Archive for the ‘Alt-right’ Category

The coded language of the alt-right is helping to power its rise – Washington Post

Ive always said that I appreciate all my readers, both those who agree with me and those who dont. But lately Ive been puzzled by the new slurs directed at me by some of the latter. Many I didnt even understand, so I did some digging.

Apparently, tried-and-true insults such as fag, fairy, kike and hebe (yes, Im Jewish) are old-school, especially among the alt-right. That small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state is developing new coded language, much as the Nazis once did, says noted linguist George Lakoff, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.

For instance, in February I wrote about Milo Yiannopoulos, the now-disgraced Breitbart News editor and alt-right poster boy. I heard from many readers about that column, which took Yiannopoulos to task for his incendiary language. But one email caught my eye: Milo is far less bigoted, misogynist, and hateful than those of you sick sociopathic and psychotic SJWs who smear him so desperately. Sick, sociopathic and psychotic, I knew. But SJW? I had no clue. In a personal ad it might mean straight Jewish woman, but two of those dont apply to me. So what was this snarky new gem of an insult?

I emailed back, What is an SJW? The reply: An SJW is a social justice warrior. In the press, this particular public predator tends to be big on PC [political correctness] virtue signaling but happy to smear others viciously with false accusations of sexism, racism, white nationalism, hate speech, etc.

Well, that was certainly clear Im a public predator allegedly guilty of smearing Yiannopoulos by referring to his very own, widely reported hateful language.

I started looking into other slurs readers hurled at me. There was libtard, and one I really liked at first snowflake, because theyre magical, in moderation.

But heres the nasty undercurrent: These new words are intrinsic to the alt-rights rise, according to Lakoff. He connects this to the Nazis and the coded language (prime example: the master race) that eventually allowed them to topple governmental institutions. The strategy is to control discourse, Lakoff points out. One way you do that is preemptive name calling . . . based on a moral hierarchy.

I asked what he meant by a moral hierarchy. God above man, man above nature, men above women. The strong above the weak. Christians above gays, he said, continuing with even more examples. Lakoff emphasized that this is different from the Democrats labeling some conservatives racist, sexist or homophobic which they do if only because that usage is not as canny or strategic.

Take Donald Trumps repeated characterization of Hillary Clinton as Crooked Hillary, Lakoff said. Say it often enough in public, and people start to believe it, and before you know it people such as Clinton are discredited. The whole idea is not to be civil, Lakoff says. The idea is to win.

With that in mind, heres a short primer on some of the alt-right coded language making the rounds:

Snowflake. This is no compliment, even if you like to think that youre one of a kind. At best, its a derisive term for someone considered entitled, which to those using it includes people of color, LGBT folks, students even Meryl Streep for her pro-kindness stance at the Golden Globes. Sarah McBride of the Human Rights Campaign told me that its often used against LGBT people in reference to pronoun usage, particularly nonbinary pronoun use, and the efforts on college campuses to be more aware and affirming of peoples pronouns. Used in a sentence, via Urban Dictionary: Hey snowflake, Trump won, deal with it. With one word youre dismissed as weak, feminine, juvenile a loser.

Libtard. Lib is for liberal, while tard is shorthand for retard. Bingo! If youre two thumbs down on political correctness, then what better insult than this combination? It even allows a bonus zing at folks with special needs.

Cuck. I heard this one while watching Bill Mahers HBO show several weeks ago. One of his guests kept using it. Its short for cuckservative, which is a word cocktail made up of equal parts conservative and cuckold. Urban Dictionary defines it as a racial slur for a White person that is not loyal to White Supremacy and offers this sample of use in a sentence: Jeb is such a cuck.

Masculinist. Im an out and proud feminist, but Id never heard of masculinist. According to Merriam-Webster, its an advocate of male superiority or dominance and is often used to promote traditional gender roles. The Oxford Dictionaries use it this way, in reference to the 1990s: The newly unified German parliament replicated the same masculinist pattern, celebrating its debut with less than 10percent women representatives. Thats the same as in pre-World War II Germany and theres that Nazi thing again.

Bottom line: It pays to increase your word power these days. Theres much more to alt-right coded language than meets the eye or the ear. Steven Petrow is a Social Justice Warrior, a public predator, a devotee of political correctness, and happy to tar and feather others with false accusations. If they say it often enough, you might believe it, and then you might not believe anything I write or say. Thats their whole point.

Agree or disagree with my perspective? Let me know in the comments section below.

You can reach the author on Facebook at facebook.com/stevenpetrow and on Twitter @stevenpetrow. Join him for a chat online at washingtonpost.com on April18 at 1p.m.

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The coded language of the alt-right is helping to power its rise - Washington Post

Arizona Newspaper Falsely Brands Campus Watchdog Site ‘Alt-Right’ – Breitbart News

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Campus Reform, which is a part of The Leadership Institute Network, is an online news site that reports on incidents of political bias at institutions of higher education around the United States.

Although the site has an obvious conservative editorial stance, it is unclear whyArizona Daily Sun reporter Suzanne Adams-Ockrassa would choose to label the site alt-right.

