Mediaboss Marketing

Some of the protesters who marched through Charlottesville last weekend were described as alt-right, a newish term that has been used for everyone from white supremacists to economic populists. But what does it actually mean? The Associated Press recently issued guidelines discouraging journalists from using the term generically and without definition since the term may exist primarily as a public-relations device to make its supporters actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience. Meanwhile, President Trump recently told reporters that some of the protesters in Charlottesville who waved Nazi insignia and chanted anti-Jewish slogans werent all nefarioussome were very fine people.

A psychology paper put out just last week by Patrick Forscher of the University of Arkansas and Nour Kteily of Northwestern University seeks to answer the question of just what, exactly, it is that the alt-right believes. What differentiates them from the average American?

For the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, Forscher and Kteily recruited 447 self-proclaimed members of the alt-right online and gave them a series of surveys. How did they know these people were really alt-right? The individuals responded to questions like, What are your thoughts when people claim the alt-right is racist? with statements like:

If it were not for Europeans, there would be nothing but the third world. Racist really needs defined. Is it racist to not want your community flooded with 3,000 low IQ blacks from the Congo? I would suggest almost everyone would not. It is not racist to want to live among your own ... Through media [the Jews] lie about the Holohoax, and the slave trade. Jews were the slave traders, not Europeans ... many people don't even understand these simple things.

The researchers compared the responses of the alt-right people to a sample of people who did not identify as alt-right. What they found paints a dark picture of a group that feels white people are disadvantaged. They are eager to take action to boost whites standing. Whats more, they appear to view other religious and ethnic groups as subhuman.

Importantly, the study authors did not find that economic anxiety was driving the alt-rights sentiments, debunking a popular theory in the wake of the 2016 election. Alt-right supporters were more optimistic about the current and future states of the economy than non-supporters, they write.

But there were key ways that the alt-right participants differed from the comparison group. The alt-right members trusted alternative media such as Breitbart and Fox more than mainstream outlets. They were much more likely to have a social-dominance orientation, or the desire that there be a hierarchy among groups in society.

One can easily guess who they want at the top of this hierarchy. The alt-right participants were more likely to think men, whites, Republicans, and the alt-right themselves were discriminated against, while minorities and women were not. This is in line with past research showing that white supremacists have a victimhood mentality, in which they consider whites to be the real oppressed people of American society.

In this study, the alt-right members were much more likely to be willing to express prejudice, to engage in offensive behavior and harassment, and to oppose Black Lives Matter. And heres the scariest part. The researchers showed the participants the below scale, which psychologists use to ask people how evolved various groups are. A score of zero puts them closer to the ape-like figure on the left, while a 100 is the fully evolved human on the right. Its a scale, in other words, of dehumanization.

The alt-right members were much more likely to consider groups they see as their opponentspeople like Muslims, Mexicans, blacks, journalists, Democrats, and feministsto be less evolved than they are. If we translate the alt-right and non-alt-right ratings into their corresponding ascent silhouettes, this means that our alt-right sample saw religious, national, and political opposition groups as a full silhouette less evolved than the non-alt-right sample, the authors write.

Voxs Brian Resnick further breaks down the data here:

On average, they rated Muslims at a 55.4 (again, out of 100), Democrats at 60.4, black people at 64.7, Mexicans at 67.7, journalists at 58.6, Jews at 73, and feminists at 57. These groups appear as subhumans to those taking the survey. And what about white people? They were scored at a noble 91.8. (You can look through all the data here.)

The comparison group, on the other hand, scored all these groups in the 80s or 90s on average. (In science terms, the alt-righters were nearly a full standard deviation more extreme in their responses than the comparison group.)

If you look at the mean dehumanization scores, theyre about at the level to the degree people in the United States dehumanize ISIS, Forscher says. The reason why I find that so astonishing is that were engaged in violent conflict with ISIS.

