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:REALLY GOOD ANALYSIS
AN 10 25
A grim-faced President Donald J. Trump looks out at the reader, under the headline “LAW AND ORDER.” Graffiti pictured in the corner of the White House Facebook post reads “Death to ICE.” Beneath that, a photo of protesters, choking on tear gas. And underneath it all, a smaller headline: “President Trump Deploys 2,000 National Guard After ICE Agents Attacked, No Mercy for Lawless Riots and Looters.”
The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.
The post is not an outlier.
In the Trump administration, White House social media posts often blur the lines between politics and entertainment, and between reality and illusion.
The White House has released AI images of Trump as the Pope, as Superman and as a Star Wars Jedi, ready to do battle with “Radical Left Lunatics” who would bring “Murderers, Drug Lords … & well-known MS-13 Gang Members” into the country.
Most recently, on the weekend of the No Kings protests, both Trump and the White House released a video of the president wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet, from which he dispenses feces onto a crowd of protesters below.
Underpinning it all is a calculated political strategy: an appeal to Trump’s political base – largely white, working-class, rural or small-town, evangelical and culturally conservative.
As scholars who study communication in politics and the media, we believe the White House’s rhetoric and style is part of a broader global change often found in countries experiencing increased polarization and democratic backsliding.
White House style
In the past, national leaders generally favored a professional tone, whether on social or traditional media. Their language was neutral and polished, laced with political jargon.
While populist political communication has become more common along with the proliferation of social media, the communication norms are further altered in Trump White House social media posts.
They are partisan, theatrical and exaggerated. Their tone is almost circuslike. The process of governing is portrayed as a reality TV show, in which political roles are performed with little regard for real-world consequences. Vivid color schemes and stylized imagery convert political messaging into visual spectacle. The language is colloquial, down-to-earth.
Just as other influencers in a variety of domains might create an emotional bond by tailoring social media messages, content, products and services to the needs and likes of individual customers, the White House tailors its content to the beliefs, language and worldview of Trump’s political base.
In doing so, the White House echoes a broad, growing trend in political communication, portraying Trump as “a champion of the people” and using direct and informal communication that appeals to fear and resentment.
Trump White House social media makes no effort to promote social unity or constructive dialogue, or reduce polarization – and often heightens it. Undocumented immigrants, for example, are often portrayed as inherently evil. White House social media amplifies dramatic, emotionally charged content.
In one video, Trump recites a poem about a kind woman who takes in a snake, a stand-in for an immigrant who in reality is a dangerous serpent. “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite,” Trump recites.
Talking to the base
While some scholars have called the White House social media style “amateurish,” that hasn’t resulted in change.
The lack of response to negative feedback is partially explained by the strategic goal of these communications: to appeal to the frustrations of Trump’s deeply disaffected political base, which seems to revel in the White House social media style.
Scholars identify a large number of these voters as “the precariat,” a group whose once-stable, union-protected jobs have been outsourced or replaced with low-wage, insecure service work. These workers, many former Democrats, can no longer count on a regular paycheck, benefits or work they can identify with.
As a result, they are more likely to support political candidates whom they believe will respond to their economic instability.
In addition, many of these voters blame a breakdown in what they perceive as the racial pecking order for a loss of social status, especially when compared with more highly educated workers. Many of these workers distrust the media and other elite institutions they feel have failed them. Research shows that they are highly receptive to messages that confirm their grievances and that many regard Trump as their champion.
Trump and the White House social media play to this audience.
On social media, the president is free to violate norms that anger his critics but have little effect on his supporters, who view the current political system as flawed. One example: A White House Valentine’s Day communication that said “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”
In addition, Trump and the White House social media use the president’s status as a celebrity, coupled with comedy and spectacle, to immunize the administration from fallout, even among some of its critics.
Trump’s exaggerated gestures, over-the-top language, his lampooning of opponents and his use of caricature to ridicule whole categories of people – including Democrats, the disabled, Muslims, Mexicans and women – is read by his political base as a playful and entertaining take down of political correctness. It may form a sturdy pillar of his support.
But prioritizing entertainment over facts has long-term significance.
Trump’s communication strategies are already setting a global precedent, encouraging other politicians to adopt similar theatrical and polarizing tactics that distort or deny facts.
These methods may energize some audiences but risk alienating others. Informed political engagement is reduced, and democratic backsliding is increasingly a reality.
Although the communication style of the White House is playful and irreverent, it has a serious goal: the diffusion of ideological messages whose intent is to create a sense of strength and righteousness among its supporters.
In simple terms, this is propaganda designed to persuade citizens that the government is strong, its enemies evil and that fellow citizens – “real Americans” – think the same way.
Scholars observe that the White House projection of the often comical images of authority echoes the visual style of authoritarian governments. Both seek to be seen as in control of the social and political order and thereby to discourage dissent.
The chief difference between the two is that in a deeply polarized democracy such as the U.S., citizens interpret these displays of authority in sharply different ways: They build opposition among Trump opponents but support among supporters.
The rising intolerance that results erodes social cohesion, undermines support for democratic norms and weakens trust in institutions. And that opens the door to democratic backsliding.
Andrew Rojecki, Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago and Tanja Aitamurto, Associate Professor of Communication, *University of Illinois Chicago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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When Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, the progressive Democrat expected to have frequent policy differences not only with Republicans, but also, with centrists in her own party. However, attacks on Omar from the far right — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and pundits at Fox News — go way beyond policy disagreements, painting her as fundamentally anti-American and an outright enemy of the United States. And on June 9, Omar tweeted a racist, threatening message her office received following a tweet by Boebert and the June 7 publication of an anti-Omar article by Houston Keene on Fox News' website.
In a June 8 tweet, Boebert — a supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy cult — described Omar as an "honorary member of Hamas" and one of the "terrorist [NOTE SUBS COMMIE-] sympathizers in Congress." Members of QAnon were among the violent extremists involved in the January 6 insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol Building.
In her June 9 tweet, Omar — who is a Muslim and is originally from Somalia — noted that it isn't unusual for her to be "inundated with death threats." And she cited the call that she tweeted as a prime example. That racist caller can be heard saying, "Muslims are terrorists. And she is a raghead n*****. And every anti-American communist piece of shit that works for her, I hope you get what's fucking coming for you."
Omar tweeted that calls like the one she posted are "incited directly by articles like this" — a reference to Keene's article for Fox News' website — and "far-right politicians like" Boebert.
TW: Every time I speak out on human rights I am inundated with death threats. Here is one we just got. “Muslims ar… https://t.co/tKLay3dwdl
— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286390.0
This is incited directly by articles like this and far right politicians like this. And it is enabled by a politic… https://t.co/6Ogf2nXnMX
— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286456.0
Here are some reactions to the racist, threatening call Omar's office received:
@IlhanMN Its really ironic since Boebert is literally a terrorist sympathizer (if not directly involved) when it co… https://t.co/RBMVTRqWyJ
— AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo (@AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo) 1623287545.0
@IlhanMN This is truly disgusting. You deserve so much better.
— Tammy Ellis ???? (@Tammy Ellis ????) 1623291291.0
@IlhanMN I hope you're reporting these messages to the FBI. Sometimes all it takes is a visit for people to realize they've crossed a line.
— Fran Adkins (@Fran Adkins) 1623287261.0
@IlhanMN Damn shame. So sorry you have to deal with that.
— Matt Gordon (@Matt Gordon) 1623286921.0
@MaryWalsh_NL @IlhanMN She was literally tweeting the location of her colleagues when violent fascists were stormin… https://t.co/AGldXKhIOx
— ThisIsItChief SupportBDS???? (@ThisIsItChief SupportBDS????) 1623312669.0
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https://theintercept.com/2020/08/24/fbi-fusion-center-environmental-wind/
fEDERAL AND STATE law enforcement officers gathered in the Midwest in February 2019 to practice their responses to a fictional threat: wind farm sabotage. They divided into four teams and pretended to be the bad guys, environmental saboteurs targeting the large grids of turbines that turn the wind into electric power. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Omaha, Nebraska, field office and the Iowa Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center had organized the “red hat” exercise, meant to provide insight into the minds of environmental activist adversaries that didn’t exist.
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Each team developed an attack plan. One proposed ramming wind turbine infrastructure with a vehicle. Another sought to plant explosives on electrical transformers. And — although U.S. environmental saboteurs tend to not use guns — two of the teams suggested using firearms to attack electrical substations from a distance. The fact that cops themselves planned the attacks may have created a “bias toward the use of firearms,” the FBI later acknowledged in a pair of reports on the exercise obtained by The Intercept. However, the federal agents also concluded that “Environmental Extremists Likely Would Use Firearms To Circumvent Perceived Electrical Infrastructure Site Security Measures.”
The exercise was not conducted due to any imminent threat — a carefully noted fact included in the December 2019 and March 2020 reports. “Neither FBI Omaha nor the Iowa DOI/FC has intelligence suggesting environmental extremists intend to attack wind farms in Iowa,” both reports repeatedly state.
Why, then, spend public dollars on FBI role-playing?Because the energy industry wanted it. The exercise came “at the request of an USBUS private energy sector partner, following 14 environmental extremist attacks against transportation infrastructure in Iowa that services the energy sector, particularly oil pipelines,” said one of the documents about the exercise. Privately owned and operated companies and industry groups — none of which were named in the reports — were intimately involved in the exercise: An Iowa utility company and a wind energy lobbyist group provided information to help judge the fake attack plans and assess the fake “threat environment,” and an industry representative joined two of the teams, posing as an insider accomplice.
Though there was no indication an attack on wind power sites would occur, the report went on to say, if one hypothetically did, it could proliferate into many, with each set of attackers becoming more skilled in evading security and capture. “As attack methods become more sophisticated,” the report warned, “the chance for large-scale failure of the electrical grid becomes more likely.” Law enforcement ought to be on the lookout for activists undergoing gun training, activists in rural locations with large infrastructure, and activists casing wind power sites, the report advised. Neither the FBI, the Iowa Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center, nor the federal Department of Homeland Security, which helps coordinate regional fusion centers, responded to the Intercept’s questions about the documents.
The red hat exercise was the product of a national network of public-private law enforcement and security partnerships forged in the wake of 9/11. The Iowa fusion center is one of 79 intelligence hubs like it, designed to enhance coordination between federal and local police as well as select private sector players. Given their close collaboration with corporate partners, the centers serve as a vector for transmitting industry interests to law enforcement.
The reports on the joint wind power security exercise were obtained by The Intercept as part of BlueLeaks, a massive trove of law enforcement documents hacked from government web sites and published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets. The documents provide a detailed picture of how state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies have used the label “environmental extremist”to guide their policing. More than a dozen documents collected and disseminated by law enforcement fusion centers and reviewed by The Intercept describe the wild speculation, threat inflation, and close collaboration with the private sector inherent in law enforcement’s pursuit of eco-activists branded as extremists.
With industry encouragement and cooperation, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement agencies have long kept a wary eye on activists organizing against energy projects. Government officials have slapped the label of “environmental extremist” on individuals who have locked themselves inside oil and gas pipelines, turned off the valves controlling oil flow, or physically damaged construction equipment — as well as a range of people who have shared viewpoints or had contact with such activists. The moniker serves to place Indigenous and environmental defenders linked to relatively minor property damage or civil disobedience in a category alongside white supremacists conducting mass killings. Both are officially declared “domestic extremists” for the federal government’s purposes.
Information about such “environmental extremists” then gets shared, as it did in the wind power exercise, through the fusion centers, to both government officials and private sector partners. From the beginning, energy industry projects have received favored status and attention from the centers as “critical infrastructure.”
Brendan McQuade, a sociologist at the University of Southern Maine and the author of “Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision,” said he had never seen anything like the Iowa fusion center documents. “It’s paranoid threat inflation and a totally indefensible depoliticization of what might be the most important political question of our time, which is, What are we going to do about climate change? This erases that question and views anyone who is seriously committed to it as criminal.”
“I’m worried about the way this will polarize the struggle and justify aggressive responses to direct action,” he said.
Mike German, a liberty and national security fellow with the Brennan Center, who formerly worked as an FBI agent, added that the collaboration with the private sector serves to misplace public resources. “There are many entities out there that are at possible risk of some kind of criminal act. And yet you don’t see community groups who are at a threat of white supremacy being invited by the FBI to talk about how they can protect themselves,” he said. “They’re spending security resources on hypothetical threats against favorite entities while ignoring real threats against other communities or private entities.”
The Elusive “Environmental Extremist”
“Environmental extremism” is among a handful of categories of so-called domestic extremism — including “racially motivated violent extremism,” “anti-government extremism,” “animal rights extremism,” and “abortion extremism” — that the FBI monitors closely.
Who exactly are these eco-extremists? Under a section titled “environmental rights extremism,” a November 2019reference guide to “violent extremism” published by the Colorado Information Analysis Center, a fusion center, and other state security agencies, which was released as part of BlueLeaks, lists a range of groups. Among others, they listed the animal liberation group Direct Action Everywhere, which has removed animals from factory farms in rescue actions, and the Earth Liberation Front, which had its heyday committing arsons in the ’90s. Also listed were East Boulder County United, a grassroots organization that promotes community consultation on oil and gas development; and 350 Colorado, the local chapter of a well-known national climate organization. Both groups have participated in and promoted nonviolent civil disobedience as a tactic to force public officials to appropriately address the climate crisis.
In a statement,Colorado Information Analysis Center spokesperson Micki Trost provided a justification for the labels, “We want to ensure that individuals have the opportunity to exercise their First Amendment rights in a safe and impactful manner,” Trost said. “We believe that information sharing on groups that have perpetrated crimes and disrupted peaceful protests helps local law enforcement better protect those that are lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights.”
According to an FBI and Department of Homeland Securitydocument, “environmental extremists” primarily target the “extraction, use, and transportation of fossil fuels.” BlueLeaks documents from various regional fusion and homeland security centers, as well as other federal agencies, point to an array of fossil fuel industry opponents, including the climate direct action group Extinction Rebellion; the Oglala Lakota opponent of the Dakota Access pipeline Red Fawn Fallis, who remains imprisoned after being accused of firing gunshots during a struggle with law enforcement at a Standing Rock protest; Arctic drilling protesters who chained themselves to a ship in Washington; and anti-oil industry activists, who shut off a pipeline by turning a valve.
the only recent U.S. incident listed in the documents that resulted in loss of life involved Rory Gunderman, who, according to the South Dakota Fusion Center and Wyoming Criminal Intelligence Center, wasassociated with the movement Deep Green Resistancebefore he allegedly attempted to carry out a plot in 2015 to shut down the power grid. After police attempted to apprehend Gunderman, he took his own life.
Indeed, in various documents law enforcement agencies underline something that many environmental activists have themselves pointed out: Unlike other types of extremism, “environmental extremism” is aimed at property, not people. One bulletin published by the FBI and DHS noted the threat that such activists pose has decreased over the years and is lower than other types of extremism. However, their “desire” to commit crime “has not waned.”
Nevertheless, authorities are keen to view “environmental extremists” as a major threat. An FBI memo urges partner law enforcement agencies to coordinate with the Bureau on any incident involving environmental extremism. Federal agents, the memo says, are interested in who is training “environmental extremists,” in addition to knowing which purported extremists are involved in domestic or international criminal organizations, where they have traveled, and how they communicate.
Protesters gather in front of San Francisco City Hall during a protest in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline on March 10, 2017.
Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
And so law enforcement has continued to monitor activists’ activity, including through an online discussion forum, an environmental organization’s web site, and a bulletin that described how tactics utilized in the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline could be repurposed against the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline in Minnesota, documents show.
To prepare law enforcement for encountering such alleged extremists, police attended trainings, including one offered in October 2019 by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. According to one of the documents, a flyer, the training would be led by Steven Stanley, a “certified anti-terrorism specialist” working for the Sigma Group who planned to cover a remarkable range of “domestic terrorism topics.” His focus would be on ideologically left-leaning viewpoints, including “Global Anarchist Activity, Social and Global Justice Groups, Anti-War Activists/Militants, Anti-Nuclear Activists/Militants, Anti-Pipeline Activists/Militants, Anti-Police Movement, AntifaMovement (Antifascists), Animal Liberation Activists/Militants, Eco-Terrorism, Radical Environmental Groups, Radical Unions, [and] Protests Protest Activity/Dynamics.” Stanley also promised to show attendees a “private collection consisting of 40 years of radical books, magazines, patches, stickers, clothing, pictures, videos, DVD’S and much more.” Fifty-eight people registered for the course.
German, the former FBI agent, said that the result of so much attention on environmental activists is visible in police’s response to protests. “We’ve had a variety of unruly protests by armed, far-right militia groups that the police react to in a very calm manner,” he said. “And yet when you see a group of environmentalists or people who might look similar to the way environmentalists at a protest look, you see a hyper-aggressive police response, even though the level of violence coming from those groups is significantly lower.”
Comparing Pipeline Activists to Al Qaeda
In most of the fusion center documents revealed by BlueLeaks, it’s the language of “extremism” that suggests that law enforcement officers perceive a common thread between environmental activists and violent militants. One document, though, explicitly applied the lens the U.S. military used on groups like Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq to community members opposing two natural gas pipelines in Virginia.
In September 2019, the Virginia Fusion Center issued a briefing titled “Criminal Environmental Groups Study and Adopt Militant Insurgent Strategiesto Advance Goals in Virginia.” The Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipeline projects were in the midst of approval processes and under construction in the state at the time. A range of activists, environmental experts, and neighbors had organized to observe construction, file lawsuits, voice their dissent at public meetings, and hold protests — including a series of tree sits, where project opponents camped out in trees in the pathway of the pipeline.
The document concluded that “criminal environmental groups” organizing against pipeline construction would likely use the same four tactics as Al Qaeda: provocation, intimidation, protraction, and exhaustion.
Asked for comment, Virginia State Police Public Relations Director Corinne Geller explained to The Intercept: “This particular report was designed to provide regional law enforcement with an enhanced awareness of criminal activity that has been associated with various groups protesting environmental interests nationwide and worldwide. Sharing common tactics and strategies associated with criminal activity is invaluable to law enforcement agencies’ efforts to engage with and for the protection of local citizens/communities, as well as for the purpose of officer safety.”
Related
How a Movement That Never Killed Anyone Became the FBI’s No. 1 Domestic Terrorism Threat
Provocation was used by Al Qaeda, the fusion center report claimed, when militants destroyed the Al-Askari Mosque in Karbala, Iraq, in 2004 in an effort to set off a violent response in the majority Shia country toward the Sunni minority. (The mosque bombing actually took place in Samarra in 2006.) In turn, provocation, the document claimed, was also used by “criminal environmental groups” in 2016 in North Dakota, when private security contractors unleashed their dogs on Dakota Access pipeline opponents —the suggestion being that the Indigenous water protectors strategically incited the dog attacks to stir up conflict.
Insurgent groups use the tactic of intimidation, the document continued, by threatening violence against local community members who don’t submit to their cause. An individual associated with a “criminal environmental group” deployed a comparable tactic in Virginia, the document suggests, when they posted a comment on the Facebook page of a hotel that provided rooms to pipeline construction workers. “I hope that money lasts you for a lifetime because the people will be there every day making sure you never earn another dollar for the rest of your existence,” the comment said. The threat of protest was apparently comparable to a threat of physical violence.
The fusion center even quoted 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden describing his goal of exhausting the U.S. government by “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” Then it went on to note that “criminal environmental groups” would likely try to exhaust law enforcement and private businesses’ resources by building camps and distributing “extremist propaganda” to residents impacted by construction. Although the document title suggested activists were studying these tactics, the fusion center provided no evidence that was so.
In small print at the bottom, the fusion center wrote, “This document is not designed to compare criminal environmental groups to al-Qa’ida and associated movements” — despite the fact that it did exactly that.
The report repeatedly cited the book “The Accidental Guerrilla,” by David Kilcullen, a senior counterinsurgency adviser to the U.S. during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a source. “Overall, in terms of content, the document doesn’t strike me as objectionable,” Kilcullen said when asked to comment on the document. “I am sure if they knew it was going to be leaked the authors might have framed the language differently, but it is an accurate reflection of how things work in these kinds of situations.”
In a recent article for theFoundation for the Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative Washington think tank where he is an adviser, Kilcullen argued that, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the U.S. might considered as being amid an “incipient insurgency.” He told the Intercept, “What’s perhaps a bit confronting is that people are now applying that logic to the United States — but the shocking thing is not that this is inaccurate, but rather that it’s now an increasingly accurate way of thinking about what’s happening on our streets and elsewhere.”
McQuade, the University of Southern Maine sociologist, said that, although this document was distinct from other fusion center documents he’s reviewed throughout his research, it shouldn’t be viewed as an aberration. “This is an insight into how security professionals view politics,” he said. “When your job is to defend the status quo at all costs, it isn’t a ridiculous overreach to apply a theory for defeating an armed movement in a developing country that has been in a civil war for decades against a protest movement in a country that isn’t at civil war.”
The danger, German said, was that law enforcement officers might unthinkingly take the document seriously. “I would put myself in the place of a brand-new police officer trying to protect his or her community, and not having a deep background in terrorism research, receiving this document,” German said. “Now anybody doing any activism in my community, I would automatically perceive as a threat — not just a threat of engaging in civil disobedience or vandalism but actually a terrorist threat.”
The fusion center claimed some individuals would be recruited into Virginia’s “criminal environmental groups” through what the unnamed author called “accidental guerrilla syndrome,” a process that leads someone who normally would not join an insurgent group to fight alongside one.
State and local law enforcement monitor an anti-pipeline protest site to make sure that no attempts are made to give protesters food or water. The pipeline opponents are occupying trees high above the ground outside Roanoke, Va., to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline Project on April 2, 2018.
Photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The proliferation of tree sits were signs that “accidental guerrilla syndrome” was already in the “contagion phase,” the document says. The memo pointed to Giles County, where tree-sitters with Appalachians Against Pipelines had gained support from neighbors, and Montgomery County, where a tree sit called Yellow Finch has been in place for two years. “If tree sits like these continue to develop, it may become more difficult for pipeline construction to continue and support for it may decrease,” the fusion center document concluded.
“If they can compare us to Al Qaeda, they can do anything to us,” said Dustie Pinesap, commenting from atop the Yellow Finch tree sit. “Last I checked we never picked up a Kalashnikov. We tend to see property damage or denial of use of property or any sort of damage or impeding of property rights as violent.”
Indeed, the document makes crystal clear that the fusion center conflated support for the projects with security. “Collaborative relationships between law enforcement and businesses, working with contractors or the energy companies may help identify criminal actors before violence or property destruction takes place,” the fusion center document says. It points to a suite of “counter insurgency strategies,” drawn from a Kunar Province road-building project in Afghanistan, that police — as well as the pipeline companies — could deploy to build community support.
“Organizations involved in pipeline construction” should consider “contracting local restaurants to provide lunch to pipeline workers each day,” the fusion center advises, in order to “spread economic engagement across the community.” Similarly, implementing the Kunar road’s “10 kilometer rule,” hiring workers within a certain radius of the construction zone, could “provide local residents a sense of pride and connection to the project.”
The pipeline companies might even consider a “youth employment campaign,” the publicly funded fusion center suggested. “If such a project was implemented in local Virginia communities, families would not support outside groups, individuals, or local opposition groups that hinder their children’s economic and skill gaining opportunities, much like the Afghan communities that rejected the Taliban and al-Qa’ida in their attempts to delay and disrupt the Kunar Road project because it directly affected their livelihood.”
“The constituency is clearly the private sector,” said McQuade, highlighting that the document’s goal did note even seem to be to protect the broader community that may be ambivalent about pipeline construction. “Those people are just pawns whose support needs to be won.”
German sees the fusion centers as captured by corporate PR campaigns seeking to portray themselves as victims of extremist violence. “Many of these are multinational corporations —they’re not even necessarily U.S. corporations — yet law enforcement seems to favor protecting them over their own communities,” German pointed out. “How many fusion center reports have we seen that document environmental damage done by criminal actions or negligent actions of corporations? Those are also criminal — those are within the jurisdiction of these law enforcement agencies — and arguably cost a whole lot more in economic damage to these communities than somebody turning a valve on a pipeline. Yet that’s not where we see law enforcement resources being spent.”
Law Enforcement Goes Don Quixote
Despite the comparisons to Al Qaeda and the descriptions of widespread monitoring of activists, several fusion center documents acknowledge that environmental defenders pose little threat to people — or even property. But intelligence analysts still had plenty of guesses about what might spark “environmental extremists” to commit so-called violence, defined to include property damage.
“Media attention given to related issues, such as exotic game hunting, may compel some individuals who had not been associated with the extremist movements to make threats of violence or commit other crimes,” a 2016 FBI report suggests.
The arrests of high-profile activists could also push people over the edge. When Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek were arrested last October for using a welding torch to poke holes in the Dakota Access Pipeline, the FBI and DHS assessed that “it is possible environmental extremists may commit criminal acts potentially destructive of critical infrastructure, such as property damage, to express solidarity with those arrested in the near term.” However, the document adds, there existed “no specific targeting or threat information” suggesting that this was actually true.
In the eyes of some intelligence analysts, even Covid-19 provided potential spark for environmental extremism. A daily intelligence briefing by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Interagency Counterterrorism Task Force provided analysis about how “Europe’s terrorists” might take advantage of the pandemic. “The Covid-19 outbreak could also lead to a rise of violent actions by the hands of environmental extremists. Economic difficulties, a lack of public support, and more urgent needs might thwart advances in the global warming agenda and interrupt green investments by national governments,” the document states. “Moreover, having witnessed the immediate environmental benefits due to radical actions like a global lockdown and economic disruption, eco-activists could be triggered to resort to violence.”
German framed much of the speculation as noise. “One of the problems with the buildup of these intelligence reporting platforms and the information sharing environment that was built after 9/11 was that they hired all these analysts who aren’t given a very specific mandate on what to report,” he explained. “They’re measured by the number of reports. After you’ve written about one problem in the criminal justice system, you run out of things to write about.”
Ultimately, the wind energy exercise in Iowa was inconclusive. The attacks might happen, or they might not: “Based on the Red Hat exercise, FBI Omaha and the Iowa DOI/FC estimated that, as wind energy projects become more common, there is a roughly even chance that attacks against wind energy assets in Iowa by environmental extremists will occur.” Even in the face of that analysis, though, the FBI declined to back down from its hypothesis: “The FBI’s official assessment is environmental extremists possibly will increase their criminal activity against the industrial wind industry.”
If anything, Germain said, the FBI’s foray into attacking windmills was counterproductive. “It is just dangerous for the FBI to be brainstorming ways for groups to attack private companies, putting that on paper, and then putting it in systems where it can leak out,” he said. “They created a security situation. This is a blueprint for how to attack wind turbines, and it doesn’t come from any terrorist group, it comes from the FBI.”
Down the road, police learning to view environmentalists as saboteurs could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “It’s creating a likelihood that when there are more confrontations over energy infrastructure,” McQuade said, “that the response will be extremely punitive and will escalate the struggle.”
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aha: us vs them enemy: we are the reasonable rational people, within accepted norms, but THEY are dangerous, deranged, cannot be reasoned with so MUST be met with FORCE, strict father must punish mis-behavior; [fundamentalist they are evil? end time armageddon?]
RANGE:
alarmist is irrationally worried about an issue, worst case will get some policy enacted that will increase friction/cost/bureaucracy
activist, same as above but is ACTIVE in street or politics, so can increase cost/damage
extremist sorta tied with militant, but latter ominous suggestion of force? well doth do, but hard to picture Pelosi busting out AR 15?
easy slide over to terrorism (eco economic)
fascist one man alone can fix the (single?) threat/problem
takes immediate swift unilateral Executive order action
aha: do nothing congress was an actual thing, commented on (repeatedly?) by Maddow in comparison on recent GOP led senate (recall mtg right after BO where (openly vs leaked?) declared we will pass nothing even if we favor it); so lack of any gov't action that could help ppl is blamed on dems; plus a MAN of action will get it done whatever it takes, HARD vs soft dems/fems
@realDonaldTrump
Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier [FREUDIAN TYPO?] from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!
https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/fox-news-removes-unethical-digitally-altered-images-of-police-brutality-protests-in-seattle
ok he was there, but a week before?
no lnx pix twt
fox News removes ‘unethical’ digitally altered images of police brutality protests in Seattle
Royalty-free stock photo ID: 1288386304 Tallinn, Estonia - 01/18/2019: Fox News website homepage. Fox News channel logo visible through a magnifying glass.
Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 16, 2020
Fox News over the weekend removed misleading images from stories about protests against police brutality in Seattle from its website after it was revealed they had been digitally altered in a manner which made the scene appear dangerous.
The Seattle Times published a report Friday calling out multiple images from Fox News coverage of the police-free “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) in the city.
One photo illustration appearing on the Fox News homepage showed a masked man with an assault rifle and tactical vest standing in front of a sign reading, “You are now entering Free Cap Hill.” The outlet did not originally disclose that the photo of the scene and the photo of the armed man had been spliced together using two different photos, which were taken more than a week apart.
The original photo, from Getty Images, shows the armed man in front of a car.
He was digitally placed in front of the entrance sign.
The same image of the man appeared in at least one other image on Fox News’ website, in front of a smashed retail storefront. According to The Times, it was also a combination of multiple images.
“It is definitely Photoshopped,” freelance photographer David Ryder, who took the original photo and published it through Getty images, told the outlet. “To use a photo out of context in a journalistic setting like that seems unethical.”
Conservatives, including President Donald Trump, have attempted to sculpt the CHAZ storyline into a political flashpoint. Protesters converted the area into a street festival after police, who teargassed demonstrators, left the precinct in an effort to de-escalate tensions.
Trump tweeted Thursday that “Radical Left Governor [J]ay Inslee and the Mayor of Seattle are being taunted and played at a level that our great Country has never seen before. Take back your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game. These ugly Anarchists must be stooped [sic] IMMEDIATELY. MOVE FAST!”
The mayor told the president, “Make us all safe. Go back to your bunker.”
Fox News on Friday used a photo of a man running through an urban inferno as a banner image for a group of stories about Seattle under the headline, “CRAZY TOWN || Seattle helpless as armed guards patrol anarchists’ autonomous zone, shake down businesses: cops.”
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The photo was unaltered, but it was an AP photo taken May 30 in St. Paul, Minn. Fox News later removed it.
The articles did not notify readers that the photos were altered, and it remains unclear who was responsible for the decision to do so. A Fox News spokesperson did not immediately respond to Salon’s request for comment.
In an emailed statement, a Fox News spokeswoman told The Times: “We have replaced our photo illustration with the clearly delineated images of a gunman and a shattered storefront, both of which were taken this week in Seattle’s autonomous zone.”
However, that statement itself was inaccurate. While the gunman was photographed that week — June 10 — the smashed storefront images were first published by Getty on May 30.
Fox News fully apologized Saturday in an editor’s note accompanying its CHAZ coverage, acknowledging that it “did not clearly delineate” the photo illustrations, which it labeled a “collage.” The site also apologized for falsely attributing the shot of the Minneapolis fire. “Fox News regrets these errors,” the note said.
Talent at the conservative network have attempted to use the Seattle protests as a political wedge issue. For example, primetime host Tucker Carlson accused the people in the zone of advocating segregation.
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The network also reported an anecdotal claim from Seattle Assistant Chief of Police Deanna Nollette.
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“We’ve heard, anecdotally, reports of citizens and businesses being asked to pay a fee to operate within this area,” Nollette said. “This is the crime of extortion.”
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Police Chief Carmen Best later corrected that statement.
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“We haven’t had any formal reports of this occurring,” she said, indicating the reports had come from rumors spread on social media.
Though the Seattle protests have at times been home to contentious scenes of unrest — including a cop filmed forcibly removing his partner’s knee from someone’s neck and a man filmed driving into a crowd of protesters and shooting a black man — the CHAZ street scene has been almost entirely peaceful, featuring musical and visual artists, free street food, concerts and movies.
Best said she did not think the officers should have abandoned the precinct, a move which she claims has led to longer 911 response times.
Trump called demonstrators “domestic terrorists” over the weekend and threatened federal action unless local officials “take back” the area. He also falsely claimed that antifa forces had taken over the city.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet thesesame weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!
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“City officials have not interacted with ‘armed antifa militants’ at this site,” a city spokesperson told CNN.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/experts-fear-trump-supporters-will-be-dangerous-if-he-loses-the-last-gasp-of-a-dying-party/
The United States has a long history of bitter, divisive presidential elections being followed by gracious concession speeches. But Journalist Andrew Feinberg, in an article published by The Independent on July 7, examines the possibility of far-right violence if Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden in November.
