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Every so often in Britain,eugenicsis accused of making a comeback. Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn attention to the harmful lasting impact of Britains colonialist figures, shocking those who assumed that white supremacy had been left firmly in the past.

But for those campaigning against the legacy ofeugenicsin higher education, these revelations about the roots of racism were not as surprising. From their perspective, eugenicist views never really disappearedthey had just found a safe havenin somepartsof British universities.

British universities have strong historical ties witheugenics. Sir Francis Galton, a prolific Victorian scientist known to be one of the pioneers ofeugenics, set up a lab at University College London in 1904 and endowed the institution with his personal collection of work, along with funding for the countrys first Chair ofEugenics(the post was renamed, in the sixties, to Professor of Human Genetics.) Until it was finally renamed after Black Lives Matter protests, students at UCL still attended lectureson bio-medical genetic issuesat the Galton Lecture theatre.

In 2018, it was revealed thatasecreteugenicsconference, the London Conference of Intelligence, had been held in a UCL lecture theatre.The event hosted white supremacist academics closely associated with the American alt-right, wrote the London Student.

A UCL internal report on the conference, since made public, show the conference had been attended by fringe academics to policy-interested individuals.In a press statement, UCL said The conferences were booked and paid for as an external event and without our officials being told of the details. They were therefore not approved or endorsed by UCL. The university reassured that they were committed to vigorously combatting racism and sexism in all forms, but also stated that they had a legal obligation to protect free speech on campus, within the law.

The scandal brought attention to UCLs history, and the university launched an inquiry into the history ofeugenicsat the institution. But just before the universitys report was publishedto the public, nine membersof the 16-strong inquiry team refused to sign it, and even argued that the inquiry did not go far enough in a separate set of recommendations. An anonymous member of the committee said: the big issue is not how a member of staff booked a room, but why someone with his views was a member of staff at all.

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But its not just about one man, or one university.After the Second World War, academics from Cambridge, Oxford and Glasgow were also part of the EugenicsEducation Society, a popular 20thcentury group thatat timescampaigned for sterilisation and marriage restrictions.Universities still memorialise the legacies of famous scientists who made important discoveries but also expressed viewsthat have attracted controversy such asFrancis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA, andRonald Fisher, a pioneer of modern day statistics.

The home ofeugenicshasnearlyalways been in universities, says David King, director of an independent watchdog organisation Human Genetics Alert. Someacademics tend to believe that all knowledge is good, even if eugenic ideas influence the research, he says:universities are a protected space for these kind of views. Political power has always operated in Britain this way, quietly and below the democratic radar, through conversations between privileged elites, often academics.

However, others disagree. Steve Jones, who was head of UCLs genetics department and former president of the Galton Institute, says that the historical ties these institutions have witheugenicsare discussed openly and extensively. In some ways, the horrors of theeugenicsmovement are what has made biologists cautious about what they are willing to do today says Jones. In the old days those involved knew almost nothing, and were willing to do almost anything; while today we know far more but are much less confident about how we use that information.

Jones argues that there is a crucial difference betweentheperspectives of medical researchers now, compared to those in the era of Galton. Eugenicists set out to change the fate of future generations, whatever the cruelties that might be visited on the people of the day. In contrast, modern genetics tries, although it sometimes fails, to improve the prospects of those alive today Jones says.

But if genetics today hasonly tenuous links toeugenics, why are people worried? A subsection ofresearch, which looks for genetic explanations for complex traits such as intelligence, mental health or personality, has recently gained traction. This field, called sociogenomics,could pave the wayfor a new era of genetic engineering and social stigma. Since the 1960s, dubious journals such asMankind Quarterlyhave been the homes of articles that appear togive backing toscientific racism, classism and ableism.

But now even more respected institutions are dabbling in it. Work linking a persons genetic code to their intelligence, income and educational attainment has been produced by researchers across UK universities, includingKings College London,University of Edinburgh, andGoldsmiths. These studies,one of whichlinks 7-year old childrens test scores with their DNA, would arguably not be out of place at the London Conference of Intelligence. Even the most prestigious academic journals, such asNature Communications, have published studies linking income with genetics. These studies have been cited in reports inMankind Quarterlyto support arguments that Muslimimmigrants have lower IQs than white western Europeans.

