Far Right Groups, Trump and GOP Behind Social Distancing Backlash

What the far right is trying to pass of as a grassroots, organic uprising against social distancing and stay home orders is actually an orchestrated efforts with some of the organizers comprised of far right white supremacist groups.  Joining in their effort is Donald Trump who is tweeting against states with Democrat governors, including Virginia, and other Republicans who care more about "reopening" the economy than the possible death toll among their constituents.  The ultimate goal behind the actions is politically motivated: to save Trump's reelection effort, especially now that his polling numbers are dropping and some polls show a 60% disapproval rate for his handling of the pandemic.  In Michigan where some of the loudest protests - with armed protesters, of course, as The Guardian reports the organizers were anything but grassroots: 

While protesters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and other states claim to speak for ordinary citizens, many are also supported by street-fighting rightwing groups like the Proud Boys, conservative armed militia groups, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccination groups and other elements of the radical right.

On Wednesday in Lansing, Michigan, a protest put together by two Republican-connected not-for-profits was explicitly devised to cause gridlock in the city, and for a time blocked the entrance to a local hospital.

It was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, which Michigan state corporate filings show has also operated under the name of Michigan Trump Republicans. It was also heavily promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to the Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos.

Near the state house, local radio interviewed a man who identified himself as “Phil Odinson”.  In fact the man is Phil Robinson, the prime mover in a group called the Michigan Liberty Militia, whose Facebook page features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front.

These are NOT nice people and I have to ask my Republican "friends" if they'd invite these folks into their living rooms and private clubs.  If not, they need to distance themselves from them and the politicians who are working with such ugly groups. As for those being duped to jump on the protest bandwagon, it sad that they still can't see beyond their racism and anger to see that those who are manipulating them are the ones who are most responsible for their economic plight.  The willful ignorance of these people is stunning and sad.

As for the motivation of the organizers behind these efforts (which, no surprise include Fox News), a piece in the  Washington Post lays it all out nicely.  Here are highlights:

The social distancing backlash is here. Like many such eruptions of anger, it’s partly genuine and partly fed by political actors with their own preexisting agendas — in this case, mostly to rescue President Trump’s imperiled reelection campaign. And it will get ugly.

On Wednesday in Lansing, Mich., thousands of protesters came to the state capitol to demonstrate against the stay-at-home order issued by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Though Michigan now has the fourth-highest total of covid-19 cases of any state, with nearly 2,000 deaths, the protesters argued that Whitmer’s order is unnecessary and overly strict.

“It wasn’t really about the stay-at-home order at all,” Whitmer said later on MSNBC. “It was essentially a political rally.” . . . . some were wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump signs, and Confederate flags appeared in the crowd (though I’m sure that was just about Michigan’s … um … heritage?). Similar though smaller protests have occurred in North Carolina and Ohio. After the Lansing protest, Fox News swung into action, praising the protest on multiple programs.  The unmistakable message being communicated is that stay-at-home orders are a leftist plot, and conservatives should be rejecting them. It’s all over right-wing media . . . . . The natural comparison to make with these efforts is the tea party eruption, and there are some points of similarity, including conservative media fanning the flames of anger and the overblown rhetoric about liberty . . . . But the more useful comparison is to Donald Trump’s election itself.

Specifically, the way Trump’s campaign was built on the anger of working-class white voters, especially men. . . . . grievances that were exploited by powerful forces on the right for their own political and economic ends. Those grievances were then channeled into an act — voting for Trump — that was primarily expressive in nature.

Liberals are quick to attribute the white working class’s support for Trump to racism and xenophobia, and there’s no doubt they played an absolutely critical role. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that when Trump told voters in Rust Belt towns that the “the system” was rigged against them, they had reasons to think he was right.

Trump spoke directly to that dissatisfaction — then layered on top of it a heaping portion of hate directed at immigrants, minorities and liberals. Never mind that “draining the swamp” turned out to be more tax cuts for the wealthy and making it easier for corporations to exploit workers and befoul already-struggling communities.

The pain people are now feeling is even more acute. Twenty-two million Americans have filed for unemployment, wiping out a decade of job gains in weeks. In Michigan, roughly a quarter of the workforce is now unemployed, an absolutely stunning figure. None of us have seen anything like this in our lifetimes.

If you’re not sick and you don’t know anyone who has died, it’s natural to say, “Why are we doing this? Why can’t we go back to work?” Then along comes a bunch of Fox News hosts and conservative activists who tell you, “You’re absolutely right. You’re being forced to suffer needlessly. Those snooty liberals in their coastal cities who can comfortably work from home are just trying to screw you over.”

And once again, the solution being offered will only make things worse. Voting for Trump didn’t help people who live paycheck to paycheck, and defying stay-at-home orders will only give new life to the coronavirus, prolonging the pandemic and making it harder to recover economically.