“Even by the hardball standards of American presidential politics,” Feinberg explains, “Trump’s reelection bid stands out in history as the sole example of an incumbent president who is pushing his supporters to view a loss as the end of the republic rather than the end of his political career. This unprecedented strategy is raising concerns among experts on extremism and authoritarianism, and even veterans of Republican politics who say it is likely to result in violence should Trump lose in November.”
Trump is hardly the first U.S. president to play hardball during his reelection campaign. President Richard Nixon, in 1972, slammed Democratic nominee George McGovern unmercifully and was reelected by a landslide. Had Nixon lost to McGovern, however, he would have no doubt congratulated him and moved on; for all his corruption and ruthlessness, Nixon knew when to quit. But as Feinberg points out in his article, Trump’s rhetoric has been historically over-the-top.
“While speaking last Friday at the foot of Mt. Rushmore as part of an official, taxpayer-funded celebration of American independence,” Feinberg notes, “Trump characterized the anti-racist protest movement that has swept the country in recent weeks as ‘a new far-left fascism’ and a ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ that is ‘designed to overthrow the American Revolution’ and ‘would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery and progress.’"
Feinberg adds that on July 4, the day after his Mt. Rushmore speech, Trump gave a White House speech in which he railed against “the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters” and asserted that defeating them in November would be akin to “the process of defeating” the United States’ enemies during World War II.
Brian Klaas, a politics professor at Universal College London in the U.K., told The Independent he “would be surprised if there is not at least some sporadic low-level violence around the election” if Trump loses.
Klaas warned, “In modern American history, there has never been a major mainstream political figure who has argued that his opponents are not legitimate.” And the things that worry Klaas about the hardcore MAGA bass, he told The Independent, include the “high concentration of weapons among Donald Trump’s supporters” and the “steady diet of information that tells them that they are the last defense for America against some conspiracy against them.”
According to Klaas, “People who have really worked themselves up in this vortex of disinformation… and have really gone down the rabbit hole…. may take Trump’s tweets literally and say, ‘OK, they’re my enemies. They’re committing treason, they’re part of the Deep State, and it’s time to be a patriot and stand up against them.’ That would be very, very dangerous.”
Former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, who was a Tea Party favorite befor he became a Never Trumper, also fears the possibility of violence from the far right if Trump loses. Walsh, interviewed by The Independent, described Trumpism as “the last gasp of a dying party” that will become “even more desperate” if Democrats retake the White House and the Senate in November.
“They will engage in violence,” Walsh warned. “They will engage in trying to stop the machinery of government from even working.”
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aha: see zinn on sacrifice, // austerity (= tough, discipline, rational, male)
free mkt FUNDAMENTALISM: = METAPHOR // STORY WORLDVIEW
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/its-time-to-reject-the-gods-of-commerce-america-is-a-society-not-an-economy/
david m
The “economy” does not exist. Human beings do. What nearly everyone understands, except Republican officials and economists on television, is that there is no singular, shared experience within one large-scale economic system. Leilani Jordan, a 27-year-old woman with a developmental disability, who worked as a grocery clerk at a satellite store of Giant Food — a chain throughout three states — died from the coronavirus infection she contracted when earning her final paycheck. That check was for $20.64. She worked without a facial mask, and lived in an entirely different universe than Nick Bertram, Giant’s CEO, who collects a salary in the high six figures.
The majority of Americans have less than $500 in savings. They simply do not experience the same “economy” as Rep. Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, a Republican who described Americans dying as a result of “opening the economy” as the “lesser of two evils.” Hollingsworth is the 12th-richest member of Congress, with a net worth of $50.1 million, most of it coming from his father — the “silent partner” in Hollingsworth’s investment firm.
Americans as disparate as Trey Hollingsworth and Leilani Jordan, whose death the congressman would presumably regard as collateral damage, might not share an economy in any substantive sense, but they do share a society.
The ideological disease that cripples the United States is the belief that society does not exist beyond its commercial activity. President Calvin Coolidge famously remarked that “the business of America is business,” while Joel Millman, a formerreporter for the Wall Street Journal, once wrote, “America is not a nation … America is a market.”
Millman was making a neutral, analytical observation, but a similar thesis has guided America’s long succession of disastrous policy decisions that treat the “economy” — meaning profits for corporations and their owners or shareholders — as sacred. An entire set of religious assumptions follow, most significantly that people like Jordan are martyrs for the God of profit. Their deaths are acceptable losses in the name of God and country, which mutate together into the bloodless idol of commerce.
Human sacrifices at the altar of the idol have become almost commonplace. Millions of children of color in the inner cities develop asthma and suffer from other respiratory problems because they breathe heavily polluted air; 26,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance; public health experts have concluded that poverty — and the lack of robust social services — causes tens of thousands of deaths a year.
The fatalities caused by environmental injustice, denial of health care and outright deprivation never provoke widespread scrutiny because, unlike the daily stock market report or reports of marginal GDP growth rates, they are largely out of sight and out of mind.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the United States to confront its market-based theology. Americans now must consider whether their country is anything more than an engine of commerce, and whether human life has value separate from a financial calculus. For the first time in most of our lifetimes, the question of priorities is direct and implicates almost everyone....
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/historian-trump-isnt-fighting-science-hes-stealing-its-authority/
...These bills do not claim to fight against science. If they did, they would lose. Few parents want their children to miss out on learning about science. Instead, these bills confuse and distort the issue by pretending that non-mainstream views about evolution have equal intellectual credibility. They insist that their religious views have earned scientific legitimacy. As have creationists for over a century, today’s activists fight for science, for the right to call their ideas truly scientific. Then they offer those ideas to public schools as better science.
Trump is doing something similar and similarly harmful. When President Trump says his decisions will be based on a “hunch,” he is repeating the tactics of generations of creationists. It might sound at first like he is rejecting the need for scientific credentials or expertise. In fact, though, Trump is positioning himself as superior to those experts, not against them. Like creationists, Trump does not deride the authority of science itself. Instead, he portrays himself as the best arbiter of the meaning of scientific details, the perspicacious decider-in-chief.
For instance, just after his pronouncement that he had a “hunch” about the true nature of coronavirus, Trump explained that his hunch was
based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this, and it’s very mild. They will get better very rapidly. They don’t even see a doctor.....
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trump twt support TP covid protests, // ingraham
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/governor-warns-trump-against-encouraging-supporters-to-disobey-the-law-on-lockdowns-words-can-be-fatal/
no lnx
Governor warns Trump against encouraging supporters to ‘disobey the law’ on lockdowns: ‘Words can be fatal’
Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story April 18, 2020
On Friday’s edition of CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) tore into President Donald Trump for his comments that Democratic states should be “liberated” from lockdown orders.
“Governor, you called the president’s tweets saying liberate Minnesota, Michigan, Virginia, ‘dangerous’, ‘unhinged,'” said Cooper. “You just heard him … I’m wondering what your reaction is.”
“Extreme disappointment, and frankly anger, because we’ve lost over 500 people in my state, and we know — there’s saying in automobile safety, that speed kills. Well, words can be fatal too.”
“When you have a president of the United States openly, willfully, maliciously trying to encourage people not to abide by the law in these states — these orders are the law of these states — president of the United States willfully trying to inspire people to disobey and violate the law with potentially fatal consequences, is irresponsible, no other way to look at it,” continued Inslee. “And what is doubly enraging to us, both Republicans and Democrats, the day before this president put out very clear guidelines based on substantial epidemiological evidence of his experts Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx that had a lot of reason to it, saying we have to wrestle this virus down significantly before we let off pressure of social distancing.”
“His own physicians saying this, his own guidelines that we’re pretty consistent with in state approaches, Republicans and Democrats,” added Inslee. “The next day, to say you should ignore that, is an outrage.”
Watch below:
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/the-gop-has-become-a-death-cult
no lnx
The GOP has become a death cult
March 4, 2017
// About 700 people gathered at the Minnesota capitol building to show support for Republican President Donald Trump. This was part of "March 4 Trump events around the country. Around 100 people were also there protesting against Donald Trump. // This man was yelling, "TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMMMMMP!" // 2017-03-04 ]
Written by Mike Lofgren / Common Dreams April 17, 2020
A decade ago, in my first public writing since leaving Capitol Hill, I warned that the Republican Party, in its evolution towards an extremist conservative movement allied with extremist Christian fundamentalism, was becoming like “one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.” After Donald Trump’s enthronement as the decider of our fate, I analyzed the GOP’s descent into a nihilism that belied every one of its supposed “values.” They value only absolute power or ruin.
It is now long past time to cast off highfalutin’ Latinisms and simply call the Republicans and their religious and secular conservative allies what they are, and in unadorned English: a death cult. As the country reels from the coronavirus pandemic, our national government might just as well be run by the infamous People’s Temple of Jonestown.
By now we are benumbed by the all-pervasive arguments over relaxing workplace shutdowns and stay-at-home orders due to coronavirus. In any sane society, the issue would be how to institute the most efficient measures to defeat the pandemic in the shortest time and with the lowest loss of life. Instead, Trump and his merry band of lunatics have hijacked the national debate into a faux-serious discussion of when, oh, please, how soon, can we “reopen the economy?” Naturally, the media gamely continue to play along with this calculated bit of dezinformatsiya.
This has led to extreme callousness, like that shown by Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, who opined that grams and gramps should be eager to shuffle off this mortal coil for the sake of their grandchildren.
There is abundant empirical evidence against this notion: voters in Florida, known as “God’s waiting room” for its geriatric population, are notoriously averse to paying one cent in state income tax to fund education or child health, let alone lay down their lives. In any case, the 69-year-old Patrick, who claims he’s willing to die for his proposition, did not relinquish the burdens of his office to volunteer as an emergency room orderly.
There’s also Congressman Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana, who put a patriotic gloss on his Malthusianism, decreeing that “it is always the American government’s position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life, of American lives, we have to always choose the latter.”
Then, striking the pose of the Serious Adult in the Room correcting mischievous children, he intoned: “It is policymakers’ decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say it is the lesser of these two evils.” This encapsulates the stereotype of the economic conservative: Dickens’s Thomas Gradgrind, the rigid, condescending, and heartless pedagogue.
But some pronouncements from the Trump coalition offer more ethereal rationalizations than the mere pursuit of lucre. The news is replete with stories about evangelical ministers packing their megachurches like sardine cans in defiance of state orders for social distancing, as well as contempt for common sense.
We all know about that harebrained medicine man in Louisiana, Tony Spell, already arrested for violating the state’s prohibition of large gatherings, who continues his antics nonstop. Spell, who sounds as socially responsible as a blood tick, is proclaiming his parishioners ought to choose death: “Like any revolutionary, or like any zealot, or like any pure religious person, death looks to them like a welcome friend. True Christians do not mind dying. They fear living in fear.”
So much for fundamentalists’ vaunted “culture of life,” a slogan which the prestige media never presume to critique.
For a more socially upscale version of this sentiment, let us turn to First Things, a pretentious journal of alleged theology that dresses up its non-stop shilling for the GOP with high-toned words like “numinous” and references to the philosopher Erasmus.
Last month, its editor, R.R. Reno, wrote a piece called, “Say No to Death’s Dominion.” It is an extraordinary performance. Contrary to the title, he actually argues that death should be embraced. He does this by weaving an imbecilic theology that includes falsifying the history of the 1918 flu epidemic to make his basic point:
“In our simple-minded picture of things, we imagine a powerful fear of death arises because of the brutal deeds of cruel dictators and bloodthirsty executioners. But in truth,Satan prefers sentimental humanists. We resent the hard boot of oppression on our necks, and given a chance, most will resist. How much better, therefore, to spread fear of death under moralistic pretexts.”
Oh, I get it! So Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day were more depraved than Josef Stalin! Reno ends with this:
“Fear of death and causing death is pervasive—stoked by a materialistic view of survival at any price and unchecked by Christian leaders who in all likelihood secretly accept the materialist assumptions of our age. “
This insane rant against materialism would seem to contradict the crassly materialistic assumptions underlying economic conservatives’ advocacy for letting a deadly virus “wash over” the population, as Trump would say. But these views, at first sight blatantly opposed, can be reconciled.
And who better to reconcile God and Mammon than a grifter like Jerry Falwell, Jr., ringmaster of Liberty University and testifier to Donald Trump’s status as an emissary of the Almighty? Not only has Falwell continued the school year, virtually alone among American universities, and despite pleading from students and parents to close, he has now been sued for failing to refund fees for student activities that have been suspended.
Fundamentalist preachers’ love of money is no secret: it is only by packing churches that the collection plate will yield a bounteous harvest so that their missionary work can continue – perhaps logistically aided by the purchase of a$65-million Gulfstream executive jet.And why not? It would upstage Pat Robertson, who had a mere Learjet, and a rental at that.
Political observers often wonder about the bizarre conservative coalition of plutocrats and theocrats, believing it to be unstable. But the intersection of the heartless pecuniary motives of religious and economic conservatives is no coincidence. And beneath the Ebenezer Scrooge façade of economic conservatives is the same kind of perverted idealism that we see in Tony Spell or R.R. Reno.
The most cost-efficient industrial process is one that wastes the fewest resource inputs. Likewise, internal combustion engines have evolved to get better mileage even as they pollute less. And electric motors are even more fuel efficient and less polluting.
So how do we explain conservatives’ perverse hatred of the environment, even when there are no profits at stake, as well as their tenacious denial of climate change in the face of irrefutable data? Is it not much the same as the Bible thumper who bitterly condemns stewardship of the environment as Gaia worship?
There are other similarities. Since the 1970s, oil shocks (and coincident with the rise of the New Right) an abiding feature on the American scene has been thesurvivalist, hoping for the national Götterdämmerung that will vindicate his having stockpiled 10,000 rounds of ammunition and a horde of Krugerrands. This dovetails with fundamentalists’ weird enthusiasm for the prospect of world annihilation that animates belief in the Rapture, the only difference being the technique by which the elect avoid the mass slaughter.
Firearms fetishism and a fascination with violence, war, and armed insurrection are also mainstays of right-wing ideology, hardly distinguishable from Jerry Falwell Sr.’s, proclamation that God is Pro-War.And how about the Ultimate Fighting Jesus? The NRA neatly intersects with “muscular Christianity,” revealing both ideological kinship and some very embarrassing gender insecurities that frequently irrupt in misogyny and homosexual panic.
There is no longer the slightest doubt in any sane person’s mind that not only are the GOP’s fundamentalist-extremist religious allies a death cult disguised as 501(c)3 tax-exempt charitable organizations. The whole extremely well-funded edifice of “economic conservatism” is equally a death cult, worshiping Mammon so fervently that it is eager to make human sacrifice upon its altar, just like the Mayans and Carthaginians.
“¡Viva la Muerte!”
“Long live death!” That was the defiant cry of José Millán-Astray y Terreros, a general in Francisco Franco’s fascist army during the Spanish civil war.It could just as well suit Trump’s foot soldiers.
Mike Lofgren is a former congressional staff memberwho served on both the House and Senate budget committees. His books include: “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government” and “The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.”
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no lnx
How the language of disease produces hate and violence
A 21st Medical Group professional tests an individual for the Coronavirus at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, March 20, 2020. In order to be tested for COVID-19, patients must first be evaluated by phone and meet criteria recommended by the Centers for Disease Control. Medical staff will test patients who will remain in their vehicle. (Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Alexis Christian)
Written by Paula Larsson, The Conversation April 1, 2020
by Paula Larsson, University of Oxford
Self-isolation. Quaratine. Lockdown. The outbreak of COVID-19 and its subsequent dissemination across the globe has left a shock wave of disbelief and confusion in many countries.
Accompanying this wave has been a spike in racist terms, memes and news articles targeting Asian communities in North America. Asian Americans report being spit on, yelled at, even threatened in the streets. There has been a recent stabbing in Montréal and increased violent targeting of Asian businesses. Asian Americans reported over 650 racist attacks last week according to the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. These incidents demonstrate rising racism against Asian communities in North America.
History tells us this is not the first time that fear of disease has led to outbreaks of anti-Asian racism. Underlying prejudice against Asian communities has been a staple feature of North American society since the first Chinese workers arrived in the mid-19th century.
Looking back at these outbreaks of discrimination is a sobering lesson of the consequences of racial labels for disease.
Increased racist rhetoric by politicians, like President Donald Trump’s erroneous use of the term “China Virus” for COVID-19, is often the first step to racialized violence. Trump recently agreed to stop using the racist label, acknowledging in series of tweets (@realDonaldTrump): “It is very important that we totally protect our Asian American community in the United States … the spreading of the Virus … is NOT their fault in any way, shape, or form.”
But more than 100 years ago, white spokespeople in North America had labelled Chinese people as “dangerous to the white,” living in “most unhealthy conditions” with a “standard of morality immeasurably below ours.”
Since then, white settler resentment of Chinese presence has consistently boiled over into outright racism and violence. Seminal work by Peter S. Li, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan, highlights such incidences throughout Canada’s history, while historian Roger Daniels explores the rise of anti-Asian movements within the United States.
Indispensable Chinese labour
The gold rush of the mid-19th century attracted many prospectors to the West Coast of North America. Chinese immigrants arrived alongside those from Japan, the United Kingdom, Europe and elsewhere. Although the majority of prospectors travelled south to California, large prospecting encampments developed in British Columbia.
When B.C. joined Canadian Confederation in 1871, the Canadian government initiated a system to recruit and attract Chinese labour to supplement the growing requirements of building the Canadian Pacific Railway. Thousands of Chinese workers were hired and arrived by boat.
Many factors contributed to their departure from China, but in Canada, they were indispensable workers that helped complete the railroad, working at minimal pay compared to their white counterparts. Indeed, the fact that Chinese workers could be exploited for cheap labour was exactly why Canada’s first prime minster, John A. Macdonald encouraged Chinese immigration.
Chinese communities thrived in the growing cities of the West Coast, setting up businesses and finding employment in laundries, grocers and labour camps, as well as in domestic service, especially as cooks.
The railway was completed in 1885, seemingly ending the continued need for good but cheap Chinese labour.
The rise of anti-Asian racism
Around this time, white communities were growing disgruntled at the presence of Asian settlers in the cities. In 1880, the Anti-Chinese Association of Victoria submitted a petition to Ottawa against “the terrible evil of Mongolian usurpation” in Canada. The 1882 passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States soon led Canadian officials to consider similar measures.
In 1884, the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration was established, to determine the impact of Chinese presence in Canada. The commission held hearings in British Columbia, San Francisco and Portland, to gather evidence from witnesses — over fifty people from among from the police, government, physicians and the public. Only two of the witnesses were Chinese.
The witness accounts reveal how underlying race prejudice has long formed the basis of North American attitudes towards China.
Blame for disease
The Royal Commission report concluded: “The “Chinese quarters are the filthiest and most disgusting places in Victoria, overcrowded hotbeds of disease and vice, disseminating fever and polluting the air all around.”
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Yet the commissioners were aware that such conditions were derived from poverty, and that the overcrowded slums could occur just as easily among “any other race” that was similarly impoverished.
Despite this, both the public and many politicians continued to connect disease with race.
The Chinese were consistently accused of being carriers of infection. In the Royal Commission report, it was a common belief that syphilis, leprosy and especially smallpox were “communicated to the Indians and the white population” from Chinese communities. This despite the fact that at the time China legally required inoculation for all its citizens, and the physicians interviewed by the commission declared having “never seen a case of leprosy amongst them.”
By 1885, Canada had passed the Chinese Immigration Act which placed a “head tax” on all Chinese immigrants.
Quarantine officers at the ports were ordered to inspect all on board of Chinese origin, stripping down and examining any Chinese person suspected to be sick. Over the next 20 years, recurring smallpox epidemics were erroneously blamed on Chinese communities.
Such sentiments were accompanied by violence. In 1886, anti-Asian riots broke out in Vancouver, resulting in violent attacks on Asian workers. Similar riots occurred again in 1907, after the formation of a Canadian branch of the American Asiatic Exclusion League in Vancouver. The group organized public, inflammatory speeches against the “filth” of British Columbia’s Asian residents. On Sept. 7, 1907, a mob violently attacked Asian shops and homes in Vancouver’s Chinese and Japanese quarters.
These historical incidents of discrimination clearly demonstrate how the language of disease is often encoded with underlying racial prejudice.
“Viruses know no borders and they don’t care about your ethnicity or the colour of your skin or how much money you have in the bank,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program.
Yet language can easily spark discrimination in times of fear, with dire consequences.The Conversation
Paula Larsson, Doctoral Student, Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, University of Oxford
This article is republished from The Conversation under a ...
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/heres-the-data-that-proves-americans-who-rage-against-political-correctness-are-the-most-xenophobic-and-most-likely-to-vote-trump-in-2020
no lnx
Here’s the data that shows Americans who rage against political correctness are the most xenophobic — and most likely to vote Trump
Written by Samuel L. Perry / Religion Dispatches March 24, 2020
Admittedly, Trump’s initial references to “the Chinese Virus” earlier in March seemed rather ad-hoc. Though clearly xenophobic in context and implication, it seemed that Trump was casually parroting the language of other far-Right commentators like Charlie Kirk. Within the past week, however, Trump has ramped up his labeling campaign, often going out of his way to refer to COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus” in Twitter storms and White House press briefings.
Two key strategies likely drive Trump’s efforts here. Both involve distracting Americans from his own administration’s failings at dealing with the coronavirus earlier on. The first is simply to blame China, laying responsibility for America’s situation solely at their feet. The fact that a Chinese propaganda director recently suggested the virus may have originated with American soldiers who brought it to China provided the perfect (and tacitly justifiable) motivation for Trump to remind the world forcefully and repeatedly where the virus originated.
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The second factor also involves distraction from Trump’s failings, but one in which “China” is only incidental. They are merely a stand-in for all “dangerous outsiders.” By repeatedly and brazenly referring to “the Chinese Virus,” and provoking a media backlash against the xenophobic implications of his language, Trump wishes to remind his base who our internal threats are: politically correct liberals who care more about defending foreigners than they do the American people.
Though Trump has previously raged against political correctness explicitly, and indeed, campaigned on it in 2016, when it comes to this recent COVID-19 labeling campaign, other far-Right thought-leaders have been doing this for him. For example, in a March 14th interview on Fox News, Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton stated, “Anyone who complains that it’s racist or xenophobic to call this virus the Chinese coronavirus or the Wuhan virus is a politically correct fool, and they ought not to be listened to about anything.”
And March 20th, Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly told Glenn Beck: “The worst thing in this pandemic virus outside of the actual illness itself of course is the political [sic] correct media still, still peddling garbage that hurts the American people.” Quoting an ABC News reporter, O’Reilly said in a whiny, mocking voice, “A lot of people think it’s racist if you call it the Chinese Virus. …It’s sickening.”
But survey data confirm that white Americans—like President Trump, Senator Tom Cotton, Bill O’Reilly, or their followers—who attack politically correct language as the enemy are in fact the most likely to hold racist or xenophobic views. In a nationally representative survey fielded in February 2020, we asked Americans to indicate how much they agreed with statements about using politically correct language. We also asked Americans for their views on refugees from the Middle East and America’s control over its Southern border.
In the first figure [left], we see that, as Americans’ agreement with the statement “Too many people are easily offended these days over language” increases, the more likely they are to believe that the federal government should do more to secure the Southern border and that Middle Eastern refugees pose a terrorist threat.
In the second figure [below, right], we see a similar trend, but in the opposite direction. The more strongly Americans disagree with the statement “People need to be more careful with language to avoid offending people,” the more likely they are to hold xenophobic views about refugees from the Middle East and to want stricter border control.
In sum: both figures show that white Americans who voice the strongest opinions against politically correct language also hold the strongest anti-immigrant attitudes.
Just as important, they are also the group most likely to plan on voting Trump in 2020.
[no graf]
The last figure [left] shows the percentage of white Americans who indicate they plan on voting Trump in 2020 by their level of agreement with our two statements regarding politically correct language. Nearly 80% of white Americans who strongly disagree that “People need to be more careful with language to avoid offending people,” or who strongly agree that “Too many people are easily offended these days over language,” intend to vote for Trump in November.
Seen in light of these data, Trump’s dual strategy is clear. By unapologetically referring to COVID-19 as “the Chinese Virus,” Trump is first able to signal to his white base that he too is disdainful of scheming, disease-ridden outsiders. But he can also intentionally provoke a backlash against his hurtful and xenophobic language, which he and his followers can dismiss as leftist “political correctness.” Trump shores up support against both a perceived external threat (immigrants) and an internal threat (liberals) with a single dangerous and offensive swipe.
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kpfa morning 1/29/20
https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/us-listed-climate-activist-group-extremists
no lnx
The Guardian -
Revealed: US listed climate activist group as ‘extremists’ alongside mass killers
DHS listed activists engaged in non-violent civil disobedience targeting oil industry alongside white supremacists in documents
Adam Federman
Mon 13 Jan 2020 05.00 ESTLast modified on Mon 13 Jan 2020
Pipes for the proposed Dakota Access oil pipeline, that would traverse North and South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. ]
A group of US environmental activists engaged in non-violent civil disobedience targeting the oil industry have been listed in internal Department of Homeland Security documents as “extremists” and some of its members listed alongside white nationalists and mass killers, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.
The group have been dubbed the Valve Turners, after closing the valves on pipelines in four states carrying crude oil from Canada’s tar sands on 11 October 2016 which accounted for about 15% of US daily consumption. It was described as the largest coordinated action of its kind and for a few hours the oil stopped flowing.
The five climate activists, members of Climate Direct Action, cut their way through fencing and turned the valves. The activists notified the energy companies whose pipelines were being disrupted and posted videos of their protest online and waited patiently to be arrested.
They have since been dubbed the “Valve Turners”, profiled in the New York Times magazine and featured in a recent documentary titled The Reluctant Radical. Their trials have also tested the willingness of courts to allow climate activists to make use of the necessity defense – the idea that a criminal action is justified if it helps to prevent greater future harm – as part of a legal strategy.
But the group’s actions attracted the attention of the DHS.
In a recent intelligence bulletin evaluating domestic terrorism threats between 2018 and 2020, the department included the Valve Turners and described the group as “suspected environmental rights extremists”.
The document also listed two of the group’s members alongside violent white supremacists and other extremists who have engaged in mass killings, including the man behind the racist 2015 slaying of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.
The document obtained by the not-for-profit Property of the People through a Foia request defines domestic terrorism as “any act of violence that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources” and that is intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or government body. The assessment is directed at departmental leadership and is based on a review of roughly 80 violent incidents between 2014 and 2017, according to the document.
The document points to an uptick in “sabotage attacks” conducted by anarchist extremists, environmental rights and animal rights extremists against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 at the height of the pipeline protest. Nearly 800 activists have been tried on a variety of North Dakota state charges, in relation to the pipeline protests, according to Water Protector Legal Collective, a legal support organization.
This activity was met with heavy law enforcement presence, FBI and DHS surveillance, and aggressive military style tactics deployed by pipeline security contractors.
In addition to providing an overview of domestic terrorism threats the document includes an appendix summarizing select incidents over the past few years. Two of the Valve Turners are listed alongside violent white supremacists such as Dylann Roof and James Fields, who have both been convicted of murdering innocent civilians. Roof killed nine black churchgoers in a rampage in South Carolina. Fields drove his car into a group of activists protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killing one and injuring at least 19 others.
The document also states that “racial and environmentally themed ideologies” were among the primary drivers of terrorist attacks in the United States during this time.
Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote in an email that
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the DHS framing was “highly misleading because white supremacists are responsible for the bulk of this violence and almost all of the fatalities that result”. “There is little evidence,” he added, “that environmentalists have engaged in the types of deadly violence that would meet the statutory definition of domestic terrorism, as codified by Congress”.
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The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Sam Jessup, one of the activists named in the document, said the bulletin shed light on the role law enforcement and intelligence agencies have played in suppressing dissent.
“Equating mass murder by white supremacists with what Michael and I did is totally obscene,” Jessup said in an email. “This whole infrastructure of so-called security has done little more than secure the future of the fossil fuel industry by terrorizing people into silence.”
Jessup, 34, served as a driver and videographer, live-streaming the action in North Dakota. Michael Foster, a former family therapist who lives in Seattle, turned the valve.
Foster said even though the action involved a high level of legal risk, it was a small price to pay in light of the cascading impacts of climate change.
“The only way to force society to change fast enough is to refuse to participate and fill the jails,” Foster said.
Both he and Jessup were convicted on felony conspiracy charges and Foster spent six months in jail. During closing arguments the prosecutor compared Foster to the Unabomber and the 9/11 hijackers. He is now on probation and barred from engaging in direct action protest for another two years.
In the more than three years since the action , several states have passed legislation making it a crime to trespass on property containing critical infrastructure.The Trump administration has advocated for stiffer penalties against activists who engage in non-violent direct action targeting fossil fuel infrastructure.
Carl Williams, executive director of the Water Protector Legal Collective, which has defended a number of DAPL protesters, says the push to criminalize dissent is part of a larger rightwing strategy that has also targeted the BDS movement and Black Lives Matter.
“I think there is a strategy that rightwing forces are using to criminalize dissent,” Williams said. “This bulletin shows that dirty hand.”
But Williams also says it shows that these same movements are making inroads. “Liberation movements know that this is happening and we’re fighting against it,” he said. “They’re doing this because they’re afraid of the power of these movements.”
Adam Federman is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations.
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aha after charlottesville had to abandon eco-terror threat for a while, but baaaack 120, why? crit infra big pipeline fights brewing?
https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-activists-valve-turners-extremists-2644830392.html
Internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security reveal that non-violent demonstrators targeting the oil industry were classified as "extremists," with some organization members listed alongside known white supremacists, as The Guardian yyy reported.
Five members of Climate Direct Action — Michael Foster, Ken Ward, Emily Johnston, Annette Klapstein, and Leonard Higgins — have been dubbed the Valve Turnersafter a coordinated effort on Oct. 11, 2016 tocut through fencing and turn off valves on a pipeline in four states. The pipeline carried crude oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries.
The activists alerted the oil companies of their actions, filmed it and waited patiently for authorities to arrive and arrest them, as The Guardian reported. For a few hours, the oil stopped flowing. Those pipelines carried 15 percent of the daily U.S. oil consumption in 2016.
Chargers for three of them were dropped, but Michael Foster, who turned a valve in North Dakota, spent six months in jail and is now on probation. During his trial, prosecutors compared him to the 9/11 terrorists and the Unabomber, according to Common Dreams.
More recently, the Department of Homeland Security described the Valve Turners as "suspected environmental rights extremists." The Guardian reported that the document, which evaluated domestic terrorism threats from 2018 to 2020, also categorized the group alongside Dylan Roof, the white supremacists who murdered nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina and James Fields, who plowed his car into a group of people protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fields killed Heather Heyer and injured 19 others.
"Equating mass murder by white supremacists with what Michael and I did is totally obscene," said Sam Jessup, one of the activists named in the documents, in an email to The Guardian. "This whole infrastructure of so-called security has done little more than secure the future of the fossil fuel industry by terrorizing people into silence."
Jessup, 34, was the driver and videographer live-streaming the action in North Dakota while Michael Foster, a former family therapist who lives in Seattle, turned the valve. Foster is the defendant who spent six months in jail.
Mike German, a former FBI agent and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote an email to The Guardian stating that Homeland Security's framing was "highly misleading because white supremacists are responsible for the bulk of this violence and almost all of the fatalities that result. There is little that environmentalists have engaged in the types of deadly violence that would meet the statutory definition of domestic terrorism, as codified by Congress."
[pix]
The labeling of environmental groups with extremists is mirrored in Britain as well where the activist group Extinction Rebellion was labeled in a document by Counter Terrorism Policing South East alongside banned far-right organizations like National Action and Islamic terrorist organizations, according to the Telegraph.
Extinction Rebellion, which uses non-violent disruptions to business as usual to call attention to the urgency of the climate crisis had a similar reaction as the Valve Turners. They were shocked and appalled.
"How dare they," said climate change group Extinction Rebellion, as the BBC reported.
A spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion said, "Teachers, grandparents, nurses have been trying their best with loving non-violence to get politicians and big business to do something about the dire state of our planet. And this is how the establishment responds," according to the BBC.
Speaking about the Homeland Security document, Carl Williams, executive director of the Water Protector Legal Collective, which has defended Dakota Access Pipeline protestors said to The Guardian, "I think there is a strategy that rightwing forces are using to criminalize dissent. This bulletin shows that dirty hand."
