Archive for the ‘Alt-right’ Category

Fox interviews anti-Muslim "protester" without identifying him as a regular "alt-right" Fox guest – Media Matters for America


Media Matters for America
Fox interviews anti-Muslim "protester" without identifying him as a regular "alt-right" Fox guest
Media Matters for America
Fox's Pete Hegseth interviewed a protester at an event organized by the anti-Muslim group ACT for America without disclosing that he was actually talking to Gavin McInnes, who has frequently appeared on Fox News in the past and who is a player in the ...

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Fox interviews anti-Muslim "protester" without identifying him as a regular "alt-right" Fox guest - Media Matters for America

Alt-Right targets women in attack on free speech – People’s World

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President Trump has spent the last several months keeping his campaign promises. From the ongoing push to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to the numerous executive orders targeting immigration, abortion care funding, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policies, the Trump administration has not eased up.

Many have voiced outrage over the turn the country has suddenly taken, as direct action is one of the few methods of dissent still intact. However, Assistant professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, recently faced death threats after FOX News aired a segment from a commencement address at Hampshire College.

A leading organizer and scholar on Black politics and racial inequality, Taylor is the author of the critically acclaimed book; #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. She spoke on a number of topics, including the growing threat of the Trump administration. From the terror-inducing raids in the communities of undocumented immigrants; to his disparaging of refugees in search of freedom and respite; he has empowered an attorney general who embraces and promulgates policies that have already been proven to have had a devastating impact on Black families and communities.

Taylor called the President a racist sexist megalomaniac and stated that Donald Trump has fulfilled the promises of a campaign organized and built upon racism, corporatism, and militarism. While the speech received backlash after being featured on a number of conservative platforms, including during, conservative news anchor, Glenn Becks The Blaze, it is far from the first time the African American professor has spoken out about the injustices that marginalized communities face. In a statement released on Facebook through the Haymarket Books page, Taylor stated that she was cancelling appearances to various universities due to ongoing threats against her and her familys safety, Since last Friday, I have received more than fifty hate-filled and threatening emails. Some of these emails have contained specific threats of violence, including murder.

While there has been a long history of white institutions silencing black academics, it seems that the increasing popularity of alt-right movements has encouraged censorship from outside influences as well. Taylor has claimed that the segment on FOX was framed as an anti-POTUS tirade that was meant to incite violent intimidation from the right-wing viewers, Fox did not run this story because it was news, but to incite and unleash the mob-like mentality of its fringe audience, anticipating that they would respond with a deluge of hate-filled emails or worse. The threat of violence, whether it is implied or acted on, is intended to intimidate and to silence.

Similar incidents around the country have featured the same type of censorship patterns towards women activists and political voices. In Iowa, Democratic candidate Kim Weaver abandoned the race against Republican Congressman Steve King (IA). Weaver cited alarming acts of intimidation, including death threats and stated that her safety and personal health had become a growing concern.

Across the country, in New York City, Muslim-American activist Linda Sarsour faced death threats before she even had a chance to get on stage. While her speech ended up being well received at the New York City commencement ceremony, the discourse surrounding her in the weeks leading up to the delivery was hostile, with messages like A good Arab is a dead Arab and Youre getting two bullets in your head being sent to Sarsour on an hourly basis.

The white nationalist movement has long used acts of violence and intimidation to manipulate public discourse. In the past the Klan played a critical role in preventing people from reaching the election polls, and harbored their extensive social network to control facets of the media. Nevertheless, the rise in the mob mentality of cyber-bullying has become a frequent tactic of the Republican partyand provides tools for doing harm to their ideological opponents.

This may seem to some to be ironic, given the anger and outrage that emerged when activist shut down Milo Yiannopoulos was forced to cancel his visit to the University of California/Berkeley after anti-fascist activists caused $100,000 worth of damage to the campus in protest. Yiannopoulos however, had threatened to out undocumented and Trans students during his Dangerous Faggot tour. Such potential for harm is a far cry from Taylors voice of dissent towards an existing government that has enacted several harmful policies in a matter of months. One speaker demands non-violent liberation and the other uses their platform to doxx, and thus endanger, local students.

It seems there are clear patterns to the way in which conservatives chose who they target; women, and specifically women of color, are frequently in the crosshairs of attacks from the right. These individuals are often spammed with misogynistic comments, intertwined with a threat of sexual and/or physical violence. For black and brown women, Like Taylor and Sarsour, these threats are also frequently coded with racism and Islamophobia. It makes it possible for white nationalist to masquerade their attacks as part free speech campaign as opposed to confronting the reality of the hate speech they utilize to enact violence.

