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Jack Donovan a 42-year-old skinhead icon and right-wing extremist lived the gay life once. It was in the 1990s, after he left his parents blue-collar home in rural Pennsylvania to study fine art in New York, when he danced go-go in gay clubs hung out with drag queens and marched for gay pride. But then he dropped out, learned how to use tools and work as a manual laborer, studied MMA, and decided he wasnt gay just an unrepentant masculinist.

I am not gay because the word gay connotes so much more than same-sex desire, Donovan announced, under a pseudonym, on the first page of 2006s Androphilia: A Manifesto: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Reclaiming Masculinity (echoing, probably unintentionally, the speech Tony Kushner wrote for Roy Cohn in Angels in America). The word gay describes a whole cultural and political movement that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics. He appropriated a new term, androphile, to describe a man whose love of masculinity includes sex with other men.

Gay men are remarkably prominent if not exactly abundant in the alt-right universe. Take the infamous Milo Yiannopoulos, who powered a meteoric rise and fall on the sheer cognitive dissonance between his flamboyant self-presentation and callous politics. (When Out magazine profiled Milo, the storys writer Chadwick Moore came out as a conservative.) Or artist turned reporter Lucian Wintrich, who joined the White House press corps when Trump-cheering blog Gateway Pundit (edited by a gay man) received its first credential. But even those men seem relatively mainstream when you compare them with Donovan, who has contributed to dapper white nationalist (and friend) Richard Spencers journal, advocates for a form of anarcho-fascism, and founded a chapter of a masculinist tribe called the Wolves of Vinland, which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group. (One member recently served time for burning down a historically black church.) Which makes sense when he shows me photos from their neopagan fight-club rituals, which sometimes involve nooses.

To hear Donovan tell it, his sexuality is a nonissue. Its a point echoed by several of his peers, who dont see their political views and sexual identities as contradictory but complementary. Masculinity is a religion, and I see potential for androphiles to become its priests, Donovan wrote in Androphilia, to devote themselves to it in a way that men who understand their manliness through women in quantifying the number theyve slept with or measuring mens rights against womens rights cant. And so androphiles like Donovan have found common ground with the gender-traditionalists and male-advocacy groups elsewhere in the messy carnival of the new right, where reactions to women range from outright hostility to benign disinterest.

And theyre not interested in queer solidarity, either. Apart from Camille Paglia, of course, I cant think of any interesting lesbians, gay white nationalist James OMeara told me in an interview. Or as Donovan said, I think most of them are so married to feminism that I dont think thats even an option. To say nothing of trans issues, which most gay alt-righters rejected (I know three transgender people in our movement, Counter-Currents editor Greg Johnson offered, before arguing against the designation. White nationalism should be straight but not narrow, he said, inadvertently repeating a slogan popularized by an anti-bullying LGBT nonprofit.) Donovan sees himself as a member of the earliest generation of gay men who could be free to ditch the victim mentality of queer politics. In Androphilia, he praises activists who fought to decriminalize gay sex and to combat institutional indifference to AIDS It would be remiss not to credit the Gay Rights Movement for fighting against this sort of oppression, intolerance, and intentional negligence, he writes, but having achieved relative tolerance for same-sex-oriented people in mainstream culture, and having brought an end to police harassment and widespread discrimination, the Gay Rights Movement has turned to nitpicking. He isnt against identity politics. Hes loud and proud about his race and his gender traits that, unlike his sexuality, do not make him a minority. Ten out of ten minorities agree that being a minority can really blow, he explains in Mighty White, an essay defending white nationalism in those who fear losing, or in some contexts have already lost, majority racial status.

Donovan whose partner of 20 years is a Trump supporter of Mexican descent supports white nationalists, but denies belonging in their ranks. I just think thats a silly goal, he says of the so-called white ethnostate. Whiteness, he points out, is an American approximation of nationality, which doesnt make as much sense as, say, German nationalism which he became familiar with when he delivered a speech praising masculine violence at a far-right German nationalist convention near Leipzig in February. Violence is a component of Donovans gang theory of masculinity, an idea he became so enamored of that he felt he could not actualize as a man until he had a gang of his own. Enter the Wolves of Vinland, a club started near Lynchburg, Virginia, by brothers Paul and Matthias Waggener, a pair of avid bodybuilders who love blackmetal bands (a.k.a. National Socialist Black Metal bands). The sons of an Orthodox priest, the Waggeners have said in interviews that they experimented with drugs, satanism, and gangster shit before discovering neopaganism, also known as heathenism, which became the foundation of their club.

