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Paul Gilroy is a writer and academic specialising in Black British culture. His books include There Aint No Black in the Union Jack (1987) , Small Acts (1993), The Black Atlantic (1993) and After Empire (2004). He has taught at Goldsmiths, University of London and Yale, where he was the chair of the department of African American studies. He is currently director of the centre for the study of race and racism at University College London. Gilroy was awarded the 2019 Holberg prize for his outstanding contributions to a number of academic fields, including cultural studies, critical race studies, history and African-American studies.

I know that you are close friends with Steve McQueen, our guest editor. How did you meet?I was teaching at Goldsmiths when he was a student there. One day, he knocked on my door with his friend, Desmond, another Black art student. He just wanted to talk and I was happy to do that. He kept on knocking on the door and he would bring his obsessions and his frustrations. I think that he was eager to be taken seriously in a way. It was clear in talking to him that we had interests in common and that he was a remarkable character.

He often speaks of himself as part of a continuum of Black artists, activists and writers who preceded and paved the way for him. I guess you would be included in that lineage.Well, Im just 15 or 16 years older than Steve, so maybe it was more about the fact that, back then, there were not that many other people writing about Black British art. The fact that I was perhaps helped to make a space in which some of the things he wanted to do could be articulated.

In many ways, Steves Small Axe films, particularly Lovers Rock, seem to me to be an elegy for another time and another kind of Black British communal identity that seems suddenly very distant.Yes, I agree. Demographically, the Caribbean population has shrunk and the dominant Black settler populations in Britain now are African people from different places, who arrived here under different conditions. Some, not all, arrived as refugees, some as middle-class people with more access to capital. So that generates a very different Blackness. It is more divided and more open to looking towards the US, and the generic forms of Black politics coming out of there, rather than being rooted in the aftermath of the slave experience.

The Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and then spread globally were seen by many as a moment of real change. Do you agree?I really dont know. It had to happen, but it does not guarantee anything for the future. I know there are people in the US who think that, because of what happened, we may be in the build-up to a new racial settlement there, a third reconstruction if you like, the first being after the civil war, the second the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I want to believe that is true, but I dont have enough information to be able to judge that. What happens next is the issue. At the moment, it feels like fatigue and depression and apathy may be in the ascendant. I dont want to be bleak, but, really, I dont see the momentum of the spring and early summer being maintained.

In your book After Empire you posed the question, could there be a contemporary British multicultural identity? Given all that has happened since, that possibility seems much further away now than when you asked the question.Yes, it does. There was a moment back then, when the reaction against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan created an alignment based on the urgent need to articulate an alternative that was not subject to the traditional belligerence, that was not Americanised. That has faded. The discrepancy between what is going on here and the widespread and sustained protests in America is stark. Here, there is apathy, fatigue, frustration.

How do you feel about the explosion of post-BLM virtue-signalling from the corporate worlds of the art, media and fashion?Well, the eager corporations and brands with their black squares and empty gestures might be enough to nudge some people who are looking for radical answers into the arms of the alt-right. More positively, it showed that some people in high places were watching the uprisings, that even corporate capitalism was listening. Maybe there are sources of hope and possibility in momentarily winning their attention, but I think it has its limits.

In America and Britain, there is the sense that the colonial past and, in particular, the slave trade, has not been engaged with in any meaningful way either culturally, historically or in terms of education. Is it possible to move forward politically without that happening?No. And its not a case of looking for an apology because you are offended, its about looking through that history colonialism, slavery and familiarising yourself with it in all its intimate detail. The education system is broken from top to bottom and teaching the Tudors and the Nazis is never going to fix it. Whats exciting about Steves films, the Mangrove one in particular, is that they are an attempt to offer a historical transfusion that, in the present condition, can give younger viewers and mainstream viewers an alternative sense of what the history of this country might be over the last 50 years.

