crossed illegally into El Paso, TX last night, making it the largest single group we have ever seen. The city of El Paso reports Border Patrol now has over 5,000 in custody & has released hundreds to city streets.
CitationFrom the Twitter account of VDare, posted December 12.
VDare’s account promoted Melugin two other times that morning as well, in both cases by retweeting comments added by white nationalist and Infowars contributor Dan Lyman. The account also retweeted Melugin or amplified his work at least nine other times in December, including one instance in which white nationalist and former Trump advisor Stephen Miller used his footage to argue against a spending bill Congress was debating. And in August, VDare celebrated after Musk had responded positively to another Melguin tweet.
Looks like a scene out of World War Z or Elysium The US as we’ve known it is finished. Just a matter of how / when it dies and what comes next.
CitationFrom the Twitter account of VDare.
Not a serious country anymore
CitationFrom the Twitter account of VDare
He's noticed!-- @elonmusk on @BillFOXLA 's daily reports on the Biden Rush at the southern border. #IMPEACHBIDENHARRIS
CitationFrom the Twitter account of VDare
VDare amplifies Melugin’s work even more frequently on their website. In October, VDare published a story based on a tweet of Melugin’s that incorrectly reported a Border Patrol agent had shot and killed a detained migrant after he had gone for the agent’s gun. In fact, as an FBI investigation found just days later, the man, Manuel Gonzalez-Moran, had apparently grabbed an unspecified “edged weapon” off an office desk, after which point a Border Patrol agent shot and killed him.
In July, VDare published a story under the same byline praising Melugin as an “intrepid” reporter “who documents The Great Replacement almost daily on his Twitter feed.” The same credited writer used similar language in February, again referencing “Fox News’s intrepid Bill Melugin, who keeps an eagle eye of Biden’s planned invasion of replacement citizens.” Also in February, a post under a pseudonymous byline said Melugin “has been doing excellent coverage along the border.”
Both Melugin and VDare have repeatedly covered the controversy over a photo that initially appeared to show Border Patrol agents whipping a Haitian migrant named Mirard Joseph in September 2021. Melugin has consistently claimed that Border Patrol didn’t do anything wrong. In October, he revisited the allegations, tweeting out an email obtained by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation sent to Department of Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas that quoted the photojournalist who took the shot. The email appeared to undercut the whipping allegations, and cast Mayorkas in an unfavorable light. VDare embedded Melugin's tweet in a blog that also included criticism of Mayorkas from the Border Patrol Union and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
The stories Melugin tells, and the way he frames them, fully align with VDare’s white nationalist agenda.
The reality of the story is far more nuanced than either Melugin or VDare want to admit. Melugin’s supposed smoking gun email included a write-up of an interview of Paul Ratje, the photographer, in which said he hadn't witnessed agents whipping any migrants, but later said his comments had been misconstrued as giving Border Patrol “a pass.” Joseph and other migrants mistreated by Border Patrol agents that day filed a lawsuit against the government, claiming agents had “lashed” him. Joseph described his treatment while in U.S. custody as “the worst humiliation I have endured in my life.” An official investigation by Customs and Border Protection didn’t find evidence that whipping took place, but did uncover “unprofessional and dangerous behavior by several individual Agents.” But both Melugin and VDare saw an opportunity to demonize migrants and took it.
Conspiracy theorists at Infowars rely on Melugin's work
Melugin’s support from Infowars extends beyond the recent tweets from Lyman, the white nationalist who VDare retweeted. In September, Alex Jones’ co-host Owen Shroyer repeatedly praised Melugin after Politico reported that the Biden White House had “become increasingly irritated” with the Fox News correspondent. Shroyer claimed, without evidence, that the story was an attempt to “get Melugin shut down and banned and censored from the Internet” to punish him for his journalism.
Video CitationFrom the September 21, 2022, edition of Infowars'The Alex Jones Show, streamed on Rumble
“Now, who’s down there reporting at the border, probably more-so and better than anyone else, that’s Bill Melugin,” Shroyer said to introduce the topic. (Shroyer, never one to sweat the details, pronounced Melugin’s name wrong until a producer appeared to correct him midway through the segment.)
“And so why are they mad at Bill Melugin?” Shroyer asked. “Because he’s down at the border every day with a Fox News crew, with cameras, and they’re showing the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants that come across the border every day. And talking to Border Patrol about the terrorists, and the child rapists that they arrest.”
Like VDare, the Infowars website regularly writes articles based on Melugin’s work. A review of Infowars’ archives show at least 37 posts that include his reporting, typically as the piece’s primary or exclusive source. These stories adopt his anti-migrant framing, treating irregular border crossings as a rolling catastrophe – the frontline in a war zone – that must be addressed with militarized responses.
In many cases, Melugin is mentioned without additional comment, but there are several instances in which Infowars bloggers express their admiration for him. Writer Steve Watson recently celebrated Melugin as a reporter “who has been at the front lines on the border crisis for years now.” Last month, on the day of the 2022 midterms, Lyman characterized Melugin as “documenting the invasion of Maverick County,” in Texas. One month earlier, writer Kelen McBreen praised a tweet of Melugin’s that supposedly “accurately pointed out” the hypocrisy of New York city’s immigration policy compared with Texas’. Watson, weeks earlier, again cheered on Melugin for being “ever present at the border.”
Racists, other far-right extremists praise Melugin’s Del Rio bridge story
Arguably Melugin’s breakthrough story came in August and September, 2021, when he covered an influx of mostly Haitian migrants who had sought refuge under the Del Rio bridge in Texas. Infowars covered the issue by cross-posting a blog from far-right conspiracy site ZeroHedge, written by pseudonymous blogger Tyler Durden. “Melugin has been reporting from the bridge for more than a month,” Durden wrote approvingly that September, also referring to the “stunning drone footage” Melugin had captured.
When the FAA issued a two-week flight restriction over the bridge, Durden accused the Biden administration of trying to kill the story, and praised Melugin for persevering. “The Biden administration’s attempt to cover up the border disaster by blocking drones didn’t stop Melugin and his team who hitched a ride on a Texas Department of Public Safety’s helicopter to capture an aerial view of the migrant crisis,” Durden gushed. In fact, shortly after issuing the restriction, the FAA provided clearance for Melugin about a day later.
The Del Rio bridge story became a national sensation, with Melugin’s implicitly xenophobic coverage leading the way. The story spread to some of the worst parts of the Internet, where the implicit bigotry was abandoned for explicit racism. Neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer referred to the migrants as “invaders,” claiming the United States’ refugee policy was “about making America nonwhite. There’s no other goal.”
The racist site Occidental Dissentalso covered the story. It was “another scene of imperial decline,” according to the site’s founder, Brad Griffin, who uses the pen name Hunter Wallace. “This has been going on ever since Joe Biden was inaugurated in January,” he added. “The only difference now is seeing so many black faces joining the flood.”
What’s most notable about this explicitly racist commentary is how closely it matched Fox News’ own coverage at the time. As Media Matters and others noted, Tucker Carlson – using Melugin’s reporting – fully embraced the racist great replacement conspiracy theorywhile discussing the Del Rio bridge story. Biden’s immigration policy was designed "to change the racial mix of the country,” Carlson said. “In political terms, this policy is called ‘the great replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.”
Melugin frames himself as a straightforward reporter, just covering the facts as he sees them. But his body of work has been wholeheartedly embraced by far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists, Carlson very much among them. That’s not intrepid reporting – it’s laying the foundation for racist propaganda.
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mma 12 22
gt replace
JACKIE DEANGELIS (FOX BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT): And that's who he's catering to, and part of going down there and turning a blind eye to what is happening, the humanitarian actual crisis, as you point out Charles, of trekking across the border is because they're trying to change the demographics in this country. They want more people in this country that will turn red states purpler and then eventually blue, and that's the overall agenda of the Democratsand that's what he's playing into. To your point Harris about how much this is costing us, the Fed is gonna continue to raise rates because 7.1% inflation is still really high. Two million people will lose their jobs next year, and we're gonna continue to have to support all of these causes and people coming into this country because that's what we do, and it's gonna be a rough 2023.
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an 10 22
no lnx twt vid
'Cesspool of hate': Jake Tapper explores Gab's digital netherworld of 'hideously racist' posts and 'Nazism'
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement October 18, 2022
CNN’s Jake Tapper says the far-right social media platform Gab, run by an antisemitic Christian nationalist, has “hideously racist” posts and embedded “Nazism” as part of its “popular” offerings – and says after he reported his findings founder Andrew Torba called him the “son of the Devil” and claimed the site hosts “pro-life” and “Christian content.”
Tapper on Monday took a walk into the world of far-right social media platforms, after Kanye West announced his intention to buy the flailing site Parler, and glanced at Facebook and Twitter as well, but says the so-called “free speech” sites on the far-right are filled with hate – and that “the hate is the whole point.”
Tapper says of the far-right sites he looked at, Gab has “the fewest rules” and “the lowest standards” when it comes to content moderation.
READ MORE: ‘Yes’: GOP Nominee Mastriano Supports Charging Women With Murder if They Have an Abortion After a 6 Week Ban (Audio)
“I signed up for Gab this morning. I clicked on ‘Explore,’ which took me to ‘popular posts across Gab.’ I came in with an open mind and immediately Gab hit me with this post: ‘We are in a wartime but it’s a quiet war perpetrated by the Jew,’ with a picture of Adolf Hitler,” Tapper told CNN viewers.
“And there was plenty more where that came from. The ‘N-word is super big on Gab. It is a cesspool of hate,” Tapper observed.
And while Gab “takes precautions,” it “doesn’t seem to care about hate speech.”
“The more speech I saw on Gab this afternoon, was more speech extolling Nazis and more speech engaging in Holocaust denial, and more speech sharing more hideously racist posts than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life,” Tapper said. “I saw less of it but still too much of it on Parler today.”
“It’s high time we recognize that the hate on many of these far-right sites is not just an unfortunate result of belief in free speech. The Hate is the whole point.”
READ MORE: Watch: Torba Warns GOP to Not ‘Disavow or Condemn Us’ Because ‘Christian Nationalists Are the Republican Party’
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) calls Gab a “haven for hate and disinformation,” and “an online hub for extremist and conspiratorial content.”
“Gab quickly became known as a platform used by conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis, members of militias and influential figures among the alt-right,” the ADL adds. “Over the last two years, Torba has worked to insert Gab, himself and Christian nationalism into mainstream society and politics, primarily through relationships with elected officials and candidates.”
Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba has promoted the white genocide or “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and has been called an advisor to Republican state senator Doug Mastriano, a far-right 2020 election-denying Christian nationalist running for governor of Pennsylvania, where Gab is based. (While never condemning Torba, Mastriano denies the relationship, but there are receipts of Gab doing “consulting” work for Mastriano, who has also told Torba, “Thank God for what you have done.”)
Tuesday morning Tapper took to Twitter to share that Torba attacked him after his Monday report aired on CNN.
Tapper shared the video of the posts he saw on Gab, which includes the antisemitic one he quoted on-air that had the photo of Adolf Hitler.
“Gab’s antisemitic founder is attacking me with the accusation he makes about folks who report factually about his site, that I’m the son of the devil. Totally normal stuff,” Tapper tweeted.
He also posted screenshots of Torba’s posts on Gab.
[READ MORE: Mastriano’s Consultant Just Posted Video Declaring ‘We Have Multiple Candidates…Who Are Christian Nationalists’
“Jake Tapper reported on CNN tonight that Gab’s Explore page was filled with Hitler memes and n word posts,” Torba wrote on Gab.
“Reality,” he claimed, “pro-life content, Christian content, content from multiple members of Congress, wholesome animal videos, etc.”
But he didn’t stop there.
“Jake Tapper = John 8:44,” Torba added.
For those unfamiliar with every Bible verse, one version of John 8:44 reads: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.”
Watch Tapper’s CNN report below, see his tweets above, or at this link.
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/4chan-republican-rhetoric-mass-murderer/
The self-identified white supremacist who slaughtered 10 Black people inside of a Buffalo, New York supermarket last week was a known risk to local law enforcement and even published a 180-page manifesto in which he outlined his hateful ideations.
According to an analysis published in The Guardian on Wednesday, GUK however, the ideas that the mass shooter espoused – enhanced by his aridly creepy selection of words – were not his original thoughts. Instead, the outlet found that the gunman copied and pasted his text from various posts that he read on the dark web right-wing hub known as 4chan.
The document "allegedly released by the accused along with a video of the attack, is rife with pseudo-scientific racism, antisemitic conspiracy theories and a call for others to mimic his violence," the investigation revealed, adding that "the screed is mostly plagiarized from other extremists" on 4chan.
Peppered throughout the viciously bigoted musings were references to theGreat Replacement Theory, a fringe belief that immigrants with higher levels of epidermal melanin are invading the United States and committing genocide against White Americans.
The hateful treatise "details the baseless racism that underpins the philosophy, including the idea that Jewish people secretly control the world, and that the genetic differences between the races make them incompatible. One particular image, sourced from 4chan, claims to show 'the truth about race' – compiling a handful of debunked, misunderstood, or cherrypicked studies to assert the claim that certain races are inferior to whites," wrote TheGuardian, noting that it "even seeks to back up its claims with the long-abandoned pseudoscience of phrenology, which studies the sizes and shapes of craniums."
Excerpts of missives authored by the indicted domestic terrorist on the instant messaging app Discord that The Guardian obtained indicate that he felt as if he had found a community in which he belonged. The Guardian also pointed out that he viewed 4chan as a dependable source of information, noting that "he confessed to browsing 4chan daily" and admitted that he “barely interacts with regular people."
The perpetrator stated in one exchange that “I only really turned racist when 4chan started giving me facts." In another instance, he claimed that “White genocide is real when you look at data, but is not talked about on popular media outlets."
While 4chan certainly had a profound influence on his worldview, it is not fully to blame for poisoning the assailant's impressionable mind, which at 18 years of age, significant scientific research has determined, is still developing.
The foundation of those repugnant conspiracy theories has been promoted by prominent conservative figures likeFox News propagandist Tucker Carlson and his colleague Laura Ingraham; misogynist podcasters Nick Fuentes, Charlie Kirk, and Ben Shapiro; Republican Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance (whom former President Donald Trump endorsed), and, most notably, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, who chairs the GOP Conference in the House of Representatives and is the only Jewish Republican currently serving in Congress.
Stefanik in particular has been under heavy fire in the wake of the Buffalo massacre over her cache of anti-immigrant talking points as well as her championing of Great Replacement during conversations with journalists and appearances on mainstream news networks.
The danger they pose is immediate and substantial. But it is not unforeseen.
Last September, The Times UnionEditorial Board warned that the "undeniable echo of Nazi Germany" has been "resonating ever since in the right-wing, repackaged lately in what’s known as ‘replacement theory,’ espoused by conservative media figures like Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. And it has seeped into the mainstream political discourse in the Capital Region, where Rep. Elise Stefanik has adapted this despicable tactic for campaign ads."
Stefanik, the newspaper's editors continued, "isn’t so brazen as to use the slogans themselves; rather, she couches the hate in alarmist anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s become standard fare for the party of Donald Trump. And she doesn’t quite attack immigrants directly; instead, she alleges that Democrats are looking to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants in order to gain a permanent liberal majority, or, as she calls it, a ‘permanent election insurrection.’ Quite a choice of words, of course, considering that the country is still suffering the aftershocks of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington by supporters of Mr. Trump who tried to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election."
Queen’s University Assistant Professor of Religion Amarnath Amarasingam expanded on these points to The Guardian.
“We have seen (the great replacement myth) playing a greater role in mobilizing individuals to violence because it has a somewhat unique ability to foster a sense of emergency,” she explained.“You can hear it all over the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto – a deep sense of urgency that there is an imminent collapse of white people and white culture. Combine all this with the furious nihilism, racism, and angst of 4chan and it all becomes deeply worrying.”
So how did a seemingly unsuspecting teenager become helplessly enraptured by online hate? The answer provided by The Guardian was as bewilderingly simple as it was unnerving.
The culprit whose name was not mentioned in this article out of respect for his victims – "including Aaron Salter, a security guard who tried to stop the shooting; local activist Katherine Massey; and substitute teacher Pearl Young" – reportedly joined 4chan out of "extreme boredom" during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020.
He has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder.
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7 22 an
Fox News' Tucker Carlson is once again circulating reports about the so-called "Great Replacement" theory.During the Tuesday night broadcast of "The Tucker Carlson Show," the Fox News host made his arguments about the great replacement theory as he explained why he doesn't believe it's just another conspiracy.
“The great replacement? Yeah, it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s their electoral strategy,” Carlson said as the headline "Democrats often celebrate demographic change” was displayed at the bottom of the screen.
READ MORE:'Deeply dangerous': MSNBC host reveals the history behind the GOP embrace of a deadly conspiracy theory
According to HuffPost, the theory centers around the belief that "white Christians are being intentionally replaced by immigrants, people of color and non-Christians." On multiple occasions, Carlson has also managed to tie the replacement theory to the various mass shootings that have taken place across the United States in the last several months.
Like Carlson, a number of mass shooters have also attempted to blame the great replacement theory for their actions. Among those are the suspects allegedly involved in the recent mass shootings that took place in Buffalo, N.Y., El Paso, Texas, and Christchurch, New Zealand.
Carlson's latest remarks have drawn more criticism as there are concerns about the dangerous rhetoric he is sharing with Fox News viewers. Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, weighed in with his assessment of Carlson's broadcast.
“The difference between a Tucker Carlson monologue and a white supremacist mass murderer’s manifesto is the Tucker Carlson monologue gets aired in prime-time on the nation’s most-watched cable news network,” said Gertz.
To view Carlson's latest broadcast, watch below or at this link....
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an 7 22
A new analysis is breaking down how Republican lawmakers and candidates are further contributing to the spread of dangerous rhetoric. From "replacement theories" to other conspiracy-driven rhetoric promoting misinformation, USA Today's Candy Woodall is shedding light on Republicans' increased use of aggressive ad campaigns.
Woodall wrote: "Experts who study language, rhetoric, and communication see a disturbing pattern between a string of violent incidents across the country and an increase in 'dangerous' language from Republican candidates and sitting GOP members of Congress in ads, social media posts, and speeches."
The Congressional reporter went on to highlight the issues withRepublican-backed political ads currently circulating as the 2022 midterm elections approach. "During the 2022 midterm cycle, more than 2,700 ads have aired on television and social media focusing on racist tropes, according to a compilation by America's Voice, a progressive immigration advocacy group," Woodall wrote.
She added, "More than 100 directly mentioned the racist Great Replacement Theory and 'invasion' language, accusing Democrats of deliberately encouraging migrants to cross the southern border illegally to replace white voters. And more than 300 ads cite critical race theory, claiming Democrats are trying to indoctrinate children with fake history lessons about systemic racism against Blacks, according to a USA TODAY analysis."
She went on to highlight some of Republicans' main focal points. "For example, the Republican candidates' claims that liberals were 'grooming' children by pushing for LGBTQI+ rights were repeated by the Proud Boys when the extremist street gang disrupted a drag queen story hour on June 11 in California."
Although these types of ads may prove to be effective among Republican voters, critics have also expressed concern about the toll they can take on America's society. Zachary Mueller, the political director for America's Voice, shared his projection of the problems that could arise in the near future. "Without a doubt, there are serious downstream violent consequences," said Mueller.
She also explained how this type of political strategy appears to be working in Republicans' favor although they are facing deep criticism for it as it has taken its toll on America's democracy. "It has become a political strategy," said Sophie Bjork-James, a professor at Vanderbilt University and an expert on race relations, "and it's working very well."
"Many historians and professors who study U.S. democracy place the blame of escalating rhetoric squarely on Republicans," Woodall wrote. "They say it is highly unusual for leaders of one of America's two major political parties to be engaging in, much less condoning, such dangerous and divisive speech."
"It elevates extreme views to a legitimacy they haven't had in the past," said Ziad Munson, a professor of sociology at Lehigh University. "Words that used to be in the fringes of political life are now part of major political campaigns."
The latest analysis comes just days after U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas weighed in on the department's efforts to monitor and surveil extremist groups.
"Individuals spurred by ideology of hate, false narratives, personal grievances, to acts of violence and it is that we respond to and we seek to of course prevent," Mayorkas said. "We are in a heightened threat environment." [vs prev DHS that ignored warnings/suppresed on white supr]
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an 7 222
lt Governor Dan Patrick, a far-right Republican, is comparing migrants crossing the border into Texas to Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor that killed 2335 people. He is calling it an “invasion” and says that gives the state the right to “put hands on people.”
Patrick, who because of Texas’ unique structure is more powerful than the governor, told Fox News on Tuesday, “we are being invaded, and if we’re being invaded under the constitution I think that gives us the power to put hands on people and send them back. Put hands on people and send them back,” he said repeatedly.
“These people are a danger to America,” Patrick said in a rant. It was unclear if he was referring to migrants or President Joe Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
READ MORE:
The Lt. Governor, who has hawked the racist “great replacement theory” repeatedly, and used the term “invasion” repeatedly, told Fox News that Texas is now spending $4 billion annually on the border, while Texas National Guardsmen and Texas Rangers complain of being called up to serve, having to abandon their regular jobs, for no apparent reason.
“This is the biggest danger we have, to your family,” Patrick says of the fentanyl crossing the border. “It’s all on Biden,” he claimed.
Last week Texas Governor Greg Abbott drew extensive criticism for using thedeaths of more than 50 migrants packed into an 18-wheel tractor-trailer as a political opportunity to attack President Biden. Even some conservatives attacked Abbott for his inhumane remarks..
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6 22 mma
rOB SCHMITT (HOST): One of the biggest problems this country has is our institutions becoming politicized. And law enforcement, of course, is the very latest. The politics of the offender are now critical to the response. And angry liberal rioting and looting and burning, and beating people is of absolutely no concern to America's political elite. They'll never have to deal with that problem. That's your problem.
But those on the right who are angry and defiant, that is a huge threat to this country. They tell you that all the time – it's a huge threat because they're not complying with the official agenda. They're angry over this ridiculous country withopen borders.They're angry over white replacement because, you know what the left said, that's what they were going to do. It's not some crazy right-wing theory, it's exactly what's happening. They don't want our left-wing radicals indoctrinating their kids. They're the problem. They're mad their government is owned by lobbyists doing the bidding of major corporations. We need the DOJ spying on them.
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hnn an 5 22
n Saturday, May 14, a gunman opened fire upon a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing ten people. As of this writing, investigators have reportedly uncovered the terrorist’s manifesto, suggesting that he was motivated to commit mass murder by a conspiracy theory popularly known as “the Great Replacement,” which holds that elites (typically depicted as Jewish) in white, European countries are overseeing the importation of immigrants to undermine the white population.
The term “Great Replacement” was popularized by a French white nationalist in his 2011 book of the same title and has since become a staple of right-wing ideology, being promoted here in the United States most feverishly by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson. Belief in this conspiracy theory has motivated other mass killings, including the 2018 murder of eleven people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as well as the massacre of fifty-one people in Christchurch, New Zealand the following year. The growing death toll has not stopped Tucker Carlson and other Republican elites from claiming that the supposed influx of migrants is part of a master plan to undermine white America.
It is easy to imagine the “Great Replacement” is just another moral panic stoked by populist grifters to keep their adherents simmering in fear and resentment. However, if you examine the historical record, elites in this nation, and my own home state of Arkansas, have explicitly engaged in the importation of foreigners to undermine local populations—just not for the reasons conspiracy theorists prefer to imagine.