While free speech is often lauded as one of the main talking points of the right, they remain surprisingly silent when it comes to the rights and liberties of marginalized voices. As long as womens dissent poses a threat to the predominantly white-male dominated GOP, then they will feel the need to retaliate towards any potential threat. This is a status quo that Taylor directly challenges: this system is led by a billionaire president and a Congress composed mostly of white men who are millionaires, Despite the setbacks, the fight against the alt-right and their methods of censorship continue. The brilliant women of the movement will continue to be at the front lines.

***When reached out to for comment Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor stated that they are not doing interviews at this time***

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Alt-Right targets women in attack on free speech - People's World

The Alt-Right Is the Modern, Hideous Face of White Supremacy – AlterNet

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons

Followingthe first part of this series, where the historical origins of modern white supremacy were explored in depth, and asubsequent essaythatexamined the ways white supremacy has influenced mainstream American politics, here are three of the nations foremost scholars on white supremacy, discussing similar issues at length.

Jeffrey Kaplanis associate professor of religion at the University of WisconsinOshkosh. His books include Radical Religion in America: MillenarianMovements From the Far Right to theChildren of Noah; Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture(co-edited with Tore Bjrgo);and The Emergence of a Euro-American Radical Right(with Leonard Weinberg).

George J. Michaelis associate professor in the criminal justice faculty at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. He is the author of Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA; The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right; Willis Carto and the American Far Right; and Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator.

Michael Barkunis professor emeritus of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. His books include A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America; Religion and the Racist Right:The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement; and Chasing Phantoms: Reality, Imagination, and Homeland Security Since 9/11.

1. What is thealt-right?

Is the contemporary alt-right a continuation of late 20th-century American white supremacist movements, or are there new components? Besides the new use of technology, are there ideological elements to the alt-right that we should take notice of? What happened to some of the exotic ideas floating around in the 1980s and 90s, such as occult Nazism and pagan religions? Did they become assimilated into the alt-right, or did those more esoteric veins fade out?

Jeffrey Kaplan:The so-called alt-right seemed to descend from the ether in the fading twilight of the Obama administration. The alt-right quickly seized the stage as the acceptable face of the radical right, which since the violence of the 1980s had been demonized and banished from the American public square. The process is common enough in American extremism. In 1963 the racist fringe was banished from the anti-communist fervor of theJohn Birch Society,just as the 19th-century Know Nothings came to be excluded from the politer society of American nativism. America, after all, is a vast smorgasbord in which individuals, religions and political movements may pick and choose among the tropes on offer.

The alt-right follows this pattern to a T. Picking and choosing from a variety of established conspiratorial, racist and outright paranoid ideas, leavened with a catchy jargon like deep state which is far more PC thanZOGor Zionist Occupation Government, which held primacy in the American radical right since the 1970s the alt-right was tailor-made for the discontented and dispossessed faithful of the far right.

Following British sociologist Colin Campbell in the 1960s, scholars have borrowed the term cultic milieu to describe the process by which oppositional individuals sample ideas, theories and wild suppositions that are the stuff of which movements are born, flourish and, most often, perish in anonymity, completely unknown to the dominant culture. This is the origin of the alt-right, and will most likely be its fate as well.

The occult and esoteric racist movements from the fringes of National Socialism to elements of explicit Satanism still exist in the wilderness of the cultic milieu, but their numbers are much diminished. The peregrinations ofDavid Myattare a case in point. Myatt, who drifted from Buddhist beliefs to National Socialism under the spell ofColin Jordanin Britain, went on to found theOrder of Nine Angles, the most successful racist esoteric organization combining Satanism and National Socialism in the 1980s and 90s. Tiring of the scene and despairing of the quality of the recruits, he took his shahadaand converted to radical Islam in the shadow of 9/11 and 7/7. In this he moved from the most distant fringes of the cultic milieu to a more potent global system of belief. Lately, however, he has taken on the cross, converting to Orthodox Christianity and embracing a message of universal love and reconciliation. Myatt is the cultic milieu personified and living proof that the esoteric white supremacist ideas of the 1980s live on, albeit on life support.