As someone who has written extensively about race and history, are you pessimistic for the future?I dont think we can afford the luxury of pessimism. I have been dispirited of late, but when I saw those young people out in the streets in the pandemic, with their masks on, spaced apart, announcing to the world that racism is a bad thing, it was inspiring and uplifting. That banner was taken up very widely and some of the people who took it up were very young. That is hopeful. The question is, can that mobilisation of people be the source of a movement that can carry this forward. Thats where my own pessimism bites me, because I dont know if the technologies that get people into the streets are so good at keeping them there.

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Paul Gilroy: 'I dont think we can afford the luxury of pessimism' - The Guardian

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Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

When Sacha Baron Cohen sprang Borat on the American public in 2006, a midterm election year, I thought I was clever to observe that nimble, improvisational, disrespectful laughter had won a landslide victory over the deep emotions and classical filmmaking of Clint Eastwoods World War II diptych, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Like a blind seer, I had no idea how horribly right I was.

Since then, vast sectors of the audience have abandoned the moviessuperhero sagas exceptedfor the rapid, random snickers of meme swapping. Meanwhile, the kiss-my-ass attitude that I detected in the publics embrace of Borat went on to transform the political landscape, though not as Id hoped. It was Donald J. Trump, rather than any tribune of The Nations fed-up legions, who rose to bestride our narrow world like a Colossus of the Raised Middle Finger.

For these reasons, the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, 11 days before the 2020 elections, posed sharp questions. In a political landscape where the presidency had become a 24/7 Don Rickles set, was Cohens insult comedy a weapon against Trumps or more of the same? And could any movieeven if perpetrated with jumpy rhythms and delivered digitallycompete in a new audiovisual environment made for 60-second attention spans?

To ask these questions is to fall, understandably, into the mountaineering fallacy: the notion that all works of art must rise to the challenge of their time. In defiance of this error, I will later recommend three fascinating pictures that could be made to speak to the present moment only if subjected to critical torture. For now, let me acknowledge that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is focused so intently on the 2020 presidential election that its end credits include the admonition, in the title characters phraseology, Now Vote. Or you will be execute. These are words to live by, always, but when read after November 3, they stamp a best-if-used-by date on a production that was conceived to mock Trump and his allies during the campaign and then marketed so that its culminating gotcha scene, a humiliation of Rudy Giuliani, was revealed as a teaser shortly before the final presidential debate. I imagine Borat Subsequent Moviefilm might retain some life in years to come. All the same, its a hybrid: part rollicking mockumentary and part get-out-the-base video, of a piece with Samuel L. Jacksons Vote, dammit, vote! ad for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Cohen remains as savvy as ever about reaching audiences where they live, so its no surprise that discrete chunks of the movie can be plucked off like grapes from the stem. Within a day of the release, clips were already circulating on dozens of YouTube accounts and beyond, with leave from Amazons promotional department and to the benefit of the films electioneering. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm proved it could fit easily into todays smartphone competition for eyeballs, but if this picture is to be judged by mountaineering standards, lets note that it does not have the field to itself nor is it alone in trying to win hearts and minds through transgressive laughter. As Borat Subsequent Moviefilm acknowledges, in scenes about digital crap slinging and grassroots calls for violencehey, cant you take a joke?Trumpworld has its own memes and sense of humor.

As a reality check, you might watch Daniel Lombrosos documentary White Noise, produced by The Atlantic as a feature-length expos of the alt-right and its normalization (kind of) through the rise of Trump. Released on multiple streaming platforms a couple of weeks before the elections, the film offers a prolonged, close-up look at three of the movements young social media adepts and self-promoters: white-power loudmouth Richard Spencer, conspiracy theory peddler Mike Cernovich, and anti-feminist, anti-immigrant YouTube poser Lauren Southern. I doubt you will think these specialists in short-form outrages are funny, but their followers do, finding mirth in the trios assaults on liberal propriety (or, as you and I might put it, human dignity). Unfortunately, I also doubt that you will learn much from White Noise, assuming youre aware of basics such as the Unite the Right rally and Pizzagate, or that you are likely to fall in love with the films shambling narration and editing. The main achievement of White Noise is to engender a sense of dismayas if you needed that.