The rest of the Wolves are not homos, and we dont consider ourselves a white-nationalist or alt-right group, Donovan clarifies by email. White nationalists and the alt-right do, however, seem to consider them kin, judging by the frequency of pro-Vinland programming in white-nationalist and alt-right media. One thing those groups share is an intellectual foundation of gender and race essentialism: Our women are females, theyre females, and our males are masculine, and we dont look for sameness between sexes, Paul Waggener told Greg Johnson in an interview. To be masculine, a man doesnt need to have sex with women although he should probably be stronger than women, and hold his own in brawls, and have tactical skills, and provide. And he should be brave, which is why Donovan gets so irritated when hes accused of homophobia. Thats a construction. Thats a silencing word and its meant to emasculate, he says. When you say someones phobic, youre saying that theyre afraid. Thats why they call men phobic constantly theyre transphobic, theyre homophobic, theyre afraid of women. Political correctness is just a way of calling a man a coward. (When it comes to language, Jack is more sensitive about ideology than sexuality. He still doesnt like the word gay but occasionally uses it for conversational expediency and punch lines about being gay with his boyfriend about their new pet dog.)

Who feels fear, and why, and whether their fear is rational, seems to be at the heart of the mainstreams tension with the alt-right. If a man gives a speech called Violence Is Golden, is that scary? What if his audience includes white nationalists? And if hes gay, does that change, well, anything? Not really, says historian Jim Downs, author of Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation. If you look at every movement, youre going to find these moments of unexpected orientations and identities that seem anomalous within a movement. But if enough people join a club, inevitably, some wont be straight. There were gay Nazis, Downs points out. But follow where the story leads you: They get massacred. What seems safe at one moment can be taboo a moment later, and traits that are liabilities in one context can be elsewhere. As recently as 2004, Republicans bragged about opposing gay rights to rally the base, while supporters like John Kerry avoided the topic. Today, longstanding opponents of gay rights are the ones who avoid the question or set aside long-held beliefs in the name of pragmatism.

I think gays can be particularly useful to the alt-right, Alternative Right editor Colin Liddell told me. Our movement is a revolutionary and taboo-busting movement, and gays have the right psychological equipment for that. And, because of their lack of immediate family, gays often have a stronger feeling for their wider family. The left has successfully displaced this sentiment to the fake gay community or to leftist causes in general, but the true wider family for gays is their particular tribal or ethnic group.

Donovan seems to be living proof of that theory but not, perhaps, by choice. When I ask if hed like to have children, he replies, If I did, it would be with a woman. Hes jealous of the multigenerational experience that straight couples can have just by fucking. Their DNA becomes entwined, playing out together for generations, even after theyre dead. The tribe lives on. Ive been really lucky, he continues. The guy Im with, hes my family. We just got a dog together, and were being gay for the dog. He laughs. Im very lucky and, I think, very unusual in that sense. I think a lot of homosexual men end up being alone. I think its very unstable and very lonely. Its not something thats like if I met a young man who would say, Hey, you know, Im questioning, Id say, Dont. I would advise them, unless there is no other way, I would say, If you have the choice between men and women, be straight.

*A version of this article appears in the May 1, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

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Is golfing a date? Okay.

You ever notice Betsy DeVos and a duffle bag of orphans bones are never seen in the same room together? Makes you think.

She shared her tale with The Hollywood Reporter.

So awkward.

Thats a lot of look.

Invalid Date, New York Media LLC.

See original here:
The Philosophical Fascists of the Gay Alt-Right - New York Magazine

This article first appeared on the Washington Spectator site.

A friend writes, For basically the past six months or so Ive been trying to tell my lefty friends in so many words, Hey, there are a bunch of people on the Internet who are waiting for someone to tell them its okay to start shooting at you.

He became concerned when a thread at the non-political firearms-enthusiasts website he regularly follows became filled with comments in all caps referring to liberals as enemies who must be shot.

