Trump’s America Is Not a Safe Place for Jews - or Those Labeled as "Other"

A column in the Washington Post laments that America is quickly becoming a place that is not safe for Jews thanks to the growing anti-Semiticism made normal by the occupant of the White House.  The piece recounts the ways in which Trump has embraced the Alt-Right which has long targeted Jews along with pretty much all minorities as well as LGBT Americans.  It's a trend that reminds one of the rise of dictators in Europe in the late 1920's and early 1930's not to mention the white nationalists who are seeking to reassert their power in places as disparate as rural areas of the United Kingdom supporting Brexit, to Hungary and Brazil where an extremist just won the presidency.  The trend throughout is the dehumanizing of those who are perceived as different which in turn opens the door for violence against those targeted.  Disgustingly, here in America, Trump and far right Republicans disclaim any responsibility for the hatred they are unleashing.  Here are column highlights:

George Washington, in his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., told Jews they would be safe in the new nation.

“The government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” he wrote. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Though that assurance has been tested, the United States has endured as a safe haven for Jews.

Now President Trump has violated Washington’s compact. He has given sanction to bigotry and assistance to persecution. After the shooting in Pittsburgh, which the Anti-Defamation League believes is the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, there is no longer safety under the vine and fig tree.

I had been dreading and expecting this day, and more like it, for two years. This was more than predictable; it was predicted.

After Trump’s presidential campaign began with genteel anti-Semitism, progressed to dog whistles and ended with a full-throated targeting of Jewish “globalists,” I wrote on Election Day that the results would be coming in on the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous night of Nazi violence and vandalism against German Jews: “I pray that on this solemn anniversary, Americans tell Donald Trump and the world that we are never going back there.”

After Charlottesville, when Trump said there “were very fine people” marching among the neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us,” I wrote about my daughter’s fear of returning to Hebrew school because of violence; armed white supremacists had chanted “Sieg Heil” and forced worshipers to flee a Charlottesville synagogue.

Consider some of the many times Trump gave sanction to bigotry before 11 worshipers were shot dead at the Tree of Life:

Telling Jewish Republicans they wouldn’t support him “because I don’t want your money.”

Tweeting an image from an anti-Semitic message board with a Star of David atop a pile of cash.

Saying “I don’t have a message” for supporters who threatened anti-Semitic violence against a Jewish journalist, and Melania Trump saying the writer “provoked” the threats.
Branding his campaign with the “America First” slogan of the anti-Semitic pre-war movement.

Alleging that “blood suckers” and “a global power structure” including “international banks” are secretly plotting against ordinary Americans.

And, when urged by the Anti-Defamation League to stop using traditionally anti-Semitic tropes, repeating the tropes in an ad with images of prominent Jews, including George Soros.

Once in office, in addition to making common cause with the Nazis of Charlottesville, Trump stocked his administration with Stephen K. Bannon and other figures of the nationalist “alt-right;” hesitated to condemn the rise of anti-Semitic threats and vandalism; issued a Holocaust remembrance statement without mention of Jews; lamented the attempts to silence Alex Jones, who peddles anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and, declaring himself a “nationalist,” increased verbal attacks on “globalists,” particularly Soros.

Whatever Trump’s motives, his words and deeds inspire the hateful and the violent. The man accused of sending pipe bombs to a dozen favorite Trump targets (including Soros) eschewed politics, his family’s lawyer says, until he “found a father in Trump.” The accused Pittsburgh gunman, though apparently rejecting Trump for being insufficiently nationalist, embraced on social media the themes Trump has popularized: the “globalist” danger, immigrant “invaders that kill our people” and an “infestation” of undesirables.

[P]roceeding with a rally mere hours after the massacre, he galvanized the crowd with the same complaint the alleged Pittsburgh killer cited in social media before the carnage: the migrant caravan. Trump told the crowd, “No caravans, right? We don’t want caravans. We’re not having caravans.”  “Build the wall!” the crowd chanted.

Be very afraid.

DHS Ties to Alt-Right; Russia Is Co-opting Angry Young White Men

The Atlantic has two disturbing articles that at first blush seem unrelated.  One looks at ties between the Trump/Pence regime and white supremacists and the other looks at Russian efforts to infiltrate and/or fund far fight clubs, motorcycle gangs and other alt-right groups to sow division and inflame racism, homophobia and liberal ideologies in general.  What is amazing or disturbing depending on one's perspective is the lengths, deviousness and reach of the Russian intelligence services directed by Trump BFF Vladimir Putin.  Highlights from the first piece include emails linking some at the Department of Homeland Security with white nationalist groups which ought to be under DHS investigation rather than possible coordination.   Here are excerpts:

In the past two years, leaders of an emboldened white nationalism have burst into the forefront of national politics and coalesced around an “alt-right” subculture as they have endeavored to make their ideology part of the  mainstream. Recent developments have shed light on previously unknown connections between white nationalist activists and the Trump administration. Now, the Department of Homeland Security has denounced “all forms of violent extremism” following the resignation of a policy analyst who had connections with white nationalists, according to leaked emails obtained by The Atlantic.

The emails show that the official, Ian M. Smith, had in the past been in contact with a group that included known white nationalists as they planned various events.  On one of the email threads, the address of alt-right white nationalist leader Richard Spencer is included as well as Smith’s. Another group of recipients includes Smith as well as Jared Taylor, the founder of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, who calls himself a “white advocate.”