The article detailed student concern that a video from a campus forumevent at Northern Arizona University appeared in an article at Campus Reform.

The video, which includes an NAU professor calling President Trump the rapist in chief, was posted in an article at Campus Reform and sparked backlash on campus and on social media.

Adams-Ockrassa also calls the Professor Watchlist, a project of Turning Point USA that serves as a directory of radical leftists in academia, an alt-right website, despite little evidence that Turning Point USA and the watchlist are anything other than products of mainstream conservatism.

Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com

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Arizona Newspaper Falsely Brands Campus Watchdog Site 'Alt-Right' - Breitbart News

Clashing views of America: Sen. Sasse challenges the alt-right – Yahoo News

Sen. Ben Sasse, in a speech last week to a gathering of Christian pastors, went out of his way to criticize the alt-right, a movement that equates American greatness with preserving white Protestant culture.

American exceptionalism was never a claim about ethnicity. American exceptionalism was never a claim about Americans unique anthropology, Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said at an annual meeting of a group called the Gospel Coalition, in Indianapolis.

American exceptionalism was an understanding about the historical moment in which the American founding flipped on its head the relationship between rights and government, said Sasse.

The Harvard- and Yale-educated Sasse said in the middle of a 30-minute speech that America at its founding was unique in its claim that rights were inalienable to each person, and automatic, rather than determined by the whims of government.

The American founding is a claim that God gives us rights, not government, and government is our secular-shared project to secure those rights. Thats all American exceptionalism means. Thats what Washington used to mean, Sasse said.

Americas identity is bound up first and foremostin an idea, Sasse said, and not a piece of land or a certain racial group.

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., on Capitol Hill January 10, 2017. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The claim that Americas greatness originated or residesin European or white Christian culture has become a central plank to many who have supported President Trumps political rise.

The rise of Donald Trump, perhaps the first truly cultural candidate for President since [Pat]Buchanan, suggests grassroots appetite for more robust protection of the Western European and American way of life,wroteMilo Yiannopoulos andAllum Bokhari for Breitbart News a year ago, in an influential explanation of the movement.

They [the alt-right] truly believe that multiethnic democracies cannot succeed, said Ben Shapiro, a former top writer at Breitbart, who now runs the Daily Wire.

Yiannopoulos and Bokharidescribed much of whats known as the alternativeright as a reaction to liberalism and identity politics among racial minorities. Donald Trump would not be possible without the oppressive hectoring of the progressive Left, they wrote, describing progressives as the real authoritarians in contemporary culture.

A perceived bias against white people drives much of the alt-rights resentment. Any discussion of white identity, or white interests, is seen as a heretical offense, wrote the Breitbart authors.

There is also the alt-right view thatmany traditional conservatives lack the will tofight the left on cultural issues.

The alt-right would argue that [traditional conservatives are]too afraid of being called racist to seriously fight against [political correctness], Yiannopoulos and Bokhariwrote.

And they contended that while there are neo-Nazis and white supremacists among the alt-right, the majority of the movement is populated by young people who like to transgress against social taboos and by more average conservatives who want their own communities, populated by their own people, and governed by their own values.

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They would prefer nonviolent solutions, they wrote.

And, they said, the movement is not going away. No matter how silly, irrational, tribal or even hateful the Establishment may think the alt-rights concerns are, they cant be ignored, because they arent going anywhere, Yiannopoulos and Bokhari wrote. The Left cant language-police and name-call them away, which have for the last twenty years been the only progressive responses to dissent, and the Right cant snobbishly dissociate itself from them and hope they go away either.

Milo Yiannopoulos speaks during a news conference on Feb. 21, 2017, in New York. Yiannopoulos resigned as editor of Breitbart Tech after coming under fire from other conservatives over comments on sexual relationships between boys and older men. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP)

But influential alt-right figures like Yiannopoulos and Trump adviser Steve Bannon have lost influence recently. Yiannopouloslost his job with Breitbart in February when it came to light that within the past year he had defended sexual contact between grown men and underage boys.

And Bannon, who ran Breitbart News until becoming a top adviser to Trump during the presidential campaign, is now in danger of losing his job at the White House after clashing repeatedly withTrumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February,Bannon described the heart of the movement he believes has driven Trump to power. The center core of what we believe that were a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being Ithink thats what unites us, Bannon said.

Bannon has also defined American nationalism in opposition to Islam, especially ISIS pretensions to a new Islamic caliphate. Bannon said in 2014 that he is worried about the future of the Judeo-Christian West because we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism and this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.

Whatever the future holds for Bannon or Yiannopoulos, however, its likely that conservatives will be having this debate among themselves for some time, and Sasse who was an outspoken critic of Trump during the presidential campaign is one of the first elected officials to go out of his way to address it philosophically.

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon attends a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, where Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch was administered the judicial oath, April 10, 2017. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sasse has spoken out against the alt-rights thinking on a handful of occasions over the past year. He has agreed with part of the alt-rights complaint that the modern left is intolerant of those who disagree with them and that the Democrats focus on minorities tends to divide Americans on ethnic lines. But he rejects the alt-rights response.

