Archive for the ‘Alt-right’ Category

Video: ‘Freedom’ Rally Brings Alt-Right Groups to Austin for Fourth of July Weekend – The Texas Observer

Tue, Jul 4, 2017 at 10:58 am CST

Nearly 200 people rallied for a variety of far-right causes from support of President Donald Trump to white supremacy on July 1 at the 1776 Freedom March in downtown Austin. Video by Ignacio Martinez.

Nearly 200 people rallied for a variety of far-right causes from support of President Donald Trump to white supremacy on July 1 at the 1776 Freedom March in downtown Austin. The event was touted by its organizers, the conservative, pro-Trump group Texans United For America, as a celebration of patriotism and liberty. The tone of the rally, though, quickly morphed into overt jingoism with event speakers such as Augustus Invictus, publisher of the far-right publication The Revolutionary Conservative, calling for the deaths of public figures such George Soros and Hillary Clinton, much to the delight of the applauding crowd.

Kyle Chapman, an alt-right leader who rose to prominence because of his Based Stickman persona that includes Chapman performing violent acts against anti-fascist, or antifa, activists while clad in makeshift armor, spoke next. Chapman called for open revolution and frequently wielded the phrase cultural Marxism. Shortly after the speakers, attendees began their march through downtown Austin and to the Texas Capitol.

Their demonstration, with fewer than 200 people, was dwarfed by several recent protests in the capital, including the womens march that turned out 50,000 in January. Last month, a demonstration by about 50 anti-Islam activists was quickly derailed at the Capitol when about 300 counter-protesters, including antifa activists, arrived.

Jinyan Li, a Chinese international student attending Northeastern University in Boston, was visiting the Capitol as the alt-right grandstanding started. Li, on vacation in Texas, was completely befuddled by the rally. Why is all of this happening? said Li as she cautiously examined the situation from afar. After the alt-right group pictures were taken by attendants on the Capitols south steps, the crowd dispersed.

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Video: 'Freedom' Rally Brings Alt-Right Groups to Austin for Fourth of July Weekend - The Texas Observer

Not Liking Modern Architecture Apparently Makes You Alt-Right – The Daily Caller

Favoring traditional art and critiquing modern architecture is apparently enough to make one a member of the alt-right, according to a Monday article.

Likening its critique of modernism and defense of traditional art to a defense of white European culture, Amanda Kolson Hurley conflates InfoWars and the National Rifle Association (NRA) with the alt-right in aneditorialentitled Why Is the Alt-Right So Angry About Architecture?

The aesthetic judgment in the NRAs one-minute ad is implicit, almost subliminal, whereas InfoWars launches a full-bore attack, states Hurley. But both bear the same message about modern architecture: It is the province of the liberal urban elite, and that it stands for oppression.

WATCH:

Hurley shifts to critiquing the NRAs ad, delivered by gun rights activist Dana Loesch. She suggests that elements of the far right are deliberately making architecture a front in the Trump-era culture wars.

WATCH:

We are never told who they are, says Hurley, referencing Loeschs repeated use of the pronoun, but the shots make it clear: They are people in liberal L.A. and Chicago who swan about in fancy parks and buildings.

Watson has publicly distanced himself from the alt-right while the NRA has never addressed its relationship to the label one way or the other.

Hurley closes her argument by suggesting that the public doesnt hate modernism, linking to apollindicating preference for 20th-century designs among the public. But she also acknowledges that the profession of architecture skews urban and blue-state, noting that designers heavily populate cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Boston.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Hurley and Justin Shubow of the National Civic Art Society for comment, but received none in time for publication.

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Not Liking Modern Architecture Apparently Makes You Alt-Right - The Daily Caller

Yes, There Is A Civil War Looming, And The Alt-Right Is Pushing It – HuffPost

Donald Trumps supporters are shaking like little schoolgirls afraid of the monster in the closet. Even while they point to the Middle East, they ignore the genuine threat of terrorism in America the alt-right.

More Americans have been killed by white, under-educated, financially impotent, scared white men, aka likely Trump supporters, in the past twelve months than by foreign terrorists screaming Allahu Akbar.

Now, Trump backers have a new dog whistle to follow which soothes their jangled nerves even as they go orgasmic for Trump, pick up their AR-15s and yell, hold my beer.

