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Until last week, Spotify-using fans of Neil Young could access a vast 54-year catalogue of songs, which attracted more than 6 million listeners a month. Now all that remains are appearances on compilations and, for some reason, a 1989 live album. Enraged by what he saw as the promotion of life-threatening Covid misinformation on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, the Canadian singer-songwriter issued an ultimatum: They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.

As Young surely knew, Spotifys choice was a foregone conclusion. Rogans show, which the streaming service acquired for $100m in 2020, is its most popular podcast, with an average listenership of 11 million per episode. In its first month, it accounted for 4.5% of all podcast listening on Spotify worldwide. For Spotify, which is banking on podcasts to drive subscriptions, he is a star of the magnitude of Adele.

He has also become explosively controversial. Youngs walkout, followed later in the week by Joni Mitchells exit in solidarity, was prompted by an open letter calling on Spotify to counter Covid misinformation after Rogan recorded an interview with Dr Robert Malone, a virologist who has become a rightwing media star for his opposition to vaccines. The director general of the WHO tweeted in support of Youngs boycott: We all have a role to play to end this pandemic and infodemic.

Young, the most ornery of all boomer rock legends, is the perfect antagonist. He is an obsessive audiophile who temporarily removed his music from all streaming services in 2015 and a purist whose 1988 single This Notes for You decried licensing songs to commercials. As a survivor of childhood polio, he might also have particularly strong opinions about vaccines. Whats more, he can afford to take the considerable financial hit. He has a loyal fanbase that will pay for top-dollar boxsets and subscriptions to his website archive. Last year, he sold 50% of the rights to his song catalogue to the investment fund Hipgnosis for a reported $150m. For less comfortable artists, Spotify could be too big to quit.

In the opposite corner is Rogan, a former comedian and martial artist who has recorded close to 1,800 episodes since launching his podcast in 2009. His guests have included Kanye West, Elon Musk, Quentin Tarantino and Bernie Sanders. But he has also entertained figures from the alt-right such as the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the Proud Boys co-founder Gavin McInnes and the provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Rogans politics are broadly contrarian with a rightward skew. He is a bullish libertarian who initially backed Sanders in the 2020 election but ended up preferring Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Last April, Rogan said that if you are young, fit and healthy, then you do not need a vaccine, attracting criticism from Bidens chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci. Im not an anti-vax person, Rogan responded. I believe theyre safe and encourage many people to take them. Yet he has still booked anti-vaccine guests.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, Spotify has never claimed to have an ideological commitment to free speech. In 2017, following a white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, it began removing music by hate bands. The following year, it introduced a somewhat incoherent hate and hateful conduct policy, designed to promote openness, diversity, tolerance and respect. Spotify may be deeply inconsistent but it has established a precedent that it takes responsibility for the material it serves up. Last week, a spokesperson boasted that Spotify had removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid since the start of the pandemic, a startling number.

Not Rogans though. Spotify CEO, Daniel Ek, has framed his hands-off approach as an anti-censorship issue, telling US news website Axios last year that Rogan was no different to a big-name rapper: And we dont dictate what theyre putting in their songs either.

Musicians have had an ambivalent relationship with Spotify since its US launch in 2011. Some are grateful to it for saving the music industry after a decade of digital piracy and plummeting sales while others claim its measly royalty rates favour only the megastar elite. The pandemic has re-energised its critics. Abruptly deprived of concert income, many artists looked again at their royalty statements and demanded a fairer deal.

The Young-Rogan contretemps is a PR headache of a different order, one that exposes the tensions inherent in Spotifys aggressive move into podcasting and decision to make music a subset of audio. Now artists and subscribers are effectively funding politically inflammatory content in the middle of a global health crisis. The rappers mentioned by Ek havent embraced Covid misinformation and would not reach 11 million listeners if they did. For a company proud of its progressive record, doubling down on Rogan on the pretext of a sudden dedication to free speech appears disingenuous, cynical and greedy.

While still the largest streaming service by far, Spotify has been slowly losing market share to its rivals. Podcasts were meant to reverse that slide but they could make things worse by thrusting Spotify on to the culture-war frontline. While the company has presumably calculated that the financial benefit of sticking with Rogan outweighs the reputational cost, many users have cancelled their premium subscriptions. The companys bullshit is just too much to bear now, tweeted the popular YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano.