The alt-right is, however, different in significant ways from its predecessors. For one, it is not simply an American made-for-export idea, as was the racialism that American intellectuals marketed internationally in the 19th century as racist anthropology or that which the anti-communist zealots spread with much less success in the 1950s.

Rather, it mixed American nativist tropes with the growing fears of immigration and Islamization that have become acute in the European Union. More remarkable still, it fell easily under the spell of Vladimir Putins Russia, whose hybrid warfare campaign against the West and the world is simply a 21st-century update of the Soviet disinformation campaigns that were calledActive Measuresin the Cold War. Putins Russia now caters to the far right globally, and as the Trump scandals now unfolding in Washington indicate, found in the alt-right perfect rubes who, for a few dollars and a grand delusion of power and global glory, would gladly ignore logic and history in pursuit of a dream of an America relatively untroubled by such putative enemies as Black Lives Matter; immigrants bent on rape, rapine and terrorism; and the dread legions of the politically correct.

George J. Michael:There is some continuity between the alt-right and extreme-right groups from the late 20th century. David Duke, for example, has long been a prominent spokesman of the white nationalist movement. In fact, he in some ways spearheaded a change in the ideological direction away from a supremacist/hate orientation to a more identitarian orientation.

The exotic ideas, including occult Nazism and pagan religions, continue to inform the movement. Mostly, their influence can be found in the forms of iconography informing white nationalist websites and assorted insignia. Norse neo-paganism is often seen as a more suitable religion for white nationalists, insofar as contemporary Christianity is seen as philo-Semitic and pro-multiculturalism.

Michael Barkun:The sudden public emergence of the alt-right during the 2016 presidential campaign raises the question of whether it is simply the continuation of a long-standing white supremacist movement or constitutes a completely new development. That is not an easy question to answer, since the alt-right is not itself a cohesive movement. Rather, it is best understood as a set of groups and individuals that share a family resemblance, knit together by an intense hostility to immigration and a fear that the white population and what the alt-right conceives as Western culture will be submerged in a non-white sea. The alt-right is dominated by white nationalists and contains anti-Semites as well as some neo-Nazis, but also others of a less reprehensible stripe.

The more interesting and disturbing issue is the alt-rights rising visibility. Whatever people mean by the alt-right, it is an element of right-wing extremism that suddenly became a factor in Donald Trumps campaign. Its highly vocal support for Trump was widely covered by the media, the attitude of the campaign toward it was analyzed, and its possible electoral effect was discussed, even though its numbers appeared minuscule and no figure of any political stature was known to be associated with it. That so seemingly marginal a group of political actors should have attracted so much attention is itself odd indeed, in hindsight, now that the campaign is over, it seems stranger still.

Yet the public emergence of the alt-right is on reflection a manifestation of a larger transformation in American culture namely, the gradual penetration of the fringe into the mainstream. This is a development that transcends politics, although it has important political implications. It began in the early 1990s and has thus been underway for about a quarter of a century. Conspicuous examples have appeared in popular culture, includingDan Browns best-selling novels with occult and conspiracist themes, as well as The X-Filestelevision program, and it has been critically accelerated by the internet and such social media as Facebook and Twitter. Without the traditional barriers of editorial gatekeepers, fringe material could now access and command mass audiences. Just as fringe themes could penetrate popular culture, so fringe politics is no longer shut up in segregated subcultures.

We see this, too, in the avid popular consumption of conspiracy theories, and there has been no greater consumer of them than Donald Trump himself. Trump, after all, was the first high-visibility proponent of the Obama birther legend. During the campaign he gave a half-hour interview toAlex Jones, the countrys leading purveyor of conspiracy theories. Trumps constant campaign refrain of immigrant wrongdoing smacks of a plot by foreigners to destroy America.

It is scarcely surprising that against this background the alt-rights appearance acquired a certain quasi-legitimacy, despite its white supremacist credentials. It seemed to be simply a slightly more strident set of outsider anti-immigrant propagandists, in a campaign that already had an outsider candidate.

The role of the alt-right in the 2016 campaign, alongside the broader movement of fringe motifs into the mainstream, suggests a political future that once seemed inconceivable: the potential public re-emergence of a white supremacist organization, something not seen in America since the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. While still unlikely, the 2016 trajectory of the alt-right may prefigure more extreme open white supremacist political forays in the future.

