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Youll have to pry their puns from their cold dead hands. Tens of thousands, at least, turned up to the Kill the Bill rally last Saturday and they brought their zingers with them.

Opposite Victorias Parliament House, where Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is running at the Princess Theatre, a woman is waving a placard that says shes a Prisoner of AzkaDAN. Another placard quips Once Andrews is jailed for treason hell have his own man-date every day. Its a riff on vaccine mandates and prison sex, if that wasnt clear.

Even Kill the Bill is a word play. A truck tows a professional looking billboard, seemingly advertising Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill but with Daniel Andrews substituted in for Uma Thurman. The crowd fears this bill will put too much power in the premiers hands to crack down on their freedoms.

With girls on stilts, a bloke dressed as Moses, another with a paper bag on his head and people thrusting signs with Bible quotes, its hard to know where to begin. Who are these people?

A counter-rally organised by Campaign Against Racism and Fascism is characterising the event as far-right, labelling some of the organisers actual Nazis.

I decide one place to begin is by moseying up to those waving flags of different nations. From Croatia to Turkey to Greece to Albania, the steps of parliament look like an audience cutaway at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Alongside a trio of women in hijabs, dressed in black from head to toe, a man is holding up the flag of Lebanon. Our scriptures tell us not to take anything that will harm our body, he explains, when I ask why they are here. Even so much, were not supposed to put on a tattoo. So, imagine taking a vaccine knowing theres carcinogens in them.

A white guy approaches and points to the metal pole on which the flag flaps. Fibreglass would be better. This guy is concerned the Muslim dude will hit an overhanging tramline and electrocute himself. Thats the Australian culture, one of the Muslim women remarks. Everybody looks after each other.

Mainstream folk would say theyre not looking after each other, theyre spreading medical misinformation about Covid-19, and possibly spreading Covid-19 itself. But hold up; not so fast. Maybe the people here arethe mainstream. Later, as the march reaches Flagstaff Gardens, Im disoriented, the crowd as vast and overwhelming as a CGI army in The Lord of the Rings.

Back here on the steps of parliament, Im overcome with the spirit of the rally: puns.

What do you think of my protest chant that you can do? I ask the Muslim women. Yes to hijab, no to the jab.

Hehehe, thats a good one, one says. Im going to steal that.

I bump past a man brandishing the placard I LOVE DAN Murphys and reach a man brandishing a Romanian flag.

When you come from a communist country, you know how things operate, he says, pointing to his sister wrapped in the Romanian flag. And when you see the loss of freedom, its actually starting to affect you because it brings back memories. In Romania, there was this thing, you couldnt freely move. You had to get approval to go to visit another city. He compares this to the digital certificates we need to hold in our phones to enter shops or the pub across the street. Its the same thing!

Another man left Egypt at the age of 10. He remembers the division between Christians and Muslims. You got a Christian name, you dont get a job, they dont play with you as a kid at school. He sees the same cleavage opening between the vaccinated and unvaccinated in Melbourne. Its divide and conquer. Why would we ever do this? This doesnt make sense.

Its interesting to talk to the older generation, a young Croatian flag-bearer tells me. They say, This is worse than communism. Even in communism back then, they were able to go and see and speak with people and leave their homes. I mean, here, were locked up for almost two years.

I didnt really think about that, I admit. Older people, whove gone through some traumatic experience overseas and then they here in Melbourne and then its like, locked down again.

The hours pass, sun reddening my ears as I weave through the masses. An Aboriginal man is daubing paint on a shirtless bloke on the grass near Parliament House. He says hell put a curse on The Saturday Paper if I misrepresent things here.

I look up to a Mori flag blowing in the wind. I ask the flag-bearer why she has turned up.

Us Mori, like the Indigenous people here, their lands were stolen and their freedoms were stolen. Im trying to fight for our freedoms that our ancestors lost many years ago, and we are about to lose again.

Like with the Romanian, theres a backstory, a reason for the anxiety. The past is never the past.

But just say theyre right? I suggest. That taking the vaccination does protect us? And that will help Indigenous health?