Following the Civil War, whites in the South did everything they could to bring back the lucrative system of slavery. They engaged in regimes of terrorism and violence, but they also promoted the importation of foreign labor, especially Chinese, as a means of undercutting the local Black labor market. Or as Governor Powell Clayton, a Republican, put it, Democratic politicians and local landowners aimed to “punish the negro for having abandoned the control of his master,” for having begun to demand fair wages and tolerable working conditions. Planters dreamed that allegedly submissive, non-citizen Chinese labor would be easier to control, but the Chinese found the slave-like conditions these planters tried to impose intolerable and cut their contracts short or moved into other lines of work, which is why the Arkansas Delta has a number of multi-generational Chinese-run grocery stores and restaurants.
In the late nineteenth century, Austin Corbin, president of the company that oversaw Sunnyside Plantation in Chicot County along the Mississippi River, recruited Italian laborers to work on the plantation with contracts obligating men to work the land for twenty-two years before finally being allowed to own it. There was no shortage of labor in Arkansas at the time, but Chicot County was majority Black, and, again, plantation owners were hoping to find a source of cheap labor devoid of citizenship rights. But the Italians had no experience with cotton, and many died from malaria. The survivors by and large moved elsewhere, most notably to Tontitown, in the northwestern corner of the state.
During World War II, plantation owners again began to dream of cheap, disposable, foreign labor, but this time the federal government came to their aid. To ensure sufficient labor to meet wartime demand for agricultural crops, the United States and Mexico created the Bracero Program, which supplied American landowners with Mexican workers on fixed-period contracts at a time when many men of laboring age were engaging in military service. The program has often been depicted as a matter of wartime necessity, but in his chapter in the recent book Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta, historian Michael Pierce of the University of Arkansas examines the career of Lincoln County activist Ethel Dawson to argue that “there was no shortage of African Americans willing to work the Arkansas Delta’s cotton fields, and planters employed braceros to lower domestic wages, stifle worker protests, rid Lincoln County of Black people they had long considered dangerous, and maintain near absolute power at a time when pressure to end Jim Crow was building.”
This anti-Black “Great Replacement” continues to the present day. When I was down in Phillips County in the runup to the 2019 centennial of the Elaine Massacre, I heard many stories about local planters who would not hire men or women from the area to work on their farms but, instead, recruited foreign labor, especially from South Africa. On November 12, 2021, the *New York Times* reported on that exact thing happening just across the river in Mississippi, revealing how residents were losing their jobs to foreigners brought to the country on H-2A guest worker visas.
The “Great Replacement” is real. But it has never been about the recruiting of foreigners to undermine white workers. Instead, it has always, in this country, centered upon the recruitment of foreigners to undermine Black labor, and thus Black economic and political aspirations. Not that Tucker Carlson or any of his brother blood-soaked millionaire elites will ever admit that.
Dr. Guy Lancaster is the editor of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System, and the author or editor of multiple books on racial violence, most recently American Atrocity: The Types of Violence in Lynching.
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origin (see Breivik)
...In 2003, Jensen returned to Norway, where he attempted to make a name for himself as a public intellectual. At first, he was hostile to feminism, accusing feminists of destroying Norwegian manhood. But the focus of his concerns soon switched to Islam. He started writing under the pseudonym “Norwegian Kafir” on an American blog calledLittle Green Footballs, which loudly and fervently supported the invasion of Iraq. From then on, his writing appeared in English, on American-hosted blogs. There, he hammered into shape the narrative of elites, specially identified with the EU, who are destroying and betraying Europe by the deliberate encouragement of mass immigration.
At this point in time, the Eurabian conspiracy appealed largely to those who had long perceived a conflict between Islam and the Judeo-Christian west – with Israel as a beleaguered and persecuted outpost of western values. These people, largely on the American right, were among the earliest exponents of Eurabia – but as they never ceased to complain, theirs was not an attitude very widely shared in Europe. What would soon supply the emotional force of the fantasy was another set of ideas about global migration, less conspiratorial in their essence, but much more widely accepted among generally apolitical Europeans. These, also, originated in France, where they were known as the “great replacement”.
The idea of the great replacement had its origin in a blatantly racist French novel of the 1970s, The Camp of the Saints, in which France is overthrown by an unarmed invasion of starving, sex-crazed Indian refugees when the French army is not prepared to fire on them. The moral of the book is that western civilisation can only be saved by a willingness to slaughter poor brown people. Steve Bannon, among the founders of the rightwing news site Breitbart and a former adviser to President Trump, has referred to it repeatedly.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, the naked racism of The Camp of the Saints kept it largely out of public debate. But the rise of Islam as a global force allowed the question to be recast. If the threatening masses were defined by religion rather than by skin colour, then hating them could be presented as an intellectual commitment rather than a racist one.
And the paranoid did have a large, shadowy half-truth to fall back on. The demographic shrinkagefacing Europe is real and undeniable, and it was obvious in the early years of this century, too. So are the much greater birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. In 2002, Russia and Pakistan both had populations of about 145 million; by 2017, Russia’s population was 144 million while Pakistan’s was 200 million.
The next stage in the development of a xenophobic populist worldview was for the two narratives to merge, so that Islam and Muslims became both a conspiracy and a demographic threat.
The 9/11 attacks changed attitudes to Islam in much of Europe and the US. Israel and the US now shared a sense of being under attack from Muslims. Without 9/11, Littman would have remained an obscure crank, and Jensen more obscure still. But the assault on the twin towers unleashed an immense backlash of wounded American pride and nationalism that led to the devastation of two whole countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and countless deaths. It also fuelled a demand for explanations. Theories about the unique malevolence and danger of Islam answered a popular hunger. George W Bush declared at the time that the US had no quarrel with Islam, but many of his compatriots disagreed.
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an 5 22
The latest mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 10 Black victims in Buffalo, N.Y., has reignited concerns about dangerous rhetoric perpetuated by far-right media and conspiracy theorists.The Guardian's Cas Mudde recently explored how right-wing media and Republican lawmakers have contributed to this ongoing problem.
"The problem is, we can talk endlessly about better regulating social media or calling for even more funding and powers for public and private 'counter-terrorism' organizations, but none of that will make us safer as long as the broader conservative movement embraces and propagates far-right propaganda," wrote Mudde, who is also a professor for the University of Georgia's School of Public and International Affairs. "This is a point worth repeating, even if I and others have made it many times before."
Mudde went on to validate his point by highlighting how the Buffalo shooter's manifesto echoed dangerous talking points from far-right media. The disturbed terrorist referenced concerns about "the Left," America's "open borders," and immigration.
"The so-called 'manifesto' of the terrorist included a lot of the standard tropes of the far-right, including the so-called Great Replacement Theory. Often linked to antisemitism, this conspiracy theory holds that 'the Left' is supporting 'open borders' to replace the 'original people' with 'immigrants,' who are inferior and therefore easier to control. Variants of this theory go back to at least the original Populists of the mid-19th century, but in its current iteration it has been around since the start of the 1980s postwar far-right in Europe."
He also expressed concern about Republican lawmakers' conflicting position on this topic. "Since the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021, I have had various informal conversations with people who work in Congress or in other state agencies about the far right," Mudde wrote. "They tell me that they want to talk about the threat it poses, but then rapidly narrow the focus to 'online radicalization' and violent groups with scary names like Atomwaffen Division or Feuerkrieg Division.This is not just because these groups get disproportionate attention in the media and the counter-terrorism industry, but because they are politically safe. These groups are so extreme that they are out of bounds for almost all political elites, even on the right. But they are also small and marginal."
He added, "This is not the case for most other more mainstream actors and ideas of the far right. In fact, their power is now so great in Washington, that it is almost impossible to come up with a term that is acceptable to both sides of the political spectrum. Republicans are skeptical about terms like 'far-right' and 'racism,' fearing this would include groups and ideas they sympathize with. This is not without reason."
"The Grand Old Party has become a far-right party that advances racist arguments in both implicit and explicit form. And many organizations within the broader “conservative” movement have followed suit, from Fox News to Turning Point USA."
With the direction the Republican Party is going toward, Mudde emphasized the reality America is facing as he offered a piece of advice to President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
"The sad reality is that fighting the far right has become a highly partisan affair in the United States," Mudde wrote. "Any attempt to make this a bipartisan effort means watering down of measures and limiting them to the most extremist fringes. If Biden and the Democrats really want to fight white supremacy, including institutional racism, they must do it without the Republican party."
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Three things happened this weekend.
They are connected.
They are the GOP’s three-legged stool.
First, several high-profile Republicans, including the No. 3 House leader, accused the president of giving preferential treatment to undocumented Americans at the expense of “native” white Americans.
The administration provides baby formula to mothers detained at the US-Mexican border while they see through the deportation process. (Baby formula is scarce due to issues relating to trade, monopoly and the covid pandemic. The national shortage is reaching crisis levels.)
New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, chair of the GOP conference, alleged on Twitter that “Joe Biden continues to put America last by shipping pallets of baby formula to the southern border as American families face empty shelves. This is unacceptable. American mothers and their babies shouldn’t suffer because of the #BidenBorderCrisis.”
In September, the representative ran a series of ads on Facebook accusing “radical Democrats” of “planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants willoverthrowour current electorate andcreate a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”
The second thing that happened this weekend was tens of thousands of women, mostly white, demonstrating in Washington and other major American cities to protest the Supreme Court’s imminent ruling that will almost certainly strike down Roe. Organizers say the marches preview a “summer of rage” happening before the midterm elections.
Third was a trio of mass shootings in California, Dallas and Buffalo.
Buffalo’s is getting the most attention.
The shooter is an18-year-old white supremacist from rural New York. His semi-automatic rifle was emblazoned with the n-word as well as the names of notorious white terrorists: Anders Breivik (Norway, 2011), Dylann Roof (Charleston, 2015), Robert Bowers (Pittsburgh, 2018), Brenton Tarrant (New Zealand, 2019) and John Earnest (El Paso, 2019).
Payton Gendron went to an eastside Tops, a grocery store not far from where I lived in the 1990s. Of the 13 people he killed and injured, 11 were Black. He’s in custody. He was arraigned Saturday on a charge of first-degree murder. Hate-crime felony charges are likely forthcoming.
Two days beforehand, Gendron posted online what appears to be a manifesto. According to Ben Collins, who covers right-wing extremism for NBC News, it “laid out specific plans to attack Black people andrepeatedly cited the ‘great replacement’ theory, the false idea that a cabal is attempting to replace white Americans with nonwhite people through immigration, interracial marriage and, eventually, violence.”
Collins wrote that, “the manifesto includes dozens of pages of antisemitic and racist memes, repeatedly citing the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory frequently pushed by white supremacists, which falsely claims white people are being ‘replaced’ in America as part of an elaborate Jewish conspiracy theory. Other memes use tropes and discredited data to denigrate the intelligence of nonwhite people.”
Three things happened this weekend. They are connected.
The “great replacement theory” is the link.
More precisely, democracy is.
Democracy in the 21st century isn’t yielding the results the right-wingers want. It produced the first Black president. It produced his reelection.
The rightwingers cannot trust democracy until they are certain that “demographic change,” which the Democrats love to talk about, has been stopped. They can’t trust democracy until there are enough white people around to make sure white people are still in charge.
Immigration.
Abortion.
Guns.
These are the three-legged stool of the Republican Party.
The stool animates the rightwing imagination. It animates the Republican incumbents running for reelection. It animates a third of Americans who believe “an effort is underway” by the Democratic Party “to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains,” according to a recent AP poll. It animated Payton Gendron.
On immigration – stop it.
Stop all of it, even legal immigration. The more nonwhite people, Muslims and Jews in America, the more risk there is to white power.
On guns – more of them in more white hands.
Rightwingers can’t get rid of Black people and Latinos who were born here or immigrated years ago, but they can terrorize or (legally) lynch them. More guns in more white hands overlap with police officers who already serve an unspoken mandate to control nonwhite people.
On abortion – more white babies.
Most of the women who get abortions are white. By forcing them to give birth, the rightwing attempts to “repopulate” the country so that, over the years, there are more white people who can vote. Only at that point can the right-wingers' return to trusting American democracy.
Gendron’s manifesto spells it out: “If there’s one thing I want you to get from these writings, it’s that White birth rates must change. Everyday the White population is fewer in number. To maintain a population, the people must achieve a birth rate that replacement fertility levels.”
It also says “critical race theory” a rightwing talking point that has come to “encompass teaching about race in school, is part of a Jewish plot, and a reason to justify mass killings of Jews,” Collins wrote.
When Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said “CRT, CRT, CRT,” his voters didn’t hear anything about education or even children. What they heard was that the Democrats are trying to replace them. What they heard was a plan for “PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION.”
This weekend, the three-legged stool was in full view.
Few Americans believed it beforehand.
A “white supremist killed my mother and other family members,” the Rev. Sharon Risher said Saturday. “Again, we deal with death because of hate and a gun. Thoughts and prayers won’t cut it. Something must be done! Can I count on you to help change this narrative?”
When democracy betrays you, where do you turn?
To hate and a gun.
Will more Americans believe it now?
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an 5 22
in a blunt column for theconservative Bulwark, Cato Senior Fellow Cathy Young raged against the spread of the so-called "replacement theory"that played a major part in prompting an 18-year-old white man in New York to go on a shooting rampage Saturday afternoon in a Buffalo-area grocery store situated in a community that is reportedly 80 percent black.
As Young put it, "Those who follow the news know that this is far from the first time “replacement theory” has figured in the ravings of a mass shooter," before adding, "We know these ideas are floating out there. We also know that, disturbingly, “replacement theory” is being mainstreamed on the right," the columnist specifying Fox News host Tucker Carlson who has repeatedly claimed that Democrats are trying to "replace" Americans with immigrants.
As Young notes, two prominent Republican lawmakers have also taken up the "replacement theory" banner, withRep Matt Gaetz (R-FL)tweeting, "The Left/Media think of replacement solely on race/ethnicity terms. I don't at all. Democrats failed voters who relied on them to run their states/cities. Now they are importing new voters. That is my argument. Those reading more into it are projecting their own bias."
Add to that, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who Young explained, ".. jumped on the bandwagon as well with a Facebook ad claiming that the Democrats were going to use amnesty for illegal immigrants to 'overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.'"
"This is hateful, stupid, paranoid nonsense," she wrote before adding, "It is also, need I point out, the epitome of collectivist 'identity politics' the right sometimes likes to deplore in its progressive guises."
Noting that a recent poll shows that a third of Americans "agreeat least somewhat that 'There is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political views,'" Young wrote, "In a sane and decent political climate, both media figures and political figures on the right would quickly and emphatically disavow “great replacement” as un-American, race-baiting nonsense. Which means … don’t hold your breath."
"That was a joke. Cue bitter laugh," she lamented.
You can read more here.
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180 pp gt replace manifesto, dad bought him one of the guns?
https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/matt-gaetz/
amanda
in the 16 months since Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump and the hosts Fox News hosts — especially its top-rated personality, Tucker Carlson — haven't exactly been subtle in approving of what happened and longing to see more right-wing violence. Trump has publicly mused about issuing pardons to the Capitol insurrectionists if he wins back — or rather steals back — the White House in 2024. Like many of the far-right Republicans in Congress, Trump has also made a martyr out of Ashli Babbitt, the QAnon believer who was shotduring the Capitol riot when she tried to break into a secure area and quite likely attack members of Congress. Carlson, meanwhile, has been at the forefront of popularizing various often contradictory conspiracy theories, mostly intended to portray the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as noble patriots and lambaste any Republican who dares say otherwise. While these GOP leaders and media personalities are generally careful to avoid direct calls for violence, their overall message of sympathy and support for right-wing terrorism is undeniable.
So Saturday's mass shooting in Buffalo, while horrifying, is really no surprise.
The alleged shooter who killed 10 people and injured three others in a Buffalo supermarket is 18-year-old Payton Gendron, who appears to have target a busy location in a predominantly Black neighborhood. As has become far too common with these kinds of mass murders, Gendron reportedly live-streamed the massacre on video, and apparently also published a manifesto that echoes many of the paranoid right-wing talking points one can hear every day streaming from the mouths of Fox News hosts and Republican politicians: a series of scurrilous lies about "critical race theory," George Soros and the "great replacement."
Now a familiar refrain will commence. No doubt we will be hear a great deal of umbrage in the coming days from Republican leaders and right-wing pundits. "How dare you blame us?" they will proclaim, in almost hysterical terms, acting shocked, shocked, that anyone would suggest that their words have had horrible consequences. The point of this fake outrage will be to make it too emotionally exhausting to hold them accountable, and to reinforce the ridiculous victim complex that fuels the American right as it increasingly slides into fascism. But let's not mince words: These folks share the blame. They have been encouraging violence, and violence is what they got.
The "great replacement" theory has been a favorite of Carlson's for some time now. This particular paranoid hypothesis is deeply rooted in neo-Nazi and other white nationalist circles. A cabal of rich Jewish people, the theory holds, has conspired to "replace" white Christian Americans with other races and ethnic groups in order to gain political and social control.Carlson doesn't actually say "Jews," and generally blames the sinister plan on Democrats, socialists or unspecified "elites," but otherwise has kept the conspiracy theory intact. (Antisemitism remains the mix by singling out individual Jewish people especially Soros, as the alleged ringleaders.) It's not like Carlson only invokes this narrative on occasion. As Media Matters researcher Nikki McCann Ramirez has documented, Carlson is obsessed with this idea that the people he calls"legacy Americans" — a not-so-veiled euphemism for white Christians of European ancestry — are under siege from shadowy forces flying the banner of diversity. He uses anodyne terms like "demographic change" to make the point, but has gotten bolder more recently, using the word "replacement" to make it even clearer that he's borrowing his ideas from the white-supremacist fringe.
Carlson has also explicitly linked this conspiracy theory to the threat of violence, repeatedly "warning" that America faces a new civil war unless these fictional conspirators stop trying to "replace" his cherished "legacy Americans." The GOP base has been getting the message. A poll conducted in December showed that nearly half of Republican respondents buy into the idea that there's a conspiracy to "replace" white Christians with different racial and ethnic groups. That proportion has probably risen since then, as Carlson's deluge has further mainstreamed this delusional and dangerous notion. Unsurprisingly, there has been a concurrent rise in hate crimes, of which this Buffalo shooting is merely the most dramatic recent example.
When called out for stoking a conspiracy theory that is likely to inspire violence, Carlson inevitably plays the victim, accusing liberals of being "hysterical" and characterizing these criticisms as "cancel culture." This only encourage his viewers to embrace the conspiracy theory even more, telling themselves that they (and he) are bold truth-tellers fighting against the forces of liberal oppression.That's why the how-dare-they posturing we will almost certainly see from Carlson and other right-wing pundits in coming days so predictable. This article, for instance, will quite likely be characterized as hysterical name-calling or an attempt to censor bold political speech. But let's understand this feigned outrage for what it is: an attempt to leverage an act of terrorism in a way that leads people to accept it or even condone it.
The "great replacement" theory fits in with the larger pattern of right-wing Republicans (especially our former president and his allies) and Fox News pundits encouraging not just right-wing paranoia, but the inevitable acts of violence that flow from it. The most straightforward example of this, of course, is the relentless rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, which began in the immediate aftermath and continues to this day. Republican leaders in Congress voted down Trump's impeachment only weeks after the riot and have tried to block congressional efforts to uncover exactly how the attempted coup went down.
Over this past winter, Fox News, Trump and other GOP leaders made another big push towards political violence, hyping outrageous conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines and encouraging their audiences toward aggressive acts of so-called resistance. As with Carlson, these threats are often packaged as "warnings," as when Trump declared on Fox News in February, "You can push people so far and our country is a tinderbox too, don't kid yourself." Around the same time, Carlson, Sean Hannity, Carlson and Glenn Beck all started pushed the idea that anti-vaccination fanatics were potentially justified in using violence as "self-defense."
Indeed, as the shooting was unfolding in Buffalo, there was an overt call for right-wing violence at Trump's rally in Austin, Texas, where oock geezer turned gun advocate Ted Nugent told the crowd of 8,000 that he'd "love" it if they all "went out and just went berserk on the skulls of the Democrats and the Marxists and the communists." In his speech afterward, Trump praised Republican politicians in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who have slavishly proven their loyalty to him.
Many of the people arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 , 2021, have stopped being apologetic about what they did, and are now portraying themselves as martyrs and heroes. Last week, one of the most prominent ringleaders on the insurrection,Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet, a troll to the very end, dramatically declared at a hearing that he was changing his plea. He had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser offense, but now wants to plead not guilty, even though he filming himself inside the Capitol during the riot and put the evidence online. Other Jan. 6 defendants have also become more confrontational, including pulling a gun on probation officers, acquiring new guns in defiance of a court order, or claiming that their actions on that dayamounted to "self-defense." In fairness, why shouldn't they feel emboldened? Most Republican voters, along with the party's leadership, are more interested in making excuses for Trump's coup than holding anyone accountable for it.
And all of the above doesn't even touch on the way Republican politicians and right-wing media have mainstreamed the QAnon conspiracy theory by regularly slurring Democrats, LGBTQ folks and their allies as "groomers." Demonizing political opponents with false allegations of pedophilia is unbelievably slimy, even by Republican standards. It also serves to inspire or encourage potential acts of violence, by dehumanizing their targets and creating a delusional narrative that makes such attacks seem justified.
Perhaps the horror unleashed in Buffalo on Saturday will cause Carlson and his allies to rethink their paranoid, racist and inflammatory rhetoric. That is doubtful, however. After all, this is just the latest in a series of mass shootings inspired by the "great replacement" theory, including the
Just this week, the conspiracy theory got another round of hype as Republican pundits and politicians pretended to believe that President Biden was stealing baby formula from Americans to feed "illegals," their slur for refugees applying for asylum. Those who would support deliberately starving babies for racist and xenophobic reasons aren't likely to feel any real empathy for the victims and their families in Buffalo. We cannot legitimately hope that they will be chastened by this latest round of violence, but we can make clear that their hateful rhetoric helped to unleash it.
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/cheney/
Buff NY mass shooter
no twt lnx
S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has become the face of the Republican Party’s embrace of the racist, white supremacist, and white nationalist “Great Replacement Theory” after a white 18-year-old man drove 200 miles and allegedly slaughtered 10 Black people in Buffalo. Stefanik’s Facebook ads and her rhetoric in recent months have been highlighted as contributing to advancing the baseless conspiracy theory,but rather than pull back and apologize the chairwoman of the House Republican Caucus is being accused of “doubling down” on her “terrorist rhetoric.”
“Democrats desperately want wide open borders and mass amnesty for illegals allowing them to vote. Like the vast majority of Americans, Republicans want to secure our borders and protect election integrity,” Stefanik tweeted Monday morning.
“There is nothing humane or compassionate about Joe Biden & Democrats wide open border and amnesty policies. It is Joe Biden’s Border Crisis. A tragic humanitarian crisis. A national security crisis. An economic crisis. And the American people know it,” she also tweeted Monday.
Immediately before those tweets, Stefanik issued a press release attacking the media for “disgraceful, dishonest and dangerous … smears” that accuse her of the very same “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric she minutes later went on to invoke.
Noted economist David Rothschild, a frequent political commentator, calls Stefanik’s tweets “terrorist rhetoric.” He criticized her Monday morning, saying the New York Congresswoman “is doubling-down with numerous [tweets] this morning echoing the Buffalo’s terrorist’s manifesto with baseless, hateful rhetoric designed to encourage violence against minorities, immigrants, and Jews.”
Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy Professor Don Moynihan agrees Stefanik is doubling down:
As does historian Kevin M. Kruse:
Some more responses to Stefanik’s tweets from this morning:
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MRC has only a few headers but one is: https://www.newsbusters.org:{/latino}:
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/business/jeffrey-clark/2022/02/17/ap-climate-army-four-leftist-big-money-orgs-fund-ap-eco
gmail
The Associated Press recently celebrated an $8 million cash infusion from left-wing mega-donors to fund a small army of eco-journalists.
The Associated Press (AP) declared on Feb. 15 that “it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues.” The announcement of the $8 million in funding marked the “largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants” in AP history.
Climate Depot founder Marc Morano put it best: “The AP will now have zero 'obligation to serve as watchdogs over public affairs and government' and instead be approved messaging lapdogs to their paymasters. Will the AP ever offend [its] donors and look critically at the UN IPCC climate panel? Or NASA? It's a laughable thought.” The organizations that opted to exchange cash for influence included left-wing organizations like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Quadrivium Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation.
AP referenced an earlier time, when it suggested news agencies were more independent: “For many years, Journalists and philanthropists were more wary of each other. News organizations were concerned about maintaining independence and, until the past two decades, financially secure enough not to need help,” [emphasis added].
So what changed? AP explained the journalism industry’s need for “philanthropy” since its “financial outlook has been otherwise bleak.” But this flies in the face of independent journalism. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics states journalists should “[a]void conflicts of interest, real or perceived.”
The Hewlett Foundation gave at least $583,165,182 in grants to the ClimateWorks Foundation from 2008 to 2020, according to Foundation Directory Online. ClimateWorks has been linked to the “‘greening of the Belt and Road Initiative,’ global trade infrastructure project pushed by Chinese President Xi Jinping to link the communist country with the rest of Eurasia,” according to investigative think tank the Capital Research Center.
The Rockefeller Foundation has a sordid history of extremism. The Rockefeller Archive Center, a research center and grantmaking organization, documented the group’s funding of population control research in the past. Additionally, “Dean Rusk, who served as Rockefeller Foundation president in the 1950s, led an effort to dramatically expand federal population control funds when he served as Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations,” Influence Watch reported.
The Walton Family Foundation of Walmart fame also got in on the climate action. It awarded at least $64,597,090 in grants to the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The EDF held a string of events in 2020 that exploited the Marxist Black Lives Matter protests and riots to rail how “[c]urrent demands for racial justice have put the spotlight on environmental racism.”
Quadrivium is another environmentalist sponsor. Under James Murdoch, the son of News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch, Quadrivium flexed its climate change financing muscles. Quadrivium gave at least $14,250,000 to the same radical EDF from 2013 to 2019.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The Associated Press at (212) 621-1500 and demand it reject climate alarmism.
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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."
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/tucker-carlson-and-george-soros/
an 1 22
Earlier this week, fans of thehighest-rated host in U.S. cable news were told that one of the most recognizable and demonized Jews in public life is waging a "political, social and demographic war on the West." Hungary, they were told, is this monstrous figure's "main hunting area," but all of North America and Europe are in his sights, and only through the widespread embrace of aggressive conservative nationalism can he be defeated.
In fairness, not all of that is made clear at first. For the first quarter of Fox News host Tucker Carlson's new documentary short, "Hungary vs Soros: The Fight for Civilization," it's hard to tell why it was made. Yes, over the last several years Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's proudly "illiberal" Hungary has become the centerpiece of American conservative vision-boarding. Yes, many on the U.S. right would love to emulate Hungary's pronatalist policies to encourage early marriage and large families; its crackdowns on press and academic freedom, including the defunding of university gender studies; its effective ban on Muslim immigration, and its actual bans on same-sex marriage, adoption and LGBTQ content for minors. It's no secret that Soros remains one of the right's foremost villains, blamed for everything from protests against Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation to Donald Trump's election loss to migrants seeking entry to America.
But all that aside, the latest "Tucker Carlson Original" looks and feels, at least at first, like old news: a tighter, better produced, chalkboard-free remake of Glenn Beck's three-hour 2010 anti-Soros series, "The Puppet Master," which was widely condemned as antisemitic and is sometimes credited for helping drive Beck's departure from Fox the following year.
Carlson's reboot, which wasn't aired on Fox News proper but its seedier online streaming service, Fox Nation, includes many of the same ingredients as the original. There's the same sort of ominous soundtrack and grayed-out coloring when Soros appears on screen, and the same fixation on Soros as a "globalist" who is allegedly erecting a new world order through his sprawling web of influence and his control of media "storylines."
There's a familiar framing, early in the film, of Soros as being amoral in some difficult-to-specify way. In Beck's version, an opening quote from Soros noted that his mother, in pre-Holocaust Hungary, had been "ashamed of being Jewish." In Carlson's, within the first minute or so we see a clip of Soros telling an interviewer he doesn't believe in God. While Carlson doesidn't repeat Beck's use of ghoulish medieval puppet props, he deploys the same metaphor, accusing Soros of using his money and NGO network "to oust democratically elected leaders and install ideologically-aligned puppets into positions of power." And, like Beck, Carlson cites as evidence Soros's support for various Eastern European "color revolutions," without acknowledging to his audience that those revolutions were almost entirely peaceful protests against communist or post-communist dictatorships.
There are some notable differences in Carlson's update. In establishing Hungary under Orbán as the last bulwark against Soros's allegedly creeping empire, Carlson turns into something of a Budapest tour guide, marveling at airport advertisements encouraging people to have more children, the city's architecture and anti-Soros street signs. ("Will George Soros attack our country again?")
He works in some combat reporter-style helicopter footage as he tours the Hungarian border fence, and lingers long on the faces of two hapless teenage-looking refugees who were caught trying to enter the country, and who Carlson darkly suggests probably aren't Syrian, as they claim. He even stops to appreciate Budapest's "mostly conservative" graffiti, like a wall spray-painted with "Fuck Liberals" (in English) and a symbol that looks a lot like the white supremacist rendering of the Celtic cross.
But the big reveal begins about a quarter of the way through, when Carlson first mentions "nationalism." Orbán was once the beneficiary of Soros's philanthropy, Carlson says, but now understands him as a threat after becoming "a Hungarian nationalist." This is likely to fly under the radar for most viewers, but that is effectively the documentary's guiding theme: Orbán is "the sort of man, the sort of political leader, who has taken these populist nationalist instincts and turned them into effective policy." Furthermore, "Soros opposes Orbán because Soros opposes nation states" and the upcoming Hungarian elections "will be the defining battle in the war between George Soros and Viktor Orbán, in the battle between globalism and nationalism."
None of that rhetoric is anything new when it comes to Orbán, who's made Hungarian national sovereignty the defining issue of his political identity. But it definitely says a lot about Carlson, and how he's helping to mainstream one of the most contentious and troubling ideologies of the contemporary right.
Last November, hundreds of right-wing academics and thinkers gathered in Orlando for the highbrow National Conservatism conference. Much of the three-day gathering focused on trying to develop a new conservative coalition along post-liberal lines. As I wrote in The New Republic earlier this month, the National Conservatives see classical liberalism — meaning old-fashioned, small-L liberalism, which prioritizes individual rights and private property, and is embraced by many staunch conservatives as well — as the root of modern society's problems.
A society ordered around unfettered personal and market freedom, they argue, makes it too difficult to raise families according to "traditional" values. A widespread commitment to multicultural pluralism, in their view, has led to an oppressive cultural imperialism where individual countries are prohibited from protecting their borders or upholding their historical cultures. They'd like to see newly empowered national governments that embrace official or public religion, use state power to coerce people into leading virtuous lives (according to their standards) and reassert the sort of proud, unapologetic nationalism that reigned before the horrors of World War II.
Besides academics and writers, the National Conservatism movement has recently been adopted by former American Enterprise Institute president Christopher DeMuth, and is influential enough that the November conference drew a number of leading Republican politicians and contenders, including sitting senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio, and wannabe-senator J.D. Vance.
Many of the intellectuals heading up the postliberal/National Conservatism movement are Roman Catholic "integralists," who ultimately want to see the country governed according to a conservative Catholic vision of the "common good" (with most details about what that means left strategically vague). Other leaders are avowed nationalists, seeking to reclaim the term from what they see as its unfair association with the likes of Nazi Germany. A number of them have made that case prominently in books published in the last four years, including First Things editor R.R. Reno's "Return of the Strong Gods," National Review editor Rich Lowry's "The Case for Nationalism," and National Conservatism conference organizer Yoram Hazony's "The Virtue of Nationalism."
In both of those camps within right-wing intellectual circles, Hungary has emerged as the most practical model they can aspire to: It's the sort of nationalist "Christian democracy,"as Orbán calls it, that they believe stands the best chance of replication in the U.S. (at least until there's enough support for the right-wing Catholic utopia sometimes described, jokingly or not, as the {Empire of Guadalupe). As abundant media coverage has noted, the U.S. right has cheered on most of Orbán's most controversial policies. His government has assiduously courted their support, including through private institutions' offer of visiting fellowships and scholarships to numerous conservative academics and thinkers and Orbán's personal invitation to figures like American Conservative writer Rod Dreher that they consider Hungary their "}_{intellectual home}_."
Those overtures have reaped undeniable benefits. Fulsome statements of support have flowed in from the likes of Dreher (who plays a starring role in the Fox Nation documentary) and Carlson, who broadcast his top-rated prime-time show from Budapest for a week last August. Orbán's reelection bid has drawn the endorsement of Donald Trump and many of his acolytes, all the way down to, just this week, the New York Young Republicans Club. In tangling with critics about the endorsement on Twitter this Thursday, the club's vice president taunted his foes by writing, "We're literally unifying the international right. …I'm not here to argue. I'm here to win.")
Orbán's regime also had a major presence at the National Conservatism conference in Orlando.There was a promotional table offering free conservative Hungarian books and magazines; a panel on "international nationalism" featuring Orbán's political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), who enjoys a sizable American following; and a plenary address from Dreher on "What Conservatives Must Learn from Orbán's Hungary." (They must learn to unashamedly embrace "state power" in defense of conservative values and build a "conservative deep state" to ensure that entrenched right-wing policies can survive the unfortunate results of electoral defeat.)
Most of Carlson's viewers are unlikely to know much about all the ideological furniture in the background, or to care about it. But he's doing his best to bring them the Cliff Notes version, breaking the ideas discussed by Ivy-educated right-wing elites in Orlando into digestible bite-sized chunks, and delivering them, airplane-style, into mainstream conservative discourse.
One of those chunks is the rehabilitation of nationalism as a conservative virtue. Another is the idea that it's not just acceptable but commendable to use family policy as a means of engineering a country's racial makeup.
For years, Hungary had one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. Combined with high emigration— mostly to other European Union nations — it was losing 32,000 people from its population annually. Orbán's government sought to address this by unveiling an aggressive suite of pronatalist policies in 2019, including interest-free loans to families that are forgiven with the birth of a third child, subsidies for minivans, and a lifetime exemption from income tax for mothers who have four or more kids.
Policies like these have enjoyed support from some conservative quarters for years. In 2007, the international right-wing coalition World Congress of Families called for similar measures while warning about what it called "demographic winter." This was the idea that European countries were producing too few children, leading to both "the graying of the continent" and the creation of dangerous population vacuums that would be filled with immigrants too difficult to assimilate. At the time, as I reported in The Nation, most of the racial hand-wringing was couched in euphemistic terms. But these days that subtext has become text, and sometimes the flashing headline, with the proliferation of conspiracist narratives about "white genocide" and the "Great Replacement," or Trump-era activists calling for a "white baby challenge."
In this new context, Orbán has been embraced by some on the right for framing his pronatalist policies as an intentional barricade against Muslim immigration, saying that while other countries were buoyed by immigration, Hungary didn't merely "need numbers" but rather "Hungarian children," or that Hungary didn't "want our colour, traditions and national culture to be mixed with those of others." Katalin Novák, the stylish and combative former family minister who became the face of Hungary's pronatalist campaign, warned that countries that abandon tradition will find themselves "condemned to [demographic] death." Conservatives on this side of the Atlantic swooned, with Breitbart dedicating regular coverage to Hungarian pronatalism, the National Reviewcheering:{that Orbánwas "redefining the possibilities for modern social conservatism," and Carlson }
:{ the plan as a model of family values during a 2019 interview with Hungary's foreign minister.}:
Orbán is not quite that blunt in Carlson's new special — the second half of which focuses on Hungary's pronatalist initiatives as part of the country's battle against Soros — but unlike other countries that choose to, in Carlson's words, "import new citizens from the rest of the world," the prime minister says Hungarians "would not like to leave this country to the migrants, we would like to leave it to our grandchildren." Carlson nods along with this, visiting a series of large Hungarian families as they beam at each other on playgrounds or buy new cars with government subsidies, before cutting to a black-and-white clip of a grim-faced Soros, saying that he's very concerned about the direction Hungary is headed. The unsubtle takeaway is that these amorphous questions of shifting populations and changing family structures is actually deliberate "demographic war," with Soros as general of the opposing army.
That's not an original idea either. It's the encapsulated narrative within or beneath the Great Replacement or white-genocide conspiracy theories, which hold that liberals — and specifically Jewish liberals — want to bring large numbers of immigrants and refugees into the U.S. or Europe to "replace" the white population there. That narrative has been the direct inspiration for numerous mass murder events, including the El Paso Walmart shooting, the mosque murders in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the assault on worshippers at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue, where the killer blamed a Jewish group for aiding refugees.
In September Carlson finally introduced the term "the great replacement" to his audience — after hinting or gesturing at it for months — calling it a "policy" to "change the racial mix of the country" through "the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries."
In the documentary released this week, Carlson illustrates this premise with a series of images intended to land more powerfully than words: a back-and-forth contrast between scenes of white people strolling amid the old-world beauty of Budapest streets or boating on the Danube, and scenes of Black and brown people, almost exclusively in situations of violent chaos, surging against fences, fighting with cops or, at their most benign, crying on the street. Toward the end of the documentary, the video cuts rapidly and repeatedly between second-long shots of white couples on park benches and footage of a crowd of shirtless Black men, shouting in a foreign language and lunging at the camera.
The next shot is meant to come as a relief: Orbán, back at the interview table, saying that he hopes his administration's work will "be enough to convince the people that it's a reasonable decision to support us, and not give the country to George Soros."
Carlson's larger point appears to be that a similar decision, one with apocalyptic or civilization-scale consequences, faces Americans as well.
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Slate on Wednesday published an interview with Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has spent the last year analyzing the demographic background of Capitol rioters.
Slate described his conclusions about the rioters as "sobering" and in particular pointed to his "research that tied rioters’ home counties to the areas that had lost the most white population in recent years."
While speaking with Slate, Pape said that he was surprised that so many of the rioters were doctors, lawyers, and other well paid professionals, and not the kind of people who usually fall in with extremist militas.
"When you look at this, it’s just one category after another after another that shouts out mainstream," he said. "The Jan. 6 insurrectionists really are best understood as a product of the mainstream."
Pape then explained how he and his team of researchers went about trying to learn just how mainstream MAGA rioters' beliefs are among the general population, and found them to be surprisingly widespread.
"21 million American adults agree with two radical beliefs: one, that the use of force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency is justified, and two, that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and is an illegitimate president," he said. "That is, 21 million don’t hold just one of those beliefs—they hold both of those beliefs. It’s 8 percent of the body politic, but that’s really significant. That really can’t easily be characterized as just the 'fringe.' We normally would think the 'fringe' would be 1 percent or less."
Underlying these two beliefs, Pape said, was the "great replacement" conspiracy theory that claims the American government is systematically trying to replace native-born white Americans with people of color from other countries.
"When you ask questions about their belief in 'the great replacement,' you see that that is head and shoulders the No. 1 belief that’s driving the difference between being in the 21 million versus being in the rest of the body politic," he explained.
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an 1 21
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/capitol-riot-research/
Slate on Wednesday published an interview with Robert Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has spent the last year analyzing the demographic background of Capitol rioters.
Slate described his conclusions about the rioters as "sobering" and in particular pointed to his "research that tied rioters’ home counties to the areas that had lost the most white population in recent years."
While speaking with Slate, Pape said that he was surprised that so many of the rioters were doctors, lawyers, and other well paid professionals, and not the kind of people who usually fall in with extremist militas.
"When you look at this, it’s just one category after another after another that shouts outmainstream," he said. "The Jan. 6 insurrectionists really are best understood as a product of the mainstream."
Pape then explained how he and his team of researchers went about trying to learn just how mainstream MAGA rioters' beliefs are among the general population, and found them to be surprisingly widespread.
"21 million American adults agree with two radical beliefs: one, that the use of force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency is justified, and two, that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and is an illegitimate president," he said. "That is, 21 million don’t hold just one of those beliefs—they hold both of those beliefs.It’s 8 percent of the body politic, but that’s really significant. That really can’t easily be characterized as just the 'fringe.' We normally would think the 'fringe' would be 1 percent or less."
Underlying these two beliefs, Pape said, was the "great replacement" conspiracy theory that claims the American government is systematically trying to replace native-born white Americans with people of color from other countries.
"When you ask questions about their belief in 'the great replacement,' you see that that is head and shoulders the No. 1 belief that’s driving the difference between being in the 21 million versus being in the rest of the body politic," he explained.
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interesting nuance:
1/6 analysis // TP redux
ref oath and proud
https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/trump-captiol-riot/
12 21 raw an
The Jan. 6 rioters’ composite profile reveals an insurrectionary base willing to resort to political violence to resist challenges to the dominant position of white Christendom and patriarchy in the United States.At about 8 a.m. on a Thursday morning in late June, FBI agents in tactical vests appeared at the front door of Casey Cusick, a 36-year-old Christian evangelical pastor, in Palm Bay, Fla.
Dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, Cusick met the agents in his front yard, and they placed him in handcuffs. His 4-year-old child asked Cusick’s wife: “Mommy, why are they locking Daddy’s hands?”
Cusick, vice president of Global Outreach Ministries church, was charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and other violations in connection with the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol. His father, Jim, the founder of the church, along with David Lesperance, a member of the church, have also been charged.
Months later, recording a podcast while awaiting trial, Casey Cusick reflected on how his father had noted before Donald Trump was elected that 1 Corinthians 15:52 says, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,at the last trump: the trumpet shall sound.”
To Casey Cusick and his father, the word “trump” couldn’t be a fluke of translation.
“Now, you can’t tell me that it’s coincidence that the last president was Donald Trump,” Cusick insisted. “And here we go reading the scripture right here where it says, ‘The last trump for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’”
The Cusicks had traveled with Lesperance to Washington DC on Jan. 6 to support Trump.
“We went up to DC to attend the rally because we believed what Trump said, and we believed that he won the election,” Casey Cusick told the far-right news outlet Newsmax. There, Trump told his supporters: “Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. You’re the real people that built this nation.” He added, “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Now, 10 months later, Casey Cusick was telling his podcast listeners: “We’re in a situation right now of combating this stuff in our country. We need to throw away all these love messages and faith messages, and start teaching our people and letting ’em know what is going on in our country. And if you don’t fight — fight back against this tyranny that’s happening — they’ll shut our churches down. We already saw what happened with COVID-19. We saw them literally shut our churches down.”
Since Jan. 6, the FBI has arrested more than 675 people in connection with the assault on the US Capitol; they are spread across 340 counties. Almost a third of them face charges of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to Department of Justice. The rioters came to hear President Trump proclaim his false assertion that the election was stolen, and some, outfitted in tactical gear and weaponry, surged towards the Capitol before he had finished speaking, intent on preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden as the winner. They condemned the US government as “tyranny,” called members of Congress “traitors” and chanted, “Hang Mike Pence,” while casting themselves as the spiritual successors of the patriots of 1776. They falsely asserted that the incoming Biden administration was captured by theCommunist Party of China.
“We won’t let you steal this country,” Oliver Sarko of Columbus, Ohio said on his Snapchat as he roamed the halls of the Capitol on Jan. 6. “Fight for Trump!” he yelled. And then, “Beijing Biden will never be president, we reject communism.”
Underneath the professions of patriotism and conspiracy-minded beliefs that the Biden administration and the Democratic Party are under the control of a sinister global cabal, therioters’ composite profile reveals an insurrectionary base willing to resort to political violence to resist challenges to the dominant position of white Christendom and patriarchy in the United States.
“It’s not just being a Trump loyalist,” Amy Cooter, a sociologist at Vanderbilt University, told Raw Story. “A good majority of them feel like their version of America is under threat in a variety of ways. They’ve had those fears exacerbated by the pandemic. They were genuinely afraid of the protests after George Floyd’s killing. Whereas people of color, especially Black people, grow in size population-wise and grow in terms of political power, white people lash out through a variety of means, including gerrymandering. Some white people, to use a technical term, are freaked out. Trump becomes a symbol of resistance to all of these problems they perceive.”
The counties that sent insurrectionists to Washington DC on Jan. 6 defy easy categorization, from Los Angeles County, with 13 (roughly one defendant for every 1 million residents) to a handful or rural Kentucky counties with populations ranging from 15,000 to 45,000 that host one defendant apiece. Among the counties with the highest levels of participation, where at least one person for every 100,000 is facing charges related to the assault on the Capitol, some like Brevard and Marion in central Florida are booming, while others, like Putnam and Dutchess in New York’s Hudson Valley, lost population over the last decade. They include Democratic strongholds like Nashville, Tenn. and Columbus, Ohio and counties that Trump carried in the 2020 election like Macomb, in Michigan, and Brevard, in Florida.
Research by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, or CPOST, has pinpointed one correlation between the insurrectionists and the demographic trends of the counties where they live. As reported by Barton Gellman in the Atlantic: “Other things being equal, insurgents were much more likely to come from a county where the white share of the population was in decline.For every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent. This was a strong link, and it held up in every state.”
CPOSTsurveyed 1,070 Americans and found that 9 percent believed that use of force was justified to restore Trump to the presidency, and that a fourth of adults agreed, in varying degrees, that “the 2020 election was stolen, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.” The survey found that 8 percent of Americans, equivalent to 21 million adults, held both of those radical beliefs.
“Today’s 21 million adamant supporters of insurrection also have the dangerous potential for violent mobilization,” wrote Robert Pape, CPOST’s director.
CPOST’s research also found that 63 percent of “adamant insurrectionists” believe in the Great Replacement theory based on their agreement with the statement: “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.”
Rooted in white-power extremist thinking, Great Replacement is typically expressed in more apocalyptic terms as a false belief that white people are facing imminent genocide due to a combination of immigration and declining white birth rates. White power extremists like Brenton Tarrant and Patrick Crusius, respectively responsible for massacres of Muslim worshipers at two mosques in New Zealand and of Latinx shoppers at Walmart in El Paso, Texas, both in 2019, used Great Replacement theory as justification for their mass murders. White nationalists chanted, “Jews will not replace us” during the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. in 2017, and Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson has recently embraced Great Replacement theory.
Amy Cooter, the sociologist at Vanderbilt University, told Raw Story she thinks the Great Replacement theory is not exactly the right framework for understanding the motivations of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
“I think Replacement theory is an overt neo-Nazi perspective where they are consciously concerned about being outnumbered by Black people,” Cooter said. “From folks I have observed for a long time, they don’t have that conscious belief. Many of them are genuinely oblivious to racism and oblivious to how much harder it is to obtain the American Dream if you’re a person of color."
Cooter conducted ethnographic research with Michigan militia activists about 10 years ago, and sees a strong crossover with the insurrectionists who mobilized on Jan. 6.