But if Republicans can convince people that the only way to understand this crisis is through a partisan lens, they can tamp down difficult questions about Trump’s performance and minimize the political damage he’ll suffer, making it possible for him to win in the fall. That’s the goal, one they’re pursuing with all their usual cynicism — even as they fight against Democratic efforts to provide more support to those being hit hardest by the recession.

Could it work? Probably not, but it just might.

The Far-Right Media Is Weaponizing Coronavirus

I continue to be shocked by those I know who ought to know better that continue to post and share false stories put out by right wing fringe publications like Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Red State, Town Hall, and, of course, Fox News.  These individuals seemingly never fact check stories and merely promote them because they fall in line with their prejudices - often racial or religiously extreme - and happily spread falsehoods while making themselves look like fools and/or bigots.  Now, with coronavirus creating semi-hysteria and fears and uncertainty, the right wing media machine is jumping into high gear and promoting falsehoods and out right misogyny as laid out in a piece in New York Magazine.  For "friends" who continue to promote false stories, they need to know that others are watching and judging them and not in a good way.   Here are article excerpts:

The coronavirus pandemic has been marked by medical uncertainty, rapidly changing information, and partisan rancor, making it a prime target for the spread of disinformation: some of that disinformation is about unproven cures, for both the disease and the disintegrating economy; some is intended to delegitimize the politicians who may or may not be in a position to steer the nation through it (and some of it comes not via the internet but from [Trump] the president himself; see the man who died after heeding Trump’s assurances that chloroquine was a possible answer to coronavirus). Jiore Craig is a political consultant at a research firm, GQR Insights and Action, who has spent the past four years tracking the spread of disinformation online, much of it originating with, or being propagated by, the far-right political media — sites like Breitbart and Infowars. The Cut spoke to her about the patterns she’s seen and how they’re playing out in the midst of this pandemic. [W]e study conservative bad actors, those known for putting out disinformation, and what’s been interesting in the midst of COVID-19 is that even they needed to take a moment to get their bearings. Typically bad actors on the right — conservative online media which rampantly spreads disinformation — are very quick to align, and get their messaging straight, which usually comes down to reaching for handy attacks, targeting women, etc. But in this moment, it took a while for them to turn their cannons in the same direction. Obviously there’s Fox News, but I’m talking about more specialized online publications, like Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Red State, Town Hall, and people like Ben Shapiro and Tomi Lahren. There’s something called Salem Media Group; they control niche Facebook pages like I Am A Conservative Woman and Shut Down Planned Parenthood, and the social network only recently identified that both of those pages were controlled by Salem. I focus on what’s being shared on Facebook and other platforms where the majority of voters are spending their time. We know that Facebook increasingly has an older audience, so I look at what’s spreading there.
 [T]hose pages I mentioned often coordinate; they’re posting at the same time and coordinating around specific attacks, and one area where they do that is attacks on women. And there is a good example involving coronavirus. When Trump called out individual politicians, including governors like Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, it was very easy for these sites to use a typical framing right away: an unflattering picture of her, where she looks drunk or cross-eyed, or appears dumb, crazy, emotional, unhinged, angry. The sites are ready to echo each other, and so they amplified an attack on Whitmer more than they amplified attacks on other male governors that Trump got into fights with last week. Now part of that is that Whitmer is in a swing state, while Andrew Cuomo, for example, is not. But it’s also that those misogynistic frames are so readily available to them.

They’re very organized, very militant: they will push out the same line as a steady drum beat— the same hashtags, #shiftySchiff or #nervousNancy, to signal that there’s a trend — whereas voices on the left are more individualistic.

So now with Coronavirus, they’ve landed on attacking the left about “PC culture” — arguing that the left is more worried about the racist phrasing Trump uses for the virus than about the virus itself. That’s an example of something they’ve unified on since last week, because they know this playbook; they know how to attack the left on PC culture; they can run with that.

[W]henever we see a social media spike that isn’t correlated with what’s happening in the news and wonder what’s driving that, it’s something that is driven by the right. I still think people underestimate how wide-reaching these pages are and how good they are at repetition. The second part is, how much of what is published online from the right is connected back to pretty extreme movements. I wasn’t expecting my work — which is typically to deal with candidates and how opinions about them are formed — to get so quickly into hate speech, man-o-spheres, intense online misogyny. . . . . the reality is that this is what the mainstream is now on the right. The conservative media I mentioned earlier, which some may consider fringe, have become more mainstream on social media in terms of the volume of content they generate and their reach. W]e’re going to see a lot of conspiracy theories being applied. But the bad actors don’t really know who to attack at the moment; it can’t quite be about government control, because Trump is the government. So there’s going to be a question of how to make it about the Democrats: maybe invoking false claims around martial law. You have Alex Jones and Infowars profiting off of readiness products because people are scared. We may get to the conspiracy that Democrats want to take away their guns and take away their rights. And I think both sides will start asking: Were you focused on people’s health or were you focused on politics-or-profits? Both sides will try to make it seem like the other side isn’t focused on the issue at hand.