The backlash is calling into question what exactly Spotify has become, or was all along. The US musician Damon Krukowski tweeted that Spotify are not in the music business, they are a tech platform, and however they can get people to spend more time on the platform, thats where they will go Spotify is not interested in the future of music.

Not for the first time in his maverick career, Neil Young has opened a can of worms. This one might be the biggest of them all.

Dorian Lynskey is the author of The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwells 1984

Read the original here:
Podcasts were meant to revive Spotify. Now its on the culture war frontline - The Guardian

This weekends March for Life rally, the large anti-choice demonstration held annually in Washington DC to mark the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, has the exuberant quality of a victory lap. This, the 49th anniversary of Roe, is likely to be its last. The US supreme court is poised to overturn Roe in Dobbs v Jackson Womens Health, which is set to be decided this spring. For women in Texas, Roe has already been nullified: the court went out of its way to allow what Justice Sonia Sotomayor called a flagrantly unconstitutional abortion ban to go into effect there, depriving abortion rights to the one in 10 American women of reproductive age who live in the nations second largest state.

These victories have made visible a growing cohort within the anti-choice movement: the militias and explicitly white supremacist groups of the organized far right. Like last year, this years March for Life featured an appearance by Patriot Front, a white nationalist group that wears a uniform of balaclavas and khakis. The group, which also marched at a Chicago March for Life demonstration earlier this month, silently handed out cards to members of the press who tried to ask them questions. America belongs to its fathers, and it is owed to its sons, the cards read. The restoration of American sovereignty must follow the restoration of the American Family.

Explicit white nationalism, and an emphasis on conscripting white women into reproduction, is not a fringe element of the anti-choice movement. Associations between white supremacist groups and anti-abortion forces are robust and longstanding. In addition to Patriot Front, groups like the white nationalist Aryan Nations and the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker party have also lent support to the anti-abortion movement. These groups see stopping abortion as part of a broader project to ensure white hegemony in addition to womens subordination. Tim Bishop, of the Aryan Nations, noted that Lots of our people join [anti-choice organizations] Its part of our Holy War for the pure Aryan race. That the growing white nationalist movement would be focused on attacking womens rights is maybe to be expected: research has long established that recruitment to the alt-right happens largely among men with grievances against feminism, and that misogyny is usually the first form of rightwing radicalization.

But the affinity goes both ways: just as the alt-right loves the anti-choice movement, the anti-choice movement loves the alt-right. In 2019, Kristen Hatten, a vice-president at the anti-choice group New Wave Feminists, shared racist content online and publicly identified herself as an ethnonationalist. In addition to sharing personnel, the groups share tactics. In 1985, the KKK began circulating Wanted posters featuring the photos and personal information of abortion providers. The posters were picked up by the anti-choice terrorist group Operation Rescue in the early 90s. Now, sharing names, photos and addresses of abortion providers and clinic staff is standard practice in the mainline anti-choice movement, and the stalking and doxing of providers has become routine. More recently, anti-abortion activists have escalated their violence, returning to the murderous extremism that characterized the movement in the 1990s: in Knoxville, a fire that burned down a planned parenthood clinic on New Years Eve was ruled an arson. Maybe the anti-choice crowd is taking tips from their friends in the alt-right.

Its not that the anti-abortion movements embrace of white nationalism is totally uncomplicated. When the Traditionalist Worker party showed up at a Tennessee Right to Life march in 2018, the organizers shooed them off, and later issued a statement saying they condemned violence both from the right, and from leftwing groups like antifa. Hatten was fired from her anti-choice job after a public outcry. The anti-choice movement has even started trying to appropriate the language of social justice. They posit equality between embryos and women, try to brand abortion bans as feminist, incessantly compare abortion to the Holocaust, and claim that abortion is an act rife with the potential for eugenic manipulation, in the words of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. Anti-choice groups are eager to claim the moral authority of historical struggles against oppression, even as they work to further the oppression of women.

But the link between the anti-choice movement and white supremacy is much older and more fundamental than this recent, superficial social justice branding effort. Before an influx of southern and eastern European immigrants to the United States in the latter half of the 19th century, abortion and contraception had only been partially and sporadically criminalized. This changed in the early 20th century, when an additional surge of migrants from Asia and Latin America calcified white American racial anxieties and led to white elites decrying the falling white birth rate as race suicide.