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Developments both online and off following Donald Trumps election have caused me to share his concern.

In December, an author at the biggest and most explicitly non-political gun site, the Firearms Blog (its tagline is Firearms, not politics), recounted his experience with an outfit that offers tactical training based on the methods of the Israel Defense Forces. The moderator soon had to begin deleting comments.

One that remains protested, as if through the millennia, hundreds of nations, principalities and city-states reached the same conclusions, and urged the curious to check out Judaism.is/genocide.html where one can watch the film Jewish Ritual Murder Revisited: The Hidden Cult.

Four days after Donald Trumps inauguration, a community member on a moderate firearms law site, PAGunBlog, a civil redoubt welcoming active participation by both firearms enthusiasts and people who hate them, described his shock from that mornings web-surf when

a long-time commenter who I recognized as right-leaning but mostly moderate commented that The Jews own and control everything in America Not many months ago no one except a flaming neo-Nazi would have dreamed of expressing such an opinion, but today it seems to have become an acceptable element of our discourse. I noticed that no one replied to or castigated the comment.

Then came February 1 in Berkeley and things really started getting scary.

The saga of what happened when Milo Yiannopoulos came to speak at the flagship campus of the University of California has since become foundational, not just with the alt-right but with quite nearly the entire right.

Trump supporters face off with protesters at a 'Patriots Day' rally on April 15, 2017 in Berkeley, California. Rick Perlstein writes that The Battle of Berkeley accelerated the construction of a body of mythology: the left has escalated its resistance to Trump into literal war, so Trump supporters must be prepared to resort to violence to oppose it. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty

Alt-right provocateur Yiannopoulos was turned back by violent protests, which culminated in the burning of a portable generator. Stuffed down the wingnut memory hole are the events that preceded the mle. The violence was, in fact, preceded by peaceful protests by approximately 1,500 Berkeley students, until they were waylaid by a tiny handful of off-campus Black Bloc and antifa, or anti-fascist, cadres who believe racist speech licenses violent resistance.

It was also preceded, less than two weeks earlier, by the shooting of a Milo protester in Seattle, by a gunman who has yet to be charged with any crime.

The Battle of Berkeley accelerated the construction of a body of mythology: the left has escalated its resistance to Trump into literal war, so Trump supporters must be prepared to resort to violence to oppose it.

How afraid of this should you be?

The most interesting answers to that question do not come from the left. They come from concerned voices on the right, whove been monitoring the chatter with mounting alarm, going public with pleas to liberals to still the antifa renegades before bodies begin piling up.

The most convincing evidence that they have a point comes in the ensuing comment threads, where the need to prepare for armed force is taken as gospel.

The proprietor of Being Libertarian, a Facebook community with 438,888 likes, wrote of Berkeley, This was a riot, and urged liberals to BE LOUD and renounce the rioters: Conservatives are going to have a field day with this. If you just sit there quietly, youre essentially letting yourself be associated with campus-pillaging barbarians. He added, You should consider yourself lucky nobody shot you.

Clearly, this man knows his audience. The comment, When someone has set your car on fire and is chasing you around with a blunt object, you get to make an executive decision regarding your continued existence, got 1,403 likes.

The conviction that this would be acting in self-defense was affirmed by the man who wrote, these riots that have been occurring are what got my ass in gear to get the final steps of my pistol permit application completed. My unrestricted carry permit cant come soon enough.

Someone reminded him a gun license is not a license to kill. His response: Yes Im aware. I just refuse to end up a helpless victim when crazy shit like this goes down.

Oleg Volk is an advertising professional and Second Amendment activist based in Nashville. He wrote on a Facebook wall about the Berkeley events: Rioting? Thats how you get Freikorps reenacting the demise of the Bavarian Republic with full approval of the majority of the population.

The Freikorps were volunteer paramilitaries set up by German World War I veterans that violently put down Communist uprisings, piling up bodies by the thousands; the movement officially came to a close in 1933 when Freikorps leaders surrendered their battle flags in loyalty to the Nazi command.

Volk made it clear that he was opposed to such escalation. Commenters responding to his post were not. Trying to decide if I will be unhappy or happy to don Freikorps attire. Then what to bring to the party, said one.