“Their ideology is shared across a broad swath of conservatism,” Cooter said of the militia activists. “The real power is trying to get at the cause of the insurrection. If you just think the insurrectionists are white supremacists, then we’ll miss some important insights about how to stop the next insurrection.”
Analysis by Raw Story suggests that racial anxiety over declining white population tells some but not all the story about the underlying motivation for the Jan. 6 insurrection. Raw Story identified a dozen “hotspot” counties where at least four people are facing federal charges related to the assault on the Capitol, excluding counties where all defendants were part of the same family or traveled to DC together. The counties were also selected based on a criterion that at least one of every 200,000 residents face charges in connection with the Jan. 6 assault.
All 12 counties saw some decline in their white non-Hispanic populations between 2015 and 2019. By far, the sharpest decline was seen in Collin County, in the suburbs north of Dallas (4.2 percent). Other counties that experienced a significant drop in the non-Hispanic white population were Franklin County (Columbus), Ohio (2.7 percent); Marion County, Fla. (2.3 percent); Macomb County, Mich. (2.1 percent); Camden County, NJ (1.8 percent); and Brevard County, Fla. (1.7 percent).
The remaining six counties saw their non-Hispanic white populations decline at rates equivalent or less than the national average of 1.5 percent: Bucks County, in the suburbs north of Philadelphia (1.5 percent); Dutchess County, NY (1.3 percent); Jefferson County (Birmingham), Ala. (1.0 percent); Allegheny (Pittsburgh), Pa. (1.0 percent); Erie (Buffalo), NY (0.8 percent); and Davidson (Nashville), Tenn. (0.5 percent).
Beyond the decline in white population across the United States, there’s a much more dramatic shift afoot. A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that the share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians dropped by 12 percentage points over the past decade. And a Gallup poll released in March 2021 found that the share of Americans who attend a church, synagogue or mosque dropped below 50 percent in 2020, down from 70 percent around the turn of the 21st century. The share of Americans of Americans who call themselves Christian has declined among all racial and ethnic groups, but none more so than white non-Hispanics....
1/6 analysis, sm sample here
12 21 raw an relationship coach kind // life coach?
...Both men overtly invoke the apocalypse, and self-consciously make QAnon references in their respective podcasts.
“What is going on here in America?” Cusick said in the Oct. 19 episode of his podcast. “They have us — we’re enslaved…. When the pilgrims came to America in 1620 — four hundred years from then goes to 2020 — when did this awakening start in the United States? Everyone started realizing what was going on with our elections, with Hollywood, with all these elites. It started in 2020, thanks to our president, Donald Trump.”
Cusick offered an allegory, comparing Americans from the settling of the colonies in the 1600s to the Israelites who, according to the Old Testament, were enslaved in Egypt under the pharaoh. By way of explaining how the United States, which after all, was supposedly “founded on Judeo-Christian principles,” had been “enslaved” since before its founding, Cusick claimed that “it was infiltrated and it became Satanic.”
For Cusick, Trump is to be credited for awakening a sense of nationalism in Americans and helping them define an enemy, which happens to be their fellow citizens.
“Trump’s the one who made people all of a sudden realize we have a country, and we have an opposition, whether you were on the left side or the right side,” Cusick said.
While concerned with something entirely different — helping men have more sex, as opposed to saving souls for Jesus — Stedman offered a similar chronology in his Dec. 9 blog post entitled “Why Your Woman Stops Wanting Sex.”
“We have been experiencing a gradual dark night of soul these past 100 years; as I write this in December 2021 we are near the culmination of it,” he wrote. Then, he went straight to the apocalypse: “In this collapse all that has been hidden is becoming seen. We are living through the apocalypse— the great revealing. The great awakening.”
After invoking apocalypse as a force for a transformation in gender relations, Stedman advised young men that they should strive for “consensual polarity” while making it clear that he was not advocating for equality: In his view, the men are protagonists; women are material to be “forged.”
“Such a relationship is well within your grasp,” Stedman advised. “In spite of all the programming, suitable women are all around; though many do need guidance — you will need to help forge them. But the limiting factor is you. Because you can only take a woman as far as you yourself have gone.”...
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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/the-qanon-movement-was-always-based-on-neo-nazi-conspiracies-now-the-mask-is-slipping/
hunter kos
We have noted in the past that the "QAnon" movement is not a set of new conspiracy theories, but a recasting of some of the most popular neo-Nazi, white supremacist, antisemitic themes of the last century for broader conspiracy consumption. Nazi-era antisemitic conspiracy theories declared that "Jews" were secretly controlling the world, that they were working to undermine governments and cultures, and that they drank the blood of children in secret rituals.
QAnon's version is identical:A shadowy cabal of "globalists" is secretly controlling the world, is working to undermine governments and cultures (for example, through a "great replacement"of Americans with new nonwhite immigrants, as supposedly funded by wealthy Jewish American George Soros), and is secretly trafficking children to harvest compounds from their blood.The most bizarre of Nazi and neo-Nazi themes have found eager new homes in the brains of supposed "real" Americans who have invariably settled on the same targets and solutions as their neo-Nazi enablers: Round up the "globalists"—meaning liberals, socialists, Democrats, those who fight for LGBT rights, those who treat immigrants with decency—and jail them. "Lock them up." Purge them.
The "everyday" Americans who have adopted QAnon beliefs as their own, insisting that the "child trafficking" or blood "harvesting" or something-something George Soros conspiracies are real, are Good Nazis. They are the sort of citizens who made Nazi Germany tick. They are sweet, patriotic parents of somebody, or children of somebody, and all they know in life is that their enemies must be defeated, even if defeating them means toppling democracy and/or supporting the most incompetent of tax-dodging lying rapist perverts.
Whether they can be reformed once they've gone down that rabbit hole is a subject for others to engage. Myself, I expect not. Human beings do not accidentally fall into believing their not-white or not-Christian or not-Republican neighbors are barely human saboteurs plotting behind the scenes to do whatever evil you might imagine. They started out that way, then fell into conspiracy holes that were pleasing because they ticked off all the boxes their previous paranoias needed to tick off.
The movement itself, however, has been drifting back to the rawer antisemitism that first crafted it.
VICE News reports that John Sabal, the influential QAnon promoter who will this week host a major QAnon conference at which four aspiring Republican lawmakers are scheduled to speak recommended on Sunday to his followers a notorious neo-Nazi conspiracy film blaming Jews as the architects of communism, World Wars I and II, and the sabotage of Naziism. "The most important historical film of all time," Sabal touted.
The posts were removed after they were "highlighted by extremist researchers," reports VICE—and Sabal claims through his partner that he never actually watched the film or knew that it was antisemitic. And yes, this is the "QAnon" provocateur with enough clout to collect Republican candidates from across the nation.
This isn't an isolated incident. VICE reports that other QAnon figures have similarly embraced the film, though none as prominent as Sabal has been.The "Q" movement is also attracting much attention and support among German neo-Nazis, who after all have a closer connection to many of the Q-adopted tropes now being exported by American conspiracists.
It hasn't stopped national Republicans from courting conspiracy leaders and allied militias, either.
QAnon may have taken some of its heaviest hits from being uniformly and absurdly wrong in all its preelection and post-election predictions about, well, everything, and from its top founder and likelyQ pretender Ron Watkins, who distanced himself slightly after Trump's loss. (He's now running for Congress himself—in Arizona, of course.) That doesn't mean it's dead.
It's unclear, however, if QAnon believers are becoming more enamored with antisemitism than they once were or if the movement is sloughing off now-bored, less-radical Americans, leaving behind a more radical, neo-Nazi-adjacent core. Conservatism in general is increasingly flirting with antisemitic speech and candidates: In Idaho, a Republican with a long history of antisemitic speech, one who claims "all Jews are dangerous," is enjoying his local party's support for joining the local school board.
Extremist rhetoric in general is being rewarded rather than scorned by Republican voters. It's probably not surprising that the Republican slide into fascism could not help but stoke the same antisemitic sentiments that past versions have relied on.The QAnon, Trump, and Republican movements are all coalescing into one ball of hate and hoaxes; in the House and Senate, party leaders are at worst helping to promote the conspiracies, and at best remaining silent in efforts to ride the hate to new election victories.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/sean-hannity-pushes-white-nationalist-great-replacement-theory
HANNITY (HOST): So my question is why would we -- if all these other countries are selling it, why are the Democrats giving away something of great value like this?
JASON CHAFFETZ (GUEST): Because they don't care, because Charlie is right, they just want to win elections. We have a higher moral obligation to the people that are going to do it legally and lawfully, we bring in about a million people a year, more than every other country on the face of the planet combined, we do it right here in the United States of America. Take care of the people -- the people I want living next to me are people that did it legally and lawfully. If you did it illegally then you should get sent home. Get rid of the rewards, incentives and get them deported, they are not to get here -- do it legally and lawfully.
HANNITY: Yeah, it's like a quid pro quo, we'll give you citizenship for free, we hope you vote Democrat. I don't know, that would be called the real quid pro quo.
CHARLES HURT (GUEST): They're indentured voters.
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no lnx twt
'Deeply dangerous': MSNBC host reveals the history behind the GOP embrace of a deadly conspiracy theory
Mehdi Hasan /
Alex Henderson October 01, 2021
Fox News' Tucker Carlson generated considerable controversy when, on his April 8 show, he promoted the Great Replacement Theory — a racist conspiracy theory that has become prominent in white supremacist and white nationalist ideology. And almost half a year later, Carlson is still claiming that President Joe Biden and other Democrats are trying to "replace" white voters with immigrants from developing countries. MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan called Carlson out on his show this week, warning that he is promoting a claim that "gets people killed."
The progressive firebrand described the Great Replacement as a "conspiracy theory so vile, so extreme, so dangerous" that it was, in the past, avoided by mainstream conservatives and kept "on the furthest fringes of the far right."
Hasan told viewers, "What is the Great Replacement? It's a story, or a theory if you will, about liberal elites secretly changing our demographics, helping Black and Brown immigrants to invade America and replace white people. It's a white supremacist story about so-called white genocide. Scary, right? Bonkers, too. And yet, this year, Fox's Tucker Carlson came along and thought, 'Hmmm, let's bring this idea into the light to a prime-time cable audience."
The MSNBC host went on to say that the Great Replacement Theory has become a "rallying cry for the neo-Nazi far right," noting that it originated in France with white nationalist author Renaud Camus and his book "Le Grand Remplacement." And Hasan noted that a series of terrorist attacks have been carried out by White supremacists who embrace and promote that theory.
"The Great Replacement Theory gets people killed," Hasan warned. "And yet, you now have Tucker Carlson — the most influential right-wing cable news host in America — defending it, promoting it, mainstreaming it. And elected Republicans are now following in his footsteps…. Members of the GOP are now openly trafficking in neo-Nazi rhetoric."
Hasan showed clips of Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rep. Brian Babin of Texas promoting the Great Replacement Theory, arguing that "members of the GOP are now openly trafficking in neo-Nazi rhetoric" rather than simply using racist "dog whistles" like Republicans of the past. And he noted that Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has vigorously defended Carlson by explicitly promoting the Great Replacement Theory by name.
"This is how white supremacy is normalized in America today: the marriage between Rupert Murdoch's Fox and Donald Trump's GOP," Hasan warned. "And they make us numb to this stuff…. This is a deeply dangerous moment for America."
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mma 921 no lnx twt pix many
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/white-nationalists-and-far-right-personalities-are-celebrating-tucker-carlsons
White nationalists and far-right personalities are celebrating Tucker Carlson's latest racist “great replacement” monologue
“This week alone both Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk addressed and acknowledged the Great Replacement. That was unthinkable even six months ago.”
WRITTEN BY NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM KELLIE LEVINE & ALEX KAPLAN
PUBLISHED 09/24/21 9:58 AM EDT
For the past year, Tucker Carlson has embarked on a dedicated campaign to insert the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, a core belief of white nationalist ideology, into mainstream Republican discourse. During the September 23 broadcast of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson explicitly referenced the term “great replacement” using a deceptively presented outake of remarks then-Vice President Joe Biden made in 2015 to accuse him of believing that “non-white DNA is … the source of our strength.” Carlson told viewers Biden had invoked “the language of eugenics,” indicating an effort to replace “legacy Americans” and “change the racial mix of the country” in order to gain political power.
Video file
CitationFrom the September 22, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): You've got to ask yourself, as you watch the historic tragedy that is Joe Biden's immigration policy, what's the point of this?
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Nothing about it is an accident, obviously. It's intentional. Joe Biden did it on purpose, but why? Why would a president do this to his own country? No sane first-world nation opens its borders to the world.
:{:{}:
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Promising the poorest people on the planet that they can have endless free taxpayer funded services if they show up and break your laws? That's not just stupid, it's suicidal.
:{:{}:
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For generations, middle-class Americans have hadaccess to the best healthcare in the world, but not anymore. That's over for good. Our system cannot handle this many destitute newcomers, period. Imagine what hospitals are going to look like a year from now. How about schools?
:{:{}:
}:
What Joe Biden is doing now will change this country forever. So again, why is he doing it? There's only one plausible answer. You're not allowed to say it out loud, CNN will attack you if you do. The social media companies will shut you down. The Southern Poverty Law Center will call you dangerous, you could lose your bank account. The left has become completely unhinged and hysterical and that's how you know it's true. They only censor the true things.
...
An unrelenting stream of immigration. But why? Well, Joe Biden just said it, tochange the racial mix of the country. That's the reason,to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here, and dramatically increase the proportion of Americans newly-arrived from the third world. And then Biden went further, he said that non-white DNA is the quote, "the source of our strength." Imagine saying that. This is the language of eugenics, it's horrifying. But there's a reason Biden said it.
In political terms, this policy is called "the great replacement," the replacement of legacy Americanswith more obedient people from far-away countries. They brag about it all the time, but if you dare to say it's happening they will scream at you with maximum hysteria.
Following the monologue, the Anti-Defamation League reiterated its call for Fox to fire Carlson from the network. Carlson’s toxic combination of conspiracy-mongering and racist commentary has been bolstered by Fox Corp. and the Murdoch family’s all but explicit approval of his caustic programming, and it has resulted in a sharp increase in the instances of fearmongering about white replacement, genocide, and race war on Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Carlson’s long history of endorsing, repackaging, and broadcasting white nationalist principles for layperson cable viewers has made him a favorite among extremist cohorts. The white supremacist website Daily Stormer has called Carlson “literally our greatest ally,” and white nationalists and far-right personalities were quick to make their approval known of Carlson’s most recent tirade.
On 4chan’s /pol/ board, users celebrated Carlson as the “only person calling out this Haitian migration surge for what it is, white replacement,” and “literally naming ‘the great replacement’ on cable TV.”
4chan Carlson 9/23/21
White supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes cheered Carlson’s comments, lauding his use of “groyper” rhetoric. Fuentes also praised TurningPoint USA founder Charlie Kirk’s “rhetoric” who the next afternoon had called for Texas to “deputize a citizen force, put them on the border” in order to protect “white demographics in America.”
Fuentes Carlson 9/23/21
Vincent James Foxx, a far-right video blogger affiliated with the white nationalist street-fighting group the Rise Above Movement,highlighted that Carlson had shared the great replacement theory with his millions of Fox viewers and encouraged his followers to share the clip.
Vincent James Carlson 9/23/21
Reacting to Carlson’s monologue, Joseph Jordan, known by his online pseudonym “Eric Striker” criticized the possibility that Republicans would simply refuse to act as Democrats ran out “the white biological clock.” Jordan reiterated Carlson’s call for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to intervene directly at the southern border.
Jordan has reportedly been affiliated with the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn,is a prolific contributor of antisemitic articles at The Daily Stormer, and hosts the antisemitic YouTube show The People’s Square.
Eric Striker Carlson 9/23/21
Far-right social media account The Columbia Bugle tweeted about Carlson “exposing” Biden’s immigration policy.
Columbia Bugle Carlson 9/23/21
Tommy Robinson News, an account dedicated to following Tommy Robinson (birth name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), boosted The Columbia Bugle’s language in a tweet. Carlson interviewed Robinson in 2018 when he was released from prison pending another trial for contempt of court charges. Robinson is the former leader of the English Defense League, an anti-Muslim extremist group.
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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/tucker-carlson-fully-embraced-white-supremacist-replacement-theory-and-fox-personalities
no lnx
Fox News personalities, guests, and elected Republican Party officials appearing on the network have launched nativist attacks that resemble the explicit white nationalist “great replacement” conspiracy theory pushed by host Tucker Carlson.
In an interview with NPR, historian Kathleen Belew explained that the nativist arguments stem from the “great replacement theory,” which imagines “nonwhite people or outsiders or strangers or foreigners will overtake the United States via immigration, reproduction and seizure of political power.”
Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson has long pushed the theory with full corporate support from Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch. In the process, he has gained praise from white nationalists while the Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly called for his firing.
Fox's decision to enable Carlson’s white supremacist rhetoric has led to more Fox hosts and guests pushing similar talking points. But it's not a completely new look for the rest of the network. Back in 2019, the manifesto of the El Paso, Texas, mass shooter closely echoed nativist Fox talking points. And Fox News personalities responded to that shooting by defending their dehumanizing rhetoric and denying that white supremacy was a problem in the United States. The only question now is what tragedy will ensue this time.
Here are a few examples from just one week in September of the kind of rhetoric Fox airs, echoing nativist and the “great replacement” conspiratorial claims.
9/19/21
Fox’s Carley Shimkus claimed that the Biden administration looks at illegal immigration as “a political opportunity, especially when it comes to Mexicans, because Mexicans typically vote Democrat.” [Fox News, The Big Sunday Show, 9/19/21]
9/20/21
Co-host Brian Kilmeadecommented on Democrats’ efforts to pass legislation to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, saying that “8 to 14 million would have been instantly legalized” and “that would have benefited, in theory, Democrats when it comes to voting because they were the ones who got it." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/20/21]
Fox & Friends hosted Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxtonto complain that the Biden administration “want[s] illegal immigration, they want what that brings.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/20/21]
Host Pete Hegseth argued, “Democrats don't care about protecting you or me or the border or our nation. They only care about protecting themselves, their political position, and their livelihood. And that's why they're ignoring the border. It doesn't affect them, except they hope in the future at the ballot box.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/20/21]
Guest Charlie Kirkwarned that through encouraging illegal immigration, the Biden administration is “trying to fulfill Barack Obama’s promise” of “a fundamental transformation of America.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/20/21]
Guest and white nationalist Stephen Miller said that the Biden administration’s “goal is as much immigration as quickly as possible, as fast as possible, to destroy the working class.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/20/21]
9/21/21
Tom Homan, Fox contributor and former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, fearmongered that migrants will “compete with low-level wage jobs and middle-class jobs. So this is not good for the American worker.” [Fox News, America Reports, 9/21/21]
Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum emphasized the number of migrants compared to the population of Del Rio: “Del Rio has a population of 35,000 people — 35,000 Texans live there. Now, they’ve got 12,000 -- as many as 20,000 at one point -- refugees living in their town." [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 9/21/20]
Host Pete Hegseth called Haitian migrants coming into the U.S. a “full-scale invasion" of the country, warning that the migrants are “coming to a neighborhood near you. … They’re coming to our backyard.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/21/21]
Host Tucker Carlson declared that Biden’s immigration policy is an “attempt to change the demographics of the United States in order to give permanent power to the Democratic Party. That's all it is, no matter what they tell you.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/21/21]
9/22/21
America’s Newsroom hosted residents of Del Rio, Texas, who discussed their frustrations with what they called a “planned" crisis: “What frightens us is we have a madman and racist making -- who’s using people to advance his political agenda, to collapse our border, and change our style of government, and that's scaring us.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 9/22/21]
Co-host Jesse Watters opened The Five by fearmongering about a “large scale" release of migrants in the U.S. [The Five, 9/22/21]
Host Pete Hegseth accused the Biden administration of “releas[ing] thousands of residents of Bidenville” and complained that “family units and pregnant women [are] being allowed to stay, meaning more anchor babies and more illegals.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/22/21]
Frequent Fox guest Victor Davis Hansonaccused Democrats of being “unhappy with the present electorate” and allowing Afghan refugees and other migrants to “change the demography” of the country and “change the electorate” for the advantage of the Democratic agenda. [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/22/21]
Host Tucker Carlson called Biden’s immigration policy “the great replacement” and “eugenics.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/22/21]
Host Sean Hannitysuggested that Democrats were offering citizenship to migrants “in the hopes that they’ll vote for Democrats.” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/22/21]
Hosts Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannitysaid that the Democratic National Committee voter registration desks were set up at the border. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/22/21]
Ingraham said the Biden administration is overseeing a “purposeful resettlement of -- it’s going to be millions of illegal immigrants" and complained that migrants get benefits like public schooling and health care. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/22/21]
9/23/21
Jesse Watters claimed that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “[let] the truth slip” and revealed that Democrats want “the votes” from immigration and amnesty. [Fox News, The Five, 9/23/21]
Pete Hegseth said that the Biden administration was encouraging migrants to come to the U.S. because “they want more illegals" and warned viewers that migrants were being flown “to the destination of their choice, maybe your hometown.” [Fox News, Fox News Primetime, 9/23/21]
On Sean Hannity’s show, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said -- without any pushback -- of Haitian migrants, “There are some folks that probably think this is the equivalent of an invasion.” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/23/21]
Host Laura Ingraham claimed that Democrats are “panicked that men of color are beginning to turn away from the Democrat Party. They need a new constituency. They hope [for] a constituency that may be dependent on the government.” White nationalist Stephen Miller agreed, adding, “This is all about … cheap labor for Biden’s wealthy backers, ... and it’s about new votes.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/23/21]
9/24/21
Fox & Friends guest Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) complained that the Democrats’ “grand strategy” is to “change America” and “replace the American electorate with third world immigrants.” He continued that Democrats will then give immigrants citizenship and “enfranchise them with a vote and have a permanent majority.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/24/21]
Faulkner Focus guest Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) claimed that Democrats have a “broader political agenda” to encourage illegal immigration to the size of “one of the largest cities in America.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 9/24/21]
Tucker Carlson Tonight guest Horace Cooper attacked the Biden administration for shirking its “number one responsibility … to protect us from invasion.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 9/27/21]
Ingraham Angle guest Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) said that Democrats “want to flood the United States with cheap labor and they want to grant amnesty to all of these illegals that are coming into our country and turn them into Democrat voters. That’s their last great hope for keeping the majority in the midterm election.” (Banks' communications director is Tucker Carlson's son.) [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/24/21]
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Luciano @ Mediaite: ‘Oh, F*ck Them’: Tucker Carlson Responds to the ADL Calling for Him to Be Fired Over Replacement Theory Rhetoric.
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omfg
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/biden-trump/
A recent Washington demonstration supporting those charged with crimes for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fizzled, with no more than 200 demonstrators showing up. The organizers had promised 700 people would turn out – or more.
But the threat from far-right insurrectionists is not over.
For months, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats have been tracking insurrectionist sentiments in U.S. adults, most recently in surveys in June. We have found that 47 million American adults – nearly 1 in 5 – agree with the statement that “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president." Of those, 21 million also agree that “use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency."
Our survey found that many of these 21 million people with insurrectionist sentiments have the capacity for violent mobilization. At least 7 million of them already own a gun, and at least 3 million have served in the U.S. military and so have lethal skills. Of those 21 million, 6 million said they supported right-wing militias and extremist groups, and 1 million said they are themselves or personally know a member of such a group, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
Only a small percentage of people who hold extremist views ever actually commit acts of violence, but our findings reveal how many Americans hold views that could turn them toward insurrection.