Abortion bans were quickly introduced nationwide. As the historian Leslie Raegan put it, White male patriotism demanded that maternity be enforced among white Protestant women. The emerging popular eugenics movement supported this campaign of forced birth for fit mothers, while at the same time implementing a widespread campaign of involuntary sterilization among the poor, particularly Black women and incarcerated women. Meanwhile, white women who sought out voluntary sterilization were discouraged or outright denied the procedure, a practice that is still mainstream in the medical field today.

In the current anti-choice and white supremacist alliance, the language of race suicide has been supplanted by a similar fear: the so-called Great Replacement, a racist conspiracy theory that posits that white Americans are being replaced by people of color. (Some antisemitic variations posit that this replacement is somehow being orchestrated by Jewish people.)

The way to combat this, the right says, is to force childbearing among white people, to severely restrict immigration, and to punish, via criminalization and enforced poverty, women of color. These anxieties have always animated the anti-choice movement, and they have only become more fervent among the March for Lifes rank and file as conservatives become increasingly fixated on the demographic changes that will make America a minority-white country sometime in the coming decades. The white supremacist and anti-choice movements have always been closely linked. But more and more, they are becoming difficult to tell apart.

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White nationalists are flocking to the US anti-abortion movement - The Guardian

Transcript

Gideon Resnick: Its Friday, January 28th. Im Gideon Resnick.

Priyanka Aribindi: And Im Priyanka Aribindi, and this is What A Day, where were pleased to announce that our boomer allies have finally found out about Wordle.

Gideon Resnick: I think they will find it much harder to fall down alt-right rabbit holes on the cute word puzzle than in the Facebook hellmouth.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah. A five-letter word for insurrection? Trick question, there isnt one?

Gideon Resnick: Ideas show workers at an Amazon facility raise concerns about a mailbox again ahead of another union vote. Plus athletes are told to use burner phones at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Priyanka Aribindi: But first, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer formally announced his retirement yesterday and delivered a brief remarks at a White House ceremony, including this one on the American experiment:

[clip of Justice Stephen Breyer] I say I want you to pick just this up. Its an experiment thats still going on. And Ill tell you something, you know who will see whether that experiment works? Its you, my friend. Its you, Mr. High School student. Its you, Mr. College student, its you, Mr. Law School students. Its us, but its you. Its that next generation and the one after that, my grandchildren and their childrentheyll determine whether the experiment still works. And of course, I am an optimist, and Im pretty sure it will. Does it surprise you that thats the thought that comes into my mind today? I dont know. But thank you.

Gideon Resnick: Wow.

Priyanka Aribindi: Wow, that is right. I know he is not threatening us. It just felt a little, a little threatening to me. Its fine. President Biden reaffirmed his commitment to nominating a Black woman to the Supreme Court and said that he would announce his choice by the end of February.

[clip of President Biden] I will select a nominee worthy of Justice Breyers legacy of excellence and decency. While Ive been studying candidates backgrounds and writings, Ive made no decision except one: the person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.

Priyanka Aribindi: So now that all of this has been formalized, lets talk about some of the responses that weve heard so far.

Gideon Resnick: Yeah, this is really only the beginning, but theres a lot. Here is just a brief overview. Some civil rights organizations are already gearing up to support the eventual nominee and really to counter any likely campaigns against her from conservatives. And already, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement that Biden should not be influenced by the quote unquote radical left in making his decision. All right. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said again that the confirmation process is going to move quickly. Senator Kyrsten Sinema said that she looks forward to quote, thoughtfully examining the nomineeand this ones interestingSenator Joe Manchin said that he wouldnt mind if the nominee is more liberal than he is, noting that from his perspective, Priyanka, it is not hard to be more liberal than he is.

Priyanka Aribindi: And on that, he is correct.

Gideon Resnick: He is correct right there. Manchin and Sinema has voted to confirm all of Bidens nominees to the lower courts so far, which is an encouraging sign for how they might end up voting here. So all that being said, on yesterdays show, we went over Breyer, the replacement process, and the general future of the court. And today we want to dive in on all the potential political ramifications this could have in the near and long term.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yes. And for more on that, I spoke with the one and only Dan Pfeiffer, former White House Communications Director during the Obama administration and one of the hosts of Pod Save America. I started by asking him about the impact that this could potentially have politically for Democrats as we head into midterm election season.