:{
- Climate Activists Outraged as Siemens Backs Adani Coal Mining ... ›
- A Climate Action for Every Type of Activist - EcoWatch ›
- 'I'm Just More Afraid of Climate Change Than I Am of Prison' - The ... ›
- 19 youth climate activists you should be following on social media ... ›
- Counter-terrorism police list Extinction Rebellion as extremist group ... ›
tar sands pipelines activism activists climate action valve turners oil
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/neo-nazis-virginia-gun-rally_n_5e221a24c5b63211761391ad
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6 Suspected Neo-Nazis Have Now Been Arrested In Lead-Up To Virginia Gun Rally
The men are all alleged members of The Base, a white supremacist group that hopes to start a race war.
By Sebastian Murdock
George Bush Praises ImmigrationGeorge Bush Praises Immigration
Six neo-Nazis have been arrested just days before a gun rally in Virginia is expected to draw thousands, including far-right extremists.
Three Georgia men were arrested Friday on charges of conspiracy to commit murder and participating in a criminal street gang as members of The Base, a white supremacist group that seeks to start a race war.The suspects are Luke Austin, Michael Helterbrand and Jacob Kaderli, The Associated Press reported.
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The men are accused of seeking out antifascists to kill, and were planning to “overthrow the government and murder a Bartow County couple,” the Floyd County Police Department said in a statement.
Left to right: Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli and Michael Helterbrand are all suspected neo-Nazis who allegedly planned to t
FLOYD COUNTY POLICE DEPARTMENT]
Left to right: Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli and Michael Helterbrand are all suspected neo-Nazis who allegedly planned to target and kill antifascists.
Atlanta Antifascists, a group that works to confront and expose fascists throughout Georgia, told HuffPost the news of the arrests “underscores that organized white supremacists remain a threat to our communities.”
“Targeting people as members of our group has become a favorite pastime of violent white supremacists,” Atlanta Antifascists said. “Many of these people are not even connected to organized antifascism at all — they simply have become caught in the crosshairs. This is part of a concerted attempt by fascists to create a general attitude of terror and paranoia. We extend our solidarity to all members of the community targeted by white supremacy and fascism and encourage everyone to watch out for each other and keep each other safe.”
The arrests came a day after three other suspected neo-Nazis affiliated with The Base were arrested in Maryland. One of the men, Patrik Mathews, fled Canada earlier last year after his white supremacy ties were discovered. A former reservist in the Canadian Army, Mathews trained as a combat engineer and is an explosives expert.
Patrik Mathews fled Canada after his white supremacy ties were discovered.
RCMP
Patrik Mathews fled Canada after his white supremacy ties were discovered.]
Authorities said Mathews is a top recruiter for the terrorist group and was allegedly planning to start violence at Monday’s gun rally in Virginia along with accomplices Brian Lemley and William Bilbrough IV. Police found guns and more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition during the arrests.
Monday’s rally in Richmond is expected to draw thousands of people who oppose recent gun control bills introduced in the state legislature, including one that would require universal background checks for firearm purchase and another that would limit people from buying more than one handgun per month.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) declared a temporary state of emergency on Wednesday banning all guns from the state Capitol grounds amid threats of violence from far-right extremists.
“We have received credible intelligence from our law enforcement agencies of threats of violence surrounding the demonstration planned for Monday, January 20,” Northam said in a tweet. “This includes extremist rhetoric similar to what has been seen before major incidents, such as Charlottesville in 2017.”
Organizers of the rally, anti-gun control group Virginia Citizens Defense League, falsely accused Democratic leaders of inviting violent groups to the rally following the temporary ban on guns.
“[Democrats] would love for it to degenerate to ‘violence, rioting, and insurrection’ in order to smear gun owners,” the group said in a statement. “Has the Democrat leadership actually invited violent groups to attend for the purpose of disrupting our peaceful assembly?”
Hours after the statement, three of the suspected neo-Nazis were arrested. The VCDL did not respond to a request for comment.
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Creating a New Market for Coal in the Push to Mine ‘Critical Minerals’ for National Security
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religion scholar: Referring to the ‘cult of Trump’ isn’t helpful
The recent events in Iran have led many to rail against a supposed “Trump cult.” But suggestions that supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump are exhibiting cult-like behaviour isn’t helpful…
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Religion scholar: Referring to the ‘cult of Trump’ isn’t helpful
Written by The Conversation January 11, 2020
The recent events in Iran have led many to rail against a supposed “Trump cult.”
But suggestions that supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump are exhibiting cult-like behaviour isn’t helpful in an era of significant political polarization.
As those of us who study new religious movements often say, a cult is just a religion that you don’t like — and that pertains to political parties too.
Since Benjamin Zeller, an American scholar of new religious movements, published “The Cult of Trump? What ‘Cult Rhetoric’ Actually Reveals” last fall, allegations that Trump has spawned a cult are appearing more frequently in the media.
One journalist called upon his peers to “to realize that when political parties and leaders begin behaving like a cult, we should think about reporting on them as such.”
There’s a #TrumpCult hashtag on social media platforms.
And Steven Hassan, a former member of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church who is now a self-described cult deprogrammer, argues in a new book that Trump is a cult leader.
What does it accomplish to allege a Trump cult?
Generally, it substitutes a value judgment in place of a sorely needed argumentative analysis of how voters generate their own political feelings, fantasies and attachments. And this feeds the cycle of polarizing political identities and political institutions.
‘Brainwashed’
Examples from Twitter, the media and in Hassan’s The Cult of Trump highlight instructive differences in how the cult concept is being used — and its impact.
Hassan argues that Trump supporters have been “brainwashed” by a charismatic leader. He sees them as deluded zealots who need his help to “wake up from the Cult of Trump.”
Hassan’s approach ignores their agency as well as decades of public education from organizations like INFORM, an independent educational charity that provides information about minority religions and has done important work on discrediting concepts of “brainwashing,” “deprogramming” and “cults.”
It’s worth remembering that the suggestion that Republican leaders were “chosen by God,” as former energy secretary Rick Perry recently described Trump, is nothing new. It was all the rage under George W. Bush and other Republican politicians who have catered to evangelicals.
Read more:
Rick Perry’s belief that Trump was chosen by God is shared by many in a fast-growing Christian movement]
Without question, Trump’s insistence that “we have God on our side” in the upcoming 2020 presidential election poses a problem for journalists and for public life.
But to describe the entire party as a cult lead by Trump is problematic. If journalists are going to heed calls to refer to the party as a cult and its supporters as cultists, they must define what cult means. Otherwise, they are assuming that a cult is some obvious phenomenon and everyone knows what the word means.
The term cult is used frequently by Trump critics on social media.As he criticized former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley’s defence of the Confederate flag, one commentator tweeted:
“Pretty telling that it’s a rite of passage into the Cult of Trump and the modern Republican Party that you have to publicly legitimize the Confederacy, a racist, treasonous, nightmarish dystopia founded on white supremacy and stark economic hierarchies.”
In this example, the cult comparison is incidental to the commentator’s argument about Republican ideology and partisanship. He isn’t arguing that Trumpism is a cult in any serious sense. Cult serves as shorthand for Trump’s base that simply adds a rhetorical flourish to a condemnation of Trump supporters on the grounds of their political beliefs.
Moral denunciation
But whether literal or figurative, cult discourse hurts critics’ ability to understand Trump’s appeal. The cult diagnosis isn’t a reasoned argument, or even an objective description: it’s moral denunciation.
There’s no question Trump policies that hurt people and endanger the world should be denounced. But the cult epithet doesn’t speak to those policies; it draws a line between Trump opponents and Trump supporters. And it oversimplifies the way people think and feel about their own beliefs and those on the other side of that line.
So why is it used so often?
It turns out that avoiding the temptation to make in-groups and out-groups — meaning dividing social groups into those who believe what we believe and those who don’t — is very difficult.
U.S. politics professor and author Lilliana Mason recently argued that it takes very little to activate a sense of group identity in people, and lead them to become hostile towards the out-group.
Indeed, the fact that we’re all susceptible to this kind of in-group/out-group thinking shows that politics is not just about reason, it is also about emotion. Political emotions are often layered with religion for Trump-supporting evangelicals who believe in a tough love that will lead to salvation for America.
[pix Faith leaders pray with Trump during an ‘Evangelicals for Trump Coalition Launch’ in Miami on Jan. 3, 2020.
(AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)]
To dismiss such people as being under the sway of a cult misses what Trumpism offers them. It therefore makes it harder to understand Trump’s power. It also makes it more difficult to understand the circumstances of Trump supporters’ lives. It makes other people’s feelings seem foreign, when they may be fundamentally common.
In conclusion, while there are many legitimate ways to critique Trump, demonizing his voters doesn’t help us understand why they are attracted to him, how their worldview has developed and how to do something about it.
[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]The Conversation
Sharday Mosurinjohn, Assistant Professor, Cultural and Religious Studies, Queen’s University, Ontario
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sort of a ctr-eg of his gener'l MO to stay general, frosh-esque BS/guessing :many ppl are saying, we are looking into...
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/the-evolution-of-a-trump-lie-how-we-got-from-imminent-attack-to-four-embassies-in-9-fact-free-steps/
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The evolution of a Trump lie: How we got from ‘imminent attack’ to ‘four embassies’ in 9 fact-free steps
Written by Mark Sumner / Daily Kos January 12, 2020
Sometimes deception generates a “tangled web,” other times just a hilarious mess. But Donald Trump’s war-triggering assassination and post-drone strike rationalizations show two things: one is how clumsily Trump shifts his lies from day to day, the other is how Mike Pompeo and Fox News hurry along in Trump’s wake, trying to paper over irrational statements with a thin veneer of claims that all fall apart on even the most cursory examination.
This isn’t even how a little lie spawned a big one. This lie started big and it stayed that way. The only thing that really grew was how obviously Pompeo and others were willing to throw away any pretense of integrity to make it seem that Trump had a passing grasp on the facts. By week’s end, America got to see how Pompeo’s I-can’t-help-smirking-when-I-lie grin had grown larger than the Joker’s.
1) Donald Trump was not supposed to assassinate Qassem Soleimani. Military planners presented it to Trump as the “far out” option under the silly assumption he would take a more reasoned approach.
2) What those planners weren’t considering wasn’t just Trump’s disdain for reason, but his need to make a big gesture toward Iran to secure the support of Republican senators in his upcoming impeachment trial.
3) So the mission went forward, with a pretense of “improving safety,” even though killing the Iranian general made the situation across the whole Middle East immediately, and obviously less secure.
4) After initially stating that Soleimani was calling back to Tehran for authorization on a plan that threatened hundreds of Americans, Mike Pompeo continually shifted the target and tried to confuse “imminent attack” with retribution for things that were already past.
5) When Congress finally got a chance to be briefed on the so-called intelligence behind the attack, even Republicans were shocked at the inability of the White House to produce anything to support their actions in the “worst briefing ever”.
6) Then, days after the attack and stinging from complaints by Republicans in House and Senate, Trump dropped [as in animal droppings] the idea thatSoleimani had been plotting “to blow up the U.S. embassy” into an interview, while providing absolutely no evidence.
7) With that new claim on the board, Pompeo hurried to not only try to support Trump’s claim by giving a long list of possible targets, including “embassies,” but flat-out lied by saying Congress had been told about the embassy threat in the briefing — which was quickly contradicted by those in attendance.
8) Trump expanded on his freshly-generated claim at his rally, telling those in attendance that “Soleimani was … looking very seriously at our embassies, and not just the embassy in Baghdad,” forcing Pompeo to ramp up his lies to match Trump’s latest claims.
9) Trump reaches into his bag of nonsense to come up with the idea that specifically four embassies were under threat by Soleimani.
Your move, Pompeo. And it goes without saying that, at every step along the line, Fox News has been not just cheering on Trump’s latest claim, but out in front, making suggestions that Trump is underplaying the real threat and that only more attacks can bring peace.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/involuntary-celibates-are-an-emerging-domestic-terrorism-threat-as-texas-warns-of-an-incel-rebellion
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Involuntary Celibates are an ‘emerging domestic terrorism threat’ as Texas warns of an ‘Incel Rebellion’
Written by Bob Brigham / Raw Story January 12, 2020
Misogynistic men who identify as part of the “Involuntary Celibate” movement are domestic terrorism threats, according to a new report.
The Texas Department of Public Safety included the warning in their 2020, “Texas Domestic Terrorism Threat Assessment” (PDF).
“Although not a new movement, Involuntary Celibates (Incels) are an emerging domestic terrorism threat as current adherents demonstrate marked acts or threats of violence in furtherance of their social grievance,” the report noted. “Once viewed as a criminal threat by many law enforcement authorities, Incels are now seen as a growing domestic terrorism concern due to the ideological nature of recent Incel attacks internationally, nationwide, and in Texas.”
“What begins as a personal grievance due to perceived rejection by women may morph into allegiance to, and attempts to further, an Incel Rebellion. The result has thrust the Incel movement into the realm of domestic terrorism,” the report explained.
“The violence demonstrated by Incels in the past decade, coupled with extremely violent online rhetoric, suggests this particular threat could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types,” the report warned.
“Texas Domestic Terrorism Threat Assessment” by the Texas Department of Public Safety (screengrab)[doc pix]
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an 120
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/right-wing-hawk-attack-tactics-arent-working-this-time-and-heres-why/
Right-wing hawk attack tactics aren’t working this time — and here’s why
Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon January 11, 2020
Earlier this week, before Donald Trump backed down from escalating the conflict with Iran, I wrote a piece arguing that the one improvement over the 2003 run-up to the war with Iraq was that this time around anti-war voices were being taken seriously. Now that the week is over and Trump seems disinclined to do more than thump his chest while (thankfully) sidestepping a real war, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at another shift from the George W. Bush era: The efforts by hawks to silence antiwar critics by calling them traitors, terrorist sympathizers, and other slurs aren’t working anymore.
To be clear, Republicans tried to use these old demonizing tactics in the wake of Trump’s order to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the second most powerful man in Iran.
On Monday, Trump’s former UN ambassador Nikki Haley said, “The only ones that are mourning the loss of Soleimani are our Democrat leadership, and our Democrat presidential candidates.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina declared that anyone who questioned Trump’s obvious lies justifying the killing of Soleimani was “empowering the enemy.”
Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia claimed that Democrats “are in love with terrorists” and that Democrats “mourn Soleimani more than they mourn our Gold Star families.”
This is a game conservatives perfected in the Bush years: Bullying liberals with false accusations of being sympathetic to Islamic terrorism, simply for daring to question the bloodthirsty and provocative approach that Republicans prefer.
It’s an accusation that never made sense, starting with the fact that the liberal values of secularism, sexual liberation, and feminism that homegrown conservatives hate are also despised by Islamic theocrats. But it’s also an accusation that doesn’t grapple with one main reason that most liberals prescribe a dovish approach: More violence only breeds more terrorism — a theory proved by the way ISIS grew from the ashes of Bush’s war in Iraq.
But, during those bad old days, this outrageous lie tended to get traction, and liberals were often on the defensive, trying haplessly to argue that, no, they don’t love terrorists.[REALITY WINNER]
This time around, however, the tactic … simply didn’t work. Collins found himself forced to explicitly apologize. There was absolutely no reason to believe his apology, however, as he’s still fundraising off this “Democrats love terrorists” sentiment — and was still making this outrageous claim on Fox News only two hours before his supposed apology. But even the fact that Collins had to pretend to be sorry shows that the current political environment is no longer so friendly to this strategy.
Similarly, Haley is now playing a bizarre game of clean-up, trying to pretend she was using some other, more obscure definition of the word “mourning” to justify saying what she did. As with Collins, it’s utter nonsense, but the fact that she’s scrambling demonstrates that casually equating criticism of a president’s actions with treason isn’t working quite as well as it used to.
The ultimate display of how the McCarthyite tactics conservatives have long used to silence anti-war voices are falling flat might have been that truly epic rant unleashed by Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, who, along with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, broke ranks with other Republicans to argue that Trump’s weak excuses for killing Soleimani and escalating tension with Iran simply weren’t good enough.
Lee complained that the Trump administration was using accusations that “you will be emboldening Iran” in order to convince senators that “we need to be good little boys and girls and not debate this in public”. He called such pressure tactics “un-American” and “absolutely insane.”
So yeah, when even Republicans are bristling under these kind of intimidation tactics, it’s safe to say things have changed a lot from the days when anyone offering criticism of the Bush administration’s warmongering ran the risk of being labeled a “terrorist sympathizer.”
This shift has two major causes. First, the Iraq war was such an epic disaster that it casts a pall over any and all tactics that were used to support it. Second of all, Trump is president and no one in their right mind thinks he had good intentions with this Soleimani killing, since Trump has never experienced a good intention in his life.
On the first part, the big problem facing conservatives rehashing the same tactics they used to defend the Iraq war is their opponents can simply, calmly ask how their methods worked out the last time. Sure, they were able to accomplish the immediate goal of quashing meaningful debate over the war, but in the end, their critics were proved right and they were proved wrong. Silencing good faith arguments is bad. Silencing arguments that later turn out to be correct makes you look foolish, cowardly and tyrannical.
On the second part, it’s hard for pro-war people to claim they are defending the nation when it’s clear that Trump, the guy who started all this, doesn’t give a fig about national security, but cares only about himself. With Bush, there was at least an argument that he was trying to do the right thing, as ill-conceived as it was. But with Trump, even the illusion that he has some noble purpose that his critics could be undermining is a joke.
Common sense alone should tell us this about Trump’s character. But just in case there was any doubt, reporting from this week confirms it: Trump’s motive in killing Soleimani wasn’t national security, but a belief that it would help him politically.
A report from the Wall Street Journal released Thursday contained this newish nugget of information: “Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.”
On Friday, Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter who covers the White House, noted that Trump “actually was surprised [killing Soleimani] was not more of a unifying event for the country” and had hoped he could distract from impeachment by generating the same rally-round-the-flag environment “along the lines of what you saw around the Iraq War lead-up,” which successfully silenced criticism of Bush during that time.
This is in line with Washington Post reporting that the White House believed “the attack on Soleimani would be politically popular” and the fact that, shortly after the killing, the Trump campaign blanketed Facebook with nearly 800 separate ads bragging about the strike. It also comports with everything we know about Trump’s character, that is, as a man who never does anything for any reason outside of self-interest.
All of which means that if you yell “terrorist sympathizer” you’re actually attacking someone who is questioning the wisdom of nearly starting a war in hopes of getting a polling boost going into an election year. Not exactly the most morally compelling of arguments for behavior that was already pretty shady.
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SEPTEMBER 20, 2019
101 Presidential Insults
Presidential historian Mike Purdytalked about his book, 101 Presidential Insults: What They Really Thought about Each Other - and What It Meansto Us, in which he discussed some of the insults presidents have traded throughout history.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?465607-1/101-presidential-insults
2015
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/new-60-words
1/20 update ***
This hour we pull apart one sentence, written in the hours after September 11th, 2001, that has led to the longest war in U.S. history. We examine how just 60 words of legal language have blurred the line between war and peace.
Last weekend President Trump authorized a strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Iraq. The news had us thinking about an episode we produced in 2014. We pulled apart one sentence, written in the hours after September 11th, 2001, that has led to the longest war in U.S. history. We examine how just 60 words of legal language have blurred the line between war and peace.
In the hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a lawyer sat down in front of a computer and started writing a legal justification for taking action against those responsible. The language that he drafted and that President George W. Bush signed into law - called the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) - has at its heart one single sentence, 60 words long. Over the last decade, those 60 words have become the legal foundation for the "war on terror."
In this collaboration with BuzzFeed, reporter Gregory Johnsen tells us the story of how this has come to be one of the most important, confusing, troubling sentences of the last two decades. We go into the meetings that took place in the chaotic days just after 9/11, speak with Congresswoman Barbara Lee and former Congressman Ron Dellums about the vote on the AUMF. We hear from former White House and State Department lawyers John Bellinger & Harold Koh. We learn how this legal language unleashed Guantanamo, Navy Seal raids and drone strikes. And we speak with journalist Daniel Klaidman, legal expert Benjamin Wittes and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine about how these words came to be interpreted, and what they mean for the future of war and peace.
Finally, we check back in with Wittes, to see how the AUMF has trickled into the 2020s.
60 Words | Radiolab | WNYC Studios
https://www.wnycstudios.org › podcasts › radiolab › episodes › 60-words
1.
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vilification of enemies is all that matters in Trump’s GOPNancy LeTourneau / Washington Mont
corruption it's also a devil term; djt needed to defend from it, so he i'm not a puppet 'd joe hunter biden --> ukraine (also bizarro mirror on server)
“Do So. Don't vote. Don't be involved in politics. It's like a sign of resistance against – not government, against politics. And voting. And very soon they're making their own YouTube videos. This is the prime minister’s house that's being graffitied! … It was carnage.
“And the reason why this was such a good strategy is because we knew, and we really really knew, that when it came to voting, all the Afro-Caribbean kids wouldn't vote, because they ‘Do So’. But all the Indian kids would do what their parents told them to do, which is go out and vote. And so all the Indians went out and voted, and the difference on the 18-35-year-old turnout is like 40%, and that swung the election by about 6% – which is all we needed!”
Again, Nix was selling his company’s expertise in promoting cynicism and apathy to suppress turnout among the opposition. But this campaign was even more manipulative: enlisting young Afro-Caribbeans in what pretended to be an authentic youth movement, secretly designed to manipulate them into surrendering their votes. This is what ‘compliance’ means in psychological warfare: achieving the desired behavioural effect from a ‘hostile audience’.
Asked for comment on the Do-So campaign, Nix responded in an email earlier today, writing, “The objective of this campaign was to highlight and protest against political corruption.There is nothing unlawful or illegal about assisting with this activity. SCL / CA has never undertaken voter suppression and there is no evidence to the contrary.”
Nix’s closing comments in his summer 2016 pitch were tantalising: “We’ve got an in-house intelligence team, so we can do full intelligence protection… Opposition don’t hack your emails and everything else. And we're pretty good at getting intelligence too… You know what? We do a lot of counter operations.You can spend $10 million on an election.Or we can send one of our guys in to go offer the leader of the opposition a bribe, you know, three weeks before polling. It's a very good way to win an election.”
Beneath the veneer, this seems to have been some of the work Alexander Nix was most proud of. This is how he pitched his company around the world, just as he was finally starting to work for Trump. This is the man who the Mercers and Steve Bannon enlisted to help them reshape the American political mind.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/sarah-palin-is-seeking-over-75000-in-damages-in-defamation-lawsuit-against-ny-times/
no lnx
Sarah Palin is seeking over $75,000 in damages in defamation lawsuit against NY Times
Written by Alex Henderson December 31, 2019
President Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican politician who has been highly critical of the New York Times: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is another long-time critic —and on Monday, the 2008 GOP vice-presidential nominee filed a 52-page amended complaint as part of her defamation lawsuit against the publication. Palin, according to Law & Crime, is seeking more than $75,000 in damages as well as “restitution in the form of the Times’ advertising revenues attributable to the” June 14, 2017 article that inspired the lawsuit.
On June 14, 2017, the Times published an opinion piece by its editorial board and discussed, among other things, Palin’s political activities in the early2010s — when her political action committee, SarahPAC, released an ad that depicted crosshairs imposed over various Democratic politicians. One of them was Arizona’s Gabby Giffords, who was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives at the time. After the ad aired, Giffords was seriously injured in a January 8, 2011 attack in Tucson by gunman Jared Loughner.
In her lawsuit, Palin asserts that it was unfair for the Times to publish an editorial linking her to Loughner’s attack. The Times’ James Bennet is specifically mentioned in the lawsuit.
The filing on Monday states, “Gov. Palin brings this action to hold James Bennet and the Times accountable for defaming her by falsely asserting what they knew to be false: that Gov. Palin was clearly and directly responsible for inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011. Specifically, on June 14, 2017, the Times published an editorial authored in the name of its editorial board, which represents the “voice” of the Times, that falsely stated as a matter of fact to millions of people that Gov. Palin incited Jared Loughner’s January 8, 2011 mass shooting at a political event in Tucson, Arizona.”
Palin, Colin Kalmbacher explains in Law & Crime, first filed her lawsuit against the Times only two weeks after the June 14, 2017 editorial was published.
The filing on Monday also states, “Gov. Palin brings this action to hold James Bennet and the Times accountable for defaming her by falsely asserting what they knew to be false: that Gov. Palin was clearly and directly responsible for inciting a mass shooting at a political event in January 2011. Specifically, on June 14, 2017, the Times published an editorial authored in the name of its editorial board (which represents the ‘voice’ of the Times) that falsely stated as a matter of fact to millions of people that Gov. Palin incited Jared Loughner’s January 8, 2011, mass shooting at a political event in Tucson, Arizona.”
Palin’s lawsuit also claims that the Times mentioned Loughner’s attack in order to divert attention from violence against Republicans — specifically, the June 14, 2017 attack in which sniper James Hodgkinson in Washington, D.C. seriously injured Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Palin’s lawsuit mentions that the Times, in 2017, identified Hodgkinson was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders — who, it should be noted, wholeheartedly condemned the attack and wished Scalise a speedy recovery.
The Palin filing states, “As early reports about the Hodgkinson shooting sparked speculation about whether his actions were motivated by liberal, anti-Republican political rhetoric, Mr. Bennet was outraged and decided to respond by reviving what he knew to be debunked speculation that Gov. Palin incited Loughner’s shooting. To do so, Mr. Bennet ignored his own knowledge of the facts surrounding the Loughner shooting, the well-known consensus, including within The Atlantic and the Times, that Gov. Palin’s political activities played no role in Loughner’s shooting, readily available information and articles about the Loughner shooting, and the most basic and fundamental tenants of ethical journalism.”
Bennet has stressed that he never said that Palin was directly responsible for Giffords’ shooting but rather, that he was making a point about the political environment in 2011.
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1219 salon rosenberg?
Enter Trump/ism, as timely as ever a manifestation of our collective shadow, meant to confront us with the repressed truth about ourselves.
Rather than viewing it only as a calamity — which in so many respects it is — we could see it as an evolving act of grace. By unveiling the truth about ourselves, individually and collectively, as a nation, Trumpism has led us to the awakening to the existence and importance of higher values in our lives.
It would be premature to claim such a sweeping awakening has already happened. But there are signs, at least, of some stirring democratic renewal — as noted byJennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M and author of the forthcoming book, “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.”
She cited two encouraging trends: increased political engagement and increased interest in how political communication works. “These twin facts signal to me that Americans are both concerned about the health of their democracy and, in response, are performing their watchdog function,” Mercieca said. “These are good things.”
ref The issue of expertise and knowledge caught the attention of another communications expert, Dr. Dannagal Young, author of “Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States” (Salon interview: Part 1/Part 2). “Truth still exists, and there are those working to study it, report on it, and illuminate it,” Young said. “We are still here. And we will be here, regardless of the economics of digital and social media that prioritize and reward spin and partisan mis- and disinformation over tedious truth”:
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ref 2
https://www.jennifermercieca.com/
Jennifer writes about American political discourse, especially as it relates to citizenship, democracy, and the presidency. Jennifer has published two books about political rhetoric: Founding Fictions (University of Alabama Press, 2010) and The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency (Texas A&M University Press, 2014). Her third book Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump will be out in late-spring 2020 (pre order here)
She has written about rhetoric and politics for The Conversation, Zócalo Public Square, USA Today, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, and other major media outlets.
...
artl on trump use/threat of force
and
scholarly essay argues that we can usefully separate “heroic demagogues” from “dangerous demagogues” by whether or not the demagogue allows themselves to be held accountable for their words and actions. “Dangerous demagoguery” can be thought of as “weaponized communication” that uses words as weapons to achieve the dangerous demagogue’s strategic goals. The essay examines several recent examples of dangerous demagogues using weaponized communication strategies, including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, President Donald Trump, and Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin. Weaponized communication is a danger in any democracy as it corresponds with democratic erosion.
The rhetorical presidency model made good sense within the traditional media market of the twentieth century, but makes little sense within the new media market of the new millennium. The era of the rhetorical presidency was characterized by a relationship between the presidency and the press that was reciprocal, mutually beneficial, and stable; the era of the post-rhetorical presidency is characterized by a relationship between the presidency and the press that is independent, competitive, and unstable. The post-rhetorical presidency began with the Bush Administration and flourished with the Obama Administration’s expert use of social and new media. Trump has only continued what his predecessors started.
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-most-fanatical-right-wing-followers-are-going-ballistic-over-impeachment-and-talking-of-civil-war
no lnx twit graf
Trump’s most fanatical right-wing followers are going ballistic over impeachment — and talking of ‘civil war’
Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos December 27, 2019
The most fanatical right-wing followers of Donald Trump have been warning for some time that any attempt to impeach the man in the Oval Office would result in a second American civil war that will produce large amounts of bloodshed as they rise up with their weapons caches and begin murdering liberals.
Now that he actually has been impeached, they’re going even more ballistic.
“He’s not gonna be removed. He’s not gonna be removed. He’s not gonna be removed,” one attendee at Trump rally told a CBS reporter. When the reporter asked, “Do you feel confident in that?” he responded, “My .357 Magnum is comfortable with that. End of story.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert—who has talked up civil war on several previous occasions—went ballistic on the floor of the House last week, warning that impeachment meant the end of America: “This is a travesty. We’re in big trouble,” Gohmert huffed, adding, “Now it’s lowered even further, the bar. [Impeachment] will be used for political battles and this country’s end is now in sight. I hope I don’t live to see it. This is an outrage.”
Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins was even more unhinged in his similar rant last week: “They fear the true will of we the people. They are deep established D.C. They fear, they call this Republican map flyover country. They call us deplorables. They fear our faith, they fear our strength, they fear our unity, they fear our vote, and they fear our president. We will never surrender our nation to career establishment D.C. politicians and bureaucrats. Our republic shall survive this threat from within. American patriots shall prevail.”
The real action, however, has been on social media, where Facebook and Twitter posts eagerly anticipating the violent uprising to preserve Trump’s presidency have been as common as dirt.
Ex-Navy SEAL Jonathan Gilliam, for instance, used Gohmert’s comments as a springboard on Twitterfor open discussion of a shooting civil war in which conservatives begin killing liberals for attempting to remove Trump: “Like so many, I see exactly what he sees. Therefor [sic] it is time we begin considering the possibility of civil war.”
“I am counting down the days until the vigilantes take to the streets. I dread the inevitable conflict that is coming but will do whatever I can I can to support the fight against the Left,” one commenter replied. Another answered: “lol it would be a short Civil War II. The vast majority of the peace officers, military personnel, and gritty hard-working 2nd Amendment loving Americans are on our side. The snowflakes have no idea about the sleeping bear they are about to awaken.”
[pix ReneHollan.PNG]
A fairly typical response among far-right extremists has been to pledge utter fealty to Trump, even unto death. Rene Hollan, a Monroe, Wash., man who is a regular participant in events organized by Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys in the Pacific Northwest, posted a screed (later removed by Facebook) vowing that he would even detonate a nuclear bomb in a major liberal city:
As a naturalized U.S. citizen who swore the Oath of Allegiance, if President Trump orders me to drive a truck with a nuke into a city with Facebook offices or an illegal sanctuary city, and detonate it, killing myself, everyone in the city, and rendering it a sheet of glass, it would be my honor to comply.
Another Northwest far-right figure, “documentarian” Brandon Farley—long a player in the Portland-area “patriot” scene—invited neo-Nazis to start killing his critics: “Hey Atomwaffen, will you please take note of this and act accordingly?” he tweeted.
Farley3.png
A couple of days later, Farley discovered that his name came up in Twitter searches for Atomwaffen, and expressed his confusion.
Social scientist Caroline Orr collected a large cache of these kinds of comments on Twitter, noting, “It’s easy to laugh at the keyboard warriors in the mix, but there are definitely extremists using this opportunity to try to bring about social and political upheaval by issuing calls for violence.”
“Lock N Load, PATRIOTS, the demonratsjust told us what they want for Christmas: #CivilWar2,” wrote one. “Let’s make the demon rats live on the streets of their own districts!”
“ALERT!! If the Democrats impeach OUR PRESIDENT WE NEED TO HAVE A CIVIL WAR,” tweeted another. “America as we have known it will be gone and the squad will be in charge of us. I shiver thinking of it. A civil war will be the only way to get America back as we remember it.”