The messages, given to The Atlantic by a source to whom they were forwarded, paint a picture of the social scene in which white nationalists gathered for an “Alt-Right Toastmasters” night in 2016, and organized dinner parties and visits from out-of-town friends. And they provide a glimpse into how a group that included hardcore white nationalists were able to operate relatively incognito in the wider world, particularly in conservative circles. The revelation of these messages comes amid increasing scrutiny of white nationalists’ ties to the administration; a White House speechwriter named Darren Beattie left the administration after CNN reported earlier this month that he had attended a conference with white nationalists in 2016. The Washington Post reported last week that Peter Brimelow, the publisher of white nationalist website VDare, had attended a party at top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow’s house.

White nationalists have an affinity for the president, whom they believe shares some of their policy priorities. After  counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, President Trump remarked that there were "very fine people on both sides" who attended the rally. After hearing the president's statement, Spencer told The Atlantic he was "really proud of him."   

According to sources with knowledge of Smith’s role at DHS, he  was a policy analyst working on immigration. He used to work for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, an anti-immigration legal organization associated with the right-wing Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Though the emails don’t show Smith and Spencer interacting, some of the messages indicate a familiarity on Smith’s part with Spencer’s projects. In another email sent on March 7, 2015, Smith refers to an event held by “NPI,” the acronym for the National Policy Institute, Spencer’s white nationalist non-profit, saying he had missed it because he was out of town. And in another on May 9, 2016, Smith recommended someone for a job at prominent, Trump-supporting media outlet, saying that the person was “currently working in development at LI” (the conservative training group the Leadership Institute) “writes for Radix, Amren, VDare and Chronicles under a pseudonym.”

The second article looks at Russian efforts across Europe and America to foster right wing, pro-Russia groups that play up white nationalism, anti-gay activism and disruption of liberal democracies in general.  Many of these insidious operations go under the radar.  Here are article highlights:

It seems almost too strange to be true: fight clubs, neo-Nazi soccer hooligans, and motorcycle gangs serving as conduits for the Kremlin’s influence operations in Western countries. It sounds more like an episode of The Americans with a dash of Mad Max and Fight Club mixed in. Yet this is exactly what is happening across Europe and North America as Russia’s intelligence services co-opt fringe radicals and angry young men to try to undermine Western democracies from within. And not just in the virtual world, but in real life.

After the Kremlin accelerated its covert war against Western democracies in the aftermath of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s intelligence services dramatically ramped up their “active measures” (in Russian intelligence jargon, aktivnyye meropriyatiya or “active measures” refers to a broad range of covert influence and/or subversive operations) using radical-right and fringe groups. These groups serve as the perfect unwitting agents to accomplish Moscow’s twin goals of destabilizing Western societies and co-opting Western business and political elites.

By forging ties to radical groups on the far right, and sometimes on the far left, the Kremlin has developed convenient local surrogates that can amplify its talking points, even as Russian trolls reinforce the divisive narratives such groups spread online.

It would be a mistake, however, to think that the partnerships between the Kremlin and these groups are always marriages of convenience. Many are genuine partnerships based on a shared aversion to liberal democracy and a desire to undermine it.

The Kremlin’s recruitment of skinheads, biker gangs, soccer hooligans, and street fighters does not usually appear geared toward the armed overthrow of democratic governments. Far more often, the recruitment, indoctrination, and manipulation of fringe right-wing groups seems aimed at sowing political chaos in Western democracies and subverting or weakening democratic institutions. But occasionally, as in Ukraine, these proxies can operate directly in support of Kremlin operations. In the West, the majority of systema clubs [a particular type of martial-arts club, based on the systema combat style, which has its origins in medieval Russia] are exactly what they appear to be. However, according to an investigation by the EU Observer, a number of systema fight clubs in Europe and North America prominently display their links to Russia’s special forces and even use GRU or FSB insignia in their promotional materials. They appeal to nationalistically minded expatriates such as military veterans, and tap into a particular Russian-nationalist subculture that extols the secret services, much like that Spetsnaz club in South Florida. Many systema practitioners also travel regularly to Russia to receive advanced training. If some Russian fight clubs in Europe and North America harbor a small fraction of GRU-affiliated agents instrumentally tapping into the street-fighting milieu to drive home an anti-Western (and pro-Russia) message, then their activity is not much different from the trolls who work for Russia’s Internet Research Agency. The key difference would be that the indoctrination and recruitment is being done in person rather than online. The Kremlin makes use of far-right groups for a number of reasons. First, these groups can be manipulated and indoctrinated through social media, which makes them ripe targets for organizations like the Internet Research Agency, whose trolls can mobilize their members with carefully crafted messaging. Second, these groups are likely to find the Kremlin’s ideology of “traditional Russian values” appealing, particularly when contrasted with Western liberal values such as individual rights, tolerance, and self-expression. Right-wing groups are more easily drawn into the Russian orbit with anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-feminist rhetoric and by a narrative that stresses a collectivist, tribal, and racially exclusive worldview. Finally, the Western radical right is attractive to the Kremlin not only because it provides a pool of recruits—often angry young white men—for stirring up social protests, but also because it serves as a backdoor for establishing ties with far-right political parties and anti-establishment politicians. The Kremlin views such politicians—like France’s Marine Le Pen, Germany’s Frauke Petry, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini—as battering rams that can be used to demolish democratic institutions and to challenge the political establishment’s support for NATO, the EU, and transatlantic ties. Although the Kremlin’s effort to co-opt Western politicians is beyond the scope of this article, it is a key reason why Russia invests resources in cultivating fringe radicals in the West. In the United States too, the alt-right and Kremlin ideologues share a common cause. While many of these ties are the result of mutual admiration more than active recruitment, the recent charges against the gun-rights advocate Maria Butina for serving as a Russian agent prove the Kremlin is also actively seeking to cultivate groups on the American right.

