PC 3 Cancel silence

221 3rd incarnation

oops see other

SEE FOURWOKE

MERRI OK

see woke

see wedge culture war polarization

see troll caucus performance wedge

see social media bias /de-platform

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Right-wing media outlets have repeatedly attacked the left for "cancel culture," and not all of the criticism has come from the right. Former President Barack Obama has complained that cancel culture has gone too far, and "Real Time" host Bill Maher has argued that progressives need to aggressively debate conservatives they disagree with — not try to silence them.

But in an article published on July 19, The Spectator's Brendan O'Neill cites an example of "cancel culture" coming from the right: Donald Trump supporters trying to shut down people who have made "tawdry" comments following the attempted assassination that Trump survived during a campaign rally in Western Pennsylvania on July 13.

"People who've made tawdry comments about the shooting are being hunted, doxxed, shamed, sacked," O'Neill observes. "Most decent folk will think it is wrong to make wisecracks about an incident in which a presidential candidate was targeted for death and an ordinary citizen was killed. I do. But should it be a cancellable offence, a reputation-shattering crime? I'm not sure it should."

O'Neill cites the comedy duo Tenacious D as an example, noting that their tour was canceled after a tasteless joke about Trump during an appearance in Sydney, Australia.

"Crass? Yes," O'Neill writes. "Too soon? Sure. But a speech crime of such epic proportions that Tenacious D must now consider its future? That's an overreaction, surely?.... We need some perspective here."

The journalist adds, "A 64-year-old comedy rocker making fun of a tragic incident might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is not the end of the world."

O'Neill emphasizes that some far-right Trump supporters who decry "cancel culture" are guilty of the very thing they rail against.

"So this is what we have to look forward to if Trump ousts Biden?" O'Neill laments. "Four more years of cancel culture? Those of us whose commitment to free speech is principled rather than contingent, who think everyone from JK Rowling to the Home Depot lady should enjoy the liberty of expression, really do have our work cut out for us."

Read Brendan O'Neill's full article for The Spectator at this link.

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Major US newspapers and broadcast TV news outlets often failed to report on Jim Jordan’s role in undermining the 2020 election – and ignored the risk to certification in 2024 if he becomes speaker | Media Matters for America

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1 24 judd ymail

david D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group (Sinclair), purchased the Baltimore Sun — the largest newspaper in Maryland — for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition means another powerful media outlet will be under the control of a wealthy conservative businessman with a history of using local media outlets to push an ideological agenda.

Smith is the son of Sinclair founder Julian Sinclair Smith and, along with his brothers, controls the company. Sinclair, a publicly traded company, owns or operates 185 local television stations across 86 markets. A 2018 study published in the American Political Science Review found that stations purchased by Sinclair "coverage of national politics at the expense of local politics" and undergo "a significant rightward shift in the ideological slant of coverage."

Sinclair regularly requires its local affiliates to run segments pushing right-wing talking points. In 2018, Sinclair affiliates were required to have local anchors read a script warning views about "fake stories" being published by other media outlets "to push their own personal bias and agenda." The trend was described as "extremely dangerous to a democracy." The argument, which included no actual examples, matched then-president Donald Trump's rhetoric about the media.

When Sinclair faced criticism for puppeteering its local anchors, Trump defended the company. "So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased," Trump said. "Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke."

Sinclair stations were also required to run political commentary from Boris Epshteyn, who previously served as a Trump advisor and surrogate. Sinclair hired Epshteyn as its chief political analyst. Epshteyn's segments for Sinclair were mostly indistinguishable from his work for the Trump campaign. "The American people demand change, and they demand action, and that’s exactly what they’ll get from this administration going forward," Epshteyn declared in one piece.

Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and advisor, said that in 2016, the Trump campaign provided Sinclair stations with extensive access to Trump in exchange for friendly coverage that did not include fact-checking. "We are here to deliver your message," Smith told Trump in a 2016 meeting. Sinclair executives denied there was anything unusual or unethical about its dealings with the Trump campaign. Sinclair affiliates have also promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, including claims that DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by a hitman as payback for sharing sensitive emails to Wikileaks.

The history of using Sinclair-owned stations to push a right-wing agenda predates Trump. In 2004, "Sinclair ordered its stations to broadcast an hour-long documentary — preempting prime-time programming — titled Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal that blamed Democratic nominee John Kerry for the torture of American prisoners of war in Vietnam."

In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, Smith defended Sinclair's news coverage "as balanced and apolitical." According to Smith, Sinclair is "not perfect" but overall is "much better than a lot of folk."

Smith, not Sinclair, is purchasing the Baltimore Sun — although that may be a distinction without a difference. Smith said, "he envisions opportunities for partnerships between The Sun and Sinclair, such as promoting each other’s stories, and other synergies in the future."

The checkered history of Smith's right-hand man

Smith did not purchase the Baltimore Sun alone. He brought along one partner: Armstrong Williams, a right-wing pundit and operative.

:{:{Williams has his own syndicated show on Sinclair stations. His social media accounts are full of incendiary statements about Democrats and liberals. "Each day Joe Biden has sat in office, we have gotten closer and closer to a fascist communist nation," Armstrong wrote on January 10. On January 5, he accused Biden of "destroy[ing] American democracy."}:

On December 19, Armstrong decried "the real time consequences of being infiltrated by radical left-wingers and the acceptance of their insane political agendas." (The issue was the Pope slightly softening his stance on same-sex marriages.) On December 6, Armstrong called Biden "a senile senior citizen" who "barely knows right from left." Armstrong also called the prosecutors pursuing cases against Trump as "terrorists" and promoted false narratives and conspiracy theories about the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.}:

Armstrong served as an advisor to former presidential candidate and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson. He claims to have paid for Justice Clarence Thomas' wedding reception. In 2005, Armstrong lost his syndicated column after it was revealed that he had been paid $240,000 by the George W. Bush administration to promote their signature education initiative, No Child Left Behind.

Follow the money

Smith has used his vast wealth to support a variety of far-right causes. The Baltimore Banner reports that since 2015, Smith, through his family foundation, has donated large sums to Young Americans for Liberty ($581,000), Project Veritas ($536,000), Turning Point USA ($150,000), and Moms for Liberty ($121,000).

Smith does not support Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D), and has sought to recruit opponents to unseat him. Sinclair stations have provided highly favorable coverage to former Mayor Shelia Dixon (D), who is running against Scott this year. Armstrong conducted an interview with Dixon on a Sinclair affiliate last summer that consisted mostly of "praise for Dixon and criticism of current elected officials."

In 2022, Smith backed a successful ballot initiative to impose term limits on Baltimore's elected officials. Currently, Smith is "underwriting Renew Baltimore, a ballot drive to cap and lower the property tax rate."

Now, Smith has a new tool in his arsenal to shape Baltimore's politics: the city's paper of record.

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hypocrisy rubber reverse

an 1 24

a Florida Republican’s bill aims to silence accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, or any other allegations of discrimination, making them “defamation” under the law and potentially costing the person who made them up to $35,000 in the state known for its “Don’t Say Gay” law.

The sweeping legislation also appears to void journalists’ right to not reveal sources, and, chillingly removes the long-standing requirement that a public figure needs to show “actual malice” to win a defamation lawsuit.

“In cases of alleged homophobia or transphobia, defendants charged with defamation are not allowed to use the plaintiff’s religious or scientific beliefs as part of their defense. If they are found liable for defamation, the defendant could be fined at least $35,000,” The New Republic reports, noting it “would silence basically any accusations of discrimination.”

“The bill applies to statements made in print, on television, or on social media. It also states that someone who is caught in a viral video engaging in allegedly discriminatory behaviors does not qualify as a ‘public figure,’ giving those people even more grounds to sue.”

:{:{LGBTQ activist Erin Reed, who first reported on the legislation, writes: “A person could not call, for instance, a fiercely anti-gay or anti-trans pastor transphobic. The pastor would be able to sue their accusers for $35,000 and their accusers could not use the pastor’s ‘religious expression or beliefs’ to prove that the pastor is transphobic or homophobic.}:

Similarly, if a shopkeeper kicks a transgender person out of a shop while citing ‘God’s word’ or their ‘scientific beliefs’ and the video goes viral, the shopkeeper could claim that they were acting under their ‘constitutionally protected religious expression or beliefs’ or their ‘scientific beliefs.’ It would bar anyone from calling that shopkeeper transphobic.”}:

Florida Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani decried the legislation, writing: “More attempts to chill free speech in the ‘free’ State of Florida.”

Dr Robert Bohan, an Irish artist and scientist who says his “work is about the human condition and understanding how the mind is connected with the body and our environment,” on social media where he has over 300,000 followers voiced concern.

“The US is proud of free speech. The KKK can spit racism, misogynists can attack women & groups can call for the annihilation of Gay ppl,” Dr. Bohan wrote. “Florida is now removing free speech, but just for the Gays. If you can’t name your oppressor how do you call them out?”

Florida State University professor of history Paul Renfro observed, “For these folks, accusations of racism, sexism, transphobia, or homophobia are far more objectionable than the racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic policies they enact and support.”

The legislation is being sponsored by Republican state Senator Jason Brodeur, who last year “introduced a bill that would require the registration of bloggers who are critical of the state’s government,” leading a columnist at the right-wing National Review to call him a “moron” and an “idiot.” It’s unclear if that would be considered defamation under Sen. Brodeur’s new bill.

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"biden all in on ej"

mma 4 23 note victim rev discrim BS

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): What does environmental justice mean? AOC laid out perfectly: the environment is now tied to racism, which is what they did with ESG -- environmental social governance. It's a scorecard, another scorecard that takes measures on how companies act responsibly. So, they marry the environment to race because it couldn't be believed alone, the numbers weren't working. The projections weren't working. But you know what works? Being scared of being called a racist.

So, environmental justice, if you do not agree with it, if you don'tswallow the climate agenda, if you don't agree with AOC, you probably don't just hate the planet, you probably hate non-white people as well.

