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Instead of being angry at the defacing of the statue, Rodgers response was nuanced.

He expects and hopes that the figures will spark heated discussion. Thats the whole point.

Difficult public figures have difficult public histories, he said. We have never tried to hide that.

In order to show that understanding, Rodger and Caputo required that all the prime ministers be at ground level and be the same size as the people who would be interacting with them, instead of having them up on pedestals to instil a sense of awe.

Sculptor Ruth Abernethy had portrayed the figure of Sir John A Macdonald as holding two chairs and inviting a conversation.

But those careful design details were not a strong enough statement for whoever threw paint on the statue.

The first batch was thrown on Macdonalds statue sometime on Saturday night. Volunteers and township staff cleaned it off. By Tuesday it had happened again. The statue was briefly covered with a tarp. It was removed after Wilmot Township Coun. Angie Hallman said the statue should be shown with the paint still on it.

But before township council had a chance to have that discussion, a group of people cleaned off the statue themselves.

Brad Greulich, 31, was one of those people. I like my community and I dont like vandalism, he said.

Yet Greulich was careful to leave the red paint splattered underneath the statue, by way of acknowledging the complexity.

I understand why people poured paint on the statue twice, I get it, I sympathize with that, he told the New Hamburg Independent.

No ones hands are clean, but I think as a historical figure, its due a little more reverence than that.

Im not making the statue spotless, because the man wasnt spotless.

The heat is rising constantly in the extremist times we live in.

On Wednesday, a group demanding the removal of Macdonalds statue verbally clashed with another group thought to be affiliated to an alt-right organization.

Meanwhile, Hallman, who 18 months ago posed for a photo with the Kim Campbell statue along with two other women councillors, celebrating their historic entrance into the previously all-male council, has now proposed that the development of the Prime Ministers Walk be suspended.

No decent person wants to perpetuate suffering. But at the same time, policy shouldnt be made by an anonymous person with a bucket of paint.

We need honest public conversations, which comes with the pain of giving up pleasant illusions.

Macdonald is not the only prime minister with a mixed legacy. He is just the focus right now.

Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier also made racist decisions, including taking away the vote from Indigenous people and dramatically increasing the head tax on Chinese immigrants to Canada. Should we rename Wilfrid Laurier University?

William Lyon Mackenzie King, meanwhile, admired Hitler so much that he wrote in his diary (in 1938) that he will rank some day with Joan of Arc among the deliverers of his people. Under Kings watch no Jews were allowed into Canada as they tried to flee Nazi Germany. Thats shameful.

The only way to gracefully go forward is to have the statues presented, but with context that is lacking now.

Something, like a plaque or a recording, needs to be part of the installation, and explain the evil as well as the good.

All the prime ministers, Macdonald included, are part of the story of Canada.

Its just that the story isnt as pretty as we think it is.

Luisa DAmato is a Waterloo Region-based staff columnist for the Record. Reach her via email: ldamato@therecord.com

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Opinion | A bucket of red paint on a statue can start a better conversation - Cambridge Times

The death of Ahmaud Arbery helped spur much of the anger and pain that have led to the massive movement for justice and racial equality across the nation. His death, at the hand of three white men who chased him while he jogged, has been on the tips of everyones tongues as they shout Black Lives Matter!

The 25-year-old Black man was gunned down after a struggle between him and three white men who had accused him of being responsible for a string of burglaries, despite having zero evidence.

The three men implicated in Arberys murder have been charged and indicted by a grand jury on nine counts, including felony murder.

The three men who have been accused in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was on a jog through his neighborhood, were indicted on Wednesday by a grand jury on nine counts.

Gregory and Travis McMichael, a father and son, as well as William Roddie Bryan, were charged in May in the Feb. 23 killing of Arbery. But a grand jury was convened to officially indict the three men.

Cobb County District Attorney Joyette Holmes announced the indictment on nine counts, including malice murder, felony murder and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

This is another step forward in seeking justice for Ahmaud. Our team from the Cobb Judicial Circuit has been committed to effectively bringing forward the evidence in this case, and today was no exception, Holmes said in a statement.