Forscher and Kteily also found there were two distinct subgroups in their sample of alt-righters. Some were populists, who were concerned about government corruption and were less extremist. The more extreme and racist among them, meanwhile, were the supremacists. The authors speculate that people who start out as populists might become radicalized into the supremacist camp as they meet more alt-righters.

This study, once it is peer-reviewed, may have broad implications for the fight against hate groupsand for psychology itself. As the authors note, modern psychology studies mostly focus on implicit biasthe internal racism that most people dont outwardly express. They might be, say, slower to associate professor with a picture of an African-American person, but theyre not grabbing torches and heading to rallies. Perhaps psychologists simply thought society had progressed to the point where overt racism is so rare as to be difficult to measure. But this study shows that hundreds of actual, proud racists can be easily recruited online for a study for the low price of $3.

The authors of this paper write that blatant intergroup bias has by no means disappeared. Its something the events in Charlottesville revealed all too vividly last weekend.

View post:
The Dark Minds of the Alt-Right - The Atlantic

To the editor: I applaud Jonah Goldberg for remaining a member of the traditional right. (The alt-right has gained ground, thanks to a win-at-all-costs strategy, Opinion, Aug. 15)

He says the so-called alt-right wont replace mainstream conservatism because the overwhelming majority of conservatives are patriotic and decent. Yet President Trumps approval rating among Republicans is around 80%. That means Republicans are supporting an administration that includes Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller.

The people whose faces were seen so well in the torchlight in Charlottesville, Va., have supremacy over nothing and no one, but they will support those in power who feed their ugly fantasy. Without these people, conservatives cant win.

They keep feeding this beast, and it gets uglier every day.

Stephanie McIntyre, Simi Valley

..

To the editor: Its a shame that Goldbergs public dissent from the alt-rights debased dogma invites harsh reprisals from fellow conservatives. But Goldbergs rare courage which prompted one pundit to label him an apostate ultimately will hold him in good stead on both sides of the red-blue divide.

Once our national nightmare has ended, most everyone to the left of the alt-right will admire Goldbergs composed, coherent takes on Trump.

If only more conservatives understood that hewing to a party line doesnt rate with being on the right side of history.

Roberta Helms, Santa Barbara

..

To the editor: Enough with the term alt-right, which obscures what that movement really is: white supremacy. Each time we say it or print it, we are practically saying its all right. It is not all right; its all wrong.

The late Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and a professor of mine at Boston University, stressed the importance of identifying and naming evil. He called it our personal responsibility, and when we name something evil, we cannot permit it to be diluted or undermined.

Please fill in your full name, mailing address, city of residence, phone number and e-mail address below. Submissions that do not include this information cannot be published. This information is seen only by the letters editors and is not used for any commercial purpose. We generally do not publish...

Please fill in your full name, mailing address, city of residence, phone number and e-mail address below. Submissions that do not include this information cannot be published. This information is seen only by the letters editors and is not used for any commercial purpose. We generally do not publish...

We, here in 2017, cannot be complacent; we cannot stand by silently. It is our imperative to name the evil that we experienced in Charlottesville. It is the neo-Nazi white supremacist movement. Sure, we can use shorthand terms neo-Nazi or white supremacy, but we cannot call it by a name that hides or obscures what this movement is.

Insist on calling a spade a spade.

Julie A. Werner-Simon, Santa Monica

..

To the editor: Who decided that white supremacists could rename themselves the alt-right? Whats next, the KKK rebranding itself as the Alternative Hood Klub?

Ken Jacobs, Santa Monica

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

View original post here:
It's a sad fact: Republicans who denounce the 'alt-right' do so at great political risk - Los Angeles Times

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE August 17, 2017 08/17/2017 10:24 am By Adam K. Raymond Share

Citing credible alt-left terrorist threats, the right-wing leaders of planned protests against Googles diversity policies have called off the demonstrations, which were scheduled to be held this weekend in nine cities across the country.

Despite our clear and straightfoward [sic] statements denouncing bigotry and hatred, CNN and other mainstream media made malicious and false statements that our peaceful march was being organized by Nazi sympathizers, reads a statement on marchongoogle.com. Following the articles, credible threats from known Alt Left terrorist groups have been reported to and relevant authorities have been notified.