Times of crisis show us who remains logical and acting on facts, not conspiracy theories and lies (and prejudices and bigotry), and  some who are blinding promoting far right disinformation should pause to consider how they will be viewed once the crisis has passed.

Multimillion-Dollar Hate Groups Are Bullying LGBTQ Children

Like a majority of Americans, members of the LGBT community are reeling from the travesty that is the Trump/Pence regime which Congressional Republicans are aiding and abetting through their cowardice and refusal to assert their power to rein in the chaos flowing from the White House.  But unlike straight Americans, LGBT Americans are also faced with an onslaught of anti-LGBT bigotry and bullying that is lowing not only from the Trump/Pence regime, but also from GOP controlled state legislatures and falsely named and well funded "family values" and "Christian" organizations emboldened by the misogyny condoned by the White House.  A piece in Time magazine by Matthew Shepard's mother looks at the daily assaults on LGBT children and youths.   However, it must be remembered that these same organizations have white supremacist and anti-minority agendas.  Simply put, they and their supporters are not nice or decent people.  Here are excerpts:

Aren’t you exhausted by the constant barrage of news — the proposed legislation against our communities and the reports of hate crime after hate crime? One fifth of these crimes are now reported to be done in President Donald Trump’s name.

In the 19 years since my son Matthew Shepard was murdered because of his sexuality, my foundation has seen the ups and downs in the numbers and targets of hate crimes. But in the last few months there has been a dramatic increase in reports across the spectrum.

Hatred is not nature. It is nurture. No one is born with hatred in their heart — it is learned behavior. People learn to hate in the same way they learn to love. The difference is: Who are the educators?

Unfortunately, groups like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which describes itself as a conservative Christian organization, exploit children in the name of hate. It parades them around a courtroom for frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit. One prime example is a suit filed recently against a school district in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, claiming that a high school student was sexually harassed when he saw a transgender boy changing in the school locker room. 

Children don’t deserve to be thrust into this spotlight. They’re just kids — kids being bullied by an international, multimillion-dollar anti-LGBTQ hate group.

The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled ADF as a hate group this year because of their longstanding history attempting to criminalize LGBTQ people. . . . . These same lawyers are now trying to take advantage of young people who are “uncomfortable with” transgender students using the same restroom or locker room in school districts across the country.

The same strategies that were employed during segregation era — the strategy of selecting white people who “became ill” or “felt uncomfortable” sharing a water fountain with their black neighbors. We already know how this will play out over the course of history. It was never about water fountains, and it's not about restrooms or locker rooms now. It is a misguided attempt to remind people that in their world view the trans community is not worthy of equal treatment under the law.

Title IX protects students from sex discrimination, and the Department of Education put out a guidance clarifying that that includes gender identity — but recently the Trump Administration decided to take away that guidance, along with the hope it brought to so many transgender children. LGBTQ students were rightfully protected from harassment and humiliation until then. The governments — local, state and federal — as well as anti-LGBTQ hate groups and the religious right are teaming up to tear these protections away.

Across the country, many of the anti-LGBTQ bills introduced into state legislatures are actually drafted by hate groups or rely heavily on their “model policy.” When LGBTQ youth are exposed to this political vitriol, it sends the message that society is rejecting them, too. We should be protecting our children from these well-funded bullies.

I would further add that one must remember that the leaders of these hate groups are typically making very plush livings marketing hatred.  

Trump Set to Legalize Anti-Gay Discrimination

Trump with hate group leader and white supremacist, Tony perkins

Since last June I have noted over and over again that Donald Trump met with leading Christofascists in New York City and made many promises in order to win the support of many "family values" groups that under the surface are little more than anti-gay hate groups or thinly veiled white supremacy organizations. Family Research Council, whose president has a documented white supremacist ties, is but one of the better known groups.  James Dobson's Focus on the Family - which ought to be named Focus on the White Family - is another.  Among the promises made was a promise to legalize anti-LGBT discrimination under the smoke screen of protecting "religious liberty."  In the minds of the Christofascists, religious liberty translate as the right to discriminate against and abuse anyone who doesn't adhere to Christofascist religious tenets.  The favorite target of such mistreatment has long been the LGBT community, but others are on the target list: women who use contraception, women who have had abortions, unmarried cohabitating couples, and, of course, non-Christians of all varieties.  After a false start earlier in the year that created a furor, Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer,  is reportedly set to sign an executive order tomorrow that will make good on his promises to one of the most hate-filled segments of American society.  It is expected that the order will allow Christofascists to ignore all state and local nondiscrimination statutes and ordinances.  Here are highlights from Politico:

President Donald Trump has invited conservative leaders to the White House on Thursday for what they expect will be the ceremonial signing of a long-awaited—and highly controversial—executive order on religious liberty, according to multiple people familiar with the situation.