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, I think it will have a galvanized effect for Democrats. We need a win. Its been a rough few months for Democrats. Getting to appoint a qualified history-making nominee with the first Black woman ever, I think, will be a boost to Democrats political fortune. I think it will give us something to rally around. One of the reasons why Bidens approval numbers have taken a hit is hes lost ground with Democrats, and I think hell be able to get some of that back by delivering on a core campaign promise.

Priyanka Aribindi: Do you think its too far out from the midterms to have an effect? Or do you think that this type of thing kind of carries on into, you know . . . ?

Dan Pfeiffer: I dont I dont think its a game changer per se, but I think we need to build some momentum towards the midterms. And so having some success over the next couple of months to get this confirmation in I think is pushing us in the right direction. So I dont think this is going to be like necessarily the Kavanaugh fight was for Republicans or the Amy Coney Barrett one was happening like minutes before the election, but it will certainly be helpful to Democrats, presuming everything goes the way we want it to go.

Priyanka Aribindi: OK. Also in the news this week: yesterday, we got some promising new numbers. The economy grew 1.7% in the last quarter, bringing the total growth in 2021 up to 5.7%. I believe thats the largest figure since the mid 80s. So good numbers there. Based on polling on the other hand, the public has not been too happy with Joe Biden in recent months. But how do good job numbers affect the president, the party in power, and how do those kind of square with the economic realities that most people are facing right now?

Dan Pfeiffer: This is probably the most narratively complicated economy in modern political history. You have 2021 was the year with the greatest private sector job growth in history, you have these growth numbersall the macroeconomic factors look incredibly strong. And particularly when you put it in the context of what President Biden was able to get us out of so quickly of what he inherited from President Trump. Yet people are pissed about the economy. Theyre incredibly angry. In every poll, people are more frustrated, angry about the economy than the pandemic. They believe that Democrats are not focused enough on the economy, and it is one very specific thing, it is inflation. And people are feeling inflation in their pocketbook and their wages are not going as far as they were before, they are paying more, particularly last year, at the gas station, grocery prices are upand that is clouding out all the other economic good news. People dont care about any of the other stuff because their dollar, their hard-earned dollars, are not going as far as they would like them to go.

Priyanka Aribindi: Right. Lets switch gears a little bit and talk a little more broadly about the midterms, which, like it or not, theyre coming later this year. Always a crazy realization for me every time I think about it. Traditionally, midterm elections have, um, shit turnout. Theyre known to be really tough for the party in power. Turnout was actually pretty high during the Trump years midterm, but it still wasnt great for him, obviously, in terms of outcome. Can you set the stage a little bit for us? What are Democrats and the president kind of walking into the midterms with? Whats it looking like?

Dan Pfeiffer: If you look at all the various factorsand I promise this will get a little bit better, but its going to start really hardall the various factors, Democrats are in a terrible position. This is the first midterm of a president, which is almost in every single case other than George W. Bush 2002, devastating for that president. Its happening in a redistricting year where Republicans control more of the maps than Democrats. Now there is some good news in this. One, with two thirds of the redistricting process done, I wouldnt say its been favorable to Democrats, but its been a lot less bad than we thought. And Democrats have opportunities to pick up a lot of seats in states like New York and Illinois that have been very aggressive in the redistricting process. The Senate map, to our great fortune, is very favorable to Democrats this year. We can not only keep the majority, but also expand it by a couple of seats, by only winning states that Joe Biden won in 2020that is Nevada, New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Thats six states. The Senate map generally is very bad for Democrats, and so it is a great fortune that we end up this year with a good map. That only happens every decade. We also have a very legitimate chance to hold on to key governors races in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and pick one up in Georgia, where in Arizona, where we have great candidates running with Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Katie Hobbs, among others, in Arizona.

Priyanka Aribindi: Got it. OK. Actually, Im very glad were talking because Im feeling a little bit better than I was 10 minutes ago. In the House and the Senate, democrats have very slim majorities at the moment. What is kind of the worst-case scenario? Obviously, well talk about the good stuff, dont worry, but what happens if they lose these majorities or the House majority?

Dan Pfeiffer: So if we lose the House, theres two things that we have to be very clear about. One, Joe Biden will not pass another bill of substance in his first term. And I think it is highly likely the House will begin impeachment proceedings against Biden for some trumped up, made up, thing.