Of course, it’s always worth remembering that this talking point has been deliberately promoted by Russian intelligence agenciesas part of their campaign to undermine American democracy. A Justice Department affidavit released in 2018 noted that the “civil war” meme is being directly encouraged by Internet Research Agency, the Russian-financed disinformation agency that purchased 3,500 ads on Facebook during the 2016 campaign with the intent of undermining American political consensus. The affidavit describes directions given to IRA’s writers.
Forcefully support Michael Savage’s point of view with competence and honesty. Savage made it clear that any attempt to remove Trump is a direct path to a civil war in the United States. Name those who oppose the president and those who impede his efforts to implement his pre-election promises. Focus on the fact that the Anti-Trump Republicans: a) drag their feet with regard to financing the construction of the border wall; b) are not lowering taxes; c) slander Trump and harm his reputation (bring up McCain); d) do not want to cancel Obamacare; e) are not in a hurry to adopt laws that oppose the refugees coming from Middle Eastern countries entering this country. Summarize that in case Republicans will not stop acting as traitors, they will bring upon themselves forces of civil retribution during the 2018 elections.
Over at Trump-friendly Russia Today, op-ed writer Robert Bridge bolstered the civil war talk with a piece headlined “Democrats’ push to impeach Trump is just the latest chapter of US Civil War 2.0,” in which he concluded, “What is happening now in Washington DC between the Republicans and Democrats is just mere dress rehearsal for far more disasters down the road. I just hope the costumes don’t end up being blue and gray, once again.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/republicans-feel-obligated-to-assault-the-english-language-with-terrible-grammar-in-order-to-show-that-theyre-true-conservatives-report/
no lnx
Republicans feel obligated to ‘assault the English language’ with terrible grammar in order to show that they’re true conservatives: report
Written by Alex Henderson December 24, 2019
The conservative movement in the United States used to pride itself on having intellectuals like George Will and the late National Review founder William F. Buckley, who spoke with a posh Mid-Atlantic accent that sounded quasi-British. But these days, many right-wing politicians and media figures champion a certain anti-intellectualism —and journalist Christian Schneider, in an article for the conservative website The Bulwark, notes that some Republicans go out of their way to butcher the English language even if they have Ivy League educations.
One example, Schneider notes, is referring to the Democratic Party as “the Democrat Party.” And Republican Sen. Josh Hawley is among the offenders: the Missouri senator, Schneider writes, “fancies himself a salt-of-the-earth Midwesterner who doesn’t truck with fancy elites” — even though he attended Yale Law School.
“Saying ‘Democrat’ instead of ‘Democratic’ has become a shibboleth — a verbal handshake to signal that you’re on Team Red Hat,” Schneider explains. “It’s about as annoying as people rolling their r’s when ordering a burrito to prove they once vacationed in Cozumel. But whatever. Triggering Democrats has become so important to Republicans that they’re willing to assault the English language if the people who like good grammar are the bad guys.”
Schneider observes that saying Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party “doesn’t make sense on any linguistic level” because “Democrat” is a noun and “Democratic” is an adjective — and “one should not use one in place of the other,” he writes.
“Low-key shittiness is now a rite of passage for calling yourself a Republican,” Schneider writes. “And with a tidal wave of nonsense coming from the right on a daily basis, it’s impossible to correct the micro-idiocies. And so, here we are.”
In order to be considered a true Republican in 2019, Schneider notes, one needn’t “spend time ruminating on the proper role of government intervention in our lives. You just have to publicly celebrate anti-knowledge because it drives the DemocRATS nuts” (DemocRATS is one of the cutesy anti-liberal insults one often encounters on alt-right websites).
Schneider wraps up his Bulwark article on a humorous note, observing that Hawley feels obligated to downplay his education in order to appeal to supporters of President Donald Trump.
“An Ivy Leaguer like Hawley must now play the role of lexical low-roader, winking to the MAGA-nistas,” Schneider explains. “Don’t be surprised if his plan to cinch the 2024 Republican presidential nomination will be declaring that gerund phrases are tools of the Deep State.”
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THIS IS NOT INCOHERENT IF YOU KNOW MYTH TALK PTS, SIMILAR STORY RECENTLTY ABOUT SINKS/DISWASHER SEE STANDUP
new
note for context, djt killd electric car subsidy
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/observers-stunned-after-trump-delivers-moronic-and-unhinged-diatribe-against-wind-power/
no lnx
Observers stunned after Trump delivers ‘moronic’ and ‘unhinged’ diatribe against wind power
Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams December 23, 2019
In a speech to the right-wing Turning Points USA conference in Florida on Saturday, President Donald Trump launched into an incoherent diatribe against wind power in which he said in the same breath that he “never understood wind” and has studied windmills “better than anybody,” pointed out for no apparent reason that the earth is “tiny” compared to the rest of the universe, and claimed there are “bird graveyards” under wind turbines.
“I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much,” Trump told the audience of mostly high school and college students. “It’s very expensive. They’re made in China and Germany mostly—very few made here, almost none. But they’re manufactured tremendous, if you’re into this, tremendous fumes, gases are spewing into the atmosphere.”
“You know we have a world, right?” the president added. “So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes and everything. You talk about the carbon footprint. Fumes are spewing into the air, right? Spewing. Whether its in China, Germany, its going into the air. Our air, their air, everything. Right?”
Trump went on to rant about the threat wind turbines pose to birds, without noting that fossil fuel plants are far more deadly.
“They’re noisy. They kill the birds,” Trump said. “You want to see a bird graveyard? You just go. Take a look. A bird graveyard. Go under a windmill someday. You’ll see more birds than you’ve ever seen ever in your life.”
Watch:
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
- 19h
If a guy at the bar sounded like this you’d slide a couple stools down as quickly as possible
Embedded video
Aaron Rupar
@atrupar
Trump’s nuts rant about wind energy: “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much... Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes & everything.”
Embedded video
Activist Matt Ortega tweeted in response to the president’s speech that “Trump says he doesn’t understand wind then proved it.”
Trump’s remarks were so bizarre that environmentalists and other observers had a difficult time critiquing them, aside from noting that they were completely “unhinged.” Vox‘s David Roberts wrote that while was no decipherable argument in Trump’s speech, that won’t stop mainstream media outlets from presenting the president’s remarks as a “coherent point about wind power.”
Earther‘s Matt Novak wrote Monday that Trump’s speech would “be almost funny if it wasn’t coming from the most powerful person in the world—a man who’s setting energy policy while climate change makes the world less inhabitable for all of us.”
“All in all, the speech was suitably unhinged for a president who has mostly lost touch with reality,” Novak added. “But President Trump has learned that he can say whatever he wants now and his supporters will stick with him.”
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new
inhofe says we must not impeach b/c danger to national security[tho not explicit in name of, does it count?], so mebbe also god term?
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new odd blend? not odd? 4 dovetail?
In April, Trump selected Jim Bridenstine, a Republican Congress member from Oklahoma who hedged on humanity’s role in rising temperatures, to lead NASA. Kathleen Hartnett White, a member of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, withdrew her nomination to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality in February. She said in a 2016 radio interview that “There’s a real dark side of the kind ofpaganism, this secular, elite religion, now evidently being global warming.”
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new
https://medium.com/swlh/analyzing-trumps-tweets-5368528d2c90
quite good
no lnx
Analyzing Trump’s Tweets
A Data-Based Analysis of Trump’s Language on Twitter
Michael Tauberg
Michael Tauberg
Follow
Oct 31, 2018 · 8 min read
Word Cloud of Trump’s Tweets
President Donald Trump represents a lot of firsts. For my money, the most important of these, the one that will change politics for years to come, is his use of social media.
Never before has a sitting president been on Twitter¹. In generations past, it was difficult to figure out what the most powerful person in the world was thinking. We had to rely on press secretaries or political speeches. Now, these thoughts trickle out in a constant stream for all to see. A leader with a constant communication channel to the world is unprecedented. Even Roosevelt’s fireside chats were limited to about 3 a year.
With Donald Trump’s tweets, we have a LARGE corpus of text data² that can give us insights into the man’s mind. Below I analyze all of Trump’s (over 24,000) tweets. Let’s see what patterns emerge.
Simple Language
Reading Trump’s tweets, the first thing that jumps out is how simple his use of language is. If we run his tweets through the Hemingway app to analyze their complexity, we find that they average about a 5th-grade reading level.
Mind you, simple words are effective. Most marketing materials are written so that they can be understood by 6th graders³. If we look at the most common words in Trump’s tweets (removing stopwords like ‘the’ and ‘a’), we see that most are short and clear.
Common words in Trump’s Tweets by Number of Uses
Polarization and Positivity
A lot of this simple language can be seen in Trump’s choice of adjectives. By far the most common word in Trump’s vocabulary is “great”. If we list the other common adjectives in his tweets, we see a study in simple opposites: ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘best’ and ‘worst’, ‘new’ and ‘old’, ‘fake’ and ‘fair’, ‘smart’ and ‘dumb’.
Just looking just at these adjectives, another trend emerges. Most of Trump’s descriptive words are positive (see those colored in blue). It seems that Trump’s boasts outnumber his attacks. Perhaps it’s not surprising that a student of Norman Vincent Peale’s “power of positive thinking”4 , Trump belives positive words can translate into positive outcomes.
If we use a naive sentiment classification to rate trump’s tweets, we again observe that more are positive than negative. This seems to be true even if we take negations (like “not good”) into account.
More tweets are right of the 0 line, indicating a slight positive bias
If we also plot this sentiment over time, we can map the history of Trump’s twitter presence. Below I show the average sentiment of Trump’s tweets for every month since his account opened in 2009.
A Timeline of the Average Sentiment of Trump’s Tweets (by Month)
We can see that early Trump tweets were largely positive and self-promotional. Trump’s earliest missives were quotes from his books or references to Miss America. Later, he would go negative in attacking then-president Barack Obama. Around the 2016 election, the sentiment of his tweets again went down. However, In the past few months, the valence of Trump’s tweets seems to be trending upwards. We’ll see if that continues after the November midterms.
Trump’s Enemies and the Subjects of Tweets
Though the average tone of Trump twitter is positive, his negative tweets are definitely the most memorable. In particular, Trump often turns to Twitter to attack his enemies. If we look at the most common people mentioned in his feed, we see that most are his political and social opponents.
The top people mentioned in Trump’s Tweets (by number of uses)
Before he was elected, much of Trump’s output was directed towards attacks on President Obama (#1 and #2 on the list). Later, after he won the Republican primary, he turned his attention to Hilary Clinton (#3). Nevertheless, cultural icons are also targets of Trump’s ire. Interestingly, Bill Maher and Rosie O’Donnell get more mentions than even Robert Mueller.
Insult and Mockery
With so many political opponents, Trump has crafted a wide and varied array of insults to deploy against them. The most common insult words that he uses are shown below.
Most common insult words in Trump’s tweets
All of these attacks can be placed into 6 main buckets. These include accusations of weakness, stupidity, failure, illegitimacy, corruption or fear-based attacks. Some examples are below.
1 — Weakness— ie. low, old, lightweight, losing, losers, ridiculous, poor, pathetic
eg. “The U.S. has pathetically weak and ineffective Immigration Laws that the Democrats refuse to help us fix.”
2 — Stupidity — ie. dopey, incompetent, clueless, moron
eg. “Paul Begala, the dopey @CNN flunky and head of the Pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC, has knowingly committed fraud in his first ad against me.”
3 — Failure — ie. failing, failed, disaster
eg. “No wonder the @nytimes is failing — who can believe what they write after the false, malicious & libelous story they did on me.”
4 — Illegitimacy5 — ie. fake, false, biased, hoax, haters, unfair, a joke, rigged
eg. “Wow, sleepy eyes @chucktodd is at it again. He is do [sic] totally biased.”
5 — Corrupt — ie crooked
e.g “Big story out that the FBI ignored tens of thousands of Crooked Hillary Emails, many of which are REALLY BAD”
6 — Fear — ie. enemy, threat, radical
eg. “Many of the Syrian rebels are radical jihadi Islamists who are murdering Christians”
Calls to Action
Analyzing the verbs that Trump uses most is as instructive as looking at his subjects and adjectives. These verbs are often used in calls to action.
Common Action Words in Trump Tweets (by number of uses)
Like any good leader (or demagogue depending on perspective), Trump needs to rally his supporters. Many of his tweets are devoted to this purpose. Besides the obvious “Make America Great Again”, here are some other examples:
“Congress must follow through on the Government’s plan on the Everglades Reservoir”
“A tragedy like Parkland can’t happen ever again!”
“Good Republican candidates will win BIG!”
“We will unite and we will win”
“I need your VOTE!”
Many of these calls to action are followed by words in ‘all-caps’ to add emphasis.
Mottos and N-grams
Besides finding the most common words in Trump’s tweets, we can also search for the most common phrases. In language processing, phrases of a specific length are called n-grams6. So for example, some interesting 4-word pairings in Trump’s tweets are shown below.
Common 4-word phrases in Trump Tweets
Besides ‘MAGA’, we also get “I will be interviewed” (usually on FoxandFriends), as well as “think like a champion” and “the art of the (deal)”, which are references to Trump’s books7.
The items in red represent Trump’s sayings, which he repeats often. These include, “the fake news media”, “america safe and great”, and “I will fix this”. We can see a similar pattern looking at 3-word phrases (trigrams) below.
Common 3-word phrases in Trump Tweets
Other Fun Facts
Twitter Use over Time
Looking at the dates of Trump’s tweets, we can see how much he has used the service over time. Believe it or not, Trump’s Twitter use has declined since he became president. It seems like it peaked in 2013 when he was A/B testing his Obama attacks and first dipping his toes in presidential politics.
Trump Tweets (not including Retweets) per yer. 2018 is still in progress
Twitter Use Per Hour
We can also look at the times of day that Trump tweets the most. It seems that his Twitter use starts first thing in the morning and builds throughout the day, peaking around 3pm. A not-insignificant number of tweets are sent in the middle of the night too.
Most Retweeted
Others have attempted to map Trump’s social network by listing who he follows on Twitter5. I decided to go one step further by analyzing who he retweets. Below is a list of the most retweeted accounts in Trump’s Twitter feed.
Most re-tweeted accounts on Trump’s twitter
Like most people, Trump seems to live in something of a filter bubble. His top retweets are from his own account and those of his aides, allies, or family.
Miscellaneous
Finally, since Twitter is an interest graph as much as a social one, we can get a sense of where Trump focusses his attention. So for example, we see that there are more mentions to ‘golf’ (314) than ‘border’ (296). There are also more references to ‘celebapprentice’ (260) and ‘apprenticenbc’ (152) than say ‘california’ (68).
Final Thoughts
A few years ago, most people barely knew what Twitter was. Today that same service is used by the most powerful person in the world many times a day. It contains all of Trump’s musings, jokes, opinions, attacks, propaganda and more. A sitting president has a bullhorn that he can use both as an outlet and as a means of driving the entire news cycle. Luckily all of this data is archived and easily parsed. I leave it to future historians to debate what it all means.
Notes
All code and data used for this project is on github at https://github.com/taubergm/TrumpTweets
1 — Yes @BarackObama has an account, but I doubt he ran it himself when he was president
2 — thanks to the Trump Twitter archive for collecting all of Donald Trump’s tweets in one place — http://trumptwitterarchive.com . They do their own analysis and it’s fun to look at the raw data
3 — Readability tests are defined here — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests
4 — https://www.npr.org/2017/01/19/510628862/how-positive-thinking-helped-propel-trump-to-the-presidency
5 — For more examples of Trump’s attacks on the press, see this https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/trump-twitter-spreadsheet-press-attacks.php
6 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram
7 — Though the Art of the Deal is more famous, “Think Life a Champion” is one of many other books that Trump uses to frame himself as a success guru. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliography_of_Donald_Trump
All book titles are concise calls to action.
8— https://towardsdatascience.com/how-does-news-coverage-differ-between-media-outlets-20aa7be1c96a
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...All of these attacks can be placed into 6 main buckets. These include accusations of weakness, stupidity, failure, illegitimacy, corruption or fear-based attacks. Some examples are below.
1 — Weakness— ie. low, old, lightweight, losing, losers, ridiculous, poor, pathetic
eg. “The U.S. has pathetically weak and ineffective Immigration Laws that the Democrats refuse to help us fix.”
2 — Stupidity— ie. dopey, incompetent, clueless, moron
eg. “Paul Begala, the dopey "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">@CNN flunky and head of the Pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC, has knowingly committed fraud in his first ad against me.”
3 — Failure — ie. failing, failed, disaster
eg. “No wonder the "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">@nytimes is failing — who can believe what they write after the false, malicious & libelous story they did on me.”
4 — Illegitimacy⁵ — ie. fake, false, biased, hoax, haters, unfair, a joke, rigged
eg. “Wow, sleepy eyes "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">@chucktodd is at it again. He is do [sic] totally biased.”
5 — Corrupt — ie crooked
e.g “Big story out that the FBI ignored tens of thousands of Crooked Hillary Emails, many of which are REALLY BAD”
6 — Fear — ie. enemy, threat, radical
eg. “Many of the Syrian rebels are radical jihadi Islamists who are murdering Christians”
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new 1019
This word cloud explains why Donald Trump is likely to lose ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com › news › the-fix › 2016/11/07 › this-don...
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WordCloud and Quick Analysis: Donald Trumps tweets - AWS
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Analyzing Trump's Tweets - The Startup - Medium
https://medium.com › swlh › analyzing-trumps-tweets-5368528d2c90
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Analyzing Trump's Twitter: Top themes from 36K tweets - Awario
https://awario.com › blog › trump-twitter-analysis
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State of the Union: The 100 words Trump used the most ...
https://www.nola.com › nation_world
Jan 31, 2018 - President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address ... NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune placed text of the Trump's address in a word cloud generator, which filtered out articles, pronouns, as well as common and modal ... St. Charles Avenue New Orleans, LA | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy.
10 most common words Americans use to describe Trump ...
https://abcnews.go.com › Politics › story
Sep 30, 2017 - 10 most common words Americans use to describe Trump (POLL) ... opinion on how he would advise a candidate described in these terms. “A candidate who has this word cloud isn't listening to anybody,” Castellanos said.
The Mueller Report Word Cloud: A brief tutorial in R - KDnuggets
https://www.kdnuggets.com › 2019/04 › mueller-report-word-cloud-brief-...
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Word Cloud: Reagan vs. Trump - Asterisk
www.theasterisktoday.com › articles › word-cloud-reagan-vs-trump
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Word Cloud of Terms Describing Donald Trump - Scalar
scalar.usc.edu › ancient-leadership-in-the-era-of-donald-trump › media
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new 919 note conflation violence
https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/revealed-the-fbi-is-targeting-immigration-activists
no lnx
Revealed: The FBI is targeting immigration activists
Written by Igor Derysh September 6, 2019
An FBI document obtained by Yahoo News shows that the bureau is monitoring groups that protest the Trump administration immigration policies as “extremists.”
An FBI “external intelligence note” that was sent to law enforcement and government agencies by the bureau’s Phoenix field office in May warns that immigration activists are “increasingly arming themselves and using lethal force to further their goals,” although it offered no evidence of violence.
The memo alleges that “anarchist extremists” are “very likely” increasing the “targeting” of immigration enforcement officers and detention facilities and pose the “risk of armed conflict.” The memo acknowledges that the claims were made with “medium” and “low confidence.”
Even though nearly all evidence cited in the memo refers to nonviolent protests and statements, the document alleges that the “threat” to Arizona “likely will grow” and may be “emboldened” if given an “opportunity for an escalation to violence.”
The memo further claims that some of the groups it described as “anarchist extremists” have “banned firearms or [are] carrying loaded weapons.” No specific evidence that this had actually happened was cited.
“These indicators, if found to be accurate, could cause a change in the confidence levels or in the assessments in general,” the document says.
The evidence cited for the FBI’s claims largely refers to activist websites and social media accounts calling for “disruptions” near ICE facilities.
The allegation that immigration activists are arming themselves appears to refer to comments from “antifa” groups about training members to use firearms. There have been no instances of shootings linked to antifa members. The document also cites a single human source to claim a group planned to provide “armed support of the migrant caravans” in December 2018. There has been no evidence that any group or any individuals actually did so.
Despite this general lack of hard evidence, the memo states that agents assessed that it was “likely” that immigration activists planned to use firearms against the government and right-wing groups, rather than arming themselves for self-defense, even though sources had told the FBI that these groups have “summarily banned the use of firearms.”
The memo was produced by the FBI Phoenix field office and distributed to other agencies. A bureau spokesperson told Yahoo News that the contents of the document offered only the perspective of the Phoenix field office and included nuanced qualifiers.
“These products are intended to be informative in nature,” the spokesperson said, “and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility.”
Mike German, a former FBI special agent, told Yahoo News that the memo is evidence of the bureau’s post-9/11 “overreach” in classifying protest groups as terror threats.
“It’s been a feature of the post-9/11 counterterrorism effort by the FBI to focus on nonviolent civil disobedience and to prioritize it,” German said. “For several years after 9/11, the FBI called environmental activists the No. 1 domestic terror threat, even though there’s not a single homicide related to environmental ‘terrorists’ in the United States.”
A 2010 FBI inspector general report criticized the bureau for targeting groups like PETA and Greenpeace, noting that some investigations were “factually weak,” and showed no indication of federal criminal activity.
“In some cases, the FBI extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis, and in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information about the groups in its files,” the report said. “The FBI also classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘Acts of Terrorism’ classification, which resulted in the watchlisting of subjects during the investigation.”
German told Yahoo News that even groups like antifa, which have been involved in violent street clashes with far-right groups, would not qualify as terror threats.
“Congress passed a definition of domestic terrorism. It requires illegal activities harmful to human life,” German said. “I’m not aware of any fatal attacks committed by somebody associated with an antifascist movement.”
Nate Snyder, a former Homeland Security and Justice Department official, told Yahoo News that the FBI also erred in linking antifa to anarchist groups and immigration activists.
“Those are three very different groups,” he said.
This federal scrutiny is apparently not limited to activist groups. An NBC San Diego investigation earlier this year found that government authorities are tracking journalists who have covered migrant caravans at the border.
Snyder called the memo a “head scratcher.” In July, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that domestic terror cases are on the rise, but that most of them involve “white supremacist violence.”
Despite Wray’s testimony, Yahoo News reported last month that the Justice Department had suppressed a report showing that white supremacists were responsible for all race-based domestic terror incidents last year. The Trump administration has also shifted resources and staff away from investigating white supremacist violence, while increasing DHS investigations that have targeted Muslims and other minority groups.
“There are people out there actually harming other people, and that’s where the counterterrorism resources should be devoted,” German told Yahoo News, “not toward people who are simply challenging government policy,”
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new
https://theconversation.com/the-warspeak-permeating-everyday-language-puts-us-all-in-the-trenches-121356
In a manifesto posted online shortly before he went on to massacre 22 people at an El Paso Walmart, Patrick Crusius cited the “invasion” of Texas by Hispanics. In doing so, he echoed President Trump’s rhetoric of an illegal immigrant “invasion.”
Think about what this word choice communicates: It signals an enemy that must be beaten back, repelled and vanquished.
Yet this sort of language – what I call “warspeak” – has relentlessly crept into most aspects of American life and public discourse.
After the Columbine shooting, I started writing about how “gunspeak” – the way everyday turns of phrase, from “bite the bullet” and “sweating bullets,” to “trigger warnings” and “pulling the trigger” – reflected a society obsessed with guns.
But warspeak’s tentacles extend much further.
crop up in advertisements, headlines and sports coverage. They’ve inspired an entire lexicon deployed on social media and in politics.
The intent might be as benign as the creative use of language. But I wonder if it communicates larger truths about American violence and polarization.
The political battlefield
For decades, America has been fighting metaphorical wars – wars on heart disease, drugs, smoking, cancer, poverty, advertising and illiteracy.
Then there are the culture wars, which have intensified recently to include wars on Christmas, abortion, bathrooms, cops and women. These are different: They involve people on two sides of a polarizing issue.
War targets an enemy – someone or something to be defeated, using whatever means necessary. It’s one thing when you’re at war with a disease. It’s quite another when you’re at war with a group of people on the other side of a political issue.
The political arena seems to have become especially fertile ground for warspeak.
Otherwise boring legislative machinations have been energized with the drama of a life or death struggle. The Republican-controlled Senate uses a “nuclear option” to confirm judges by a simple majority of 51 votes rather than the older standard of 60 votes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s ability to speed along the appointment of conservative judges constitutes the latest volley in a “judicial arms race.”
Elections deploy the language of military campaigns. Republican donors and lawmakers warned Trump of a potential bloodbath before the 2018 midterm elections. Meanwhile, Democrats running for president strategize in their campaign “war rooms” for ways to build up “war chests” that will leave them with enough funds to compete in the “battleground states.”
The political media reinforces it all. In its coverage of the July primary debates, The New York Times wrote that the moderates were “throwing firebombs” at the progressives. Cory Booker, the “happy warrior,” sparred with former Vice President Joe Biden who “took incoming fire” all night, but “shot back” and survived, even as moderator Don Lemon “threw a generational warfare bomb.”
Our semantic arsenals
Then there are the less obvious ways warspeak has become part of everyday speech.
Baseball players mash bombs while basketball players drain three-point bombs. Social media is replete with photobombs and tweet bombs, and there are
, it’s a miracle your TV hasn’t exploded.
Everything has been “weaponized.” According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, the use of the word in print has increased by more than a factor of 10 between 1980 and 2008.
You might have seen it applied to race, feminism, children, immigrants, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, higher education, free speech and songs.
But did you know that tennis serves, laughter, paperwork and Midwestern niceness can also, apparently, be weaponized?
Then there are the warriors in our midst – the weekend warriors, gridiron warriors, keyboard warriors and spiritual warriors – while the country’s future software engineers sign up for coding boot camps to learn their trade.
We’re all in the trenches, and most of us don’t even know it.
Why warspeak matters
Semantic wars, like all wars, are costly. But the role of warspeak in today’s society isn’t as easily quantified as a military budget or body count.
Nonetheless, I believe warspeak matters for three reasons.
First, it degrades our ability to engage with one another about important issues. Law professors Oren Gross and Fionnuala Aolain have written about how the framing of issues as a “war” can “significantly shape choices.” There is an urgency that’s communicated. Instantaneous action is required. Thought and reflection fall by the wayside.
Second, in the context of politics, warspeak seems to be connected to violent political attitudes.In 2011, researchers at the University of Michigan found that young adults exposed to political rhetoric charged with warspeak were more likely to endorse political violence.
Finally, if everything from weather to sports is charged with violent imagery, perceptions and emotions become needlessly distorted. Political carnage and carnage in the classroom, weaponized songs and weapons of war, snipers on the hockey rink and mass shooters – all blur together across our cognitive maps.
There’s a reason why writers, talking heads and politicians deploy warspeak: It commands people’s attention in an increasingly frenzied and fractured media environment.
I wonder, however, if it contributes to political polarization – what Pew Research describes as the “defining feature of American politics today.” And I wonder if it’s one reason why, according to Gallup, Americans’ stress, worry and anger increased in 2018, to the highest point in a dozen years.
One thing is clear: Americans no longer need to be enlisted in the Army to suffer from battle fatigue or be shell-shocked by the latest mass shooting.
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new , boom so to speak after 3x mass shooters
https://theconversation.com/from-across-the-globe-to-el-paso-changes-in-the-language-of-the-far-right-explain-its-current-violence-121468
The recent shooting attack in which a young white man is accused of killing 22 people in a Walmart in El Paso fits a new trend among perpetrators of far-right violence: They want the world to know why they did it.
So they provide a comprehensive ideological manifesto that aims to explain the reasoning behind their actions as well as to encourage others to follow in their steps.
In the past, only leaders of far-right groups did this. Now, it’s common among lone-wolf perpetrators, such as the alleged perpetrator in El Paso.
In the past decade, the language of white supremacists has transformed in important ways. It crossed national borders, broadened its focus and has been influenced by current mainstream political discourse.
I study political violence and extremism. In my recent research, I have identified these changes and believe that they can provide important insights into the current landscape of the American and European violent far-right.
The changes also allow us to understand how the violent far-right mobilizes support, shapes political perceptions and eventually advances their objectives.
New identity crosses borders
Since the early stages of the American white supremacy movement in the mid-19th century, the movement has always emphasized the superiority of Western culture and the need for segregation between racial groups in order to maintain the purity and dominance of the white race.
For example, in the 1980s, a Ku Klux Klan affiliate published a map allocating specific parts of the U.S. to specific ethnic communities. The map makers imagined Jews limited to the New York area, while Hispanics were to live in Florida.
But recently, a growing number of far-right activists have preferred to focus on cultural and social differences between communities, rather than on attributes such as race and ethnic origin.
They justify their violence as a way to preserve certain cultural-religious practices, rather than relying on their old justification – maintaining the genetic purity of the white race. In these activists’ view, the battle has moved from genes to culture.
For example, a member of the National Socialist Movement, an American neo-Nazi organization, wrote in a 2018 online post that white American is an identity like African American or Jewish American. In a statement that probably wouldn’t have been made by previous generations of neo-Nazis, the member wrote that all whites should come together, using their knowledge and weapons, to stop non-Europeans from pushing their secular agenda via government and media power.
Countering liberal left’s cultural influence
Another traditional theme of the far-right discourse – preserving the patriarchal order from attacks from the left – has grown in prominence.
Andres Breivik, who killed 77 people and injured more than 300 in July 2011 in Europe’s most lethal act of white supremacism, issued a manifesto shortly before his rampage.
In it, he stated that the politically correct terminology which is becoming more prevalent in the West intends to “deny the intrinsic worth of native Christian European heterosexual males” who were reduced to an “emasculate[d] … touchy-feely subspecies.”
Such sentiments are becoming more prevalent in the white supremacist forums, and reflect another component of what they perceived as an ongoing cultural war to preserve the white Christian way of life.
Belgian Flemish right-wing party member Tanguy Veys holds a copy of a manifesto sent to him and written by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 76 people in twin attacks in Norway in 2011. AP/Virginia Mayo
New transnational culture
The declining emphasis by the far-right on nationalism has led to the adoption of a transnational identity based on race, culture and religion.
Simply put, they feel closer to whites in other countries than non-whites who live in their neighborhood.
This explains why we have seen a global spread of violent white nationalism in recent years as the far-right finds kinship with like-minded nationalists in other countries.
Racial identity was always a prime component in the identity of far-right activists, but it was usually framed by local politics. In the past, racist British skinheads focused mainly on what they perceived as the interests of the British white working class. Today the rhetoric of most skinheads focuses on international geopolitics, although local issues haven’t been abandoned.
The attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which an Australian white supremacist killed 51Muslim worshippers in a mosque on March 15, 2019, reflects that far-right activists seem to increasingly embrace a regional, if not global, perspective in the way they define their constituencies and the threats they are facing.
The Christchurch attacker’s manifesto was clearly inspired by far-right rhetoric from European and American groups, such as notions of :{“:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{white genocide:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:.” He specifically mentions Norway’s Breivik as a role model.
Legitimizing far-right ideology in the US
In the U.S., what’s different about the current rhetoric of the far-right is that they are now using terminology that can also be found in some mainstream political parties and movements, aiding their efforts to gain popular legitimacy.
For example, the United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan released a new set of organizational goals a couple of years ago. Beyond their longstanding, bedrock belief – the protection of the white race – they also declare support for restricting immigration and free trade and ending or limiting foreign aid. They want government to provide protection to small businesses, agricultural workers [?] and gun owners.
This broad ideological shift also spilled over to some far-right skinhead organizations. Volksfront, for example, declares in its online mission statement that beyond white nationalism, the organization will fight for economic issues, states’ rights, crime repression and labor rights.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s language about the need to restore order to the streets of America, as expressed in his inaugural address, is also evident in the language of American white supremacists. In a poster produced by the skinhead group Keystone United, they call for harsher punishments for drug dealers.
The demand for stricter punishment of criminals is echoed in many racist group platforms. These include support of death penalty expansion, an important point of discussion mainly in skinhead message boards, and levying harsher punishments for sexual offenses.
Since minorities are overrepresented among American incarcerated population, far-right activists see these criminal justice policies as a more “legitimate” way to “punish” members of minority groups.
Two future trends
These changes in the discourse of the far-right suggest two important trends.
The first is the growth in the international nature of far-right violence, posing a challenge to law enforcement across borders.
Second, the growing overlap between the language of the far-right and the rhetoric of elected officials illustrates how the current polarization in the political system, and delegitimization of minorities by political leaders, can provide legitimacy for radical practices and violence and broader acceptance of ideas, concepts and statements that in the past were the domain of the far-right.