Authors from these studies say resultscould helpminimize social disparities in health and well-being, or they could lead toevidence-based, biologically-informededucation policy. But how can linking genes with how much you earn lead tolessinequality? And how would finding tiny unchangeable differences in the DNA of schoolchildren lead to better educational for all, when the biggest drivers of educational achievement are factors like having a safe home, and a comfortableupbringing?

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The global rise of alt-right populism is to blame for the resurgence ineugenicsresearch, says Professor David Colquhoun, who has worked at UCL for over 40 years. The alt-right give credence to eugenic ideas, and use pseudoscientific genetic theories to support them, he explains. This is documented in scientist Angelina Sainis bookSuperior: The Return of Race Science, where she describes how racists insistently search for biological evidence that they are more special than everyone else. If skin colour cant explain racial inequality, then maybe the structure of our bodies and brains will. If not anatomy, then genes. When this one, too, throws up nothing of value, theyll move onto the next thing, she writes.

Ben van der Merwe is the investigative journalist whodrew attention tothe London Conference of Intelligence at UCL. He believes that universities have beentoo willing to provide a home for these people too. You have a minority of people who are basically cranks, and these individuals (qualified scientists and amateur bloggers) have managed to position themselves as part of the current moral panic over free speech on campus he says. Universities dont appreciate thateugenicsis not a culture war issue over the right to offend.

Universities are further heavily incentivised to hide their history ofeugenics, because many profit from legacy funding from these figures, says a UCL SU Disabled Students Officer, who prefers to remain anonymous. The legacy ofeugenicsseems to pervade inuniversity policies today, which are hostile to students with disabilities and other marginalised groups, they say. Black alumni at UCL have spoken about feeling they were forced out [of the university], and I have no doubt this happens to other groups historically targeted byeugenics. Universities in this country were built from the work of people with many harmful attitudes, says the SU Officer. Students are blocked from finding out about their institutions histories by a lack of accessible information, and an attitude that everything has been fixed now. But it hasnt.

Profit motives and prejudiced policy are not the only factors leading to a culture where eugenicsresearchseems to thrive.Criticising UCLs handling of theeugenicsinquiry, Joe Cain, professor of history of science at UCL,wrote: Excessive deference to managers is one factor. Excessive amounts of discretionary money is another. Crafty people who know how to work the system is a third. Complacent, homogenous, and soft oversight is a fourth.

What should universities do next?UCL have taken important steps, including considering new names for their buildings named after eugenicists, and plan to fund new scholarships to study racism.

David King, who says he has experienced threats and intimidation for speaking up, believes a more extreme approach is needed, in UCL and other centres. He wants places like the Galton Institute to be shut down, and funding for research into genes and intelligence to be removed.

Big science projects cost a lot of money and do not take place unless they are funded King says. There is never enough money to fund all the research that scientists want to do. Science gets stopped every day. So the real question is which science do we want? And who gets to control it?

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The secret history of Britain's universities and eugenics - Prospect

Bill Maher, the longtime political satirist and host of HBOs Real Time, harbors an Ahab-like obsession with cancel culturethe theory that prominent politically incorrect (to borrow his catchphrase) folks are being pushed out of their jobs by bad-faith online mobs.

This likely stems from the time when, six days after the 9/11 attacks, Maher eventually had his show Politically Incorrect canceled by Sinclair after calling the terrorists involved not cowardly for staying in the airplane when it hits the building, a statement that had come on the heels of Maher comparing his dogs to retarded children. In a matter of months, however, he was given a brand-new show by HBO, which hes hosted for the last 17 years.

And, like many of the rich, privileged, highly influential signatories of Harpers infamous cancel culture letterfrom Malcolm Gladwell and Fareed Zakaria, who have committed multiples acts of plagiarism yet have not seen their opportunities slip, to J.K. Rowling, an anti-trans billionaire and bestselling authorMaher is a living example that cancel culture is overblown.