A solid survey
[method grfx]
extreme beliefs
This polling found that 9% of American adults say they agree with the statement that “Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency." And 25% of adults either strongly or somewhat agree with the statement that “The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president."
Overall, 8% of the survey participants share both of those views.
The margin of error of this survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points. So when calculating the number of the 258 million adult Americans who hold these views, we looked at the range of between 4% and 12% – which gave us between 10 million and 31 million. The best single figure is the middle of that range, 21 million.
People who said force is justified to restore Trump were consistent in their insurrectionist sentiments: Of them, 90% also see Biden as illegitimate, and 68% also think force may be needed to preserve America's traditional way of life.
The fringe moving into the mainstream
Combined with their military experience, gun ownership and connections to extremist groups and militias, this signals the existence of significant mainstream support in America for a violent insurrection.
This group of 21 million who agree both that force is justified to restore Trump and that Biden is an illegitimate president has two additional views that are also on the fringes of mainstream society:
- 63% agree with the statement that “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites" – a belief sometimes called “the:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{ **Great Replacement."
- 54% agree that “A secret group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is ruling the US government," which is the key belief in the QAnon movement.
Some people with insurrectionist sentiments hold one of these political views but not the other, suggesting there are multiple ways of thinking that lead a person toward the insurrectionist movement.
Broader support
This latest research reinforces our previous findings, that the Jan. 6 insurrection represents a far more mainstream movement than earlier instances of right-wing extremism across the country. Those events, mostly limited to white supremacist and militia groups, saw more than 100 individuals arrested from 2015 to 2020. But just 14% of those arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 are members of those groups. More than half are business owners or middle-aged white-collar professionals, and only 7% are unemployed.
There is no way to say for sure when – or even whether – these insurrectionists will take action. On Jan. 6, it took clear direction from Donald Trump and other political leaders to turn these dangerous sentiments into a violent reality. But the movement itself is larger and more complex than many people might like to think.
Robert A. Pape, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago
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alrt rt EUR
Krange, O. Kaltenborn, B.& Hultman, M. (2018). “Cool Dudes in Norway: Climate Change denial among conservative Norwegian Men”, Environmental Sociology.
McCright, A., Dunlap, R (2011). "Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States", Global Environmental Change.
In their article ‘Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States’ the authors state: ‘Clearly the extent to which the conservative white male effect on climate change denial exists outside the US is a topic deserving investigation.’ Following this recommendation, we report results from a study in Norway. McCright and Dunlap argue that climate change denial can be understood as an expression of protecting group identity and justifying a societal system that provides desired benefits. Our findings resemble those in the US study. A total of 63 per cent of conservative males in Norway do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to 36 per cent among the rest of the population who deny climate change and global warming. Expanding on the US study, we investigate whether conservative males more often hold what we term xenosceptic views, and if that adds to the ‘cool dude-effect’.1 Multivariate logistic regression models reveal strong effects from a variable measuring ‘xenosceptic cool dudes’. Interpreting xenoscepticism as a rough proxy for right leaning views, climate change denial in Norway seems to merge with broader patterns of right-wing nationalism.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/tucker-carlson-2652858483
travis raw
Fox News staffers called on the network to fire Tucker Carlson over his call to harass parents and children for wearing masks, but the highly rated host is "invincible."
Current and former employees were embarrassed and outraged when Carlson urged viewers to call child protection services on parents whose children wear masks in public, but they told The Daily Beast the top-rated prime-time host is "untouchable" and will never "suffer any repercussions" for his openly white nationalist comments or other statements that might lead to violence.
"He's a good example of how much you can get away with at Fox if your ratings are high," one current network staffer said. "Aside from that, he just perpetuates the right's catastrophe platform. They cannot win with their supposed limited government, fiscal conservatism, because not even they really believe in it. So all they do is fear monger."
The Anti-Defamation League had called on Carlson to be fired and advertisers to boycott his show after he endorsed the white-supremacist "Great Replacement" theory on air, but Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch defended the network's biggest star -- much to the chagrin of staffers.
"The Murdochs love him," one former Fox News personality said. "Like them, he is a rich, prep school kid born with a silver spoon who traffics in populism while living in an expensive ivory tower and never meeting in real life the people he gins up for ratings."
Even advertiser boycotts won't dent the Murdochs' support for Carlson, because Fox doesn't need them thanks to their loyal viewers -- and other cable customers -- who pay carriers to make sure the conservative network remains on their service.
"He's the new Bill O'Reilly," another ex-Fox News employee stated. "The dirty little secret is that FNC doesn't care about losing advertisers. They make their money via cable conglomerates that pay them much money so that dumb f*cks who worship FNC can continue being told what, in their heart of hearts, they want to believe -- and that's a lot of people."
Fox News staffers are frustrated their concerns aren't taken seriously, and one current staffer says his ability to skate away from consequences remind them of someone else Fox News helped turn into a political star.
"If Tucker left, his fans would follow him wherever he went and would turn Fox off for scorning their leader," the current staffer said. "If Trump is the most dangerous person in the country, Tucker is a close second behind him."
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https://www.mediamatters.org/murdoch-family/fox-corp-ceo-lachlan-murdoch-endorses-tucker-carlsons-white-replacement-theory
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/tucker-carlson-conspiracy-theories/
ah
Fox News' Tucker Carlson has drawn a great deal of criticism recently for promoting a racist conspiracy theory that is common among white supremacists and white nationalists: "the Great Replacement," which claims that liberals and progressives — especially those who are Jewish — are importing non-whites from developing countries in order to "replace" them. Liberal opinion writer Greg Sargent addresses Carlson's latest controversy in his Washington Post column this week, laying out some reasons why the far-right pundit's views on immigration are so wrong-headed.
The Great Replacement Theory isn't limited to the United States. In France, it is a widely held belief among members of the National Front — the far-right party led by Marine Le Pen, who lost to President Emmanuel Macron in France's 2017 presidential election. But whether it's being championed by Le Pen in France or Carlson in the U.S., the theory's basic premise — that whites are being "replaced" by non-whites by design — is the same.
Sargent notes that on Monday night, Carlson "doubled down" on Great Replacement ideology, "insisting that his comments were entirely race-neutral and that they were only about defending the 'voting rights' of U.S. citizens."
"But if anything," Sargent writes, "Carlson's defense reveals his worldview as the one that's truly hostile to democracy. And that in turn unmasks the ideological underbelly of the broader right-wing populist nationalist movement that he and his defenders champion."
Sargent goes on to lay out the flaws in Carlson's views on immigration.
"There are two big deceptions here," Sargent explains. "The first is that Democrats want to increase immigration only for cynical electoral purposes. In fact, those who favor more legal immigration have defended it on normative and pragmatic grounds…. Carlson's basic premise — that there's something untoward about wanting to bring more immigrants into one's political coalition — is unwittingly revealing."
Another major flaw in Carlson's thinking, according to Sargent, is that immigrants will automatically become card-carrying Democrats.
"It's strange that Carlson presumes the GOP has no chance at winning these particular immigrants," Sargent writes. "Doesn't that cut against the interpretation of the 2020 election — in which Latinos shifted Republican — holding that right-wing populism can effect a multiracial, conservative realignment of the working class?But the deepest deception of all concerns the notion that bringing in immigrants — or legalizing undocumented ones already here — is by definition a threat to the power of the existing citizenry's voting rights."
It should be noted that some of the Karl Rove-era Republicans of the 1990s and 2000s didn't view immigrants as hostile to the interests of the GOP. If anything, GOP strategist Rove and his allies — including former President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who speaks fluent Spanish and is married to a Mexican woman — were of the view that Latino immigrants can be quite receptive to conservative ideas when exposed to them.
Trumpism, however, pushed the GOP in a more nationalist and isolationist direction. And Carlson has been a major proponent of Trumpist ideology.
"In his monologue," Sargent writes, "Carlson declares that on immigration's impact on democracy, 'America badly deserves a national conversation.' Too bad he and his pals are so cagey about what they really believe."
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/scholar-explains-how-the-conservative-movement-transmits-sanitized-versions-of-white-supremacist-ideology/
paul r salon
As the longest sustained period of racial justice protests in American history segues into the heat of election season, dark shadows have appeared, from the vigilante killing of protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin — and widespread conservative defenses of the teenage accused murderer — to ludicrous charges against protesters, including "terrorism," to the Trump administration's crackdown on federal antiracism training, calling it "anti-American," and Attorney General Bill Barr's call for protesters to be charged with sedition.
So much for the notions that Donald Trump has no ideology, or, for that matter, that getting rid of him will make America great again. In July of 2016, I wrote about why such views were myopic: "Trump advances core paleoconservative positions," researcher Bruce Wilson told me, including "rebuilding infrastructure, protective tariffs, securing borders and stopping immigration, neutralizing designated internal enemies and isolationism."
Trump's record as president has been surprisingly consistent for such an erratic figure, with his purely rhetorical support for infrastructure as the most notable exception. And therein lies a key to the current moment:With infrastructure removed from the equation — the most broadly popular position Trump's ever embraced — the remaining white nationalism stands out in stark relief, highlighted in the frenzied push toward violent confrontation around the election, and beyond.
Dr. James Scaminaci III has just published a report about the long historical genesis of this recent push for Political Research Associates, "Battle With Bullets: Advancing a Vision of Civil War." Scaminaci has a PhD in sociology from Stanford and has worked as a civilian intelligence analyst with expertise on the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and organized crime. So the spread of social chaos, internecine violence and associated enabling ideologies is a subject he's familiar with.
Scaminaci traces the roots of culture-war and race-war narratives as far back as the Haitian revolution of the early 19th century. He observes that Steve Bannon nurtured those carefully at Breitbart News and they have played a key role in radicalizing Trump's base over the past five years, to the point where some of his supporters are visibly preparing themselves for violence. Some parts of this story have been relatively well covered, but Scaminaci provides a much more integrated and historically extensive account of how we reached our present state. I reached out to him recently for an interview by email to discuss some of his key insights and how they provide us with a much clearer picture of the forces pushing America toward civil war. The following has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
In your article, you write: "Over the last several years, a narrative around the threat of civil war — and more specifically, a racial civil war — has been growing on the Right." You observe that this comes in different versions and has deep historical roots, dating back to the colonial era. Before getting into the details, why is it important to recognize this history and learn about it?
I wanted to convey that what we are seeing now on the right wing has a long history, a history that is either overlooked or ignored. Jill Lepore and other scholars looking at the right have noted that modern day "patriots" cast themselves as lineal descendants of the founding fathers and the American Revolution — that they are revolutionaries against the existing "tyrannical" federal government. But that history is drenched in violence and blood against Black and indigenous peoples. That context cannot be omitted. And the idea that whites are under existential threat from Black folks also needs to be put into historical context.
Second, the right-wing idea that the federal government is "tyrannical" is largely the product of white supremacist politicians, both Republican and Democratic, and intellectuals like William F. Buckley. This was the idea that post-World War II federal support for civil rights was federal overreach, was unconstitutional, and that it upset allegedly harmonious race relations in the South and eventually in the North.
According to white supremacists, the existential threat to white people in the Jim Crow South came from Black folks, whether children or adults, even touching anything that could be shared with whites. A schoolbook touched by a Black child became a Black textbook. Blacks and whites could not share drinking fountains or sit in the same seats on a bus.
What I wanted to portray in "Battle With Bullets" is that whites have long viewed any expression of nonviolent Black agency as an existential threat to themselves that required whites to resort to a brutal, genocidal racial civil war. One can understand the palpable fear of a slave revolt before 1861. But white supremacists have claimed that registering to vote, voting, moving into a white neighborhood after a history of redlining, moving into managerial or foreman positions in the workplace, or being cast as heroes or superheroes are existential threats.
You write that "The most dangerous versions of that [civil war] narrative come from leaders with paramilitary forces, while other appeals seem intended to generate a heightened sense of crisis." Can you give an example of each and then help us understand how the two are related?
Roger Stone is a political operative who has graduated from ratfucking political operations into calling for a civil war or violence or martial law. He is an ideological chaos agent. He can help set the narrative mood for the right wing. As Chip Berlet has written, elites know how to write the score for scripted violence. Somehow, the gunmen always know who to kill. In a similar category are the numerous Christian right leaders who broadcast the same civil war message to their Christian nationalist supporters and followers. I also quoted [Dallas megachurch pastor] Robert Jeffress in the article.
David Neiwert owns the beat on tracking the transmission of fringe ideas to the conservative mainstream. Even a decade before Trump, the ideological lines were blurring.
In 2008,Michael Savage, a right-wing radio host, said, "[T]he white person is being erased from America's future. ... There is a racial element to the immigration invasion." Then Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly claimed, "So now, it's becoming a race war."The Center for American Progress went on to note that O'Reilly claimed that immigration reformers "hate America ... because it's run primarily by white, Christian men" and were seeking "to change the complexion...of America."
That is no different from Jean Raspail's theme in "The Camp of the Saints" or the narrative at The Social Contract, a white nationalist journal which published Raspail's novel. Or Glenn Beck on Fox News in February 2009, airing his racial civil war scenario within one month of the first Black president taking office. Or a variety of Christian Right leaders during the Obama years calling for or suggesting a racial civil war is coming, includingTony Perkins, Larry Klayman and Rick Joyner.
In 2006, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted the "symbiotic dance" between white supremacist groups and John Tanton's hardline anti-immigration movement, as well as the sharing of conspiracy narratives between white supremacists and the "patriot" militia movement.
The conservative movement, both the political and religious wings, transmit sanitized versions of white supremacist ideology. The latter is premised on preparing for, if not instigating, a racial civil war in America.
John Jackson, a scholar who covers "scientific" racism, in a recent article titled, "Going Full Nazi,"asked the question: "[W]hat is the point of drawing a line between the 'mainstream' and the 'alt' right? Perhaps there is no useful distinction to be made." The angry white guys with guns are dangerous because they have weapons of war. But the dividing line between them and the "Fourth Generation Warfare" chaos agents creating a crisis of legitimacy is increasingly blurred.
You write that this rhetoric is rooted in a narrative adapted from the1973 French novel you just mentioned, "The Camp of the Saints." Can you explain its basic narrative?
The novel has seven key ideas that its critics and proponents have noted. One, mass migration is an invasion. Two, immigrants and refugees are invaders. Three, the invaders will eventually destroy Western culture and replace Western populations. Four, the West's political elites do not have the moral strength to defend the West. Five, the invaders must be physically removed and/or violently repelled. Six, there is a difference between the "real country" and "real citizens" and the "legal country" and "legal citizens." Seven, multiracial, multiethnic or multi-confessional societies are not only unstable but undesirable, and lead to the "balkanization" of societies — a view also imported from Serbian genocidal propaganda into the American and global right.
The main variations within this "Camp of the Saints" worldview are whether the political elites lack moral strength to resist the invasions ("Great Replacement"), enact immoral policies which weaken Western societies to invasion ("demographic winter") or actively collaborate with the governments of the invading migrants to facilitate the invasion (as in John Tanton's network). The other variation distinguishes the neo-Nazis from all the other segments: whether or not the Jews are responsible for the destruction of their societies ("white genocide").
You note that for both France and the United States, the historical roots of this narrative go back to the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804. In the U.S. this has produced the "white genocide theory" and in France the "great replacement" theory. What distinguishes them and what draws them together?
The "white genocide" theory is premised on the fear of a Black slave revolt against the white slave-owning society. The "great replacement" theory is based on the fear of massive nonwhite immigration coupled with lower white birth rates leading to a "replacement" of the white population with a nonwhite population, and the transformation of the culture.
White supremacists use the more palatable, more sanitized "great replacement" theory interchangeably and conflate them. But they have different causal mechanisms.
On the other hand, the neo-Nazis and other proponents of the "white genocide" narrative consider any action by Black people to improve themselves, to gain access to privileged white spheres of social action or to more equitably redistribute power and status as an existential threat. "Great replacement" proponents do not share this outlook. Nor do "great replacement" proponents, in general, blame Jews for what they consider to be massive immigration.
You write, "It would be a mistake to see these various 'White Replacement' narratives as isolated from mainstream conservative thought in Europe or America." How has their influence spread through terrorist acts?
In the right-wing information sphere, ideas swirl around, mix, recombine and mutate over time to fit changing circumstances. Raspail's "Camp of the Saints" is foundational to this narrative or worldview. Raspail directly influenced the emergence and popularity of the "great replacement" theory, which is the catchall theory cited by white terrorists.
But Bat Ye'or's conception of the problem — that European elites conspire with Arab elites to produce both subservience to Islam and the "great replacement" — directly influenced the Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, who was motivated to provoke a decades-long civil war to stop the formation of what Ye'or called "Eurabia." Breivik, as well as the "great replacement" narrative, have inspired numerous white terrorist acts around the globe.
Returning to the American context, How did Steve Bannon and Breitbart spread their influence?
Bannon's principal contribution was to use Breitbart News to mix white supremacist ideology into the Republican Party and the Christian Right, and to heavily promote Raspail's "Camp of the Saints." In 2015 and 2016, Breitbart was the largest driver of ideological influence on the right.
How has this spread through the Trump administration?
The "Camp of the Saints" worldview largely shapes Stephen Miller's approach to immigration issues. Raspail's bottom line was that "the barbarians had to be repelled" either by violence or cruelty or both. Trump's immigration policy has been cruel, and as Adam Serwer noted, "cruelty is the point."
You also call attention to the Christian right's specific variant called "demographic winter," and argue that this has played a central role in evangelical support for Trump and his wall. What should people know about that?
The term "demographic winter" appears to have come from Don Feder, communications director of the World Congress of Families [a far-right, anti-LGBT Christian group]. He is the most prominent WCF official linked to the Tanton anti-immigration network and was apparently influenced by Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia" ideas, which circulate widely in conservative and right-wing Jewish circles.
In November 2005, Feder's view of Muslims in France reflected the worldview of Raspail and other "Eurabia" writers. Feder blamed the French riots of that year on "demographic winter," "lax immigration policies" and "brain-dead multiculturalism." Where "demographic winter" differs from Raspail, the "great replacement" and the Eurabia narratives is that liberal elite support for women's reproductive freedom and gay marriage are the principal culprits, in addition to massive Muslim immigration.
What resonates with conservative Christians and Christian nationalists is the idea that Christian (Western) civilization is under threat from nonwhite immigration, Christians are being persecuted in the West and around the world, and only a strong, authoritarian leader building a wall can save them.
Survey data supports my contention that white evangelical Protestants have a "Camp of the Saints" worldview: Seventy-eight percent favor strict limits on "legal immigration," 76% favor "building a [border] wall," 69% support a "temporary" Muslim ban and, 54% favor "preventing refugees from coming into the United States," according to October 2019 PRRI data.
The last section of your article deals with the emergence of the "Boogaloo boys"during the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. How can we better understand them in terms of the longer history you've laid out? What lessons need to be learned?
The first lesson to be learned is that Donald Trump and local elected Republican officials, especially the so-called "constitutional sheriffs," have a much closer relationship to the armed wing of the Christian right. Bruce Wilson and David Neiwert have been tracking that.
The second lesson is that Trump is openly orchestrating armed demonstrations of force against Democratic Party governors and mayors.
The third lesson is that it is very easy to take off your camouflage fatigues and put on a Hawaiian shirt and pretend you just got concerned — but not before you spent around $2,000 on a rifle, tactical gear and ammunition. Journalists should stop being so credulous.
The last lesson is that claims that the "patriot" militia support Black Lives Matter protests are preposterous. The BLM protests are not simply about wrongful deaths at the hands of law enforcement — something a majority of whites can see and empathize with.
BLM is calling for reckoning, a "Third Reconstruction" of America — politically, economically and culturally — in the context of a deliberate confrontation with that racist, violent history. Even at the intellectual level of the "Never Trumpers," those potentially most sympathetic to BLM, there is a blindness or an inability to confront that larger American history and the smaller Republican Party history regarding racism. To think that "angry white men with guns" have thought it through is absurd.
What's the most important question I haven't asked? And what's the answer?
I do not know the answer to the question: "Why do scholars and journalists not consider the religious basis of America's long-term crisis of legitimacy in terms of politics and science?" But I would suggest that scholars and journalists have glommed on to the least important of Richard Hofstadter's explanations, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," and ignored his more trenchant analysis in "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," which focuses on the epistemological disruption caused by fundamentalist Protestantism. They also ignore Marty Lipset's and Earl Raab's use of the concept of monism in describing the right wing in "The Politics of Unreason." Those old guys were on to something.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-white-nationalist-who-toiled-inside-a-right-wing-media-powerhouse
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More Than a Decade of Racist Material
[Michael J. Thompson and Devin Saucier pose with Rep. Steve King of Iowa at a Virginia golf resort during a Republican election celebration. (Image courtesy of Katie McHugh)]
Paul Kersey is the name of the main character in the “Death Wish” film series. Kersey is a bleeding-heart liberal who roams the streets searching for criminals to murder in the name of vigilante justice after his wife and daughter are beaten and raped. In a scene from the first film, released in 1974, cocktail?-party guests can be heard discussing the vigilante murders.
“I’ll tell you one thing, the guy’s a racist. You notice he kills more blacks than whites,” a male guest says.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Harry, more blacks are muggers than whites,” a woman replies. “What do you want us to do, increase the proportion of white muggers so we’ll have racial equality among muggers?”
Black crime is a favorite topic on Thompson’s blog, Stuff Black People Don’t Like?, which he launched in May 2009, as noted in a post celebrating its 10th anniversary. On the blog, Thompson presents misleading? content designed to further arguments for reintroducing racial segregation in America, which he believes the country was foolish to abandon, and for reorganizing the powers of the government to enforce a ruling white supermajority in the United States. Tweets citing Paul Kersey blog posts have been retweeted by far-right commentator Ann Coulter, who could not be reached for comment.
During a 2016 appearance ?as “Paul Kersey” on thewhite supremacist web outlet Red Ice, Thompson said that his blog began as a joke between friends but quickly became more serious after he was convinced that Detroit had ?been destroyed? by African Americans who moved there during the Great Migration. The blog, which began on the Google-owned Blogspot site, is currently hosted on a website owned by far-right writer Ron Unz.
To this day, Thompson uses his Kersey byline to advance falsehoods asserting the genetic inferiority of black people and spin reports of crimes committed by black people to justify the creation and implementation of racist government policies. He has called black men “the biggest terror threat to America” and claimed that black people are more prone to violence than white people for biological reasons. He once described black people as “America’s greatest liability, dragging down western civilization to the black mean wherever they are found.”
When Barack Obama was president, Thompson spun into meltdown after meltdown, repeatedly railing what he called “Black-Run America” and claiming that electing an African American president had solidified “the United States’ permanent decline.” That kind of repulsion for black people carries into Thompson’s vision of the United States.
In one article Thompson?, writing as Kersey, co-authored with Taylor for American Renaissance, ?the pair argued ?that the anniversary of the United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790, which limited the acceptance of immigrants to the United States to free white people, should be recognized as American Independence Day, rather than July 4. Thompson has also denounced the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which did away with racial quotas for immigration?.
Thompson has repeatedly promoted the white supremacist “Great Replacement” myth—the notion that the white populations of various countries are being “replaced” by black- and brown-skinned immigrants. He’s currently writing a book under the Kersey byline ?called “The Great Replacement in the USA,” according to a recent Kersey blog post. Since the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre on March 15, 2019—where a white supremacist uploaded a manifesto crediting the myth as his reason for killing 51 Muslim worshipers in two mosques—Thompson has promoted the “great replacement” myth in at least twelve Kersey blog posts.