2. The strength and leadership of the white supremacist movement

How strong is white supremacy in this country? Is it getting stronger, is it a declining movement or has it remained stable from when you first began your research? Was the 1990s Patriot movement the heyday of white supremacy? Are there things people label white supremacy that we should more properly put outside that framework? Which white supremacist group(s) do you find most intriguing today from a scholarly viewpoint?

Kaplan:White supremacy, like the poor, will be with us always. It is the nagging voice in even the most racially enlightened among us when they find themselves walking at night in Hyde Park in Chicago or contemplating a trip to Detroit. Once, it was a mainstream idea as many of the most idealistic young American men, fired by the racial threat depicted in D.W. Griffiths The Birth of a Nation, sent their money to the mail-order Klan in exchange for a newsletter, a bizarre lexicon and a copy of the Kloran. With the legislative victories of the civil rights movement and a concerted push from Hollywood, it faded from polite society and the movements that held true to the racist call were banished to the most distant fringes of the cultic milieu.

This is where I found them when I began my research among their number in the late 1980s. They were a battered and demoralized lot.Identity Christiansheld fast to their esoteric interpretations of the Bible; National Socialists treasured their SS-inspired regalia and propitiated the shade of Adolf Hitler as if the Second World War were merely on hiatus; andOdinistsdrank bloats, rode motorcycles and formed prison gangs. ThePatriot movementwas never really among their number. Like the Birch Society of the 1960s, race for them was a distraction from the more important work of decoding the manifold conspiracies which, in the words of the iconic (and African-American!)Last Poets, Keep the people asleep and the truth from being told.

Early in the new millennium, I left the world of participant/observer research into the radical right in search of new and more potent oppositional ideas. None of the white supremacist constellation were intriguing simply because no new ideas, fresh movements or visionary leaders were on the horizon. I would argue, perhaps alone in this forum, that white supremacy as we have known it remains for the moment moribund. What we see today, the red meat of the alt-right and the popular fears that led to the election of Donald Trump, speaks to broader dreads Islamophobia, immigration and the ever-present other rather than an appeal for White Power. Racism is a powerful ingredient in the stew, but it is no more the leitmotif of what we are seeing today than is traditional America First nativism.

Michael:That is really the $64,000 question. It is very difficult to quantify the size of the white nationalist movement in America. There is no viable political party that advocates for its interest, unlike far-right parties in Europe.

The movement seemed to have gone into decline during the 2000s. The movement suffered a number of casualties as several leaders died (e.g.,William L. Pierce,Sam Francis,Richard Girnt ButlerandWillis Carto) and a number of others were arrested and incarcerated (Matt Hale,Chester Doles,Kevin Alfred Strom).

The Patriot movement differed quite a bit from the white nationalist movement over ideology, to wit, on the issue of race. The Patriot movement began a steep decline not long after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (as measured by the number of groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center). However, in recent years, the movement seems to have reinvented itself under the label of preppers and once again is gaining momentum.

The late 1990s seemed to be the heyday for the white nationalist movement in America. The movement had not suffered any major repression from the federal government since theFort Smith sedition trial of 1988. During the 1990s, the movement took advantage of the fledging medium of the internet to get its message out to a larger audience. But after 9/11, the movement experienced quite a few prosecutions from the federal government. Moreover, after 9/11, the American public did not seem receptive to the white nationalist movements message of white racial solidarity. After 9/11, there was an upsurge of American patriotism. Conservative-leaning Americans were not amenable to white separatism; instead, a new form of patriotism gained currency that viewed the country as under attack from anti-democratic, religious extremists in the form of militant Islam. The extreme rights critique of the U.S. governments pro-Israel foreign policy seemed unpatriotic. As a result, the extreme right languished for quite some time during the 2000s.

In recent years, however, issues involving race have gained great salience, including immigration, the ideology of multiculturalism and the prominence of language policing under the rubric of political correctness. The white nationalist movement was well-prepared to provide commentary on these issues. As a result, the movement seems to be gaining relevance once again.

Are there things people label white supremacy that we should more properly put outside that framework? Yes, for example, immigration. People who do not consider themselves to be white nationalists are nevertheless concerned about immigration because of its costs to taxpayers, as well as its impact on employment prospects for native-born Americans, the cost of health care, etc. Furthermore, many ordinary people are rejecting the restrictiveness of political correctness on the discourse in America.