Still, the films study of alt-right zanies has its uses. It can confirm for you, by means of comparison, that Cohens insult comedy is not just more of the same.Current Issue

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Directed valorously by first-time-filmmaker Jason Woliner after a long career in television and scripted more tightly than the original Borat despite having been written by Cohen with eight others, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is at heart a tender story of father-daughter love. Never mind that the semi-feral Tutar (Maria Bakalova) is discovered under a layer of straw, rags, and facial grime in the corner of a barn, where Borat is astonished to learn shes part of his, as he puts it, livestock. When he undertakes his ensuing knockabout journey through America, unwillingly accompanied by the adolescent Tutar, the incidents may be designed, one by one, to deride Trumps supporters, but the plot is machined to forge emotional ties between father and daughter, until the two transform Kazakhstan into a feminist nation, like US of A and Saudi Arabia.

What unites the loose string of sketch-comedy episodes with the steady emotional arc? Satiric rage against the belittlement of women, which Cohen identifies as central to Trumps strongman cult. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm scatters its assaults against other targets, tooassault rifle enthusiasts, casual racists, Jew haters, Roma haters, and coronavirus deniers all get their lumpsbut the main enemy throughout is male supremacy, whether in the imaginary Kazakhstan or the America whose attitudes Cohen prankishly exposes.

Among the actually existing people who are played for suckers this time by a disguised Cohen and Bakalova: a coach for young women who want to sell themselves to sugar daddies, the operator of one of those crisis pregnancy centers that intercept women seeking abortions, a plastic surgeon who proposes making Tutars titties monumental, the guests of a debutante ball in Georgia (whose gentility in declaring young women marriageable is mugged by a traditional Kazakh fertility dance), and for the finale, old lech Rudy. The orange Sun King who reigns over this realm of pussy grabbing remains unseen, except for a Kazakh animated movie in Disney style and a full-body disguise worn by Cohen. Trumps influence, nevertheless, is omnipresent.

Which brings me to a contradiction. The trick of the first Borat was to concoct an impossibly crude, depraved Kazakhstan and then, through the title characters adventures, show America as its mirror image. The new Borat takes the same approach, but past a certain point the pattern breaks down. Even the QAnon adherents who shelter Borat in one sequence insist that women in America have the same rights as men and cant simply be sold or gifted. Even the members of a Southern Republican womens club, whose evening meeting is interrupted by a wandering Tutar, welcome this strange, uncouth figure with gentleness and respect, until she drives them to wonder if they shouldnt call her an Uber. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm lays bare an American culture of misogyny, except when it doesnt.

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And then there are Jeanise Jones and Judith Dim Evans.

The first, who works as a babysitter, is hired by Borat to kennel Tutar for a day but instead decides to educate the young woman, convincing her with infinite patience that she is an independent human being with a mind of her own. The second, encountered in a synagogue, is a Holocaust survivor who offers Borat food and a kiss, while gently informing him that his Jew disguise is a little off. (The talons, for exampletoo much.) Watching these scenes, which provide contrasting images of a decent America, you might feel that middle-aged Black women and elderly Jews have problems of their own and should not bear the burden, as they do so often, of being deployed as exemplars of charity and understanding. Yet these are the real Jones and Evans (to whom the film is dedicated), responding as themselves to ridiculous, constructed circumstances, and though they are far more developed in their fellow feeling than most butts of Cohens impostures, they dont stand alone in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

This is where Cohens insult comedy departs from Trumps and the alt-rights. (I should add Bakalovas comedy as well. Though seemingly runtish next to the elongated Cohen, she thwacks herself off him and everybody else in sight with a headlong mummers energy that knows no embarrassment, only joy.) One side thinks it funny to demean and dehumanize. The other gives people latitude to shame themselves but also allows glimpses of the better angels of our nature.