“The Great Replacement is not only real, but leveling the civilization our ancestors built in the United States and slowly – but surely – erasing the rights we were granted. Sadly, we are learning they are not inalienable, but easily defeated simply because demography is destiny. And democracy is nothing more than a racial headcount,” Thompson wrote in November.
“Kersey” has published a volume of columns and books that rivals some of the country’s most prolific white supremacist propagandists. He has appeared on podcasts alongside well-documented white nationalists, including Spencer and Greg Johnson, and regularly co-hosts the American Renaissance podcast with Taylor.
His Nearly Clean Getaway
The pavement was wet and the suburban sidewalks quiet in a middle-class neighborhood sprung from the ruins of a coal-mining town after the mine closed down. Most of the white wood mailbox posts display the last name of the family that resides in the home they belong to, but the post is blank where Thompson is thought to live in Midlothian, Virginia.
Tracking down Thompson was a difficult task, due to how diligent he has been in obscuring his identity and maintaining a low profile in conservative society since his time at WorldNetDaily. When I drove by the home, I caught only a glimpse of a man who I thought looked like Thompson, and who withdrew inside his garage after I stopped my vehicle in front of his home. Multiple attempts to reach Thompson via email failed. His neighbors declined to talk to us.
We were unable to determine whether Thompson continues to work anywhere using his real name, or if his income comes primarily from his role within the white nationalist movement. Thompson’s former colleagues, employers, and friends declined to speak with us, except for Epstein, who called us and then declined to be interviewed after we informed him about this report’s subject matter.
Thompson seemingly maneuvered himself into the heart of right-wing politics in Washington and escaped without a scratch, unlike many of his peers who saw their careers implode. It’s not clear who knew about Thompson’s moonlighting and to what extent he is still in communication with employees at right-wing media outlets and The Leadership Institute.
I tried to imagine Thompson coming back to the two-story home in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, turning into the gentle curves of the road and rolling up the driveway to greet his children; it’s a serene picture of an unassuming American life. But online, Thompson authors vitriolic material for racist websites that Trump’s top policy adviser on immigration apparently reads. That much he can no longer hide.
Update: This article previously stated that the Youth for Western Civilization student group received support from white nationalists at its founding. The story has been updated to reflect that the group reportedly received such support in 2011.
Tags: Joseph FarahMichael ThompsonAlt-RightRacismwhite nationalismwhite supremacyBreitbartLeadership InstituteWorldNetDaily
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When Barack Obama was president, Thompson spun into meltdown after meltdown, repeatedly railing what he called “Black-Run America” and claiming that electing an African American president had solidified “the United States’ permanent decline.” That kind of repulsion for black people carries into Thompson’s vision of the United States.
In one article Thompson, writing as Kersey, co-authored with Taylor for American Renaissance, the pair argued that the anniversary of the United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790, which limited the acceptance of immigrants to the United States to free white people, should be recognized as American Independence Day, rather than July 4. Thompson has also denounced the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which did away with racial quotas for immigration.
Thompson has repeatedly promoted the white supremacist “Great Replacement” myth—the notion that the white populations of various countries are being “replaced” by black- and brown-skinned immigrants. He’s currently writing a book under the Kersey byline called “The Great Replacement in the USA,” according to a recent Kersey blog post. Since the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre on March 15, 2019—where a white supremacist uploaded a manifesto crediting the myth as his reason for killing 51 Muslim worshipers in two mosques—Thompson has promoted the “great replacement” myth in at least twelve Kersey blog posts.
“The Great Replacement is not only real, but leveling the civilization our ancestors built in the United States and slowly – but surely – erasing the rights we were granted. Sadly, we are learning they are not inalienable, but easily defeated simply because demography is destiny. And democracy is nothing more than a racial headcount,” Thompson wrote in November.
“Kersey” has published a volume of columns and books that rivals some of the country’s most prolific white supremacist propagandists. He has appeared on podcasts alongside well-documented white nationalists, including Spencer and Greg Johnson, and regularly co-hosts the American Renaissance podcast with Taylor.
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ref
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2019/08/deadly-myth-great-replacement
The deadly myth of the “Great Replacement”
The shootings in El Paso are the latest expression of an unfounded and racist mythology.
BY ELEANOR PENN
It happened again. The suspect in the El Paso shooting is the latest in a ghoulish parade of white men who in recent years have taken it upon themselves to gun down crowds of civilians in the name of defending their race from the nefarious plots of suspected “invaders” bent on destroying white civilisation from within.
The document written by the shooter credits the “Great Replacement” as his central motivation. Also known as “white genocide”, this is the increasingly popular conspiracy theory that the white race and the entirety of “western civilisation” are besieged by the combined forces of non-white migration and dwindling white birth-rates, orchestrated by multicultural, globalist [read: Jewish] elites in an attempt to undermine the integrity of white life. For the shooter, this could not be allowed to stand.
He killed 22 people, and injured many more. Add that to the toll of 77 murdered by Anders Breivik, and the black churchgoers murdered by Dylan Roof, both of whom saw themselves as the first soldiers in an all-out “race war” for the survival of white people. Add those to the 11 murdered at the Tree of Life Synagogue, by someone set out to punish Jewish people for orchestrating an “invasion” of migrants. At the Unite the Right Charlottesville rally, neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us” – and then, one of them killed a counterprotester. The Christchurch shooter, who killed 52 people, titled the document he left behind “the Great Replacement”. “It’s the birthrates.” he insisted. “It’s the birthrates. It’s the birthrates.” This is paranoiac race-war fanaticism newith an ever-growing body count.
The phrase “the great replacement” was coined by white supremacist French philosopher Renaud Camus, in his alarmist 2012 screed of the same name. He wrote that French society is critically endangered by an onslaught of non-white, Muslim migration, a pattern of “reverse colonisation” reflected across the western world which has left white cultures – and national securities – under siege from hostile forces. He denies seeing the white race as “superior”, insisting rather that he’s neutrally concerned about the integrity and survival of an ethnic group facing down an exterior threat; an undeniable concern, surely. But the victims and their aggressors are clear; Camus uses hysterically inflated statistics and good old-fashioned reactionary nativism to describe white Europeans being “invaded” and “occupied” by a vicious army of black and brown people, with catastrophic results. Providing academic structure to a concocted sense of white victimhood has earned Camus a vaunted place as the darling of the global alt-right. He’s a doyen of the New Right in France, whose youth movement Génération Identitaire spawned a network of international versions in Generation Identity and Identity Evropa. These anti-migrant, anti-Muslim groups have found champions in Richard Spencer, Lauren Southern and Katie Hopkins - and in the Christchurch shooter.
The shadow of the Great Replacement conspiracy looms large over the mainstream right. Tucker Carlson has accused US Democrats of orchestrating “demographic replacement,” with a “flood of illegals” to create “a flood of voters for them”. In 2013, Nigel Farage intimated that some Muslim people are“coming here to take us over”.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief Strategist notoriously cited The Turner Diaries, a novel considered the “bible of the racist right”, in which white men heroically take up the struggle for the survival of the white race, suffering under near-future tyranny of black people, migrants and jews. For his part, Trump’s has anointed himself a similar hero, the champion of the beleaguered working whites, helping them throw off the yoke of globalisation.
Public-facing theories about the Great Replacement, playing for popular respectability, usually eschew direct reference to white supremacy, favouring the altogether more slippery language of diversity, cultural preservation and of self-defence. Hence, the insistence among the “identitarian” right, that if BAME people can talk about defending the survival of their own cultures and races, then so can white people. The El Paso manifesto decried “shameless race mixers” for “destroy[ing] genetic diversity”.
These excuses are just as flimsy as they sound, collapsing into all-out racism under the weight of the slightest scrutiny. The soft-shuffle manoeuvre from race to culture is a routine canard of the far right to avoid accountability, and handwringing about “cultural preservation” is nothing but a dog whistle for those embarrassed to openly show their disgust for miscegenation. Moreover, the steady effects of demographic change and cultural mixing are only worrisome if you’re clinging to a rabid ideal of ethnocultural purity; a foundational doctrine of fascists everywhere. There is precisely zero evidence that “liberal elites” would be interested in the fatal dilution of whiteness, even if they did indeed have shadowy cabals of Jewish people to put their plans in motion. None of this really matters; the conspiracy is less about levelling a statistically robust world picture, and more about telegraphing a sense of global white victimhood around which to arrange a sense of political outrage. It’s about mobilising an age-old panic to build a case for extreme racial violence.
This is bait-and-switch white supremacy for media-savvy crypto-fascists distantly aware that calling for the all-out extermination of black and ethnic minority people doesn’t play well on the TV (at least for now). Better instead to gloss it with a thin patina of plausible deniability; talking diversity rather than supremacy, preservation rather than extermination.
But really, fears of a white population overwhelmed by racial others is nothing new.
The spectral menace of the “race war” has long haunted our political imaginaries; a frenzied Caucasian cautionary tale in which BAME people and migrants, when inadequately punished and cowed, wreak extraordinary vengeance on the white man. It can be found in desperate petitions to preserve chattel slavery as a backstop against the supposed threat of violent black people. Thomas Jefferson described the institution of slavery as “holding a wolf by the ears”. In 1898, Winston Churchill cautioned against the “militant Mahommedanism” of migrant workers. In 1968, Enoch Powell declared that an influx of migrants meant “the black man [would] have the whip hand over the white man”.
If you buy into this world picture (and many, many do), any step towards racial inequality becomes an unthinkable concession to a deadly set of enemies who must be crushed – or else. If you buy into this world picture, must be prepared to do whatever it takes to survive.
This, of course, is precisely the point.
Of all the swivel-eyed conspiracies shambling through the more squalid reaches of the internet, the Great Replacement has proved uniquely powerful. Its doctrine of survival is a captivating persuasion tactic for people bent on drawing more people to the cause of white supremacy. It crams children into cages in detention centres, and it puts guns in the hands of men wishing to exorcise their bloody power fantasies. And it veils the real operation of violence, recasting terrorism as heroism and tyranny as the tactical necessities of self-defence.
The El Paso shooter allegedly wrote: “I can no longer bear the shame of inaction knowing that our founding fathers have endowed me with the rights needed to save our country from the brink of destruction.” Such is the mythos of the Great Replacement. It reaches out a hand to the foetid, trembling, paranoid soul of white supremacist culture and tells it that everything it has ever feared is coming true. But that we have the power to stop it. It asks – do you want to be a hero, kid? I can tell you how to be a hero. Just follow me.
eleanor Penny is a writer and editor at Novara Media and Red Pepper Magazine.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/not-all-republicans-are-neo-nazis-but-are-they-still-evil-for-not-fighting-the-neo-nazis
no lnx
Not all Republicans are neo-Nazis — but are they still evil for not fighting the neo-Nazis?
Written by Frank Vyan Walton / Daily Kos August 25, 2019
In previous articles, I’ve discussed how the GOP has openly become the party of racism, white supremacy, and nationalism; why you can’t be nice to neo-Nazis or their enablers in the GOP; and how the recent racism leading to violent acts of terrorism and mass murder wasn’t started by Donald Trump himself—he just brought the kerosine and the s’mores to the fire. What I’ve always wondered is: At what point would the majority of the GOP finally come to their senses and recognize all of this, and begin to denounce Trump’s many bigoted statements and policy positions? When will they reach the breaking point?
But It seems as though waiting for Trump to go too far, or to say too much,is a fool’s errand. The rank-and-file Republicans have repeatedly said they don’t care what Trump says, or for that matter what he does, as long as they themselves are economically alright. Not that there hasn’t been a slow trickle of converts, including former Republicans and never-Trumpers like Joe Walsh, Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, Justin Amash, Jeff Flake, Bill Kristol, Michael Cohen, George Conway, and lately Anthony Scaramucci. But the basic bread-and-butter Republicans still don’t give a shit, even when there are neo-Nazi Proud Boys marching in the streets wearing #MAGA hats, or when thousands of children and families are being held by Trump’s immigration forces indefinitely at concentration camps in crowded unsafe conditions, without proper sanitation, and without flu shots, in violation of federal court orders and international law.
If they can’t stand up against any of this, does this mean they are providing a tacit endorsement for it? Are they not willfully permitting this abject evil?
There is danger in saying that “all Republicans” are bigots, because it’s clearly not true. It couldn’t possibly be true. It’s understandable that making such a broad and unfounded claim would clearly generate outrage and a backlash for the person making such an outlandish claim. As I’ve said before, however, there are worse things than just being a racist.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more difficult to observe Trump and not see that he traffics in bigotry and that each time he has an outburst of bias, members of the GOP scramble to ignore it, excuse it, justify it, and rationalize it.
Worse, it’s become more common that they echo the themes of supremacy by supporting ideas such as the “great replacement.”
In July 2017, white nationalist Youtube star Lauren Southern posted a video called “The Great Replacement” that has since garnered more than 670,000 views.
In the monologue, Southern blends fear-mongering about the supposed Islamification of Europe with specifically American concerns about automation and disappearing jobs to create a narrative of whites being replaced.
“The future of Europe looks pretty halal,” she says, before discussing how technology makes jobs — and people — redundant. “It’s all replaceable and there’s nothing particularly significant about the thing being replaced.”
According to Keegan Hankes, the interim research director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, the theory is a “dressed-up version” of older ideas that white nationalists have peddled about supposed conspiracies to destroy the white race.
“It’s not that the ideas are new, it’s new packaging,” he said.
But the idea has caught fire on the U.S. far-right since Trump’s election.
Rather than remaining on the fringe, these ideas have been echoed within the mainstream GOP.
Fox Newshas begun to propagate aspects of the racist narrative over the past year, without necessarily adhering to the theory itself. The Fox News version is more narrowly focused on domestic electoral politics, accusing Democrats of pushing for replacement for partisan political advantage.
Laura Ingraham has subscribed to the notion that Democrats are trying to use “chain migrants” to replace Americans. She said in one appearance last year that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants.”
Tucker Carlsonhas also echoed elements of the theory — “demographic replacement” is his term — using it as a partisan bludgeon to accuse Democrats of trying to seed the country with liberal constituencies.
After the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, for example, Carlson claimed that leftists were advocating for a “genocide” of white men. He has also characterized the difference between U.S. policy towards immigrants and towards its native-born citizens as “it’s like, shut up, you’re dying, we’re gonna replace you.”
Trump himself has promoted this idea with his rallies and ads about the scary migrant “caravan” during the midterm elections.
The “Great Replacement” was a specific idea that was espoused by the Pittsburgh synagogue and the Christchurch shooters last year.
Only 19 minutes before 911 was first alerted that a terrorist shooting had occurred inEl Paso, Texas on Saturday, the suspect posted a 2300-word manifesto online that outlined his motives. The suspect spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” asserting, “If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable.” At the heart of the manifesto, titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” was a belief that is central to modern white nationalist and white supremacist ideology: the Replacement Theory, which argues that whites are being replaced by “non-whites” around the world. And the Replacement Theory has been a primary motivation in a series of deadly terrorist acts, from Pittsburgh to New Zealand to Virginia.
In “The Inconvenient Truth,” acts of terrorism are characterized not as extremism or murdering innocent people, but as acts of self-defense against a non-white “invasion.” And the manifesto openly praises the worst act of terrorism in New Zealand’s history: an attack on two mosques in Christchurch on March 15, 2019 that left 51 people dead. In the manifesto written before that attack, the Replacement Theory was specifically mentioned as a motive — and “The Inconvenient Truth,” in solidarity, asserts, “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto. This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
The Christchurch terrorist specifically thanked Donald Trump, but somehow the National Review thought it was totally unfair to link Trump to his actions.
I do not recall hearing President Donald J. Trump urge anyone to enter a mosque and gun down Muslims. Still, Trump’s critics — whose volcanic rage makes Vesuvius resemble Old Faithful — hold him responsible for March 15’s mayhem in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Police say that an Australian white supremacist opened fire inside two local mosques, killing 50 worshipers and wounding some 50 more. Yet, somehow it’s all Trump’s fault — his detractors argue.
Senator Tim Kaine (D., Va.) said: “The president uses language often that’s very similar to the language used by these bigots and racists, and if he’s not going to call it out, then other leaders have to do more to call it out.”
“Time and time again, this president has embraced and emboldened white supremacists,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.). “Instead of condemning racist terrorists, he covers for them.”
[…]
These scathing attacks raise this philosophical question: If the president of the United States speaks, and the Trump-loathing media and his critics ignore his words, has he made a sound?
In fact, President Trump has praised Muslims at home and abroad. He has denounced white supremacists. And he has embraced the two groups whom Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and their ilk detest the most: blacks and Jews. This news may shock most Americans, since anti-Trump journalists conceal these facts like classified data.
Oh sure, Trump said that he “condemns” all types of violence, and he’s criticized white supremacists once or twice. But frankly, nobody, including the white supremacists, believe any of that because he’s also criticized the “alt-Left” and Antifa. They said so during the recent Portland Proud Boys rally.
The organizer of a far-right rally in Portland, Oregon claimed the event was a “success” after President Donald Trump attacked Portlandiers protesting the group.
“A confluence of protesters on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum merged on Portland’s waterfront Saturday in a tense but relatively uneventful face-off that brought national attention, including a tweet in the hours before the protest by President Trump decrying the city’s signature anti-fascist movement,” the Oregonian reported Saturday.
[…]
“Joe Biggs, a former InfoWars staffer and the organizer of Saturday’s right-wing demonstration, was asked by The Oregonian/OregonLive what message the effort got across,” the newspaper reported.
“Go look at President Trump’s Twitter,” Biggs said. “He talked about Portland, said he’s watching antifa. That’s all we wanted. We wanted national attention, and we got it. Mission success.”
In recent weeks, white supremacists have murdered dozens of people in El Paso, Texas, and Gilroy, California. Several others have been thwarted before they attacked, including one who praised Trump as he threatened to kill Hispanics and blacks.
Eric Lin, 35, was charged with interstate transmission of threatening communications. According to the criminal complaint against him, Lin targeted an unnamed victim who lives in Florida but is from Spain with threatening Facebook messages, repeatedly indicating he identified with Hitler’s views. He also referenced the President.
“Our Great President Donald John Trump is too Nice of Man. But I will say it,” Lin allegedly wrote on July 15 to his victim, before unleashing a series of racial slurs and saying that Hispanic, black and Muslim Americans “will be Killed!”
“I Thank God everyday President Donald John Trump is President and that he will launch a Racial War and Crusade to keep [various slurs] and any dangerous non-White or Ethnically or Cultural Foreign group ‘In Line,’” he allegedly wrote a few days later.
Another white nationalist was arrested for planning an attack in Ohio.
The FBI raided the home of James Reardon, 20, on Friday and found a stockpile of weapons that included dozens of rounds of ammunition, several semi-automatic weapons and protective gear like a gas mask and bulletproof vest, according to multiple reports. Police also found white nationalist and anti-Semitic imagery in his home.
Reardon was initially flagged by authorities last month when he posted a video on Instagram that showed a man shooting a semi-automatic rifle. Sirens and screams were heard in the background of the video, according to ABC News and Reardon tagged Jewish Community Center of Youngston in the Instagram post.
And yet another anti-trans, racist Trump fan from Connecticut was arrested for making violent threats.
A Connecticut man who had amassed an arsenal of tactical weapons and body armor, and who police say may have been preparing for a mass shooting, left a trail of virulently racist and anti-trans postings online.
TPM found that social media accounts registered to Norwalk, Connecticut resident Brandon Wagshol both reflected elements of the police accusations against him and contained rants against minorities.
[…]
In January 2018, for example, after Trump complained that immigrants were coming into the U.S. from “shithole countries,” Wagshol posted memes riffing on the term.
In one post, a meme appears to show the popular 23andme genetic testing kit offering consumers the opportunity to discover “which shithole country are you from?”
And these three were just the tip of the floating turdberg.
It’s impressive that all of these whack jobs were caught before things went completely off the rails, but none of that was thanks to Trump or the White House ,who have been repeatedly ignoring the threat of growing white nationalism.
“Homeland Security officials battled the White House for more than a year to get them to focus more on domestic terrorism,” one senior source close to the Trump administration tells CNN. “The White House wanted to focus only on the jihadist threat which, while serious, ignored the reality that racial supremacist violence was rising fast here at home. They had major ideological blinders on.”
The National Counterterrorism Strategy, issued last fall, states that “Radical Islamist terrorists remain the primary transnational terrorist threat to the United States and its vital national interests,” which few experts dispute. What seems glaring to these officials is the minimizing of the threat of domestic terrorism, which they say was on their radar as a growing problem.
“Ultimately the White House just added one paragraph about domestic terrorism as a throw-away line,” a senior source involved in the discussion told CNN. That paragraph mentions “other forms of violent extremism, such as racially motivated extremism, animal rights extremism, environmental extremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism.” It made no mention of white supremacists. (A separate paragraph in the report mentions investigating domestic terrorists with connections to overseas terrorists, but that does not seem to be a reference to white supremacists.)
Also, Homeland Security has been struggling to deal with domestic terrorists because of the White House’s obsession with immigrants.
An unnamed current DHS official told the Daily Beast on Tuesday that the department is “scrambling” to deal with domestic terrorism following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
“These two shootings have caused a mad scramble where they are pulling every publication and book off the shelf in an attempt to figure out what they can do to address this problem,” a former DHS official told the Daily Beast.
Former DHS deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator John Cohen said the struggle is a “direct result” of “no serious planning efforts by the department” to fight domestic terrorism.
“That’s due in large part because of the insistence by the White House that the department first and foremost focus on immigration and border security,” he said.
Under President Donald Trump, who’s fixated on immigration and Islamic terrorism, the department’s seen major cuts in resources for addressing domestic terrorism.
Trump has ignored asylum law, which allows people to legally enter the nation from any port of entry. He’s detained asylum seekers, even though as many of 99 percent of them make it to all of their court dates. Now he’s both implementing indefinite detention for families and children while denying them flu shots, when several kids have already died as a result of the flu. Remember that Anne Frank didn’t die in a gas chamber: She died of typhus while at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Trump’s goal is simple: to make the risk of trying to enter the U.S. so painful, dangerous, and perilous that it’s not worth it, even when the alternative is death as a result of crime, gangs, and drug lords.
And all this came after acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan revealed that domestic terrorism is now a greater threat to the U.S. than al-Qaida or ISIS.
Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan stated that domestic terrorism is “absolutely” a bigger threat than international terrorism on Sunday.
“Is it fair to say that you want to change the priority–that your priority needs to be domestic terrorism?” NBC host Todd asked during an interview with McAleen. “Is that a greater threat, right now, than international terrorism?”
“Absolutely,” the acting DHS secretary replied, adding that the DHS “has to balance threats.”
McAleenan said that his department’s emphasis is providing support for “prevention, awareness, and response capability” regarding domestic terrorism on a local and state level.
Just to re-emphasize: As the threat of foreign terrorism slows, the Trump administration would rather continue to focus on that and immigration issues (such as their sudden huge raid at a chicken plant in Mississippi) instead of address terrorists that are right here, right now, and who are killing Americans by the dozens.
And then you have the House GOP caucus, which concocted talking points about white supremacy intended to minimize the issue and instead attack so-called “left-wing” violence.
In an email to constituents reported by the Tampa Bay Times, Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) included a series of talking points that his spokesperson told the paper were “provided by the House Republican Conference.”
If asked, “Do you believe white nationalism is driving more mass shootings recently?” the talking points falsely respond that the El Paso shooter and the man who shot Congresswoman Gaby Giffords were politically “from the left.”