Fringe-right groups already consider the Kremlin an ally. At the alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, chants of “Russia is our friend!” were commonplace. Richard Spencer, who led the Charlottesville rally and directs an alt-right organization called the National Policy Institute, has praised Putin as a protector of the white race. His website, altright.com, features such articles as “Why Anti-Racism is Nothing but a Lie” and defends the alt-right’s associations with Putin by arguing that “Russia is one of the few countries left that supports and upholds Pro-European values such as strength, unity, racial awareness, etc.”

The lessons for the United States and its allies are clear. Russia’s manipulation of fringe far-right groups is part of a deliberate strategy to undermine Western democratic institutions. Russia’s trolls and intelligence services prey on social outcasts in order to radicalize them and recruit them to wage war on their countries’ liberal institutions. To do this, the Kremlin reinforces their belief that liberal democracy is rotten and cultivates their restless anger and propensity toward violence. In addition to stoking anger and resentment, the Kremlin also uses covert financing to bankroll their destructive agenda. These efforts occur both in person, via martial-arts studios and motorcycle clubs, and in the virtual world of social media, where they are largely hidden from law enforcement and the general public.

Who Joins White Supremacist/Alt-Right Groups

Today is the anniversary of the Alt-Right and White Supremacists assault on Charlottesville, a city that I and countless University of Virginia hold dear.  Ironically, given last year's violence, Charlottesville is perhaps Virginia's most progressive city - it voted heavily for Clinton in 2016 and Democrat Ralph Northam got roughly 85% of the vote in 2017 - and, thus, represents what the far right hates most: education, knowledge, tolerance and non-discrimination. While frictions erupted last night in Charlottesville, today's main gathering of haters will take place in Washington, DC, near the White House - a fitting location given Trump's refusal to condemn the white supremacists who violated Charlottesville last year and killed a counter-protester.  A piece in Newsweek looks at who joins the Alt-Right and by extension, makes up much of Trump's hardcore base.  Here are excerpts:

A new University of Virginia study found that white nationalists are likely to be low-income, divorced, uneducated and unemployed.

One year after the Unite the Right marches in Charlottesville, Virginia that led to the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer and dozens of serious injuries, scholars at the nearby university analyzed the demographics of potential alt-right members in hopes of discovering what makes certain Americans susceptible to joining white nationalist movements.  

Researchers at UVA’s Institute for Family Studies studied responses to 2016 American National Election Survey, and singled out respondents who had a strong sense of white identity, a belief in the importance of white solidarity and a sense of white victimization.

The group found that unemployed white Americans without a college degree and with an annual income between $0 and $29,000 were more likely to agree with the principles of the white nationalist movement. These respondents were also much more likely to be divorced than married or never married. Religious beliefs, gender and age had little impact on whether a white American was held supremacist beliefs or not, the study found. “Divorce does seem to increase the likelihood a respondent will believe whites suffer discrimination and the likelihood that a white person will agree with all three of the basic premises of white identity politics,” wrote George Hawley, an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Alabama, in the studies findings.

A July Anti-Defamation League study also found a clear link between misogyny and white supremacy. “Misogyny has the potential to act as a gateway into the white supremacist world,” said report author Jessica Reaves, an expert at ADL’s Center on Extremism. “The hatred and resentment of women voiced by groups like involuntary celibates and Men’s Rights Activists is disturbingly similar to white supremacists’ hatred of minorities. And some white supremacists, especially those on the alt-right, use the same degrading, violent anti-woman rhetoric we hear coming from misogynist groups.”

“Pundits and scholars have spent the last several years debating whether racism or economic anxiety is the main catalyst for right-wing populism and white racial identity politics,” wrote Hawley. “It turns out that economic variables are some of the stronger determinants of white attitudes on racial questions. Higher incomes are associated with lower levels of white racial identity, racial solidarity, and feelings of discrimination.

I doubt many of my country club/yacht club Republican "friends" would associate with these people socially, but they voted with them and sadly, seemingly subscribe to the same ugly racism.  My late mother always told us as children that we'd be known by the company we kept.  My Republican "friends" have said a lot about themselves given the politically kindred spirits and it's not something positive.

Corey Stewart Could Endanger Other Virginia Republicans

As a former Republican and activist within the Republican Party of Virginia, the selection of Corey Stewart as the party senate nominee underscores the sad reality that the Virginia GOP has become as insane as a rabid dog. As recently as 15-20 years ago, Stewart would have been hard put to be elected to a a city or county committee.  Back then, of course, moderates were still the norm within the Party.  Now, with evangelical Christian extremists and white supremacists (the two groups are difficult to differentiate) controlling the base, insanity and bigotry are the norm.  One can only hope that Stewart goes down to a horrific defeat and kills the delusional myth that Republicans have not won statewide office in Virginia for nearly a decade because their candidates were "too liberal."  Two pieces look at the likely consequences of Stewart's selection.  One is found in Bearing Drift, a conservative site, which argues there is no conservative case for supporting Stewart and refers to Stewart as the "Gauleiter of Prince William County" (for Fox News viewers, "gauleiter" is a political official governing a district under Nazi rule), and the other is in the New York Times.  First highlights from Bearing Drift:

Back in February 2014, I penned a piece warning about the rise of the nativist alt-right in Republican politics. . . . The Republican Party of Virginia . . . . has descended into a parody of itself, finally lifting from the dust the battle standard of Massive Resistance and waving it proudly in the hands of one man: Corey Stewart.