Im not going to kid myself that audiences are watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm for the sake of its passing visions of kindness. People want to laugh their asses off at the dumb, the rude, and the grotesque, and theyre getting their moneys worth. What will be left of the movie, though, now that its electoral purpose is obsolete and even the most prominent of its political targets, such as Mike Pence and Giuliani, begin their inevitable fade-out from popular memory? After rising to the challenge of its moment, must this film fall off the peak and be forever buried in snow?

I think something does remain alive after November 3: hope in the power of decency, hope in women, and pride in constructing a fully thought-out 97-minute film, even if a lot of people no longer want anything but clickbait. Thats hardly enough of a foundation on which to rebuild America, but its more than we were owed by a British comedian and a young actress from Bulgaria, home of the world-famous Museum House of Humor and Satire.

If you cannot remember the last time a film deeply excited you, please do yourself a favor and watch Pietro Marcellos Martin Eden, now available through various virtual cinemas, including Film at Lincoln Centers. Marcello and his co-screenwriter, Maurizio Braucci, claim to have based their film freely on Jack Londons semiautobiographical novel, but except for relocating the action from Oakland, Calif., at the turn of the 20th century to Naples, Italy, in the 1970s (more or less), theyve been stunningly faithful to Londons story of the intellectual and emotional awakening of a young proletarian writer and the personal and artistic catastrophe of his failure to awaken politically as well. By cleverly mixing tinted archival footage from Londons time into the re-creation of 20th century Italy, Marcello implicitly expands the title character from an individual case to a recurring type: the working man of exceptional talent and energy who struggles against all odds to educate himself and win a daughter of the bourgeoisie, only to discover in the end that the world is stronger than me. Marcello deserves credit for the bold conceptual move, but the true author of the movie might be Luca Marinelli, who plays Martin. With shoulders broad enough to bear the yoke of a two-ox team and a loose, slant-lipped smile that invites and offers confidences, Marinelli charges not only the character but the entire film with power, intelligence, and an allure that ultimately turns tragic.

Oliver Laxes Fire Will Come, available at virtual cinemas such as the Metrograph in New York and the Acropolis in Los Angeles, is a film of changing seasons and impressive yet fragile landscapesincluding the facial topographies of the nonprofessional performers Amador Arias and Benedicta Snchez, who play the main characters. Amador, in the story, is a taciturn, middle-aged man with sorrowful features that could have been carved with a pocketknife. Released from prison after serving a sentence for arson, he returns to his 83-year-old mother and her three-cow farm in the mountains of Galicia in Spain and settles into the annual round, meanwhile suffering abuse from townspeople who regard him as both an idiot and a threat. In the first half of the film, the neighbors get ready to accuse him of starting the next of the devastating fires that rage each summer through the woods. In the second half, as the screen explodes in flame, you hold your breath shot by shot to see Laxe and his crew daring to capture this infernowhile you wonder how any one man could be blamed for something so overwhelming.

Finally, moving on from the transhistorical drama of Martin Eden and the ecological cycle of Fire Will Come, you can go all the way to Neverland, otherwise known as the Three Treasures Temple, thanks to the new restoration of King Hus 1979 Raining in the Mountain. One of only two films that the master of martial arts sagas made in South Korea, Raining in the Mountain places Hsu Feng, as a thieving adventuress, amid towering vistas, labyrinthine architecture, balletic chase sequences and fights, and massed ensembles in color-coded costumes, all assembled for the sake of a folkloric fable and synchronized to a bang-up musical score by Ng Tai Gong. The experience is no more substantial than our transient world (to adopt the viewpoint of the storys Buddhist monks), so why not escape to it? Raining in the Mountain is streaming exclusively at the virtual cinema of New Yorks Film Forum.