I fear these dynamics are likely to encourage additional far-right activists to express their views via violence. The emerging evidence that the El Paso shooter was inspired by popular theories in the far-right rhetorical universe, such as that of the “great replacement,” is a clear warning sign.
==
https://theconversation.com/the-rhetorical-trick-trump-used-on-the-squad-and-how-it-could-affect-the-vote-120565
Trump’s tweets calling on four Democratic congresswomen of color to “go back” to the “corrupt” countries they came from sparked the controversy he undoubtedly wanted, as did his subsequent attack on one, Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota.
The chant “Send her back,” a variation on the 2016 Trump supporters’ chant about Hillary Clinton, “Lock her up,” resounded through a recent political rally.
These slights reveal Trump’s fondness for a rhetorical device called synecdoche.
Difficult to pronounce but easy to define, synecdoche comes from the Greek synekdokhe, which means “an understanding one with another.” It substitutes a part for the whole, using that one part to represent the whole.
The title of the television series “Suits,” in which formal clothes represent scheming lawyers, nicely illustrates the idea. When people say “wheels” for cars, “boots on the ground” for occupying soldiers or “Ol’ Blue Eyes” for Frank Sinatra, they’re using synecdoche.
In the president’s case, he wants to make “The Squad” represent the Democratic Party. Trump thinks his chances for reelection will improve if people see these four women every time they hear the word “Democrat.”
[Synecdoche Squad: from left, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. AP/J. Scott Applewhite
FDR gets away with it
If Trump’s use of this strategy feels familiar, that’s because synecdoche happens during every election. I notice these things, because I’m a scholar of political rhetoric.
Presidential candidates are themselves synecdoche. They represent their whole party. If they’re popular enough, they create what’s called a “coattail effect.” People vote for the entire party because of one person, its leader. The reverse can be true as well: A poor candidate, like Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, can drag down the entire party.
In 2018, Democrats sought to attach the president to every single Republican in a swing district, while Republicans demonized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a way to tarnish all Democrats.
Trump’s tweets twist the usual strategy by aiming his synecdoche at House members. This is rare for a president.
One prior example is Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 reelection campaign. Seeking an unprecedented third term as war raged in Europe and Asia, Roosevelt, a Democrat, faced a formidable opponent in businessman Wendell Willkie.
New to electoral politics and an outsider, Willkie exuded charisma. He criticized Roosevelt’s economic record, but shared his concern for national defense. Unlike many Republicans of the era, Willkie was no isolationist.
Roosevelt did not want to attack Willkie; the president admired the Republican liberal. Instead, he found his Republican foils in the the crusty old House minority leader, Joseph Martin; in Bruce Barton, an advertising executive turned politician; and in Hamilton Fish III, a strident, conservative isolationist.
“Martin, Barton and Fish” – the chant became a staple at FDR’s campaign rallies, as he detailed their opposition to every New Deal reform and national defense measure. When FDR got away with that synecdoche, Willkie later said, “I knew I was licked.”
[Franklin D. Roosevelt making his final campaign speech in 1940, asking for a third term. AP
Democratic nominee becomes irrelevant
Roosevelt could control the political narrative because, as president of the United States, he was the nation’s chief storyteller, the keeper of national myths.
That’s the power of the president. Because of it, presidents can influence perceptions of political reality. This is what Trump is attempting to do as he enters the 2020 presidential campaign.
He wants to define the Democratic Party to his advantage. And, as David Brooks recently wrote in The New York Times, the president has a “vested interest in keeping the progressives atop the Democratic Party.”
If these four women represent Democrats – much as a representative serves as a proxy in Congress – then Trump’s synecdoche suggests that the Democrats are only these progressive women of color.
By identifying his opponents as the party of leftists, women and minorities, Trump thinks he can secure crucial white working-class votes.
If this strategy works, the Democratic nominee in the 2020 election becomes irrelevant. That leader, like Willkie, would no longer be the face of the party.
The president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, explained this strategy after Trump’s attack on Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings.
“Whenever the members of Congress like [Rashida] Tlaib or [Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez] or Cummings are the focus, that means the focus is not on [Kamala] Harris or Joe Biden. Every time people go crazy, it’s still cemented in some people’s minds that these people are maybe the modern Democratic Party,” Giuliani told the Washington Post.
As Richard Nixon did with his divisive “Southern Strategy” in 1968 that exploited white racial animus in the South, Trump’s “Squad Strategy” offers the promise of victory through polarization of the electorate. “They” are not like “us.”
Could it backfire?
Yet 2020 is not 1940 or 1968. Heightening racial tensions with synecdoche is now a risky choice.
For one thing, the nation no longer looks like it did in 1968. The white working-class part of the electorate has been shrinking. More people identify with the Squad than ever before.
By attacking representatives Ocasio Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib, Trump may encourage women, minorities and those who like this foursome to head to the polls.
As important, an incumbent president’s greatest advantage is, well, incumbency. Only 10 U.S. presidents have failed to win reelection, because the office itself and people’s respect for it is a significant electoral advantage.
But if President Trump squanders that respect through racially divisive strategies like his attacks on the Squad, Representative Cummings and Baltimore, it could cost him in 2020.
Americans may no longer see Trump as a part for the nation’s whole.
Democratic Party
Republican Party
Richard Nixon
Donald Trump
Nancy Pelosi
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/texas-border-militiaman-is-now-a-federal-fugitive-vowing-to-make-himself-a-martyr/
no lnx vid
Texas border militiaman is now a federal fugitive vowing to make himself a martyr
Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos July 30, 2019
A Texas militiaman who led a border-watch operation and was later convicted in 2015 on federal weapons charges has announced that he is becoming a fugitive after a warrant was issued for his arrest—and is vowing that he won’t be captured again.
Kevin Lyndel “KC” Massey, a 53-year-old from Quinlan, is the subject of a Federal Marshals Service warrant issued last week naming him “Most Wanted,” and warning that he is “armed and dangerous,” and moreover “has reportedly made threats to kill law enforcement that attempt to arrest him.”
It appears he intends to make himself a martyr to the “Patriot” cause in the mold of LaVoy Finicum, the Utah man shot in January 2016 by Oregon State Patrol officers after he refused arrest related to the armed standoff at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge.
On his Facebook page, Massey posted a warning:
KC is done playing the game of unconstitutional courts that already cost him 3+ years in federal prison for not even violating the law as written. The judge said in his statement, that the conviction was based on court precedent not on the written letter of the law. The feds continued to subject KC to their tyranny after release from prison, while serving a double jeopardy sentence of 3 years probation. KC is NOT going to allow himself to be kidnapped again. Death before dishonor!
Massey was arrested in 2015 by federal agents at the Mexico border, where he had been involved in an ongoing effort by a group of “Patriot” militiamen to prevent crossings by would-be immigrants at the Rio Grande. The group—who called their operation “Camp Lonestar”—was among the first such militias to actually detain border crossers with wrist ties and hold them for detention by Border Patrol.
The first arrest at the camp occurred when a participant named John Frederick Forrester, also a convicted felon, had an encounter in the brush with a Border Patrol officer that drew the agent’s gunfire. When more federal agents arrived to pursue a tip that Forrester was not the only armed felon in the camp, they found Massey—who had a 2003 conviction on his record—also in possession of a gun.
Massey had become the chief media spokesman for Camp Lonestar, which had begun operating initially under a veil of secrecy. As is inevitably the case with such operations, rather than actually clamping down on illegal crossings, the group’s presence actually just complicated an already difficult situation. It also fairly dripped with conspiracist paranoia.
Camp Lonestar was particularly notable for its harassment and detention of would-be border-crossers. In one video, the militiamen could be seen rounding up a group of immigrants and holding them for Border Patrol. Massey posted an explanation on Facebook afterwards: “Sorry we had to ‘Detain’ them,” he wrote in a comment. “[B]ut they were wore out and just fell down and gave up while the other 7-8 ran like gazelles!”
As the post explained, the militiamen detained the people—described as Honduran, Guatemalan, and Mexican—after they encountered a group of about 11 border crossers, most of whom took off through the brush. The three men they kept were “ziptied, debriefed, and given water,” and U.S. Border Patrol officers eventually arrived and took them away.
“WE DO NOT AIM TO DETAIN, we would much rather send them back into the river into Mexico and dissuade them and the cartel from crossing on the property we patrol,” the post explained. “All encounters were conducted in a humanitarian, professional fashion. Stay vigilant. Thank you for your support.”
But behind the guise of humanitarian treatment was a not-so-subtle smirking contempt. “One of the guys pissed himself!” remarked Massey. Another chimed in, “Dude pissed himself bad.”
Massey, the camp’s “commanding officer,” had appeared in numerous videos posted on Facebook and elsewhere that showed the activities involved in Camp Lonestar.They also featured their rationalizations for harassing people at the border: “I’m not anti-immigration,” he told reporters. “I have no problem with immigrants. I have a problem with terrorists. I have a problem with people who are coming to this country to hurt my fellow Americans and to destroy my fellow Americans’ property and livelihood.”
After Massey’s arrest, Camp Lonestar largely crumbled apart and ceased operation. The landowner whose property they operated from, Cuban “Rusty” Monsees, later told reporters that the experience “wasn’t that great.” “They jeopardized my safety and some other people’s safety by what they were doing,” Monsees said.
Massey pleaded guilty in September 2015 to the federal weapons charges and served three years in prison. After his release, he remained on parole, but continued to claim that he had been unjustly prosecuted. The conditions of that parole appear to have led him eventually to revolt, which in turn brought the most recent warrant for his arrest.
One of Massey’s supporters penned a blog post suggesting that Massey was now following Finicum’s example of deliberate martyrdom:
One thing I do know, like LaVoy, he will live to his last day out in the open, not in a cage…I don’t know about anyone else reading this but I don’t want another good patriot killed because the government didn’t want their dirty secrets revealed or the “virus” known as the Constitution spreading. I refuse to lose another good friend. I will do everything in my power to keep that from happening.
Commenters on Facebook not only supported this view, but suggested that Massey’s case might inspire a larger revolt. “10s of thousands doing the same thing only way this stops is if any and all moron parasites and workers for them are removed every attempt they make to steal lifes time or property they should at no time ever be allowed past to do it to another,” one of them wrote.
Another suggested that a team armed militiamen should intervene on Massey’s behalf, saying that “a team of solid mother fuckers need to grow a pair and hear his story and decide if they will help if not he will be killed in cold blood or put in prison its that simple a facebook set of balls will do nothing,” he wrote.
==
aha "agenda" means secret (long term) plan to do evil, get control tyranny that takes our freedom sovereignty liberty etc thus conspiracy theory
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/fox-news-host-accuses-rashida-tlaib-of-having-a-hamas-agenda/
no lnx
Fox News host accuses Rashida Tlaib of having a ‘Hamas agenda’
Written by Matthew Rozsa / Salon July 30, 2019
“Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Pete Hegseth has accused Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., of having a “Hamas agenda” following her criticisms of Israel.
Fellow Fox News colleague Sean Hannity began a segment of his eponymous primetime show Monday by denouncing the so-called “squad” of four liberal Democratic congresswomen, which in addition to Tlaib includes Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. The group has recently found itself the target of racist Twitter attacks from President Donald Trump.
“Nobody in the Democratic team of hopefuls for 2020 is talking about Nancy Pelosi’s policies,” Hannity told his viewers. “They’re adopting ‘the squad’s’ policies.”
Hannity continued by engaging his colleague Hegseth over the accusations of “radicalism” and “virulent anti-Semitism” he levied against “the squad” earlier in the segment.
“Pete: To me they’re going to help in the end, because it seems like everybody is afraid of them. And they’re so radical and so extreme, and frankly a number of them are quite bigoted,” Hannity told Hegseth. “And I don’t think it’s going to work very well to call America a garbage country; or compare the concentration camps in Nazi Germany to the treatment we’re giving people in facilities down at the border; or to say that Israel has hypnotized the world, and we want to boycott Israel just the way we boycotted the Nazis. I don’t think that’s going to fly.”
==
==
eg redefinition of terms, hijack/distory founding docs:
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-trump-administration-is-abolishing-the-very-idea-of-human-rights-as-a-part-of-american-identity/
no lnx
The Trump administration is abolishing the very idea of human rights as a part of the American identity
Written by Karen J. Greenberg / Tom Dispatch July 25, 2019
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Grimm’s fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel. Terrified by cruel conditions at home, the brother and sister flee, winding their way, hungry and scared, through unknown woods. There, they encounter an old woman who lures them in with promises of safety. Instead, she locks one of them in a cage and turns the other into a servant, as she prepares to devour them both.
This article originally appeared on Tom Dispatch.
Written in nineteenth-century Germany, it should resonate eerily in today’s America. In place of Hansel and Gretel, we would, of course, have to focus on girls and boys by the hundreds fleeing cruelty and hunger in Central America, believing that they will find a better life in the United States, only to be thrown into cages by forces far more powerful and agents much crueler than that wicked old woman. In the story, there are no politics; there is only good and bad, right and wrong.
Rather than, as in that fairy tale, register the suffering involved in the captivity and punishment of those children at the U.S.-Mexican border, the administration has chosen a full-bore defense of its policies and so has taken a giant step in a larger mission: redefining (or more precisely trying to abolish) the very idea of human rights as a part of the country’s identity.
This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left no doubt: the reality of those children locked in cages, deprived of the most basic needs, and brazenly abused by the administration he works for has been an essential part of the Trump team’s determination to abandon human rights more generally. That willingness to leave children unprotected is part of a far larger message, not merely an unfortunate byproduct of ill-thought out and clumsy actions by an overwhelmed border police force.
Children in Detention Camps
The story of the children at the border is indeed gruesome. The United States has long had migrants pushing at its southern border, often in larger numbers than at present. In fact, since the 1980s, the numbers crossing that border exceeded one million in 19 different years. While the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to estimate that current immigration rates are on track to exceed one million by September, many other experts don’t think it will even happen this year.
What’s genuinely new with the current border crossings is the number of children among the migrants. According to Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan’s sobering recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the presence of such children has risen 72% in recent years. Some even come “unaccompanied.” Others belong to migrant families. And while last month the government officially stopped its cruel policy of separating families, leaving many of those children (even toddlers and babies) alone in custody, Vox reports that “at any given time, for the past several weeks, more than 2,000 children have been held in the custody of U.S. Border Patrol without their parents.”
The conditions in the camps, strewn along the U.S. borderlands from Arizona to Texas, are shameful and fall most harshly on those very children. A recent Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report, issued in redacted form just days before the July 4th holiday celebrating the birth of this country as a beacon of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” described the staggering squalor and danger at such confinement facilities. There, children were often deprived of changes of clothes, beds, hot meals, toothbrushes, soap, showers, even adequate medical attention. Other eyewitness accounts have provided graphic details on the nature and scale of the deprivation, showing us children in soiled diapers, living with the stench of urine, sleeping on concrete floors, many weeping. On the somewhat more civilized floor of the Senate, members were told of children sleeping outside, exposed to the elements, and of the spoiled food at the camps.
Add to this the emotional toll that family separations have wrought on thousands of young people, as a new report issued by the House of Representatives Oversight Committee reveals and as others have documented. An El Paso immigration lawyer visiting one facility, for instance, described seeing a young boy who had scratched his own face until it bled. There are first-hand accounts by visitors to the camps of children trying to choke themselves with the lanyards from their own identification cards and others who dreamed about escaping by jumping out of windows high above the ground.
No wonder at least seven children have died while in such circumstances and many more are suffering from lice, scabies, chickenpox and other afflictions. Yet when doctors from the American Association of Pediatricians traveled to the camps to offer their help, their services were refused. Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights, herself a pediatrician, has labeled the situation of the migrants “appalling” and noted that “several U.N. human rights bodies have found that the detention of migrant children may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that is prohibited by international law.” Others have been less circumspect, explicitly comparing the treatment of the children to torture.
It’s hard not to assume that, however overwhelmed CBP may be, at least some of this treatment is intentional. Why else turn away doctors offering help or refuse supplies of donated aid sent by worried citizens? Why arrest a humanitarian aid volunteer who gave food and water to two ill and desperate undocumented Central American migrants and tried to get them medical help? The administration acknowledges that the overall situation is dire, but its officials on the spot have basically thrown up their hands, complaining that they have been “overwhelmed” by the situation they created, are “not trained to separate children,” and are powerless to address the problem of scarce resources.
While those on the ground have claimed helplessness in the face of the challenge, the rest of the administration refuses even to admit to the appalling conditions. (“They are run beautifully,” said President Trump of the border facilities, blaming the Democrats for any problems there.) Instead, top officials have repeatedly called the disgracefully unacceptable acceptable. Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who bore responsibility for creating much of the mess, assured Congress that the children were “well taken care of,” claiming that “we have the highest standards.” Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions echoed her words. “The children,” he insisted, “are well cared for. In fact, they get better care than a lot of American kids do.”
In court, Department of Justice lawyer Sarah Fabian refused to admit that the absence of soap, a toothbrush, a bed, and sleep constituted unsafe and unsanitary conditions, the legal standards applying to the detention of migrant children. The U.S. Border Patrol chief for the El Paso region callously remarked, “Twenty years ago, we were lucky if we had juice and crackers for those in custody. Now, our stations are looking more like Walmarts, with diapers and baby formula and all kinds of things, like food and snacks.” Vice President Mike Pence highlighted the refusal to acknowledge reality recently by calling the two camps he visited, neither solely for children, but one housing families, examples of “compassionate care… care that every American would be proud of.”
Really? In whose world are filth, disease, and persistent emotional cruelty acceptable? In what America is the brutal incarceration of children not a violation of founding principles? In what America is rejecting the advances in protections that have been a hallmark of U.S. and international policy since the Second World War standard operating procedure? Since when do American officials just throw up their hands and declare defeat (as a kind of victory of cruelty) rather than muster their best talents, energies, and resources to confront such a problem? The answer, of course, is in Donald Trump’s America. And don’t for a moment think that this is just a matter of the piling up of unintended consequences. It’s not.
A Declaration of Inhuman Rights
Recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered some insights into the mindset of such an administration when it comes to the country’s longstanding embrace of the very idea of human rights. Soon after July 4th, he announced the creation of a new Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department. Its purpose, he claimed, was to rethink the spread of human rights protections as a part of American foreign policy. The very idea of rights, Pompeo insisted, had spun out of control. “Human-rights advocacy has lost its bearings and become more of an industry than a moral compass,” he said, wagging his finger at 70 years of history. “‘Rights talk’ has become a constant element of our domestic political discourse, without any serious effort to distinguish what rights mean and where they come from.”
Rather than expand rights further, he explained, the country would do well to return to (his idea of) the context of the founding fathers and explore just what they really meant in their classic writings. Essential to his goal, experts suggested, was rolling back abortion rights. A remarkable number of the commission members were, in fact, known for their anti-abortion positions and this should have surprised no one, since the State Department had already withdrawn all health assistance from international organizations that offer abortion counseling and care. In doing so, it expanded what, in prior Republican administrations, were more modest restrictions on abortion-related care. Striking as such a global anti-abortion-rights position might be, however, Pompeo’s urge seems far grander. His goal is evidently to unilaterally reject the evolution of human rights that has prominently defined the country since the post-World War Two era, and that has been an essential piece of American democratic rhetoric since its founding.
To begin the process, Pompeo promptly misappropriated the very language of the Declaration of Independence to promote an agenda explicitly calling for the removal of rights. “My hope,” he announced, “is that the Commission on Unalienable Rights will ground our understanding of human rights in a manner that will both inform and better protect essential freedoms — and underscore how central these ideas are not only to Americans, but to all of humanity.” As the rest of his comments showed, he was invoking the freedom to deprive others, exclude others, and cause hardship for others. Placed alongside the border realities, it was a testament to the administration’s determination to erase rights from the nation’s identity. Putting a fine point on his goals, Pompeo added that, in his view, human rights and democracy were distinctly in opposition to each other. As he pungently put it, “Loose talk of ‘rights’ unmoors us from the principles of liberal democracy.”
Pompeo’s attempt to recast the founders’ intent in the context of today’s cruelty may be the most full-throated articulation to date of what this administration has been up to. The ongoing mistreatment of children at the border, a story that has lasted for well over a year, suggests that the spirit of Pompeo’s Declaration of Inhuman Rights has long been on the agenda. He had one thing right, however: those border camps do seem to belong to another place and time, one that preceded the U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, another document he invoked, intending to reshape American adherence to it.
The New Status Quo
This is hardly the first time the Trump administration has revealed its cynicism over democracy. Redefining the very purpose of “liberal democracy,” as I wrote more than a year ago, had been part of its mission since the beginning. In its first 18 months, the administration removed the language of democracy from the mission statements of many of its departments, including the phrase “nation of immigrants” from that of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Still, after two and a half years of reorienting the executive branch of government away from equal protection under the law, the equal right to vote, and a respect for the very idea of welcoming immigrants, Pompeo’s “commission” may be the most brazen conceptual act yet when it comes to erasing the language of human rights from the country’s identity.
It’s in this still-developing context that the migrant children crisis should be understood. It should be seen as a graphic version of the insistence of this administration on changing the very meaning of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the modern age. For Pompeo (as for his president), the evolution of the country towards more rights for more people is nothing but a mark of shame. How far back would he take us? To before the Civil War?
No wonder, on learning each day’s news from the border, it’s easy to feel we’ve entered a dismal fairy tale from an age of ogres and witches, where the forces of evil and ill will have taken charge and the prospect of saving helpless children seems as irretrievably long gone as those crumbs eaten by the birds following Hansel and Gretel on their grim journey into the witch’s lair. Attacking the most vulnerable among us — infants, toddlers, young children, teens — leaves little room for doubt. This administration is determined to undo the country’s commitment to human rights and so change its identity in a way that should concern us all.
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note mirroring contortions (good news is a ways since it show that critige of right is getting thru to ppl; a variant of whataboutism?
https://cei.org/AGclimatescheme
Law Enforcement for Rent (note series, gov't etc)
How Special Interests Fund Climate Policy through State Attorneys General
Christopher C. Horner • August 28, 2018
Author’s Note
This paper is based on documents obtained over two and a half years from open records requests and, in some cases, subsequent litigation. Due to the volume of records, not all cited records are included in the body of this paper. Key documents are provided in the paper’s appendix, which can be accessed at CEI.org. The complete collection of documents cited in this paper is available at ClimateLitigationWatch.org, a project of the nonprofit public interest law firm Government Accountability & Oversight.
Executive Summary
This paper details an extensive and elaborate campaign using elective law enforcement offices, in coordination with major donors and activist pressure groups, to attain a policy agenda that failed through the democratic process. The plan is revealed in emails and other public records obtained during two and a half years of requests under state open records laws. Most are being released now for the first time. Many were obtained only by court order in the face of a determined and coordinated resistance that one deputy attorney general foresaw, expressing early concerns over “an affirmative obligation to always litigate” requests looking into the effort. The paper details how donor-financed governance has expanded into dangerous and likely unconstitutional territory: state attorney general (AG) offices.
The plan traces back to 2012 when activists agreed to seek “a single sympathetic attorney general” to assist their cause. AGs began subpoenaing private parties’ records in service of a campaign of litigation against opponents of their climate policy agenda. The public records date to a July 2015 email in which Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists confided the group’s involvement with AGs.
Those public records reveal the following: (a) donors introduced plaintiffs’ lawyers to AG offices (OAGs),
(b) a slideshow tour by plaintiffs’ lawyers recruiting OAGs to the effort, and
(c) senior attorneys from OAGs flying in—some at taxpayer expense and others on the donors’ tab, which had been run through a pressure group— for a briefing with “prospective funders” about “potential state causes of action against major carbon producers.” One presenter described this briefing as a“secret meeting.”It was secret enough that one AG litigated to withhold the agenda— under implausible claims of privilege—for a year and a half before being compelled by a court to release the lineup for what turned out to have been an AG-assisted fundraiser.
Those public records reveal the anatomy of what began as an “informal coalition” of AGs to use the legal system in pursuit of an overtly political agenda in coordination with activists and plaintiffs’ lawyers. That coalition disbanded under open records and media scrutiny, but it has now reconstituted through a program by which donors fund, privately hire, and place investigators and prosecutors in AG offices. It uses a nonprofit organization to pass the funding through and to provide the OAGs with a network of “pro bono” attorneys and public relations services. In return, OAGs provide office space to the privately hired prosecutors; agree they are there to “advanc[e] progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal positions”; and provide regular reports about their work.
Led and funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, this scheme hires “Research Fellows,” which it then places as activist “Special Assistant Attorneys General.” All of the participating OAGs had to promise that this work would not get done but for this private funding. All OAGs also certified they are not violating the law by accepting privately funded prosecutors. At best, as several OAGs tacitly admit, this unprecedented arrangement operates in a gray area with neither prohibition nor authority. One state where the scheme is arguably illegal is New York, where disgraced former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had a leading and organizing role at every stage of the campaign this paper describes.
The New York OAG openly boasted to a donor that its “need” for privately funded prosecutors was driven in part by the “significant strain on staff resources” that had been caused by its “non- litigation advocacy”—that described as its having “led” the resistance to the Trump administration. Importantly, the NYOAG also cited its campaign “building models for two different types of common law cases to seek compensation” from industries for supposedly having caused global warming; moreover, it “needs additional attorney resources to assist with this project.”On these bases and with a claim to having statutory authority to enter the unprecedented arrangement—a claim which on its face appears to be an invention—the NYOAG was awarded not one but two privately underwritten prosecutors.
This is the most dangerous example of a modus operandi we have found: it uses nonprofit organizations as pass-through entities by which donors can support elected officials to, in turn, use their offices to advance a specific set of policies favored by said donors. It also uses resources that legislatures will not provide and that donors cannot legally provide directly. The budget for climate policy work alone is in the tens of millions of dollars per year.
Across various levels of government—including mayors and governors—the bulk of this money is budgeted for pass-through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and off-the-books consultants, report writers, and public relations (PR) firms that are hired through an NGO. The NGO takes a percentage as its fee (up to 24 percent in some cases). Another component involves privately hiring and then placing in-house, non- official personnel as advisors when they are actually employed by a donor’s group.
The extension of this billion-dollar per year climate industry to privately fund AG investigations sets a dangerous precedent. It represents private interests commandeering the state’s police powers to target opponents of their policy agenda and to hijack the justice system as a way to overturn the democratic process’s rejection of a political agenda.
As a subsequent report will affirm, this model of using nonprofit groups as cutouts for donors to finance elected officials’ activism is, in fact, widely adopted generally by the axis of donors, elected officials, and NGOs and by the climate litigation industry specifically. The de facto law enforcement for hire by private interests raises concerns beyond mere political opportunism, obvious appearances of impropriety, or even compliant 501(c)3s that seemingly rent out their tax-exempt status on behalf ofactivist donors.
The use of this approach by AGs carries legal, ethical, and constitutional implications, as well as for the integrity of law enforcement and the constitutional policy process. The public–private partnership of law enforcement for hire revealed in this report, in which the partnership uses public office to expend resources not appropriated or approved by their legislatures, raises significant constitutional and other legal issues—as well as ethics concerns—and should be the subject of prompt and serious legislative oversight.
Introduction
BEFORE YOU GASP, PLEASE NOTE that foundations are currently spending over $1 billion a year on climate work.”1 So wrote Dan Carol, a senior aide to California Governor Jerry Brown (D), on October 3, 2017, to his colleagues and staff members for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) and Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D) regarding charitable foundation spending that promotes their climate policy agenda (see Figure 1). This figure dwarfs spending in opposition to that agenda—efforts to portray matters otherwise notwithstanding.2
Carol offered this sum to make his case that $50 million per year is reasonable to ask so donors can privately underwrite an off-the-books network of “support functions” for a handful of governors’ climate policy advocacy.
In further support of his position, Carol attached a “draft agenda, presentation slides, and budget worksheet.”Those items are among a large cache of public records that were obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), along with other public policy groups, and that detail and propose the exploitation of a “plethora of funder interest” in secretly bankrolling the public office holders’ use of their positions to take a more aggressive role concerning climate politics and policy.
This years-long campaign by substantial, left-leaning donors revealed in Carol’s email correspondence and in other emails produced under state open records laws has now expanded into dangerous and likely unconstitutional territory. Led and funded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, this scheme centers
..[long]
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rhet --> policy
note drop eco econ and go straight up terror (// iran republican guard):
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/dangerous-republican-resolution-suggests-that-all-forms-of-political-dissent-could-soon-be-considered-terrorism/
no lnx
Dangerous Republican resolution suggests that all forms of political dissent could soon be considered terrorism
Written by Urie Dvorozniak / Salon July 23, 2019
Last week, Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Ted Cruz of Texas introduced a resolution to designate “antifa,” which the Anti-Defamation League defines as “a loose collection of groups, networks, and individuals who believe in active, aggressive opposition to far right-wing movements,” as a “domestic terrorist organization.”
In fact, antifa is a constellation of many different activist groupings, with no official leader or clear hierarchy. As the New York Times has noted, its membership count is “impossible to know.” That didn’t stop the two Republican senators from claiming that “Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who ‘fight fascism’ with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege.”
Senator Ted Cruz
?
@SenTedCruz
Antifa is a terrorist organization composed of hateful, intolerant radicals who pursue their extreme agenda through aggressive violence. Time and time again their actions have demonstrated that their central purpose is to inflict harm on those who oppose their views.
26.2K
1:02 PM - Jul 18, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
23.5K people are talking about this
Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” traces its ideological roots to 1920s and 1930s Germany and supposes that if people had opposed the Nazi Party more aggressively, Adolf Hitler might never have come to power. The ADL reports that many people who act within antifa are anarchist or very left-wing, but that “since Trump’s election, some people with more mainstream political backgrounds have also joined their ranks.”
In their resolution, Cruz and Cassidy reference the “violent demonstrations” on June 29 in Portland, Oregon, where writer right-wing Alex Ngo was assaulted while covering an antifa protest against the “far-right nationalist” group known as the Proud Boys.
After the incident, Cruz called for a federal criminal investigation of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat who is also the police commissioner of the city.
Ted Cruz
?
@tedcruz
To federal law enforcement: investigate & bring legal action against a Mayor who has, for political reasons, ordered his police officers to let citizens be attacked by domestic terrorists. https://tinyurl.com/y2udrv5d https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1145212511966441473 …
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler Under Fire for Not Stopping Antifa Protests
Wheeler's hands-off policy when it comes to Antifa came under scrutiny on Saturday after journalist Ngo was assaulted by masked assailants.
breitbart.com
Ted Cruz
?
@tedcruz
To law enforcement: find & prosecute these violent felons. https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1145212299914952704 …...
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-they-hate-america-became-republicans-ugly-new-attack/
no lnx
How ‘they hate America’ became Republicans’ ugly new attack
Written by Nancy LeTourneau / The Washington Monthly July 22, 2019
In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in order to harass the people he had identified as enemies. This is how his domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, described the strategy. :
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan adopted a different dog whistle.
At a campaign rally in 1976, Ronald Reagan introduced the welfare queen into the public conversation about poverty. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.”
Who the beneficiary of policy is perceived to be is of material consequence to how it is designed. For the past forty years, U.S. welfare policy has been designed around Reagan’s mythical welfare queen—with very real consequences for the actual families urgently needing support.
All of those arguments are still with us. For example, in 1992, George H.W. Bush attempted to scare white Americans into believing that if we elected Dukakis, there would be black rapists running amok in the country. Mitt Romney reprised Reagan’s argument in the 2012 election by talking about all of “those people” who wanted “free stuff.” Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign by talking about Mexican criminals and rapists.
But with the election of this country’s first African-American president, Republicans needed a new dog whistle. We saw that emerge when Rudy Giuliani first questioned President Obama’s patriotism and claimed that he didn’t love America.
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said during the dinner at the 21 Club, a former Prohibition-era speakeasy in midtown Manhattan. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
That one caught on like wildfire, leading Obama to give the most important speech of his presidency.
I recount that history because, with Trump’s latest attack on the Squad, the focus has mostly been on his statements that they should “go back” to their own countries. But preceding that suggestion is always a claim that they “hate America.” Here is the president at the rally in North Carolina that spawned the “send her back” chants.
I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down — they never have anything good to say — that’s why I say, “Hey, if they don’t like it, they can leave.” Let them leave. Let them leave! They’re always telling us how to run it, how to do this — you know what? If they don’t love it, tell them to leave it. I don’t know. And now watch, I’ll go back tonight — “Oh, sir, that was so controversial. Sir.” No, I’m just saying it’s their choice. They can come back when they want. But you know, they don’t love our country. I think in some cases they hate our country. And they’re so angry.