And the consequences of that, we've talked about it before, with every aspect of life being filled with racism or injustice. The roads are racist we found out this week. Pollution is racist, we just found out. Cheap energy, fossil fuels, that's racist because it hurts non-white people. If you don't want to be looted, that's racist, too, because looting is mere redefinition of justice.

Basically, you're telling people that they can -- you're sanctioning crime. You're sanctioning riots. That's why the politicians in Chicagosaid as much and said that this was their way of evening the score. Because when you tell everybody, and you program their brain with this language that the world sucks and it's this group of people behind it, now it's in climate. Now it's in climate.

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mma 2 23

https://www.mediamatters.org/newsmax/timeline-gop-threatens-directv-defense-newsmax

no lnx

Timeline: GOP threatens DirecTV in defense of Newsmax

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 02/02/23

Republicans are accelerating their campaign to force private cable news carriers to not only carry right-wing propaganda networks but pay them for the privilege. The effort demonstrates how the party has institutionalized former President Donald Trump’s corrupt and authoritarian practice of retaliating against companies that refuse to prioritize the GOP’s partisan interests.

NewsmaxTV is a right-wing cable news channel founded by Christopher Ruddy, a conservative media veteran. Its stars include former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer and former Fox News host Eric Bolling, and it drew notoriety for its relentless lies about fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

NewsmaxTV is available for free on Newsmax’s website and through venues like YouTube and Roku, and it has at times paid cable providers to carry it. The channel loses money but helps burnish the company’s brand and drives new subscribers to the company’s various email lists. Those lists are the company’s profit center: Newsmax uses them to scare credulous seniors into buying scammy financial and health products.

DirecTV dropped NewsmaxTV last Tuesday after their carriage deal collapsed. According to DirecTV, the company had previously provided NewsmaxTV “at no cost to the programmer” but that Newsmax was “seeking significant fees” in a new deal, and it subsequently replaced it with another right-wing channel in a deal that did not include “extra fees.” But Ruddy declared Newsmax the victim of “political discrimination and censorship.”

Republican officials have rallied to Newsmax’s defense – often securing network airtime to do so. They are threatening federal retribution against DirecTV and its parent, AT&T, in apparent hopes of forcing the companies to accept particular customers at their preferred price. Party chair Ronna McDaniel, presidential frontrunners Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and dozens of House Republicans, and several of their Senate colleagues have gotten involved in the private business matter.

The GOP’s Newsmax campaign is the latest in a series of Republican efforts to use the power of the state to target corporations for failing to support its partisan interests.

Key Events

January 20

Amid carriage negotiation, House Republicans lean on DirecTV and its owners. Forty-two House Republicans, including third-ranking member Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Oversight Committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY), signed a letter from Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) to the CEOs of DirecTV, majority owner AT&T, and minority ownerTPG Capitalstating that DirecTV was “moving to de-platform NEWSMAX by denying it cable fees on a fair and equitable basis.” The signatories claimed that this would mean that DirecTV “is actively working to limit conservative viewpoints on its system” and suggested that they might respond with congressional “oversight.”

January 23

DirecTV says sticking point in negotiations is that Newsmax is “now seeking significant fees.” In a statement to the Washington Examiner for an article about the House GOP’s letter, a DirecTV spokesperson said: “We deliver Newsmax to our national base of satellite and IPTV customers today at no cost to the programmer or our customers, ultimately offering Newsmax the ability to generate considerable advertising revenue at no cost. … We’ve discussed with Newsmax on several occasions that we’d like to offer their programming, however, the network is now seeking significant fees that we cannot pass on to our broad customer base.”

January 24

DirecTV drops NewsmaxTV. At 11:59 p.m., DirecTV’s deal with NewsmaxTV expired and it stopped broadcasting the channel. In a statement, a spokesperson said, “On multiple occasions, we made it clear to Newsmax that we wanted to continue to offer the network, but ultimately Newsmax’s demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base.” Ruddy responded by calling the move “a blatant act of political discrimination and censorship against Newsmax," adding, “The most extreme liberal channels, even with tiny ratings, get fees from AT&T's DirecTV, but Newsmax and OAN need to be deplatformed.”

January 25

Newsmax tells viewers to demand congressional action. Using identical language, several Newsmax hosts implored their viewers to contact members of Congress and tell them to take action in response to DirecTV dropping Newsmax. “We are urging you to call your congressman and senator today and demand they investigate AT&T and DirecTV for their discrimination against conservative media,” host Rob Finnerty said after accusing the companies of “blatant political discrimination.” The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona reported that by the afternoon, “Newsmax anchors John Bachman, Bianca de la Garza, Shaun Kraisman, and Bob Sellers had also read the prepared monologue on air.”

Trump threatens AT&T and DirecTV over dropping Newsmax. On his Truth Social platform, former President Donald Trump commented: “The Radical Left seems to have taken over the mind and soul of AT&T. This is a big blow to the Republican Party, and to America itself. For DIRECTV to drop very popular NEWSMAX, without explanation, will not be accepted. I, for one, will be dropping all association with AT&T and DIRECTV, and I have plenty.”

Donald Trump, Jr. calls for a right-wing boycott of AT&T.Trump Jr. tweeted, “OUTRAGEOUS: ATT just dropped Newsmax! It’s time for Americans to return the favor and drop ATT. @PatriotMobile is the ONLY conservative mobile provider — use code “DONJR” for FREE activation!” According to its website, Patriot Mobile is “America’s ONLY Christian conservative wireless provider” and the company “is proud to partner with Donald Trump, Jr. in the fight to defend our freedom of speech.”

January 26

DirecTV announces it is replacing Newsmax with another right-wing network. DirecTV said that it would replace Newsmax with The First, another right-wing channel that features Fox and OAN castoffs Bill O’Reilly, Dana Loesch, and Liz Wheeler.A DirecTV spokesperson told the Daily Beast that the deal did not include any “extra fees” for The First, which like Newsmax is also available for free online.

On Newsmax, Reps. Waltz, Van Drew call for hearings into DirecTV. On Newsmax’s Wake Up America, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) said that House Republicans could convene “public hearings” in which executives from DirecTV and AT&T “come to talk to usand explain this to us” about dropping the channel. Later that day, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) told the network that DirecTV dropping Newsmax “is what happens in authoritarian regimes” and said he is “going to push for hearings” in order to preserve “the future of our nation.”

Sen. Paul calls for boycott of DirecTVover dropping Newsmax. Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted, “I would cancel @DIRECTV for censoring @NEWSMAX but I already cancelled them for cancelling @OANN. I guess @DIRECTV doesn’t want conservative viewers so maybe we should all just quit their services and go elsewhere.”

January 27

House oversight chair promises DirecTV-Newsmax probe.Asked by Finnerty whether he would hold hearings, Comer replied, “Yes. There's gonna be a committee that's gonna hold hearings. We're sitting, we're gonna meet later today and try to discuss which committee's gonna do what. That's certainly on the agenda. I'm very concerned by this.”

Sen. Cruz on DirecTV dropping NewsmaxTV: “Conservative voices must not be silenced!” On Twitter, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) shared a Washington Times editorial that described the Newsmax drop as the “censorship of conservative media.” He commented, “Conservative voices must not be silenced!” and included the handles of Newsmax, AT&T, DirecTV, and TPG.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey sends letter of concern to DirecTV. Morrisey, a Republican who is considering a race for governor or U.S. Senate, sent a letter to the CEO of DirecTV stating, “Neither DirecTV nor the channels it carries should face an ongoing concern over whether programming is acceptable to powerful political elites.”

Newsmax’s Bolling condemns Fox for not covering the story. Bolling lashed out at his former employer for not covering DirecTV dropping Newsmax, saying, “By the way. Where are you, Fox? How about you, Fox? I mean, you stand up for us.”

January 30

Speaker McCarthy promises congressional “action,” says he spoke to AT&T directly. In a Newsmax appearance, McCarthy said he found DirecTV dropping the channel “very concerning” and told the hosts, “You're going to see action taken, because we believe it's responsible to allow everybody to have a choice of what news they want to listen to." He also said that he had told AT&T that “Newsmax should not be treated any differently based upon them being a conservative news outlet.”

RNC chair condemns DirecTV for “censoring” conservatives. McDanielshared a clip of Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) on Newsmax castigating DirecTVand commented, “The woke agenda of many corporations is bent on censoring voices they disagree with. @MarkwayneMullin is right – by silencing @NEWSMAX, @DIRECTV is censoring voices who pay their bills.”

January 31

House Republicans give floor speeches condemning DirecTV. Eighteen House Republicans, including Reps. Van Drew, Lauren Boebert (CO), Eric Burlison (MO), and Matt Gaetz (FL), gave demagogic Special Order speeches denouncing DirecTV for dropping Newsmax.Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) wrapped up the event by noting, “many of the speakers today, many of the members of Congress who spoke, made it absolutely clear that they’re going to dedicate time and energy and staff resources to make sure that we look into this further.”

Gov. DeSantis supports congressional probe of DirecTV.Asked at a press conference about the debate, DeSantis said of DirecTV, “They will give different rationales for why they don’t want to do it, but the reality is they have so much other content that is very lightly viewed, and they keep that on, and it seems it is the One America News and the Newsmax that are being targeted. So I think it does warrant an investigation.” He added that Congress should “ensure that there’s not intellectual discrimination when it comes to what people are able to view.”

Rep. Gaetz calls for Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission to investigate AT&T. Gaetz tweeted: “AT&T's DirecTV has REMOVED @Newsmax from its lineup. This is blatant content-based censorship. Congress, the Antitrust Division of the DOJ, and the FCC need to investigate @ATT's decision immediately. Americans should not be denied their right to access diverse viewpoints.”