Two senior administration officials confirmed the plan, though one cautioned that it hasn’t yet been finalized, and noted that lawyers are currently reviewing and fine-tuning the draft language. Thursday is the National Day of Prayer, and the White House was already planning to celebrate the occasion with faith leaders.

The signing would represent a major triumph for Vice President Mike Pence—whose push for religious-freedom legislation backfired mightily when he served as governor of Indiana—and his allies in the conservative movement.

The original draft order, which would have established broad exemptions for people and groups to claim religious objections under virtually any circumstance, was leaked to The Nation on Feb. 1—the handiwork, many conservatives believed, of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who have sought to project themselves as friendly to the LGBT community. Liberals blasted the draft order as government-licensed discrimination, and the White House distanced itself from the leaked document in a public statement.

Pence and a small team of conservative allies quickly began working behind the scenes to revise the language, and in recent weeks have ratcheted up the pressure on Trump to sign it. The new draft is being tightly held, but one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. “The language is very, very strong,” the source said.

Signing it this week could also lessen the sting Trump’s religious backers are feeling over the newly-approved omnibus spending bill, which keeps federal funding in place for Planned Parenthood. The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List holds its own annual gala on Wednesday, one night before the Becket Fund’s, and the news of Planned Parenthood’s continued funding has dampened some of the enthusiasm surrounding Pence’s keynote address to the event.

  

"As one LGBT journalist friend notes, the draft order 'privileges' a certain set of beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity—beliefs identified most closely with conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians—over others. That goes beyond 'what RFRA might authorize' and may violate the Establishment Clause."  While the order will hopefully be struck down by the courts, the damage done in the interim will be widespread. 

Are Black Christians Finally Realizing White Evangelicals Are the Enemy?

One thing that has driven me to distraction for years is the manner in which black Christians - especially many black pastors - have allowed themselves to be manipulated by racist white evangelicals.  Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation ("TFF") - an organization that traces its history to many of the the white supremacists who backed "Massive Resistance" rather than integrate public schools - has played black pastors for fools for decades and turned them into TFF's trained circus dogs.  Positions on abortion and gays have been cynically used by TFF to rally these pastors to support Republican candidates who once in office are enemies to minorities in general and blacks in particular.  A piece in Religion Dispatches speculates that just maybe in the face of the Trump/Pence regime and racist GOP agenda black Christians and evangelicals are waking up to the fact that white evangelicals are NOT their friends.  Here are excerpts:

But this new administration has changed everything for George and evangelicals of color across the nation. The fact that 81 percent of white evangelicals supported a candidate who channeled white nationalism is not lost on minority believers. Nor is the unending news of travel bans, appointments of white nationalists, mass deportations and racial hate crimes. It has forced a reckoning.

Today, believers of color are redefining their relationships with white evangelicalism in ways that could dramatically shift the landscape. Already, people of color make up a larger portion of the entire American Christian population than before, and church growth experts predict they will make up the majority of the Christian population after 2042. And their values are largely at odds with the white evangelical support for Trump; pre-election surveys showed that nonwhite evangelical Protestant voters, which included black, Hispanic and Asian-Pacific Islander Protestants, supported Clinton over Trump by a very wide margin (67% vs. 24%), according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

So while white evangelicals captured the election, they may have lost their fellow believers, the very people who could keep their churches, denominations and institutions from the attrition that has many Christian institutions and leaders genuinely worried for the future. These days, evangelicals of color are talking next steps. Their endeavors run the gamut, but the ones gaining steam include leaving evangelicalism altogether, reframing the evangelical world as a mission field as opposed to a place for spiritual nourishment, creating ethnic safe spaces or staying firmly planted in evangelical community to combat racism from within. It’s too early to tell which will prevail, but the urgency and organization happening within communities of color point to a fundamental shift in the evangelical landscape.

Like these evangelicals of color, in the aftermath of the election and that party, George began to question everything.

For one attendee of a California megachurch, the questions began after her pastor made a sermon joke about how King Nebuchadnezzar’s Median Wall was built because he “got the Mexicans to pay for it.” The audience roared with laughter, but “Jan,”* who is Korean American, and her Mexican-American husband, ushered their children out of the service. Jan asked her pastor for a public apology. When he shrugged off her request, she was shocked. He had been a spiritual guide for years. He officiated the funeral of her son. But now it was as if they didn’t know each other. She resigned from her role in the children’s ministry, and her family has left that church for good.