Others discussed appropriate armamentsIll see your 308 and raise you a 45-70 [sic]until one Richard Carter trumped them all: See you all that crap 50 bmg. He was referring the .50-caliber Browning machine gun, a weapon useful for downing low-flying aircraft. After all, another commenter observed, The Brownshirts are all liberals now.

Another commenter offered a Side note: Ever notice they dont try that shit somewhere like Texas or Florida, where the odds are good that Joe Public will ventilate their asses when assaulted. As it happened, one month later events provided a natural experiment to prove or disprove his hypothesis.

March 4 was national March 4 Trump Day. It was also Confederate Flag Day though whether coincidence or not is always a difficult question to answer in Trumpland, where what the presidents respectable partisans would prefer to keep hidden in the basement is only a dog whistle away.

A prelude to the March 4 Trump events played out on February 19, when a complement from the III% Security Force armed with rifles stood guard over a pro-Trump rally in Atlantas Centennial Olympic Park.

The next day, National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre went online with a video advertising his appearance at the following weeks Conservative Political Action Conference. The video opened with the words THEY COULDNT HANDLE IT, interposed with clips of Michael Moore calling Donald Trump a fascist and Nancy Pelosi intoning white supremacist, then the words, SO THEY STARTED A WAR, AGITATION, INSURRECTION, and ANARCHY.

All this was interspersed with chaotic images of fire, vandalism, and Madonna at the Womens March explaining, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House. Thereupon LaPierre pledged the NRA would be the spearhead of the counter-resistance: On Friday, February 24, we fight back.

Then in Austin on March 4, a blogger who calls himself Morgoth, after the J.R.R. Tolkien character often interpreted as a stand-in for Satan, filed a dispatch from the pro-Trump rally at Wooldridge Park, sprinkled with pictures of dudes with signs like the one featuring the alt-right iconic image of Pepe in a pilot outfit with the legend FREE HELICOPTER RIDES and the silhouette of a woman falling from the sky.

The only contribution we received from the Republican Party was some Trump Pence and MAGA signs, he boasted. Quite unlike the AstroTurf leftist protests where professional agitators are organized, bused in and often paid by shadowy group funded for George Soros or the Democratic Party[ sic ].

Morgoth was impressed with organizers doing

everything possible to dispel the notion that Trump or his supporters are in any way racist. After all, speakers at the event included a black woman . . . and a Mexican woman who had just obtained U.S. citizenship. Amusingly, the Mexican ladys speech was largely drowned out by long and raucous chants of build the wall, build the wall!

Morgoth estimated the alt-right contingent at 10 to 20 percent of the crowd. He celebrated their chants, including Free helicopter rides for commies and One people, one nation, one leader. He reported, The Alt Right were well turned out, many wearing shirts and ties, well groomed, well informed, physically fit and well versed in their arguments. They stood in stark contrast to the weak degenerates of Antifa . . .

He said the whole thing made him feel as glorious as when he participated in an Orange Walk those marches where Ulster unionists would parade menacingly through Catholic neighborhoods to celebrate the 1690 defeat of Irish Catholics. He thrilled to what he claimed was evidence that even mainstream conservatives were moving toward us.

He also confirmed the accounts of about a dozen anti-Trump protesters that one of them, Austin radical journalist Kit OConnell, received a concussion when he was smashed against a post by a former Marine after touching his flag.

OConnell was arrested and charged with a crime. The attacker was not.

OConnells assailant, wearing an American-flag windbreaker, carrying an American flag and sporting two small American flags in his MAGA cap, can be heard in a video boasting,

He was so light, I thought he was a girl. But I hit him against the pole, and I felt sorry for him so I stopped. . . How do you justify attacking somebody with an American flag? . . .They went after my flag.

Morgoths blog post in praise of this fine patriot featured a screen grab of OConnells Facebook message. Morgoths comment:

Here is a post of the glass jawed communist made on Facebook the next day showing him still in this hospital bed whining about his treatment at the hands of the fascist police state. Youd need a heart of stone not to laugh. . . . Antifa pussy, straight from central casting.

The screen grab contained the name of the hospital, should any local neo-Nazilike the fellow who recently charged into an Austin anarchist bookstore and threatened to burn them outwish to visit him.

When I reached OConnell by phone, he told me, Theres a real feel in the Austin left, especially the far-left, that this counter-resistance is becoming frighteningly organized.