While counseling the president to “knock it down a notch,” Senator Lindsey Graham said that the four congresswomen of color are “a bunch of communists” who “hate our country.” Andrew McCarthy writes that if “go back” to your own country was based solely on ethnic roots, it would be racist. But, he asks, “Is it ‘racist’ to tell people who have contempt for the country—who abhor the common culture that makes us American—that they ought to go back to where they came from?” The correct response is “yes,” because it is also racist to assume that when people of color challenge this country to live up to our ideals, they are showing contempt for the country and our common culture.
We saw something similar when black athletes took a knee to protest police brutality. Rather than focus on the issue they were attempting to highlight, Trump and his enablers accused them of being unpatriotic, which turned into accusations that, as millionaires, they weren’t appreciative enough of what this country has done for them.
Of course, none of that recognizes that the president himself has called this country “stupid,” “weak,” and “pathetic.” But then, in the world of Donald Trump and his enablers, white men get to make the rules and the rest of us are required to submit and be grateful.
That is the racist underbelly of the equally racist “go back to where you came from” narrative that is all the rage on the right these days. It has taken hold because people of color are gaining positions of power and prestige that other forms of racism were meant to deny. Whenever black people rise to the top of their fields in politics, business, or sports and fight for those who would come behind them, they are be told that they “hate America.”
Leanard Pitts has a response to that charge.
You, like them, take for granted that America is your house, a white house where you make the rules, you set the standards and the rest of us live only by your sufferance…
But this has never been just your house, Donald, grandson of a German immigrant. It belongs to all of us, to every Yup’ik in Kwethluk, every Cuban in Miami, every black boy in Compton, every Muslim in Dearborn. We get to criticize it, we get to love it, we get to fight with it, we get to fight for it, because we built it. And we do not need your permission…
But for all their cowardice, for all your cynicism, for all the fear some white people hold, you can count on the fact that the rest of us will not be denied, deterred or defeated. You are nothing we have not seen before. And still we rise.
In the truest sense of patriotism, that is exactly how Representative Ilhan Omar responded to the “send her back” chants in North Carolina last week.
Ilhan Omar
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@IlhanMN
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
-Maya Angelou https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1151639430194532353 …
Jon Favreau
?
@jonfavs
The crowd at Trump’s rally chanting “send her back” after the President viciously and dishonestly attacked Ilhan Omar is one of the most chilling and horrifying things I’ve ever seen in politics.
769K
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no lnx
The frightening undercurrent running through all of Trump’s talk
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/the-frightening-undercurrent-running-through-all-of-trumps-talk/
Written by David Neiwert / Daily Kos July 21, 2019
Many observers, with good cause, have decried Donald Trump’s vicious attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar and her fellow progressive congresswomen of color and the frightening chants—“Send her home!”—his fanatical followers in North Carolina started up all on their own, responding to Trump’s vituperation about Omar, as nakedly racist, not to mention dangerous. Many have remarked on the fascism dripping from every word, and suggested that what we saw Wednesday in Greenville was a new Nuremberg, Trump’s feeble denials notwithstanding.
If anyone needed further evidence that Trump is now America’s eliminationist-in-chief, the frenzied crowd delivered it in spades.
But listen carefully to the language being used by Trump and his defenders to rationalize their words. It is language with a very familiar ring: The language of community defense and purification, driving from the body politic any foreign—and therefore innately toxic—presence or influence. The language of heroic willingness to sever the Gordian knot and do “what needs to be done” to protect the community, or in this case the nation, or indeed Western civilization itself.
It is the language of hate crimes, used by their perpetrators to rationalize their deeds.
Even before the chant, it was fascinating to watch Trump’s defenders in the wake of the nakedly eliminationist “go back where they came from” tweets that inspired the chant. There was Sen. Lindsay Graham, justifying the tweets to the hosts on Fox & Friends by suggesting that people like these members of Congress deserve to be ejected from the country: “We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists … they’re anti-Semitic. They’re anti-America.”
And then there was U.S. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, who tweeted on Monday along similar lines: “Montanans are sick and tired of listening to anti-American, anti-Semite, radical Democrats trash our country and our ideals.” (Special hypocrisy note: Daines employed a noted white nationalist named Taylor Rose as a campaign field organizer in Montana in his 2014 Senate campaign.)
Listen to the words Trump used in Greenville to attack Rep. Omar just before the chant broke out:
I mean think of that one, and she looks down with contempt on the hardworking American, saying that ignorance is pervasive in many parts of this country. And obviously and importantly, Omar has a history of launching vicious antisemitic screeds.
After the chant, he continued with similar language in attacking Omar’s colleague, Rep. Rita Tlaib:
And Tlaib also used the F word to describe the presidency and your president. That’s not nice, even for me. She was describing the President of the United States and the presidency with the big fat vicious, the way she said it, vicious F-word. That’s not somebody that loves our country.
This is how violence against both nonwhites and political dissenters has been justified by the mainstream American Right for centuries: If you disagree, you hate the country, and thus deserve ejection or elimination. This is why “go back where you came from” is a favorite phrase both of hate-crimes perpetrators and violent right-wing thugs like the Proud Boys.
Yet this was presented as a rational explanation by Trump’s defenders: “The president clarified in there what he was talking about: a love of the country. And if you don’t love the country, leave the country,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told the press.
New York Post columnist Sohrab Ahmari hated the chants but then embraced the underlying sentiments:
Needless to say, the “send-her-back” chants are gross. But again, with remarks like these, and many other of the kind, she has signaled radical hostility to her adopted homeland and the West — i.e., a total departure from the political community.
Beneath the pseudo-logical veneer, there is a frightening undercurrent running through all of this talk.
The problem is much deeper than the naked discrimination and intolerance on display: This is language that will be used to justify violence. It will almost certainly inspire a fresh wave of racial sectarian violence in the form of hate crimes and right-wing extremist domestic terrorism, because it is the very same language that is used by the perpetrators of these crimes to justify their acts.
The criminologists and social scientists who study hate crimes have parsed the motivations behind such acts into four different but related kinds: thrill-seeking, “defensive,” retributive (or revenge crimes), and “mission” crimes (perpetrated by committed ideologues intent on striking a blow on behalf of their cause).
By far the largest of these categories is the “defensive” kind of motive, in which perpetrators see themselves as heroes who are out to save their communities and the nation as well. One study found that this category of motive had become dominant in hate crimes after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001—and that hate crimes were likely to spike when “when a particular group is regarded as representing a danger to the dominant group’s prestige, wealth, or power.”
“Dylann Roof [who murdered nine parishioners at a black church in Charleston, S.C, in June 2015] thought he was saving the world,” said Heidi Beirich, Intelligence Project director at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They’ve come to believe they’re saviors of the white race. … I’m doing this to protect my race.”
In “defensive” hate crimes, perpetrators see themselves as heroic protectors of their communities: their neighborhoods, their workplace, their religion, their country, their race. These “defenders’ often target specific victims, justifying their crimes as necessary to fend off perceived threats. Particular events such as the arrival or a Muslim or a black family in a previously all-white neighborhood can act as the spark for such crimes.
Both while in the act and afterward, especially when caught and charged with bias crimes, these perpetrators defend themselves by using the language of community defense. They show little to no remorse for their crimes, and usually insist that they are acting on the unspoken wishes of the majority of people in the community, which is too afraid to act. Even non-defender types of perpetrators—particularly “mission” and retributive criminals—employ this kind of rhetoric to explain their actions.
“They honestly believe that what they’re doing has some sort of communal assent,” says Brian Levin, who leads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
This is where the role played by Donald Trump becomes crucial: Rather than acting as a lever to discourage such acts, Trump clearly has encouraged them with both his rhetoric and his actions. This has led to what has been called the “Trump Effect,” in which outbreaks of bigoted crimes and incidents are directly linked to the president’s outbursts in speeches and on Twitter.
This effect was first marked in the month immediately following Trump’s election in November 2016. Levin’s team as CSUSB assembled hate-crimes data from 38 jurisdictions and found the effect was unmistakable: “racial hate crime according to FBI data surged during November 2016, and in particular on the day after the election, rising from 10 to 27. Our analysis of the same FBI data set further revealed November was the worst month—with 735 hate crimes—since 2007 and the worst November going back to 1992, when systemic national record keeping began. Further, we found that hate crimes more than doubled, from 17 to 42, the day after the election and that a 72 percent average daily spike occurred in the two weeks following the election compared to before.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center recorded a similar phenomenon:
To the contrary, in the first 34 days after the election, the SPLC documented 1,094 bias-related incidents and found that 37% of them directly referenced Trump, his campaign slogans or his notorious comments about sexual assault. Not every incident met the definition of a hate crime, but many did. The FBI later confirmed the sharp uptick in reported hate crimes in the fourth quarter of 2016. Researchers have shown that reported hate crimes following Trump’s election made up the second largest surge since the FBI began collecting data in 1992 (trailing only the increase after the 9/11 terror attacks).
Another study found that not only is there a demonstrable “Trump Effect” arising from his rhetoric, the effect is substantially broadened and deepened by the fact of his winning the 2016 election:
Using time series analysis, we show that Donald Trump’s election in November of 2016 was associated with a statistically significant surge in reported hate crimes across the United States, even when controlling for alternative explanations. Further, by using panel regression techniques, we show that counties that voted for President Trump by the widest margins in the presidential election also experienced the largest increases in reported hate crimes. … We hypothesize that it was not just Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric throughout the political campaign that caused hate crimes to increase. Rather, we argue that it was Trump’s subsequent election as President of the United States that validated this rhetoric in the eyes of perpetrators and fueled the hate crime surge.
More pointedly, there has been a sharp spike in hate crimes (226 percent) in counties where Trump has held his political rallies, which feature his frequently eliminationist and threatening speeches. As its authors note, “Recent research also shows that reading or hearing Trump’s statements of bias against particular groups makes people more likely to write offensive things about the groups he targets.”
All this bodes ill for the coming 2020 presidential campaign. If Trump continues to wage his culture war against nonwhites and the liberals who defend them, the Trump Effect is certain to surge along with it—and so will the hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism that ride in its wake.
war metaphor agw
https://grist.org/article/the-war-on-climate-the-climate-fight-are-we-approaching-the-problem-all-wrong/
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aha: the invisible hand (not God, but His replacement?)in theory deprives the bad cobbler of income and forces him to make better shoes faster and cheaper or find something else more productive (read profitable). So we all benefit by getting good cheap shoes. Our individual self-sh acts get transmuted alchemically into the greater good. But depends on rational choice and adequate (honest, not ad ad/hype) information and education.
This is said to eliminate "waste" and promote efficiency, which becomes a god term to justify/rational-ize decisions that may be immoral (see Grapes of Wrath debate between farmers and banker men on who rightfully owns land, the ppl who work it or those with a piece of paper and numbers).
We get rid of anything deemed surplus (because of "opportunity cost": we could be doing something else with the money or space). Computers made supply lines "just-in-time" but in Japan the whole car industry stopped when a single part not avaialbe b/c of a typhoon in Singapore or somesuch.
Related to austerity, when you beat up on lazy undeserving poor safety net in the name of tough, hard-headed rational reallocation of resources (usually to the rich). eg it's more efficient to put an ankle monitor on a prisoner so you do not have to pay for room, board, guard and godforbid medical treatment. so pvt co charges fees that get ppl BACK in jail.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-the-race-baiting-invective-of-rush-limbaugh-on-the-obama-presidency-led-to-trump/
no lnx
How the race-baiting invective of Rush Limbaugh on the Obama presidency led to Trump
Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh
written by Robin Lindley / History News Network July 8, 2019
252
Ultimately, the right wing needs white racial anxiety. In fact, it cannot survive without it.
Ian Reifowitz, The Tribalization of Politics
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America—the first African American to attain this exalted office. Hundreds of thousands crowded the National Mall during the ceremony to wish the new president well.
However, rather than offering the president words of encouragement and congratulations, voices from the far right almost immediately expressed the hope that President Obama would fail and serve no more than one term. He had inherited a faltering economy, a war, a country still divided by race and other vexing issues, while the right-wing media labeled him as anti-American and unpatriotic, as a black president who would please his constituents of color to the detriment of white citizens.
Popular far-right talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was one of the most vociferous voices, and was the one with the largest audience. He uttered unceasing, racially-charged attacks on President Obama virtually every day of his two terms in office.
Historian Ian Reifowitz examines Limbaugh’s hateful invective and American political polarization in his new book, The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh’s Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Ig Publishing).
To better understand the attacks on President Obama, Professor Reifowitz took on the daunting task of analyzing the transcripts of Limbaugh’s radio shows and associated materials from the Obama years. As a result, Professor Reifowitz has documented the manifold instances of Limbaugh’s hateful race-baiting and “othering” of the president. And Limbaugh has profited greatly as a leader in sparking white fear of racial peril.
The book traces the election of Donald Trump and the recent rise in white supremacist activity to the incendiary language of racism that the right-wing relies on to win politically. Historian Keri Leigh Merritt commented that The Tribalization of Politics is “is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how the US has reached its lowest point in race relations since the Civil Rights Movement.”
Professor Reifowitz teaches history at Empire State College of the State University of New York. His other books include Imagining an Austrian Nation: Joseph Samuel Bloch and the Search for a Multiethnic Austrian Identity, 1846-1919, and Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity. He has published a number of academic articles in the Journal of Jewish Identities, Nationalities Papers, and East European Quarterly, among others. Professor Reifowitz is also a contributing editor at Daily Kos, and his articles have appeared in the Daily News, Newsday, The New Republic, In These Times, Truthout, Huffington Post, and others. His awards include the 2009 Susan H. Turben Award for Scholarly Excellence, and the 2014 S.U.N.Y. Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activities.
Professor Reifowitz graciously responded to a series of questions in an email exchange on his work and his new book.
Robin Lindley: You’re a historian specializing in the modern history of the United States. How did you decide to study history, and then to focus on the American past?
Professor Reifowitz: I’ve always, since I was in college (too many years ago) been interested in multiethnic societies, and specifically how they work to create ‘national’ bonds across lines of ethnicity to bind together their diverse population.
My graduate study, which led to my first book and other early academic publications, focused on Austria-Hungary. That state tried and failed to create strong enough national bonds, i.e., bonds based on citizenship in and loyalty to a common state, that would have allowed it to survive World War I and the overthrow of the Habsburg dynasty. Even while pursuing that research, I’d also been reading and thinking about another multiethnic society, the one we live in, that faces some of the same issues (thankfully, we don’t have to rely on a monarchy as the foundation of our unity).
Eventually, my passion for understanding how unity and diversity were playing out today drove me to begin writing and researching the contemporary U.S. I published a couple of articles in The New Republic, and later in other outlets, and began to read more deeply and develop my ideas further. Then along came Barack Obama. I wrote my previous book, Obama’s America, in which I examined his conception of American national identity, one that incorporates pluralism and inclusiveness into a strong, unifying vision of national community that, one would hope, Americans of every background could adopt.
Robin Lindley: How did you come to write about Rush Limbaugh’s race-baiting rhetoric in the Obama Era? Did the project grow out of your past research for Obama’s America?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: To continue the story from above, one section of Obama’s America examined critics (mostly on the right, but a few to Obama’s left) who criticized Obama’s vision of American national identity. I had spent some pages examining Rush Limbaugh’s rhetoric from the first couple of years of Obama’s presidency, and that had energized me (albeit with a sort of dark energy, compared to the more uplifting work of looking at Obama’s writings and speeches).
Then, in the summer of 2015, the idea came to me for another book, and I thought: why not do a comprehensive, close examination of everything Limbaugh said about the Obama presidency. I put together a proposal, started the work in late 2015 and kept up the research until Obama left office, and then started writing. In the meantime, of course, Trump had emerged and been elected. Trump’s campaign and then victory helped me decide to focus the book on Limbaugh’s race-baiting, both in order to document it in a comprehensive way for people, and to draw parallels between what he was doing—playing and preying on white anxiety—and what Trump did in his campaign (and, to be sure, for years beforehand, starting with his own incendiary, racist rhetoric about the Central Park Five and right up to him claiming the mantle of birther-in-chief).
Robin Lindley: You address our current political “tribalization” by focusing on Limbaugh’s rhetoric. In your view, what is tribalization, and how does it affect our politics now?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I’ll give you the definition I used in the book’s introduction rather than come up with something off the top of my head.
“Tribalization refers to a transformation much more profound than merely convincing Americans to be partisans who vote based on a shared set of policy preferences. It means cleaving America in two, and, in the case of Limbaugh, creating a conservative tribe animated somewhat by political ideology, but more so by racial and cultural resentment that feeds a hatred of the opposing tribe.”
Robin Lindley: This new Limbaugh project had to be daunting and possibly distasteful to you in view of your past research on President Obama and your favorable view of his efforts to unite our diverse nation. How did you feel as you put your book together?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: Well, I did mention above that I felt a different kind of passion motivating me on this project compared to the Obama book. But I have to admit that, once I got deep into the research, there were times when I wished I hadn’t committed to the project. There were plenty of times that I didn’t want to read through another word of Limbaugh.
I guess my stubborn streak helped. I wasn’t going to abandon a project that I’d already invested so much time and energy in, and certainly wasn’t going to do so because Limbaugh’s rhetoric was hard to stomach. I hoped I was doing something important, that could make some connections that would help people better understand where our politics has gone in the past few years.
Robin Lindley: What was your research process for your new book?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I went to RushLimbaugh.com and read through the transcripts for every show he did during the eight years Barack Obama was president, which he thoughtfully published free of charge. To be honest, if the transcripts didn’t exist, I don’t know that I could have done the research by listening to the audio recordings. That might have been too much. Thankfully I didn’t have to find out.
I also read secondary sources on contemporary politics, in particular on matters of race and identity. After I started focusing on the connections between Limbaugh and Trump, I read political science scholarship on public opinion in 2016, which documented how white anxiety and resentment correlated with votes for Trump both in the primary and general election, and I incorporated that information into my analysis.
Robin Lindley: What did you learn about Limbaugh’s origins?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I read some about his rhetoric in early years, how he had used racist language even before making his turn toward talking full-time about politics in the 1980s. But the focus of the book is on what he said about Obama, which spoke for itself. To clarify, I don’t care if he actually believes what he’s saying, because the effect his words have is the same whether he’s just a cynical opportunist or a true believer. I’m not especially interested in his motivations.
Robin Lindley: How did you come to focus on Limbaugh in your book. You see Limbaugh as a major force in dividing the US during the Obama era, but other potent Obama detractors included the current president, Senator Mitch McConnell and much of the Republican Party, Fox News, the Tea Party, and others. How would you weigh Limbaugh’s influence, if possible?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: My background, in terms of the kind of work I do, focuses on analyzing political rhetoric. Limbaugh was the person whose rhetoric I chose to examine because he broadcasts about two hundred shows a year, so there would be essentially no important issue relating to the Obama presidency that he would not address. Plus, he had the largest radio audience in the country throughout all eight years Obama was president (and decades before as well, and even in the years since up through the most recent month).
I used him as a case study—where the biggest part stands in for the whole of the right-wing media. The transcripts helped as well, as it would be impossible to read every word broadcast on, say, Fox. This way, I had a closed, yet comprehensive, set of data to use as my source base.
Robin Lindley: Thanks for explaining your process. Do you see Limbaugh as an ally of white supremacist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazis?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: His show helps push sanitized versions of some of their ideas into the mainstream. The views he expresses are not the same as the views of the KKK or American Nazis, but he taps into some of the same hate and fear that they do. I don’t think that makes him an ally, but more like an enabler.
Robin Lindley: How did Limbaugh view Senator Obama before he was elected in 2008?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I didn’t look at the pre-inauguration rhetoric in a comprehensive way, but from what I saw nothing changed on Election Day.
Robin Lindley: How did Limbaugh usually describe President Obama?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: You want the whole book in a nutshell? Here’s a brief summary from the book:
“While Obama was president, Limbaugh constantly, almost daily, talked about him using a technique that scholars call “racial priming”—in other words, he race-baited. The host aimed to convince his audience that Obama was some kind of anti-white, anti-American, radical, Marxist, black nationalist, and possibly a secret Muslim to boot. This was neither a bug nor a supporting element of Limbaugh’s presentation, but instead stood as a central feature deployed strategically in order to accomplish a very specific task, a task reflected in the title of this book. The tribalization of politics is exactly what Limbaugh set out to achieve.”
I’ll add: “[Limbaugh] portrayed him in a way designed to exacerbate white racial anxiety about a black president, or depicted him as a foreign “other,” outside the bounds of traditional Americanness.”
Robin Lindley: How did Limbaugh exploit Islamophobia and the fear of immigrants to attack President Obama?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: He repeatedly sought to portray Obama as some kind of “secret Muslim” or somehow more sympathetic to Muslims—even terrorists—than to Christians and/or the interests of the United States. On immigrants, I’ll give you the following example:
“On July 1, 2015, two weeks after Trump’s infamous comments [made during his announcement that he was running for president] about Mexican immigrants being rapists and bringing drugs into the United States, a woman named Kathryn Steinle was shot and killed in San Francisco by Jose Inez Garcia Zarate [an undocumented immigrant with a criminal record].
“. . . On the campaign trail, Trump pounced, and Limbaugh followed suit a few days later. On July 7, in comments designed to inflame white racial resentment, the host claimed that Steinle’s name would “never be as well-known as Trayvon Martin,” and that the president would not deliver the eulogy at her funeral, even though Obama had not delivered a eulogy at the funeral of Martin or any other citizen killed by police. Obama did, however, speak at the memorial service for the five Dallas police officers murdered a year later….Limbaugh speculated that the president did not care about Steinle’s murder, and blamed it on the administration’s immigration policies, which were “coming home to roost”—this was a phrase uttered by Reverend Jeremiah Wright that was discussed so often on Limbaugh’s show. The host again talked about Obama hating America and wanting to alter its “composition” in order to change “the face of the country.”
Limbaugh attacked the president over Steinle on three more shows over the next week. On July 15, 2015, the host contrasted Obama not having contacted the Steinle family to his having written letters to forty-six felons whose sentences he commuted, and to his outreach to the family of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Limbaugh’s point was to remind his listeners that Obama cared more about prisoners (read: black and Hispanic people) and black people killed by cops than a white woman who was murdered by someone here illegally. If there’s one segment that both encapsulates Limbaugh’s tribalizing history of the Obama presidency, and shows how his race-baiting rhetoric set the way for the rise of Trump, this was it.
Robin Lindley: How did President Obama respond to Limbaugh’s attacks, particularly in terms of dealing with claims that he was pro-Muslim, anti-police, and anti-white?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: He basically ignored them, but I did not examine Obama’s responses comprehensively.
Robin Lindley: Limbaugh attacked President Obama almost daily during his eight years in office. For Limbaugh, it seems that the ideals of equality, tolerance, democracy, community, and serving the common good are anathema and, indeed, anti-American. What is your sense of Limbaugh’s view of these ideals?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: He would pay lip service to most of those ideals in the abstract, while attacking Obama and other liberals for seeking to change the traditional definition of them to something involving retribution and reparations that would take from whites and give to non-whites. He would turn any criticism of racial inequality in America back around and argue that the problem of racism in America stemmed from people overexaggerating it. [// chemo-PHOBIA]
For example, on July 25, 2013, Limbaugh “accused “the left” of wanting “race problems” to remain unsolved, and in fact wanting to make them worse. Why? Because “too many people make money off of racial strife, and therefore they’re always going to promote it.” [whereas trump GOP wants to run on immigration in 2020]Here’s a quote from May 26, 2010, about Obama and liberals in general: “everything’s about race. Everything is about skin color to these people, or however they classify people, however they seek to group them, whatever, they’re victims.” This is how he viewed racism in America.
Robin Lindley: Beyond Limbaugh, what are some things that you learned about the massive right-wing media misinformation machine?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I didn’t do too much with them, because they do generally move in lockstep. I did note in the book that in the summer of 2018, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham on Fox News echoed Trump’s language of white anxiety regarding immigration and demographic changes. Limbaugh had spoken similarly as well during the Obama presidency, which I documented in greater depth.
Robin Lindley: Were there any particular findings that surprised you as you researched and wrote your book?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: Nothing really surprised me in terms of ideology, Rush pretty much delivered exactly what I expected when I started the research. I was already pretty familiar with his bile. However, when I came across Limbaugh’s comments connecting Tiger Woods and his sex-related scandals involving white women to Obama—which suggested that the president might be involved in something analogous based on little more than the fact that both were multiracial guys with a similar skin tone—that was something beyond even what I had expected. There were also a few times, at least until I got used to it, when I was surprised by how baldly Limbaugh just lied about facts and statistics, in particular regarding the economy. Either he really didn’t understand them, which is not likely to be true because he didn’t manipulate them to make President Trump look bad—only President Obama—or he just thought lying was the right thing for him to do.
Robin Lindley: Limbaugh wasn’t new to exploiting race to divide Americans. In fact, that’s been a Republican strategy for decades. What did you find about how Republicans use race to their political advantage?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I wrote this in the book: “As journalist Dylan Matthews noted in an article entitled “Donald Trump Has Every Reason to Keep White People Thinking About Race,” a vast corpus of social science research indicates that “even very mild messages or cues that touch on race can alter political opinions,” and added that “priming white people to so much as think about race, even subconsciously, pushes them toward racially regressive views.”
Robin Lindley: What do you see as Limbaugh’s role in the election of President Donald Trump?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I’ll share an example from the book, with some data, that demonstrates the role Limbaugh’s race-baiting rhetoric played in paving the way for Trump:
“Public opinion research data suggests that exactly this kind of rhetoric helped move some whites who had previously voted for Obama into Trump’s column by 2016—most Obama-Trump voters expressed high levels of anger toward non-whites and foreigners. It might be hard to imagine Obama voters being bigoted, but John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck found that significant numbers of whites who voted for Obama in 2012 expressed varying degrees of white racial resentment while also overwhelmingly embracing liberal positions on issues such as taxation and the existence of climate change. It might be surprising, but about 25% of those whites who found interracial couples unacceptable nonetheless voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. The country’s racial climate during Obama’s second term contributed to this phenomenon of racially resentful white Obama voters shifting to Trump, as [according to Zack Beauchamp at Vox] Black Lives Matter and Ferguson “kicked off a massive and racially polarizing national debate over police violence against African Americans.” Limbaugh took full advantage of that climate, and his race-baiting helped pave the way for Trump.”
Robin Lindley: What has Limbaugh been doing since Trump’s election? Does he continue to blame President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton for problems the nation faces.
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I’ve stayed away from Limbaugh to some degree, just to give myself a break. But he’s still a huge media figure. He’s done exactly what I expected, which is the same thing he did once Trump became the presumptive nominee. He’s been a huge Trump backer and has continued to use rhetoric aimed at ginning up white anxiety, to make sure those anxious whites keep on remembering who their (false) champion is. I did check to see what Limbaugh said about Tiger Woods recently, now that Trump has embraced him, and in fact Limbaugh has done a 180, offering nothing but praise for how been Tiger has been a friend to Trump. However, while discussing Tiger and Trump, Limbaugh made sure to remind his audience that Obama is still the one to blame for exacerbating racial tensions in America. He certainly doesn’t blame Trump—or himself, for that matter. None of those things qualify as a surprise.
Robin Lindley: What are some good ways to counter the hateful and inaccurate rhetoric of Limbaugh and his fellow extremists in the right-wing media?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: I’ll leave folks with the concluding paragraphs of the book, which are as close as I get to offering a prescription going forward regarding how to counter the Limbaugh/Trump vision of America:
“White racial identity has been the foundation of the single most destructive form of identity politics over the course of American history. In colonial times, slave-owners raised the status of white indentured servants—many of whom had developed close relationships with the enslaved African Americans alongside whom they worked—transforming these “plain white folks” into equal citizens and telling them that they were superior to blacks, who were thus undeserving of freedom. Why did they do this? Because the slave-owning elites had one fear above all: a white-black coalition of the masses that would unite to overthrow them. Similarly, after emancipation, the Southern economic elites made sure to bind poor whites to them through the race-based advantages conferred by Jim Crow, all in the name of thwarting that same white-black, class-based political partnership.
“In this century, some working- and even middle-class whites, especially those without a college degree, have been drowning economically in a way they have not since the Great Depression. For many, whatever privilege comes with being white is not enough to keep them afloat. They are angry, afraid, and looking for a scapegoat. Limbaugh has been only too happy to oblige. He has absolutely no interest in helping the country figure out how to deal in a productive way with the white anxiety that arises from demographic change. He is interested in one thing, and one thing only: exacerbating this phenomenon in order to keep separate whites and Americans of color who do share common economic interests. That is how Republicans win elections.[recall he was nearly RNC chair]
Limbaugh’s divisive approach, in that specific regard, is a carbon copy of the approach taken by the nineteenth century Southern white elites. The more he can get working, and middle-class whites to identify with their racial identity—their tribe—above their economic interests, the better he will be able to prevent the multiracial, progressive coalition assembled by President Obama from growing strong enough to defeat Limbaugh/Trump-style conservatism once and for all. Ultimately, the right-wing needs white racial anxiety. In fact, it cannot survive without it.
Robin Lindley: Thanks for those powerful words. What are you working on now?
Professor Ian Reifowitz: Right now? How about a nap? I’m still teaching full time, so I’ll be spending time thinking about a new project over the coming months.
Robin Lindley: Thank you for your thoughtful comments Professor Reifowitz and congratulations on your fascinating new book, “The Tribalization of Politics.”
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djt trump twitter algorithm?
is djt following gingrith language memo, or has he just absorbed by assmosis? too much fox news?
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/is-donald-trump-the-modern-day-earl-long-a-political-scientist-details-the-history-of-weaponizing-childish-nicknames/
HNN
Is Donald Trump the modern day Earl Long?
A three-time Louisiana governor, Long mastered the art of political ridicule seven decades ago by weaponizing nicknames. The hilarious names Long pinned on his rivals, and the rollicking stories he told about them, riveted audiences bored by puffed-up rhetoric.
While Long’s stunts may be remembered as silly hijinks, there was a sly, often deadly serious, purpose to his technique. He used it to get voters to laugh at his foes and to put them on the defensive – a place politicians never want to be. Tucked within Long’s jests were razor-sharp attacks aimed at exploiting opposition weaknesses – hidden swords inside a pea-patch cloak.
When New Orleans Mayor deLesseps S. Morrison ran for governor against Long in 1956, the wily Long took aim. He called the mayor “Della Soups” and said he’s “the only man that can talk out of both sides of his mouth, whistle, and strut all at once.”
Long scoffed that the impeccable Morrison was “slick as a peeled onion” and imitated him powdering his face and hiding his bald spot with a toupee (or, as Long called it, a “tuppy”). Sporting suspenders, baggy pants and a rumpled, sweat-soaked shirt, the rustic Long assured his hard-scrabble, plain-folk audiences that if you put one of Morrison’s silk suits on “Uncle Earl”––the nickname he gave himself––it would look like “socks on a rooster.”
Earl, the younger brother of the more famous Long, Huey––himself no slouch when it came to clever attacks––pestered a range of state politicians. He branded his former lieutenant governor, an on-and-off ally, “Big Bad Bill Dodd,” a name that stayed with him forever. Long also called Dodd “the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of Louisiana politics.”Another target was “psalm-singing” Jimmie Davis, a former governor who was an accomplished singer-songwriter.
Long went after rivals many ways. In his last gubernatorial campaign, he soft-soaped opponent Fred Preaus, a well-known car dealer, calling him “a fine man.” Then Long explained that if he needed a car, he’d do business with Preaus. But, he added, “if I needed two cars, I wouldn’t do business with him. He couldn’t handle a deal that big.” Long won the race.
The tactic of nicknaming political opposition has survived the modern age of electronic media. Donald Trump is the new master of the game – delighting supporters, mortifying adversaries.
In the 2016 election, Trump deployed nicknames against every threat. Remember “Low Energy Jeb Bush” and “Liddle Marco” Rubio? Then there was “Crooked Hillary,” the label that drove the Clinton camp crazy.
When it came to “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, Trump made a point of adding, “You have to spell it right––L-Y-I-N-apostrophe.” Twisting the knife, he went on: “The bible held high, then he puts it down and he lies.”
You could almost hear Uncle Earl holler out that punchline, he lies!
Trump has unsheathed new names for 2020. There is “Sleepy, Creepy” Joe Biden and “Crazy Bernie” Sanders. “Pocahontas,” the sobriquet Trump slapped on Elizabeth Warren, was so troublesome that she got a DNA test to prove Native American heritage.