Jan is one of many evangelicals of color choosing to depart from white evangelical spaces. For some, that means leaving churches and communities while for others, it means not supporting evangelical conferences or organizations that are predominantly white. Many describe these moves as “divestment” from white evangelicalism: they’re moving money, bodies and souls elsewhere.

“For some people, the divestment began before the election,” says Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, associate professor of practical theology at Mercer University and author of Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength. “One friend said the election was the ‘final nail in the coffin of my relationship with the evangelical church.’”

She sees firsthand how nearly “everyone is reconsidering whether or not they want to remain under the moniker ‘evangelical,’” including minorities, white people, the young and the old, “because the word ‘evangelical’ has been truly hijacked by a movement to maintain the political, economic and social supremacy of whiteness.”

For those staying, they must contend with a dominant white theology, shaped in the cauldron of privilege, which suggests that a successful life springs from an individual’s good, moral choices alone. It fails to recognize how unfair policies and societal structures harm the economic and social wellbeing of those subject to those systems.

Those who stay must also contend with a politicized evangelical movement fundamentally shaped in the late 1970s by a desire to preserve segregation. As documented by historian Randall Balmer, the religious right galvanized evangelicals into a political movement when the IRS threatened to revoke the tax exempt status of racially discriminatory Christian schools. Today, evangelicals of color staying to “combat racism from within” are working against a deeply entrenched culture.

Shortly after the party, George resigned from his post as the executive pastor of his megachurch. After seeing the white evangelical role in electing Trump and after that toxic party interaction, George knew it was time for a change. His departure wasn’t a rebuke of his church, but of a faith culture that denies its brutal legacy while indoctrinating its followers to perpetuate it.

“I think evangelicalism is the empire that’s about to fall,” he says. “It needs to be dismantled because it’s too powerful and it’s all about money.” Rather than centering the needs of the marginalized and justice work, George sees a toxic faith system that platforms capitalism, unsustainable growth, a prosperity narrative, flashy services and pastors who hang with celebrities. To George, “everything” is at stake.  “We’re at the part of the story where Jesus goes into the temple and flips over tables.”

Better late than never.

Is The Mainstream Media Normalizing Neo-Nazis?

The media can either be a bulwark of democracy and can protect the public at large from would be tyrants and ugly demagogues or it can be the downfall of democracy and decency.  Sadly, much of the media, especially cable news outlets, now seems to  be falling into the latter category through both laziness, the idiocy of many anchors who are selected based on physical looks rather than intelligence and analytical skills.  Add to this, the false equivalency that is so often given to candidates and their positions, not to mention the constant repetition of lies without challenging them and those who promote them.  Hitler and the Nazi regime and dictators like Vladimir Putin always seek to control the media because it is a key to furthering their anti-democratic agenda and often frightening policies. Here in America, we now see much of the media seemingly voluntarily doing the work of propagandists as they proceed with normalizing Neo-Nazis and other extremists by describing them as "conservatives" and "conservative Christians."  These hate merchants are not conservative nor are they Christian, yet through sickening deference and the unquestioning parroting of their lies and propaganda, the mainstream media is helping to kill America.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this disturbing phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

When the Los Angeles Times’s social media team tweeted a link to a storyabout last Saturday’s celebratory post-election gathering in Washington of racists, anti-Semites, and white nationalists, the reaction—at least by some—was collective outrage.

“Worthless @latimes covers resurgent neo-Nazi movement as if it was a new boy band,” one of dozens of aggrieved readers tweeted after the paper touted the story on the benignly yet deceptively named National Policy Institute with the cheeky tweet, “Meet the new think tank in town: The ‘alt-right’ comes to Washington.”

Another critic, actor Adam Shapiro, who was in the cast of Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobsbiopic, objected to the respectful attention the Times’s coverage of the conference accorded National Policy Institute president Richard Spencer, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right” for his fellow twenty- and thirty-something clean-cut millennials who would rather not be tagged as xenophobic thugs.

“WTF?! Why are you glamorizing this guy, @latimes? This is not a think tank. It’s a hate group,” Shapiro tweeted in response not only to Lisa Mascaro’s story—which quoted Spencer as hailing “the alt-right as an intellectual vanguard”—but also to an accompanying video in which the telegenic and articulate white nationalist was given four unchallenged minutes to reasonably explain his dream “to influence politics and influence culture” to restore white people of European descent to unquestioned power and social dominance, adding, “I think we have an amazing opportunity to do that with Donald Trump.”