Is another Civil War brewing? Marshall Connolly writing for Catholic Online points out, There are few differences. The rhetoric is almost seditious. Politicians give speeches telling persons to be disruptors.

The word, revolution is being tossed about as a political term and its difficult to avoid the idea that the alt-right is being called to arms.

Terrorist Propaganda Courtesy of The NRA

A new ad from Americas largest gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, is being compared to a recruitment video produced by terrorists, experts claim.

Referring to persons on the left, the video claims They use their media to assassinate real news.

The video, featuring NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch, who is employed by the alt-right outlet The Blaze, claims the left is using former-President Obama to endorse the resistance.

The video urges viewers to link up with the gun lobby to fight back by raising clenched fists of truth.

Cynthia Storer, an adjunct instructor at Johns Hopkins, says, This is the kind of rhetoric which creates extremists.

Storer should know. She created the models used by the CIA in tracking the path of extremist radicalization.

Extremism sparks extremism in return. Its a cycle and the world burns, says Storer.

While Trump-supporters continue to point to refugees and persons from the Middle East as being a threat to America, the real terrorists are right-wing Americans. According to a recent report, nearly twice as many terrorist attacks were carried out by American extremists as Islamist extremists within America.

In a recent interview with Newsweek, Susan Benesch, a researcher with Harvards Berkman Klein Center, said, leaders used to condemn violence and the violent speech that incites hatred head on.

Benesch held up Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as an example of what more politicians must do. Following the shooting of Republican Whip Steve Scalise by a Sanders supporter, Sanders said, Real change can only come about through nonviolent action. Anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.

Jerry Nelson spends much of his time poking Trumps meth-addled, uneducated fans with a pointy stick and is currently writing a book of muskrat recipes as well as a scrapbook of his favorite death threats. His lifes aspiration is to rule the world with an iron fist, or find that sock hes been looking for. Feel free to email him at jandrewnelson2@gmail.com if you have any questions or commentsor join the million (seriously) or so who follow him on Twitter @Journey_America.

Never far from his Marlboros and coffee, Jerry is always interested in discussing future writing opportunities.

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Yes, There Is A Civil War Looming, And The Alt-Right Is Pushing It - HuffPost

Trump’s CNN-Bashing Tweet Video From ‘Alt-Right’ Reddit Site – The National Memo (blog)

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

President Donald Trump tweeted a video showing him tackling and punching a man with the CNN logo imposed over his face. The video appears to have come from forum frequented by alt-right Trump supporters who posted it days earlier.

On July 2, Trump tweeted video that appeared to show Trump in a wrestling match attacking a man with CNN on his face, writing along with the video, #FraudNewsCNN #FNN.

The Reddit forum r/The_Donald, wherealt-rightmembers supporting Trump congregate,posted a GIFfour days prior that seems to be the same footage.

Following Trumps tweet, users on the forumtook creditfor Trumps promotion of the footage, with one user telling the original uploader of the GIF that his dankery has been tweeted by the President of the United States.

Trumps tweet is the latest example of him promoting content that appears to have originated on online message boards such as Reddit and 4chan, which have regularlypushed conspiracy theoriesthat some in Trumps inner circle have sometimes promoted. During the presidential campaign, Trumps campaign teammonitoredforums like r/The_Donald for content, and in May, Trumpappeared to take messagingfrom r/The_Donald directed at Rosie ODonnell.New Yorkmagazines Olivia Nuzzinotedthis trend on CNNsReliable Sources, saying, I think this has happened a number of times where something it goes from Reddit to one of Donald Trumps aides, and then to Donald Trumps Twitter account.

(h/tBrian StelterandBradd Jaffy)

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Trump's CNN-Bashing Tweet Video From 'Alt-Right' Reddit Site - The National Memo (blog)

Navigating Trump’s Twitter: @realDonaldTrump and the alt-right meme factory – Mic

Navigating Trumps Twitter is a new series from Mic that explores how the president elects to use his favorite medium to impact policy, express his viewpoints and attack the media. Instead of covering Trumps tweets as they come, we look for patterns in behavior that offer a window into the presidents actual world view and how he chooses to express it through unmediated 140-character missives.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump tweeted a disturbing video of himself bodyslamming a man who had the CNN logo digitally pasted over his face.

The tweet, which rounded out a week of controversy over Trumps salacious Twitter usage, was widely criticized both by Democrats and Republicans for going too far. CNN issued a response saying Trump was engaging in juvenile behavior far below the dignity of his office.