February 1

Senate Republicans send a letter asking DirecTV to explain the decision. Cruz and other GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC), Mike Lee (UT) and Tom Cotton (AR) sent a letter to DirecTV’s leadership stating that they are “deeply disturbed” by its decision and alleging that the company may be “suppressing politically disfavored speech at the behest of liberal Democrats.”

RNC chair praises House Republicans for demanding an investigation. McDaniel said in a statement that “DirecTV’s decision to censor Newsmax – the fourth-highest rated program on cable TV [sic] – is a slap in the face to the voters who pay the network’s bills.” She added, “I applaud House Republicans for taking important steps to hold DirecTV accountable for their censorship of Republican voices.”

February 2

McCarthy reiterates interest in congressional hearings. At a press conference, McCarthy said that “we should look at” DirecTV’s decision to drop Newsmax in order to ensure that the network hasn’t been “jeopardized from being on television simply because of their philosophical beliefs.”

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aha yikes used to be k12? see campus free sp BS

an maya 1 23

Amid his attempt to ban race-related conversations from higher education classrooms, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis distributed a memo requesting course data from state colleges that teach “diversity, equity and inclusion,” reports ABC News.

The request comes after a judge recently temporarily blocked the passing of the governor’s Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, which would ban race-related coursework, also known as critical race theory (CRT) from college and university classrooms.

In a statement from his office regarding the proposed law, DeSantis said, "No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race. In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida."

Those who support DeSantis’ law believe CRT is “discriminatory” and that students should not learn about the history of oppression and privilege in the U.S.

Critical race theory — taught in mostly graduate school programs, and not K-12 classrooms — according to The Brookings Institution, asserts that “U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.”

:{ProPublica recently reported that DeSantis referred to the :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:**Stop WOKE Act :{as the “the strongest legislation in the nation against the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory.”}:

On the other hand, those who adamantly disagree with the law say it restricts free speech. Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali called it “a racist dog whistle but with a facially neutral cover.”

The memo says, “Governor Ron DeSantis has prioritized a cost-effective higher education system that delivers high-quality service to Floridians to best prepare them for employment.” It continues, “Additionally, state law requires dutiful attention to curriculum content at our higher education systems.”

A State University System of Florida Board of Governors representative said all 12 colleges confirmed receipt of the governor’s memo, according to ABC. And each institution is required to submit requested data by Friday, January 13.

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"tastes like I'd rather be fat': GOP senator wails about kale and yoga mats while calling Democrats 'berserk'

Brandon Gage

United States Senator John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) railed against "high-IQ stupid people" and "wokers" during a speech at a campaign stop for Georgia's scandal-plagued Republican...

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/sen-john-kennedy/

call crackhead for help ad

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https://dailycaller.com/2022/10/04/climate-disinformation-hate-speech/

kos ref

POLITICS

Enviros Are Demanding Big Tech Treat ‘Climate Disinformation’ Like Hate Speech

Two-thirds of conservativesfeel[ings, nothing more than...] like social media is censoring conservative voices, according to a poll.

Daily Caller News Foundation logo

BRONSON WINSLOW

CONTRIBUTOR

October 04, 2022

A coalition of environmental advocacy groups has requested that the CEO’s of major social media platforms stop the spread of “climate disinformation” by censoring user posts, according to a Tuesday letter.

Addressed to the CEOs of Facebook, TikTok, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Pinterest, the letter claims that climate disinformation should be censored because it “undermines” the government’s ability to efficiently and effectively respond to the climate. The coalition asserted that social media companies are directly responsible for “amplifying and perpetuating” disinformation and should be completely transparent to show the “exact extent” of damage done.

Social media platforms will be forced to follow the guidelines of the coalition following the approval of the Digital Services Act (DSA), according to the letter. The coalition urges the platforms to “fulfill their obligations” and agree to its terms before the DSA takes effect.

The platforms are urged to “commit to including climate disinformation as a separately-acknowledged category in its reporting and content moderation policies in and outside of the EU,” the letter said. “More specifically, we urge platforms to commit to recognizing climate disinformation as a specific reason within the statement required under DSA Article 15(1), and include data on content moderation decisions related to climate disinformation as stated under Article 23.”

The platforms “owe it to their users and the planet” to stop amplifying climate disinformation that undermines the coalitions’ ability to combat the climate crisis, the letter said. The letter ended by informing each CEO that a written response and signature is required after conforming to the coalitions’ new standards.

Friends of The Earth did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Tags : censorship climate change social media

https://foe.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Count-The-Climate-Sign-On-Letter-1.pdf

To: The CEOs of Facebook, TikTok, Google & YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest From: Civil Society Groups Concerned with Climate Disinformation Date: October 4, 2022

RE: It’s Time for Platforms to Count the Climate

The climate crisis has become increasingly apparent as the July heat wave across Europe broke records in Spain, and we saw deadly floods in eastern Kentucky destroy local communities and wildfires burning from France to California. Unfortunately, the spread of climate disinformation undermines governments’ ability to efficiently and effectively respond. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has even named climate disinformation as a threat to the world’s ability to effectively address climate change. The UN Secretary General António Guterres recently mentioned the threat of misinformation, proliferated by social media companies, in a recent General Assembly speech and tweet. Social media companies bear responsibility for their role in amplifying and perpetuating climate disinformation but transparency, that would quantify the exact extent, has been lacking from all platforms. The Digital Services Act has passed in the EU, and its obligations for platforms will take effect very soon. We’re writing to ask platform leaders to fulfill obligations set forth in the DSA, and to commit to including climate disinformation as a separately-acknowledged category in its reporting and content moderation policies in and outside of the EU. More specifically, we urge platforms to commit to recognizing climate disinformation as a specific reason within the statement required under DSA Article 15(1), and include data on content moderation decisions related to climate disinformation as stated under Article 23. Platforms owe it to their users and the planet to stop amplifying the climate disinformation that undermines our ability to combat the climate crisis. We call on your companies to implement these actions as soon as possible and request a written response addressed to the signatories below.

Regards, ● 350.org ● Accountable Tech ● Action for the Climate Emergency ● Center for Countering Digital Hate ● Check My Ads ● ClimateVoice ● Digital Climate Coalition ● Exposure Labs ● Friends of the Earth ●Greenpeace ● Green Latinos ● Institute for Strategic Dialogue ● Stop Funding Heat ● Union of Concerned Scientist

:{:{}:

see caller 2 for 3 parts]

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kos ref

paywall

OPINIONREVIEW & OUTLOOK

The Climate-Change Censorship Campaign

The left is demanding that social media shut down debate even on solutions.

By The Editorial Board Follow

Oct. 5, 2022

INSANE! Twitter Censors Anti-Critical Race Theory Account

Kayla Sargent

June 11th, 2021

Twitter’s rampage against conservatives has not stopped with the platform now seemingly taking its orders from the left.

Rachel Bovard, Senior Director of Policy for the Conservative Partnership Institute, said that Twitter suspended the conservative think tank Citizens for Renewing America (CRA) after the group posted resources combating Critical Race Theory (CRT). She tweeted: “So @amrenewctr issues a toolkit for parents to help stop CRT in schools, Media Matters issues a baseless and wildly untrue hit on the Center, and mere hours later, Twitter suspends their account. Big Tech working very hard to protect racist ideologies from criticism.” Her tweet included a screenshot of what appears to be a message from Twitter that said, “We’ve temporarily limited some of your account features.” Bovard is a MRC Free Speech America board advisor.

CRA President Russ Vought provided more insight as to why the organization’s content may have been suspended. “Twitter is now saying that our Renewing America accounts were suspended by ‘enforcement bots’ but wouldn't tell us what was flagged. This occurred soon after we launched an important anti-CRT tool kit and a radical left outlet put forward wild conspiracy theories about it,” he tweeted.

CRA recently published a toolkit for “Combatting Critical Race Theory in Your Community.” The toolkit said: “This guide is meant for anyone of any knowledge and experience level who is concerned about what children are being taught and how they are being treated, with an emphasis on making the banning of Critical Race Theory (CRT) the central theme by which you reclaim your schools.”

Leftist group, Media Matters for America, however, called the toolkit “a conspiracy theory about the overthrow of America’s constitutional system.” It also somehow drew an arbitrary connection between the toolkit’s language and what the organization called the “infamous white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia.”

Media Matters for America received more than $1.5 million from liberal billionaire George Soros between 2010 and 2014.

Twitter has long silenced conservative voices on its platform. Its massive push to censor conservative voices resulted in the platform receiving a “F” grade from the Media Research Center in its first Big Tech Report Card. Twitter removed former President Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol after he called for “peace.” The platform also slapped a “sensitive content” label on a graphic from the MRC. The graphic described the results of a recent poll in which fifty-three percent of respondents answered “no” to the question: “Should biological men be allowed to compete in women's sports?”

Twitter did not respond to a request from MRC Free Speech America to confirm whether it had suspended CRA.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/robert-reich-gop-culture-wars/

Former United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich posted a new video on Tuesday in which he enumerated the parallels between Russian President Vladimir Putin's propaganda and the messaging emanating from the GOP and its media pundits.

"Why do Putin and the Republican Party sound so much alike? Simple," Reich began. "Their culture wars have similar agendas. Both are trying to distract attention from the economic looting by their respective oligarchies."

Reich explained that figures like ex-President Donald Trump, Fox News stooge Tucker Carlson, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), and the right-wing at large have a vested interest in keeping the American population divided because their ultimate collective goal is total economic domination.

"Sowing racism, homophobia, and transphobia creates life-or-death dangers for many people in our society. For both Putin and the American right, it serves to divert attention from the economic plunder by the ultra-rich," he said "They want people to fear one another rather than unite behind higher wages, better working conditions, and a fairer economy — and against authoritarianism."

Reich then offered some advice on what can be done about it.

"To fight back, we must fight widening inequality while defending marginalized communities from these demagogues’ attacks. The real threat is not diverse identities – it’s corporate greed and political corruption," Reich concluded. "We have to see the culture wars waged by Putin and America’s right for the cynical strategies they are, and build a future in which prosperity is widely shared."

