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We can have Rome again if you break enough BMW windows. -Mike Ma, Harassment Architecture

And finally, the political machinations of the two great tribes slowly spins to a halt America has a president. On Saturday, Joe Biden declared victory after presumably taking Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state in the race.

This means, of course, that I was wrong not by a little bit, but by a lot. By multiple states, in fact. I messed up Arizona, and most importantly, Philadelphia, and that was my downfall. I wont dwell on it publicly, except to say that things were very, very close. Minute adjustments over a long enough timeline can lead to massive changes in the whole, and at the very least, I was close. Close enough for government work, as my dad says, and ironically, this was some of the most important government work that you can be wrong about. And thats, Gump-like, all I have to say about that.

America has always been shaped by inflections points, by moments in time weve made hard decisions about who we are what we want to be, Biden said in his victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware. There was an overwhelming call for a return to normalcy in Bidens speech, something that was echoed in his demands for bipartisanship among both camps Trump and Biden supporters.

Just like that, a race that had stretched into the wee hours of the night with little consensus, and allegations of cheating on both sides, was over. Joseph Robinette Biden, a man with the middle name of a fancy French boy, is the 46th president of the United States. Hes taking office in the middle of a pandemic. There are foreign enemies on both sides amassing power and baying for blood. Hes now in charge of running a country where two political parties have split Americans into factions, each focused on absolute annihilation of the other.

Right-wingers want Biden-voters crucified, their blood watering the tree of liberty or something. Left-wingers want Trump-voters imprisoned in some techno-hell a self-righteous I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Harlan Ellison may be spinning in his grave at this very moment, but nevertheless, I persist, to paraphrase the noxious lexicon of Elizabeth Warrens ill-fated campaign.

What a horrendous sh*tshow its almost enough to make one not believe in the integrity of elections anymore. Accusations of cheating continue to rock the airwaves, and Trumps refusal to officially accept the results only gives credence to conspiracists, hell-bent on finding evidence to support ballot-trashing or forging.

There must be some kind of way out of here, said the joker to the thief, theres too much confusion, I cant get no relief.-Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

What a profoundly stupid world. How deeply weve sipped from the cup of neoliberalism that Joe Biden, hey-jacking his way into senility, seems to be Clark Kent reincarnated. Establishment Dems creamed their collective jeans at Bidens win, calling it a win for normalcy. Baudrillard was right this is a pure simulacrum, with no relationship to any reality whatsoever.

The fundamental willingness for Biden voters to accept this profoundly stupid, self-serving candidate on the grounds that hell bring normalcy back to the White House simply illustrates the fantasy theyve deluded themselves into believing.

Not to be black pilled on main, to borrow the 4chan parlance, but the political situation in which weve found ourselves embroiled cant be solved by electing someone who embodies the establishment in his every action. The DNC threw unique, progressive candidates (like Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard) under the bus to advance the careers of establishment libs like Pete Buttigieg (who Alfred E Neumann-ed himself into abysmal poll numbers), Elizabeth Warren (who eventually shot herself in the foot with a 23andMe test) and yes, like Joe Biden, whos been part of the establishment for his 47-year political career.

Even Bidens progressive policies accomplish nothing and in fact, may dig America into a deeper hole. His support for such deeply flawed policies as the Paris Climate Accords will cripple us economically, and solve nothing in terms of climate. His support for the Affordable Care Act is essentially a farce healthcare will stay, as it always has, expensive and inaccessible for most Americans. Taxes are going to skyrocket for middle-class Americans, with little perceived benefit.

This is to say nothing of his VP, a woman who embodies neoliberal transparency. Kamala Harris, the first Black female vice president, is this token figure for Dems to wave around Weve got a minority candidate, and everything is right with the world!

Its all simulacrum, and Harriss fascist prosecutorial history doesnt matter to these people. What matters is appearance, the concept of being progressive without actually taking steps to make that happen. Identity politics has fractured the political paradigm, degrading discourse and ensuring that nothing will ever really change. The military commander drone-striking an Iraqi village may use they/them pronouns, but the white phosphorus will still be white phosphorus.

With full clarity, I mean every word of what Ive said, in whatever context youve interpreted it. If you take this as the rantings of some caffeine-crazed armchair revolutionary, go ahead. If you assume this is the manifesto of some profoundly disturbed alt-right Proud Boy, take it as that. If you think I should see someone or be on some kind of medication, youre probably right.

Regardless, everything Ive said here is true. It was on everyones lips Tyler and I just gave it a name, in the words of Palahniuk. Biden is president, and to you, that may mean the lesser of the two evils took office but in politics, there is no lesser evil. Theres only evil, in all its octopus-like, super-PAC forms.