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Living in Borats America - The Nation

By Te Aniwa Hurihanganui, of RNZ

Opponents of an Auckland art exhibition which featured neo-Nazi flags and symbols of white nationalism have received an apology from one of the exhibition's co-facilitators, but say it doesn't go far enough.

The exhibition by Mercy Pictures gallery closed last week, but has come under intense scrutiny by locals and activist group Tmaki Anti-Fascist Action which believes the display, which did not include context or justification, was deeply hurtful.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the group said many of the images used were clearly symbols of oppression, disguised as art.

"We were profoundly troubled by its extensive and uncritical use of neo-Nazi symbols, which is a form of platforming their ideology. We've found this especially frustrating when we and other community groups have put in so much effort to deplatform fascists before and following the Christchurch massacre," they said.

"In addition, we were deeply concerned that the exhibition's introduction was written by British transphobe Nina Power who has also collaborated with the alt-right, as a form of platforming her transphobic and alt-right ideology."

The group was also concerned that neo-Nazi symbols were displayed alongside the Tino Rangatiratanga and Ngi Thoe flags, without permission from tangata whenua.

The spokesperson said the company as a whole had refused to apologise but co-facilitator Jerome Ngan-Kee had since taken it upon himself to express his regret.

"I would like to sincerely apologise for the harm and retraumatisation brought about by the exhibition I played a part in putting together ... I deeply regret the way Mercy Pictures has responded to criticism and the pain that this show has bought about. It was irresponsible of me to assume these symbols and our action in displaying could deny their meanings and histories to extended communities," he said in an open letter.

"I regret in the strongest way possible the display of images and symbols related to terrible violence inflicted upon marginalised communities in the name of art. I recognise now this was a form of platforming fascist symbols. I apologise whole-heartedly for any detraction from the strength, mana and resilience of those people and for any pain that the exhibition caused them."

He also acknowledged that he would not work with Nina Power in the future, and said he would meet with the communities he had harmed face-to-face.

An open letter is circulating online to condemn the exhibition, and demand an apology from the entire company.

The letter also calls for the company to refuse to work with Nina Power in the future, no longer platform fascist and other far-right figures, and to apologise to tangata whenua for displaying their flags without permission.

In a statement, Mercy Pictures said it rejected any suggestions it supported far-right or extremist movements.

"It has been heartbreaking to see some of the responses to the exhibition. We find it very upsetting that some people have felt unsafe as a result of this artwork and we take these responses very seriously.

"Mercy Pictures believes extremist movements of any kind are malevolent and evil. We oppose these kinds of groups vigorously, not least because they put the lives of the people we love at risk. Mercy Pictures and the wider Mercy Pictures family is predominantly made up of queer people and people of colour. As such, any suggestion that we are alt-right, neo-Nazi, queerphobes, homophobes, xenophobes, and white-supremacists is offensive and untrue," it said.

It said the 'People of Colour' exhibition had no formal relationship to any other artist or organisation.

"The artwork is comprised of over 400 flags: national flags, political flags, religious flags, fictional flags, and flags from the internet. Our intention with the exhibition was to explore the dangers of political and tribal identities. This is an ongoing and dynamic conversation we wish to be a part of and in some way foster. We were asking questions like 'What does it mean to identify with a flag?' and 'What are we to do when a flag means different things to different people?'

"We recognise that balancing artistic freedom and community safety is a difficult task. In retrospect one thing we could have been better at is providing some more context to the show, to guide viewers that the exhibition is about the complexity of these symbols. We are in the process of reaching out to groups that may have been affected by the exhibition. It may take some time to organise, but we have begun this process and we are grateful to those who are offering us guidance. We will release more information about this as things proceed."