On his HBO show, Maher has said the N-word; regularly defended powerful men accused of sexual harassment; yukked it up with the alt-right; made discriminatory statements against Muslims; pushed anti-vaxx nonsense; and suggested that everyone should want to get COVID-19. He has yet to be so much as censured by HBO (at least publicly) for his behavior.

And so, on Friday night, Maher welcomed Bari Weiss and Thomas Chatterton Williams, the two people who have dined out the most on the Harpers letter, to discuss cancel culture.

As a guy who did a show called Politically Incorrect and another called Real Time, thank you, because we need a pushback on cancel culture, said Maher, adding, What strikes me about it is the pushback is coming from liberals, and almost anyone who signed this letter is a liberal! (The bulk of the letters signatories are more libertarian than liberal.)

Chatterton Williams, who was not able to provide a single solid example of someone whos been truly canceled during a recent interview with The New Yorkers Isaac Chotiner, spoke of the overall climate of censoriousness and applauded the letters international coverage; meanwhile, Weiss referred to it as a warning cry from inside these institutions, this growing culture of illiberalism, which is different from criticism. She added, It is about punishmentit is about taking away their job.

Lets unpack this a bit. Chatterton Williams is a prominent author and writer who has for some reason penned two memoirs before the age of 40 and contributes to The New York Times Magazine. Weiss recently wrote a book and was an opinion writer at The New York Times. These people have massive platforms. Furthermore, Weiss recent resignation from The New York Times, which shes painted as her being canceled by a major institution, was by all accounts a coordinated PR effort conducted by Weiss and the writer Andrew Sullivan who had been plotting to launch a new venture for people who presumably wont criticize them as much.

Weiss went on to draw a false equivalence between those on the right who worship Trump as a deity who can do nothing wrong and those on the left where to be anything less than defund the police or abolish the police makes you a hereticthe latter of course not even being true, since the majority of those on the left, including Democratic nominee Joe Biden, dont support defunding or abolishing the police. Im also not sure how the blind worship of a fascistic ruler is on the same level as believing in defund the police, or to support the reallocation of some police funds elsewhere, though it sounds like Weiss does not understand that defund the police does not actually mean taking away all the polices money.

Im not sure how the blind worship of a fascistic ruler is somehow on the same level as believing in defund the police, or to support the reallocation of some police funds elsewhere.

Maher agreed wholeheartedly with Weiss (whom he called hip) and Chatterton Williams, opining, For those who think that this is just, again, celebrities whining or elites or something, there was a survey recently and 62 percent of peoplesay theyre afraid to share what they truly believe.

Heres the thing: this letter was mostly celebrities whining. And that study Maher cited was conducted by the Cato Institutea right-wing organization founded by Charles Koch.

The reality is that speech has never been more Democratic, and platforms like Twitter, that the Weiss and Chatterton Williams of the world decry as unfair, have given voice to countless underrepresented groups, from Black Lives Matter to the Arab Spring. Sure, there are some cancellations happening in media and academia but they arent of these politically incorrect writers with gigantic platforms who are paid large sums of money to share their politically incorrect opinions and at no risk of cancellation. Theyre of people like Norman Finkelstein, who was driven out of academia and denied tenure for criticizing Israelthe very same crime that drove Weiss to campaign to get Arab professors fired during her college heyday.

Plus, with all the real problems going on in the world150,000-plus dead from the novel coronavirus, unidentified federal agents kidnapping protesters on the streets, police brutality against Black bodies, Trump threatening to postpone the electionwhy is Maher dedicating the majority of his program to this crap?

Originally posted here:
Bill Maher, Who Said the N-Word on TV, Decries 'Cancel Culture' - The Daily Beast

The irony of a mens rights activist murdering two men to get back at feminists goes to show, no one is safe from violent misogyny, writes Baker. Toxic masculinity kills. (Mathias Wasik/ Flickr)

On Sunday afternoon, July 19, a white, anti-feminist mens rights activist and lawyer Roy Den Hollander dressed up in a FedEx uniform and went to the house of New Jersey federal judge Esther Salasthe first Latina appointed to be a federal judge in New Jersey. Judge Salas had presided over a case brought by Hollander, challenging the U.S. governments male-only military draft registration requirement.