And why not? They believe theyre only fighting back.

A Morgoth commenter who calls himself Gentleman Jim Crow praised the virile young Alt-Rights clashing with clapped out retrograde commies. The future belongs to us. Another commenter responded to that, They will still escalate. Morgoth himself wrote,

While looking for footage of the Austin march to accompany this post I came across this footage of the violence at the March 4 Trump in Berkeley, California. . . the Trump supporters seem to be more physically capable, but the weaker leftists are prepared to up the ante by introducing cowardly devices like tasers and pepper spray.

Students of fascism will recognize the fantastical confusion of tropes: the enemy as a terrifying horde, raising the stakes ruthlessly beyond all civil bounds, but also the enemy as pitiful (glass jawed) weaklingssometimes both within the same utterance. Such language is how students of fascism know that they are in its presence.

Ive seen the Berkeley footage Morgoth is referring to. Thats how I made the acquaintance of Based Stickman.

Berkeleys March 4 Trump was organized by a man named Richard Black, who announced that members of the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists were banned.

Among those who did not get the memo were Moshe Daniel, who goes by the nickname Kilt Man. Daniel depicts himself on Facebook with a giant serrated knife and a T-shirt featuring the face of the late Chilean fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet, the legend PHYSICAL REMOVAL, and another of those silhouettes of people being dropped from helicoptersa Pinochet-favored method for dealing with dissenters.

The march turned into a small riot, as gun-rights blogger Bob Owens, one of the most widely read on the web, and a cool and clear-thinking moderate, described it after reviewing the available documentation. Both sides came to this incident prepared for a fight, he wrote, concluding it was impossible to see who threw the first punch.

In my mind, however, there were at least two moments where the person who threw the first punch was starkly evident. In both cases it was an individual who wore all black, from boots to baseball cap, and carried a distinctive black shield emblazoned with a V for victory, and an American flag.

The man in black also wore a gas mask, surely in response to a widely disseminated urban legend that antifas are routinely attacking protesters with pepper spray. In one video he whacks a downed anti-Trump protester with the long wooden stick he carries (with two tiny American flags attached, thus he can call it a flagpole). In another, he can be seen smashing his stick down so hard on an unarmed protesters head that the stick breaks in half.

Hes since become a right-wing folk hero, and, after Berkeley police arrested him on several felony charges, naturally, a right-wing martyr.

Morgoth declared an image of Based Stickman in his getup to be his picture of the week. Wrote the proprietor of a blog called Ride the Bomb!, who calls his hero Captain America:

For those who are not aware, the Antifa jerks have been bringing flags to violent protests so that they can use the flag poles to beat Trump supporters over the head. This gentlemans flagpole was a great FU to all of them. My personal favorite video . . . shows Captain America breaking his flagpole over the head of an Antifa member. . . .

Let us hope now he understands that it was foolish to think that a beta male Liberal wussy boy like him who has never been in a fair fight in his life could brawl with men. I believe that going forward Captain America will serve as in [sic] inspiration for us all. More than anyone else he will be remembered as the symbol of the turning point represented by the Berkeley March 4 Trump.

Based Stickmans real name is Kyle Chapman of Daly City, California. On Facebook, he can be seen dipping bullets into bacon, apparently for use against Muslims. His favorite books include March of the Titans: A History of the White Race . He likes the Nordic-Germanic Front, Nordic Beauty, Soldiers of Odin USA and RT.

He also has a long criminal history, including felony convictions for charges that include robbery and grand theft.

Following a crowdfunding campaign to aid with his bail and defense, he wrote,

The outpouring of support has nearly brought me to tears. I do not consider myself a hero. Im a patriot that loves freedom and my fellow countrymen. I have long embraced my inner warrior as many of the warrior patriots that have fought along side me. Could not have done it without them.

The decadence of the West has made us soft. We must reverse this if our republic is to survive. Let 3.4.17 be the beginning of a new revolution.

Among those who have joined the crowdfunding crusade is Richard Black, the organizer of March 4 Trump, who had banned white nationalists and the alt-right.