An Aboriginal woman gripping her flag, next to a Torres Strait Islander gripping hers, has been listening. People in the past said the exact same thing. They were going to protect the Aboriginal people. And thats where I see the similarity. Its very scary. Were brought up to, you know, the land provides. We are just the caretakers of this land. We know when to go out to the bush to get our medicine.

This ventures into impossible territory for some on the left. The rule book says to defer to Indigenous knowledge of the land. I later catch a tweet that, through careful wording, complains anti-vaxxers at this rally are exploiting Indigenous matters, giving the impression these offending anti-vaxxers are white.

In fact, the Aboriginal man threatening the curse, D.T. Zellanach, is a key organiser. A couple of years back he was here protesting against the governments plan to chop down sacred trees to make way for a freeway. Next week hell be the opening speaker, spending more than an hour explaining to thousands on the grass how society will operate under his version of decolonisation. Im not suggesting Zellanach is representing everyone. Nonetheless, the crowd is sprinkled with Aboriginal flags.

I USED TO LOVE HER BUT ITS OVER NOW Mick Jagger. The flip side of this placard explains that the ABC has become another sellout organisation misrepresenting this rally as a Nazi one.

How is pro-choice alt-right? asks a young womans placard, applying the left-wing term for reproductive rights to her desire to refuse the jab. The font and art direction on her sign are nicked from the Campaign Against Racism and Fascisms material, which paints this as a far-right rally.

I had family members that were hung by the Nazis, in their village, a 20-year-old with a Greek flag tells me. My grandma hid in chicken pens so she didnt get killed. How would they like it if theyre called a Nazi? They wouldnt like it. I wouldnt call Daniel Andrews a Nazi. Id just call him a wanker.

So, there arent Nazis here? Not so fast. Up the top of Bourke Street, a bunch of placards are lying on the ground: QUI? Thats French for who? and a neo-Nazi meme. Im desperate to find who placed them, or abandoned them, here.

I dart my eyes across the crowd. Over the Jehovahs Witnesses, who are certain the vaccine mandate is a sign of the apocalypse, so its bad, but bad in a good way, because Jesus will return. Over the young man dressed as Wally of Wheres Wally fame. Weve found Wally, his sign proclaims, now wheres the truth?

I squint, spotting a QUI? held up in the distance. Distracted momentarily by the opening drumbeat of Twisted Sisters Were Not Gonna Take It blasting from the fat speakers on the steps of Parliament House, I lose sight of it again. I head in the general direction, past the old man with a laminated chart explaining how Bert Newton and Graham Kennedy were tied up in Satanism, and Bert being granted a state funeral last week proves it goes all the way to the top.

I catch up to a woman. What does that sign mean?

I just found it. I felt like I needed to pick it up. She thought it said oui yes.

Its qui who, I tell her. Far-right people must be here at the rally. Because thats theirs. Their answer to who? is its the Jews. Forced vaccinations, its the Jews.

Yuck! She drops the sign on the ground. Shit, thank you.

I spot another sign, this time 9/11 QUI?, positing that the Jews are behind the September 11 attacks. This woman picked it up from the side of the street, too, not wanting the general public to think the Kill the Bill protesters were litterbugs. No sign of the actual folk responsible for these placards.

The marchers end up at Flagstaff Gardens. No point complaining Sky News are exaggerating the numbers. Even if they are, Ive never seen anything like this. The Big Day Out crowd running into a Collingwood v Carlton crowd in the park. Is this the mainstream? A giant Info Wars flag and T-shirts featuring yellow Minions with Fuck Dan Andrews and his Minions written in puffy pen beneath?

A Labor adviser later tells me I have to keep in mind the latest Roy Morgan Poll. It puts Dan Andrews approval at 60 per cent, 10 points down from last year but still pretty great. And this high approval is largely based on his handling of the pandemic. So plenty dont agree with the enormous placard of a naked Dan Andrews spooning an inflatable doll with What happened to consent before being fucked? written across it.