To trudge to the polls every four years in the hopes that the lesser evil gets elected is this profoundly depressing, degrading facet of our political machine, that the party elites hope no one ever questions or challenges. If you can frame your dark-magic, dark-money ghoul as the shining hope for American democracy, in contrast with Baphomet himself Orange Man Bad f*ck, you can get away with anything!

Drone strike a Yemeni wedding? In the name of democracy. Pass a crime bill jailing thousands of Black men, for tenuous connections to non-violent drug crimes? As long as weve got a gay mayor in South Bend!

You see, the Democrat, in his many forms, doesnt care about results. He cares about image, and that, friends, is the dividing line that determines how the American political machinations will roll and will continue to roll until Gabriel blows his horn, or Hunter S. rises from his grave or Henry Kissinger croaks his last.

By the way, none of this is a tacit endorsement of Trump by any means. Many of the problems with the 46th president are exhibited by the 45th as well, with significantly less slick political coaching. To argue, however, that Biden is this incredible improvement on the Donald, is a view so divorced from reality that its almost laughable. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, sings The Who.

Its been an eventful four months since I began this column, and I like to think Ive provided some kind of new voice in the political sphere. Its debatable as to whether I missed anything important if Id had the time and energy, I would have taken a closer look at the Senate races, maybe, or talked a little about Washingtons gubernatorial race. Whatever. It doesnt matter at this point.

The point of political writing is to try to put some sense on what is functionally a nonsensical business. You can spend billions to try to predict the stock market, or flip a coin for millennia and never get above 50 percent accuracy, but all of those pointless activities would get you closer to an accurate end product than political predictions.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it, Tommy Lee Jones said in Men in Black. Say what you will about the directorial prowess of Barry Sonnenfeld (and given Wild Wild West and Nine Lives, Ill probably tend to agree with you), but that quote sticks in your craw for a reason. Politics is Hollywood for ugly people, the saying goes. In politics, objective good is a byproduct, and certainly not something to be strived for.

I would hope that I havent ruined any potential shot at a career in these columns (though a position in Pete Buttigiegs cabinet is probably off the table) because Ive tried to earnestly speak my mind. Authenticity in writing is something I strive for, more so than snappy one-liners or coordinated groupthink. But in the end, I think my writing is probably more of a composite of all the people I admire and respect for their views and ability to express them. If you see Hunter S. Thompson or Felix Biederman, or even, God bless him, P. J. ORourke reflected, youre probably not wrong.

Now it ends. Biden is president, it seems, for good or for evil. Thank you for reading.

Were trapped in the belly of this horrible machineAnd the machine is bleeding to deathThe sun has fallen downAnd the billboards are all leeringAnd the flags are all dead at the top of their poles.

-Godspeed You! Black Emperor

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OPINION: Countdown after the 3rd: I have no mouth and I must scream - The Daily Evergreen

One among a sea of unfortunate consequences of the last four years is that ordinary people have heard of many political figures who once would have been relegated to the fringe. Theres Mike Cernovich, a self-styled provocateur and meme creator who is an InfoWars regular. Theres Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who became especially notorious during the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. And theres Lauren Southern, a YouTube personality and anti-immigrant activist who famously supported the Defend Europe group, which opposes search-and-rescue operations for refugees in the Mediterranean Sea.

These three individuals are the focus of White Noise, an excellent new documentary from Daniel Lombroso, a journalist at the Atlantic. The film paints a portrait of the past few years of their lives, but more than that, it subtly exposes how much of the internet-fueled alt-right is driven by a desire to get rich, become well-known, and draw acolytes. Lombroso spent several years tagging along with Cernovich, Spencer, and Southern, attending their events, letting them talk, and quietly allowing them to do the work of unraveling their own arguments.

I recently spoke with Lombroso about how he secured this access, what he learned, and how its changed him. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

How did you get connected with these subjects?

I started covering the alt-right as a reporter at the Atlantic way back in 2016, before the figures in the film were especially well known. It started with a series of short documentaries. I was actually the guy who caught a roomful of people breaking out into Nazi salutes [in 2016], which was a pivotal journalistic moment that solidified the alt-right as fundamentally a white nationalist and potentially a neo-Nazi movement.

So, I was covering the alt-right in short documentary form. I did a profile on Richard Spencer back before he was, you know, essentially synonymous with David Duke the way he is now.

Then I returned to my day job as a video producer at the Atlantic, covering all sorts of issues, but really carving out a niche around fundamentalism. I did a piece on far-right Christian media called Church Militant. I did a piece on Israeli settlers in the West Bank and spent two weeks there.