Watch below:

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no lnx twt an 4 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/ny-times/

NY Times pummeled over piece on 8 conservative men who don’t feel 'free to be themselves in the culture'

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement April 13, 2022

Some might say The New York Times is the king of normalizing views from the right, even views that could be considered disturbing or, in some cases, even dangerous to their fellow citizens, the nation, or the world. The Times’ pre-World War II profiles of a young Adolf Hitler are a legendary example.

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In 2015 The Times republished what it calls “1922: Hitler in Bavaria,” patting itself on the back for getting “a lot of things right,” like its “description of his ability to work a crowd into a fever pitch, ready then and there to stage a coup.”

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The Times that year also reported that “several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea thatHitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes.”

History knows how that turned out.

Fast forward to 2017, when The Times published a profile commonly referred to as “The Nazi Next Door,” originally titled, “In America’s Heartland, the Nazi Sympathizer Next Door,” which was written by Richard Fausset.

Salon’s Matthew Smith described the piece, bemoaning the “creepy trend of media outlets attempting to humanize Nazis and white supremacists.”

“Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall,” Fausset’s story begins. “They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.”

“Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.”

A caption of a photo reads: “Mr. Hovater and others in the loosely defined alt-right movement are hoping to make their ideas less than shocking, even normal.”

Some felt The Times, intentionally or not, certainly appeared as if it were trying to lend a hand. And in fact, after massive outrage, which forced a headline change (along with removing a link it included to “a webpage that sells swastika armbands,”) the Times’ editors defended publishing the piece by saying they thought “it was important to do so.”

Between 1922, and 2017, and after, no doubt the Times has published other works that normalize the radical right, extremism, and fascism.

Earlier this year a Twitter user posted his take on how the Times in 1935 covered a “large anti-Hitler protest in front of a Nazi ocean liner.”

And oh yes, 1924:

“22,000 Nazis Hold Rally in [Madison Square] Garden; Police Check Foes,” was a front-page headline in the Times about a stunningly disturbing NYC event in 1939.

Meanwhile, fast forward to today.

“These 8 Conservative Men Are Making No Apologies” is the headline in Tuesday’s Times Opinion section. The piece is by the Times’ deputy Opinion editor Patrick Healy and the Opinion section’s editorial assistant Adrian J. Rivera. And while no one should make a comparison to Hitler or Nazis, the question some are asking is why did The Times think it important to profile a group of conservative men, since conservative men have pretty much been in charge for decades?

“There was no talk of a stolen election, no conspiracy theories about voter fraud or rants about President Biden’s legitimacy. Yet listening to our 90-minute focus group with eight conservative men, you couldn’t help but worry for our democracy a bit,” it begins.

“The men didn’t see themselves fitting into American society today. They didn’t feel free to be themselves in the culture,” the piece claims. “Seven of them said they felt like a stranger in their own country. At a time when democratic institutions are under pressure — and even under attack — and the United States feels so ununited, what causes these Americans to feel so alienated from America?”

The Times, to my knowledge, has never done a focus group of, say, eight LGBTQ men over 50. Or eight LGBTQ people of any age. What about doing a focus group of eight Northeast Democrats? How about visiting a diner and listening to supporters of President Joe Biden? Or Senator Elizabeth Warren? Or Reps. Jamie Raskin or Val Demmings?

When does the paper of record start highlighting views of people from the left, rather than a Nazi from 1922 or conservatives from 2022?

Again, The Times defends its piece, claiming these are “Americans whose voices are often not heard in opinion journalism.”

The Times apparently has never heard of Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, or Facebook.

The Times piece includes one hour and 22 minutes of audio it titled, “8 Conservative Men On Being a Man in America Today.”

To give a taste, here are some of the men and their top concerns about America or American society:

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Tony (white, 72, retired, Massachusetts): Government spending.

Derrick (Black, 63, software engineer, Georgia): Inflation.

Michael (white, 67, retired, Florida): Economy.

Christopher (Black, 51, small-business loan broker, Maryland): Elitism.

Danny (Middle Eastern, 47, Realtor, Florida): Disgraceful.

Joe (white, 37, apparel manufacturing, New York): Weak.

Joe says: “This is not the America I remember growing up in, and it’s just sad to see what’s going on.”

Robert says: “You’re not free to be yourself anymore because of crime. You’ve got to be concerned about ‘If I go out, am I going to be a victim of crime?'”

:{:{}:

(Most crime is actually at historic lows, but you won’t hear that on TV or social media. The Brennan Center reports the “violent crime rate in the United States has decreased sharply over the past 25 years.”)

Later in the piece, Robert reveals, “I voted for Trump. I like Trump from when he was with ‘The Apprentice.’ I knew him as a businessperson. That’s why I voted for him. And then — oh, Lord — from church to every place, people just had a problem with it. You can’t have a different viewpoint.”

One interviewer asked questions like “What does it mean to be a man?” “Is masculinity important to you?” “Who would you all think of as good examples of masculinity or manliness these days? Who’s a good example?”

Responses to The Times’ piece were strong and appropriately unforgiving:

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4/22 edit bd

I don’t follow what every Democrat says. No one can. There’s no way for me to know whether the tenor and tone of their collective rhetoric changed last week. But it felt like it got stronger, sharper and angrier.

Consider Brian Schatz.

The Hawaii Senator took to the Senate floor to scorch his colleague Josh Hawley of Missouri, who’s been holding up appointments to the Department of Defense that are necessary to America’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Before he signs off, he said, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin must resign for his “failures” in Afghanistan.

Schatz said that’s rich coming from a guy who raised his fist in solidarity with the J6 insurrectionists and who voted to acquit the former president for the high crime of extorting Ukraine’s president.

“This comes from a guy who before the Russian invasion suggested that maybe it would be wise for [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy to make a few concessions about Ukraine and their willingness to join NATO.”

He added:

“They withheld lethal aid until, unless Zelenskyy released false smears against Joe Biden's son. Then [Hawley] voted to exonerate President Trump for this. So spare me the new solidarity with the Ukrainians and with the free world, because this man's record is exactly the opposite.”

His tirade amazed those of us longing for the Democrats to take a strong stand against the Republican Party’s lies and bad faith. Perhaps we’ll see more now that Greg Sargent put a brighter light on it.

The Post columnist interviewed Brian Schatz on Friday. “Democrats need to make more noise,” the Senator conceded. “We have to scream from the rooftops because this is a battle for the free world now.”

Let’s not forget what Schatz said, however.

He said Hawley is “doing a very specific thing.”

“He is damaging the Department of Defense.”

So far, Schatz is the only Democrat seeing what needs seeing.

Though he says he’s outraged by the US pullout from Afghanistan, Josh Hawley is also attacking, directly, the military leadership itself. (He won’t move on appointments until the secretary of defense resigns.)

Demanding Austin’s resignation is not a “reasonable request,” Schatz said. It can’t be. The point is sabotaging civilian control of the military.

You read that right.

The point is cleaving the ranks. The point is to create conditions in which military personnel feel inspired to take action that’s favorable to the Republicans’ (perhaps the former president’s) return to power.

They are picking up where the J6 insurrection left off. But next time, it won’t be a mob of schlubs. It will be an army of highly-trained insurgents bent on restoring whiteness to the center of the republic.

At gunpoint.

Everyone should see what Schatz sees.

So I interviewed Fred Wellman, founder of Beer Hall Projectand a 20-year Army veteran who served when Secretary Austin was General Austin. I called Fred after US Rep. Matt Gaetz failed to humiliate the secretary in testimony before the House Arms Services Committee.

Fred said: “A standing army can’t be a tool of a political party. Under the Trump years, it became more partisan. Now Matt Gaetz and his peers in the Republican Party are directly undermining the apolitical and nonpolitical nature of the military by dividing troops from leaders.”

Matt Gaetz and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Thoughts?

My main frustration has always been with the “performance wing” of the Republican Party. They don’t want to govern. They want to act.

In this case, Matt Gaetz tried convincing people that “wokeism,” or trying to get a more diverse American military force, is hurting our ability to fight wars. It shows how monumentally stupid he is.

He's dragging culture wars into national defense. That he does so while sitting on the House Armed Service Committee is outrageous.

It’s a committee responsible for oversight of the men and women in uniform, but it’s oversight partially provided by someone as monumentally asinine as Matt Gaetz – that’s just disgusting to me.

Good point. When a country sends people overseas, the presumption should be that leaders will take that responsibility deadly seriously. Deadly serious responsibility is the opposite of Matt Gaetz.

I'm a 20-year Army veteran. I rose through the ranks to be a lieutenant colonel. I retired after Desert Storm and three Iraq tours. I’m the son of a World War II Marine veteran. My son is an Army veteran. My son-in-law continues to serve in the National Guard.

But not everybody can serve.

Less than 7 percent of our nation is veterans. Less than 1 percent serve at all. Less than one-third of the eligible population is capable of serving. I'm talking about fitness, criminal record, mental health, etc. This is the reality of maintaining and growing an all-volunteer force.

That's the point of trying to increase the diversity of the officer corps. That's the point of trying to increase the diversity of the pilot corps. That's the point of welcoming all races and creeds. As Secretary Austin said, anybody who's eligible, who has the capability to serve, should be welcomed even if they're non-binary, gay, straight, whatever.

If they're capable of serving, of meeting the physical and mental requirements we need in our military, we've got to open our arms.

There are just not enough white dudes left.

When you have someone like the Florida congressman directly attacking that, that turns away possible recruits. Gaetz is literally undermining those who serve and who may serve in the future.

Sounds like you’re angry?

I amangry.

The Matt Gaetzs and Marsha Blackburns of the world are openly undermining good order and military discipline with a culture war for political effect. A representative sitting on the Armed Services Committee should understand the challenges of an all-volunteer force.