I bump into an old friend so shes one of these folks? but have to abandon her when I spot them under the trees. Who?

These men and women hold up QUI? signs and they havent accidentally picked them up. Their giant banner, that stretches between trees, directs you to a website that lays out how the Jews are responsible for your misery.

Some of their QUI? placards feature a headshot, an illustration of a stereotypical looking Jew. To be fair to the neo-Nazis, Ive got to say it does kinda look like me.

One T-shirt reads: Naming is half the battle. This meme argues youre not easily allowed to say the word Jew when discussing the problems of the world. Another sign says They Know. Shut It Down. This meme, often accompanied by an Orthodox Jew on a phone, argues the Jews will shut down those who see through the matrix and realise its the Jews.

Last month, an acupuncturist I visited theorised that my tight back is caused by walking towards dangerous people when my body is telling me to walk away. I approach.

No comment, says one of the blokes. But we know, he adds.

You know what? I ask.

We just know! he squeaks, sounding like a frustrated character on Seinfeld.

I approach another guy with a QUI? sign featuring a different stereotypical looking Jew. It looks like my friend George Weinberg.

What does that mean? Qui?

Fuck off.

Everyone has brought their backstory to the rally. I ask two North African dudes why theyre chanting Hang Dan Andrews! Everyone else in the vicinity is happy leaving it at Sack Dan Andrews!

He needs to be hanged because if someone commits treason, to put this many people in danger, what does he deserve? one guy says.

Do you mean it literally or just as a joke? I ask.

You see what they did to Gaddafi? Was that a joke?

Ive brought my backstory, too. Amazingly, the venom some on the left feel towards Jewish people has led them to tell Jews to stay away from the anti-racism movement. And for Jews lets not beat around the bush, literally me to stop writing about days like these. Their gambit is to cast Jews as white and thus not the people to talk about, or fight, racism. Im meant to buy that they dont know about anti-Semitism? They know. Rather, this gambit is one more baton in their backpack, to club the Jews, to present us as a problematic race.

My irritation over this drives me to hunt out the neo-Nazis again. I let them off too easily. I am the one to confront them. At least I can try to annoy them. The crowd is slowly marching back to Parliament House.

I see one neo-Nazi hidden behind a black cloth balaclava, more restrictive than the masks hes protesting against. I point to his placard.

Hey buddy, thats the meme saying Its the Jews! I know.

Nah. Dont be anti-Semitic, mate, he sarcastically throws back. I point to the website printed on his sign: GoyimTV.

Ive been to the website!

He picks up the pace, trying to get away from me. I catch up with him.

But Im giving you a chance to name the Jew!

He makes off again. Now Im trotting after him, along the tramline.

You cant complain that no ones letting you name the Jew, I squeak. And then I give you an opportunity the name the Jew, and you wont name the Jew!

He pulls away.

Fine, but dont complain that youre not allowed to name the Jew.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper onDec 4, 2021 as "Pun times: A dispatch from the protests".

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The rest is here:
Pun times: A dispatch from the protests - The Saturday Paper

If many far-right players have been shunted aside, the ideology has not been. In recent decades, whenever far-right groups have lost in court, the movement has rebounded.

While some of the messengers have been eviscerated, the more mainstream versions of their hatemongering continue to have real currency, with broad exposure guaranteeing that the violence of the far-right fringes will unfortunately continue, said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

In seeking to prove that the violence was foreseeable, the plaintiffs highlighted how often the idea of hitting protesters with cars came up beforehand.

Samantha Froelich, who was dating two of the main organizers simultaneously in the lead-up to the rally, but who has since left the movement, testified that hitting protesters with cars was discussed at a party earlier that summer in the Fash Loft, short for fascist, the nickname for Mr. Spencers apartment in Alexandria, Va.

After the violence, Mr. Parrott, whose Traditionalist Worker Party has since disbanded, and the others celebrated. Charlottesville was a tremendous victory, he said in a post. The alt-right is not a pathetic and faceless internet fad, but a fearsome street-fighting force.