Barkun:The present strength of the white supremacist movement has always been notoriously difficult to measure. The movement I use the word advisedly, as a term of art has always been riven by factionalism, and no group wants to divulge membership numbers except in the most grossly inflated forms. It is fair to say that right-wing extremism probably peaked in the early 1990s, when the Christian Identity movement was still vibrant and before paramilitary organizations had attracted the full attention of the federal government after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1993.

There are clearly still militia groups active, some with apparently aggressive agendas. TheHutaree Militiain the Midwest was one such case, although despite substantial evidence of an impending attack, its principal leaders were acquitted of the most serious charges in a 2012 trial. TheAryan Strikeforceleaders in the mid-Atlantic states were recently indicted before their plans could unfold. However, there is no evidence that these or other recent paramilitary activities have been linked or coordinated.

The conceptual difficulty lies in separating out the white supremacist element from other beliefs that are often associated with it. For example, virtually everyone on the extreme right is a conspiracist, buying into ideas about what is termed the New World Order the belief that there is an overarching conspiracy seeking to establish a global dictatorship. There are numerous variations on this theme: religious and secular, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Masonic, anti-capitalist and so on. In some versions of the New World Order, there is also the claim that the aim of the conspirators is to enslave or destroy the white race. Some conspiracists, in other words, are racial supremacists, and some are not.

The same is true of another frequently overlapping theme, anti-immigration. As has been true during other periods when anti-immigrant sentiment has been strong the 1890s, for example, or the 1920s it can be more or less racist. Not everyone seeking to limit or even ban immigration is a white supremacist, although some are. The mere presence of opposition to immigration is not, without further inquiry, evidence of white supremacist beliefs.

In light of the increasing migration of fringe themes into the mainstream, mentioned above, the real danger is that forms of white supremacism will insinuate themselves into mainstream American culture. There have already been attempts to do this in the South in the form of the so-called neo-Confederate movement, with its disingenuous claim that it is simply celebrating history and heritage. Something similar may appear elsewhere using such labels as Western civilization, Christian civilization or even Judeo-Christian civilization. Thus white supremacy may begin using code words that seem on the surface to be innocuous or even positive but in the eyes of the knowing are read through a racist lens.

3. The leadership of the white supremacist movement

The founders of most of the leading white supremacist organizations have died in the last decade or two: William L. Pierce,Ben Klassen, Richard Girnt Butler, Willis Carto and others. Who are the new leaders we should know about? Is there a difference in leadership style between the deceased older generation and the newer generation? Is there a leadership vacuum? If leaderless resistance was the reigning philosophy in the 1990s, are we still operating under that or have we moved on to other forms of organization?

Kaplan:The leaders of the white supremacist organizations of the 1980s have passed from the scene. Their dysfunctional compounds likeAryan Nationsor theCovenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord(CSA) are gone too, victims of civil suits, government suppression or simple ennui. The mail-order faiths, KlassensCreativityor PiercesCosmotheism, are down to a small handful of true believers. Battle-scarred remnants of the time, such as National SocialistHarold Covington, struggle to adapt to new times with ideas like his idyllicNorthwest migration initiativeseeking a white homeland in America and really quite good apocalyptic literature in his Northwest Trilogy Hill of the Ravens(2003), A Distant Thunder(2004), A Mighty Fortress(2005) as well as The Brigade(2007).

What remains is more potent overseas than in the United States. White power music, pioneered in the late 1970s byIan Stuart DonaldsonsSkrewdriver, flourishes throughout the world, including such decidedly non-Aryan redoubts as Jakarta. The skinhead movement is perhaps stronger than ever, especially where it benefits from a measure of government support and protection in places like Russia.

Evolutionary change is most dynamic outside the confines of white supremacy. In Europe a new generation of leaders has emerged to mainstream formerly explicitly National Socialist, racist or primitively nativist political parties. Groups like theSweden Democrats, theTrue Finnsor the FrenchNational Fronthave gone from the wilderness to contenders for power, just as the alt-right has emerged in the U.S. But none are explicitly white supremacist, even as they borrow heavily from traditional white supremacist ideas.

Like the leaders of the far right, the humble leaderless resistance idea has given way to a more dynamic successor in lone-wolf attacks. Leaderless resistance as posited originally by Texas KlansmanLouis Beamwas an expression of helplessness and despair. It was the equivalent of tilting at windmills, which succeeded primarily in the incarceration of a generation of skinheads, would-bePhineas Priests, bikers and simple sociopaths. While William L. Pierce could lionize serial killerJoseph Paul Franklinfrom the safe remove of anom de guerrein his novel Hunter, the current generation of lone wolves serve terrorist groups who are more than the state of mind organizations of the white supremacist world, enjoying considerable material and other support in the process.