When the door opened, Hollander shot Judge Salass 20-year-old son dead and seriously wounded her husband, then fled. Judge Salas was in the basement at the time.

Hollander was later found dead about two hours north of Judge Salass home in an apparent suicide.

The 72-year-old Ivy League-educated, former New York corporate lawyer had been a member of the San Diego-based mens rights organizationthe National Coalition for Men. He had for years filed lawsuits alleging gender discrimination against men. He challenged the constitutionality of ladies night promotions at bars and nightclubs, sued Columbia University for its womens studies classes, and sued news organizations over what he said was biased coverage against Trump during the 2016 election.

In 2008, he filed a suit against the federal government, alleging the Violence Against Women Act was unconstitutionally biased against men.

Hollander reportedly carried around a typed, 41-point list headed Discrimination against men in America. He complained feminists had infiltrated institutions, and theres been a transfer of rights from guys to girls.

In a 2018 ruling, Judge Salas allowed Hollanders case to go forward, but he criticized her for not moving the case along quickly enough. He called her a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.

This man seems to have been especially unbalanced, but the incident nonetheless offers a tragic illustration of how violence lurks very close to the surface for some of these men, pro-feminist scholar and educator Jackson Katz told Ms.

It is directly related to how violence is used by abusive men in heterosexual relationships with women. It is a very effective means of gaining compliance: If I cant get my way by any other means, Im going to get it through the threat of violence or the actual enactment of violence.

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Hollander follows in a long line of anti-feminist men who commit murder, such as Marc Lpine and Elliot Rodger. In his 1989 Montreal massacre, Lpine shot 30 rounds of ammunition into a group of female students at an engineering school in Montreal, while yelling, Youre all feminists!

In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others in Isla Vista, Calif., after distributing a 141-page document describing his deep-rooted loathing of women. Like Hollander, Lpine and Rodger both killed themselves after murdering others.

And just as mass shooters often have histories of domestic violence, so did Hollander. His former wife accused him of abuse and harassment, including revenge porn. In 2001, she filed a New York domestic incident report, alleging that he violated a protective order by stealing her diary and posting it on the internet along with nude photos. He stalked her and doxxed her for years.

Hollander, who was a Trump supporter and volunteer, posted a 2,028-page collection of writings on his website containing deeply misogynist and racist rants about women, whom he called feminazis. He characterized feminists as an evil that wants to exercise totalitarian power over men. He said men have a right to revolt against that tyranny, to take it down. He also threatened that Feminists should be careful in their meddling with nature. There are 300 million firearms in this country, and most of them are owned by guys.

Just as Lpine left a list of nineteen names of radical feminists he would have killed but for lack of time, police found in Hollanders car the names of other female judges he may have planned to target, including New York States chief judge Janet M. DiFiore.

Hollander was part of the anti-feminist mens rights movement, which advocates for a male supremacist ideology the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a thinly veiled desire for the domination of women and a conviction that the current system oppresses men in favor of women.

A Voice for Men is the largest and most influential mens rights organization. Hollander published on their website. But the movement has many branches, including:

The 60,000-plus member online community called the Red Pill uses a metaphor from The Matrix to refer to the moment one comes to believe that men are oppressed. Most mens rights activists are white, middle-class, heterosexual men.

While there is often hostility among the different subgroups, SPLC reports the unifying thread is virulent, at times violent misogyny, and the practice of blaming women and a large feminist conspiracy for the ills of (mostly white) men today.

Male supremacist ideology is driven by the belief that men are entitled to a superior place in society than women, which are biologically and intellectually inferioras a result, any advancement that women might have obtained is nothing more than a usurpation. Like white supremacy, male supremacy is driven by fear and anger at the loss of white male status.

This misogyny is often interlaced with implicit or explicit threats of violence.

Violence is a critical part of that ideology, says Katz. If I cant get what I want through persuasion, I will use violence, or the implicit threat of violence of it. Even if a man doesnt use violence, the threat of violence hangs in the air as the ultimate way to get what he wants.

Many mens rights activists have an aggrieved entitlement that they use to justify misogyny and violence, says sociologist Michael Kimmel, author of Angry White Men: If you feel entitled and you have not gotten what you expected, that is a recipe for humiliation.