Priyanka Aribindi: Right.

Dan Pfeiffer: And there will be endless investigations that would make Fox primetime blush in terms of its absurdity, will all happen in the House. If we were to lose the Senate, it is likely that Joe Biden would not confirm another judge of consequence in his first term. The Republicans are definitely favored in the House, and I think the Senate is a coin flip, but thats because the map benefits us, and what will really determine what happens in the Senate is what happens in the Republican primaries. You know, they are more electable Republican candidates facing off against some pretty Trump-y Republican candidates, and who wins those primaries could help determine how we do there.

Priyanka Aribindi: Got it. OK, so lets talk about the flip side. What if they win? And obviously Im not a hater, but its been a tough few months watching a lot of the priorities that Joe Biden ran on get shot to the ground by members of, you know, his own party. So whats the case the Democrats are trying to make to keep their jobs and, you know, expand their majorities? What happens for us in the best-case scenario?

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, the best-case scenario in the Senate is that we get up to 52 senators, which is very mathematically possible because we have pickup opportunities in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Ron Johnson is running for reelection in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania is quite a Republican primary. Dr. Oz, the head of one of the worlds largest hedge funds, whose remade himself into a MAGA candidatetheres a whole bunch of crazy stuff happening there. But if you get the 52 senators, we never have to say the words Manchin and Sinema again. In both the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Senate primary, the major candidates have said they would be for getting rid of the filibuster. So you can see a world where we get to 52 and could eliminate the filibuster. And if we still have the House to pass legislation, could deal with voting rights on day one.

Priyanka Aribindi: Got it! OK, you dont have to tell me twice. Good to know. OK, but thanks to Republicans and a couple Democratic senators, we do not have federal voting rights legislation as we head into this election. You wrote about this in your last issue of Message Box, your newsletter. But in the face of all these voting rights restrictions that are going on around the country, how do Democrats win elections now? Is there something specifically that we should be focused on? How is this possible?

Dan Pfeiffer: Well, were going to have to win in an environment of voter suppression. That is the world were going to live in. There will continue to be some measure of court cases to try to push back on some of those efforts, but we have to recognize that the environment that Joe Biden won Georgia in, in 2020, is going to be tougher for Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock because of voter suppression. And its going to require hard work and organizing and getting people on the ground as soon as they can and educating voters about these new rules. And its going to be a ton of work. And its completely unfair and its probably unconstitutional and its wrong, but were going to have to live in that environment. But we also have to think not just about voter suppression, but about election sabotage, because we know that Republicans are running these 2022 elections to put themselves in a position to ensure that no matter what happens in the Electoral College or the popular vote in 2024, they will have the opportunity to install Donald Trump or whoever the Republican nominee is in the White House despite losing the election. Parts of the Freedom to Vote Act would have dealt with that. The best way to fight that is at the local level by electing governors, secretary of state candidates, and even in some states like in Arizona county recorders of deeds are the local election officials. And so Run For Something, a group that we have worked with the Crooked Media at lot, has been recruiting and training candidates to run in those races to try tobecause Republicans have been doing this. Theyre recruiting believers in the Big Lie to run up and down the ballot everywhere.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yikes.

Dan Pfeiffer: They are pouring money and resources into this because they know thats where political power is, and we have to do the same thing on our side.

Gideon Resnick: Youll be hearing more about all of this very soon. We are quite sure of that, but that is the latest for now. Its Friday WAD squad, and for todays temp check, we are back on our favorite beat, which is Sarah Palins battle with the New York Times by way of her battle with the novel coronavirus. So as we know, Palins defamation trial against the Times was postponed this Monday after it was revealed that she had tested positive for COVID. She had not gotten the vaccine, probably under the impression that she could outrun COVID aerosols on a snowboard. The story got even more interesting after the postponement, as it became clear that Palin had eaten inside the pricey Italian restaurant Elios in Manhattan on Saturdaythis is a place I was not familiar with quite honestly until this story

Priyanka Aribindi: Me either.

Gideon Resnick: Now I am deeply familiar with itleading many to question how she had managed to get around New York Citys COVID vaccine mandate.