Let us be clear where things stand.  Our chairman, John Whitbeck, is best known for his jokes about Jewish people at party gatherings.  For an unprecedented 11 times, Whitbeck defended Fredy Burgos, a man whose anti-Semtism and fondness for Augusto Pinochet were abundantly clear, but never worthy of countenance until this publication forced his hand.  Yet while removed by State Central Committee by a margin so close as to be an embarrassment unto itself, Burgos was in fact rewarded for his troubles, earning a role as vice chairman of the Fairfax GOP, a full 1/8th of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The litany of stupid and the obtuse only becomes worse.  The current executive director proudly boasts of how Governor Northam has betrayed his “heritage” on social media and openly shares material from known alt-right operatives.  . . . members and activists have abandoned the party in droves.

It gets worse.  Proudly, the alt-right brags about electing two Republican congressmen (Brat and Garrett), proudly they take photos next to our candidates pledging themselves to their cause (Stewart), and the mewling from erstwhile conservatives in protest is barely audible — protecting access to power over their own conscience, excusing weakness for prudence.  It’s folly.

In 1993 nearly 25 years ago.  Back then, the Republican Party was the party of free minds, free ideas, and a free society.  Free speech was sacrosanct; free trade was the pillar that destroyed Soviet communism.  Around it all was a wholesale commitment to family and the American entrepreneurial spirit — that equality of outcome could never be guaranteed, but equality of opportunity was our first and foremost responsibility as a polity. So when is it enough? Was it enough when in 2014 Dave Brat abased himself before the likes of Breitbart.com — the self-declared mouthpiece of the alt-right?  Was it enough when the alt-right spiked the football in 2016 with cries of “Hail Trump!” as they celebrated their election night win?  Was it enough when in 2017 they earned invitations to town halls in Charlottesville?  Was it enough when three people — two of whom were Virginia State Troopers — died during the August 2017 alt-right rallies in Charlottesville?

Is it enough now when their groomed and chosen candidate — financed by the likes of Chris Ekstrom and run by Rick Shaftan — rides the wave of white nationalism?  To a party nomination contest?  And wins?

Let’s be clear about what happened.  The future of the Republican Party of Virginia fought the past, and lost. 

For 25 years, I have believed — perhaps erroneously — that the Republican Party was the best home for my beliefs as a conservative, as a Virginian, and as a Catholic. With the nomination of Corey Stewart?  That is now an impossibility.

[W]hatever the threat political socialism presents to the American republic, the answer cannot, is not, and never will be white nationalism.  My children deserve a better future than this; their children deserve a better future.  If the great story of America is to be abruptly ended in a syrup of debt and moral relativism, I would much rather go down standing athwart history yelling STOP! rather than participate in the moral contagion of a once great party. [W]e are watching in real time as the party of freedom descends into a party of rank and bitter nationalism. . . . So unless you stand up and do something now? Get used to this sound and become comfortable with its grip.  It will have you and the people you love by the throat soon enough.

The sound referred to is a clip of a Hitler Youth singing "The World Belongs to Me."  I suspect many more will be exiting from the Republican Party of Virginia.

The piece in the New York Times looks at Stewart's ugly history and the possible reverberations for others on the GOP ticket in November.  Here are excerpts:

He [Corey Stewart] once stood proudly before a Confederate flag, declaring it was not a symbol of hatred, but “about our heritage.” After the march of torch-carrying white supremacists in Charlottesville last year, which led to the death of a counterprotester, he criticized “weak Republicans” who “couldn’t apologize fast enough.”

As officials around Virginia have grappled with whether to remove Confederate statues, he has compared those politicians to leaders of the Islamic State. Now Corey Stewart, a county official who for years has played to the hard-right fringe, captured the Republican nomination for Senate in Virginia.

He did so in a low-turnout primary on Tuesday when many centrist Republicans apparently stayed home, unhappy with a three-way race among candidates all professing strong loyalty to President Trump and given to fiery culture war pronouncements.

[Stewart] received a congratulatory overnight tweet from the president, who called Mr. Stewart’s Democratic opponent, Senator Tim Kaine, “a total stiff.”

Tellingly, though, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party’s campaign arm, said it would not support Mr. Stewart, who lags far behind Mr. Kaine in fund-raising and has a history of cozying up to white supremacists and anti-Semites that threatens to make him an albatross for down-ballot Republicans. . . . The real worry for national Republicans — and the hope for Democrats — is that Mr. Stewart’s nomination may cost some incumbent Republicans in Virginia their seats in Congress.

“For the G.O.P. candidates in the down-ballot House races in Virginia, having Stewart on the ticket is going to be a very tough challenge,” said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “Somehow they will need to separate themselves from the more extreme elements of his message, while at the same time not alienating the Trump Republicans whose votes will be needed.”

Virginia Democrats quickly moved to join Mr. Stewart at the hip to other Republicans in competitive House races.  “There is no place to hide — you are either running with Corey Stewart and you condone his vile politics, or you don’t,” said Susan Swecker, the state Democratic chairwoman.

Mr. Stewart could especially hurt Representative Barbara Comstock, a Republican defending a seat in affluent Northern Virginia that is emblematic of how the state has been shifted from its once-fixed Republican moorings by an influx of immigrants and college-educated professionals.