When they see women around them who have succeeded when they havent, they blame women for their failures, feel aggrieved, and use violence, or the threat of violence, to get back at them.

If you grow up with the expectation that the world should be organized in your favor, says Katz, and theres a deep cultural belief in a natural hierarchy with white men residing at the top of that hierarchy, and youre growing up from the earliest moments of your life being taught that, and then seeing it slip away, then theres a real feeling that something is being taken away. Even though objectively they didnt deserve it in the first place, thats not their lived experiencethats not their subjective emotional experience.

Anti-feminist mens rights activists often attack efforts to address violence against women, as Hollander did in his lawsuit challenging the Violence Against Womens Act, inaccurately contending that women engage in intimate partner violence against men as often or more than men do against women.

In her book Equality with a Vengeance: Mens Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash, scholar Molly Dragiewicz argues antifeminist mens groups use the language of gender neutrality to attack programs created to ameliorate the outcomes of gendered inequality. These discourses proclaiming sex symmetry in violence against intimates serve to reproduce the conditions that enable violence by silencing those most adversely affected, obscuring structural contributing factors, and echoing abusers.

According to SPLC, the most established proponents are the virulently misogynistic website A Voice for Men, started by Paul Elam (male spelled backwards), and the Return of Kings, founded by pick-up artist Roosh V. The SPLC designates both as hate groups and describes male supremacist ideology as the gateway drug for the racist alt-right.

Australian scholar Michael Flood maintains a comprehensive website of scholarship about mens rights movement, including resources on the links between anti-feminist mens rights activists and the alt-right.

Hollander, who was 72 and had a fatal cancer diagnosis, may have felt he had nothing to lose. In addition to the murder of Judge Salass son, Hollander is also the top suspect in the murder of a rival mens rights activistlawyer Marc Angelucci, the vice president of the group National Coalition for Men. On July 11, a man posing as a FedEx delivery person shot Angelucci to death at his home in California. Investigators suspect that Hollander may have been jealous of Angelucci, who won a military draft case before Hollander could win his case before Judge Salas.

Mens rights activists are now trying to distance themselves from Hollander, claiming he is not one of them. But his long-term involvement in their movement, past membership in one of their leading organizations, and use of their ideology and rhetoric proves them wrong.

The irony of a mens rights activist murdering two men to get back at feminists goes to show, no one is safe from violent misogyny. Toxic masculinity kills. Male supremacist ideology and behavior, which often intersects with white supremacy as in the case of Hollanders racist misogyny toward Judge Salas, have been tolerated for far too long in American society.

Whether in the streets or in our homes, in front of womens reproductive health clinics or in the halls of government, whether online or in person, we must finally start taking misogyny seriously, in word and in deed.

The coronavirus pandemic and the response by federal, state and local authorities is fast-moving.During this time,Ms. is keeping a focus on aspects of the crisisespecially as it impacts women and their familiesoften not reported by mainstream media.If you found this article helpful,please consider supporting our independent reporting and truth-telling for as little as $5 per month.

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Misogyny, Murder and the Men's Rights Movement - Ms. Magazine

Federal officers walk through tear gas while dispersing a crowd of about a thousand people during a protest in Portland, Ore. (Nathan Howard / Getty Images)

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A major American city has been taken over by violent anarchists, according to the Trump administration and right-wing news. Portland, Ore., is a city under siege, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, said last week. On Thursday, Wolf visited Portland to see for himself the lawless destruction, which is allegedly so dire as to warrant the deployment of federal forces, who have spent the last few weeks teargassing, beating, and temporarily kidnapping protesters. Fox Newss Sean Hannity decried constant chaos; Tucker Carlson claimed the whole city had been destroyed by the mob.Ad Policy

This would be alarming stuff, if it were true. Portland, where I live, has been the site of ongoing protests against police brutality and racism since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a 54-day stretch of activism as of this writing. Over the past two months, mostly peaceful demonstrators have filled bridges, parks, and Interstate 84, sometimes numbering in the thousands. In what is now a predictable pattern, each night a group converges near the Justice Center and Federal Courthouse downtown. Usually small provocationstossed water bottles or fireworks or a Granny Smith apple with a bite out of itspark a wave of violence from law enforcement. Occasionally, there have been more overt acts of vandalism, particularly in the immediate wake of Floyds death, including broken windows and small fires. (For more detailed timelines of the protests in Portland from local reporters, read this and this.)