Then Charlottesville happened. It was eight months after the Nazi salute excerpt that went viral, and it was a pivotal moment for a million reasons. In the newsroom, we knew we had to do something deeper. So, I immediately circled up with Jeff Goldberg, the editor-in-chief [at the Atlantic], and Kasia [Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg], who ran Atlantic Studios. All of us had always wanted to do a feature. I think we didnt know when it would happen or what it would be about, but right away when Charlottesville happened, and when Trump failed to disavow white nationalists, we knew that this had to be the story.

So that was three years ago, and its evident in the film that several years elapse from the beginning to the end. What was it like to stick with them for so long?

I spent three years reporting out the film, beginning with Richard, then meeting [Mike] Cernovich, and then eventually getting access to Lauren [Southern]. She was the hardest and actually took eight months to negotiate access to. And for me, shes the most pivotal to the film. She is a female face of racism, and she embodies such blatant contradictions.

The Atlantic was really great about giving me space. I basically work alone as a reporter and a filmmaker, so Im a one-man band. I shot the film and directed it and co-produced it.

I started by reporting and filming with maybe 20 or 30 subjects on the right. It became clear to me pretty quickly that I didnt want to just amplify a fringe voice, someone who wasnt relevant, and make them relevant by giving them the credibility of the Atlantic. I quickly decided, along with Jeff and Kasia, that it had to be these three figures, because they have followings in the millions and a tremendous amount of influence. Cernovich can start a meme from his laptop in Orange County, and a few days later, its coming out of [Sean] Hannitys mouth on Fox News and then eventually the presidents mouth.

It was a slow burn. After Charlottesville, I spent two or three months all over the country. By October or November of [2017], we were planning on those three [subjects]. And it took until May of the following year, eight months later, for Lauren to sign on.

From there, I just tracked their stories very closely. For Richard, its a little more than three years; with Mike and Lauren its more than two. At its core, White Noise is a follow film. To do that right, you need time. And thankfully the Atlantic gave me the space to do that.

This film struck me as a portrait of what it takes to be a grifter today, or at least it explains the social and financial rewards inherent in taking extreme positions on the internet.

Daniel Lombroso

Theyre opportunists, theyre hucksters, and I would say its fair to say theyre grifters, too. Its tricky, because they do believe what they say Cernovich a little bit less than the other two, but they definitely believe it enough to say it.

But, theyre also in it for the fame and for the money. I think Cernovich is the most extreme example of this. He starts the film very comfortable using the term alt-right. When that term becomes a little bit more toxic after Charlottesville, he says, Fuck the Nazis, and gets away from them and re-brands. And then at the end of the film, you see hes selling supplements and lifestyle regimens.

Lauren is really interesting. She knows what her package is. She is very articulate, and she can use her looks, and shes very convincing and on YouTube, thats the sort of thing that works. It almost feels Stalin-esque, like old Russian propaganda stuff; if you look down the barrel of the lens and say something thats convincing, it feels true. And shes able to back it up with pseudo-science thats usually not accurate.

Their motivations are so mixed, and at its core, thats what the film seeks to expose. The real power of the alt-right is that theyre selling a narrative, that they understand life, and that if you feel lost or depressed but follow them, youll be connected to the great history of white civilization.

By allowing you to sit with the subjects for so long, the film lets you see how mixed their motivations really are. They have a vested interest. They want to be famous. They want to get rich. And they are constantly contradicting the things that they believe.

A challenge in this era seems to be figuring out how to write about these folks without aestheticizing them, without talking wonderingly about the clean-cut neo-Nazi. The film shows that a lot of what theyre doing is essentially leaning on an appealing aesthetic. Theyre presenting a picture to people of who they could be. Are there special challenges in presenting that in film, which is a visual medium?

We didnt want the film to glorify them in any way. That influenced everything from the scene selection to the shot selection. We had very spirited conversations about everything from the way we cover the subjects down to shot-level decisions. We screened for diverse audiences and built a really diverse team around the film.

What theyre doing is fundamentally aesthetic. Theyre so obsessed with their appearance that it is obviously part of the story. I think its our responsibility as journalists to cover that ethically and responsibly, and to be highly critical. I think the film does that.

And you are missing the mark if you ignore it, because the appeal of the alt-right is to upper-middle-class, highly educated white kids in New York and LA. Its hardly about the white nationalism. Its about the community. Its about a clique. Its about the way you look and dress, and the way you say, Hello all of their interesting codes of communication, different kinds of ways they communicate online but also in the physical sphere. Thats pretty fundamental to understanding the movement.