The center of gravity for the Republican Party in the state has shifted “from the country club to the country,” as one Republican strategist, Tom Davis, put it.  “Every candidate will be asked if they support Stewart,” said Mr. Davis, a former congressman from Virginia. “This is more nuanced than the media would have you believe, but in high-education areas, it is a killer.”
 If the turnout pattern repeats in November, at least two other Republican House members besides Ms. Comstock could also be in trouble: Dave Brat and Scott Taylor. “Stewart’s fearmongering and division-sowing campaign will turn many Virginians to the Democratic ticket,” said Schuyler VanValkenburg, a Democratic state legislator who lives in Mr. Brat’s district, the Seventh.

Mr. Taylor, a former Navy SEAL who represents the Second District, centered on Virginia Beach, will face Elaine Luria, a former Navy commander.  “My opponent will either embrace Corey Stewart, be silent or distance himself from him,” Ms. Luria said in an interview. “Virginia favors equality, diversity and economic opportunity for all. Corey Stewart’s race-baiting rhetoric is offensive to everybody in Virginia.”

In January 2017, Mr. Stewart met with and praised Paul Nehlen, an outspoken anti-Semite who is now making his second run for Congress in Wisconsin. Mr. Stewart was also endorsed last year by the white nationalist Jason Kessler, who later helped organize the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

It is pitiful - and frightening - what the Republican Party of Virginia has become.

Russia-linked Company Created Alt-right Websites During Election

Donald Trump can bray all he wants that "there was no collusion with Russia," but circumstances increasingly seem to indicate otherwise, with Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, seemingly being one of the possible epicenters of Trump/Russia activities not otherwise readily explicable in the normal course of above board business. First we learn of large payments by a Russia linked firm to Cohen.  Now we learn that that firm was registering alt-right websites during the 2016 presidential election to possibly disseminate fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton and push bigoted voters towards Trump.  One can only hope that the Mueller investigation speeds up its investigation and gets to the bottom of what more and more looks like illicit activities.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on these newest revelations: 

A company at the center of widening questions involving President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen is listed as the organization behind a string of websites targeted toward white nationalists and other members of the alt-right.

Columbus Nova, a company whose U.S. chief executive, Andrew Intrater, and Russian investment partner Viktor Vekselberg have both reportedly been interviewed by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team, is listed as the registrant behind a handful of domains for websites named after the alt-right that were created during the 2016 election.It is unclear if any of these websites were launched or ever hosted content.

These sites include Alt-right.co, Alternate-right.com, Alternate-rt.com, Alt-rite.com, and other similar combinations, which were all registered in the two days following a speech given by then candidate Hillary Clinton in August 2016 in which she excoriated the far-right movement known for its extremist, racist, anti-Semitic and sexist viewpoints. 

Michael Avenatti, a lawyer for the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, circulated a document on Tuesday that purported to show that Columbus Nova gave $500,000 to Cohen in the first half of 2017.

A spokesman for the company told The Washington Post that Frederick Intrater was not acting on behalf of Columbus Nova when he registered the sites, even though he had used his company email address and listed the organization. The spokesman said that Columbus Nova was not aware that the sites had been registered before Wednesday.

Avenatti’s document appeared to herald the potential that two explosive story lines could converge: the Russia investigation and the $130,000 payout to Daniels, with Cohen at the center.

Avenatti claimed that Vekselberg may have provided funds that “replenished the account” following Cohen’s payments to Daniels. Vekselberg has denied through a spokesman that he or the company he founded, Renova Group, have had any “contractual relationship” with Cohen.

If one looks at Trump's entire career, one sees a constant disregard for the law and associations with sleazy - if not criminal - individuals  and entities.  No one should be surprised that the patterned continued through the election through to today. #Notmypresident.

The Alt-Right's Frightening Vision for America

A column in the Washington Post looks at three new books that have studied the so-called "Alt-Right" which in the final analysis is little more that various groups of white supremacists who have as an ultimate goal the ridding of racial minorities from the country.  Also in need of elimination in the view of the Alt-Right is anyone who opposes its racist and misogynist agenda.  In this world, skin color matters more than anything else and non-whites are simply less than human.  It's an ugly, vicious and dangerous mindset.  Perhaps most troubling is the fact that evangelical Christians have rallied to the Al-Right/Trump standard, thereby emblazoning their moral bankruptcy for all to see.  The irony is that in the process of pushing a racist agenda, these so-called Christians are killing the Christian brand at large.  Hence the rapid rise in the number of "Nones" and the dramatic exodus of the under Millennial generation from organized religion.  Here are column highlights:

Trump’s electoral victory one year ago this week was not merely his own, nor that of the befuddled party that relinquished its nomination to him. It was also a triumph for the dark tangle of forces we’ve come to know as the alt-right. Long before the 2016 campaign, the alt-right was already gathering strength and allies; it simply needed a standard-bearer. Then there was Trump, a leader with enough star power and authoritarian charisma to grant his alt-right supporters visibility and stature, to lower the social costs of open bigotry, to give energy to the movement’s underlying vision.