It is a new day in the world of self-propelled violence. There are successes on occasion abroad.Anders Breivikcertainly comes to mind. But in America?

Michael:In my estimation, the most important leader isMatthew Heimbach, the leader of theTraditionalist Youth Network. He first gained notoriety in 2012, when he founded a White Student Union at Towson University in Maryland. Although he is only in his mid-20s, he is already an accomplished orator. He is also a very effective interlocutor when he gives interviews to the media. He evinces the hallmarks of what Eric Hoffer once called the True Believer. Heimbach does not flinch from street activism, despite the strident opposition he faces from various antifa counterprotesters. Furthermore, he advances a leftish white nationalist ideology which could potentially resonate with many disaffected young people. Finally, he has established ties with like-minded activists overseas includingAlexander Duginfrom Russia which gives his organization the semblance of an international movement. He reaches out to separatists from all racial and ethnic groups. At the present time, this might all seem inconsequential, but separatism seems to slowly be creeping into the national discourse, as evidenced by the push for Calexit.

Barkun:The first and even the second generation of white supremacist leadership has now virtually all died out, figures like William L. Pierce of the National Alliance and Richard Girnt Butler of the Aryan Nations. Not surprisingly, their organizations, small to begin with, collapsed shortly after their deaths. Neither they nor others in their cohort were succeeded by figures of comparable strength. OnlyDavid Dukeremains, a strange relic of the past. Even in white supremacys heyday, none of its leaders could command more than small followings. Like the extreme left, those at the other end of the ideological spectrum often spent as much time fighting one another as combating their supposed enemies. Small points of ideology and tactics counted heavily in these duels. Those who had dreams of uniting racialists under a single banner quickly learned that such ambitions were destined to founder.

At the moment, three figures seem of more than passing importance, although given the movements history, they may pass quickly into obscurity:Richard B. Spencerof theNational Policy Institute, prominent on the alt-right; Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Youth Network; and Andrew Anglin of the onlineDaily Stormerwebsite. But there is no reason to believe that they will drive the white supremacist right over the longer term.

It is easy to concentrate on organizations, websites and the people associated with them, because they are visible and easy to identify. However, the danger of violence by individuals acting alone so-called lone wolf attacks remains and, in my view, is far more serious than the threat posed by organizations. The danger is high precisely because, absent unusually good intelligence, they normally become known only after the fact, as in the infamous 2011 attacks in Norway by Anders Breivik.

In that connection, attention needs to be paid to those known as sovereign citizens, who are potential lone wolves. Sovereign citizens do not constitute a movement. Rather, they represent a stream of anti-government thought and activity, built around the belief that traditional conceptions of American citizenship, law and institutions are invalid and that, consequently, no individual has any obligation to obey the law. This idea is based on a radically variant reading of the Constitution and the common law that makes each person, in effect, a law unto him- or herself. While the sovereign citizen idea is not in itself based on white supremacy, the two overlap. Some sovereign citizens have also been white supremacists, and the very nature of sovereign citizen thought deprives civil rights protections of any legitimacy. It follows, too, that the failure of sovereign citizens to accept any legal obligations inevitably involves them in conflicts with the government and, not infrequently, in violent and sometimes deadly incidents.

Next week: How do we deal with organized white supremacy? What do we get wrong about it?

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The Alt-Right Is the Modern, Hideous Face of White Supremacy - AlterNet

The Alt-Right Thinks ‘Wolfenstein: The New Colossus’ Is Racist to White People – Motherboard


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The Alt-Right Thinks 'Wolfenstein: The New Colossus' Is Racist to White People
Motherboard
Sunday night at a pre-E3 press conference Bethesda Softworks unveiled its lineup of new games, including Wolfenstein: the New Colossus, which builds on the gaming industry's decades-long tradition of making first-person shooters in which the player ...
'Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus' called anti-white by alt-right because KKK and Nazis are villainsMic
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How Rachel Bloom’s Bill Nye Gig Led to Alt-Right Death Threats – Vanity Fair

Courtesy of Netflix.