But perhaps the most disturbing element of the entire controversy was the fact that the meme appears to have been created by a racist Reddit user who posts under the handle HanAssholeSolo.

Many were shocked that the president whose deputy press secretary claimed just days earlier that Trump had never promoted or encouraged violence would capriciously spread alt-right propaganda insinuating physical violence against the media is OK.

But this isnt the first time or even the second time that Trump has tweeted out memes originating from the darkest corners of the internet in order to promote his agenda, and it likely wont be the last.

During his presidential campaign, Trump famously tweeted an anti-Semitic meme of his opponent Hillary Clinton, which featured a Star of David over a pile of money labeling Clinton the most corrupt candidate ever. The image appeared to be an attempt to draw a connection between Clinton and anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish people and money, or possibly global banking conspiracies.

Less than a year before that, Trump manually retweeted an image that purported to show statistics about the percentage of black people killed by other black people in the U.S. The image, which has since been deleted by the original user, was based on made-up statistics from the Crime Statistics Bureau San Francisco, an agency that does not exist.

Sure enough, the origins of the image appear to trace back to white supremacist Twitter.

The crime statistics tweet was one of many manual retweets in which the president copied and pasted problematic content from his supporters into his own Twitter feed. The method is a holdover from a time before Twitter created a retweet function and users would have to copy others content to post it on their feed.

Trump continued to manually retweet things well after Twitter developed the retweet function, which frequently led to incidents during the campaign in which Trump retweeted his own racist followers with Twitter handles like @WhiteGenocideTM.

Trumps ability to credulously retweet his followers without any due diligence even led now-defunct Gawker to create a fake Benito Mussolini Twitterbot, which tweeted quotes from the fascist leader at Trump with the hope that he might retweet one of them which he eventually did.

The retweeted white supremacist content can be easily explained by the presidents famous lack of attention to detail. The same cannot be said of content like the CNN tweet or the Star of David tweet, both of which required the president to download or copy the source material into an original tweet.

The image of Hillary Clinton Trump tweeted had been edited from the original meme to obscure its attribution to a white supremacist website at the bottom.

The original version of the Hillary Clinton Star of David meme side-by-side with the one tweeted by Trump. The attribution is obscured in the latter by the addition of a Fox News Poll graphic.

In both the Star of David tweet and the CNN video tweet, questions remain about how the content made its way from the internets racist message board fever-swamps to the presidents Twitter feed.

Further, in at least one other case, Trump has had problems with Nazi imagery appearing in tweets that his campaign claims to have made themselves.

In a tweet sent out near the beginning of his campaign Trump tweeted a photo of himself, an American flag, $100 bills and soldiers. The only problem is that the soldiers, which were taken from a stock image, were wearing Nazi uniforms.

At the time, the Trump campaign blamed a nameless intern who they claimed had apologized and removed the link. But given what we have since learned about the resources of the early Trump campaign, its not outside the realm of possibility to imagine that Trump actually sourced the image from the internet.

One possible window into how alt-right memes end up in front of the president comes from his son, Donald Trump Jr. Following the 2016 campaign moment that saw Hillary Clinton claiming half of Trumps supporters are in a basket of deplorables, Trumps eldest son posted a meme on his Instagram account that featured him and his father alongside other prominent republicans as well as alt-right cartoon symbol Pepe the Frog and alt-right provocateurs Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopolous.

In the caption, Trump Jr. claims that a friend sent him the image. That same day, a similar version of the same meme, based on the movie campaign for The Expendables, had been tweeted by former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.

Its possible that Trump and his family come by these memes through their connections with people who spend time in and around alt-right circles. Conspiracy theorist and alt-right personality Alex Jones has boasted that he has spoken to the president multiple times since he took office, and others like the eccentric Roger Stone, who frequently appears on Jones show, are also thought to have the the presidents ear.

Despite the presidents avid Twitter use, he is not a person who frequently seeks out information and culture online. His infamous Twitter account only follows 45 other accounts, most of which belonging to members of his campaign and Fox News hosts. And he has frequently demonstrated his preference for cable news over other forms of news media consumption.

But if someone close to Trump is sharing this content with him, then the question is who? And how much influence do they have over a president who plays fast and loose with his messages to the public?

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Navigating Trump's Twitter: @realDonaldTrump and the alt-right meme factory - Mic