A lot of what is happening in the Republican electorate right now is the downstream effects of the tribalism of race, class and gender-identity politics on the left, Sasse said just over a year ago. Some on the right have decided, if theyre going to have an identity politics, we need one too. But we already have one postconstitutional party. We dont need another one.

And in February of this year, he said on Morning Joethat the Republican Party is experiencing a rising tribalism.

Were in danger of heading toward a kind of identity politics that the lefts had for quite some time, he said. Im against identity politics. Im for an idea politics that talks about what America means and what were for together.

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Clashing views of America: Sen. Sasse challenges the alt-right - Yahoo News

Watch: Reporter assaulted as Antifa clashes with Alt-Right during anti-war rally – TheBlaze.com

Saturday, during an anti-war rally outside of the White House put on by the alt-right, members of the alt-rightprotestors found themselves going toe to toe with members of Antifa.

During a Facebook live video by the Daily Caller, reporters are standing to the side filming alt-righters, who among them was figurehead, white supremacist Richard Spencer, debating others. While words were thrown back and forth, the debate was tense, but largely peaceful.

Soon, members of Antifa began to approach from the opposite side, with one member in a red mask quickly coming forward and hitting one of the reporters cameras with a rolled up banner. No Nazis, no KKK, no fascist USA were chanted by Antifa members who were carrying communist flags and signs that read the future is feminist.The same member who assaulted the Daily Caller reporter also snatched a sign out of the hands of an alt-righter and began to tear it up.

At some point, someone from the alt-right side made a quick grab for something between the two groups causing a brief scuffle, and resulting in both sides squaring off with fists raised. Police immediately came between them and created a barrier keeping them apart.

Both sides spent some time hurling chants and obscenities toward each other, until police pushed both groups away from one another.

The two groups would clash once again a little later on, with police once again creating a barrier between the two. Antifa hurled insulting chants like f**k you, Nazi toward the alt-righters, while those on the alt-right chanted get a job, Commie at Antifa.

Watch the interaction below. Be warned, there is hard language in this video.

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Watch: Reporter assaulted as Antifa clashes with Alt-Right during anti-war rally - TheBlaze.com

Berkeley Farmers Market Canceled Due To Safety Fears Over Pro … – East Bay Express

Every Saturday, the Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley is home to the Ecology Centers farmers market, where families, students, and organically inclined food shoppers mingle with growers and vendors. But this weekend, on April 15, the market is canceled because of an Alt-Right rally.

Instead of white-tents and free fruit samples, visitors may instead find themselves caught in the crossfire between two opposing protests that if anything like the violent MiloYiannopoulosclash earlier this year in Berkeley could end in violence.

A so-called Patriots Day rally is attracting far-right Trump supporters and white-nationalist activists from across California, who claim they are traveling to Berkeley to demonstrate in the name of free speech.

The unpermitted event is scheduled to feature a cadre of contentious speakers, including Pizzagate-believer and AltRight.com contributor Brittany Pettibone, Twitter personality Baked Alaska (whose racist and anti-Semitic tweets got him uninvited from the DeploraBall, an alt-right inauguration

In videos posted on the event page, organizers from the Liberty Revival Alliance emphasize that they are planning a peaceful rally, even though it comes on the heels of a pro-Trump demonstration in Berkeley this past March, which ended in bloodshed and arrests.

As a nod to the backlash from that event, and the widespread protests that broke out when former Breitbart editor Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak in Berkeley the month before, organizers stated that they are prepared to defend themselves.

The Oath Keepers (an organization classified by the Southern Poverty Law Centers "Extremist Files" as a radical anti-government group made up of thousands of law-enforcement officials and military veterans) and 2 Million Bikers (who have posted online they will Protect the 1st Amendment from Thuggery [sic]) have signed on for security and support.

In response, Berkeley's Antifa coalition is calling on its own supporters to occupy the park. We need MASS ACTION to DEFEAT THEM AS A COMMUNITY [sic] organizers posted on their dedicated event page. These fascists are coming to our backyard in an attempt to scare us off the streets and they hope to build on this success. What we do, or do not do, on the 15th will have ramifications across the country." Attendees have been instructed to bring their crew, a mask, and food to share.

Several hundred people have RSVP'd to both events and many more are expected throughout the afternoon.

Citing security concerns over the likely clash between the two groups, The Ecology Center canceled Saturday's farmers market, leaving approximately forty vendors without a spot to sell their wares.

In a prepared statement released to the Express today, Ecology Center executive director Martin Bourque expressed his disappointment and explained why he felt it essential to close down for the day:

Weve been working closely with the City of Berkeley. Theyve committed to additional support for the market, but the situation is unpredictable, and things may happen that are out of their control. We appreciate the police departments restraint and what a challenge it is to protect both free speech and public safety today.

The Ecology Center Farmers Markets are a safe, welcoming and healthy environment for the community. While this is a real financial blow to many farmers, we can not put a price on safety.

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Berkeley Farmers Market Canceled Due To Safety Fears Over Pro ... - East Bay Express