“White nationalism and racism are pure evil and cannot be tolerated in any form,” the talking points included in the email said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “We also can’t excuse violence from the left such as the El Paso shooter, the recent Colorado shooters, the Congressional baseball shooter, Congresswoman Giffords’ shooter and Antifa.”
Rather than address these terrorists, the right would rather attack Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib for their support of human rights in Palestine, by arguing that doing so “supports terrorism.” This tactic is shown in the video below, where The Atlantic’s Peter Beinart engages in an amazing shouting match with the National Review’s Rich Lowry. He repeatedly denies that they or he support Palestinian terrorism, but repeats that the basic humanity of the Palestinians itself is inherent. Beinart argues powerfully that Palestine is an apartheid state, and that you can’t understand how bad conditions are for the those on the West Bank until you visit there and see that it is as bad and tragic as the Jim Crow South. Lowry blows all that off.
During the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King jr. and groups like SNCC, led by John Lewis, were called “communist.” The same went for Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress, which fought against South Africa’s apartheid system—and not always with nonviolent methods.
This basic and clear inhumanity was what Tlaib and Omar were attempting to highlight and unveil by visiting Israel, but Trump asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block them. Netanyahu did just that, with frankly bogus claims of “anti-Semitism” and support for terrorism on their part.
The irony of that is just delicious.
Rather than admit the truth that Beinart speaks or call out domestic terrorists, conservative columnists have instead claimed that Trump has been the “victim’ of racism, and that bringing up these white supremacist terrorists is mere “identity politics.”
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Heather Mac Donald says that Trump himself is a victim of racist attacks.
In a story headlined “Trump Isn’t the One Dividing Us by Race,” Mac Donald claims that “He hardly mentions it, while his adversaries are obsessed with ‘whiteness’ and ‘white privilege.’”
“It is the media and Democratic leaders who routinely characterize individuals and groups by race and issue race-based denunciations of large parts of the American polity,” Mac Donald claims. […]
“Identity politics dominate higher education: Administrators, students and faculty obsessively categorize themselves and each other by race. “White privilege,” often coupled with “toxic masculinity,” is the focus of freshmen orientations and an ever-growing array of courses.” […]
“To note the inevitability of white identity politics in no way condones the grotesque violence of men like the El Paso killer,” she says. “But the dominant culture is creating a group of social pariahs, a very small percentage of whom—already unmoored from traditional sources of meaning and stability, such as family—are taking their revenge through stomach-churning mayhem,” Mac Donald argues.
And many conservatives, including Newt Gingrich and Erick Erickson, apparently lost their minds over The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which is a series of essays about the impact of slavery in America published on the 400th anniversary of the first Africans landing on North American soil.
Some commentators, like Elie Mystal, have noted the absurdity that all these complaints seem to center on the idea that no one would like America if a full and complete history of slavery and its brutality was debated publicly.
But there is another, deeper common thread that runs through all these complaints. Conservatives seem to be bristling at the idea that slavery is not just something in our past, but something that shapes what our nation is to this day.
They don’t want to grapple with the structures we have cyclically built and rebuilt to reduce black Americans to a state “almost” like slavery, from mass incarceration to attacks on voting rights. They don’t want to talk about how stereotypes we formed about black people during slavery affect everything from how willing employers are to hire them to how willing doctors are to prescribe them pain medicine. And they also don’t want to hear how white people were not, in fact, selfless saviors who swooped in and ended slavery in 1863, because that forces them to confront how unwilling they are to address its lasting effects now, from civil rights to reparations.
Admitting and acknowledging the experience of African Americans is a threat. It validates the evil, discriminatory, and bigoted acts of (some) white people during the past four centuries, and if those acts are admitted then it requires action—largely by white people—to change and correct those actions. That’s exactly what the GOP doesn’t want. It’s certainly what Trump doesn’t want.
Instead of correcting the consequences of discrimination, Trump’s Labor Department has been establishing rules to legalize LGBTQ discrimination for “religion-exercising organizations.”
Labor officials have made public a new rule—no Congress, needed, thank you—to allow companies contracting with the federal government who are “religion-exercising organizations” to ignore federal laws protecting the rights of gays, transsexuals, and who knows who else in hiring or workplace practices. Religious employers and companies with “closely held” religious ties now will be shielded from claims of bias in court or other law enforcement actions, says the rule..
Trump supporters like goofy game show host Chuck Woolery claim “racism has nothing to do with race.” Yeah—okay, Chuck.
Rather than point advocate against any of this, other Trump supporters are instead holding rallies against “hate” directed at Trump.
Trump supporter Tammy Curry, who sells log cabin accessories and CBP products at a pair of local shops, organized a “Make America Great Again” rally Friday evening at a picnic grounds, where supporters gathered to celebrate the president.
“We have to do something about all the hatred,” Curry said. […]
The 61-year-old Curry was instead concerned about criticism against one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history.
“I just think right now the president is being attacked unjustly,” Curry said. “People don’t respect the office of the president. Never have I seen this much hate. It scares me.”
Most of Trump’s supporters are just as oblivious, if not more so. His base’s support hasn’t wavered, remaining in the 80 percent range both before and after his “very fine people” reaction to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. They fail to see these events, his disgusting treatment of immigrants, and his dismissive attitude toward the dangers of white supremacist terrorism as being relevant to them.
His support among the GOP actually increased after his attacks on Reps. Omar, Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley, which were launched to tamp down their criticism of his inhumane immigration policies.
Support for U.S. President Donald Trump increased slightly among Republicans after he lashed out on Twitter over the weekend in a racially charged attack on four minority Democratic congresswomen, a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll shows.
The national survey, conducted on Monday and Tuesday after Trump told the lawmakers they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” showed his net approval among members of his Republican Party rose by 5 percentage points to 72%, compared with a similar poll that ran last week.
They don’t really mind any of this, because they like his immigration policies. But that doesn’t make them all racist. It just makes them racist-adjacent.
One of the key things learned from the 1619 Project is the fact that there was never any point in time when most Americans were racist. I believe they were not. The issue of slavery something that only impacted the slave owners themselves, and few people (even among Southerners) belonged to that class. If you read the letters of Civil War soldiers, rarely are the issues of slavery or abolition discussed. More often, their issues are personal and more prosaic. Union soldiers were, at least originally, not fighting to free the slaves, despite what Newt Gingrich says. In fact, they were somewhat concerned with the ramifications of the Emancipation Proclamation.
One of those new measures that is taken to fight the war is the Emancipation Proclamation. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had been issued on September 22nd of 1862 and the Emancipation Proclamation really changed the whole aim of a war that had been begun to save the Union. Now it becomes a war also to end slavery. Now those two goals had never been completely separable but the official line had always been “This is a war to save the Union” and not to have really much of anything to do with slavery. Those changes really rocked much of the Civil War North, particularly the Northern home front.
You have quite a lot of dissent among white Northerners over the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Northerners, there is no dissent. They think this is exactly what has been needed since well before the war began. There are a number of issues at stake in the 1862 elections. There are economic issues, there are issues having to do with civil liberties, what actions can and cannot the United States government take during wartime and there’s the war and of course there’s the Emancipation Proclamation.
All of those from the North weren’t abolitionist heroes, and all those from the South weren’t slaver bigots. Then, as now, most people were largely trying to get on with their lives and not so much concerned with the matters of others.
This is why it is only the threat of a looming recession that has Trump starting to worry he just might lose the support of his base. Trump can use the exact same anti-Semitic trope of suggesting that Jews aren’t “loyal” that Rep. Ilhan Omar was slammed for when she criticized AIPAC, and his base won’t care one wit. What they care about is their own pocketbook, and hardly anything else.
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who has always supported Trump’s policy positions (even though they are all still based on bigoted ideas) is someone who reached the breaking point with Trump’s racist attacks on “the Squad” when he said they should “go back where they came from.” He believes there are other Republicans who are merely in the closet on their moral objections to Trump’s behavior.
He claims he can take five points off of Trump’s support using his new SuperPAC and gathering Republicans who supposedly have the strength of moral conviction to try and primary Trump in 2020. The goal is to continue Trump’s policies without all the embarrassing, silly, and racist parts.
Oh, really?
We’ll have to see how he does with that effort, but I’m not optimistic.The problem is the core of the “Great Replacement” idea is that it’s not just racial, it’s also economic. It’s about jobs and opportunities being supposedly taken or blocked from white people who because of immigration now have to compete on the level that the market actually demands. To keep their jobs and avoid being “replaced,” they’d have to accept a cut to their pay or their benefits, which migrants are willing to tolerate. According to the paranoid theory, white people would likely have to move to another state, or possibly even out of the country because that’s where their jobs just might be going.
Trump has been selling his base the idea that he’s going to bring those overseas jobs back, and he’s going to get rid of all those pesky immigrants (even a lot of the legal ones!) and that’s what is going to “Make America Great Again.” The economic and the racial have always been linked in his vision; it’s not really possible to separate them.
In order to bring about his economic vision, Trump has to totally amp up the cruelty toward immigrants. He has to attack even our allied nations and portray China and the E.U. as taking “unfair advantage” of us on trade, because you see “those other people” are always the problem. “They” are the issue. We just need to put all those other people in their proper shithole place, and America will be better off—the “real” America, that is: not Baltimore and all its rats and rodents, of course.
This is why the white supremacists love him. This is why they feel emboldened by him. This is why they are acting out, and have become radicalized at increasing rates: because of him.
Meanwhile, the rest of the GOP stands idly by, in denial—and often, in delusion.
During the height of the civil rights struggle, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously stated that his largest challenge wasn’t with the KKK, but with white moderates who remained idle in response to injustice.
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice […]
It’s often said that all that’s required for evil to flourish, is for good men to do nothing.
Then, as now, the greatest challenge we have aren’t the white supremacists and racists who have rallied to Trump’s side: It’s the other loyal supporters of the GOP who have placed their own personal gain and comfort above the damage that Trump’s tragic trade, immigration, and domestic terrorism policies are doing to the lives of tens and hundreds of thousands. They just don’t care, because they don’t think they’re in the path of the wrecking ball.
I think they’re wrong about that.
They aren’t moved by pictures of children in cages. They aren’t moved by pictures of Americans dead and dying on the ground as a result of white supremacist terror. They aren’t moved by seeing throngs of Proud Boys marching in the streets of Portland, or by the “very fine people” in Charlottesville. They aren’t moved by Trump saying black and brown congresswomen should “go back where they came from,” and they aren’t moved by Trump saying that Jews that support Democrats are “disloyal.”
They’re more concerned about being called “racist” for supporting Trump. They’re more concerned with being blamed for something, or being responsible for anything. They’re more concerned with their own 401(k). They’re more concerned with their own pension.
Technically, there’s nothing wrong with that. Obviously, people can make their own choices about what they’re going to care about. But I do wonder: When there is clear and obvious evil taking place on their behalf, on their watch, and under their nose; when terrorists are being radicalized by the rhetoric of the current White House resident, when does their standing on the sidelines become an act of enabling that evil?
Are you truly innocent if you only act when your own financial interests are threatened by a recession?
And naturally, in anticipation of this Trump is already scapegoating the news media for creating a recession if there is one, so he won’t have to take the blame.
“The Fake News Media is doing everything they can to crash the economy because they think that will be bad for me and my re-election,” Trump tweeted Thursday, apparently seeking to spread the outrageous theory that shadowy forces would wreck the economy for the sole purpose of damaging him politically.
“Mr. Trump has repeated the claims in private discussions with aides and allies, insisting that his critics are trying to take away what he sees as his calling card for re-election,” Haberman writes
Because of course, their money is all they truly care about. As for the rest of it, they’re just not interested or worse yet, they really do believe that wackadoodle conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton (on her day off from running the Comet Pizza teenage human trafficking ring and selling Benghazi secrets to Q-anon while laughing over Seth Rich’s grave) hired Christopher Steele to pay off a bunch of Russians to lie about Trump, and then used that information to manipulate the Deep State of Comey, Strzok, Page, Clapper, and Brennan to illegally spy on Carter Page and Trump in his tower. Then they called up Bigfoot and the Sasquatch for an Illuminati clam bake at Chappaquiddick and any minute now—literally any second—Attorney General Barr is gonna have them all, including Mueller, Hillary, and Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend Bill Clinton, in handcuffs and leg irons. Just you wait.
They think Trump saying that he’s the “King of the Jews” and the “chosen one” is cute and the best thing they’ve heard since the last chosen ones, Neo of the Matrix and Anakin Skywalker.
Scaramucci is betting that GOP rank-and-file will get up off the sidelines and support his alternative candidate to Trump in 2020 on essentially moral grounds. He’s not the first to try and make this argument. Former Sen. Jeff Flake tried to stand up to Trump too, and it didn’t work out so well for him. Rep. Justin Amash is trying to do it, but the verdict is still out on how that’s going. The Mooch might have a better shot if he was willing to go third-party rather than try and work inside the GOP, because I think that the rank-and-file Republicans are frankly long, long gone from being who and what he seems to think they are. The cancer of the Trump cult —which Trump claims is a “movement based on love”—has already metastasized.
At its core, Donald Trump’s love is filtered through fascism and authoritarianism. His form of tainted love rests upon moral inversion, a state of being in which truth is replaced by lies, empirical reality itself is usurped, and the evil and immoral are transformed into the good and the noble. As Hannah Arendt warned in her landmark book “The Origins of Totalitarianism”:
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
In this malignant reality, people who are in thrall to Donald Trump (or the other ignominious fascist and authoritarian leaders whom he adores and imitates) do not know what right and wrong are anymore. When these distinctions are pointed out, Trump’s supporters double down on their investment in the Great Leader and “the Movement,” focusing their rage and violence against the political truth-teller.
Donald Trump’s love is exclusive rather than inclusive, narrow rather than broad. It is focused inward on the in-group as a way of legitimating violence and meanness towards the out-group. Trump’s love is not a celebration of the best of humanity but is itself inhumane.
They have become an authoritarian cult. Maybe they already were after the days of George W. Bush and decades of Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson, Pirro, the rest of Faux Snooze, Sinclair, Newsmax, Breitbart and RT. They don’t flinch at his crazed, inhumane, and racist actions because they support his inhumane and racist actions. They like it. They think every little time the media has a bovine birth over his latest nutball action like trying to buy Greenland like it’s on sale at Walmart is great. He’s just trolling the media, and also “pwning the libs,”, ha ha! He called the prime minister of Denmark “nasty”? Just like Meghan Markle and Elizabeth Warren? Fine. He also said London’s Mayor Saddiq Khan was a “Nasty guy” and a “total loser” but since he’s a dude, that makes it fine.
I don’t think they’re ever coming back from being enablers for Trump’s bigotry. They like that he says out loud what they’re afraid to admit they think. He says pretty boldly what Limbaugh and Ann Coulter only hinted at previously. His supporters have completely lost their moral compass down the garbage disposal if they can’t see this man is totally bankrupt not only six times financially, but also morally and ethically. And I when Trump is finally gone—whenever that maybe—they’ll still be here, raging about immigrants and foreigners, and enabling and rationalizing monsters.
And if I’m wrong, nobody is stopping them from proving this isn’t the case.
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ref 2 mma
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/rush-limbaugh-and-other-conservative-media-dismiss-ny-times-report-showing-el-paso-shooter
Conservative media figures dismissed an analysis from The New York Times showing hundreds of instances in which they used the same sort of anti-immigration rhetoric as the manifesto of the gunman who shot and killed 22 people in El Paso,TX, in early August.
El Paso mass shooter’s white supremacist manifesto echoed language used by prominent Fox News figures and other conservative media personalities
Multiple Fox News personalities have pushed rhetoric that white Americans are going to be “replaced” by non-white immigrants -- the same white supremacist conspiracy theory referenced by the El Paso shooter. The shooter wrote in his manifesto that he wanted revenge against “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” and warned of “cultural and ethnicreplacement.” Media Matters showed that multiple Fox News personalities, including prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, had spread similar rhetoric on the channel. Media Matters, [8/5/19]
NY Times: “There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by” the shooter. The New York Times conducted its own analysis of the manifesto written by the El Paso shooter and found that his numerous references to an “invasion” by Hispanics and cultural “replacement” of white people overlapped in hundreds of instances with comments from prominent Fox News and other conservative media personalities, including Carlson and Rush Limbaugh.
Tucker Carlson went on his prime-time Fox News show in April last year and told his viewers not to be fooled. The thousands of Central Americans on their way to the United States were “border jumpers,” not refugees, he said. “Will anyone in power do anything to protect America this time,” he asked, “or will leaders sit passively back as the invasion continues?”
When another group approached the border six months later,Ann Coulter, appearing as a guest on Jeanine Pirro’s Fox News show, offered a dispassionately violent suggestion about what could be done to stem the flow of migrants: “You can shoot invaders.”
A few days after, Rush Limbaugh issued a grim prognosis to his millions of radio listeners: If the immigrants from Central America weren’t stopped, theUnited States would lose its identity. “The objective is to dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture,” Mr. Limbaugh said, adding: “This is why people call this an invasion.”
There is a striking degree of overlap between the words of right-wing media personalities and the language used by the Texas man who confessed to killing 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso this month. In a 2,300-word screed posted on the website 8chan, the killer wrote that he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”
It remains unclear what, or who, ultimately shaped the views of the white, 21-year-old gunman, or whether he was aware of the media commentary. But his post contains numerous references to “invasion” and cultural “replacement” — ideas that, until recently, were relegated to the fringes of the nationalist right.
An extensive New York Times review of popular right-wing media platforms found hundreds of examples of language, ideas and ideologies that overlapped with the mass killer’s written statement — a shared vocabulary of intolerance that stokes fears centered on immigrants of color. The programs, on television and radio, reach an audience of millions.
…
At the start of the El Paso suspect’s screed, he refers to the “great replacement,” a white supremacist conspiracy theory based on a French book that claims the migration of minority groups can lead to a “genocide” of white culture.
The El Paso suspect, who confessed to the mass shooting last week, claimed in the document he posted to be defending against a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” The words “invasion” and “invaders” appear six times in the text, a stark parallel to the language heard on conservative television and talk radio today. The New York Times, [8/11/19]
Conservative media respond by attacking NY Times and mocking concern over white supremacist rhetoric
Radio host Rush Limbaugh suggested a 14-year-old quote from then-Sen. Barack Obama was as incendiary as his own language. Talk radio host Rush Limbaugh claimed of the New York Times story that “they worried about me because I called this invasion a ‘flood’” and then played an audio clip of remarks then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made in December 2005 in which he used the phrase “flood of illegals” to distance his own rhetoric from the shooter’s. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]
Limbaugh: NY Times story is just the latest attempt to sabotage me. During his second segment responding to the Times story, Limbaugh said it’s the latest in a long line of attempts to discredit him specifically and conservative media in general.
RUSH LIMBAUGH (HOST): I appreciate the emails that you have sent that I caught during the first breaks here in the program about not taking this thing in The New York Times today apparently seriously enough.
You know, when I know that there isn’t any truth to it, then that’s the primary reason I’m able to laugh at it. And I know the motivation behind it. They simply -- folks, they cannot defeat us on ideas or debates of ideas, in the arena of ideas.
It’s been a constant attempt by the left since I started this program to discredit me,to impugn me. And their purpose has been to make sure I don’t acquire an even larger audience. They are trying to poison the minds of people who don’t listen into never trying the program. That’s the objective of it, and that’s always been the objective.
…
Now we have an obviously deranged lunaticwho is just part of the crowd that has been influenced, but only influenced, by conservative media. This guy apparently, according to The New York Times, was immune to being influenced by anybody else. He was incapable of making up his own mind or coming to his own deranged conclusions on his own. And this has been the baseline, or foundational, attack on me and all of conservative media since it began.
It’s actually an attack on all of you.That you’re dumb, uninformed hicks who don’t know anything and don’t think anything every day until you get marching orders after listening to this program or as a result of listening. This has always been absurd. And I think it’s always been a very weak and very, very telling admission on their part, and that is they hold average people in contempt. Average people are not smart enough to think on their own. They’re not smart enough to live life the right way. They’re not smart enough to make the right decisions, even with their own money.
So I don’t get worked up by it anymore because it’s been a feature of 30 years. And I’ll tell you this. By righteously opposing it and standing here -- sitting here -- pounding my fists on the table and acting out is not gonna stop it, either. I just mock it. I just try to make fun of it. And then I welcome other people to the montage. Now they’re adding -- you know, it used to just be me. Now they’re throwing a bunch of other people into it because conservative media has expanded and become so big that now their efforts to destroy conservative media go beyond me. Premiere Radio Networks, *The Rush Limbaugh Show*, [8/12/19]
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro dismissed those linking conservative media rhetoric to the El Paso shooter as a “conspiracy theory.”
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): Again, I don’t like the language of “invasion,” and I don’t believe I’ve used it. If I had, I’m sorry I did, because I don’t think that it is correct. But I’m fairly certain I never did, because I never considered it a quote-unquote “invasion” when illegal immigrants cross our southern border. But -- and I certainly don’t believe in the idea of quote-unquote “racial replacement,” because I literally do not care about the races of people who live in America. I care about their ideas and their ideology.
But The New York Times decides that because there is language that sounds similar to stuff that Tucker Carlson has said, they’re now going to attribute this shooter to Tucker.
…
Again, this is a conspiracy theory:{. And a conspiracy theory, this one, is deliberately designed in order to link together basic conservative tropes about immigration with white supremacism. The Daily Wire, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:*The Ben Shapiro Show*:{, :(style="background-color:#eff3f7ff"):}:[8/12/19:{]}:
Breitbart News Daily's Alex Marlow: NY Times story is “such bad journalism,” and “they’re going to have blood on their hands” for taking the shooter’s manifesto seriously.
ALEX MARLOW (HOST): This is where I’m obsessed with this story from yesterday, where The New York Times had five bylines on how the El Paso killer echoed the incendiary words of conservative media stars and they cited something like 50 or 60 examples of [unintelligible] -- almost everyone on Fox News personalities using the term “invasion.” And this assumes so much -- it's such bad journalism because it is, it assumes a couple of key things.
First of all, it assumes that because the -- it takes the manifesto seriously, which I keep saying is a mistake that only will encourage more serial killers or more mass shooters. These are lunatic ravings that are designed to give attention. And to give attention to it, and to take it literally, it means that all you have to do is write something and then shoot people, and then you get a platform forever for whatever insane ideas you have. So I think the media taking these manifestos literally is actually going to -- they’re going to have blood on their hands if they keep doing this. But this has been the tactic of most of the media, to take the manifesto of the El Paso shooter seriously.
And the implication that if you used the word “invasion,” it means that you’re culpable for violence from one lunatic, who again, his idea of stopping the invasion was going to a Walmart and shooting a lot of people who were not invaders. That was his way of dealing with the invasion. So, it is -- and this just prints five bylines here. The New York Times. It takes five people to go through Fox News and say, “They used invasion,” the implication being this is why this guy shot people at a Walmart. It’s so stunningly irresponsible, even for The New York Times. Sirius XM Patriot, *Breitbart News Daily*, [8/12/19]
Conservative blogger and pundit Erick Erickson mocked the Times’ analysis, saying it “blames the dictionary for El Paso shooting.”
Oh how awful. The shooter in Texas used the same language the President and Rush Limbaugh have used to talk about the caravans of illegal aliens flooding our southern border.
The particular word is “invasion.” That’s what the President called it. That’s what Rush Limbaugh called it. That’s what the dictionary calls it.
I realize many journalists and progressives will seal clap this story. They’ll get excited by it and might even go blind in the bathroom stall while reading it. But the technical term for a horde of people crossing the border without permission is “invasion.”
...