We hope to hold our peaceful march in a few weeks time, the statement says.

The marches, which were set to target Google facilities from Mountain View to Boston, were organized in response to Googles firing of a male employee who wrote an inflammatory memo on the tech giants diversity initiatives. James Damores now-infamous memo argued that Googles attempts to hire more women in technical positions was harming the company because women are biologically less suited for the work. His argument was both scientifically contestable and highly offensive, particularly for many of the companys female employees.

The planned March on Google was organized in defense of Damore and in opposition to what organizers call the anti-free speech monopoly Google. That mission alone would have drawn hecklers and counterprotesters. But then Charlottesville erupted when a white-supremacist rally descended on the town. Soon, links were drawn between the March on Google and the racist alt-right groups in Charlottesville. That made the march toxic.

Ultimately, though, it wasnt the toxicity that led to the cancellation, it was the threat of violence. At least thats what organizer Jack Posobiec says. The internet conspiracy theorist and Naval urinalysis officer tweeted one threat that marchers received and implied there were others like them.

Of course, thats not the only theory on why these marches were canceled. It also could have been because no one was going to show up.

Rabbi That Oversaw Ivanka Trumps Conversion to Judaism Slams Trump on Charlottesville Response

The Funniest Things Prospective Jurors Said About Martin Shkreli

Why Did Bannon Bash His Colleagues, and Trumps Foreign Policy, to a Liberal Journalist?

Dont Look Now, But Alt-Right Demonstrations Are Scheduled for Nine Cities Next Weekend

Trumps Aides Tried to Conceal His Crazy, Racist Beliefs From the Country

Nothings Shocking Anymore With Trump

Seth Meyers Takes a Closer Look at the Very Fine Charlottesville Protesters Trump Defended

The Real Housewives of New York City Reunion Recap: Fairy Tale Dream

How to Catch Up on Fall TVs Returning Favorites

Trump Lawyer Forwards Email Claiming There Literally Is No Difference Between Robert E. Lee and George Washington

By going soft on neo-Nazis, Trump is doing the Democrats job for them: highlighting an issue that splits the GOP base from the rest of America.

During the Jim Crow era, southern states sought recognition in the Capitol for ex-Confederates and other proud racists. That may finally be corrected.

Trumps response to breaking news of a possible terrorist attack in Spain is to endorse a false tale of U.S. torture and religious insults.

A democracy that retains monuments to men who committed treason in defense of slavery is one that has changed its history, not learned from it.

Is that all?

Two suspects are in custody and another has been shot dead.

As part of Trumps promise to expand employers religious freedom.

He managed to both threaten nuclear war and embrace neo-Nazis while on vacation. Wait until he gets back to work.

Its a pretty long list.

Dozens of people attempted to turn themselves in after four were arrested for toppling a Confederate statue.

The planned defense of a fired Google employee and his sexist memo is off, for now.

Trumps endorsement of a primary challenge to Jeff Flake demonstrates, once again, that the mogul cares more about his ego than his agenda.

Doubts about Medicare-for-All are arising on the left as well as the center, despite activist efforts to make support for it a litmus test.

Especially if hes planning to pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Supposedly he thought the conversation was off the record but is Trumps embattled chief strategist really that naive?

Both saved America.

While we avoid politics, we aredeeply troubled by the moralequivalency and equivocation President Trump has offered.

The GOP has long been an awkward coalition of business elites and social reactionaries. Can it last?

Heyers mother, Susan Bro, spoke at her daughters memorial service Wednesday.

Trumps response to Charlottesville led CEOs to distance themselves from the president.

Link:
Alt-Right Organizers Cancel the March on Google, Citing 'Terrorist Threats' - New York Magazine

I wont be a fig leaf for Nazis, a member of the A.C.L.U. of Virginia board of directors, Waldo Jaquith, posted on Twitter, announcing that he was resigning from the organization. Among his parting messages to the organization was, Dont defend Nazis to allow them to kill people.