We will continue to be intentional in the pursuit of justice for this family and the community at large as the prosecution of this case continues.

The Coronavirus pandemic had slowed legal proceedings across the country. A grand jury is required to meet in person and, therefore, they werent able to convene until after June 12, once the state lifted stay-at-home measures.

Prosecutors in the U.S. have a lot of discretion when it comes to deciding on how to proceed with a criminal case. For one, a prosecutor themselves can examine the evidence (usually supplied by police officers) and decide to issues charges against a defendant.

Or they can present the evidence to a grand jury, who will decide if the state can bring charges against the defendant. There is little difference for the person charged with the crime but the process is different.

Gregory and Travis McMichaels, a father and son, had told police there had been break-ins in the neighborhood and that they began to chase Arbery in their truck when they saw him hauling ass.

They heavily armed themselves before hopping in their pickup truck and chasing down Arbery. They confronted him alongside a wooded road and, after a struggle with a shotgun, Arbery was shot by Travis.

No arrests were immediately made in the killing of the young Black man, and outrage intensified whencellphone video of the pursuitand the shooting was publicly released.

The handling of the case has been marred with conflicts of interest, since one of the men involved is a former investigator for the District Attorneys office and a former police officer. Several law enforcement officials have had to recuse themselves from the case because of their connections to the McMichael family.

Only after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation stepped in to investigate, were the suspects finally brought in on murder charges. Many, including leading politicians on both sides of the aisle, issued harsh statements condemning the manner in which Arberys murder was being handled.

Despite the frustration, Arberys family has held strong and has remained committed to making sure that his killers are held accountable for their actions, and that justice is served.

Excerpt from:
Alt-Right Members Are Attacking Bubba Wallace On Twitter After The FBI Decided That the Noose Found In His Stall Was Not A Hate Crime - mit inc

The agenda of the right-wing forces will likely move to the left, not through the betrayal of their basic ideological principles, but because they will have to respect the requirements of their electorate and supporters, writesDaniil Grigoryev,expert of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), Moscow.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has been top global news for months now, has resulted in a thorough revision of the seemingly inviolable rules of the game in budgetary policies, social infrastructure priorities and many other fields too. It has also provoked deep changes in collective consciousness, which is slowly rising from ruins amid the unexpected changes and pessimistic mid-term forecasts. What effect will this have on the public and, in particular, on the views that set the tone on the global political stage? To try answering this question, we really need to take a good look at the situation preceding the surprise pandemic.

Something that predominantly sticks out in global history over a period of the past decade was the increased turbulence, or a series of conflicts and crises that shook many countries around the world. Flabby economic growth in the United States, a large-scale crisis in the European Union (in particular, in southern Europe), ever decreasing growth rates in the periphery countries, and a shocking plunge of oil prices have created a material basis for social instability. On the other hand, they have launched a powerful process of political and cultural transformation. The military component of international relations, although very important, is not something to be brought up in this commentary.

The largest and most significant of these processes is the rise of political influence of various populist forces, which are gaining ever more attention by sharply criticising the existing social system, from its monetary policies to immigration laws and mainstream media. Populist leaders are famous for speaking simply, so that their slogans easily appeal to the general public, appealing to everyday experience, and offering simple solutions to the majority of current problems. [: There are very many books and other literature on populism, for example, The Global Rise of Populism (2016) by researcher Benjamin Moffitt and its latest contribution, Populism (2020).]

There are several dimensions of the rising populism. One is represented by the so-called left-wing populists, such as Pablo Iglesias Turrion (Podemos, Spain), Alexis Tsipras (former SYRIZA, Greece), Bernie Sanders (Democratic Party, US), Jeremy Corbyn (Labor Party, UK), Jean-Luc Melenchon (La France Insoumise or France Unbowed), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (member of the US Congress), and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (President of Mexico). Despite their social media popularity, most of them did not have much luck when it came to fighting for power.