But the city is hardly wracked by chaos. Outside of the few square blocks downtown that are marked by graffiti, boarded-up windows, and metal fencing, things feel normalor rather, as normal as possible given the impact of Covid-19, which has had a far more disruptive effect than have the protests. The bulk of the violence cited by Wolf amounted to graffiti and other property damage. Meanwhile, his agents and other federal officers have seriously injured a number of protesters, including a Navy veteran who had his hand broken by federal officers after he tried talking to them. The mood in the crowd downtown is often jovialat least until law enforcement arriveswith people dancing and chanting and giving out vegan stew, barbecue, and donated bike helmets. On Friday night around 10:30 pm, shortly after federal forces started spraying tear gas, filling a city block with noxious fumes, a few families were strolling by shuttered storefronts just a few blocks away, apparently unaffected by the siege.

Federal agents showed up in Portland in early July, after Trump signed an executive order protecting statues and monuments from criminal violence during racial justice protests. In response, the Department of Homeland Security created a task force to surge resources. Ostensibly, federal forces are in Portland to protect federal property, including the courthouse. But their primary effect has been to escalate violence. On July 11, a deputy with a tactical unit of the US Marshals Service shot a demonstrator named Donavan LaBella in the head with an impact munition, fracturing his skull. On July 16, reporters for Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that federal agents were grabbing people on the street and pulling them into unmarked cars.

I am basically tossed into the van. And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldnt see and they held my hands over my head, Mark Pettibone, one of the people detained, told OPB. While Pettibone had been at the demonstration that night, he was on his way home when he was whisked away. I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time. As The Nations Ken Klippenstein reported, the agency responsible for Pettibones detention was the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC), a SWAT team-style unit officially charged with responding to terrorist threats.

A number of lawsuits have been filed against the federal government for civil rights violations, and protests that had dwindled to a hundred people or so are now drawing thousands to downtown. Things had been in fact kind of winding downuntil the federal police force or whatever it is, Im still not quite sure, came in and literally blew things up, said Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran, who joined the demonstrations over the weekend and on Tuesday night. Theyre responding with this horrific amount of force that is causing so much trauma and injury to what had been relatively minor acts of, at the very worst, vandalism of property.

How did a city of 653,000 become the testing ground for what Trump has suggested will be broader interference in US citiespart of an election-year strategy to stoke fear and advance an authoritarian vision of law and order? The groundwork for federal intervention in Portland was laid long before this summers protests by right-wing groups and media, which turned the city into a bogeyman. While Oregon has a legacy of state-sanctioned racism and is still home to a disproportionately large number of hate groups, Portland has also long been the site of antifascist organizing and other left protest movements. (Demonstrations in Portland against George H.W. Bush between 1989 and 1991 were so notorious that a member of the administration dubbed the city Little Beirut.) Extreme groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer have repeatedly targeted the city over the past few years, holding rallies that inevitably drew counterprotests and created media spectacles.Current Issue

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Demonstrations in Portland immediately following Trumps election in 2016 were huge and, at times, explosive, with police deploying tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets in response. The following year, days after a white supremacist stabbed and killed two people on Portlands light rail, the alt-right group Patriot Prayer held a Trump Free Speech Rally rally; police responded to by detaining hundreds of counterdemonstrators. Similar incidents occurred throughout 2017 and repeatedly in the years since, and conservative media eagerly latched onto a narrative of Portland as lawless anarchist enclave. National Review, for instance, devoted a cover in 2018 to a story by Kevin Williamson in which he described anti-fascist goons and thugs as being in effective control of Portland. In July 2019, clashes between the alt-right and counterdemonstrators drew attention from Trump (Portland is being watched very closely Hopefully the Mayor will be able to properly do his job, he tweeted) and prompted Texas Senator Ted Cruz to call for federal prosecutiona premonition of what was to come.