In the film, you see that in various ways. In the conference at the beginning, when Richard says, Hail Trump! we really dwell on the fact that theyre young. He says, Stand up if youre under the age of 30, and the whole room stands. Most of those kids went to college I interviewed a lot of them and they are educated. They have a very clear aesthetic. You might call it Hitlerjugend, 20th-century fascism, but its like suit and tie, and they all have a haircut that they call the fashy.

Laurens package is all about her image. I have a story on this; shes very conscious of her image and she uses it. She very consciously uses it. Shes an intelligent person and knows how to be convincing, but she knows the package shes selling and uses it to maximize her effect and her influence.

There are really dangerous ways to cover that. I mean, there was a botched profile early on I dont want to call out who wrote it that really dwelled on Richard being a dapper white nationalist. Weve seen all sorts of iterations of that. I think it just comes down to being very, very careful, from the shot selection to the way you talk about the subjects. But their aesthetic is really fundamental to the whole project, in the way it always has been for fascist movements.

So much about fascism is about the myths and legends that the look of it calls to mind.

Exactly.

Sometimes when Im watching a documentary, I feel like Im just reading a magazine article. So one thing I appreciate about White Noise is how skillfully you use the visual medium to reinforce and undercut what people are saying out loud, or to get at elements that you couldnt easily capture in a piece of writing. Ill never get over the look on Cernovichs face when he is hawking skin care products.

Or in the car wash. Hes sitting, depressed, going through a car wash.

Are you looking for those images as you shoot?

When people watch a movie, they want to see a movie. What Im really looking for are quiet, telling moments that dont require dialogue. What destroys most Hollywood films is exposition, or saying something in dialogue that you would never say in real life, just to set up the audience. Thats the bane of everything I wanted to do. In the edit, I was trying to find ways to set up and say things that are very subtle.

Im always looking for ways to let the subjects hang themselves. For instance, in one scene, Richard says very proudly, Im bigger than the movement which is insane for a million reasons. And then five minutes later in the film, which was the following day in real life, he gives a speech in a school of agriculture, and six people are there, maybe 10.

This is my first feature, but Im always looking for visual ways to tell the story and to stay subtle. I think thats ultimately a lot more powerful than a talking head or someone telling you, This is a racist movement. Cernovich is a grifter. I think its much more revealing when you just see him putting on facial serum and talking about how thats his latest pivot.

Theres a bit where Lauren is watching a video of herself talking, and shes sitting with another woman who is side-eyeing her the whole time. It felt like that scene encapsulates something else the film shows: the kind of bubble that your subjects built around themselves to elevate their importance. Richards statement is a good example of that. They know theyre influential, but they also have surrounded themselves with people who keep saying Youre influential to them.

Did you get a sense of that while following them around? Were there times where you were, like, Wow, your sense of reality is so far from reality?

Absolutely. Theres so much disinformation on the far right. People just casually joke about things like Pizzagate, which is just false. Theres not even a basement at Comet Pizza, where [according to the disproven Pizzagate conspiracy theory] there was allegedly a pedophilia ring in the basement.

But all of them have a sense of inflated importance. I think thats because they very intentionally surround themselves with yes men, or with people who play to their ego.

Richard is the most obvious example. Hes constantly followed by mostly younger kids in their 20s, college kids or kids right out of college, who have this dated but modernized fascist aesthetic. On a typical day, especially when Im not filming and just sitting with them, theyre pouring him whiskey and buying him dinner and theyre fulfilling his every command. He has the air of a cult leader.

With Lauren and Mike, its to a lesser extent. This might be surprising to people, but Mike is sort of a father figure to people in his sphere. In that alpha-male section of the alt-right, called the manosphere or whatever, people really trust Mike and turn to him for advice. So, when Lucian Wintrich who we ultimately played down a little bit, hes a far-right provocateur who started the Twinks4Trump meme went through a breakup, Mike was one of his first calls. He wanted Mikes advice. I think thats what sets apart Mike from the other two characters: In his world, people really trust him, and that might be surprising.

Lauren is going through a transformation in the film, and ultimately, its an incomplete one. Shes always doubting herself. She gets her validation online, and I think the moment you mentioned is a really good example. Everythings mediated through screens. Shes in Moscow, watching herself speaking in London through a screen, and then Brittany, whos jealous of her, is side-eyeing her watching herself.

Lauren derives a lot of her confidence from comments, and she obsesses over negative comments and things that dont go her way. Thats been hard for her, and continues to be hard for her. I think part of it is just that she was so young when she got into this, and this is all she knows. Its all shes ever known.