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah, it is not known if Palin had tested positive before or after her Saturday Elios trip. But since her diagnosis, she has continued to sample New Yorks finest restaurants, eating at a different fancy Italian place on Tuesday, though this time she was outside, and returning to Elios eat outside on Wednesday. Back to the original scene of the crime.

Gideon Resnick: What!? OK.

Priyanka Aribindi: So as we go to record, she is surely working through a tray of hot lasagna on a Manhattan sidewalk somewhere. Her new status as the Typhoid Mary of pasta places is so undeniable that even the mayors office has had to address it, with a spokesman for Eric Adams saying quote, We encourage any New Yorker who came into contact with Sarah Palin to get tested.

Gideon Resnick: Dear Lord.

Priyanka Aribindi: I mean, she comes with a warning. Now Gideon, you and I are not public health experts, so weve been reluctant to offer too much pandemic guidance in the past, but this seems like one topic where we are uniquely qualified to weigh in. So my question is how would you advise someone who is seated next to a COVID-positive Sarah Palin at a restaurant?

Gideon Resnick: Well, I would say its unfortunate that you are in this position, but I hope that you have a syringe on you, because if you put a syringe on the edge of the table in eyesight of Sarah Palin, she could be led to think that it may be a vaccine and she may not want to be near said vaccine and may very well leave. And that gives you the opportunity to finish your lovely Italian dinner. Priyanka, what do you think about all of this?

Priyanka Aribindi: Yeah, OK, if you find yourself in this scenario, you are seated next to COVID-positive Sarah Palin, one, get the fuck out of there. Two, question everything that has ever happened in your entire life to lead you to this point. What are you doing dining at the same place as her? Youre messing up somewhere.

Gideon Resnick: Its true.

Priyanka Aribindi: I hate to break it to you.

Gideon Resnick: Just like that, we have checked our temps. They are at a normal temperature because we dont have fevers from contracting the novel coronavirus near Sarah Palin at this time.

Priyanka Aribindi: Havent been in contact with Sarah Palin, so were all good.

Gideon Resnick: We can affirm that, and well be back after some ads.

[ad break]

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Supreme Courting The Voters with Dan Pfeiffer - Crooked

Within my lifespan I have witnessed democracys ebb and flow, from the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and bipartisan support for the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to the attack on our nations Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. I am as concerned today about democracys survival in the U.S. as anytime during my adult life.

I moved to Atlanta in 1973. Despite the progress achieved by the landmark legislation of the previous decade, it was a time when Black Americans, along with other moderates and liberals, were still grieving the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose 93rd birthday we recently commemorated. In addition to Kings death, we had lived through and mourned the assassinations of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Sen. Robert Kennedy and Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

I began to feel hopeful that democracy might have a chance after Georgias governor, Jimmy Carter, was elected president in 1976. Among other encouraging steps, Carter appointed civil rights activist Andrew Young as U.N. ambassador and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founder and leader John Lewis as associate director of the national volunteer organization ACTION. Over the ensuing decades, I remained relatively positive over the possibility that our republic could become a more inclusive, just and equitable nation, despite the limitations of what was achieved under the two terms of President Barack Obamas administration.

As I write today, I feel less sure that our democratic institutions, not to mention the idea of democracy itself, will survive what we are now going through.

Progressives and Democrats in Georgia and elsewhere did a superb job in 2020 getting voters to the polls, which resulted in historic wins for the presidency and the Senate. But, egged on by the former presidents big lie that he won, in 2021 19 states enacted at least 34 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote, according to the Brennan Centers tally.

My skepticism over democracys survival is not based just on the cowardice on the part of some federal elected officials or their refusal to place the countrys interest over that of their party. I am equally disturbed over what state officials are doing, particularly those with safe Republican majorities, to make it more difficult for even conservative voters to cast a ballot. Nowhere am I hearing bipartisan opposition to these anti-democratic developments.

Even Georgias Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, both of whom refused to yield to pressure from the former president to overturn the 2020 Georgia election, have repeatedly defended the Republican-controlled Georgia General Assemblys voter-suppression laws on the grounds that they make for better voter integrity.

These are indeed scary times in the U.S., and things will not get better if all of us who see what is going down give in to fear. It is also important, however, to remember the five purple states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that voted blue in the 2020 elections, as well as the prospects this year for Democrats to win governorships now held by Republicans in states including Arizona, Georgia, Maryland and Massachusetts due to the strength of minority and blue-trending suburban votes. To protect those victories and support these possibilities, there are some things that I believe elected officials and the public in general can do to better safeguard democracy.