Several people have sought to interpret that vision — Hillary Clinton gave it a go with a harsh campaign speech, while Breitbart offered a sanitized taxonomy of the group — and now books on the subject are starting to pour forth.
 Although it’s hard to pin down a shifting collection of meme-crazed commenters, hard-core conspiracists and race-obsessed marchers long enough to bind them in hardcover, three new works make that effort from different vantage points. [F]or all its attacks on left-wing identity politics, [the Alt-Right] is particularly focused on supplanting traditional conservatism with a white identity politics of the right. And although alt-right supporters are energized by Trump, they are not beholden to him. Indeed, the president’s alt-right credentials may be more about aping its brutal sensibility than fully embracing its substance. Trump’s self-interest helped pull the alt-right out from the digital swamps, but he may be simply marking the beginning of its rapid ascent, with some truer and more skilled political patron yet to come. Proponents of the movement, he notes, are largely uninterested in moral traditionalism, economic liberty, a strong national defense — all the premises of 20th-century American conservatism. Tax cuts do not energize their ranks, and even abortion is fine if it serves eugenic purposes. They are driven, more than anything, by identity politics, which in their case is a more elevated description for unadulterated racism. Today, Hawley writes, “the most energetic and significant figures of the movement want to see the creation of a white ethnostate in North America.” White supremacists want to dominate other racial or ethnic groups; white nationalists want to see those competing groups gone altogether. . . . .  Alt-right animosity toward the GOP flows from the belief that even though they depend on white votes, “conservatives in power rarely promote white interests.”
 Hawley himself believes that the United States has operated as a de facto white supremacist nation for much of its history. But the alt-right wants de facto to become de jure, too — to explicitly wage battle against the growth of non-white communities, including immigrants, in the United States, and to “push transparent white-identity politics, with the ultimate goal of stopping and even reversing these demographic trends,”  . . .
 In “Kill All Normies,” Nagle describes a world, found in sites such as 4chan and Reddit, where nihilism, cynicism, irony and absurd in-joke humor have mingled with pornography, racism and misogyny to produce a “taboo-breaking anti-PC style” that characterized the early alt-right. . . . . (The “normies” of Nagle’s book title is alt-slang for whites who have not achieved racial consciousness and militancy.)
 [T]he alt-right is about more than race; it is an indiscriminate and brutal aesthetic that also targets women, religious and cultural minorities, and virtually anyone promoting notions of egalitarianism — all for the sake of forestalling a supposed civilizational and demographic decline. Neiwert looks beyond conservative schisms, left-wing failings and online subcultures to pinpoint the experiences and beliefs that bind the alt-right together, and he calls the world he finds “Alt-America” — “an alternative dimension, a mental space beyond fact or logic, where the rules of evidence are replaced by paranoia.” It is a world of Patriots and Three Percenters, a world where Ruby Ridge and Waco loom as eternal warning signs of encroaching fascism, where the federal Bureau of Land Management is more hated than the IRS. It is an environment suffused with conspiracy and grievance, where Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, climate change is a hoax . . . .
 Neiwert considers the GOP and traditional conservatives complicit in the degrading of discourse and truth on the far right, whereby “rational anger and discontent with the federal government was being transformed into an irrational, visceral, and paranoid hatred of it.” Conspiracy theories and white-nationalist narratives coalesced in response to the nation’s first black president, giving Trump his opening. Birtherism became his calling card to Alt-America; the border wall and travel ban his sales pitch. Trump fits with the alt-right’s abusive culture, and studies of the psychology of online trolls highlight their deception, narcissism and manipulativeness — traits not inconsistent with what psychiatrists observe in our 45th commander in chief.  The core alt-right wants more than greater immigration restrictions and temporary travel bans against a handful of Muslim-majority countries. It wants nonwhites out of the country altogether. Trump and his aides have called for measures that, however extreme, fall short.  “What Trump has succeeded in doing, by exploiting the strands of right-wing populism in the country, has been to make the large and growing number of proto-fascist groups in America larger and more vicious,” Neiwert concludes.

The Catholic Alt-Right Attacks Pro-Gay Catholics

As the previous post noted, today's GOP base is largely controlled by those who claim to be Christian yet seem to hate nearly everyone who thinks, looks or loves differently than they do.  The same holds true for what I believe is a minority of Roman Catholics in America and certainly across Europe. While proclaiming their piety and wearing their religion on their sleeves, their conduct would likely shock even the hypocritical Pharisees of the New Testament.  Indeed, the New Testament message of loving others is nowhere to be seen in their agenda of clinging to outdated customs, denigrating women, embracing 12th century ignorance and hating others, especially LGBT individuals.  As noted in prior posts, Jesuit author James Martin is finding out just who vicious and un-Christian these alt-right Catholics can be. Indeed, many remind one of the German Catholics who rallied to Adolph Hitler' message of hate more than 80 years ago.  Martin takes a shot back at these vicious elements in the Catholic Church in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are excerpts:

After a gunman killed 49 people at Pulse, a predominantly gay nightclub in Orlando in 2016, I found myself disappointed that more Catholic leaders did not offer support to the LGBT community. And that the few who did found it difficult to acknowledge that LGBT people specifically had been targeted for murder.

For me, that silence highlighted a certain failure to be compassionate to the LGBT community even in a moment of tragedy. It also revealed that the LGBT community was still largely invisible to some church authorities. In response, I recorded a brief video that was posted on Facebook. It offered some support for the LGBT community during a terribly difficult few weeks.

Not long afterwards, New Ways Ministry, an organization that ministers to and advocates for LGBT Catholics, invited me to accept their Bridge Building Award. Until then, I had never done what you might call formal ministry with LGBT Catholics, besides the counseling that almost every church worker does in his or her ministry. But the Catholic Church’s response to the events in Orlando encouraged me to do so in a more public way. So, with my Jesuit superiors’ permission, I accepted the award and offered a lecture on how to build a “two-way bridge” between LGBT Catholics and the institutional church — that is, the church’s hierarchy and decision-makers.  From that talk came the first half of my book, “Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity.”