That attention bubble seems so warping. I had the feeling watching White Noise that I had watching the two documentaries about Steve Bannon thatve come out in the last few years, or that I have every time I read one of those explosive interviews that Isaac Chotiner does at the New Yorker. I wonder, why on earth would these people talk to a journalist or filmmaker, or let cameras follow them around? What do you think is the character trait or quality that makes a person willing to have a filmmaker follow them around for a few years when they know that person is is not sympathetic to their views?

Part of it is narcissism, and that comes across pretty clearly in the film. The other is that I work really small. I shoot alone, Im a one-man band, and that helps neutralize them. Theyre all willing to sit and give a quote here and there. But its sort of a misconception that the alt-right wants attention theyre happy to give you a quote here and there, or sit for an interview, as long as theyre in control. This sort of unvarnished, all-access thing was incredibly difficult to achieve. And I think part of the reason they did it was that I was genuinely curious, and I kept coming back.

But part of it was their narcissism. I think they thought that they could outsmart me, that if they only depict a positive part of their life for instance, Cernovichs sunny, southern California life that could help redeem him or rewrite his public image.

Part of it, too, especially with Lauren Im a little bit older than her, but Im around her age, and we grew up experiencing a lot of the same things. So there are enough reference points in common that, when youre spending hundreds of hours off-camera just killing time in an airport or getting lunch, theres enough to talk about to kind of get them to that place where theyre willing to open up.

In the film, you see many of the juiciest moments. But all documentary filmmakers know that you spend hours and hours to get people to that point. The three minutes of Russia in the film was a 10-day trip. It was that way across the board.

You said you covered fundamentalism in the past. Is there an overlap between fundamentalism and this topic?

Theres absolutely overlap. Extremism allows you to feel like youre part of a historical narrative. You feel like youre living for the past and for the future, that youre part of something larger than your mundane, day-to-day, even boring experience.

I dont mean to conflate these things because they are different, but you see that with far-right evangelicals. In the Church Militant piece, I interviewed a bunch of interns who were working at this far-right media company, and it was the same narrative. One of them said, I was lost for years and years and years, wandering in the darkness, until I met Michael Voris, the person who started Church Militant. Its the same narrative.

With Israeli settlers again, I dont mean to conflate the situation there with white supremacy! but theres this feeling that in settling the West Bank theyre writing the next chapter of Jewish history. Thats a lot more fun, in a way, than just being a person who will die and everyone will forget you.

So, there is this gravitas to it. At its core, its the same appeal a profoundly emotional or even metaphysical appeal.

So you spent three years in the alt-rights world. How did the experience change the way you think about American politics?

I dont know that I was ever nave enough to think that we lived in a post-racial America, but I was probably a little bit more hopeful going into the project, and now Im a lot more cynical about the whole thing. The film is an unsympathetic eulogy to the alt-right. You see the figures fall off at the end, but their ideas are now so clearly part of our discourse. Theyre on Fox News every night. There are newer influencers coming up who are saying things a whole lot worse. Tucker Carlson is now the highest-rated person on broadcast TV and hes saying things that I heard Richard say three or four years ago.

Its been very depressing to see the scale of white nationalism and conspiracy in both American and especially European politics, and I just dont see it going away. I think its wrong to think that if Trump loses the election, its done and its over, because even if a section of his base lost, theyre still there. There are still kids who are finding these videos on YouTube and being radicalized by them.

In the way we talked about radical Islam, for better or for worse, as being a defining issue of the late 90s and early 00s, I think white domestic terrorism and white nationalism are issues were going to be dealing with for a long time.

White Noise is available to digitally rent on platforms including Apple TV and Google Play; see the website for details.

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Continued here:
White Noise documentary: Why the alt-rights power is in the narrative it sells - Vox.com

After yet another right-wing Twitter figure was embarrassed by poor turnout and overwhelmed by counter-protester turnout in San Francisco on Saturday, self-styled alt-right pundits have spent the last 48 hours ridiculing him and distancing themselves from the embarrassment. Also, Instagram and Twitter have booted him of their platforms. Still, a GoFundMe to help fix the organizer's front teeth has raised over $26,000.

SFist surmised two weeks ago that Texas-based Twitterer Philip Anderson a seemingly passionate but highly confused young Black man who supports the Proud Boys and hates Black Lives Matter and all things Left was likely operating under some delusion of grandeur and without the confirmation of many of his scheduled speakers when he began tweeting out a flyer for a "free speech rally" in San Francisco's Dolores Park.

Such events can not get permits for Dolores Park, as SF Rec & Parks assured us. But Anderson turned out to be somewhat more determined than we'd guessed, obtaining a permit for an event in UN Plaza and flying himself to San Francisco to appear, all while costing SF taxpayers money with police protection, etc.