While the plaintiffs case took three weeks and 36 witnesses, the defendants rested after a day and a half, having made four broad arguments. First, they argued that while others might deplore their views, the First Amendment allowed them. Second, that they acted in self-defense. Third, that the police were to blame for not keeping the opposing sides apart. Fourth, that none of them could anticipate what Mr. Fields did because none knew him.

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Charlottesville Rally Trial: Jury Finds Far-Right Conspiracy - The New York Times

Standing in front of the partial ruins of Romes Colosseum, Boris Johnson explained that a motive to tackle the climate crisis could be found in the fall of the Roman empire. Then, as now, he argued, the collapse of civilization hinged on the weakness of its borders.

When the Roman empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration the empire could no longer control its borders, people came in from the east and all over the place, the British prime minister said in an interview on the eve of crucial UN climate talks in Scotland. Civilization can go into reverse as well as forwards, as Johnson told it, with Romes fate offering grave warning as to what could happen if global heating is not restrained.

This wrapping of ecological disaster with fears of rampant immigration is a narrative that has flourished in far-right fringe movements in Europe and the US and is now spilling into the discourse of mainstream politics. Whatever his intent, Johnson was following a current of rightwing thought that has shifted from outright dismissal of climate change to using its impacts to fortify ideological, and often racist, battle lines. Representatives of this line of thought around the world are, in many cases, echoing eco-fascist ideas that themselves are rooted in an earlier age of blood-and-soil nationalism.

In the US, a lawsuit by the Republican attorney general of Arizona has demanded the building of a border wall to prevent migrants coming from Mexico as these people directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In Spain, Santiago Abascal, leader of the populist Vox party, has called for a patriotic restoration of a green Spain, clean and prosperous.

In the UK, the far-right British National party has claimed to be the only true green party in the country due to its focus on migration. And in Germany, the rightwing populist party Alternative for Germany has tweaked some of its earlier mockery of climate science with a platform that warns harsh climatic conditions in Africa and the Middle East will see a gigantic mass migration towards European countries, requiring toughened borders.

Meanwhile, Frances National Front, once a bastion of derisive climate denial, has founded a green wing called New Ecology, with Marine Le Pen, president of the party, vowing to create the worlds leading ecological civilization with a focus on locally grown foods.

Environmentalism [is] the natural child of patriotism, because its the natural child of rootedness, Le Pen said in 2019, adding that if youre a nomad, youre not an environmentalist. Those who are nomadic do not care about the environment; they have no homeland. Le Pens ally Herv Juvin, a National Rally MEP, is seen as an influential figure on the European right in promoting what he calls nationalistic green localism.

Simply ignoring or disparaging the science isnt the effective political weapon it once was. We are seeing very, very little climate denialism in conversations on the right now, said Catherine Fieschi, a political analyst and founder of Counterpoint, who tracks trends in populist discourse. But in place of denial is a growing strain of environmental populism that has attempted to dovetail public alarm over the climate crisis with disdain for ruling elites, longing for a more traditional embrace of nature and kin and calls to banish immigrants behind strong borders.

Millions of people are already being displaced from their homes, predominately in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, due to disasters worsened by climate change such as flooding, storms and wildfires. In August, the United Nations said Madagascar was on the brink of the worlds first climate change famine.

The number of people uprooted around the world will balloon further, to as many as 1.2 billion by 2050 by some estimates, and while most will move within their own countries, many millions are expected to seek refuge across borders. This mass upending of lives is set to cause internal and external conflicts that the Pentagon, among others, has warned will escalate into violence.

The response to this trend on the right has led to what academics Joe Turner and Dan Bailey call ecobordering, where restrictions on immigration are seen as vital to protect the nativist stewardship of nature and where the ills of environmental destruction are laid upon those from developing countries, ignoring the far larger consumptive habits of wealthy nations. In an analysis of 22 far-right parties in Europe, the academics found this thinking is rife among rightwing parties and portrays effects as causes and further normalizes racist border practices and colonial amnesia within Europe.