In fairness, Mascaro’s story—which eventually carried an altered headline, dropping the “think tank” idea in favor of “White nationalists dress up and come to Washington in hopes of influencing Trump”—did point out that “the formally dressed men more resembled Washington lobbyists than the robed Ku Klux Klansmen or skinhead toughs that often represent white supremacists, though they share many familiar views.”

But unlike more unsympathetic accounts of the gathering in The New York Times and The Daily Beast, it made no mention of partygoers, including former MTV host Tila Tequila, jubilantly giving the Nazi salute and engaging in other less than democracy-friendly behavior.

Still, the LA Times story also quoted Heidi Beirich, of the anti-hate group nonprofit, the Southern Poverty Law Center, as warning against the “mainstreaming” of pernicious ideologies that the National Policy Institute represents.

Beirich, while calling the LA Times’s Mascaro “thoughtful,” cautioned news outlets not to legitimize such groups with apparently balanced, if not credulous, coverage.

“I don’t want anything to normalize the National Policy Institute,” she told The Daily Beast. “I think there has been a tendency in the press to not understand what the alt-right is—which is white supremacy. And I think we’re letting haters basically rebrand themselves to sound less threatening—and that is very disappointing. I worry about that.”

The LA Times’s spokesperson didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.

Democracy doesn't die without either the willing or forced complicity of the press and news media.  I truly wish some of these "journalists" would take a history course on the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime and then take a good look at themselves in the mirror. If they are not relentlessly exposing the hate and evilness of these Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, then they are part of the problem. 

Trump Is Building Team of Racists

Bannon, Sessions and Flynn

As the last post noted, white rage and racism swept Donald Trump to power and now he is setting about building a team of racists in his administration to deliver on his promises that America will be a whites first nation.   Just as they helped normalize the toxicity of Trump's campaign rhetoric and appeals to the ugliest elements in American society, now much of the media is fast at work trying to normalize the team of open racists and misogynists being assembled by Trump to lead his fascist like administration.  We are seeing euphemisms like "conservative" and variations thereof as a smoke screen to shield racists, bigots and homophobes that are rapidly gaining Trump's nod with the help of Mike Pence, an alarming extremist himself.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the slate of foul individuals who, if they have their way, will take the nation back decades and erase much societal progress.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign bludgeoned modern norms about the acceptability of racism. The candidate proposed a religious test for immigrants, and called a federal judge unfit on the grounds of his heritage. Trump could have decided to put the racial demagoguery of the campaign behind him, and it could have been remembered as a divisive ploy to win that did not define his administration, like George Bush’s manipulation of white racial panic to defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988. But Trump, perhaps predictably, is making a different choice. His early staffing choices are redefining the boundaries of acceptable racial discourse in Republican politics.

Michael Flynn, Trump’s new national security adviser, would be disqualified from a normal administration on multiple grounds. He is paid by authoritarian regimes in Turkey and Russia, as well as Russia’s propaganda apparatus. Multiple figures who worked with him in the military describe him as “unhinged,” a highly negative quality for a primary foreign-policy adviser.

The singular belief that lies at the core of Flynn’s worldview is indiscriminate hatred of Islam. . . . He openly endorses indiscriminate fear of the entire religion . . .

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s new attorney general, originally had the political profile of a white reactionary Alabama politician in the Old South mode. The Senate rejected his bid for a federal judgeship in 1986 over a series of racist remarks he’d made, some of which he confirmed. Sessions called the NAACP “un-American” and accused it of “forcing civil rights down the throats of people,” and he allegedly called a black lawyer “boy” and warned him to be careful how he addressed white people.

Despite his rejection by the Senate, Sessions won election in the state, and his racial repertoire has since expanded beyond the traditional Deep South mode. He has enthusiastically embraced arch-restrictionist stances on immigration. He objected to the National Endowment for the Humanities distributing books about Islam to public libraries. He is obsessed with a shadowy globalist media-business conspiracy in general, and the role of George Soros in particular.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, has attracted perhaps the most controversy. That Bannon’s ex-wife has testified to his hatred of Jews has attracted a great deal of attention, but this fact both over- and understates the racial nature of his beliefs. Bannon’s journalistic work is centrally dedicated to the task of refashioning conservatism along white-identity lines. His publication, Breitbart News, has promoted the “alt-right.” Breitbart itself defines the alt-right as a more intelligent version of skinheads. . . 

The theme connecting Bannon’s ideology with Flynn and Sessions is an intensified and narrow nationalism. The Bannonites see a “real” America as under threat by demographic transformation, and the waves of immigrants eating away at its culture from below are in alliance with a global and disproportionately Jewish media and business elite from above. Their project is to preserve white Christian American identity, and wage a civilizational war against Islam in alliance with other white Christian powers, especially Russia.