First, all people of good will must wake up and recognize that the country is in grave danger of being taken over by antidemocratic forces. Then, constituents should screen candidates for public office based on their steadfast support of Americas bedrock principles of democracy. This wont be easy in an alt-right environment where a large percentage of voters has had politicians prey upon their fears and feed them lies as to the reasons they are economically insecure.

Second, Republicans who are not afraid of or indebted to the former president must carefully weigh the cost of remaining silent against the dangers of losing democracy as weve known it and to what this loss could mean to the ruin of the American economy they depend on for wealth.

Finally, and unfairly, it will probably continue to fall on the backs of racial minorities, workers and women who have historically and persistently been denied the fruits of full participation in Americas democratic institutions to double down on their efforts in fighting racism, fascism, and voter suppression and subversion of all types.

By doing so, they might end up saving democracy not just for themselves but for us all.

Read more:
The Threat to Our Democracys Survival, and What We Can Do About It - Governing

Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines said Wednesday he will not fire a campaign staffer who said on his YouTube channel in 2020 that he wants to restore historical American culture by maintaining a supermajority of the original stock of the United States, and maintaining a homogeneity, referring to white people.

The staffer, Jake Lloyd Colglazier, has previously done fieldwork for the campaign, Huffines said, adding that he will not take any action against Colglazier.

On his YouTube channel, Colglazier warned that were nearing the demographic cliff, a reference to an increase of people of color gaining more political and economic power. On another livestream platform, he mocked a woman who appears to be Asian, saying she needed to be in China getting the shit beat out of her by her husband. In another post, he said, I spit on George Floyd.

If I were to go through the social media history of any young Texan I would find something I disagree with, Huffines said in an emailed statement. My campaign will not participate in cancel culture.

Huffines did not respond to questions about whether he condemned Colglaziers comments or whether he condemned white nationalism.

Colglazier, 24, a self-proclaimed American nationalist, previously worked for the far-right conspiracy site Infowars, owned by Alex Jones. While at InfoWars, he interviewed white supremacists such as Vincent James Foxx, who founded the now-banned alt-right Red Elephants site, and Faith Goldy, a conspiracy theorist who was fired from a conservative Canadian website for talking on a podcast hosted by the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.

Political Research Associates, a social justice think tank, first reported evidence of Colglaziers connections to the America First/Groyper movement on Friday. So-called Groypers make up an alt-right network of people who advocate for a majority white, Christian nation and identify as American nationalists. They coalesce around their support of Nick Fuentes, a white supremist podcaster who has been banned from Twitter, YouTube and the streaming platform DLive for violating hate speech policies.

Until Friday, the True Texas Project, a conservative nonprofit, had a biography for Colglazier on its website that identified him as currently the Deputy Communications Director for the Don Huffines for Governor campaign. That sentence has since been removed, and the True Texas Project did not respond to a request for comment.

Huffines, a former state senator from Dallas, said in his Wednesday statement that Colglazier is not his deputy communications director, but acknowledged hes done work for the campaign.

America First started as a conservative TV commentary series by Fuentes. With episode titles such as Combating Anti-White Hatred, Diversity Is Code for Anti White and Modernity Kills Women, the series also boasted guests including Foxx, Goldy and Patrick Casey, a leader in the Groyper white nationalist movement. The show also featured Colglazier, who went by Jake Lloyd at the time, on an episode about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Colglazier was one of three speakers at an America First conference in December 2019, when he called on the Groypers, to overtake the countrys conservative party.

The greater political establishment of the United States will crumble at the hands of the Groypers. History will remember the Groypers and the movement that followed, that flowed from America First, Colglazier said at the conference.

Colglazier could not be reached for comment.

Regardless of his staff position, Colglazier publicly remains a strong supporter of Huffines for governor, as he said in a December interview with Current Revolt and as seen in his Twitter profile.

Huffines is running to the right of Gov. Greg Abbott, whom he criticizes frequently for not being conservative enough. Among Huffines top campaign platforms are bans on critical race theory and building a wall at the Texas-Mexico border to try to block illegal immigration.

Abbott did not respond to a request for comment.

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Texas GOP gubernatorial candidate says he won't fire staffer tied to white nationalist movement - The Texas Tribune