Turner, an expert in politics and migration at the University of York, said the link between climate and migration is an easy logic for politicians such as Johnson as it plays into longstanding tropes on the right that overpopulation in poorer countries is a leading cause of environmental harm. More broadly, it is an attempt by the right to seize the initiative on environmental issues that have for so long been the preserve of center-left parties and conservationists.

The far right in Europe has an anti-immigration platform, thats their bread and butter, so you can see it as an electoral tactic to start talking about green politics, Turner said, adding that migrants are being blamed in two ways first, for moving to countries with higher emissions and then adding to those emissions, as rightwing figures in Arizona have claimed; and secondly for supposedly bringing destructive, polluting habits with them from their countries of origin.

A mixture of this Malthusian and ethno-nationalist thinking is being distilled into political campaigning, as in a political pamphlet described in Turner and Baileys research paper from SVP, the largest party in Switzerlands federal assembly, which shows a city crowded by people and cars belching out pollution, with a tagline that translates to stop massive immigration. A separate campaign ad by SVP claims that 1 million migrants will result in thousands of miles of new roads and that anyone who wants to protect the environment in Switzerland must fight against mass immigration.

The far right depict migrants as being essentially poor custodians of their own lands and then treating European nature badly as well, Turner said. So you get these headlines around asylum seekers eating swans, all these ridiculous scaremongering tactics. But they play into this idea that by stopping immigrants coming here, you are actually supporting a green project.

Experts are clear that the main instigators of the climate crisis are wealthy people in wealthy countries. The richest 1% of the worlds population were responsible for the emission of more than twice as much carbon dioxide as the poorer half of the world from 1990 to 2015, research has found, with people in the US causing the highest level of per capita emissions in the world. Adding new arrivals to high-emitting countries doesnt radically ramp up these emissions at the same rate: a study by Utah State University found that immigrants are typically using less energy, driving less, and generating less waste than native-born Americans.

Still, the idea of personal sacrifice is hard for many to swallow. While there is strengthening acceptance of climate science among the public, and a restlessness that governments have done so little to constrain global heating, support for climate polices plummets when it comes to measures that involve the taxing of gasoline or other impositions. According to a research paper co-authored by Fieschi, this has led to a situation where detractors are taking up the language of freedom fighters.

We are seeing the growth of accusations of climate hysteria as a way for elites to exploit ordinary people, Fieschi said. The solutions that are talked about involve spending more money on deserving Americans and deserving Germans and so on, and less on refugees. Its yes, we will need to protect people, but lets protect our people.

This backlash is visible in protest movements such as the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) in France, which became the longest-running protest movement in the country since the second world war by railing against, among other things, a carbon tax placed on fuel. Online, favored targets such as Greta Thunberg or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been shown in memes as Nazis or devils intent on impoverishing western civilization through their supposedly radical ideas to combat climate change. Fieschi said the rights interaction with climate is far more than just about borders it is animating fears that personal freedoms are under attack from a cosseted, liberal elite.

You see these quite obviously populist arguments in the US and Europe that a corrupt elite, the media and government have no idea what ordinary peoples lives are like as they impose these stringent climate policies, said Fieschi, whose research has analyzed the climate conversation on the right taking place on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms.

This sort of online chatter has escalated since the Covid-19 pandemic started, Fieschi said, and is being fed along a line of influence that begins with small, conspiratorial rightwing groups spreading messages that are then picked up by what she calls middle of the tail figures with thousands of followers, and then in turn disseminated by large influencers and into mainstream center-right politics.

There are these conspiratorial accusations that Covid is a dry run for restrictions that governments want to impose with the climate emergency, that we need to fight for our freedoms on wearing masks and on all these climate rules, Fieschi said. There is a yearning for a pre-Covid life and a feeling climate policies will just cause more suffering.

Whats worrying, Fieschi continued, is that more reasonable parts of the right, mainstream conservatives and Republicans, are being drawn to this. They will say they dont deny climate change but then tap into these ideas. She said center-right French politicians have started disparaging climate activists as miserabilists, while Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union who sought to succeed Angela Merkel, has said Germany should focus on its own industry and people in the face of cascading global crises.