This ideology is often portrayed as a frontal attack on traditional conservatism. It is not quite that. . .  [T]he main points of emphasis in traditional conservatism lie elsewhere. It is primarily concerned with opposing redistribution from rich to poor.

Bannon is less obsessed with cutting the top tax rate, deregulating Wall Street, and reducing social spending than the traditional GOP is, but he does not oppose these policies, either. That generalized agreement, or lack of disagreement, is the reason it is possible for white-identity conservatives and libertarian conservatives to work together under unified Republican government. Paul Ryan may not like racism . . . but he is willing to work with racists to gut the welfare and regulatory states.

If Trump had lost, the GOP would probably have reverted to its traditional anti-government identity very quickly. Now Trump is reshaping it before our eyes. 

With the holiday season here, if you want to get a gift for your friends and acquaintances who voted for Trump, Klan robes are probably the most appropriate.  And be sure to say "Merry Christmas" to them as you hand them their gift. 

Republican Platform Veers Far Right and Very Anti-Gay

The poisonous influence of those I call the Christofascists - i.e., American right wing Christians who basically want a Christian theocracy in place of constitutional government with themselves in charge, of course - continues to make itself visible as the Republican Party platform committee works on the party's 2016 platform.  So far the draft looks more like something from 1956 than the 21st century.  And, as is always the case with the Christofascists and the con-artist professional Christians/hate group leaders who are their spokesmen, no group is more targeted for abuse and denial of civil rights equality than the LGBT community.  Blacks, as also is the norm, are not far behind in terms of the animus with which they are viewed.  The New York Times looks at the increasingly reactionary aspects of the GOP platform.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans moved on Tuesday toward adopting a staunchly conservative platform that takes a strict, traditionalist view of the family and child rearing, bars military women from combat, describes coal as a “clean” energy source and declares pornography a “public health crisis.”

The document . . . . and amounts to a rightward lurch even from the party’s hard-line platform in 2012 — especially as it addresses gay men, lesbians and transgender people.

As delegates debated in two marathon sessions here on Monday and Tuesday, they repeatedly rejected efforts by more moderate members of the platform committee to add language that would acknowledge or condemn anti-gay discrimination . . . . . while public and legal opinion has moved steadily in one direction, the official declaration of Republican Party principles appears to be heading sharply in the opposite direction.

Social conservatives in the party exerted significant influence over the drafting and amending of the platform this week, succeeding in almost all of their efforts to add language that pushed the document more to the right.

The platform demands that lawmakers use religion as a guide when legislating, stipulating “that man-made law must be consistent with God-given, natural rights.”

It also encourages the teaching of the Bible in public schools because, the amendment said, a good understanding of its contents is “indispensable for the development of an educated citizenry.”

Much of the most combative debate centered on language in the platform that describes gay and transgender people, and efforts to strip those words out and replace them with language proposed by a minority contingent of socially moderate delegates.

[N]early every provision that expressed disapproval of homosexuality, same-sex marriage or transgender rights passed. The platform calls for overturning the Supreme Court marriage decision with a constitutional amendment and makes references to appointing judges “who respect traditional family values.”

Additional provisions included those that promoted state laws to limit which restrooms transgender people could use, nodded to [thoroughly discredited] “conversion therapy” for gays by saying that parents should be free to make medical decisions about their children without interference and stated that “natural marriage” between a man and a woman is most likely to result in offspring who do not become drug-addicted or otherwise damaged.

[C]onservative activists like Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council [a certified hate group] . . .  exert greater influence. Mr. Perkins’s hand could be seen in dozens of amendments on issues like gun control, religious expression and bathroom use.

And for those who don't know, Tony Perkins has documented ties to white supremacy groups, including the KKK.  

“Christian Militia” Leader Calls for Arming of White Christians

For those who continue to refuse to admit the blatant racism of white conservative Christians, look no farther than the latest declaration by Stewart Rhodes, head of the Oath Keepers, a heavily-armed self-described “Christian militia,” who wants white Christians to arm themselves and form a network of militias to defend the "American lifestyle."   Southern Poverty Law Center has documented that Oath Keepers is affiliated with the white supremacy movement.  The group is also vitriolic in its opposition to LGBT rights and same sex marriage, and offered to assemble in Kentucky to defend renegade court clerk, Kim Davis from rearrest.  Right Wing Watch looks at the frightening craziness of these people.  Here are excerpts:

I call on all Oath Keepers, and all patriotic Americans, to come to the aid of their local police, and to the aid of their communities, and unite and coordinate in mutual defense against this orchestrated campaign of Marxist terrorism, which is the modern version of the wave of terrorism we saw in the late 60s and early 70s by the Marxist Weather Underground and related groups (who also frequently targeted police), along with the closely related Jihadist terrorism offensive, with Orlando being merely the latest in an ongoing wave of attacks.