At the same time, right-wing populists seem to be more successful in this pursuit, for example, leader of the Brexit Party Nigel Farage, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President of the National Rally (formerly National Front) political party Marine Le Pen, US President Donald Trump, President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, and the collective leadership of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany. They have won elections and were more successful in attaining their other goals, such as Brexit. It is therefore not surprising that the attention of political analysts, commentators and academics was focused on these and other right-wing politicians.

Despite a rapid rise during the crisis period, the New Right politicians do not resemble their predecessors of the 1930s or even the 1970s in structure, ideology, or even presentation. A new term has been coined to denote them, alt-right, alternative right, to stress their unique status. The heyday of the alt-right coincided with Donald Trumps victory (Data source: Google Trends), who was widely supported by many speakers of the alt-right, related media resources and other celebrities, including many online communities.

Trumps political victory promised a bright future for the alt-right, and many people thought that the alt-right would determine the development of the worlds largest countries in the next decade. We are well aware now that these forecasts never materialised. The seeming unity of the alt-right started eroding exceedingly fast. Public figures claimed that they had no relation to the movement, including conservative youth leaders, such as Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos, let alone Donald Trump himself. Trumps chief strategist and the co-founder of the far-right website Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, left the White House, although according to the grapevine it looks like he might be on his way back again. Many Western politicians slammed the door in the face of the alt-right after a series of thunderous scandals and suspicion of racism. In fact, alt-right supporters are now active predominantly in culture (gender identification, same sex families, and inclusiveness) and the environment, mostly climate change. The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the gradual demise and degeneration of the alt-right movement, with the remaining few alt-right public figures only on rare occasions coming out with some statement or other.

Global shocks in human history usually encourage the spread of numerous popular theories and explanations of their origin, for example, the Zionist conspiracy theories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Cold War spy mania, and the mystic theories that appeared during the Soviet Unions collapse. Collectively, they can be described as conspiracy theories that include many issues related to the alt-right and, in general, the right/conservative agenda.

Conspiracy researchers point out the features of many conspiracy theories:

Numerous interpretations and versions (the advocates of conspiracy theories claim that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in China, or the United States, or Russia);

Secretiveness and incomprehensibility (almost all conspiracy theories suggest the existence of private elite clubs and shadow governments)

Technophobia (the narratives of the digital concentration camp, forced human microchipping, 5G radiation, the dangers of vaccinations, and many other theories that are popular in Russia as well).

Another attractive feature of conspiracy theories is their rationality, according to which everything that takes place in the world can be explained by the existence of a small group of players with clearly mercenary objectives and effective instruments for attaining them. By this logic, unpredictability, chance, coincidence and uncontrollability only play a very insignificant role in these processes. Taken together, this shows that conspiracy thinking is a natural response of the public to frightening, unpredictable and dangerous events.

It is no wonder then that people who can be tentatively described as advocates of right-wing views have taken part in many events organised by COVID dissenters and the opponents of the lock-down regime. Overall, the right-wing politicians love of conspiracy theories is not a liberal presumption. For example, Infowars founder Alex Jones promoted a campaign that disputed the need for social distancing, shelter in place, and quarantine efforts. According to recent surveys, Republicans believe twice as often as Democrats that Chinese scientists engineered the coronavirus and that Bill Gates wants to use a mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 to implant microchips in people to track them with a digital ID. However, the conspiracy-based agenda is not popular everywhere. For example, AfD is getting rid of unpopular marginal party members in an attempt to dissociate itself from such views

Government response to the coronavirus was so divided in many countries that this has not really helped to create and maintain a stable group of government supporters. Within a matter of a few months, the US and UK authorities moved from denying the danger of the coronavirus infection to calling for self-isolation, taking nationwide medical measures, and spending the largest ever amount of funds since WWII on financial support for the people, which reached double-digit percentage points of GDP. At the same time, far from all members of the right-wing parties have changed their views when it comes to the coronavirus, which is deepening the internal split in the not very popular movements and organisations.