Has there been incendiary rhetoric? Absolutely. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused the United States of running a concentration camp and a leftwing radical used that same language to justify his firebombing of an ICE facility.
Most of the media has willfully ignored that.
They’d rather blame Rush, Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and Donald Trump.
They might as well blame the dictionary. The Resurgent, [8/12/19]
Conservative radio host Mark Simone deflected to the Dayton, OH, shooter’s support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), calling the NY Times “a total joke.”
MARK SIMONE (HOST): Hey, the fake news has been -- you know, it’s been fake news for two years. Michael Goodwin wrote an incredible piece about The New York Times, how it went from being -- they used to call it the “Gray Lady,” the paper of record -- to being the sleaziest fake news organization ever. In fact, he’ll be with us later this hour and we’ll talk about it. But if you look at today's New York Times, they have an article, front page, above the fold, and it's a photograph of the El Paso shooter's manifesto with certain words underlined. It's a big -- right above the fold on the front page. The biggest place they could put it, and it's all about how look how the El Paso shooter's manifesto says similar things to the right-wing talking points. This is the big story. Now, nowhere in the paper does it mention that the Dayton shooter, his manifesto was all Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren stuff. The Dayton shooter a huge supporter of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, quoting their stuff left and right. You think we'll see that article tomorrow? You think we'll ever see that article? This is why The New York Times has become a total joke. WOR-AM, *Mark Simone Show*, [8/12/19]
Philadelphia talk show host Dom Giordano defended using “invasion” to describe the border situation and pushed the white supremacist “replacement” theory.
DOM GIORDANO (HOST): All right, the word of the day, according to The New York Times, front and center, is “invasion.” You can't say “invasion” anymore. Now they're going after not just Fox News, but talk radio, and they talk about how talk radio hosts and callers and others use this word “invasion.” Now, in fairness, I might start using it more now. I don't think I've used it enough. That's exactly what it is that's going on at the border. The numbers are staggering. It's a perfectly legitimate word.
Now the word they allege that the El Paso gunman used -- and they claim is being used a lot -- I guess Tucker Carlson -- and I see Tucker most nights -- is replacement. That’s the one you’re going to start to hear more. In other words, this plays into the big narrative that white working-class people believe they’re being replaced by people the Democrats, mainly open-borders crowd, want to bring into the country. And there are books, there are conspiracy theorists out there that this is an organized effort to do that exactly. Versus an outcome that comes out of this invasion. I mean, these people that were arrested in Mississippi -- did you see the outcome of this now?
…
Now these companies are going to be holding job fairs to have to replace these workers that were here illegally. And the theory is, and there seems to be some evidence of that, they’re going to have to up the wages and benefits. Bingo. So is that not a case of replacement, where they’re able to replace low-skilled high school graduates, or not even, that are in these tough jobs, meatpacking, and all that?
...
And by extension, even though I don’t think it’s a planned thing, it’s just an economic thing, they were replacing American workers in these industries. WPHT-AM, *The Dom Giordano Show*, [8/12/19]
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https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/16/the-myth-of-eurabia-how-a-far-right-conspiracy-theory-went-mainstream
guk no lnx
The long read
The myth of Eurabia: how a far-right conspiracy theory went mainstream
Once an obscure idea confined to the darker corners of the internet, the anti-Islam ideology is now visible in the everyday politics of the west. How did this happen? By Andrew Brown
Fri 16 Aug 2019 01.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 16 Aug 2019 07.48 EDT
In July 2011, a quiet European capital was shaken by a terrorist car bomb, followed by confused reports suggesting many deaths. When the first news of the murders came through, one small group of online commentators reacted immediately, even though the media had cautiously declined to identify the attackers. They knew at once what had happened – and who was to blame.
“This was inevitable,” explained one of the anonymous commenters. And it was just the beginning: “Only a matter of time before other European nations get a taste of their multicultural tolerance that they’ve been cooking for decades.”
“Europe has been infested with venomous parasitic vermin,” explained another. “Anything and everything is fine as long as they rape the natives and destroy the country, which they do,” said a third.
As the news grew worse, the group became more joyful and confident. The car bomb had been followed by reports of a mass shooting at a nearby camp for teenagers. One commenter was “almost crying of happiness” to be proved right about the dangers of Islam. “The massacre at the children’s camp,” another noted, “is a sickening reminder of just how evil and satanic the cult of Islam is.”
A couple of hours after the first reports of the bomb explosion in central Oslo, a few doubts emerged to cloud the picture: “Because the targets in the shooting were all good little leftists, won’t the shooter be played up as a rightwing extremist, whatever his actual motives?” one person asked.
When information emerged to suggest that the attacker might be a “tall Nordic guy”, one of the commenters, who called himself “Fjordman”, realised the true nature of the disaster: “Judging from some of the recent information, it must be treated as a serious possibility that this is actually some Timothy McVeigh, not a Muslim. It is too early to tell. If that is indeed the case … it would practically destroy my country, and make the working conditions for people like myself incredibly difficult for a long time to come, I’m afraid.”
The truth turned out to be worse than Fjordman feared. The massacre in Oslo had not been committed by Muslims. It was the work of a white supremacist, Anders Behring Breivik, who had detonated a bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, and then shot dead 69 others, many of them teenagers, at a youth camp run by Norway’s Labour party. And, according to the manifesto he published online, Breivik had been directly inspired by Gates of Vienna – the blog where all these comments appeared on the day of his massacre. Breivik called the ideology that justified his murders “The Vienna school”, after the blog.
Fjordman, whose real name is Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen, now lives in obscurity in provincial Norway. He outed himself as the man behind the pseudonym to a Norwegian tabloid in the weeks following the massacre – butmanaged to avoid testifying at Breivik’s trial, thanks to the intervention of high-powered lawyers paid for by the Middle East Forum, a rightwing American group that would later sponsor Tommy Robinson– real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – in Britain. Nonetheless, Jensen’s influence on Breivik, however indirect, had been considerable.
Breivik borrowed part of the title of his manifesto, A European Declaration of Independence, from one of Fjordman’s blog posts, and many of the chapters in it were simply reprintings of Fjordman’s postings on various blogs, mostly Gates of Vienna, but also a far-right and passionately anti-EU site called the Brussels Journal.
Gates of Vienna was, and still is, run by Edward “Ned” May, an American computer programmer from Washington DC. It was among the first in a wave of blogs that urged the US to war after the shock of 9/11, and almost certainly the most fanatically anti-Muslim. It takes its name from the siege of Vienna in 1683, when an Ottoman Turkish army was defeated by a Polish-led one. Its essential thesis is that this was only one battle in a long war and that Europe and its civilisation are constantly threatened by a Muslim invasion.
On these varied online forums, the narrative was always the same: a liberal cabal was conspiring with hostile Muslim powers to hand over the decent working people to Islam. This was the animating myth of the bloggers, calling themselves the “counter-jihad”, who congregated at Gates of Vienna and other like-minded sites – and inspired both the violence of Breivik and the message of the racist far-right parties that have transformed European politics in the past decade.
But all of these later conspiracy theories took inspiration from a founding myth of contemporary Islamophobia: an invented plot, known as “Eurabia”, to destroy European civilisation. This is the doctrine that Jensen promoted and Breivik acted on, a hidden underpinning of a movement that has changed the world.
Once an ideology confined to the kookier corners of the internet, the idea of Eurabia is now visible in the everyday politics of the US, Australia and most of Europe: when Trump tweets about stabbings in London and falsely claims that crime in Germany is “way up”, he is invoking the Eurabian myth, taken as fact on Fox News, that European liberals have surrendered their cities to Muslim criminals.
The spread of the belief that elites conspired to push Muslim immigration on their native populations is also the story of a conspiracy theory that was nourished on some of the very first blogs and message boards, started appearing in mainstream discourse after 9/11, and thentook on a life of its own, even while the supposed facts behind it were exposed as ridiculous. It is a lesson in the danger of half-truths, which are not only more powerful than truths but often more powerful than lies.
Eurabia is a term coined in the 70s that was resurfaced byGisèle Littman, an Egyptian-born Jewish woman who fled Cairo for Britain after the Suez crisis, and then moved to Switzerland in 1960 with her English husband. She wrote under the name of Bat Ye’or (Hebrew for “Daughter of the Nile”). In a series of books, originally written in French and published from the 1990s onward, she developed a grand conspiracy theory in which the EU, led by French elites, implemented a secret plan to sell out Europe to the Muslims in exchange for oil.
The original villain of Littman’s story was General Charles de Gaulle. It is difficult for an outsider to understand how De Gaulle, who led the French resistance to the Nazis and was probably the greatest conservative statesman in French history, could be reinvented as the man who betrayed western civilisation for money. But Littman had lived many years in France, and the French far right hated De Gaulle, and indeed tried several times to assassinate him. Not only had De Gaulle fought the Vichy government, he had also admitted defeat in the long and hideously bloody war of Algerian independence – granting an Arab Muslim country its freedom at the expense of the French-Christian settler population, who had to retreat to France (and whose descendants formed the backbone of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front).
Agreeing to Algerian independence was understood by the French far right as a betrayal. De Gaulle had been brought out of retirement and restored to power in 1958 because he was believed to be on the side of the settlers in their war, which was opposed by much of the left. And so, to the far right, the Mediterranean came to seem like the frontline in a long, shifting struggle between rival colonialisms, Christian and Muslim, in which the Muslims had won a great victory in Algeria. Where would their new advance stop?
Littman’s argument, framed by her experience in Egypt (which a French force had invaded, along with the British and Israelis, in 1956), was that Islam imposed a second-class status on all non-Muslims, whom they ruled. This status of “dhimmitude” – a coinage of Littman’s, meaning subjection to Islamic rule on pain of “forced conversion, slavery or death” – was now to be extended to Europe.
According to Littman, her books describe “Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilisation, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilisation that is subservient to the ideology of jihad and the Islamic powers that propagate it.”
She saw tentacles of the great conspiracy in committees of blameless tedium and obscurity, such as the Euro-Arab Dialogue, an institution set up by the European Economic Community and the Arab League in the 70s to promote greater discussion between the regions. Her conspiracy theory was dismissed in 2006 by the Israeli historian Robert Wistrich as “the protocols of the elders of Brussels”, but what mattered more was the place he chose to challenge her ideas: a conference in Jerusalem on antisemitism to which she had been invited despite her lack of academic status. September 11 had changed everything for Littman, she told Haaretz after the conference: “In the United States, I am certain that the September 11 attacks woke people up, including the Jewish community that had previously ignored me, because it belongs more to the left.”
She explained to Haaretz the future she saw for Europe. “We are now heading towards a total change in Europe, which will be more and more Islamicised and will become a political satellite of the Arab and Muslim world.”
This was the idea that the Norwegian Jensen was enchanted by, and which, as Fjordman, he transmitted to Anders Breivik.
[Marine Le Pen, president of France’s far-right National Rally (formerly National Front) party, applauds the former US presidential adviser Steve Bannon after his speech at the party’s annual congress in March 2018.]
Jensen is unusual among Eurabia believers in that he has actually had some experience of the Muslim world and even speaks Arabic. He is the son of a socialist politician in Norway and studied Arabic in Cairo – his earlier university studies in Bergen had included English (which he writes fluently), Russian, Arabic and Middle Eastern history. In 2000, he had been interviewed by the local paper back in Norway, and spoke enthusiastically about his hosts in Egypt: “Outside the tourist areas, you meet friendly, hospitable, curious and open people who want to get to know you. I have been part of their daily lives. We’ve been invited to their homes, and talked and smoked shisha together.”
That was Jensen’s first encounter with Islam, and he was still in Cairo at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He says he saw then that there were some Muslims who celebrated the slaughter, and he also saw that this wasn’t reported in the Norwegian papers. The next year, he worked for the Norwegian Refugee Council in the disputed city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.Unusually among Scandinavians who have worked with Palestinians in Israel, he identified with the Israelis.He narrowly escaped a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, at a bar where two of his colleagues had been killed in another attack the previous year. The experience cemented his growing fear and loathing of Islam.
The fact that the Norwegian press took a generally pro-Palestinian line while he and his friends had been the victims of Palestinian terrorism helped to convince Jensen that Islam was an existential threat to European civilisation which the politically correct establishment was wilfully ignoring. Like Littman, he seems not to acknowledge any element of nationalism in Palestinian consciousness: it is all either Arab or Muslim. In fact, the belief that Islam is hostile to national consciousness is quite widely held on the right: the philosopher Roger Scruton brought it up in a controversial speech on nationality in Hungary in 2013, in which he contrasted European Christian nations with Islamic empires.
In 2003, Jensen returned to Norway, where he attempted to make a name for himself as a public intellectual. At first, he was hostile to feminism, accusing feminists of destroying Norwegian manhood. But the focus of his concerns soon switched to Islam. He started writing under the pseudonym “Norwegian Kafir” on an American blog calledLittle Green Footballs, which loudly and fervently supported the invasion of Iraq. From then on, his writing appeared in English, on American-hosted blogs. There, he hammered into shape the narrative of elites, specially identified with the EU, who are destroying and betraying Europe by the deliberate encouragement of mass immigration.
At this point in time, the Eurabian conspiracy appealed largely to those who had long perceived a conflict between Islam and the Judeo-Christian west – with Israel as a beleaguered and persecuted outpost of western values. These people, largely on the American right, were among the earliest exponents of Eurabia – but as they never ceased to complain, theirs was not an attitude very widely shared in Europe. What would soon supply the emotional force of the fantasy was another set of ideas about global migration, less conspiratorial in their essence, but much more widely accepted among generally apolitical Europeans. These, also, originated in France, where they were known as the“great replacement”.
The idea of the great replacement had its origin in a blatantly racist French novel of the 1970s, The Camp of the Saints, in which France is overthrown by an unarmed invasion of starving, sex-crazed Indian refugees when the French army is not prepared to fire on them. Themoral of the book is that western civilisation can only be saved by a willingness to slaughter poor brown people. Steve Bannon, among the founders of the rightwing news site Breitbart and a former adviser to President Trump, has referred to it repeatedly.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, the naked racism of The Camp of the Saints kept it largely out of public debate. But the rise of Islam as a global force allowed the question to be recast. If the threatening masses were defined by religion rather than by skin colour, then hating them could be presented as an intellectual commitment rather than a racist one.
And the paranoid did have a large, shadowy half-truth to fall back on. The demographic shrinkagefacing Europe is real and undeniable, and it was obvious in the early years of this century, too. So are the much greater birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. In 2002, Russia and Pakistan both had populations of about 145 million; by 2017, Russia’s population was 144 million while Pakistan’s was 200 million.
The next stage in the development of a xenophobic populist worldview was for the two narratives to merge, so that Islam and Muslims became both a conspiracy and a demographic threat.
The 9/11 attacks changed attitudes to Islam in much of Europe and the US. Israel and the US now shared a sense of being under attack from Muslims. Without 9/11, Littman would have remained an obscure crank, and Jensen more obscure still. But the assault on the twin towers unleashed an immense backlash of wounded American pride and nationalism that led to the devastation of two whole countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, and countless deaths. It also fuelled a demand for explanations. Theories about the unique malevolence and danger of Islam answered a popular hunger. George W Bush declared at the time that the US had no quarrel with Islam, but many of his compatriots disagreed.
One of the many bad fruits of 9/11 was the new atheist movement, a phenomenon marked by mutual self-praise and undeviating hostility to Islam. Even if the ostensible target of much of the hostility was Christianity, the new atheists tend to consider Islam far worse and more “religious” a religion. The American writer Sam Harris’s breakthrough book The End of Faith from 2004 now reads like Bat Ye’or without the inconvenient scaffolding of easily disproved facts. “We are at war with Islam,” he writes. “It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists … Armed conflict ‘in the defence of Islam’ is a religious obligation for every Muslim man ... Islam, more than any religion humans have ever devised, has the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.”
In the run-up to the Iraq war, and after the invasion, coverage in American newspapers and on television was, to a European eye, jingoistic in the extreme. The possibility of defeat was unthinkable. Nonetheless, a new wave of bloggers began using the term “MSM” for “mainstream media” as a disparaging reference to the large media organisations’ pretended neutrality. One of the earliest and most influential of these was Little Green Footballs, founded and run by Charles Johnson, a Los Angeles-based former session guitarist with an interest in web design. It was typical of the moment that he was an opinionated amateur with no credentials, whose real advantage was that he could build websites at a time when this required some programming skill.
Jensen, commenting on Little Green Footballs as Norwegian Kafir, made it a distribution point for Eurabian ideas. Another was Gates of Vienna itself, run by Ned May under the moniker Baron Bodissey after a sage in the sci-fi novels of Jack Vance. Then there was Jihad Watch, run by the American author Robert Spencer. Both Spencer and his frequent collaborator Pam Geller were banned from the UK in 2013 for making statements likely to foster hatred and violence between communities.
The only European blog of note in this constellation was the fanatically anti-EU site the Brussels Journal, where the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan was a contributor. The Brussels Journal was run by Paul Beliën, a far-right Belgian journalist and author. Jensen was active on all these sites, taking part in discussions in which the Eurabian beliefs gave rise to something that called itself the counter-jihad movement.
Nowadays, when Facebook effortlessly spreads disinformation around the world, it is difficult to recapture the sense of revelation, and of belonging, that once accompanied the discovery of a new blog. The cramped but, to its adherents, strangely comforting thought world of the counter-jihad blogs turned politics into a gigantic online game. Anyone could play and everyone could find in it their inner child: “Some people think I’m weird; some think I am exceptionally intelligent,” Jensen had told a reporter when he was still a student in Cairo.
The boundaries between these blogs and the “MSM” they affected to despise were porous. Some writers aimed for a high-minded tone about the dangers of Muslim immigration: the former Financial Times columnist Christopher Caldwell published in 2009 a book, Reflections on a Revolution in Europe, that recapitulates the idea of a slow-moving Muslim barbarian invasion from a position of Olympian disdain: “Immigrants also bring a lot of disorder, penury and crime … Muslim culture is unusually full of messages laying out the practical advantages of procreation … If you walk north across the Piazza Della Repubblica in Turin, you see, mutatis mutandis, what the Romans saw. To the east, two well-preserved Roman towers remain, and so do the walls built to separate citizens from barbarians. Today, in the space of about 60 seconds on foot, you pass from chic shops and wine bars through a lively multiethnic market into one of Europe’s more menacing north African slums.”
Some were less highbrow. In 2004, the Daily Telegraph gave a column to the Canadian prophet of American greatness Mark Steyn, who had originally made his name as a witty critic of musical theatre. Doom and horror was all he saw in Europe’s future. As early as 2002, he said: “I find it easier to be optimistic about the futures of Iraq and Pakistan than, say, Holland or Denmark” – a remark he was still proudly quoting for Telegraph readers in 2005, when Iraq had become a slaughterhouse.
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In terms that anticipated Jensen, Breivik and the alleged manifesto of the man charged with the Christchurch massacre, Steyn wrote (and the Telegraph published) this prophecy: “In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography – except through civil war. The Yugoslavs figured that out. In the 30 years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43% to 31% of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26% to 44%.”
[painting naked white? woman sucks finger, others gawk; ‘Europeans, vote for AfD, so that Europe will never become ‘Eurabia’!’ reads a campaign poster in Berlin for the far-right party during this year’s European elections.
Compare Steyn in 2005 with the manifesto of Patrick Crusius, who confessed to murdering 22 people in El Paso earlier this month: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion ... America is rotting from the inside out, and peaceful means to stop this seem to be nearly impossible.”
In 2007, the believers in a counter-jihad began to meet up in the real world. After a preliminary meeting of bloggers, commentators and Danish and Norwegian sympathisers in Copenhagen, attended by Jensen, a conference was arranged by May and the far-right Flemish party Vlaams Belang, in Brussels in 2007. This brought together most of the ideologues of Eurabia, as they attempted to transform it from an idea into a movement. Littman was the keynote speaker. Others present were Geller and Robert Spencer from the US, and Gerard Batten, later briefly the leader of Ukip in Britain. Ted Ekeroth, of the nationalist, rightwing Sweden Democrats, also attended.
As both Ukip and the Sweden Democrats rose to become powerful political forces, anxieties about terrorism were subsumed into much wider anxieties about demography, and about status within the old order. The American anthropologist Scott Atran has carried out extensive research into the mindset of the young men who become Islamic terrorists: the combination of wounded pride with the delight of belonging to a movement which has both global, apocalyptic significance and a living presence in a friendship group is tremendously important in recruiting jihadis. The same dynamic operates among their enemies: Breivik was remarkable chiefly in that he was so solipsistic that he could radicalise himself without the aid of any friends in real life, only those he imagined on the internet. He had at one stage approached his intellectual idol, Jensen, via email, who brushed him off as “boring as a vacuum cleaner salesman”.
You do not have to be a jihadi to feel the tug of these compulsions. The counter-jihadis, just as much as their enemies, believed they were entering an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. This is a century of wounded pride and anxieties about status for almost everyone.
Despite all this, there were some signs, even before the Breivik killings, that the original Eurabian front would break up. Those who were opposed to immigrants in general began to separate from those who hated Muslims in particular.Johnson, the founder of Little Green Footballs, excommunicated most of his followers in 2010 because of their increasing closeness to parties of western Europe that he regarded as being descended from fascists – the Vlaams Belang in Belgium and the Sweden Democrats, although he also denounced the English Defence League. Johnson was a genuine philosemite, who could not forgive the taint of antisemitism.
The anti-immigrant right had good reasons for separating itself from the anti-Muslim right. If the logic of the “Vienna school” – Jensen, Spencer and Geller, May and Littman – led inexorably to civil war and the righteous slaughter of Muslims and their leftie enablers, then most of the right shrank back from it. Commenters such as Douglas Murray and Caldwell quite genuinely believed that Breivik was insane, and that his actions had no relation to the ideas that he espoused. There may in this have been an element of self-deception, but it is also a testimony to the sort of instinctive, unthinking decency we all need sometimes to rescue us from the consequences of our ideas. It seemed that some kind of pragmatism would prevail.
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The hope now seems deceptive. What changed this was above all the election of the US president, Donald Trump, whose then adviser Bannon was a believer in a “brutal, bloody ... global war” against “Islamic fascism”. They showed that there was a huge constituency for racialised hatred and despair and – for them – no real negative consequences, electoral or otherwise, in pandering to it.
Since Breivik’s massacre, his own beliefs have only become more widespread.They have spread into the politics of all European countries. In the campaign for the European elections this May, the German far-right party AfD ran posters showing a naked white woman being pawed by dark-skinned men in Arab headgear. One had stuck his fingers in her unresisting mouth. “Europeans, vote for AfD, so that Europe will never become ‘Eurabia’,” said the caption. Millions of people who have never heard of Bat Ye’or, of Fjordman, or even of Breivik and Bannon, now understand that poster at a glance, and no amount of evidence will shake their certainty. They now believe all politics comes down to the words of one of Trump’s more recent tweets: “The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them … Be strong & prosper, be weak & die!”
But who, in this situation, are the losers, and who are the strong? Last week, in an apparent attempt to emulate Breivik, a rich, disaffected young Norwegian, Philip Manshaus, shot his way through the entrance gates to a mosque in the upmarket suburb of Oslo where he lived and started firing at the congregation. He was wrestled to the ground by an unarmed 65-year-old Muslim, Mohammed Rafiq, who then held him down, with the help of another man, until the police arrived. On the Gates of Vienna blog, this episode was not deemed worthy of mention. Instead, its devoted readers were told that Muslims had been responsible for a recent outbreak of animal cruelty in Sweden.
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