What is now needed, more than ever, is the reestablishment of the militia of the people, trained, equipped and organized in each town, to defend against what is now clearly a “Tet Offensive” American style, as Navy SEAL veteran Matt Bracken warned. While we work to reestablish that militia system, you must go armed at all times, and be prepared, at all times, to defend your community against these Marxist terrorists as well as their Islamist terror allies. Remember, they are in league, and you are their common enemy and their common targets.

The power elites who control, aid, abet and fund these terrorists will attempt to use these attacks to further destroy what little is left of our Constitution, but the one thing they do not want, and the one thing they truly fear, is for We the People, who are still armed, to come together and restore the militia of the several states. And the elites’ terrorist proxies among the Marxists and Islamacists also fear such a revitalization and restoration.

So, let’s do what our enemies all fear most. Let us resurrect and restore the militia system of this nation, which the Founders told us is necessary for the security of a free state, and which must consist of ALL of the able bodied citizens of your community. It is time to finally get down to doing what is necessary. It starts with you and your neighbors coming together, now, to address this grave threat, and for you to lead them toward the only constitutional solution – the revitalization of the militia.

Be very afraid.

Donald Trump's Rallying Cry - “Make America Racist Again”

For decades now the Republican Party has been sending subtle, dog whistle messages to its base and those in the South in particular, that racism is acceptable.  With the rise of Donald Trump, all pretense of keeping the party base's raging racism behind a smoke screen is gone.  A piece in Politicususa.com notes this reality.  And just to that there can be no doubt about the matter, Trump's campaign has once again be caught using imagery from a white supremacist website that also maligns Jews through it use of a Star of David in the hit piece on Hillary Clinton. Here are some highlights:

When did it become “okay” to be a racist?  I think the date is around 15 June 2015.  That was when Donald J. Trump declared his intention to run for President of the United States with his now iconic speech in which he put down Mexican people, saying “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”  Somehow, at that moment in time, at the point where he said it and Americans cheered rather than jeered, it became “okay” to be a racist and to speak with a forked tongue.

During the little over a year since Trump’s official candidacy announcement, he has yet to give a speech whereby he doesn’t mock or put down some group of people:  Muslims, Hispanics, women, Asians, disabled people, and the list goes on.  And because Donald Trump can stand in front of a crowd of hundreds and spew his racist, bigoted hate-filled speech with little or no consequence, all those closet-racists who have been biting their tongues are now coming out of the woodwork in droves, turning our nation into one where there is no courtesy, no respect, and no tolerance for others.  It is this very attitude that has made it seem “okay” to some that a man running for the U.S. Congress puts up billboards urging citizens to “make America white again.” It is the attitude that has given rise to discrimination in venues across the nation, from workplaces to schools, from state governments to churches.

When did it become “okay” to be a racist?  Let me tell you a little secret … it didn’t.  It has never been okay, it isn’t okay now, and it will never be okay.  It was not okay when we interned American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II.  It was not okay when we made black people sit in the back of the bus.  It was not okay when we burned crosses on the yards of African-Americans.  And it is not okay when a pastor contends that “racism, misogyny, homophobia are ‘biblical truths we stand for’.”

Trump is merely the catalyst that has brought it back out into the open, stirring the dual pots of fear and hatred in the process.  Trump did not create racism and hatred, he simply told Americans that it is “okay” to speak out loudly against those who are different, who are non-Caucasian, who are non-Christian, who are disabled or female or transgender or homosexual.  He merely gave the green light, the thumbs-up . . .

I now believe that these individuals, whether they will admit it or not, never truly moved on from the days of Jim Crow laws, of lynchings, of cross-burnings and murders by the Klan, of strict segregation.  They never came to understand that their white skin, their European ancestry, and their Christianity does not make them superior, but that their attitudes make them, in fact, inferior.  Attitudes which might have lain fallow for decades longer had not Donald Trump told them that it was “okay” to be a racist.  No, my friends, it is NOT okay.  It never was and it never will be.

As for the anti-Semitic imaging, the Washington Post notes as follows:

But the image that Trump chose to illustrate his point, which portrayed a red Star of David shape slapped onto a bed of $100 bills, had origins in the online white-supremacist movement. For at least the fifth time, Trump’s Twitter account had shared a meme from the racist “alt-right” and offered no explanation why.

On white-supremacist forums, Trump was cheered for apparently declaring his solidarity through not-so-subtle code.

“The evangelicals will listen to his pro-Israel statements, while we will listen to his signals,” Andrew Anglin wrote in the Daily Stormer, a racist site named after Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher’s notorious tabloid. “By pushing this into the media, the Jews bring to the public the fact that yes, the majority of Hilary’s [sic] donors are filthy Jew terrorists.”