This year has been a banner one for the civil liberties group, which is expected by some on the left to serve as a legal bulwark against some of the Trump administrations policies. Indeed, the A.C.L.U. helped secure the first court ruling against the travel ban.

Membership in the group has almost quadrupled, and donations online have reached $83 million since the election, when, in a typical period, about $5 million or less might be expected, a spokeswoman for the A.C.L.U., Stacy Sullivan, said.

But the groups defense of the Charlottesville rally has crystallized a recurring challenge for the organization: How to pursue its First Amendment advocacy, even for hate-based groups, without alienating its supporters.

It has seen a backlash on social media after the violence in Charlottesville. Even Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia asserted that because of the A.C.L.U.s intervention, the rally was unwisely held downtown where it became a powder keg.

Ms. Sullivan acknowledged that the organization was aware of a lot of threats on social media of people saying they would drop their membership, although neither she nor the groups executive director, Anthony D. Romero, would provide more details.

And with numerous alt-right rallies scheduled in the coming days and weeks, the A.C.L.U. also faces the question of how to respond to the next case involving a white nationalist rally that the local authorities try to block.

Another potential First Amendment showdown in Texas already looms. Citing safety concerns, Texas A&M on Monday canceled a white nationalist rally scheduled for Sept. 11. The rally organizer, Preston Wiginton, told the Texas Tribune he might sue and he might seek the A.C.L.U.s help.

Mr. Romero, the A.C.L.U.s executive director, said in an interview this week that the group would remain committed to its free speech advocacy. This is not a new juncture for the A.C.L.U., he said. We have a longstanding history of defending the rights of groups we detest and with whom we fundamentally disagree.

Even so, in the first months of the Trump presidency, the A.C.L.U. seemed to be more cautious about which fights it would embrace. It stayed uncharacteristically quiet when the University of California, Berkeley, canceled speeches by two right-wing writers and provocateurs, Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter, earlier this year, issuing statements and tweets, mainly after the controversy had already passed. And when a federal judge in April weighed whether Richard Spencer, a leader of the so-called alt-right, could hold an event at a public university in Alabama, the A.C.L.U. was absent from the case.

The civil liberties unions apparent absence from some of these disputes prompted questions, even criticism, about the organizations continuing commitment to fighting old-fashioned free speech cases for unpopular clients.

The A.C.L.U. has long maintained that defending the First Amendment rights of white supremacists does not only vindicate constitutional rights where they are under attack, but also protects speech rights for all groups. Social justice and equality, the group believes, are best served with more speech, on all sides, and by confronting hateful ideas head-on, rather than suppressing them.

But some on the left argue that freedom of speech should not extend to hate speech. Under this view, defending the free speech rights of racists does not, in the long run, strengthen the civil liberties of minority groups.

Those divisions were on display within the organization last week, when the A.C.L.U. took on lawsuits in support of two figures associated with the alt right. In once case, the A.C.L.U. filed a lawsuit against the Washington Metro system, for, among other things, removing advertisements for Mr. Yiannopoulos book Dangerous from subway stations and cars.

Chase Strangio, an A.C.L.U. lawyer best known for representing Chelsea Manning, expressed unhappiness with the decision, using Twitter to criticize the organizations free-speech philosophy. The idea that the speech of Black Lives Matter is being defended through the representation of someone like Milo is a farce in my view.

The organizations Virginia affiliate then brought a lawsuit representing a Charlottesville man who was organizing a rally to protest the removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. The City Council had changed the parks name from Lee Park to Emancipation Park in June. After initially granting him a permit to hold the rally at the park, the city tried to move it to a larger park, about a mile away.

The A.C.L.U. argued that the rally organizers ought to be able to stage the event at the park associated with Lee where the symbolism was greatest and the meaning of the rally clearest. The city argued that for safety reasons the protest should be moved to the other site. A federal judge sided with the A.C.L.U.