Civilian oversight of the military matters even though those civilians may never have served, may not have been qualified to serve. People like me, people like Secretary Austin – we understand that. Someone who rose to the rank of four-star understands he’s going to answer to some 25-year-old kid on the Armed Services Committee.

That's the nature of it.

But what frustrates me is the lack of respect for the office and a lack of respect for the military as an apolitical and non-political entity.

One of the biggest fears of our founding fathers was a standing army. They didn't want one and that undermined efforts early on in the republic because of rebellions. We had no army to address them.

Even Washington was like, man, we need an army.

A standing army can’t be a tool of a political party. Under the Trump years, it became more partisan. Now Matt Gaetz and his peers in the Republican Party are directly undermining the apolitical and nonpolitical nature of the military by dividing troops from leaders.

The troops love Trump, they believe, but the troops are being failed by “woke” leaders. Where the fuck do you think the leaders are? You don't just magically make a general. Secretary Austin started as a fucking second lieutenant. He rose through the ranks. This is dangerous.

I do not say this lightly.

This is incredibly dangerous.

They attack the military leadership as“woke”because they're trying to cause a break in the ranks. They're literally undermining good order and military discipline deliberately to break the chain of command.

I've never seen that in my lifetime.

You’re describing national security risk. Is that overstating it?

No, I don't think so.

The very nature of our republic relies on an apolitical military every American knows serves them, no matter their race, creed, religion, color, region, political party, whatever. Our republic depends on everyone knowing a standing army is not a threat to the country.

Many in the Republican Party are super-fans of Putin, let's be honest.They're having CPAC in Hungary, for God's sake, a country led by a rightwing dictator, a Putin fan. Imagine a scenario in which they’re in power and we can't fight because they’ve undermined the military.

It's terrifying to think where this could go.

I've seen reports of white nationalism gaining traction in the ranks of the military. There's an effort from above to deal with that.

I learned in military science 101 at West Point that an all-volunteer force is a direct reflection of our society. You raised your children for 18 years before they get into the military. I give them 12 weeks of basic training. That won’t overcome 18 years of raising them as racists.

All I can do is ensure they don't act on those beliefs and undermine good order and military discipline. If they do behave inappropriately, we use the separate military system to discipline them appropriately and remove them from the military as they're no longer a threat.

But we do know white nationalist and patriot front-type groups have been actively sending “their troops,” if you will, into the military for military training. Right-wing nationalist groups are infiltrating the ranks and recruiting veterans after they get out of the military.

At one point,10 percent of Jan6 cases were United States military and veterans. One of them is an active-duty Marine Corps major!

How horrifying that is.

Talk about the fundamental tension between universal values, like honor, and individual interest, like investment in whiteness.

Some really extreme right-wing politicians say universal values are an attack on conservative thought. It's not against conservative thought.

Conservative thought should mean taxes and “pulling up my bootstraps and raising myself up by going into the military” – that's fine.

Saying Black people are inferior soldiers, assaulting the ranks, inciting homophobia and transphobia and attacking fellow service members – That’s not conservative. That’s extremism, white nationalism.

That needs to be stomped out.

There have been several surveys of service members saying the biggest threat they face isn’t Muslim terrorists. It’s extremism in the ranks....

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// heartland reverse engr: we will be destroyed by evil dems, so therefore they did not win/will not rule? thus voter suppression is unfair (unAmerican in trad sense) but necessary ; mypillow guy sent gunmen to polls?

an 3 22

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/far-right-biden-presidency/

a Georgetown University history professor is shedding light on the real reason why far-right Republicans still believe the unfounded claim that President Joe Biden's presidential win was illegitimate.

While its no secret that election conspiracy theories and false claims of widespread voter fraud have run rampant since former President Donald Trump lost his bid for re-election, there is a reason why Republicans "are convinced the outcome of the election was illegitimate regardless of whether or not there were specific procedural irregularities."

In an analysis published via The Guardian, Thomas Zimmer, a Georgetown University history professor with a concentration on the United States' democracy, referenced a controversial essay written from the perspective of a far-right conservative.

The essay, titled “ ‘Conservatism’ is No Longer Enough,” was penned by conservative writer Glenn Ellmers for The Claremont Institute's right-wing publication, American Mind.Zimmer notes:

"It is notable that Ellmers makes no claim that the 2020 election was 'stolen' – he doesn’t allege manipulation, voter fraud, or conspiracy, and in fact explicitly acknowledges that more people voted for Biden than for Trump. He does not peddle conspiracy theories. Yet Ellmers maintains that the outcome of the 2020 election is illegitimate and must not be accepted."

Zimmer then highlighted another key takeaway from Ellmer's piece:

"Ellmers is outraged precisely because he accepts the fact that a majority voted for Biden, that 'authentic Americans' have become the minority in a country which they are supposedly entitled to dominate. Here we have a striking glimpse of the depth of despair underlying the pervasive siege mentality on the right. What’s scandalous about the 2020 election, in this interpretation, is not that it was “stolen”, but that “un-American” forces straightforwardly won."

Zimmer's analysis also delved into the disturbing ideology behind the majority of Republican voters' thinking in regard to Biden being an illegitimate president.

"What is most alarming is the underlying ideology that leads so many on the right to consider Democratic victories invalid – even if they concede there was nothing technically wrong with how the election was conducted," Zimmer wrote. "It has become a core tenet of the Republican worldview to consider the Democratic party as not simply a political opponent, but an enemy pursuing an 'un-American' project of turning what is supposed to be a white Christian patriarchal nation into a land of godless multiracial pluralism."

Zimmer added, "Conversely, Republicans see themselves as the sole proponents of 'real' America, defending the country from the forces of radical leftism, liberalism, and wokeism."

He went on to explain Republicans' beliefs of the Democratic Party. "Even if they don’t subscribe to the more outlandish conspiracies propagated by Trumpists, many Republicans agree that the Democratic party is a fundamentally illegitimate political faction — and that any election outcome that would lead to Democratic governance must be rejected as illegitimate as well."

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3 22 digby

no lnx

Former president Donald Trump had another of his interminable rallies this weekend. He said the usual things delighting his South Carolina crowd and boring the rest of us into a coma. This time, however, he did add one memorable new line to the script which got people's attention:

As we watch the horrific carnage unfolding in Ukraine and the repressive crack down in Russia, comments like that are all the more chilling. He truly does want to emulate Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. As the Washington Post reported recently, he has repeated his earlier admiration for Kim's "total control" as well:

He espoused praise for North Korea's brutal leader, marveling at how Kim's generals and aides "cowered" when the dictator spoke to them. "Total control," Trump said of how Kim ran the country, describing generals snapping to attention and standing up on command. "His people were sitting at attention," he added. "I looked at my people and said I want my people to act like that."

I have little doubt that if he wins another term, he will be much worse than he was in the first. He won't make the mistake of hiring people who might stand in his way a second time.

However, as we know, Trump isn't really serious about governing and wouldn't know how to do it efficiently even if he were. It doesn't make him any less dangerous, of course. His chaotic narcissism can do as much damage as a serious ideological authoritarian could. But he's laid out a style template for someone who is serious, showing them exactly the attitude that appeals to the MAGA base. And nobody in GOP politics is as ready to seize the mantle as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump 2.0.

The personality and affect have been evident since DeSantis won the governor's seat back in 2018. The Trumpian pettiness, the contempt, the reflexive hostility seem to come naturally to him. He treats the press like dirt and thinks insults are the highest form of humor. If he has any personal warmth or human compassion it's certainly well hidden. He even gestures like Trump.

But with DeSantis, it's more than just style. He's got the Republicans in Florida working together like clockwork to enact the most authoritarian agenda in the country, calibrated perfectly to appeal to the base in advance of his re-election campaign --- and a potential presidential run in 2024.

Florida has been at the leading edge of COVID denialism from the very beginning, but in recent days DeSantis and his hand-picked science-denying surgeon general have taken it to a new level. They had already turned masks into a battleground with the governor taking it upon himself earlier this month to scold high school kids for wearing them in his presence, declaring that it's time to end the "COVID theatre." This was ironic since it turned out that many of the kids had been told by their parents to wear them and DeSantis' numerous assaults on education over the past year have been rationalized as a defense of "parental rights." Then last week the surgeon general went even further, defying the CDC and most physicians by recommending that kids not get vaccinated for COVID-19. DeSantis and his medical henchman seem determined to keep the virus circulating as long as they can.

Meanwhile, the legislative season just coming to a close has produced such an astonishing array of right-wing culture war victories delivering on Desantis' "anti-woke" agenda that it's hard to know where to start. Building on last year's education wrecking ball in which they banned Critical Race Theory from schools despite the fact that they were not teaching it, instituted a requirement that schools teach about the "evils of communism" and passed a higher education law that allows for budget cuts to colleges based on student and faculty surveys about "viewpoint diversity" (which DeSantis defines as "indoctrination") this year they took it to a whole new level. Salon's Amanda Marcotte offered this tart analysis of the "Stop WOKE Act" "

The legislature also passed the "Stop WOKE Act," which bars both schools and businesses from having any training or program that supposedly causes an "individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin." This has been largely covered as a ban on any kind of diversity training, but it's even more expansive than that. As I note in Friday's Standing Room Only newsletter, conservatives can also block anti-sexual harassment trainings by claiming it's guilt-tripping men to tell them that ass-pinching is not allowed in the workplace.

The "fuck your feelings" crowd sure are sensitive snowflakes, aren't they?

Maximum leader DeSantis also got his wish for a first in the nation election police force which will report directly to him. I've got a tip for them: it turns out that the Republican Party in south Florida changed the registrations of hundreds of Democrats to Republican without their permission. That's a crime. In fact, DeSantis might end up regretting this one. If the election police are on the level (which is unlikely, I know) it's almost certain they will be putting many more Republicans behind bars than Democrats. Even Trump's Chief of Staff just blatantly committed it in the last election.