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Activist group calls out neo-Nazi symbols at Auckland art exhibition - New Zealand Herald

Ten days after the election, Donald Trump is still skulking around the White House, claiming that he was cheated. This shouldnt surprise anybody who watched him during the campaign. He repeatedly claimed that the vote would be fraudulent, and, at one point, he suggested that Election Day should be delayed. In October, Bright Line Watch, a monitoring organization that was set up in 2017 to monitor Trumps threats to U.S. democracy, surveyed hundreds of political scientists about their expectations for the election and its aftermath. Many of the respondents predicted that Trump would declare victory early on, attack the blue shift caused by the late counting of mail-in votes, and refuse to concede.

Thats precisely what happened, of course. Trump has also empowered an army of lawyers to gin up accusations of voter fraud. Attorney General Bill Barr, breaking with Justice Department precedent, has ordered his underlings to investigate any allegations of irregularities that are clear and apparently-credible. As the vast majority of elected Republicans have failed to denounce these alarming developments, some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that Trump and his cronies are trying to stage a coup.

On Thursday, I spoke with Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth political scientist who was one of the founders of Bright Line Watch, and asked him whether he subscribed to the coup thesis. I think that is wrong, Nyhan said. What I would emphasize is precisely what we have been talking about pretty much all the time: the concern is democratic erosion. Democratic erosion isnt something to be minimized or taken lightly. It refers to the gradual undermining of democratic norms and democratic institutions, which ultimately can prove fatal to democracy, and its something that Nyhan and other political scientists have been issuing warnings about since shortly after Trump was elected. Democratic erosion happens in a slow and piecemeal process, Nyhan said. Joe Biden will almost certainly still be sworn in as President, but democratic erosion can still take place.... The peaceful transfer of power is the core of democracy.

Writing in the Washington Post earlier this week, Erica De Bruin, a political scientist at Hamilton College who is the author of the book How to Prevent Coups dtat, made a similar argument. Although the measures that Trump and Republican officials have taken to undermine the election are enormously damaging, they do not constitute a coup, De Bruin writes. The real danger, she argues, is that Republicans are violating the norms we rely on to ensure peaceful transfers of power, undermining trust in our electoral process and conveying to their supporters the poisonous notion that Democrats, as a rule, can never win power legitimately.

Although it seems likely that Trump will eventually accept that he cant stay in office, nobody should underestimate the damage that he is doing and the dangers he is fuelling. In repeatedly making unfounded claims about the election, he is creating a false narrative, which, in years to come, could well become a Trumpian version of the stab-in-the-back legend that some German generals promulgated after the First World War. According to that baseless narrative, which many right-wing extremists, Hitler included, subsequently seized upon to undermine the fragile Weimar Republic, Germanys soldiers didnt lose the Great War on the battlefieldthey were betrayed by civilian politicians.

In Trumps equally fictitious narrative, he didnt lose the election: his opponents stole it by stuffing mail-in ballots, throwing out Trump votes, and engaging in other nefarious tactics. On Thursday, Trump tweeted about an utterly unsubstantiated story from the pro-Trump One America News Network, which claimed that software provided to local governments by the technology firm Dominion Voting Systems deleted 2.7 million Trump votes nationwide. (There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which oversees election security, said in a statement. The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.)

Although Trump has amped up his fake-history project since the election, some of the foundational work for it was done before the 2020 campaign began, and he was far from the only one responsible. For more than a decade now, Republicans intent on suppressing the minority vote have been making false claims about voter fraud. Trump picked up and amplified these claims. At a rally, in September, he told his supporters, Its a rigged election. Its the only way we are going to lose.