Rachel Bloom has long been a bleeding-heart liberal theater geek. Need proof? Aside from the plethora of progressive issues broken down on her musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, her HOLY SH*T (You've Got to Vote) Funny or Die spot from November 2016 called our then soon-to-be president an orange talking S.T.D., a garbage fire, and human syphilis, just to name a few.

Politics is a tricky thing because I dont want to preach to the choir, Bloom told Vanity Fair outside Radio City Music Hall before the 71st annual Tony Awards on Sunday. That Trump video was very much meant for the choir, and it was meant to kick the asses of the people who were already in the choir but too lazy to stand up and join the choir.

With beyond-the-choir viewers in mind, the 30-year-old Golden Globe winner is wary about doing something so politically on-the-nose again.

It takes a lot if youre actually going to make a video to try to convince people to your way of thinking, and were so polarized, she said. The other side right now, we think theyre horrible, and they think were horrible. No one wants to be the bad guy; everyone thinks theyre the good guy. I think part of any sort of healing is to stop being so angry at each otherand the amount of anger is insane.

Bloom knows that anger firsthand. Though her bubbly turn as last nights Tony Awards pinch hitter host backstage has Broadway lovers calling for Bloom to host the whole shebang next year, the pre-show red carpet had her getting emotional for things other than theater.

Ive been on the receiving end of this hatred, she said, recalling a recent musical number she did for Bill Nyes highly anticipated Netflix return, Bill Nye Saves the World, that spurred the most barbarous online harassment she experienced since her 2015 breakout. The song? My Sex Junk, a number from Episode 109 of the science series meant to humorously highlight how gender is non-binary.

While she didnt write that 2.5-minute tune, Bloom agreed to do it as a big fan of Bill Nye. I was happy with it. It was just a silly song . . . and, honestly, [I] forgot that I did it, and then it came out on Netflix, and I got eviscerated, she said. I got eviscerated by the alt-right. And its something no one else around me noticed because it was only stuff directed to me on Twitter. But it was, like, Kill yourself. It was death threats. Someone found my mothers Facebook and wrote about [the content of] her Facebook. They found a letter that my father wrote to the local newspaper in 1997 [and called] him an unfit father.

Bloom now cites the backlash as a wake-up call to the level of anger and depression that much of the country feels, but it still hit her hard.

It was crazy how out of control it felt, she said. I think up until then, I had been in sort of a liberal theater-kid bubble, and it really affected me. I mean, its hard to go on your Twitter and have hundreds of people tell you that you should kill yourself. Its fucking hard.

Despite the online vitriol, Bloom was quick to acknowledge an understanding of perspectives different from her ownjust as she hopes she and her colleagues continued work in Hollywood will enlighten others to theirs.

I think that part of what the other side is reacting to is the sudden swell of awareness that weve had in the past couple years of how far we have to go as far as representation, as far as the way women are treated, as far as the way people of color are treated, L.G.B.T. people are treated. And I think that people are freaking out because its so much change so quickly, she said. The way that you counterbalance it is to keep showing the stories and the point of views of people that we have not seen before. Yes, the casting process is a big part of inclusion, but it starts at the bottom.

That means allotting entry-level positions to people of varying socioeconomic backgrounds and tapping talent for writers rooms that reflect the characters on-screen. Bloom, for one, has a majority female team of writers for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and a Filipino writer to chart love interest Josh Chans arc. Thats how you tell these stories: You get people knowledgeable about [them], she said.

And when it comes to more prospective clashes online with the alt-right, Bloom had a better idea of how they should spend their time. At the end of the day, we were all, like, forced into existence on this planet. Lets just work together and hug each other and get pancakes.

Wearing Rodarte.

Wearing Chris Gelinas and Fred Leighton jewelry.

Wearing Pamella Roland.

Wearing Michael Kors Collection.

Wearing Fred Leighton jewelry.

Wearing Prabal Gurung.

Wearing Voutsa.

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Wearing Rodarte.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Chris Gelinas and Fred Leighton jewelry.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Pamella Roland.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Michael Kors Collection.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Vivienne Westwood and Fred Leighton jewelry.

By Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic.

Wearing Fred Leighton jewelry.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Derek Lam.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Sally LaPointe.

By Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic.

Wearing Rosie Assoulin and Fred Leighton jewelry.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Fred Leighton jewelry.

By Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic.

Wearing Prabal Gurung.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

Wearing Voutsa.

By Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images.

See the article here:
How Rachel Bloom's Bill Nye Gig Led to Alt-Right Death Threats - Vanity Fair