Bob Owenss post about the March 4 Trump in Berkeley is entitled Can Trump Supporters Legally Shoot Left-wing Antifa Attackers? He wrote it in response to a Tweet directed to him, noting a moment where three antifas got in three light kicks at a downed Trump supporter, asking, Looks like lethal self-defense could be justified. Opinions?

Owens assured his readers this was indubitably not so. He reviewed Californias statute on the use of deadly force, which requires a shooter to reasonably believe he or she was in imminent danger of being killed or suffering great bodily injury, then to use no more force than was reasonably necessary to defend against that danger, and that belief in future harm is not sufficient, no matter how greatly or how likely the harm is believed to be.

He concluded, Both sides acted childishly and violently, but there was no violence that came close to justifying the use of firearms to stop a deadly force attack, Introducing firearms, he wrote, would have been frankly stupid, as youre much more likely to hit innocent bystanders downrange than you are likely to hit the person youre shooting at in such dense crowds.

To which his commenters replied: to hell with that, were shooting anyway. Theyre not ashamed. They use their real names, and sometimes list their hometown; and, in one case (a firefighter in a small Florida town), their employment, which I confirmed. Then, they say things like this:

[W]hen the law says you must die why would you care about the law.

Its far better to be judged by 12, than carried by 6.

If you physically attack someone you can legally be shot. Doesnt matter what Kool Aid you drink.

[I]f a person, or persons, are a threat to you or someone else . . . Act accordingly to protect life. Everything else, including the targets well being, is a by product that is not my concern.

If deadly force isnt reasonable then why do the cops show up armed???

And last but not least: But lets face it legalities put aside, killing these ANTIFA douches would probably make America a better place.

Just chest-thumping boasts? My friend, a liberal and a Second Amendment advocate, isnt sure what to think. He hopes they have jobs and mortgages and kids and so on . . . They have way too much to lose to start shooting at anybody.

But then theres another part of me that knows how men (and theyre mostly men) of this type are. When you have that much invested in some hardware, and they do have a lot invested as a percentage of income, then you want to use it.

Maybe its all just idle Internet chatter.

But didnt they used to say that about Munich beer halls once, too?

Rick Perlstein is The Washington Spectator s national correspondent.

See the article here:
Rick Perlstein: The Alt-Right Is Gunning for Anti-Trump Protesters - Newsweek

The University of Washington, one of the United States top educational institutions, has been in the news recently for reasons other than academic success. In January, a protester was shot in the stomach outside an on-campus event for a featuredalt-right guest speaker, MiloYiannopoulos.

Now, while the national conversation focuses on the free speech rights of right-wing speakers, some are concluding the school is incapable of providing a safe and welcoming environment to those the undocumented, the non-white, and anyone on the left who are so often the targets of right-wing speech.

Over 44,700 students attended UW in 2015, of which 43.3 percent identify as white, 27.6 percent as Asian, 7.1 percent as Latino, and 3.5 percent as African-American. That makes the school significantly more diverse than Washington state as a whole, where whites make up more than 80 percent of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The diverse student population doesnt exist in a vacuum, however.

According to the schools Bias Incident Advisory Committee, there have been two significant upticks in reported bias incidents since November 2016. The first occurred immediately after the U.S. presidential election, it said in a March 1 report, and the second occurred after the presidential inauguration.

The day of the inauguration is when UW College Republicansplanned to have Yiannopoulous, a figurehead of the alt-right movementwho created a whites-only college scholarship, speak on campus. The invitation itself was controversial: thousands signed a petition calling on UW President Ana Mari Cauce to cancel the talk, citing a school policy against discriminatory harassment and concerns Milo was inciting his followers to engage in similar acts of harassment.

@amcauce As an alum dismayed to see UW giving Milo Yiannopoulos platform to speak & legitimacy. Also, nazi group flyers now seen on campus.

On the day of Yiannopoulous's appearance,those fears were borne out, with a Milo supporter shooting a left-wing protester in the stomach. On April 24, the confessed shooter, Elizabeth Hokoana, was charged with first-degree assault; her husband Marc, described as a former UW student, was charged with third-degree assault for pepper-spraying protesters prior to the incident, their lawyer claiming they acted in self-defense amid a scuffle outside the talk.

As the Seattle Times reported, Senior Deputy Prosecutor Mary Barbosa said the shooting,was not an impulsive act done in a moment of fear, and that Facebook messages revealed that the couple was prepared to start cracking skulls hours before the talk began.