On the eve of the electionafter almost four years of exposure to the President and to media outlets and social-media accounts that support himTrump supporters already subscribed to a counterfactual version of reality. A survey that Bright Light Watch carried out in October found that seventy-eight per cent of respondents who approved of Trump believed that voting in U.S. elections by noncitizens was common, and seventy-eight per cent of Trump supporters believed that there was widespread stealing of, or tampering with, ballots. Trumps statements since the election have added to the misinformation. A Politico and Morning Consult poll published earlier this week found that seventy per cent of Republicans now say that they dont believe the election was free and fair. Whether that many Republicans really think this way is immaterial. Bearing false witness to things that arent true is a rite of passage in many extremist groups, and todays Trump-dominated G.O.P. certainly qualifies as one. The failure of many Republican leaders to repudiate Trumps false claims is perhaps the most alarming thing that has happened since November 3rd. We depend on the bipartisan affirmation of the results to help the losers accept the legitimacy of the election, Nyhan said. Instead, we are seeing the opposite.

Ultimately, Trumps fake history could prove more insidious and lasting than an actual coup attempt. If he were to announce tomorrow that he intends to stay in office and order the U.S. military to recognize him as the rightful President, it seems highly improbable that the generals would heed his call, despite the fact that he has just fired the Secretary of Defense and appointed new civilian leaders to the Pentagon. In all likelihood, any effort to usurp the Constitution would be over quickly, and Trump could end up facing charges of treason. By claiming that the Democrats stole the election from him, and that the mainstream media went along with it, he is creating something more durable: a rallying cry for his most vehement supporters, and a foundational myth for future recruits to Trumpism.

Some of Trumps backers on the alt-right are organizing a Stop the Steal demonstration in Washington, on Saturday. According to a Washington Post story, those planning to attend include Alex Jones, the Infowars conspiracy theorist, and Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys. With anti-Trump rallies also planned for the same day, its possible that there will be violent clashes between the rival demonstrators. This summer, Trump cheered on supporters of his, who rode into Portland in pickup trucks and fired paintballs and pellet guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators. He seems unlikely to stay quiet this weekend.

With both Axios and the Washington Post reporting that Trump has told associates he is going to run again in 2024, there may well be four more years of demonstrations and bogus assertions that a great injustice has been done. Its easy to imagine Trump and the conservative media keeping that claim going through 2024 and denying the legitimacy of the Biden Presidency, Nyhan told me. To be clear, it is probably going to be a relatively small group of Americans who believe the most extreme versions of those claims. But its one that is especially important to the way the Republican Party and the conservative-media universe work. That relatively small group can distort the actions of lites and do a lot of damage.

Trump is also setting a precedent, and a very bad one. Until this year, it would have been unthinkable for a sitting U.S. President to refuse to concede after being clearly defeated in an election. In the countrys two-hundred-and-forty-three-year history, such a thing has never happened. Now that it has, what will transpire if some future election is considerably closer? We could have leaders with authoritarian inclinations who are more competent than Trump, Nyhan noted.

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The Long-Term Damage of Trumps Antidemocratic Lies - The New Yorker

Origin of alt-rightFirst recorded in 200510; associated shortly after with Richard Spencer, U.S. white nationalist (born 1978); shortening of alt(ernative) + right (in the sense political conservatives)historical usage of alt-right

Though the term alt-right was used in certain circles as early as 20052010, it first received mainstream attention in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. There has been so much confusion and debate around the term that many news organizations have felt compelled to explain in their official style guides how they will use or not use it. Media outlets including the Associated Press , the New York Times , the Guardian , and National Public Radio have all come to the conclusion that the term alt-right should not be used without further qualifying information, from prefacing the term with so-called to clearly stating that the alt-right is a hate group. Several of these guides suggest the use of less euphemistic, more explicit language such as white supremacist , white nationalist , or neo-Nazi in place of the term alt-right . The term alt-right has been seen as an effort to rebrand various hate groups in order to appeal to an internet-savvy generation. The first element, alt-, is a shortening of alternative . It has positive connotations for many younger people, often being paired with music genres to suggest a more hip offshoot of the original: alt-rock , alt-country , alt-folk . Critics of the term alt-right believe that it sanitizes, masks, and normalizes the true nature of the ideologies upon which this movement was formed.

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Alt-right | Definition of Alt-right at Dictionary.com