And then there is the grotesque "Don't Say Gay" law which prohibits teachers from discussing the subject in grades K-3. But because it uses the new vigilante system of civil law harassment, and is written so poorly, it will result in a chilling effect on all school districts and will result in small kids with gay parents being treated like aliens and many LGBTQ kids being shoved in the closet. If you doubt their intentions, just listen to DeSantis' vile press secretary:

Those of you who are of a certain age will hear the echoes of one of Florida's original homophobic crusaders Anita Bryant whose "Save Our Children" campaign was based upon the noxious lie that gays were "recruiting" the nice Christian children of the sunshine state.

Under pressure, the CEO of Disney, the state's largest employer and a major DeSantis donor belatedly objected to the bill and spoke to the Governor about it. DeSantis didn't budge and Disney announced that they will be suspending all political donations in the state of Florida after which the governor had a full blown meltdown:

Florida Republicans believe these Commie Symp mega corporations have no right to criticize them.

There was a time when business property rights were sacrosanct in the GOP as a matter of principle. But in the new authoritarian right, if a business doesn't toe their bigoted line, the government "won't stand for it."

Donald Trump is still likely to get the nomination and we can only hope and pray he doesn't win. His dictatorial impulses are well known. But Ron DeSantis is the future of the Republican Party and he's figured out how to take all that right-wing hate and grievance and put it into practice. You don't want to know what he could do on a national level.

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3 22

Eight days after Russia illegally invaded a sovereign country to overthrow its government, reportedly killing thousands of Ukrainian troops and civilians, Vladimir Putin‘s spy chief is now decrying the international sanctions that have crushed the Russian economy.

Russian Foreign Intelligence Service director Sergey Naryshkin, using language that many are staying could have been written by the American far-right, or Fox News, says:

“The masks are off. The West isn’t simply trying to close off Russia behind a new iron curtain. This is about an attempt to ruin our government – to ‘cancel’ it, as they now say in ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist circles.”

The quote was posted by The Washington Post’s national security reporter Paul Sonne.

It’s important to note that the Soviet Union “built” the “iron curtain” to separate the USSR from the West, so the analogy is historically inaccurate, misleading, and as some suggest, smacks of false victimhood.

Naryshkin was aired around the world last week. Now once again he is being blasted – and widely mocked:

“Cancel culture strikes again,” wrote The Atlantic’s Molly Jong-Fast in response to Naryshkin’s remarks.

“They are really desperate to change the narrative here. If you start a war, you can’t then pretend that YOU are the victim of cancel culture,” a Twitter user replied in agreement.

“This kind of language is exactly the same as the gop messaging from elected officials to tv personalities to online influencers & internet trolls. It’s the same twisting of words and meaning smothered with a thick sauce of contempt. See it?” noted another social media user.

Foreign and defense policy writer, professor of national security and strategy at the U.S. Army War College Steve Metz replied: “No Sergei, the world is trying to cancel your war criminal, nazi like aggression. The world held its nose and tolerated your fascist government before that.”

“We’ve seen claims of “cancel culture victimhood” from bigots, white supremacists, sexual harassers, rapists, public masterbators, and many others, but this one might trump them all (so to speak). Ridiculous,” added another Twitter user.

“Isn’t it interesting that he uses the same language as Fox News?” asked WGN anchor Steve Grzanich.

He was not alone in that observation.

Clemens Wergin, the Chief Correspondent for German news outlet Welt: “Everybody is a Nazi or a Fascist it seems who doesn’t do what Russia’s cleptocratic dictatorship wants.”

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kos

tag TAG https://www.dailykos.com/tags/Shellenberger

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/12/2063888/-With-COP-Closing-Deniers-Beclown-Themselves-Then-Cry-I-ve-Been-Cancelled-When-People-Laugh

With COP Closing, Deniers Beclown Themselves, Then Cry ‘I’ve Been Cancelled!’ When People Laugh

The disinformation around this year’s climate negotiations got off to a stupid start, got slightly funny and gross there for a minute, and then just gross as a TERF called climate reporters biased. But not to worry, it’s still getting stupider, and...

ClimateDenierRoundup

Nov 12, 2021 at 7:00 am PST

disinformation around this year’s climate negotiations got off to a stupid start, got slightly funny and gross there for a minute, and then just gross as a TERF called climate reporters biased. But not to worry, it’s still getting stupider, and more offensive!

On the stupid front, a member of the new denial PR pop-up CAR26 that we warned about last week tweeted on Monday that she was “chased” out of COP26, and had to do an interview while “hiding in the disabled loos.” But it turns out no one chased her out of COP26, she was just asked to leave a private meeting room at a side event, presumably because it was about to be used for, you know, a meeting.

“Anti-climate actors rely on a reactionary dynamic with ‘mainstream’ institutions, media, or experts,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) disinformation expert Jennie King told DeSmog, “and cultivate their brand, especially on social media, around being ‘cancelled’ or outcast by perceived elites.”

This dynamic is absolutely unmistakable across the deniersphere, to the extent that it even entices people who try to distance themselves from it, like “honest broker” author Roger Pielke Jr. While he’s long attempted to portray himself as sitting squarely within the consensus, and expresses support for a carbon tax, he’s also done plenty of work that’s immediately used by the sorts of people who cry persecution when they lock themselves in a bathroom, like alleging that Democrats have corrupted climate science.

And deniers return the favor by supporting him, for example with a new 20-page report published by GWPF detailing how, due to persecution, his university office is tiny and filled with boxes from his shuttered projects. Based on an interview with Donna LaFramboise, who’s past works have centered on smearing the IPCC, it’s built on the idea that the tenured professor who once complained about being silenced in the Wall Street Journal has been, as King described of the bathroom-dweller, “‘cancelled’ or outcast by perceived elites.”

:{(On Tuesday, } $_{a COP26 event}_$ :{ honored the lives of the 1,000+ }:environmental activists murdered:{ since the }:Paris Agreement in 2015:{, a third of whom were from indigenous communities. But everyone should really feel very sorry for Pielke, because his office is very small and doesn’t even have any windows!)}:

While most may not be moved by such a harrowing tale of being told you’re wrong, refusing to admit it, and facing consequences for your toxic actions, one person who did praise Pielke yesterday was **Michael Shellenberger. Also on the anti-elitist kick, Shellenberger tweeted a link to his new substack post a couple dozen times as well, so we took the bait and gave “Why Wokeism Is A Religion” a read. And surprisingly, we were glad we did!

Because for years now, Shellenberger has slowly been evolving beyond his brand as the liberal presenting hard truths in the name of a stronger and more successful progressive movement, and despite naming his post-Breakthrough spin-off “Environmental Progress,” he is moving fully into the reactionary, alt-right space. This undoubtedly confirms it.

Shellenberger’s new “taxonomy” of the “woke religion” is a project with fellow anti-woke-ist Peter Boghossian, who recently quit Portland State University after getting blowback for writing fake academic papersand in an apparent preemptive self-cancellation, as announced on the substack of fellow preemptive self-canceller Bari Weiss.

Similar to the TERFs and trans disinfo we talked about last Thursday, t:{his “woke religion taxonomy” links racism, climate change, trans people, crime, mental illness, and drug and homelessness issues by suggesting each has an “original sin” (history) committed by “guilty devils,” (white capitalists, mostly) perpetuated by “myths” (sociology) and impacting “sacred victims” (actual victims of racism) who “the elect” (((elite))) protect with “supernatural beliefs” (facts) and by outlawing “taboo facts” (alternative facts) and “taboo speech” (hate speech), and can only be improved through “purifying rituals” (reducing emissions, being respectful of people's identities by using their pronouns) and by embracing “purifying speech” of words and phrases as outlandish as “Black,” “Renewables,” and “Trans women are women.”}:

Seriously, those are the actual examples!

Somehow, though, that’s not even the most disgusting content coming from a supposed ally of climate action yesterday. While the Republican plan to export natural gas as a climate cure would lead to a catastrophic 3.1°C of warming, apparently even that is too much climate action for so-called skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg.

In this week's Wall Street Journal column, Lomborg argues that a "reasonable alternative" to the COP26 talks is to allow for 3.5°C (6.3°F) of warming. But just the difference between 1.5°C and 2·°C of warming is significant, with _{upward of 1 billion additional people who would be at risk of dying from extreme heat if they spend a summer day outside}_ at 2°C (and half the world population is at risk at 4°C). Allowing fossil fuels to pollute us to{ to 3.5°C would put at }_}_{least}__{{ 275 million people’s homes under water}, including _{{entire island nations}}_ (and {Louisiana} communities) that will be submerged by _{{sea level rise after just 2°C of warming}}_, literally {committing cultural genocide}.

Experts were quick to debunk Lomborg's claims, for example pointing out that if you look at the updated version of the study he cites to justify that genocide, it now matches the Paris goals.

While the antics of obvious anti-climate activists hiding in bathrooms may be an entertaining distraction, it seems these days the real danger is coming from those “honest brokers” pretending to offer “reasonable” advice.

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no lnx

How the right wing uses language as a weapon

Magdi Semrau May 04, 2021

Right-wing operatives have recently mounted a campaign against the idea and practice of "wokeness." The word has the pretense of a neutral reference, but is increasingly used to debase and belittle the underlying meaning of anti-racism and anti-bigotry. Similar rhetorical tactics have a long history in conservatism, as they allow the GOP to obscure policy objectives, while simultaneously evoking negative and positive emotions. Overall, the GOP benefits from imprecise language soaked with connotation. Unfortunately, journalists and some liberals keep falling for it.

In the case of "woke" and "wokeness," conservatives are undermining a positive idea with derisive figurative language. Consider a converse example, in which the Republicans advanced an ugly principle through positive framing: waterboarding. It was described as "enhanced interrogation" by conservatives, and that was repeated by the press corps. However, if you actually describe what's involved in waterboarding—making a person temporarily experience drowning—Americans respond with repulsion. Conservatives knew this, so they chose to be evasive. "Enhanced interrogation" is more palatable than both "torture" and "simulated drowning."