Now, in the past few weeks, three lectures I was invited to have been canceled, and I have been targeted by some far-right groups whose actions betray a level of homophobia that is hard to fathom. These groups, a kind of Catholic alt-right, are increasingly attempting to substitute themselves for legitimate Church authority by passing judgments on which Catholics are orthodox and which are not. “Heresy” is a word they use as frequently as “and” and “the.”

My reflections, which can be summarized as a call for respect on both sides, were based on the gospel, and on the Catechism’s call for the Church to treat “homosexual persons” with “respect, compassion and sensitivity.” As with all my books, I sought the formal ecclesial approval of my Jesuit superiors, who vetted my what would become “Building a Bridge.” Perhaps to the disappointment of some critics, it is about dialogue and prayer, not about sexual morality or the sexual practices of LGBT people. On sexual matters, the LGBT community and the institutional church are simply too far apart at this moment. 

What I didn’t know was that, in a few quarters, the pushback would be hysterical, vicious and immediate. . . . The vast majority of people have responded positively, both in person and online. And people in the pews, especially LGBT Catholics and their parents, have told me that they are grateful that a priest is raising this topic. Many of these conversations have transpired through tears.

This makes any backlash worth it.  But the backlash from the far right is more intense than anticipated. I’ve been accused of heresy, ridiculously, by some critics (I’m not contradicting any revealed truths); there have been over-the-top condemnations (I should be removed from the priesthood) and name-calling that I thought was confined to 1950s playgrounds (faggot, fairy, pansy and worse.) Here’s a quote from a letter received just this week: “You’re leading souls to hell where you will surely reside in a few years.” 

[R]eflection on various biblical passages and an invitation to prayer seems to be of no interest to them; perhaps they feel that LGBT people do not, and should not, have access to the Holy Spirit.
 The far-right backlash has led, perhaps inevitably, to the cancellation (or rescheduling) of several speaking events . . . Each of these talks was not about LGBT issues, but about Jesus. And in each of the cities in which the talk was scheduled, the local bishop (in each case a cardinal) had no qualms about the upcoming lecture. . . .  the organizers admitted that they were responding to people who had been persuaded by online campaigns of far-right sites designed to lead people to view me as a heretic, even though I am what Catholics call a “priest in good standing” and the book had been vetted and endorsed by legitimate Church authorities.

There is such widespread homophobia in some dark corners of the Church that it causes people to become enraged by a book that they have never read. These individuals and sites trafficking in such obvious homophobia operate through means of vicious social media campaigns, relentless personal attacks, gross misrepresentations, as well as simple lies and deceit. They end up trying to be so Catholic that they are barely Christian.

Ironically, these groups, like the website Church Militant, which tout their desire for “traditional” Catholic practices consistently set themselves against bishops and religious superiors. Thus, groups that have zero legitimacy in the Church (and which have often been criticized by Church leadership) are setting themselves up against legitimate authorities. Pope Francis himself, for example, is a frequent target.

I am trying to do what Jesus did, in reaching out to people on the margins and telling them that God created them, God loves them and God welcomes them. And that is the truth.

Like the Protestant Christofascists, these alt-right Catholics ceased to be Christian long ago.

Are Liberals Underestimating the Danger of the Alt-Right?

Throughout my years of activism, in educational issues, as a Republican activist, and now as an LGBT activist, I have personally believed in a confrontational approach while armed with facts and data is always preferred to a polite and non-confrontational approach.  Yes, you hurt some feelings, but sometimes feelings need to be hurt and lies and hypocrisy need to be harshly confronted.  In the current political atmosphere where Republicans, Der Trumpenführer, and their Alt-Right allies are destroyng environmental protects, education and degrading healthcare coverage - mental health coverage will no longer have to be covered - "playing nice" is not enough.  Indeed, history and the rise of past fascist regimes shows that liberals need to grow a spine and cease being afraid of confrontation.  If "friends" are offended and are willing to be complicit in immoral actions, then you do not need them as friends.  A column in Salon looks at these issues:

Since the election of Donald Trump as president, liberals and leftists have been discussing how to best respond to American conservatism’s transformation from a shopworn, Cold War, anti-government philosophy into something else.

To the anarchists and socialists who consider themselves part of the global “antifa” movement (an abbreviation for “anti-fascist”), the transition currently taking place on the right is all too familiar. The rise of the alt-right and white nationalism within the U.S. is something the mainstream left doesn’t take seriously enough, they say, even as many Democrats compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.
 If it is true that the civic nationalism of Trump and his top strategist Steve Bannon are helping to lay the groundwork for a more radical right — intentionally or otherwise — then their self-described opponents on the left need to do more than wear safety pins and post Facebook denunciations of the president they didn’t vote for say the antifa advocates.

Instead of merely talking among themselves about opposing racism, say the anti-fascists, leftists need to take direct action to make being a white nationalist as difficult as possible. That’s why many antifa proponents have concentrated their efforts on tactics such as targeting the financial means of support for websites they see as enabling or promoting fascist views; they have even engaged in acts of physical assault against members of the far right.

“Only by fighting and destroying fascism can we actually defeat it,” an anonymous member of the website It’s Going Down told Salon via email. . . . they take politics much more soberly than their less extreme counterparts do. For the antifas, understanding that white nationalists are deadly serious about instigating a “racial holy war” is the key to countering them.

“During the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany, while anarchists and communists were literally fighting the fascists in the streets, the liberals and social democrats attempted to debate the Nazis point for point in the halls of power,” the anonymous activist continued. “This did nothing, and also normalized the positions of the Nazis and also made them into legitimate positions.”