Of course, the right-wing movement includes not only the alt-right and party groups in parliaments, but also conservatives, religious fundamentalists, and all manner of patriotic movements. The ultimate effect that they have on society is no easy task to assess, because the economic views of this movement vary from ultra-paternalism to anarcho-primitivism, and taking into account their fundamental ideologies that range from the political philosophy of the 19th century to the Scriptures.

So, what conclusions can we make from the just mentioned information?

First of all, when the COVID-19 crisis erupted, the alt-right had not developed as an integral movement with recognised leaders, ideologies (manifests), universal policy proposals and functioning political organisations.

Secondly, the coronavirus crisis is eroding the initially amorphous and unstable basis of the right-wing/conservative movement backed by numerous supporters of conspiracy theories, fringe politicians, anti-government forces, as well as the advocates of flat Earth theories.

And lastly, the overwhelming majority of the proponents of right-wing views are strongly influenced by changes in the public mood, the growing popularity of paternalism, the government programmes aimed at rapidly bringing the national economies back to pre-crisis levels, as well as ensuring (or introducing) the principle of universal access to modern, high quality medical services regardless of what people earn or where they live.

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Influence of COVID-19 Crisis on Global Right-Wing Agenda - Valdai Discussion Club

TECH

9:00 AM PDT 6/24/2020byNatalie Jarvey

Vice Media Group is prepping an investigative podcast series with the help of iHeartMedia.

The company will debut weekly series Vice News Reports this fall, it is set to reveal Wednesday during its virtual NewFronts presentation.

The podcast will feature in-depth, on-the-ground reporting on the biggest stories in the world. The half-hour show, which will feature a mix of story formats, will also dive into underreported events that dont get covered in the 24-hour news cycle. Already on tap is a deep dive into the rise of the alt-right and a multi-part investigation into the debate about arming American teachers.

At Vice News we provide a comprehensive look at complex news issues by reporting where others do not, and amplifying voices that are going unheard, said Vice global news and entertainment president Jesse Angelo. Audio allows us to go further; the medium lets us dive into the nuance and involve the audience in intimate ways that cannot be achieved with video. We are excited to explore this even more with Vice News Reports and iHeartRadio.

Vice News Reports, which will be distributed on the iHeartPodcast Network, follows on the heels of audio projects including Chapo: Kingpin on Trial, Uncommitted: Iowa 2020 and The Distance: Coronavirus Dispatches, which have been released under the leadership of producing veteran Kate Osborn.

iHeartMedia offers 750 original podcasts with more than 215 million downloads each month. On Tuesday, it announced a partnership with WarnerMedia Entertainment to produce companion podcasts for HBO Max originals.

With todays busy schedules, listeners are always looking for engaging content, especially on global critical topics of interest, said iHeartPodcast Network president Conal Byrne. We are excited to launch this new investigative series with Vice, keeping listeners up-to-date on the latest current events, while also uncovering untold truths in todays tumultuous climate.

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Vice News to Launch Investigative Podcast With iHeartMedia (Exclusive) - Hollywood Reporter

An alleged plot by a young solider to coordinate with a neo-Nazi group to attack and kill members of his own army unit has put new scrutiny on the US militarys failure to address violent white supremacy within its own ranks.

Federal prosecutors have announced charges against current or former US military service members for plots linked to violent extremism nearly once a week this month.

A 2019 survey of readers of Military Times, an independent news outlet, found that more that 36% of active-duty troops surveyed said they had personally witnessed examples of white nationalism or ideological-driven racism within the ranks in recent months a 14% increase from a similar survey the year before.

But in a congressional hearing in February, military officials testified that mere membership in white supremacist groups is still not prohibited for American service members.

The US Department of Defense prohibited members of the military from active participation in white supremacist and other extremist groups since 1996, when decorated Gulf war veteran and white supremacist Timothy McVeigh carried out the Oklahoma City bombing. But active participation is still defined as attending rallies or fundraising for a racist group, not being a member, military officials testified in February.