The interplay between environmentalism and racism has some of its deepest roots in the US, where some of the conservation movements totemic figures of the past embraced views widely regarded as abhorrent today. Wilderness was something viewed in the 19th century as bound in rugged, and exclusively white, masculinity, and manifest destiny demanded the expansion of a secure frontier.

John Muir, known as the father of national parks in the US, described native Americans as dirty and said they seemed to have no right place in the landscape. Madison Grant, a leading figure in the protection of the American bison and the establishment of Glacier national park, was an avowed eugenicist who argued for inferior races to be placed into ghettoes and successfully lobbied for Ota Benga, a Congolese man, to be put on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. This focus on racial hierarchies would come to be adopted into the ideology of the Nazis themselves avowed conservationists.

There has been something of a reckoning of this troubling past in recent years a bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a native American man and an African man is to be removed from the front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and at least one conservation group named after the slaveholder and anti-abolitionist John James Audubon is changing its name. But elsewhere, themes of harmful overpopulation have been picked up by a resurgent right from a liberal environmental movement that now largely demurs from the topic.

Republicans, aware that many of their own younger voters are turned off by the relentless climate denial as they see their futures wreathed in wildfire smoke and flood water, have sensed an opportunity. The right is reclaiming that older Malthusian population rhetoric and is using that as a cudgel in green terms rather than unpopular racist terms, said Blair Taylor, program director at the Institute for Social Ecology, an educational and research body.

Its weird that this has become a popular theme in the US west because the west is sparsely populated and that hasnt slowed environmental destruction, he added. But this is about speaking to nativist fears, it isnt about doing anything to solve the problem.

The spearhead for modern nativism in the US is, of course, Donald Trump who has, along with an often dismissive stance towards climate science itself, sought to portray migrants from Mexico and Central America as criminals and animals while vowing to restore clean air and water to deserving American citizens. If there is to be another iteration of a Trump presidency, or a successful campaign by one of his acolytes, the scientific denial may be dialed down somewhat while retaining the reflex nativism.

The Republican lawsuit in Arizona may be a prelude to an ecological reframing of Trumps fetish for border walls should the former president run again for office in 2024, with migrants again the target. We will see weird theories that will spread blame in all the wrong directions, Taylor said. More walls, more borders, more exclusion thats most likely the way we are heading.

A recasting of environmentalism in this way has already branched out in different forms throughout the US right, spanning gun-toting preppers who view nature as a bastion to be defended from interlopers a back to the land ideology where you are an earner and provider, not a not soft-handed soy boy, as Taylor describes it to the vaguely mystic wellness practitioners who have risen to prominence by spreading false claims over the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines.

The latter group, Taylor said, includes those who have a fascination with organic farming, Viking culture, extreme conspiracy theories such as the QAnon fantasy and a rejection of science and reason in favour of discovering an authentic self. These disparate facets are all embodied, he said, in Jake Angeli, the so-called QAnon shaman who was among the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January. Angeli, who became famous for wearing horns and a bearskin headdress during the violent insurrection, was sentenced to 41 months in prison over his role in the riot. He gained media attention for refusing to eat the food served in jail because it was not organic.

Angeli, who previously attended a climate march to promote his conspiracy-laden YouTube channel and said he is in favor of cleansed ecosystems, has been described as an eco-fascist, a term that has also been applied to Patrick Crusius, the Dallas man accused of killing 23 people in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.

In a document published online shortly before the shooting, Crusius wrote: The environment is getting worse by the year So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable. The shooting came just a few months after the terrorist massacre of 49 people in two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand, with the perpetrator describing himself as an eco-fascist unhappy about the birthrate of immigrants.

Such extreme, violent acts erupting from rightwing eco-populist beliefs are still rare but the alt-right has been adept at taking concerns and making them mainstream, said Taylor. It has fostered the idea that nature is a place of savage survival that brings us back to original society, that nature itself is fascist because there is no equality in nature. Thats what they believe.