Immediately after the incident, UW College Republicans issued a statement that called the protesters pseudo-terrorists; the statement did not mention the shooting.

That episode, critics say, should have sparked a change in how UW addresses the far right. Extremist rhetoric isnt just free speech, in their view, but incitement with potentially lethal consequences.

One student had already been giving them trouble, disrupting class discussions on racism and refusing to work with international students. The instructor alleged that the student also made comments suggesting they would like to violently repress left-wing activists on campus.

I was terrified because [the student] was already exhibiting behaviors suggesting paranoia, the instructor said. It sounded like they were escalating, or radicalizing.

On Feb. 1, the instructor called UWPD to report their concerns, for which they were allegedly reprimanded by the interim head of the English Department. Rather than remove the student, the school recommended cautious normalcy andthe instructor was told totry to reach the student pedagogically.

Re: mood on campus: @UW Pres. Cauce says Nazi posters showing up on campus and says dreamers are really anxious. #civiccocktail

The interim chair of UWs English Department at the time, Anis Bawarshi, did not respond to requests for comment. However, the head of the instructors program confirmed to ATTN: that the incident was reported to UWPD, Safe Campus, and UW Community Standards and Student Conduct.

Instead of removing the student after the claimed endorsement of violence, the school met with them instead. About a week later, the instructor found thatsomeone had smashed the rear window of my car. Nothing was taken, and no other car was broken into. The instructor did not find it coincidental. "This happened right after Community Standards and Safe Campus informed me that they would have to meet with the student.

In response to the incident, the school suggested therapy. They completely blew off my concerns and strongly advised me not to call police because the student would feel targeted, the instructor said, treating the incident as more about her feelings than the students actions.

The university is just continuing to not take white supremacy and the alt-right seriously, spending more effort to protect the free speech rights of the white supremacists who are behaving very inappropriately, and violently.

The instructor has since stopped teaching and attending classes.

We find it laughable that President Cauce thinks that UW is a safe and welcoming campus for all when the actions of her and the administration only serve to further embolden and protect ideologies centered around the harm of others, one woman said at a March 31 action on UWs Seattle campus, held the same time as Prospective Students Day.

The speaker was a prospective student herself, slated to start in fall 2017. Instead of worrying about what classes to take, however, she said she was asking herself whether I feel safe here on campus.

Speaking to ATTN:, the student requesting anonymity out of fear of being targeted said she had since answered the question: no. Indeed, she concluded the campus is not really behind behind me, and it actually its behind people who actively want to harm me. She felt it would be a dereliction to, in her view, reward the schools inaction with her tuition dollars.

I am putting my future on hold because I dont feel safe on campus," she said. I dont think the UW administration cares about me, and I dont want to be part of a community that doesnt take threats to marginalized students and community members seriously.

UW spokesperson Norman G. Arkans told ATTN: that one email does not a pattern reveal, noting that 15,000 offers of admission were issued with an eye toward a freshman class of 6,700 students. Interestingly, he said, just yesterday [April 18] I replied to a mother who wrote to us about how, from her perspective, politically conservative-leaning students felt threatened on campus by students from the left. I guess were getting from both sides.

My strong belief, Arkans continued, is that these perspectives represent the extremes and that the vast, vast majority of our smart, hard-working students feel absolutely safe, secure, and supported to pursue their educations here.

See the original post here:
The 'Alt-Right' Is Scaring Some Students Away From a Liberal College in Washington - ATTN:

Two conservative journalists have sparked outcry on social media by making what some have interpreted as a white supremacist hand symbol at a recent visit to the White House.

Freelancejournalist Mike Cernovich and Cassandra Fairbanks, a reporter for Russian news outlet Sputnik, posed for a picture behind the podium in the White House briefing room. In the photo, they are making a hand sign that can be used to signify white power.

Just two people doing a white power hand gesture in the White House, Fusion senior reporter Emma Roller tweeted, alongside a screenshot of the picture.

Ms Fairbanks, however, claims the hand gesture was not a reference to the white power movement. She pointed to her partial Puerto Rican heritage as evidence that she is not a white supremacist.

White power!!!!!!! Except I'm Puerto Rican. Can it be PR power?! she tweeted.