Berkeley Antifa helped galvanize turnout among local leftist activists to make a show of force at Saturday's event, and by all accounts there were several hundred counter-protesters facing off with Anderson and perhaps a small handful of supporters and Proud Boys. It's not even clear if any of his scheduled speakers showed up at all, and current leader of the Proud Boys, Florida-based Enrique Tarrio, had publicly backed out of the event two days before.

As the Chronicle reports, Anderson took the "stage" around 1 p.m. after already being punched, claiming that he was only interested in "free speech," but obviously understanding what he had come to San Francisco to incite. He reportedly had a lot of plastic and glass bottles thrown at hime. A couple of other Trump supporters and Proud Boys were confronted by the throngs of counter-protesters, and at least two other men one with a MAGA hate were reportedly injured after confronting counter-protesters on Market Street about 90 minutes later.

Violence was thankfully kept to a minimum, and Anderson claims he was punched was for "no reason." But the antifa kids clearly saw reason enough to be outraged in bringing the Proud Boys who claim not to be racist but merely "western chauvinist" and overlap quite a bit in their supporters with white nationalists to the middle of San Francisco for a rally.

The event had many parallels with an equally poorly planned Patriot Prayer rally in San Francisco in the wake of Charlottesville in the summer of 2017, which was canceled, protested, rescheduled, and ended up being a bust for gun-toting organizer Joey Gibson.

And while Anderson tried to make the case that the "optics" of his bloody mouth and taking a punch from antifa were good for the alt-right cause, this Twitter thread documents the various troublesome figures whom Anderson unsuccessfully tried to lure to the event by naming them as speakers without their permission, and figures who are now denouncing his foolishness for holding such a poorly planned event with little security of his own.

One Proud Boys leader, Joe Biggs, went on Twitter to decry Anderson's poor organization and poor planning, and says that his knocked-out tooth just makes them look "weak." He claims, spuriously, that he and Tarrio will hold their own event in San Francisco soon to raise money for Anderson's dental work, and it will be better organized and protected by more Proud Boys.

Berkeley Antifa has also been taking pains to document Anderson's support for the Proud Boys, despite his being a minor figure thus far in the alt-right, by all accounts, with fewer than 2,000 followers before his Twitter account was suspended over the weekend. Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, and Anderson, both like to claim their own race as proof that the Proud Boys is not a racist group but as has been widely noted, they promote Islamophobia, xenophobia, violence against leftists, everything Trump, and their membership has for obvious reasons overlapped with many a racist and white-supremacist group.

Unfortunately, like Trump, embarrassments like this may only incite a stepped up sense of importance among alt-right figures, with San Francisco and Berkeley being their favorite stages (after Portland) for street battles aimed at gaining video content for their social media crusades.

Hopefully we can get through the next two weeks before the election without any more of this bullshit.

Previously: Trump Supporters Turn Out for Small 'Free Speech Rally' at UN Plaza, Outnumbered by Counter-Protesters

See the original post here:
Alt-Right Figures Distance Themselves From SF Rally Organizer, With One Proud Boy Vowing a 'Better Planned' Event in SF - SFist

Richard B. Spencer is a clean-cut, boyish-looking, business-suited man in his early 40s who talks a lot about ownership, especially when it comes to his fellow white people, whom he believes own the United States. In his speeches to enthusiastic post-collegiates who closely resemble him, he borrows talking points from Joseph Goebbels and drops German phrases. "I am an artist before I am a politician," claims Spencer, founder of AlternativeRight.com.

"Men's rights activist" Mike Cernovich, author of such reading material as How to Cheat on Your Girlfriend and Misogyny Gets You Laid, is a pro-wrestling fan who "wants to be a household name." Otherwise, conspiracy theorist and budding entrepreneur Cernovich tells an interviewer in the new documentary White Noise, "I'm not a political guy. I'm an author and everything"in between helpings of nitric oxide booster capsules.

Lauren Southern, a native of Canada, makes a point of saying she's "at war with the world," and enjoys going to protests with "FUCK ISLAM" painted on her face. When she isn't having fun confronting a boatload of migrants in Italy or lounging in a palatial Russian mansion, anti-immigrant YouTuber Southernthe very image of a Fox News info-Barbieglowingly describes herself as "a persecuted white girl" who does shocking things that "put you on the map." Picture The Bling Ring staffed by Hitler Youth dropouts.