During that hearing, the California congresswoman Jackie Speier called that approach woefully inadequate for addressing the countrys very serious domestic terror problem.

The potential for placing our service members at risk is so great, Speier said.

Military veterans have held leadership roles in some of the most prominent white supremacist groups that took part in the deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Investigative journalists and anti-fascist activists continue to uncover new members of violent racist groups who are also current members of the army, the marine corps, the air force and the national guard.

In January, a coast guard lieutenant was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison on gun and drug charges. He was accused by prosecutors of being a white nationalist who was plotting politically motivated attacks against journalists and Democratic politicians.

The same month, a US army veteran and a former combat engineer in the Canadian army reserve were among the alleged members of neo-Nazi group The Base who prosecutors said were discussing plans to create violence at a pro-gun rally in Virginia in order to spark a civil war.

In the month of June alone, prosecutors in California announced murder charges against an air force sergeant for the shooting death of a federal officer in Oakland, in addition to a previous murder charge for the shooting death of a local sheriffs deputy, and described the sergeant as part of a nascent anti-government movement obsessed with the boogaloo, or coming war against government tyranny.

The justice department announced charges against three Nevada men with military experience, alleging that they had planned to hijack a Las Vegas protest over George Floyds death, and that they were also inspired by anti-government boogaloo ideology. Experts who monitor extremist groups disagree on the extent to which the still-developing boogaloo ideology overlaps with white supremacy.

And federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment against 22-year-old Ethan Melzer for allegedly sending a British occultist neo-Nazi group sensitive details about his army unit in order to plan a deadly attack against his fellow soldiers.

While many veterans describe their military service as a crucial, and positive, experience of diversity in a country where many neighborhoods remain segregated by race, white supremacist organizing within the military has long been a problem.

The US armed forces were formally desegregated in 1948 and the last segregated units were disbanded in 1954, but the same racist violence and discrimination that black Americans experienced at home continued within the military and overseas during the Vietnam war.

American veterans have played key roles in the white supremacist movements in the United States for more than a century, according to Kathleen Belew, the author of Bring the War Home, a history of the contemporary American white power movement.

The Ku Klux Klan had new waves of resurgence after both world wars and after the Vietnam war, Belew writes, just as the recent wave of alt-right white supremacist organizing has been deeply shaped by Americas War on Terror in the Middle East.

Each wave of white supremacist organizing has involved racist veterans of the war in key leadership positions, made use of veterans military skills for training recruits and planning acts of violence, and was influenced ideologically by the political experiences of the war, Belew writes.

Experts on extremism have repeatedly warned that white power groups have sometimes encouraged young members to join the US military in order to get advanced weapons and other training in order to more effectively carry out attacks.

In the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan was actively organizing on a US military base at Camp Pendleton in southern California, and Klan members were harassing and attacking black marines for years before an outright fight prompted official intervention.

Efforts to address the danger of white supremacist organizing among service members and veterans has been met with political opposition from Republicans.

In 2009, Republicans forced Obamas department of homeland security chief to apologize after an intelligence briefing warned that US military veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be vulnerable to radicalization by violent white supremacist and antigovernment groups.

Conservative commentators at the time portrayed the briefing as an outrageous attack: how could the nations first black president portray standard, ordinary, everyday conservatives as posing a bigger threat to this country than al Qaeda terrorists?

The Republican pushback had a chilling effect on government monitoring of rightwing extremism, teaching government employees about the political risk of focusing on domestic terrorism, according to Daryl Johnson, the former career analyst who lead the team that produced the report.

Johnson has argued that Republican officials have blood on their hands, and that more aggressive government intervention could have prevented some of the white supremacist violence the United States has seen over the past four years.

But Johnson said this week that the drumbeat of federal charges against extremists in recent weeks could be a positive sign.

The charges against Melzer, the alleged neo-Nazi collaborator, sounds like an FBI sting operation to me, and thats important because that lets me know that the FBI is starting to take this threat seriously, Johnson said.

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How the US military has failed to address white supremacy in its ranks - The Guardian