Advocates for those fleeing climate-induced disasters hope there will be a shift in the other direction, with some advocating for a new international refugee framework. The UN convention on refugees does not recognize climate change, and its effects, as a reason for countries to provide shelter to refugees. An escalation in forced displacement from drought, floods and other calamities will put further onus on the need for reform. But opening up the convention for a revamp could see it wound back as much as it could be expanded, given the growing ascendancy of populism and authoritarianism in many countries.

The big players arent invested in changing any of the definitions around refugees in fact the US and UK are making it even more difficult to claim asylum, said Turner. I think what youre going to see is internally displaced people increasing and the burden, as it already is, falling on neighbors in the global south.

Ultimately, the extent of the suffering caused by global heating, and the increasingly severe responses required to deal with that, will help determine the reactionary response. While greater numbers of people will call for climate action, any restrictions imposed by governments will provide a sense of vindication to rightwingers warning of overreaching elites.

My sense is that we wont do enough to avoid others bearing the brunt of this, Fieschi said. Solidarity has its limits, after all. Sure, you want good things for the children of the world. But ultimately you will put your children first.

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Climate denial is waning on the right. Whats replacing it might be just as scary - The Guardian

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia As the plaintiffs in the landmark federal lawsuit against two dozen neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who organized the Unite the Right rally called their final witnesses, they zeroed in on the alleged calls for violence in the run-up to the event, presenting organizers own message threads as evidence.

Plaintiffs attorney Karen Dunn on Tuesday called to the stand Jason Kessler, a white nationalist, member of the Proud Boys, and one of the primary Unite the Right organizers. The attorney spent hours Tuesday confirming and walking Kessler through his extensive communications with other white nationalists and neo-Nazis in the months, weeks, and days leading up to Aug. 11 and 12, 2017. Those communications over social messaging platforms including Facebook and Discord, as well as by phone and text message made clear that Kessler was looking to draw like-minded people from across the US to Charlottesville. In one post, he promised it would be the biggest Alt-Right event of the year.

He also referred to the rally in fighting terms, saying it would go down in history as the Battle of Charlottesville. Many of his messages discussed violence and provoking antiracist counterprotesters as a means to not only foment a race war, but also get media attention.

We need a new way to tip off antifa when we want them to show up somewhere, read one message that Kessler wrote to other white nationalists. We definitely want to play these people into our hands Saturday in Charlottesville.

In that same online discussion, Kessler spoke about the need to hide weapons while in public and his expectation that at least some attendees would be packing firearms.

Can you guys conceal carry? I dont want to scare antifa off from throwing the first punch. Big scary guns...will keep Antifa away. I want them to start something, Kessler wrote. Lots of armed military vets in attendance so we arent going to be lacking for firepower.

The planning of violence is key to the case of nine plaintiffs, who are suing for damages to compensate for the injuries they sustained in August 2017 as well as to punish the rally organizers. Brought on the plaintiffs behalf by the civil rights nonprofit Integrity First for America, the lawsuit is using the 150-year-old Ku Klux Klan Act to try to hold some or all of 24 of the most notorious white nationalist figures and organizations in the US accountable for alleged racially motivated violence.

Over the course of three weeks, the plaintiffs have laid out their case that the rally planning amounted to a conspiracy; they have testified about the physical and psychological injuries they experienced and still struggle with; and they have used a mountain of digital evidence to show the extent to which the group of white supremacists went to allegedly get the fight they were after.

The jury is expected to hear from defense witnesses as early as Tuesday. So far, defense statements at trial have ranged from bizarre rants to hate speech. Unable to afford lawyers, some of the white supremacists are representing themselves, using their time in court to broadcast their extremist ideologies as well as grievances with their fellow defendants.

Neo-Nazi podcaster Christopher Cantwell, who is defending himself in the trial, also took the stand Monday. The plaintiffs played episodes of his podcast that aired before Unite the Right, including one in which he interviewed Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. In the interview, Auernheimer calls for a race war and praises neo-Nazi mass murderer Dylann Roof.