If you think you've already seen enough hyper-rightwing goons on TV and online to last you a lifetime, you may want to skip White Noise. The first feature-length doc from the publishers of The Atlantic, it was put together by rookie filmmaker Daniel Lombroso, a video producer for the respected 163-year-old magazine. Alarmed by the ubiquitous voices of the far right, Lombroso embarks on a four-year odyssey stalking would-be stars of the Twitter-sphere Spencer, Cernovich and Southern, as they strut around country club parking lots and rented hotel ballrooms, talking up a storm.

It's not easy being a white supremacist these days. The flies that swarm around Donald Trump (and occasionally land on his Vice President's head) tend toward sallow complexions, heavy drinking and a shared superiority complex. Plus pills, an astounding number of pills.

Director Lombroso was evidently inspired to research the alt right after the 2016 election. Who were these well-scrubbed young menit's a mostly-male clubmarching in a Nazi-Germany-style nighttime torchlight parade during the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia? Apart from their frat-house blazers and lusty grog-chugging, what exactly are their basic political issues, besides taunting liberals, feminists, Blacks, Jews, "invaders" (a.k.a. immigrants) and non-violent demonstrators? White Noise doesn't particularly go there, largely because there's nothing beneath the surface.

And yet Lombroso's easy-target subjects, gaudy as they are, make a nominally fascinating study. Their poisonous, publicity-seeking antics may be shallow, but they offer valuable comic relief for the 2020 election season. As prospects have declined for the President, so have the fortunes of these neo-fascist great thinkers. Business is a bit slow. Cernovich, a seller of smart pills, seems on track for a nervous breakdown. These days Spencer spins out fantasy scenarios from the safety of his mother's home in Montana (as he explains, "I don't want to be a beautiful loser"). Meanwhile Southern is married, a mother and not quite yet apologetic for her role as a blond race-hatred groupie. Her filmography lists only one documentary, yet more than 30 credits under "Self." It's all about Self.

The documentary slowly peters out. However, the filmmakers have included, by way of context, this quotation from author James Baldwin, who knows something about social inequality: "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." There's a fair amount of pain in the United States of America these days. Maybe we can do something about it together, if we try.

"White Noise" debuts Oct. 21 on iTunes, Amazon Prime Video and Google Play.

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Meet the talkative alt-right sales reps of White Noise - East Bay Express

In Trumps America, disciples of white supremacy are so worried about losing their position in an emerging world of multi-ethnic diversity. They decided there is nothing to lose in taking the fight to the gutters as the only way to hang on to the last vestiges of their perceived power. Of course, they seek out allies from an army of dim-wits and deplorable, together with some witless religious bigots from African

When a Yale psychologist, Jennifer Richeson heard about the August 2008 report of the U.S. Census Bureau, her immediate response was that, This is probably freaking somebody out. That report had predicted that by year 2050, there will be a seismic shift in American demographics, when the population of minorities is expected to rise up to 54 per cent and they would emerge the new majority, while the whites in America will become the minority. In the years that followed, Richeson and her group carried out a series of experimental research in an attempt to elicit reactions on what that meant to the average white person. What they found was unsettling but crucial to understanding the politics of Trump, Brexit and the resurgence of white nationalism all across the globe.

The research showed that when people hear about the rise of a particular group, they automatically fear it will imperil theirs. According to Richeson, making the U.S. racial shift salient increases racial bias. This leads to negative attitudes towards minorities, opposition to diversity, anxiety and the feeling of threat by the majority groups. The study of demographics on political attitudes also noted that whites who traditionally are independent voters tend to lean more towards being conservative, as they become increasingly aware of a dwindling white population. This observation has been noted for its impact on the future of American national politics.

Another famous social psychologist, H. Robert Outten, replicated identical findings in a similar study conducted in both the U.S. and Canada. The fear of what a future shift in demographics would mean is making some in white communities lose sleep.

One other theory that had been suggested as fanning the embers of white nationalism is the fear and anger emanating from the concept of a zero-sum game. The belief by some that whenever blacks or any of the other racial minority groups are getting ahead, whites must have something to give up. You bet that certain politicians seeking votes would ride on the wave of such false narrative by implicitly or explicitly stoking fear. These people would not hesitate to lend their voices and give a platform to the Alt-right movements, whose agenda are the American version of the warped Aryan racial superiority, reminiscent of Hitlers Nazi Germany.

Despite all the lies and half-truths, however, its important to note that even the much referenced 2050 majority-minority census data may be missing a key salient aspect of the analysis, which is that white people will still overwhelmingly be in the majority. Its only by lumping every other race together into one category that they become the minority.