Language can be exploited to great political effect. Words convey meaning two ways. By denotations, the actual real-world reference of a given word or phrase. And by connotations, the feelings they evoke. The GOP systematically uses language that obscures denotation and advances connotation. The case of "wokeness" is not so different from "enhanced interrogation," but, in this case, the underlying denotation—awareness of social injustice—is good whereas the connotations are unfortunately negative. As they did with "enhanced interrogation," conservatives are using figurative language to obscure deeper principles and create a fog of feeling, rather than reason.

The GOP's use of such language—figurative, imprecise, but laden with connotation—gained prominence in their backlash to the civil rights movement. After a certain point, it was of little benefit to conservatives to explicitly state they were opposed to equal rights for Black Americans, so they adopted fuzzy terms. This strategy was famously outlined by the late Lee Atwater, a chief architect of modern GOP rhetoric:

You start out in 1954 by saying, '[n-word], [n-word], [n-word].' By 1968 you can't say '[n-word]'—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. … 'We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "[n-word], [n-word]."

Here, Atwater specifically argued that, to advance racism, conservatives should embrace abstractions, given that racial slurs no longer confer electoral success. This tradition of linguistic manipulation continues to pervade our discourse. From "illegal alien" to "states' rights" to "politically correct" to now "woke," the Republicans have perfected the art of language devoid of concrete specifics, but charged with big feels.

That language has this power presents a challenge for journalists. Reporting should be informative and neutral. Yet with increasing frequency, the press corps uncritically adopts whatever linguistic frame has currency. The result, predictably, is neither informative nor neutral. What do Republicans actually mean when they criticize "wokeness?" It's unclear. Yet journalists repeat their rants without clarification.

Consider what "woke" actually denotes. The origin of the expression is unknown, but references to "staying woke" in African-American English can be traced back to Lead Belly's recording of "Scottsboro Boys," a song about young Black men who were falsely accused of rape. Recently, "woke" gained prominence during the 2014 Ferguson protests when it was used to signal awareness of anti-Black racism. "Woke" then proliferated online where its meaning broadened to describe anyone who was aware of systemic racism. Finally, the meaning shifted to encompass an awareness of bigotry in general. Now, lexicographers define "woke" as "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)."

While the current use of "woke" arose from African-American English, "awake" as a metaphor for awareness has deep cross-cultural roots. Wakefulness as revelation is referenced throughout both Buddhism and Christianity as well as in the work of poets and playwrights. It is, in fact, the same metaphor underlying the "Age of Reason"—or the Enlightenment—such that Kant wrote, "Enlightenment is the release of man from a state of bondage. … Have the courage to use your own understanding!" "Wokeness" was present in American political movements long before BLM. Republicans—proud descendants of Abraham Lincoln—might be interested to learn that an early anti-slavery faction within their own party called themselves "The Wide Awakes."

So, what "wokeness" denotes is overwhelmingly positive: awareness of bigotry and concomitant opposition. Yet, recently, as conservatives have co-opted it, the term has become derisive. "Woke" people are unserious. You're allowed to roll your eyes at them, because they are sensitive and sanctimonious. In this sense, "woke" has unfortunately become a dysphemism. Whereas euphemisms soften underlying meaning (the dead "passed away," for instance, or the woman is "with child"), dysphemisms do the opposite (the dead "croaked', for instance, or the woman got "knocked up").

What's denoted by "woke" has been eclipsed by connotations. When we hear "woke" now, we do not think of its history as a metaphor for awareness. We certainly do not think of the Enlightenment. We think of pious scolds. And then, perhaps unwittingly, we transfer this pejorative connotation to the underlying principles of social justice.

We can't expect rhetorical honesty from the GOP, but we can ask more of the press corps that reports on conservatives' use of "woke." When reporters repeat the GOP's derision of "wokeness" without explaining the underlying denotation of the word, they are serving as a conduit of conservative propaganda. Such reporting is neither informative nor neutral. The meaning of what's said is, at best, obscure and imprecise. Failure to report the underlying meaning allows the negative connotations to prevail.

So, if an elected official claims "wokeness" is bad, journalists should ask them what they mean! Journalists could ask, for example: "Is anti-racism bad? What about anti-bigotry in general?" If they refuse to define what they intend when they deride "wokeness," journalists should do it for them by citing the dictionary definition.

We are in an existential battle. The forces of bigotry are strong, and, in many ways, our electoral system allows them to flourish. However, the evidence is clear: the actual principle of "wokeness"—the broad "awareness of social injustice"—is increasingly popular. We cannot let conservative rhetorical manipulations muddy this fact.

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an 721

fox News is furious at the latest storyline from Marvel's Captain America, with two guests declaring the comic book publisher has turned the hero who has fought fascism and Nazism since 1941 into "Captain Woke."

For those unaware, Captain America was created in the middle of World War II, just before America officially entered the war, as an instrument to help Americans in the fight against the Axis powers. He's been called a "patriotic supersoldier," his entire foundation is literally about fighting fascism and the far right, and his popularity over the decades has only increased.

Until today, when Fox News launched an assault on the American hero.

"Dean Cain slams Marvel for new 'woke' Captain America comic: Bashing USA is now 'the cool thing to do'," is the title of a Fox News article that claims "Marvel is facing backlash for its latest comic, 'The United States of Captain America,' which says the American dream isn't real."

Here's how Fox News presents a quote from the comic book:

"…The first American dream is the one that isn't real. It's one some people expect to just be handed to them… When the truth is, it never really existed in the first place… other cultures. Immigrants… We're at our best when we keep no one out. A good dream is shared. Shared radically. Shared with everyone. When something isn't shared, it can become the American lie."

Fox News adds, "Cain said wokeness is becoming pervasive, affecting the media, actors, and celebrities and indoctrinating children in schools."

Marvel is literally just saying America has to be actively reinvented every day, and to do that we need and should want immigrants to share in our dream.

To Fox News, that's wokeness and propaganda.

On cable, Fox News guest Michael Loftus ranted about Captain America.

"It's sad, really, it's so sad when Captain America is now like Captain Woke, or Captain Propaganda. Did I miss an issue where he was kidnapped by liberal arts professors and was forced to move to Portland?" Loftus lamented. "It's the absolute worst, and it's it's just more proof that the left is going to come after everything that real Americans hold near and dear, they're in, after baseball they tried to cancel apple pie. And now, Captain America. Maybe they'll change his outfit, maybe now instead of a shield, he'll be armed with a laptop, and they'll have exciting adventures where he sits in coffee shops and and tweets mean things, and he's an active fact checker on Facebook. It's horrible."

Loftus says Captain America "has a huge impact" on children, calling the declaration that America is a land of immigrants "pretty insidious," while complaining the left doesn't "want the right to have any heroes."

He went on to "cancel" Captain America, declaring him "dead," at least to him: "I'm done with Captain America. He's dead."...

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hypocrisy

Former Associated Press reporter Emily Wilder was fired from the international media company late Thursday following a pressure campaign by right-wing media, including publications such as The Federalist and The Washington Free Beacon working in tandem with the Standford College Republicans. Wilder was "canceled," if you will, for pro-Palestinian activism during her years in college — not at the AP.

The campaign to have Wilder fired started on Monday with the Stanford College Republicans taking to Twitter to bill the reporter's past pro-Palestine demonstrating as controversial, coming to the verdict that she would never be able to be impartial while covering national news.[twt pix]

"Recently, we discovered that theAssociated Press has hired former Stanford anti-Israel agitator, Emily Wilder, who referred to the late Sheldon Adelson as a 'naked mole rat' as one of their 'journalists,'" the college Republican organization tweeted. The series of tweets from the Standford Republican chapter went onto claim that the reporter, who is Jewish, during her college years belonged to a "Students for Justice in Palestine," on-campus group. The college Republicans — who appear to have their own questionable Twitter activity — also took offense to Wilder calling right-wing provocateur Ben Shapiro a "little turd" and Sheldon Adelson a "naked mole-rat."

From there, the right-wing outrage machine got ahold of the story, including The Federalist, The Washington Free Beacon, and Fox News, which billed the reporter as being "anti-Israel." Notably, the Free Beacon ran their hit-piece with no attached byline and didn't return Salon's request for comment as to why.

On Thursday, an all-staff email from AP News director Peter Prengaman to employees read: "A note to say that news associate Emily Wilder is no longer with the AP[twt pix]

but the Associated Press claims it wasn't her activism in college. "While AP generally refrains from commenting on personnel matters, we can confirm Emily Wilder's comments on Thursday thatshe was dismissed for violations of AP's social media policy during her time at AP," an AP spokesperson told The Wrap.

"Amazing how quickly a talented young reporter's career can be snuffed out by a Twitter mob that decided to feign outrage over some college tweets. And if @vv1lder somehow violated @AP's social media rules, the solution is to offer guidance, not termination, to a new reporter," TheWashington Post's Glenn Kesslerwrote on Twitter following the ouster.

[twt pix] responding to her firing, Wilder told SFGATE that her firing was nothing more than a right-wing outrage mob that reportedly disdains "cancel culture," doing what they claim to resent.

"There's no question I was just canceled," told SFGATE reporter Eric Ting on Thursday following the news of her firing. "This is exactly the issue with the rhetoric around 'cancel culture.' To Republicans, cancel culture is usually seen as teens or young people online advocating that people be held accountable over accusations of racism or whatever it may be, but when it comes down to who actually has to deal with the lifelong ramifications of the selective enforcement of cancel culture — specifically over the issue of Israel and Palestine — it's always the same side."

in her interview with SFGATE, Wilder noted an "onslaught of absolutely vile messages" she received after right-wing media began running with the story. Wilder didn't immediately return a request for comment from Salon.