I fucking like you Youre awesome," Cantwell tells Weev after listening to him rant.

Social media posts by Cantwell in which he used racist and violent language were also shown to the jury. One read, America wont be free until the last kike is strangled with the entrails of the last Democrat.

The plaintiffs also played a clip from a Vice News interview in 2017, in which Cantwell shows off the arsenal of firearms he had brought to Unite the Right.

In the process of presenting their case, the plaintiffs have also indirectly exposed how the ties among the white nationalists have frayed since the lawsuit was filed against them. During cross-examinations when some of the pro se defendants those who are representing themselves have interrogated their codefendants, things have turned heated.

In one testy exchange Monday, white nationalist Richard Spencer asked Kessler on the stand about Kesslers public criticism of him.

So when did you determine that I was a sociopathic narcissist?" Spencer asked Kessler, a term the latter had used in a 2019 tweet.

You were just despicable to everyone you ever came in contact with... You were like a robot, like a serial killer, Kessler answered.

Kessler, his voice raised at Spencer, continued, saying that Spencer had accused him of being a Jew because I wouldnt Sieg Heil with you, referring to the Nazi salute.

Spencer, glancing nervously at the jury and then down at his notes, responded before ending his questioning a moment later: Thats that's enough, Jason.

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I Want Them To Start Something: White Supremacists Allegedly Strategized How To Provoke Counterprotesters Ahead Of The Unite The Right Rally -...

If I was planning a coup detat and the overthrow of the government of the United States of America, Id not really go out of my way to blab about what I knew, before or after the event.

If what they say is true about Steve Bannon, a man best thought of as Donald Trumps Svengali, then I too wouldnt be cooperating that much with the authorities about what I did or did not know about the protests (to put things euphemistically) at the Capitol on 6 January.

Whether it was a pro-Trump rally where things got a bit out of hand or an attempt to seize control of the levers of government and to frustrate the ratification of a democratic election is what is in question at the the various Congressional inquiries now underway. What was Bannon doing in Washington on 6 January? And what did Bannon mean when he predicted, a day before, that all hell would be let loose? We all have our views.

From Bannons point of view, stonewalling must be the best option. Saying as little as possible is a constitutional right, arguably, and no one can actually force him to tell anyone anything. He can use his high-profile platform to argue, if hes minded to engage, that the whole process is illegitimate, being conducted by an unlawfully elected fake assembly, and motivated by a desire to protect a Democrat president elected through fraudulent means. Donald Trump, in this version of reality, is still the president of the United States, and Bannon and his allies only recognise his authority.

Therefore, Bannon might point out, hes under no obligation to hand anything over or give up any information to a body, the US Congress, that is operating under false pretences and has itself usurped the true democratic government of the US the Trump administration. Indeed, silence would add to his aura of power and mystery. It gives him leverage, too what will the establishment offer in return for his information?

The worst and also the best thing that could happen to Bannon is that Congress finds him guilty of contempt, sends him to jail for a year and slaps a $100,000 fine on him. The whole Bannon shtick, absurdly, is that hes the little guy being bullied by a fraudulent, selfish, crooked elite looking, as ever, after their own interests, and terrified of the people and the peoples continuing president, Donald J Trump.

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Nothing suits Bannon more than to be seen as the victim, even if his travails are entirely self-inflicted. Nothing would be more satisfying than a one-year spell in prison, where, like some notable figures from the past, he would spend his time writing his memoirs and setting out his political philosophy and patriotic mission.

Congress presently seems set on making Steve Bannon into a sort of conservative Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner banged up for his beliefs, victimised for his defiance of an illegitimate regime. No doubt he will do well out of it.

You wonder, though, what might happen if the Congress ever tried to come after Trump personally theyve already tried to get their hands on personal records and Trump tells them to get lost and they send him to prison too. Trump and Bannon might share a cell, assuming the Justice Department can locate a cell big enough for these two outsize egos. It would be an unusual place to launch the Republicans 2024 presidential bid.

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Nothing would suit Steve Bannon more than to be an alt-right martyr in prison - The Independent