Portlands drawn the fascination and ire of a lot of right-wing media personalities, fascist groups, neo-Nazi groups, and of course the president, said attorney Juan Chavez, who directs the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center and is involved in litigation against the city of Portland regarding treatment of protesters. Were a big enough city to matter but small enough to be a laboratory for a lot of these tactics. And exacerbating this is the way our city government has portrayed protesters in the past, and the way Portland police have portrayed protesters in the past and currently.

City leaders have been sharply critical of the federal response, and have demanded that the Trump administration remove its officers. But Chavez and some activists say that the initial response to citywide protests by local politicians and police helped grease the skids for federal intervention. For weeks, Mayor Ted Wheeler, also serving as police commissioner, did little to restrict the polices use of tear gas and impact munitions against protesters and journalists beyond issuing statements of concern and loose directives with unclear enforcement mechanisms. (A temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge and a new state law restricting tear gas use did eventually put pressure on the bureau to justify its uses of force.) Now, Portland police appear to be coordinating with federal officers to disperse crowds downtown. Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner met with Wolf during his visit to Portland, and in a press conference over the weekend parroted the claim that the city is under siege by rioters.

Basically, you had thousands of people hitting the streets and getting met with tear gas, impact munitions, and harsh police tactics, and that really set the tone for where we were going, said Chavez. I think the city didnt grasp what they were dealing with. There was an immediate political response, that while it came quickly it wasnt adequate. And because of that, basically people did not feel like they had adequate civic feedback on their demands.Related Article

While the city implemented some reforms this yearremoving police from public schools, disbanding the controversial Gun Violence Reduction Team, and reallocating $15 million from the bureaus budgetmany activists wanted a deeper transformation. They ignored us, they did not center victims or protesters, they did nothing to de-escalate, they did nothing to engage, said Teressa Raiford, the founder and executive director of Dont Shoot PDX, which has been organizing for police reform in Portland for years and in June filed a class-action lawsuit against the city for indiscriminate use of tear gas. That is why Donald Trump took advantage of the situation. He knows exactly whats happening here in Oregon. Its a shame. Its disgusting.

Despite the public attention to the demonstrations and apparent public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Raiford said that immediate safety issues for Black residents are still going unaddressed. On July 10, for instance, an 18-year-old named Shai-India Harris was shot and killed while walking down the street in southeast Portland. Police have not arrested anyone in her case.

Its not clear how all of this will end. Appearing on Fox News on Monday, Wolf said that the DHS was not going to back down. Neither are the protesters. The entire community, the entire city is on our sideeverybody from nurses to teachers to children to parents to families that have lost their loved ones, great grandmas, Raiford said. The most immediate questions concern the extent to which the violence will escalate. Longer term, Chavez wonders about the legal endgame. Can and will the federal courts allow this type of federal invasion of a state? In a lot of ways I think were in uncharted constitutional territory, he said. Even if the courts do act, it may not be fast enough to protect the people who will be out in the streets again tonight.

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Why Portland Became the Test Case for Trumps Secret Police - The Nation

When Patricia and Mark McCloskey stormed out of their lavish St. Louis mansion in a wild-eyed, class-war lather, brandishing guns aimed at nearby Black Lives Matter activists, they committed one of the most risibly deplorable, meme-birthing acts of socio-political optics since U.C. Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-sprayed a seated group of students protesting with the Occupy movement in 2011.

Firearm enthusiasts on Twitter mocked the McCloskeys inexpert gun-handling, and armchair fashion pundits, like myself, couldnt help but notice their chosen uniform for the outburstMarks pink polo shirt and light khakis, and Patricias French boating chemise and capri leggings. When they were inevitably declared the champion Ken and Karen of the summer, they also unwittingly pulled a 202-year-old symbol of American normcore into a national polemic by turning it into the label of the un-woke.

The timing of the St. Louis incident couldnt have been worse, as the company, the countrys oldest apparel brand, filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter due to a variety of financial and market reasons. Here was another stain on its otherwise crisp chinos, its long-held place in the public consciousness as the definition of fashion safety for the conservative class, now an emblem of toxicity.

Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPIAlamy

The psychology and semiotics of fashion dictate that in times of turmoil, your personal style is especially burdened with the symbolic history of your commercial choices, for good or ill. In the late 1960s, clothing was just one of the aesthetic battlegrounds for the visual opposition of us vs. them, between the John Birch Society and Phyllis Schlafly on the one hand, and the anti-war activists who stopped shaving their armpits and went commando under their ponchos.

Now, the playing field is a lot more complicatedtraditional symbols of conformity or anarchy are being further warped by the participants in the frontlines of the culture wars.

The Hawaiian shirt was once an innocent staple of summer, Margaritaville and endless boogie guitar solos. Now, its caught a case of political COVID and must be quarantined since being co-opted by 8chan gun enthusiasts called Boogaloo Bois, a disparate group of heavily armed anti-government militia-types.

Some of them abhor immigration; some believe there is a white genocide happening, and others are eager to incite a civil war to defend their rights to carry M4 rifles into a Wendys. Reece Jones, an author and a professor at the University of Hawaii, went viral on Twitter earlier with a thread explaining the connection.

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Along with Brooks Brothers and Robin Williams shirts, some previously inoffensive basics of womens fashion have also acquired a suspicious patina. Is a sheath still alright to wear, or a wallpaper print dress for that matter? When worn at the White House lectern by Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, they become something else, implements in a broader campaign of disinformation.

The array of body-con outfits at her briefings suggests at first a Tracy Flick-ish brand of intensity but its as transparent a costume as some of her specious talking points. I will never lie to you, she said during her first appearance in the role. And then, of course, she proceeded to lie straight to the cameras, constantly, as if it was part of a sorority hazing stunt.

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Clothes are not the only politicized aspect of our appearances nownor were they ever; hair is also a prominent battleground. During the French Revolution, Marie Antoinettes signature powdered pouf was copied by the bourgeoisie, but it was reviled by the starving sans-culottes, who saw it as a wasteful indulgence, another representation of her to loucheness and profligacy.

A more modern hairdo once popular with hipsters is the shaved/faded sides and long-on-top look, or grown-out high and tight once favored by everyone from Macklemore to David Beckham. That, too, has been appropriated by far-right figurehead Richard Spencer and his ilk, who have taken to wearing it with Brooks Brothers suits, because Nazis used to wear the hairdo to look tidy under their helmets.

The New York Times once dubbed it the Hitler Youth, but it has since gone on to be nicknamed the Fashy Haircutshort for fascist, natchand some of its adherents seem blithely unaware of the politics telegraphed by their coiffure. In 2016, the Washington Post once noted the irony of white nationalists sporting a hairstyle thats already been repurposed in the 21st century by young people whose ethos is radical safe-space inclusiveness, not ethnophobic separatism with eugenic undertones.

In the context of today, that misdirection is precisely the point. The alt-right has intentionally become more sophisticated about blending in, substituting red tank tops and MAGA hats with more ambivalent iconography, the kind of fungible avatars that can be taken at face value, or interpreted as dog whistles if weaponized.

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Arguably, another head of hair that looks suspect in the current climate is worn by perennially corporate hyper-conservatives like Jared Kushner. Its the third-grade-picture-day, combover haircut that announces you have a turtle in your lunchbox and get to wear big boy pants because you havent wet the bed in weeks. Its hair that looks excessively Boy Scouty and feckless precisely because it isnt, like when predatory octopods camouflage themselves by mimicking the ocean floor.

For maximum due diligence, ask yourself a few difficult questions before opting for the old standbys when getting dressed for your next Zoomtinis. Remember that something that looks safe on the surface rarely is. We must all make sacrifices during times of (culture) war, but dressing in flip flops and pajama bottoms is arguably better than walking out of your house looking like you want to annex the Sudetenland.

The McCloskeys, by the way, are looking at a possible felony for what the Circuit Attorneys Office in St. Louis called unlawful use of a gun in an angry or threatening manner. The fashion police, however, has not yet pressed charges, though a guilty verdict seems like a foregone conclusion.

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How Brooks Brothers Became a Symbol of What Not to Wear to the Revolution - TownandCountrymag.com