It has also been widely reported that even with the growing minority population, the hierarchy of races has largely remained unchanged and so the perceived threat of minority domination is by far exaggerated. In other words, Whites in American and the world over, would still be the dominant global power. Caucasians and Jews will continue to maintain positions that pull the levers of control over world politics and economics.

We are is 2020 after all, a time when mentally unstable and morally depraved men, who before now existed only in the fringes are taking the centre stage. But what should we expect when the group now believes that they have a Grand Wizard in the White House as an ally! Stand back and stand by, he told Proud Boys. The reality of this moment is no doubt stranger than fiction.

What is indeed a fact is that as other races continue to improve on themselves and get ahead, both economically and politically, some of those powers will be shared. A multi-cultural society in which all races and ethnic nationalities are upwardly mobile and peacefully co-exist as equals, is the imperative of an emerging new world. That, I believe, is the natural evolution of humankind and any attempt to suppress it in order to stick to the old order is akin to trying to halt a moving train. Without question, such would guarantee chaos and spell doom for humanity, as evidenced by the recent surge in racial unrest across America.

The widespread protest and racial tension arising from the George Floyd murder case and many others recently is a great pointer to the fact that the old system cannot be propped up for much longer. Many white Americans understand this so well and that explains the massive support for racial justice we have seen lately. Unfortunately, there still exists a sub-group, trapped in the old colonial mentality of Jim Crow, who though in the minority are very loud to the point of drowning the sane voices of the silent majority.

Just recently, the president of the United States re-tweeted a message from a group that claims that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles exists that runs a global child sex-trafficking ring and is plotting against him. Just to be clear, I am not in the least flabbergasted by any claim made by QAnon or whatever the morally depraved alt-right jokers are out to sell, but if anyone had told me before now that an American president could sit in the hallowed grounds of the Oval Office and shamelessly peddle conspiracy theories capable of inciting bloody violence, I would ask him to quit watching horror movies.

We are is 2020 after all, a time when mentally unstable and morally depraved men, who before now existed only in the fringes are taking the centre stage. But what should we expect when the group now believes that they have a Grand Wizard in the White House as an ally! Stand back and stand by, he told Proud Boys. The reality of this moment is no doubt stranger than fiction.

In Trumps America, disciples of white supremacy are so worried about losing their position in an emerging world of multi-ethnic diversity. They decided there is nothing to lose in taking the fight to the gutters as the only way to hang on to the last vestiges of their perceived power. Of course, they seek out allies from an army of dim-wits and deplorable, together with some witless religious bigots from African who are cheer-leading from across the Atlantic. This later group are easily sold on any agenda in so far as its clothed in religious garb. Today, the American far-right has inundated the world with an avalanche of falsehood and conspiracy theories in pursuit of their ungodly agenda. For them, they play by no rules and truth is not allowed to get in the way. In their arsenal are massive propaganda tools deployed to misinform and obfuscate.

The common enemy remains the same, namely: The Jews, LGBT and in America, blacks, non-white immigrants and certain sub-cultures. Lately even fellow whites viewed as non-conforming, likes Gretchen Whitmer, the current governor of Michigan, who they planned to kidnap.

There is a popular saying that history often repeats itself and the world definitely had seen this movie before. The Nazi Party, in its early years, was quick to recognise the power of an effective propaganda tool and Hitler himself had this to say:

Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side. The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. (Mein Kampf, chapter VI).

The Fuhrer hired Joseph Goebbels and established a Party newspaper known as Volkischer Beobachter, a widely circulated publication. Goebbels on his own, added another voice when in 1927, he started Der Angrif. Trump, on the other hand, has Breitbart, One America News Network, Mike Pence and QAnon.

The common enemy remains the same, namely: The Jews, LGBT and in America, blacks, non-white immigrants and certain sub-cultures. Lately even fellow whites viewed as non-conforming, likes Gretchen Whitmer, the current governor of Michigan, who they planned to kidnap.

They attack ferociously and crush anything that gets in the way. They dismiss science, deny climate change and attempt to brand the Bill Gates of this world as anti-Christ with a global agenda. They throw innuendos and sling all kinds of mud, hoping that some would stick. The mental cripples that support them have no idea what is going on and happily chorus the attacks.

The world suffered incalculable loss under Hitlers Germany and it required a World War II that lingered between 1939 and 1945, and resulted in the death of an estimated 70 to 85 million people, to stop him in his track. Thankfully, history had taught us that no matter how long it takes, good will always triumph over evil.

Osmund Agbo, a public affairs analyst is the coordinator of African Center for Transparency and Convener of Save Nigeria Project. Email: eagleosmund@yahoo.com

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American Alt-Right, Proud Boys and the Rise of Neo-Nazis, By Osmund Agbo - Premium Times