Trump has gone after others, as well. The Democratic Senate leader is “Cryin’ Chuck” Schumer. The Meet the Press moderator is “Seepy Eyes” Chuck Todd. The former FBI director is “Leakin’ James Comey.” Perhaps funniest––but surely most dangerous––is “Rocket Man,” North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.
Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop has called Trump’s capacity to wipe out critics with pejorative nicknames a “dangerous linguistic power.” He also complains that an otherwise “hyper-vigilant” press oddly views this Trumpian tactic an “amusing distraction.”
Nonetheless, Trump’s enemies have tried to beat him at his own game. Only recently, one Democrat tagged him “Con Don.” Over the last few years, we’ve heard “Cheatin’ Don,” “Traitor Trump,” “Agent Orange,” “Captain Chaos,” “Dangerous Donald,” “Hair Hitler,” “King Leer” and “Benedict Donald.” So far, none of these nicknames have stuck.
Today’s distended crop of Democratic presidential candidates will keep trying to stamp Trump with a lethal nickname that will stick. But, can any of them do it? Should they even try? After all, there’s not an Earl Long in the bunch.
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aha:
horo-show sez left is source of violence (note slippage of black bloc wackos burning some trash or breaking windows are violent) whereas actual acts of violence eg by trump whipping up hate to press that gets them shoved/hit?
more aha: rt conflates verbal violence and actual, eg sec of def nom said ok for son to use baseball bat on mom b/c she yelled/nagged him for 3 hrs, thus self-defense
// slippage of eco- --> econ terror; rt calls left "extremists" and angry thus irrational, they seem to be the ones to consistently and constantly "lose it" plus violence is the trad perogative of men and power. plus if left tyranny is real threat to freedom and liberty, violence is justified/necessary
eg
United States isn’t the only English-speaking country where politicians can be loose cannons: in the U.K., Conservative MP Mark Field has been suspended from his position as a Foreign Office minister following a physical attack on a female Greenpeace activist.
In a video that has been posted on the Guardian’s website, Field can be seeing grabbing the protester by the neck at a June 20 dinner at London’s Mansion House and physically removing her from the event — and she can be heard saying, “It’s a peaceful protest.” Greenpeace activists disrupted the dinner in order to draw attention to the climate change crisis.
burgess sp give them an argument
https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-june-3-2019/
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an 519
no lx
Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s most effective rhetorical weapons — and why they could get him reelected
written by Alex Henderson May 31, 2019
The 2018 election results in the United States demonstrated that Democrats have an abundance of positions that can work in their favor, from universal health care to protecting Social Security and Medicare to calling for middle class tax cuts. But Democrats have a formidable adversary in President Donald Trump because he knows his base, knows it well and knows how to work it. Democrats enjoyed an impressive net gain of 40 seats in the House of Representatives in 2018, but Trump’s aggressive stumping on behalf of Republican candidates helped the GOP slightly increase its majority in the U.S. Senate and win key gubernatorial races in Georgia and Florida.
Trump is a loose cannon, but he is a master of soundbites and a master of messaging — and he stands a good chance of being reelected in 2020 despite the fact that Democrats are strong on issues like health care and middle class tax cuts. Rhetorically, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee — whether it’s Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris of California or someone else — will need to engage in verbal guerrilla warfare and fierce messaging in order to overcome Trump’s ability to whip the GOP base into a frenzy. And Democrats who underestimate Trump’s rhetorical powers do so at their own peril.
Here are some examples of themes and rhetoric Trump is likely to use to flog Democrats going into 2020.
- Sleepy Joe and Crazy Bernie
Trump’s name-calling seems incredibly childish and silly to his critics, who have often accused him of being a 72-year-old man (73 on June 14) who sounds like he’s taunting classmates in middle school. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. While Trump has street smarts and knows how to diminish his opponents — which means that he will be using names like “Sleepy Joe” for Biden and “Crazy Bernie” for Sanders a lot this year. The idea is to paint Biden as lethargic and Sanders as extreme and radical. Truth be told, Sanders isn’t nearly as far to the left as Trump would have us believe: he’s essentially a New Deal liberal who believes in capitalism with a strong social safety. Sanders isn’t really anti-capitalist — he’s against crony capitalism. But if Trump repeats his “Crazy Bernie” rhetoric enough, it could convince swing voters that Sanders is a dangerous extremist.
Biden, meanwhile, will need to appear as aggressive, forceful and focused as possible in order to keeping Trump’s “Sleepy Joe” rhetoric from sticking.
So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews. Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the “audience” was so smiley and nice. Very strange, and now we have @donnabrazile?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2019
Welcome to the race Sleepy Joe. I only hope you have the intelligence, long in doubt, to wage a successful primary campaign. It will be nasty – you will be dealing with people who truly have some very sick & demented ideas. But if you make it, I will see you at the Starting Gate!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2019
- Claims that Democrats want to steal your guns and repeal the 2nd Amendment
Wanting to regulate the sale of firearms is a far cry from wanting to abolish the 2nd Amendment, but going into 2020, Trump will most certainly try to paint Democrats as the party that hates the 2nd Amendment and can’t wait to confiscate your guns. In the past, Democratic candidates have been mocked by other Democratic candidates for posing for photos while holding their hunting rifles. But if one of Trump’s 2020 messages is that I and I alone can protect your 2nd Amendment rights, Democrats will need to explain their positions and explain them well.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT WILL NEVER BE REPEALED! As much as Democrats would like to see this happen, and despite the words yesterday of former Supreme Court Justice Stevens, NO WAY. We need more Republicans in 2018 and must ALWAYS hold the Supreme Court!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018
- Trump will denounce Democrats as ‘sore losers’
Challenging Trump on his policies and investigating him via the House of Representatives is not the same as refusing to accept the 2016 election results. When Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded to Trump in November 2016, Democrats accepted the election results — and President Barack Obama tried to make the transition as smooth as possible even though his efforts, sadly, were in vain. But perception can become reality at a Trump event, and Trump has repeatedly denounced Democrats as “sore losers” who cannot accept the fact that Clinton lost to him. On March 4, Trump revisited that theme when he tweeted that if Democrats continue to investigate him, they will “continue to look like sore losers who didn’t accept the WILL OF THE PEOPLE in the last election.”
“Now that the Dems are going to try & switch from Collusion to some other reason, it makes them continue to look like sore losers who didn’t accept the WILL OF THE PEOPLE in the last election – they will do anything to get rid of the President.” @AriFleischer It will never work!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2019
- ‘No collusion, no obstruction, total exoneration’
Ever since special counsel Robert Mueller delivered his final report for the Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr, Trump has been repeating his mantra “no collusion, no obstruction, total exoneration” —which wasn’t what Mueller said. The special counsel’s report said that the 2016 Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians, although questionable, didn’t rise to the level of a full-fledged criminal conspiracy — and Mueller made no judgement of either guilt or innocence on obstruction of justice but rather, laid out the evidence for others to evaluate going forward. Mueller, speaking publicly on May 29, stated that his work in the Russia investigation is over and done with; now, it’s up to others to read his report and decide what to do with the information.
So no, Mueller’s report wasn’t a total vindication of Trump. But the president realizes that if he repeats his “no collusion, no obstruction, total exoneration” soundbite often enough, many people will believe it. Trump is great at finding soundbites and working them to death, and being redundant is not a liability for the president — he views it as an asset.
No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2019
- Trump claims that U.S. economy is better than ever
Trump obviously realizes that many Americans, like himself, have short attention spans. Democrats are much better at nuance, but when so many Americans respond instinctively to soundbites — not nuance or intricate details — Democrats are fighting an uphill battle. Trump has repeatedly congratulated himself for the United States’ low unemployment rates of 2018 and 2019, but the devil is in the details: the country was recovering significantly from the Great Recession when Obama was still president — and not all Americans have been feeling the recovery. But when Trump stresses that “our economy is better than it has been in many decades” and tries to take credit for it, his base is going to buy into it — even if they’re still struggling.
Our economy is better than it has been in many decades. Businesses are coming back to America like never before. Chrysler, as an example, is leaving Mexico and coming back to the USA. Unemployment is nearing record lows. We are on the right track!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 28, 2018
The Economy is soooo good, perhaps the best in our country’s history (remember, it’s the economy stupid!), that the Democrats are flailing & lying like CRAZY! Phony books, articles and T.V. “hits” like no other pol has had to endure-and they are losing big. Very dishonest people!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2018....
519
Department of Energy, US policy will support the export of American energy products such as liquefied natural gas as “molecules of US freedom” to the rest of the world.
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519 AHA: THE SOLUTION IS REPAIR THE COMMONS (including rhet. lang expertise ~ agnotology
wicked smart henry g
https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/our-culture-of-ignorance-has-made-possible-the-rise-of-a-terrible-new-political-blend-neoliberal-fascism/
The ghosts of a fascist past are with us once again resurrecting the discourses of hatred, exclusion and ultra-nationalism in countries such as the United States, Hungary, Brazil, Poland, Turkey and the Philippines. In addition, right-wing extremist parties are on the move politically in Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Germany. The designers of a new breed of fascism increasingly dominate major political formations and other commanding political and economic institutions across the globe. They have infused a fascist ideology with new energy through a right-wing populism that constructs the nation through a series of racist and nativist exclusions, all the while feeding off the chaos produced by neoliberalism.
Their nightmarish reign of misery, violence and disposability is legitimated, in part, in their control of a diverse number of cultural apparatuses that produce a vast machinery of manufactured consent. This reactionary educational formation includes the mainstream broadcast media, digital platforms, the Internet and print culture, all of which participate in an ongoing spectacle of violence, the aestheticization of politics, the legitimation of opinions over facts, and an embrace of a culture of ignorance. Under the reign of this normalized architecture of neoliberal ideology, literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-science. Chris Hedges is right to argue that both the rule of law and the institutions that make democracy possible are being undermined. He is worth quoting at length:
The mechanisms that once made democracy possible have withered and died. We no longer have elections free of corporate control; real legislative debate; an independent press rooted in verifiable fact that lifts up the voices and concerns of the citizens rather than peddling conspiracy theories such as “Russiagate” or cheerleading for disastrous military interventions and occupations; academic institutions that vigorously examine and critique the nature of power; or diplomacy, negotiation, détente and compromise. Puffed up by self-importance, intoxicated by the ability to wield police and military power, despots and their grotesque courtiers are freed with the collapse of the rule of law to carry out endless vendettas against enemies real and imagined until their own paranoia and fear define the lives of those they subjugate. This is where we have come, not because of Trump, who is the grotesque product of our failed democracy, but because the institutions that were designed to prevent tyranny no longer function.
Ignorance has lost its innocence and is no longer synonymous with the absence of knowledge. It has become malicious in its refusal to know, to disdain criticism, and render invisible important social issues that lie on the side of social and economic justice. James Baldwin was certainly right in issuing the stern warning in “No Name in the Street” that “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”
...
Thinking is now viewed as an act of stupidity, and ignorance a virtue. All traces of critical thought appear only at the margins of the culture, as ignorance becomes the primary organizing principle of American society. For instance, two-thirds of the American public believe that creationism should be taught in schools and most of the Republican Party in Congress do not believe that climate change is caused by human activity, making the U.S. the laughingstock of the world. Politicians endlessly lie, knowing that the public is addicted to extreme violence and shock, which allow them to drown in overstimulation and live in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images. News has become entertainment and echoes reality rather than interrogating it. Unsurprisingly, education in the larger culture has become a disimagination machine, a tool for legitimating ignorance that now plays a central role in the formation of an authoritarian politics that has gutted the ideologies, policies and institutions that are crucial to a substantive and thriving democracy.
I am not talking about the kind of anti-intellectualism that has a long history in the United States. I am pointing to a more lethal form of ignorance fueled by a manufactured type of illiteracy that is often ignored. What I am referring to is a mode of illiteracy that is both a scourge and a political tool power designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking, and the capacity for critical thought. Chris Hedges is right to state that “the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idiom of mass culture.” Words such as love, trust, freedom, responsibility and choice have been deformed by a market logic that narrows their meaning to either a relationship to a commodity or a reductive notion of self-interest.
Freedom now means removing one’s self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-indulgence. And so it goes. The new form of illiteracy does not simply constitute an absence of learning, ideas or knowledge. Nor can it be solely attributed to what has been called the “smartphone society.” On the contrary, it is a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives.
The writer and social critic Gore Vidal once called America the United States of Amnesia. The title should be extended to the United States of Amnesia and Willful Illiteracy. Illiteracy no longer simply marks populations immersed in poverty with little access to quality education; nor does it only suggest the lack of proficient skills enabling people to read and write with a degree of understanding and fluency. More profoundly, illiteracy is about what it means not to be able to act from a position of thoughtfulness, informed judgment and critical agency.
In this instance, manufactured illiteracy has become a form of political repression that discourages a culture of questioning, renders agency inoperable as an act of intervention, and restages power as a mode of domination. Illiteracy serves to depoliticize people because it reproduces conditions that make it difficult for individuals to develop informed judgments, analyze complex relationships and draw upon a range of sources to understand how power works and how they might be able to shape the forces that bear down on their lives.
Think about the defunding of public education or the assault on truth and civic literacy by the Trump administration in the U.S. and the Jair Bolsonaro administration in Brazil. Illiteracy provides the foundation for being governed, not how to govern. It is precisely this mode of illiteracy that now constitutes the modus operandi of a society that both privatizes and kills the imagination by poisoning it with falsehoods, consumer fantasies, data loops, propaganda machines and the need for instant gratification. This mode of manufactured illiteracy and education has no language for relating the self to public life, social responsibility or the demands of citizenship.
It is important to recognize that the rise of this new mode of illiteracy is not simply about the failure of public and higher education to create critical and active citizens; it is about a society that eliminates those public spheres that make thinking possible while imposing a culture of fear in which there is the looming threat that anyone who holds power accountable will be punished. Literacy is dangerous to tyrants because they recognize that it is not only about learning critical competencies and an essential step towards agency, it is also the precondition for intervening in the world by being able to critique common-sense assumptions that legitimate apparatuses of persuasion and power. In the absence of a culture of literacy, the preconditions disappear for confronting not only the crisis of memory, ethics and agency but also the crisis of democracy itself.
At a time of growing fascist movements across the globe, power, culture, politics, finance and everyday life now merge in ways that are unprecedented and pose a threat to democracies all over the world. As cultural apparatuses are concentrated in the hands of the ultra-rich and major tech companies, the educative force of culture has taken on a powerful anti-democratic turn. This can be seen in the rise of new digitally driven systems of production and consumption that produce, shape and sustain ideas, desires and social relations that contribute to the disintegration of democratic social bonds and promote a form of social Darwinism in which misfortune is seen as a weakness and the Hobbesian rule of “war of all against all” replaces any vestige of shared responsibility and compassion for others. Think of the power of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire as an anti-democratic disimagination machine, especially in its ability to influence the Trump presidency.
The era of post-truth is in reality a period of crisis which, as Antonio Gramsci observed, “consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born [and that] in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Those morbid symptoms are evident in Trump’s mainstreaming of a fascist politics in which there is an attempt to normalize the language of racial purification, the politics of disposability and social sorting while exaggerating a culture of fear and a militarism reminiscent of past and current dictatorships.
I want to argue that any viable attempt at developing a radical politics must begin to address the role of education and civic literacy and what I have termed public pedagogy, or more precisely the educational force of the wider culture, as central not only to politics but also to the creation of subjects capable of becoming individual and social agents willing to struggle against injustices and fight to reclaim and develop those institutions crucial to the functioning and promises of a substantive democracy. One place to begin to think through such a project is by addressing the meaning and role of pedagogy as part of the broader struggle for economic justice and practice of freedom.
The reach of pedagogy extends from schools to diverse cultural apparatuses such as the mainstream media, the expanding digital screen culture, and alternative old and new media outlets. Accordingly, pedagogy is at the heart of any understanding of politics and the ideological scaffolding of those framing mechanisms that mediate our everyday lives. Across the globe, the forces of free-market fundamentalism are using media establishments and public and higher education to reproduce the corporate-driven culture of neoliberalism. In addition, they are waging an assault on the historically guaranteed social provisions and civil rights provided by the welfare state, public schools, unions, feminist organizations and social services, among others, all the while undercutting public faith in the defining institutions of democracy.
As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish — from public schools and alternative media to health care centers — there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values and the common good. This grim reality has been called by Alex Honneth a “failed sociality” — a failure in the power of the civic imagination, political will and open democracy. It is also part of a politics that strips the social of any democratic ideals and undermines any understanding of education as a public good and pedagogy as an empowering practice.
...
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khj grad crs
https://www.c-span.org/video/?459639-1/depth-kathleen-hall-jamieson
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/a-historian-of-rhetoric-details-the-genius-of-trumps-strategic-and-instrumental-lies/
So Donald Trump has told 10,000-plus lies, or “misstatements,” since taking office as president. So what? All those lies, and what sense have we made of them? That’s the first question that really matters: What sense can we make of an avalanche of lies designed to overwhelm our capacity to make sense of anything? The second question is also important: What can we do about them?
One thing should be clear: The media shouldn’t be repeating them, giving Trump’s lies more life. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what they’re doing, according to a recent Media Matters study, which found that major media outlets routinely amplified Trump’s false claims on their Twitter accounts — 19 times a day, on average. The study period ran from Jan. 26 to Feb. 15 of this year, and its “key takeaways” included:
Nearly one-third of the tweets from major media outlets about Trump’s remarks (30%) referenced a false or misleading statement.
Nearly two-thirds of the time, the outlets did not dispute that misinformation.
That means the outlets amplified false or misleading Trump claims without disputing them 407 times over the three weeks of the study, an average of 19 times a day.
So, that’s what we shouldn’t be doing. But what to do instead? That should be informed by knowledge and understanding — first about the nature of Trump’s lies themselves, and then, more broadly about how they function and what they’re intended to do.
We can make a start in two ways: First, by looking more closely at Trump’s most frequent lies and considering how we might build on our knowledge of them, to cover all his lies more responsibly; second, by considering what academic researchers have found, which can help inform and direct us moving forward. Beyond that, however, the real work lies in coming to grips with Trump’s use of rhetoric, and the threat that poses to democracy and the institutions and values on which it depends.
Plumbing the depths of the “Bottomless Pinocchios”
Trump’s most frequently repeated falsehoods are those the Washington Post now identifies as “bottomless Pinocchios.” Most frequent of all is his claim that his “big, beautiful wall” is already being built — a false claim repeated 160 times. This top-rated lie is all the more remarkable given how recent it is. The original “Three Pinocchios” for the claim came only on April 5 of last year. Trump’s only other false claims that come close are his overstating the impact of trade deficits (147 times), claiming his tax cut was the biggest in history (143 times), and claiming that the U.S. economy has never been stronger (134 times). The cut-off for bottomless Pinocchios is 20 repetitions, and the bottom two — at 22 repetitions each — are falsely claiming to cut the cost of the F-35 jet and wildly exaggerating the costs of illegal immigration, which is quite likely a net benefit to the country.
A better sense can be gained by grouping the bottomless Pinocchios by subject matter, which give us the following set of totals:
505 lies about immigration
402 lies about Trump’s economic accomplishments
143 lies about exaggerated military spending
127 lies about Trump himself being persecuted
It’s hardly an accident, or a surprise, that the top two subjects of Trump’s lies revolve around the so-called issues that made him president — his racist appeals to fears and hatred of immigration and his bogus claims of brilliant business success — exposed as never before in the recent New York Times tax record exposé. The fact that these two subjects represent 5% and 4%, respectively, of Trump’s 10,000 lies only underscores the value of simply keeping track.
Grouping Trump’s false claims under broad categories this way highlights the false attacks he’s mounting against others, as well as the false glory he’s trying to claim for himself. Given that journalists all know that he’s lying by now, this should be the minimal standard for telling the truth about what he’s doing — rather than simply reporting his lies as if they were true, and then belatedly or half-heartedly fact-checking them, This is step one: Stop doing everything wrong, as the Media Matters study reports we are doing now.
Scratching the surface: Lessons from academics
In a note at the end of their story, Post fact-checkers pointed to three examples of academics using their fact-checking data for important purposes. In December of 2017, UC Santa Barbara psychologist Bella DePaulo reported (in the Post and Psychology Today) that Trump lied a lot more, and a lot more viciously, than most people do.
In her earlier work, she had found that most lies are either self-serving, or meant to flatter others — with the former about twice as common. Only around 1 to 2% of lies were defined as cruel. Trump, in contrast told 6.6 times as many self-serving lies as kind lies, and fully 50% of his lies were cruel.
In addition DePaulo wrote, Trump’s lies “often served several purposes simultaneously (for example, sometimes they were both self-serving and cruel).” This last point echoes something noted above: One bottomless Pinocchio may fit into two different categories of lies, serving to advance two different agendas. Trump’s use of lies to serve multiple purposes should surely be a central focus of attention moving forward.
In May 2018, Tali Sharot of University College London and Neil Garrett of Princeton addressed the increased pace of Trump’s lying, from about five false claims a day during his first 100 days to nine a day from March 1 to May 1, 2018. They pointed to their own research as well as other studies showing that “our response to our own acts of dishonesty is strong at first, but over time decreases,” a process they dubbed, “emotional adaption.” They also cited other research showing that “individuals adapt not only to their own dishonesty but also to that of others,” and pointed to other evidence that Trump’s dishonesty hadn’t diminished his support.
If anything, these findings are cautious or understated, given how Trump’s pace of lying has continued to skyrocket. The Post itself recently reported, “All told, the president racked up 171 false or misleading claims in just three days, April 25-27. That’s more than he made in any single month in the first five months of his presidency.” Trump’s escalation of lying deserves focused attention as well — and we’ll touch on it again below.
Finally, research by Sophie Van Der Zee of Erasmus University and her colleagues “found substantial linguistic differences between factually correct and incorrect [Trump] tweets and developed a quantitative mode” which could predict the veracity of Trump tweets with 73% overall accuracy. As they explained, “Lying can cause behavioral change [in language use] because it is cognitively demanding, elicits emotions, and increases attempted behavioral control.”
Van Der Zee’s research is very important; here’s why. The success of this method strongly suggests that a) Trump knows that many of his false statements are lies — an enduring subject of debate — and b) he responds to his own lying, at last subconsciously, much as other liars do.
These are interesting findings, but they only scratch the surface of what’s going on. To make sense of the larger picture of what Trump is doing, and the even more urgent question of what we should do about it, we need to look beyond the wall of Trump’s 10,000 lies to the larger landscape around them.
Trump’s lies as rhetoric
To place Trump lies in a larger context, I turned to two experts whose focus is much broader. Because such a prodigious liar can’t be fully understood without considering the full range of his rhetorical expression, I first turned to Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of rhetoric, whose book, “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” (table of contents here) will be published in early 2020.
And because Trump’s demagoguery itself needs further explanation and context, I also turned to Elizabeth Mika, a contributor to the “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” to help make sense of the social psychodynamics involved — not just in Trump’s behavior, bur more generally.
“It’s important to realize that lies are marketing for Trump,” Mercieca said. “He isn’t concerned about whether or not a statement is true or false. Veracity isn’t important at all. He is concerned with shaping our understanding, with framing.”
This is a fact that’s widely recognized, but seldom seems to sink in — as witnessed by how pervasively the media continues to propagate Trump’s lies, even when recognizing them as such.
“Everyone quotes the ‘truthful hyperbole’ thing from his book [“The Art of the Deal”], but Trump didn’t even write that,” Mercieca continued. “Tony Swartz said that he made it up on Trump’s behalf because it acknowledged, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’ I think that’s about right. Trump doesn’t even care that it’s a lie. It’s just a means to an end. Trump is a very strategic and instrumental communicator.”
The evidence from Van Der Zee’s study arguably suggests, let us note, that Trump actually does care, at some level, but it’s simply not part of his conscious calculation.
“Trump’s lies fall into different categories, such as hyperbole and humbug, like P.T. Barnum,” Mercieca said (see her own account of Barnum’s multi-layer humbug here), “but also more menacing categories of speech that border on authoritarianism. Trump proclaims his truth as the one and only truth and asks his audiences to deny their own perception of reality. It’s a pre-Cartesian view of truth — ‘truth’ is no longer what we perceive (I think, therefore I am), but what Trump says is true.
“Folks who call it a form of ‘gaslighting’ are correct,” Mercieca went on. “Trump’s constant blizzard of lies denies us the possibility of knowing. It’s its own epistemology. And if that doesn’t frighten you, the constant barrage of lies are authoritarian — they are used to prevent him from being held accountable for his words and actions.”
But the lies don’t just work in isolation, she noted:
The lies serve in conjunction with his other rhetorical strategies to attract attention, control the national dialogue, and distract our attention. I write about how he routinely uses ad hominem attacks, ad baculum threats of force, reification (treating people as objects), ad populum (appealing to the wisdom of the crowd), American exceptionalism, and paralipsis (I’m not saying, I’m just saying). The lies are part of all of those strategies. He lies when he attacks, he lies when he praises, he lies and lies and lies. There is no truth that matters.
It’s this kind of framing of Trump’s lies that’s been so dramatically and tragically absent from virtually all mainstream media coverage. What I wrote earlier about categorizing Trump’s lies ties in directly here. Mercieca’s rhetorical distinctions suggest further ways of refining how we categorize Trump’s lies: ad hominem attacks against groups and individuals, for example, or categories of who is being threatened or treated as an object. We also need to use these categories to critique Trump’s rhetoric holistically — not just keep track of his blatantly false statements, but also the threats, promises and postures that serve as their oxygen.
==
https://tyt.com/stories/4vZLCHuQrYE4uKagy0oyMA/55ZimtgirWgUh9ZgMSPirI
no lnx
TYT Investigates
‘Put Them All in a Gas Chamber,’ Said Border Militia Member: Report
By: Ken Klippenstein May 6, 2019 3 comments
“Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them,” a border militia member in New Mexico is alleged to have said of border migrants that the group had been monitoring.
“We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber,” the militia member, Armando Gonzalez, is also alleged to have said. Gonzalez did not respond to multiple requests for comment by TYT.
The disturbing comments appear in an April 24 police report containing allegations by a former member of the militia group. The former member, Steven Brant, contacted the Sunland Park Police Department to notify them of what he called “terroristic threats” he had witnessed by the group. The report was produced by the Sunland Park Police Department and was obtained by TYT through a public records request.
On April 18, the border militia, which calls itself the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), sparked national outrage after reportedly detaining about 200 border migrants, including several children, at gunpoint. After video surfaced appearing to show UCP impersonating Border Patrol — a federal offense — the FBI arrested UCP’s leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins.
Although the police report obtained by TYT does not mention UCP by name, Daniel Carranco, Sunland Park City Clerk, confirmed to TYT that UCP is the group referenced.
The police report is an interview of a militia member named Steven Brant who told police he went by the codename “Viper.” On April 23, an article in The New York Times about UCP mentions both Gonzalez and quoting a “balaclava-clad militia member who gave his name only as Viper.” Brant did not respond to multiple requests for comment from TYT.
Judging from the article, Brant seemed an ardent supporter of UCP’s agenda prior to his decision to contact the Sunland Park PD.
“We’re here to protect Americans from the illegals violating our sovereignty,” Brant told the Times, espousing a commong talking point among Trump supporters.
“It’s my God-given right to be here," he said. "The guys in Washington say one thing about not wanting us on the ground but no one from the Border Patrol here has ever told me they don’t want our help."
Indeed, the report suggests that UCP enjoys the support of Border Patrol, stating that Brant “was a part of the group who was assisting Border Patrol with observation of subjects crossing the border illegally.”
Asked to confirm the Sunland Park PD claim that UCP was assisting, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official did not respond directly. The official told TYT, “U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not endorse or condone private groups or organizations taking enforcement matters into their own hands. Interference by civilians in law enforcement matters could have public safety and legal consequences for all parties involved. Border Security operations are complex and require highly trained professionals with adequate resources to protect the country.”
However, the official also noted that “Border Patrol welcomes assistance from the community and encourages anyone who witnesses or suspects illegal activity to call.”
So why did Brant become disillusioned?
According to the police report, on the night of April 24, Brant and other UCP members had been monitoring the border when they observed several people crossing. Brant told police that another member, identified as Armando Delgado Gonzalez, then handed him a handgun and ran to his vehicle and grabbed an AR-15.
An internal police report obtained by TYT includes a militia member's account of what another member said about killing undocumented immigrants.(Image: Screengrab of Sunland Park, NM, internal police report.)
Brant said he gave Gonzalez back his gun and told him to put the weapons away since they were only to observe and report activity. Brant said Gonzalez then became upset and made the remarks about Hitler and gassing their detainees.
Brant told police that he was going to start a new group “that followed the law.”
Although Gonzalez did not respond to TYT's requests for comment, the Times article includes several quotes from him about his motives.
“If you ask me this is all about politics,” Gonzalez told the Times. “The Democrats want illegal immigration because that means more votes for them.”
“But I took an oath to protect my country and what’s happening on the border is an invasion threatening our people,” Gonzalez said. “These men [UCP] are patriots and I'm proud to stand alongside them.”
According to the Times, Gonzalez identified himself as an Army veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ken Klippenstein is a senior investigative reporter for TYT. He can be reached securely via Signal at 202-510-1268, on Twitter @kenklippenstein or via email: kenklippenstein@tytnetwork.com.
==
==
new cointelpro blk extremists
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/the-fbi-appears-to-be-engaged-in-a-modern-day-version-of-cointelpro-aclu-racial-justice-program-deputy-director/
https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/watch-beto-orourke-slams-trumps-rhetoric-as-something-we-mightve-expected-to-hear-in-nazi-germany/
“What other country on the face of the planet does that kind of thing?”
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was questioned by a reporter Thursday night after he told an audience that some of President Donald Trump‘s comments echo the rhetoric of Nazi Germany’s “Third Reich.”
Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur reports O’Rourke had told participants at the Sioux City, Iowa town hall that Trump’s policy of separating migrant families at the Southern border “follows the rhetoric of a president who not only describes immigrants as rapists and criminals but as animals and an infestation.”
O’Rourke, a former U.S. Congressman from Texas, added, “I might expect someone to describe another human being as an infestation in the Third Reich. I would not expect it in the United States of America.”
His comments drew “heavy applause” from the college crowd, Bloomberg notes.
O’Rourke stood by his remarks criticizing the President when the reporter challenged him.
“Calling human beings an infestation is something that we might’ve expected to hear in Nazi Germany,” O’Rourke explained. “Describing immigrants, who have a track record of committing violent crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans as rapists and criminals. Seeking to ban all Muslims — all people of one religion, what other country on the face of the planet does that kind of thing?”
The former Texas Congressman who raised $9.4 million in just 18 days, was not quite finished.
“Putting kids in cages. Saying that neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists are very fine people,” he added, evoking Trump’s remarks in 2017 that there were “very fine people” in the pro- and anti-white nationalism marches in Charlottesville, Virginia.
...
In Iowa, @BetoORourke says the president’s rhetoric on migrants and calls to ban Muslims sound more like the Third Reich than the USA.
Asked about the comparison after the rally, he emphatically stood by it.
Watch the exchange here
==ref
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-05/in-iowa-o-rourke-says-some-trump-rhetoric-echoes-nazi-germany
no lnx
In Iowa, O'Rourke Says Some Trump Rhetoric Echoes Nazi Germany
By Sahil Kapur
April 4, 2019, 7:51 PM PDT Updated on April 4, 2019, 8:59 PM PDT
He slams the administration for separating families at border
The former congressman spoke to crowd at a college in Iowa
Beto O’Rourke
Beto O’Rourke Photographer: Joshua Lott/Bloomberg
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Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke told a crowd in Sioux City, Iowa, that some of President Donald Trump’s inflammatory remarks echo the rhetoric of Nazi Germany’s “Third Reich.”
He said the administration’s policy of separating families who cross the Mexican border unlawfully “follows the rhetoric of a president who not only describes immigrants as rapists and criminals but as animals and an infestation.
“Now, I might expect someone to describe another human being as an infestation in the Third Reich. I would not expect it in the United States of America,” O’Rourke said Thursday, drawing heavy applause from the young crowd at Morningside College.
At a White House event in May 2018, Trump ripped into undocumented immigrants and said “these aren’t people, these are animals.” He later said he was referring to MS-13 gang members. The same month, he tweeted that Democrats “want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13.”
Embedded video
Sahil Kapur
?
@sahilkapur
In Iowa, @BetoORourke says the president’s rhetoric on migrants and calls to ban Muslims sound more like the Third Reich than the USA.
Asked about the comparison after the rally, he emphatically stood by it.
Watch the exchange here ??