While The Associated Press might have folded to the demands of the right-wing mob, many journalists on Twitter voiced their support for the young journalist. "Shame on @AP @peterprengaman. I stand with Emily. Her reporting at our newspaper was excellent. Reverse your decision NOW," The Arizona Republic's reporter Rebekah Sanders wrote. The Washington Post's Dave Weigel responded: "'Hire @vv1lder' is something more and more people are saying."

"Every journalist should be outraged about @AP firing [Wilder] over college activism in favor of freedom for Palestinians. The industry is rife with clear double-standards on this," Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Adam Elmahrek commented on the firing. The Daily Beast's senior politics reporter Will Sommer replied, "It's crazy that editors are still falling for these bad-faith campaigns from right-wing media."

The decision to out Wilder comes on the heels ofright-wing pundits cheering the Israeli airstrike that leveled a building in Gaza on Saturday, housing several international news outlets, including The Associated Press.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/right-wing-cancel-culture/

comm dr

Cancel culture. Cancel culture. The right wing trumpets it so many times it rings in my ears. Freedom of speech, the right's mouth pieces claim, is "silenced" by the liberals and socialists who, conservatives say, control the nation's media and universities, canceling out all but their own speech.

But it is not those on the left that threaten free speech in any systematic way. It is those on the right that have a long and continuing history of silencing those who espouse even moderately progressive ideas and programs.

Worse, even as the right claims to hold the Constitution and its First Amendment free speech rights in high esteem, it aggressively attacks the Constitution's Fifteenth Amendment voting rights guarantee, which came into being only after 800,000 died in the Civil War to save the Union and end slavery.

Moreover, the right has been waging its own war on speech, assembly, and association going back well in the 20th century.

Look at the right's history of silencing former communist party members, or those it called "fellow travelers," no matter how old their participation was. In the post-World War II years, the right-wing House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joe McCarthy used the fear of communism to silence progressives by threatening employers into firing or blacklisting employees in the motion picture industry, the leaders of the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO), as well as those in government or teaching in universities. Fueling the attacks, many newspapers and radio networks acted as megaphones.

Then, of course, there was still Jim Crow creating a virtual wall of silence in the overwhelmingly white-dominated South. After the United States passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I first went to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as a newly minted civil rights lawyer.

As I traveled South, the Ku Klux Klan, with local law enforcement often joining in, murdered civil rights workers seeking to maintain their brutally violent racist culture. The murder of four black girls in a Birmingham church in 1963 and Bull Conner unleashing dogs and powerful fire hoses on nonviolent demonstrators awakened press to the brutality. But even then it took unparalleled violence and additional civil right murders to create the necessary momentum to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The last four years show we never left that dark period behind. The right is still viciously attacking the basic exercise of First Amendment rights—and waging the most sustained attack on voting rights since Jim Crow.

We just survived four years with Donald J. Trump. His response to those in the media who had the integrity to report his lies, evasions, and dog whistles, was to "cancel" White House press conferences, and use twitter to broadcast his falsified version of the news. Like Bull Connor in Birmingham, Trump encouraged violent police conduct against demonstrators marching under Black Lives Matter banners as well as bullies, whom he praised at his own rallies for assaulting protesters.

Even more insidiously, Trump endlessly and systematically attacked the media for publishing what he called "fake news." Nor was he alone in misleading the public. Fox echoed him, as did the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal and the media newcomers that sprang up even further to the right, playing to the Republican Party and Trump's base among the 74 million people who voted for him. Trump and his captive party still do that. They trumpet "Fake News" and "Stop The Steal," with the media acting as an echo chamber.

The right's purpose is clear: Blot out mainstream media. Substitute "the lie" for news.

This is the backdrop of the present-day struggle to preserve for Black Americans their constitutional right to vote and have their votes counted, as guaranteed in the Fifteenth (1865) and Nineteenth (1920) Amendments. After the United States withdrew its troops from the South in 1876, the white ruling classes, their land owners, politicians, and sheriffs, gradually stripped Black Americans of their voting rights as well as virtually all their citizenship rights, placing them at the bottom of a cruel racial caste system.

This began to change after the Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation decision, Brown v. Board of Education, and then Congress' 1964 Civil Right Act. These ushered in the end of Jim Crow, and Congress re-established the right to vote in 1965 and provided federal provisions to ensure its enforcement. As a result, Black voting steadily increased.

In 2013, however, a conservative Supreme Court struck down key enforcement provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which applied to the old Confederate states as well as a few Northern states that had engaged in exclusionary voting tactics. After voters of color helped elect Barack Obama to two terms, and then helped Joe Biden oust Donald Trump and flip the Senate in 2020, the far right voter suppression machine shifted into overdrive.

Republicans are now pressing state legislatures and local governments to do whatever it takes—including closing polling places, limiting the use of absentee ballots, ending Sunday voting, reducing early voting days and shortening voting times, eliminating drop boxes, requiring voters to have certain identification documents, even prohibiting people from giving water to those in long voter lines—to drive down voter turnout.

Put simply, they seek to "cancel" the Constitutional amendments which afford all Americans the right to vote. Cancel culture indeed.

Now when Black citizens exercise their rights to ask corporate America to boycott the states passing such laws, the right threatens that if corporations engage in actions intended to help preserve voting rights, the affected states should strip them of government benefits such as tax breaks. To back up their threats, the right has Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in their corner demanding that corporate America not side with Democrats and what he calls "far left mobs." Stay out of it, he says, after years of getting and obtaining their support.

Bottom line: The right wing not only seeks to cancel progressive's free speech but the voting rights of tens of millions of Americans. The right's claims to defend free speech and fight back against "cancel culture" are bogus, little more than a thinly disguised mask. Progressives should not let the right get away with it. These issues are critical to the survival of our democracy.

Lewis M. Steel is senior counsel at Outten & Golden LLP and an Institute for Policy Studies board member. He's the author of The Butler's Child: White Privilege, Race, and a Lawyer's Life in Civil Rights

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Cancel Jim Jordan': GOP rep mocked for whining about 'cancel culture' during debate over Trump impeachment

Meaghan Ellis

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) appears determined to defend President Donald Trump's rhetoric after a mob last week attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to halt certification.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/cancel-culture/

In discussing the truth about "cancel culture," I'm going to ask you to act for a moment like a journalist. Journalists are concerned, or should be concerned, with gathering relevant facts, crafting stories using relevant facts, clarifying ambiguities and identifying as much as possible who is doing what to whom, when, where, why and how. As applied to "cancel culture," this means who is using the term, in what context are they using it, why are they using it, and whom are they applying it to.

When you look at "cancel culture" from the point of view of a journalist, you can see that the people most likely to use "cancel culture" are most likely critical of the maddeningly muddled liberalization of American society in which people historically on the margins of respectability and power are slowly taking their equally entitled place at their center. Most critics are conservative. Some are liberal in that they worry about freedoms lost as freedoms are won. Others are merely and transparently fascist.

The context in which critics use "cancel culture" is naturally related to language. I say "naturally," because the words we use to engage the political reality we all inhabit is naturally as important as the reality itself. Indeed, the words we use can create their own fictional reality, one that ends up competing with, or even replacing, political reality. Because of the link between language and power, forces of liberalization are naturally interested in reshaping the language we all use in the interest of expanding the rights, liberties and blessings of the franchise.Forces against liberalization are naturally resistant to tampering with the language et al. And as these polar forces collide, there might arise legitimate constitutional questions of freedoms and rights.

But this binary I have established—advocates for and critics against the reshaping of the language that we use in order to engage the reality we inhabit—is mostly false. It's distorting, because it suggests an equal moral footing. Fact is, critics of "cancel culture" are not being honest with you. Advocates are not trying to cancel anyone. They are trying to change the political culture for the purpose of improving as many lives as possible. Critics understand that. That's why they invented a term of art in order to malign advocates—"cancel culture" is an inchoate threat we must face before it's too late. Critics of "cancel culture" are doing the same thing critics of liberalism have done since forever. While liberals complain about problems, critics complain about liberals. And they go to great lengths to get the liberals to shut the hell up.

While "cancel culture" is a fiction invented by critics of liberalization for the purpose of attacking liberals, there is such a thing as cancel culture. We just don't call it that, because real cancel culture has plagued human relations since the dawn of human history—it's when the politically powerful stomp the politically weak.Maltreatment on such a vast and historical scale is so normal, pervasive and ubiquitous that it's almost entirely invisible to those of us lucky enough to have been born on the giving end of it. Those of us unlucky enough to have been born on the receiving end of it, however, can see real cancel culture quite clearly. Again, the difference should be a familiar one. Those with the power to name, name. Those without the power to name, don't name. Those with the power call it "cancel culture." Those without the power sit in silence.

Power is, in fact, how you tell the difference between cancel culture and "cancel culture." It's the best way, to my way of thinking, to make sense of stuff that just doesn't make sense. For instance, the Times reported the story of a Black student at Smith College who claimed being targeted for discrimination by the school's white staffers. The claim wasn't true, turns out, but Smith College's president continued to take the student's side for reasons related to systemic racism. Critics of "cancel culture" howled. This was proof of wokeness run amok! Stop it before it's too late!

This wasn't "cancel culture," though. It was real cancel culture. A privileged Black student at one of the elite institutions of higher education in the United States chose for her own bad reasons to stomp some white working-class stiffs with the full faith and approval of her elite institution, an injustice as old as the history of the country. The problem for critics of "cancel culture" was not, however, the abuse of power. It was not that Smith College took the side of a student in abusing her power. It was the abuse of power by a Black person who isn't supposed to have any power to abuse.

Critics of "cancel culture" would rather not talk about the old hierarchies of power, however, because talking about the old hierarchies of power makes things that don't make sense make sense. The question is almost never about language and freedom of speech. The question is almost always about who is doing what to whom, when, where, why and how. Critics prefer we debate unclear and unresolvable abstractions. But you can free yourself from propaganda by acting, for a moment, as a journalist should.

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