“Liberalism [has] proven itself unable to prevent the rise of fascism over and over again,” the activists wrote. “By the time liberals are comfortable with cracking down on fascism, it’s almost always too late.

Beyond targeting far-right activists’ financial means and showing up to physically confront them at their events, many antifa activists have made it their mission to expose the true identities of popular alt-right figures so they cannot hide behind pseudonyms. The Nebraska activists provided an example of this tactic in December when they exposed the identity of Cooper Ward, a University of Nebraska student who was outed as the co-host of a popular neo-Nazi podcast. He quit the podcast program after being identified and hasn’t returned.

Antifa activists also take issue with liberals who think that letting people with racist or anti-Semitic views state them publicly somehow serves as a method of relieving societal pressures. Instead, as an anonymous essayist on the anarchist website CrimethInc wrote, such expressions merely increase the reach and influence of the far right:

Fascists are only attempting to express their views “peacefully” in order to lay the groundwork for violent activity. Because fascists require a veneer of social legitimacy to be able to carry out their program, giving them a platform to speak opens the door to their being able to do physical harm to people. Public speech promoting ideologies of hate, whether or not you consider it violent on its own, always complements and correlates with violent actions. By affiliating themselves with movements and ideologies based on oppression and genocide, fascists show their intention to carry on these legacies of violence — but only if they can develop a base of support.

By definition, the antifa arguments are both radical and controversial. The unanswered question is whether liberals, moderates and others who oppose the radical right can learn something from the antifa activists’ confrontational stance. Or will the violent tactics they advocate only worsen tensions in a divided society and beget more violence?

I do not condone violence.  That said, sometimes quiet, peaceful protests may not be enough, especially when confronted with white supremacists and alt-right violence and viciousness.  

Trump Has Mainstreamed the Alt-Right, Racism and Bigotry

Threats against Jewish community centers across the country have sky rocketed, anti-LGBT violence is on the rise, and the dehumanization of Muslims and Mexican immigrants has the imprimatur of the White House.  Yet, many Republicans continue to close their eyes to what is happening and most certainly disavow any responsibility for the hate and ugliness that is now being mainstreamed and made acceptable (at least in some quarters) by Der Trumpenführer and his inner circle, many of whom are reminiscent of the thugs and losers who comprised Hitler's inner circle.  I believe that Republicans and other Trump voters need to be held personally accountable for what they have set in motion be it due to their own hatred towards others who are different, their laziness in not bothering to educate themselves on what they were voting for, or general indifference.  Republicans like to talk about "personal responsibility" and "holding people accountable,"so it's time to apply their words against them.  A column in the Washington Post underscores the responsibility of Trump and his Republican enablers in mainstreaming white supremacists and other hate merchants.  Here are column excerpts:

Leading conservatives have taken to pretending that the alt-right is a fringe movement that they and President Trump have disavowed. In recent interviews and at a high-profile conservative conference last month, conservatives have taken great pains to distance conservatism — and the Trump administration — from any alt-right influence.

But here’s the reality: The alt-right’s deep influence over this White House is on display daily — in Trump’s rhetoric and his administration’s policies. The alt-right influence on Trump matters: it means the most powerful man in the world is under the influence of a racist and white nationalist movement. And conservatives should reckon with this more forthrightly.

For instance, note this podcast that the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart conducted with American Conservative Union president Matt Schlapp. Capehart pointed out that Stephen K. Bannon and Stephen Miller are Trump’s top White House advisers, and asked: “Doesn’t that mean, that despite the concerns, the alt-right is now mainstreamed, if not the power within the White House?” Schlapp flatly denied that the alt-right had been mainstreamed in this manner.

Bannon — who is now Trump’s most influential adviser — told me last summer, when he was chairman of Breitbart, that his site was “the platform for the alt-right.” Capehart questioned Schlapp about this, but Schlapp argued, implausibly, that this is not as significant as it appears.

Yet Breitbart was and remains one-stop shopping for readers looking for anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-refugee rhetoric and disinformation, as well as stories about “black crime.”

This echoed similar head-in-the sand denials that were on full display last month at the ACU’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The reality is that it is under Bannon’s influence that the administration has taken its actions that most thrill the alt-right, most notably his moves to step up deportation of undocumented immigrants, and ban refugees and migrants from Muslim-majority countries.

When Bannon and I spoke this summer, he tried to deny to me that the alt-right is a white nationalist movement, although he did concede that white nationalists and anti-Semites could be attracted to “some of the philosophies of the alt-right.” But, as I have written after Trump tapped him to head up his campaign, Bannon nonetheless praised the deeply Islamophobic ethno-nationalism on the rise in Europe, like the National Front in France, led by far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

And then there’s Trump’s choice of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. During the transition, alt-right leaders were delighted with the Sessions pick, pointing to his opposition to immigration as well as their hope that he would stop enforcing civil rights laws and might even prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters.

As Emily Bazelon writes, Sessions has long been a devoted Breitbart reader, and met regularly with the site’s writers. Trump’s dark vision of America as besieged by inner city crime, immigrants, and refugees, Bazelon notes, “provides clear justification for policies that will advance Sessions, Bannon and Miller’s divisive nationalism.”

Trump’s false claims about voter fraud are straight out of the ugly maw of alt-right meme-making, portraying supposed voter fraud as a scourge perpetrated by African-Americans and undocumented immigrants — a possible signal that a crackdown on voting rights is coming, one that Sessions would likely help carry out from the Justice Department.

[T]he reality is that Trumpism would not exist without the alt-right. Conservatives can pretend it’s fringe and has little to no influence on the Trump administration — but the proof is in the policy.