14.1K
7:30 PM - Apr 4, 2019
5,028 people are talking about this
Asked about the charged comparison by a reporter after the town hall, O’Rourke stood by it and cited Trump’s calls to ban Muslims and his remark at the dawn of his presidential campaign that Mexico was sending rapists to the U.S.
Read More: O’Rourke Matches Sanders Pace in 2020 Democratic Fundraising
“Calling human beings an infestation is something that we might’ve expected to hear in Nazi Germany,” the former Texas congressman said. “Describing immigrants, who have a track record of committing violent crimes at a lower rate than native-born Americans as rapists and criminals. Seeking to ban all Muslims -- all people of one religion, what other country on the face of the planet does that kind of thing?”
“Putting kids in cages. Saying that neo-Nazis and Klansmen and white supremacists are very fine people,” he added, evoking Trump’s remarks in 2017 that there were “very fine people” in the pro- and anti-white nationalism marches in Charlottesville, Virginia.
O’Rourke’s comparison on Thursday night came in response to a question about how he would take on Trump if he’s the 2020 Democratic nominee.
He said he would seek to “pull this country together around the work that’s ahead.” He vowed to jettison the “pettiness and meanness and personal attacks,” arguing that Democrats may lose if they try to match Trump’s approach because Trump is too “gifted” at that style of campaigning.
The Texan’s blistering critique of the president came as the large and diverse field of Democratic contenders — which grew to 16 on Thursday with the entry of Ohio Representative Tim Ryan — look for ways to distinguish themselves. And the front-runner in most surveys, former Vice President Joe Biden, has yet to announce his plans.
O’Rourke, who’s polling near the top of the pack, recently announced that he had raised $9.4 million over the first 18 days of his campaign.
MSNBC host Christ Hayes unleashed on conservative columnist Matt Mackowiak Thursday evening on Twitter for defending some of President Donald Trump’s worst and most vile rhetoric.
The back-and-forth began when Mackowiak tweeted a story from The Washington Free Beacon about presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, who recently compared Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border to that of the Nazis.
“He then went on to call asylum-seekers animals and an infestation,” explained O’Rourke. “Now we would not be surprised if in the Third Reich other human beings were described as an infestation, as a cockroach or a pest that you would want to kill.”
“The reckless candidate continues his recklessness,” Mackowiak said of O’Rourke.
But Hayes disagreed.
“He noted that talking about immigrants as an ‘infestation’ and ‘animals’ is Nazi language, and in that he is 100% correct,” the MSNBC host tweeted. “The recklessness lies with the president using those vile, dehumanizing terms, not with the person pointing that out.”
Mackowiak responded: “What word would you use to describe 4,000 apprehensions every day?”
And that’s when Hayes became truly outraged.
“[OF] HUMAN BEINGS?!!! OF CHILDREN? I would never ever ever EVER under any circumstances refer to it as an ‘infestation,’ because that is a word that describes vermin,” Hayes wrote. Asked whether “invasion” was appropriate, he said: “They don’t have weapons, and are not militants of any kind so fo course invasion is definitely not appropriate. It is a humanitarian crisis, yes.”
He added: “Calling a group of people an “infestation,” comparing them to rats or vermin or cockroaches has been deployed as justification for genocide time and time again. This is just a plain historical fact.”
The exchange ended with this:
Matt Mackowiak
@MattMackowiak
- 17h
Let's be clear. I don't call it an infestation or call them animals.
But by now we should all know that comparing anything to the Nazis is unwise.
Chris Hayes
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@chrislhayes
I know you don't and wouldn't! I think the comparison is often hyperbolic and maybe unwise, but this is a case, imho, where it's apt.
125
4:00 PM - Apr 4, 2019 · Manhattan, NY
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Mackowiak’s last point here is particularly revealing and alarming. He is, it seems, more concerned and offended by the analogy Trump’s critic’s make of his administration to the Third Reich than he is of the analogy and metaphor the president makes comparing immigrants to animals and an infestation. In addition to Hayes’ astute points about the relative accuracy of each analogy, there’s a more fundamental point to be made: one of the comparisons is used to critique the powerful ruling party in the U.S. government, while the other is used to attack and demonize a vulnerable and frequently abused population. The fact that Mackowiak finds one of these analogies “unwise” while offering little condemnation of the other is particularly telling.
==
AOC good on twitter comeback (tho fox drives her #'s down? 3/19)
EJ ACW
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has quickly become a powerful voice in the Democratic Party, and a new video showing a speech she delivered in a hearing on the importance of environmental protection and the threat of climate change makes clear why.
Addressing the charge that environmental concerns are “elitist,” she dispatched with the attack quickly.
“One year ago, I was waitressing in a taco shop in downtown Manhattan. I just got health insurance for the first time a month ago,” she said. “This is not an elitist issue — this is a quality of life issue.”
She continued: “You want to tell people that their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which are suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint whose kid’s — their blood is ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist. You’re telling them, that those kids are trying to get on a plane to Davos? People are dying! They are dying! And the response across the other side of the aisle is to introduce an amendment five minutes before a hearing in a markup? This is serious! This should not be a partisan issue.”
==
only boo's in sotu ~ aoc US will never go socialist!
https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/here-is-a-recent-history-of-republicans-attacking-democrats-as-socialists-and-why-it-will-only-get-worse-in-the-months-ahead/
no lx twit
During his 2019 State of the Union address earlier this month, President Donald Trump declared, “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” It was crude, cheap political theater designed to rally his far-right base, but Trump is hardly alone when it comes to using the word “socialist” to terrorize American voters—and hysterically attacking Democrats as “socialists” is likely to become even more prevalent in the months ahead.
Equating liberalism with socialism is nothing new. In the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s critics often attacked the New Deal as “socialism” even though, truth be told, his reforms were designed to save capitalism from itself. Even the fiercely anti-communist President Richard Nixon understood that in the 1970s, supporting elements of the New Deal and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. If anything, Nixon was so terrified of communism that he accepted a certain amount of “socialism” in order to avoid it. But the Republican Party of 2019 is so extreme that any belief at all in a social safety net is likely to be attacked as socialist.
On February 17, the New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported that according to Rep. Tom Emmer, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), fear-mongering over “socialism” will be a prominent tool in the GOP playbook in 2020. Stolberg tweeted, “NEW: Inside look at the 2020 GOP playbook: Paint Democrats as socialists, baby-killers and anti-Semites. ‘Socialism is the greatest vulnerability by far that the House Democrats have,’ the NRCC chairman told me.”
Responding to Stolberg on Twitter, Democratic operative Ronald A. Klain (who served as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff) posted, “Republicans calling Democrats ‘socialists’ is not a new playbook—it’s their ONLY playbook. Jack Kemp called Al Gore a ‘socialist’ in their 1996 debate. The GOP called Obama’s economic plans ‘socialist.’ They called the ACA ‘socialism.’ DO NOT BE SCARED, DEMOCRATS!”
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
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@SherylNYT
NEW: Inside look at the 2020 GOP playbook: Paint Democrats as socialists, baby-killers and anti-Semites. “Socialism is the greatest vulnerability by far that the House Democrats have,” the NRCC chairman told me. https://nyti.ms/2Ef6Tc5
837
1:49 PM - Feb 17, 2019
Some Republicans have seized on actions by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, center left, and Rashida Tlaib, right, to cast them as radical or anti-Semitic.
Republicans Hope to Sway Voters With Labels That Demonize Democrats
With 21 months until Election Day 2020, Republicans are trying to paint Democrats as left-wing radicals on the economy, abortion and Israel.
nytimes.com
1,583 people are talking about this
Ronald Klain
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@RonaldKlain
Republicans calling Democrats "socialists" is not a new playbook -- it's their ONLY playbook. Jack Kemp called Al Gore a "socialist" in their 1996 debate. The GOP called Obama's economic plans "socialist." They called the ACA "socialism."
DO NOT BE SCARED, DEMOCRATS!
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
?
@SherylNYT
NEW: Inside look at the 2020 GOP playbook: Paint Democrats as socialists, baby-killers and anti-Semites. “Socialism is the greatest vulnerability by far that the House Democrats have,” the NRCC chairman told me. https://nyti.ms/2Ef6Tc5
3,552
5:21 AM - Feb 18, 2019
In 2018, many Republican candidates used the word “socialist” in the hope of frightening voters into supporting them. One was Sen. Ted Cruz, who stressed, “I am not remotely afraid to debate left-wing liberal socialists.” Texas Rep. Chip Roy compared his Democratic opponent, Joseph Kopser, to Karl Marx, and former Texas Rep. Pete Sessions insisted that Democratic challenger Collin Allred had “socialist ideas”—although it didn’t work for Sessions, who was voted out of office and lost his seat to Allred.
How well anti-socialist rhetoric will or won’t work for Republicans in the months to come depends a lot on the state, the area or the district where they’re running. Some Democrats or allies of Democrats were victorious in 2018 despite calling themselves “democratic socialists”—or perhaps even because of it, including Sen. Bernie Sanders in Vermont, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Queens and the Bronx, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib in Michigan. Context is crucial: Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib are, in reality, FDR/LBJ capitalists who believe in a strong social safety net. But Republicans will distort their views, using them to terrorize their gullible voters.
Republicans have repeatedly used the word “socialist” to demonize the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, even though it’s “universal health care via the private sector” model was influenced by the Heritage Foundation, Richard Nixon and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Modern-day Republicans will even attack GOP ideas as “socialist” when they believe it’s expedient.
In May 2018, right-wing author Paul Gottfried wrote a piece for the American Conservative that was highly critical of Democrats yet lambasted Republicans for tossing the word “socialist” around so carelessly. Gottfried is no fan of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s liberal/progressive policies but stressed that it’s silly to think she fits the definition of “orthodox Marxism.”
Gottfried wrote, “The U.S. is hardly on its way to becoming Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela, whatever the complaints one hears on Fox News. But we could easily slip into an up-to-date version of ‘antifascist’ Germany or Sweden.”
Agree or disagree with Gottfried’s criticisms of Warren—at least he’s intellectually honest enough to admit that she looks to Germany and Sweden for political inspiration, not Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela.
But Gottfried is a 77-year-old paleoconservative intellectual, not a Republican running for office in 2019 or 2020—and even if they know it’s disingenuous, that won’t stop Republicans from calling their opponents “socialists.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has denounced opponents of Trump’s proposed U.S./Mexico border wall as “socialists who prefer open borders,” and he will mindlessly repeat that over and over if he thinks it will save him from a GOP primary challenge next year.
The Democratic victories of 2018 ranged from hardcore liberals like Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib to centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. If Sinema were from the U.K., she would probably fit right in with the Conservative Party and run as a Tory. But in a July 23, 2018 press release attacking Sinema, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) tried to paint Sinema as an example of the Democratic Party’s “full embrace of socialism”—which is idiotic. Full socialism is called communism, and Democrats are hardly promoting discredited Marxist-Leninist ideas such as abolition of all private property.
But this is the type of nonsense that the GOP is promoting in the Trump era, and it will only get worse as the 2020 presidential election draws closer.
what are can tell us about t rhet
https://theconversation.com/what-aristotle-can-teach-us-about-trumps-rhetoric-107761
From Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats to Ronald Reagan’s reputation as the “great communicator” to Barack Obama’s soaring oratory to Donald Trump’s Twitter use, styles of presidential communication have varied over time.
But what is similar across all presidents is their ability to create persuasive messages that resonate with large segments of the U.S. population.
Whatever your opinion about Donald Trump, he is highly effective at doing this. The question is why, and how does he do it?
As someone who teaches rhetoric and communication, I am interested in how people connect with an audience and why a message resonates with one audience but falls flat with another. Whether intentional or not, Trump is using rhetorical strategies that have been around for more than 2,000 years.
What makes something persuasive?
There have been many definitions of rhetoric over the past two millennia, but at its most basic level it is the practice and study of persuasive communication. It was first developed in ancient Greece, and arose from the need for people to defend themselves in law courts – a brand new invention at the time.
One of the world’s most influential thinkers in this regard was the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who lived from 384 to 322 B.C.
Aristotle was a student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote about philosophy, poetry, music, biology, zoology, economics and other topics. He also famously wrote about rhetoric and came up with an elaborate and detailed system for understanding both what is persuasive and how to create persuasive messages.
To Aristotle, there were three main elements that all work together to create a persuasive message: a person’s use of logic and reasoning, their credibility and their use of emotional appeals.
Aristotle wished that everyone could be persuaded with detailed logical arguments – what he called “logos.” However, that approach is often tedious, and, frankly, Aristotle felt most people weren’t smart enough to understand them anyway. Facts, documents, reasoning, data and so forth are all important, but those alone won’t win the day. So, he claimed, we need two other things – and this is where Trump excels: credibility and emotion.
Trump: The credible leader
Aristotle argues that someone’s credibility – or “ethos” – is one of the elements that people find most persuasive.
However, he also said credibility is not a universal trait or feature. For example, a degree from Princeton gives you credibility only to someone else who has heard of Princeton, understands its cultural cachet and respects what it represents. The Princeton degree itself doesn’t give you credibility; it’s the perception of the degree by someone else that’s important.
Aristotle also said that an important feature of credibility is to appear to have the audience’s best interest in mind by sharing and affirming their desires and prejudices, and understanding and amplifying their cultural values. In politics, the person who does the best job of this will get your vote.
So when Trump states that climate change is a hoax or that the “news media is the enemy of the American people,” what makes that effective for certain audiences has nothing to do with the truthfulness of those statements.
Instead, it’s because he’s channeling and then reflecting the values and grievances of his audience back to them. The closer he gets to hitting the sweet spot of that specific audience, the more they like him and find him credible.
Very often, politicians “evolve” or “pivot” from a position that has earned them intense loyalty from a small group to a position they think will resonate with a larger group in order to get more supporters. This works for some people. But that’s not Trump’s strategy.
Instead, he goes all-in with his core supporters, establishing stronger bonds and identifying more closely with that group than someone with a more moderate message would. This also creates extremes on both sides: passionate supporters and intense detractors.
President Trump the communicator, then, has a laser focus on one particular segment of the population. He doesn’t mind if you don’t agree with him because he’s not talking to you anyway. His strategy is to continue nurturing his credibility with core supporters.
Trump: The emotional leader
Peppering your credibility with emotional appeals – what Aristotle calls “pathos” – is particularly effective. As Aristotle once wrote, “The hearer always sympathizes with one who speaks emotionally, even though he really says nothing.”
Anger, for example, is an emotion that a speaker can provoke in an audience by using real or perceived slights. In Book 2 of his “On Rhetoric,” Aristotle writes that anger is an “impulse, accompanied by pain, to a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight.” He details how an audience will channel their “great resentment” and revel in the “pleasure” of their expectation of “revenge” against those who have wronged them.
In another passage, he writes, “people who are afflicted by sickness or poverty or love or thirst or any other unsatisfied desires are prone to anger and easily roused: especially against those who slight their present distress.”
Using slights to channel and rouse anger is a near daily strategy that Trump has used against the FBI, the news media, the Mueller investigation and other perceived enemies.
Anger over the slighting of one’s “present distress” also helps explain why, for example, Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment was such a rallying cry for Republicans. They didn’t like being dissed.
Trump’s language style
A speaker’s style of language is also important. Trump is very effective with this, too.
Aristotle recommended that a speaker should first identify feelings that their audience already holds, and then use vivid language that resonates with that specific audience to intensify those emotions. Trump has repeatedly put this tactic to work, particularly at his rallies.
For example, Trump regularly invokes a familiar adversary, Hillary Clinton, at his rallies. By drawing on his audience’s known animosity toward her and encouraging them in the “lock her up” chant, calling for her to be jailed and describing her election night loss as “her funeral,” he is using an aggressive style of language that reflects and heightens the preexisting emotions of his audience.
The downside is that the more he uses language that is strongly incompatible with other groups, the more they dislike him. But that seems to be something Trump embraces, which only gives him even more credibility with his supporters.
Whether this approach is a smart electoral strategy in the future remains to be seen.
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Orwell warns us in his dystopian novel 1984 that authoritarianism begins with language. In the novel, “newspeak” is language twisted to deceive, seduce and undermine the ability of people to think critically and freely.
Donald Trump’s unapologetic bigoted language made headlines again Thursday when it was reported he told lawmakers working on a new immigration policy that the United States shouldn’t accept people from “shithole countries” like Haiti. Given his support for white nationalism and his coded call to “Make America Great (White) Again,” Trump’s overt racist remarks reinforce echoes of white supremacy reminiscent of fascist dictators in the 1930s.
His remarks about accepting people from Norway smack of an appeal to the sordid discourse of racial purity. There is much more at work here than a politics of incivility. Behind Trump’s use of vulgarity and his disparagement of countries that are poor and non-white lies the terrifying discourse of white supremacy, ethnic cleansing and the politics of disposability. This is a vocabulary that considers some individuals and groups not only faceless and voiceless, but excess, redundant and subject to expulsion. The endpoint of the language of disposability is a form of social death, or even worse.
As authoritarianism gains strength, the formative cultures that give rise to dissent become more embattled, along with the public spaces and institutions that make conscious critical thought possible.
Words that speak to the truth to reveal injustices and provide informed critical analysis begin to disappear, making it all the more difficult, if not dangerous, to judge, think critically and hold dominant power accountable. Notions of virtue, honour, respect and compassion are policed, and those who advocate them are punished.
I think it’s fair to argue that Orwell’s nightmare vision of the future is no longer fiction in the United States. Under Trump, language is undergoing a shift: It now treats dissent, critical media coverage and scientific evidence as a species of “fake news.”
The Trump administration, in fact, views the critical media as the “enemy of the American people.” Trump has repeated this view of the media so often that almost a third of Americans now believe it and support government-imposed restrictions on the media, according to a Poynter survey.
Thought crimes and fake news
Trump’s cries of “fake news” work incessantly to set limits on what is thinkable. Reason, standards of evidence, consistency and logic no longer serve the truth, according to Trump, because the latter are crooked ideological devices used by enemies of the state. Orwell’s “thought crimes” are Trump’s “fake news.” Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” is Trump’s “Ministry of Fake News.”
[twit]
Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump
I’ve had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!
145K
T--
The notion of truth is viewed by this president as a corrupt tool used by the critical media to question his dismissal of legal checks on his power, particularly his attacks on judges, courts and any other governing institutions that will not promise him complete and unchecked loyalty.
For Trump, intimidation takes the place of unquestioned loyalty when he does not get his way, revealing a view of the presidency that is more about winning than about governing.
One consequence is the myriad practices by which Trump gleefully humiliates and punishes his critics, wilfully engages in shameful acts of self-promotion and unapologetically enriches his financial coffers.
Under Trump, the language of civic literacy and democracy has become unmoored from critical reason, informed debate and the weight of scientific evidence, and is now being reconfigured and tied to pageantry, political theatre and a deep-seated anti-intellectualism.
One consequence, as language begins to function as a tool of state repression, is that matters of moral and political responsibility disappear and injustices proliferate.
Fascism starts with words
What is crucial to remember here, as authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, is that fascism starts with words. Trump’s use of language and his manipulative use of the media as political spectacle are disturbingly similar to earlier periods of propaganda, censorship and repression.
Under fascist regimes, the language of brutality and culture of cruelty was normalized through the proliferation of strident metaphors of war, battle, expulsion, racial purity and demonization.
As German historians such as Richard J. Evans and Victor Klemperer have made clear, dictators like Adolf Hitler did more than simply corrupt the language of a civilized society, they also banned words.
Soon afterwards, the Nazis banned books and the critical intellectuals who wrote them. They then imprisoned those individuals who challenged Nazi ideology and the state’s systemic violations of civil rights.
The end point was an all-embracing discourse of disposability — the emergence of concentration camps and genocide fuelled by a politics of racial purity and social cleansing.
Echoes of the formative stages of such actions are upon us now. An American-style neo-fascism appears to be engulfing the United States after simmering in the dark for years.
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https://medium.com/s/story/maga-the-power-of-four-words-4e9269add4e9
no lnx
How MAGA Worked Magic
A deep dive into one of the most powerful political slogans in U.S. history
“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
— Aldous Huxley
“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
— Rudyard Kipling
I am not in any way endorsing the Donald J. Trump presidency, nor am I valorizing the content of his message. Rather, I am valorizing the form of the message. I’m interested in the power of words.
I cannot remember Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election campaign slogan. It might have been “I’m with her.” I saw that a lot, but I’m not sure if it was official.
Donald J. Trump’s slogan, in contrast, is seared into my mind. There were times when I blinked and I could see it in the darkness of my eyelids. Okay, that’s a lie, but you get what I mean. It is perhaps the most powerful and memorable political slogan ever.
Why? Because it is a syntactical and semantic masterpiece. Just four words convey a powerful and, of course, frightening message—one that starts inclusively and ends with a divisive challenge.
I’m not claiming four words caused one of the greatest electoral upsets in history, but the slogan has been used and adapted to the point of ubiquity. It underpinned the entire campaign. It was all over the news, like a barbed leitmotif.
It is perhaps the most powerful and memorable political slogan ever.
The words are often referred to with the acronym MAGA. The distinctive red baseball cap so pervasive during Trump’s campaign has become a contested symbol of contemporary America. Even rap royalty has been caught up in the polarizing storm.
Kanye West, who has seemingly embraced Trump, describes his Trump-autographed MAGA hat as his “Superman cape.” The four words embroidered on it represent “good and making America whole again.”
Four Words
Whatever you think of Trump and his election campaign, these four words underpinned an extraordinary campaign that defeated everything Washington could throw at it. Word by word, here is why it is so powerful:
Make
This is a directive verb addressed directly to the beholder. It also empowers, implying that you can verb something together, verb something to happen. (You can/will) make America great again.
America
This places you in the bigger picture of the nation, which is greater than the sum of its people. You are an American, you are part of it, and you can do something.
Great
This is a superlative, and the least interesting of the four words. But it’s equally important. You can be part of something that is great. Great also means powerful—but without the negative connotations that can come with that term.
Again
This is the crux of the whole sentence and of Trump’s campaign, delivered right at the end. Again is a shrill dog whistle that everybody hears, but especially white social conservatives of any party.
The implications are, of course, that America was great back in the day, but is no longer. Perhaps it stopped being great under Bill Clinton or maybe George W. Bush; it was certainly no longer great under Obama’s administration.
The word ‘again’ is the contentious part. It is implicitly combative, and it invites a with-us-or-against-us reaction.
But remember the three preceding words—especially that directive verb. America can be fixed, and you can fix it. You can do this by supporting Donald Trump.
The word again is the contentious part. It is implicitly combative, and it invites a with-us-or-against-us reaction. If you question whether America was ever great or assert that it is great now, you are getting locked into a long argument.
My friend, a behavioral economist, observed that the power of Trump’s slogan lies in how it communicates a sense of loss:
“One thing that struck me, from a behavioural economics perspective, is Trump relies on people feeling they’ve lost something […] The ‘again’ is powerful. It communicates a sense of loss. People are more risk averse when they’re winning. But when they’re losing, they do some pretty crazy s*** trying to get it back.”
Trump was simultaneously the reckless risk and the guy who made people believe they had nothing to lose.
I just Googled Hillary’s slogan. It was “Stronger Together.” That’s not bad, but it’s not compelling—it doesn’t cut into the psyche like “Make America Great Again” does.
“Stronger Together” is not a directive. There’s no verb, no superlative—merely a comparative adjective. There’s nothing above and beyond the readers of the words, like America is above and beyond together. The slogan is not a challenge like Trump’s is, and as a result, it’s not as powerful. Trump’s slogan hit his adversaries like four landed punches.
Trump registered “Make America Great Again” only six days after the defeat of Mitt Romney in November 2012. Photo: Gage Skidmore via flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
The $325 Slogan
Trump had conceived of “Make America Great Again” as early as Nov. 7, 2012, when Mitt Romney lost his race against President Obama. Phrases like “We will make America great” and “Make America great” popped up but felt like a slight on the country’s past.
With the addition of again, Trump had what he was looking for. He immediately trademarked the four words for a $325 registration fee.
The long-sighted application paid off. When GOP rivals started to use the phrase in their own speeches, Trump’s team sent them cease-and-desist letters. The phrase has become plastered across a vast plethora of merchandise—official and unofficial—from bumper stickers to swimsuits.
Federal Commission filings show that Trump’s team spent more money on making MAGA hats than on polling, campaign consultants, staff, or even television advertisements.
With the addition of again, Trump had what he was looking for. He immediately trademarked the four words for a $325 registration fee.
The bite-sized slogan was copied. “It was knocked off 10 to one,” Trump told the Washington Post, but he reasoned that every time somebody buys counterfeit MAGA merchandise, “that’s an advertisement. It meant jobs. It meant industry, and meant military strength. It meant taking care of our veterans. It meant so much.”
The phrase also has a distinctly American ring. Where “Keep Calm and Carry On” embodies an English quaintness and bashful stoicism, “Make America Great Again” has a go-forth boldness.
Like “Keep Calm and Carry On,” MAGA has been appropriated—often subverted—to form thousands of phrases adorning T-shirts and coffee mugs, from “Make America Green Again” to “Make Metallica Great Again.”
Again and Again
Here’s the twist: “Make America Great Again” doesn’t come from Trump.
Ronald Reagan was first. In 1980, Reagan exploited the perception that America had slid into decline throughout the 1970s. Reagan’s leadership revolutionized the Republican party by embracing economic liberalism and social conservatism. Photo: Fotosearch/Getty Images
It’s not a new slogan. In fact, it’s pretty old. Ronald Reagan used a variation of it in 1980: “Let’s Make America Great Again.”
In the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter’s America struggled with the stagflation crisis while the Soviet Union consolidated its power by invading Afghanistan. The embarrassment of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 made people feel like the U.S. was losing its foreign clout.
Bill Clinton also used the slogan in 1992 as a response to the recession of the late 1980s that lasted into the ’90s: “Together, Let’s Make America Great Again.” Clinton’s version is softer with together added to the start. It’s an invitation, not an imperative. This version also fits with Clinton’s triangulation strategy of appeasing moderate Republicans.
Trump’s slogan is more visceral. Truncating it to the four words without the universal adverb together or the inclusive transitive verb let’s makes it more of a directive, more a direct address to the voter alone, more of a challenge.
Of course, context is important: America was out of the latest recession by 2016, so why was it “failing to be great”? Part of the genius of the four words is that again has different meanings for different people.
To converted rust-belt Democrats, again might hark back to industrial America; to Southern state conservatives, again could refer to the era before the Civil Rights Act of 1964; to Wall Street traders, again may recall the financial boom days of Reagan’s presidency.
Trump has never been crystal clear about the meaning, only suggesting that America was great under Reagan’s presidency. It’s interesting that the subjectivity of the phrase galvanizes so many people.
The flip side is that it’s a covenant, a deal. If Trump can’t deliver great—whatever that means—chances are voters will punish him in future elections.
I don’t want to cheapen the gravity of the situation, of everything at stake in politics. But considering the power of language is important. Words shape feeling, words can melt hearts, words can ultimately kill. Use them wisely.
Go to the profile of Steven Gambardella
WRITTEN BY
Steven Gambardella
I write about history, art and philosophy and how these subjects can help you in business and life.
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Trump supporters are proud of their absolute faith in him. You see it in the way they beam proudly when they tell reporters that they’d support him no matter what he does. Now that’s unconditional love!
We have mixed feelings about absolute faith and unconditional love. Sometimes we regard them as the highest virtues. Sometimes we think such commitment is pretty dangerous. Unconditional? Would you still love a partner who turned into an ax murderer?
On the receiving end, absolute faith and unconditional love are pretty handy. Gaining that kind of unconditional respect means you can do no wrong, which frees you to do all the wrong you want.
So if you’re into that sort of thing, here’s all it takes to get it. And if you’re not into that sort of thing, here’s what to watch out for.
Target people who can’t stand uncertainty: Go for the hungry, anxious, eager to believe; people who have had their fill of uncertainty and can’t stand anymore.
Target people who don’t notice the downside of absolute faith: These are people who get all dewy eyed when thinking about faith, the kind who either ignore a faith they regard as wrong-headed or will tell you that wrong-headed faith is not really faith.
Get their guard down: You’ll want people who see you as the answer to their prayers, people who want to align with you for a boost in their morale, status and prospects. Charm them. Listen to them and feed them whatever will satisfy them. The hungry are the easiest to eat.
Make bold, vague statements that speak directly to them. (Trump’s “Make America Great” is a great example.) Great how? Your targets can fill in whatever comes to mind. Likewise, you can court someone personally with a line like, “Wow, I can really tell that you’ve got talent for understanding what’s going on!” Bold, flattering, vague. Suckers line right up.
Include them in your “winner’s circle” with talk about the idiots "out there": Nothing wins faith like disparaging others. You see it at rallies where the speaker riles the audience by ridiculing everyone outside your circle. You can hear it in the way people flirt by confiding in you (yes you, because you’re wonderful!).
Speak as though you are the absolute final, neutral judge of reality. Don’t ever qualify what you say; it’s not your opinion, it’s truth. That will annoy careful thinkers. but they’re not your targets. It will win gullible thinkers, but only if they agree with you already. They’ll agree with you if you’re sufficiently vague (see #4).
Dog whistle: Keep your pandering to your targets and your attacks on others under the radar, so you can always deny them if challenged.
Make it easy to align with you, costly to break with you: Don’t ask your targets to make sacrifices. Once you’ve hooked them they’ll make all sorts of sacrifices. Make all of their first encounters with you self-affirming fun for them and make the alternative, not aligning with you, seem like nothing but a hassle.
Appear invincible: Your targets want to believe you, so make it easy for them. Prove you are right, absolutely and always (by your “authoritative” standards). Remember, there is absolutely nothing that can’t be mocked, attacked or vilified. It’s easy. Just pick apart anything that suggests you’re wrong.
Heads you win, tails you lose: Any good news affirms that you’re right. Any bad news affirms you’re the victim of persecution.
Avenge tenfold: Be savage. Be relentless. Don’t let anyone get away with saying anything bad about you. Make sure that anyone who tries has at least 10 times more bad things said about them. Gaslight like crazy.
Police morality as though you’re a crusader for reality: Above all you are always the morality police. If you hate immorality in others, the gullible will believe that you must be morally pure.
What’s nice about these rules is that it doesn’t matter what you know or think. Following them frees you from careful thought. That’s the beauty of it! You can apply these to win absolute faith and unconditional love from the gullible in support of anything. It doesn’t matter whether you offer anything for them to have faith in, since your targets are the kind who have faith in faith. Remember, they consider it a relief to no longer have to keep an eye on things—a relief from dreaded uncertainty.
Jeremy Sherman is a decision theorist studying how life deals with dilemmas from the origins of life to everyday and political life.
https://users.wfu.edu/zulick/454/gopac.html
As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used at intraining sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."
2
That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.
3
This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.
4
While the list could be the size of the latest "College Edition" dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Pos[i]tive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.
5
Please let us know if you have any other suggestions or additions. We would also like to know how you use the list. Call us at GOPAC or write with your suggestions and comments. We may include them in the next tape mailing so that others can benefit from your knowledge and experience.
Optimistic Positive Governing Words
6.1
Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the pos[i]tive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!
6.2
share, change, opportunity, legacy, challenge, control, truth, moral, courage, reform, prosperity, crusade, movement, children, family, debate, compete, active(ly), we/us/our, candid(ly), humane, pristine, provide, liberty, commitment, principle(d), unique, duty, precious, premise, care(ing), tough, listen, learn, help, lead, vision, success, empower(ment), citizen, activist, mobilize, conflict, light, dream, freedom, peace, rights, pioneer, proud/pride, building, preserve, pro-(issue): flag, children, environment; reform, workfare, eliminate good-time in prison, strength, choice/choose, fair, protect, confident, incentive, hard work, initiative, common sense, passionate
Contrasting Words
7.1
Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.
7.2
decay, failure (fail) collapse(ing) deeper, crisis, urgent(cy), destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, liberal, they/them, unionized bureaucracy, "compassion" is not enough, betray, consequences, limit(s), shallow, traitors, sensationalists, endanger, coercion, hypocricy, radical, threaten, devour, waste, corruption, incompetent, permissive attitude, destructive, impose, self-serving, greed, ideological, insecure, anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs; pessimistic, excuses, intolerant, stagnation, welfare, corrupt, selfish, insensitive, status quo, mandate(s) taxes, spend (ing) shame, disgrace, punish (poor...) bizarre, cynicism, cheat, steal, abuse of power, machine, bosses, obsolete, criminal rights, red tape, patronage.
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