That led at least a few people to say the A.C.L.U. bore some responsibility for the resulting violence. If we hadnt intervened, the event would have been held a mile away, far from downtown, and three people would be alive, Mr. Jaquith, the Virginia board member, posted on Twitter.

Mr. Romero rejected that view. He placed some of the responsibility for the violence on local authorities, saying they had taken a hands-off approach to policing the event, even as it devolved into violence.

I want to be clear, the violence of this weekend was not caused by our defense of the First Amendment, he said, noting that a federal judge had sided with the A.C.L.U.

Mr. Romero expressed concern that, after Charlottesville, local authorities around the country would be tempted to stop extremist groups from holding rallies. It would be a very sorry day for our democracy if government officials insisted on denying any and all protests under the guise that violence might erupt, Mr. Romero said.

David A. Goldberger, a former A.C.L.U. lawyer who represented the neo-Nazis in the Skokie case, said that Charlottesville would likely pose a test for the group, not unlike the Skokie case had four decades ago.

The neo-Nazis who planned to march in Skokie were never expected to number more than a few dozen. So marginal and universally despised, they struggled to muster numbers beyond that. (The march never occurred; the group held a demonstration in Chicagos Marquette Park in 1978.)

A.C.L.U. membership dropped by 60,000 from 1973 to 1978, and by 1979, the group was facing a $500,000 deficit. Yet it seems possible that the far right of today could prove more divisive for the A.C.L.U. than the neo-Nazis and Skokie ever were.

White nationalists over the last two years have made their presence felt in the national discourse more so than they have in decades. That is partly because the far right has been emboldened by President Trump, who has been reluctant to condemn white nationalists.

Meanwhile, much of the newfound interest in the A.C.L.U. has been driven by opposition to the presidents policies.

As future cases involving the free speech rights of white supremacists surface, it remains to be seen how the events in Charlottesville may affect the A.C.L.U.s response.

The death may make people have second thoughts I surely hope not. Mr. Goldberger said. This is a real crossroads for the A.C.L.U., and I think its going to choose the right road.

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misidentified a group of protesters. They were anti-Nazi, not neo-Nazis.

Jonah Engel Bromwich contributed reporting.

Continue reading here:
In Backing Alt-Right, ACLU Embraces Role in Defending 'Groups We Detest' - New York Times

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) on Thursday said white supremacist groups did not converge on Charlottesville, Va., to protest the removal of a statue, but rather to make a show of their racist and bigoted views.

This is not just about monuments. This was a big issue that happened in this country on Saturday. These people who came to Charlottesville the neo-Nazis, the alt-right, they werent here for a statue,"McAuliffe said on CBS's "This Morning."

"Alt-right" is a term that refers to groups with views that often mix white nationalism, anti-Semitism and populism.

"They went to the University of Virginia on Friday night with their torches, that had nothing to do with a statue. There was hatred, there was bigotry that has been unleashed in this country and we need to understand how it has happened most importantly what we can do moving forward as a nation," the Virginia governor added.

Although McAuliffe did not answer whether Trump is unfit to lead the nation after failing to directly condemn the hate groups, he expressed strong disagreement with the president's statements regardingthe weekend events.

"I disagree with the president that this was all about the Lee statue," he said, adding that he just "lost three great citizens."

The demonstrations over the weekend took a deadly turn when a man with ties to the white supremacist groups allegedly drovehis car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing a woman and injuring others.Two state law enforcement officers also died when a Virginia State Police helicopter crashed near the city.

The presidenthas come under fire from both Republican and Democratic lawmakersafter aggressively defending his initial remarks about the violence at an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower on Tuesday in which he failed to directly denounce hate groups and condemn racism.

On Saturday, Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence before directly condemning the hate groups on Monday. He then said"both sides" share the blame on Tuesday.

The reversal sparked a firestormamong his critics, who saidthe president was failing to take a stand so he canplease extremistsupporters within his base.

Go here to read the rest:
Virginia gov: 'Alt-right' was not 'here about a statue' - The Hill