Ms Fairbanks supporters point out that the hand symbol is also used to mean OK. Photos show people of all races using the symbol to signify that everything is alright.

The symbol, however, has become more contentious with the rise of the alt-right a far-right contingent in the United States that rejects both mainstream conservatism and liberal ideologies. The self-proclaimed founder of the alt-right, Richard Spencer, is a well-known white supremacist.

Alt-right journalist Lucian Wintrich, a writer for The Gateway Pundit, sparked outcry when he flashed the symbol in a similar picture at the White House in February. Notorious alt-right personality Milo Yiannopoulos also frequently flashes the symbol.

The resurgence of the symbol may be traced back to a popular alt-right meme, known as smug Pepe, which began circulating on alt-right, pro-Trump message boards in 2015. Mr Trump often uses the symbol when speaking, explaining its significance with the presidents supporters.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) characterises the symbol as a racist hand sign.

Some white supremacists, particularly in California, may use a two-handed hand sign in which one hand forms the letter W and the other hand forms the letter P, to represent WP or White Power, an entry in the ADLs hate symbols database reads.

Ms Fairbanks joined notoriety when she moved from supporting Senator Bernie Sanders to supporting Mr Trump for president. She now frequently speaks out against Islamic terrorism and the Black Lives Matter movement. Her employer, Sputnik, applied for White House press credentials last month.

Mr Cernovich is the founder of the mens rights blog Danger & Play, and author of the book MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again. He received White House press credentials on 25 April.

Originally posted here:
Two members of alt-right accused of making white supremacist hand signs in White House after receiving press passes - The Independent

Police and university officials said they were bracing for possible trouble whether Coulter comes to campus or not, citing intelligence and online chatter by groups threatening to instigate violence.

UPDATE: 12:45 p.m. Eastern

BERKELEY, Calif. The International Socialist Organization says it will hold an "Alt Right Delete" rally in downtown Berkeley to show support for free speech and to condemn the views of conservative commentator Ann Coulter and her supporters.

Thursday's rally at noon comes as Gavin McInnes, founder of the pro-Trump "Proud Boys" has said he will speak in the afternoon at Berkeley's Civic Center Park.

He is encouraging similar groups to show up for gathering.

Another group called the Orange County Alt Right Group is planning a morning rally in the same place.

Coulter's planned speech at University of California, Berkeley, was canceled and police are preparing for possible violence by the groups with opposing political views.

ORIGINAL STORY:

BERKELEY, Calif. Ann Coulter said Wednesday that she was forced to cancel her speaking event Thursday at the University of California, Berkeley amid concerns of violence but might still "swing by to say hello" to all her supporters.

Police and university officials said they were bracing for possible trouble whether Coulter comes to campus or not, citing intelligence and online chatter by groups threatening to instigate violence.

A group of far-right supporters plans to hold a rally Thursday at a Berkeley park to denounce what they claim is an attempt to silence their conservative views.

KCBS reports that Gavin McInnes, founder of the pro-Trump "Proud Boys," says he will speak at 2 p.m. at Civic Center Park and is encouraging other alt-right groups to make a large showing at the gathering.

In emails to The Associated Press on Wednesday, Coulter confirmed that her planned speech on illegal immigration, followed by a question-answer session, was canceled. But she remained coy about what she might do instead.

"I'm not speaking. But I'm going to be near there, so I might swing by to say hello to my supporters who have flown in from all around the country," Coulter said in an email. "I thought I might stroll around the graveyard of the First Amendment."

Officials at UC Berkeley said last week they feared renewed violence on campus if Coulter followed through with plans to speak. They cited "very specific intelligence" of threats that could endanger Coulter and students, as Berkeley becomes a platform for extremist protesters on both sides of the political spectrum.

Efforts by the university to cancel or delay the Coulter event dealt a blow to Berkeley's image as a bastion of tolerance and free speech.

Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks sent a letter to the campus Wednesday saying the university is committed to defending free speech but also to protecting its students.

"This is a university, not a battlefield," Dirks said in the letter. "The university has two non-negotiable commitments, one to Free Speech the other to the safety of our campus community."

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Alt-right, socialist groups to rally after cancellation of Coulter talk - Canton Repository