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With an associatefilming him, the neo-Nazi whose real name is Robert Warren Ray gave speeches, tussled with counterprotesters and was charged with illegally spraying tear gas.

Since those days in in August 2017, Azzmador has been nowhere, appearing only on podcasts on The Daily Stormer and occasionally talking with his lawyers in a federal civil lawsuit.

Robert Warren Ray, a neo-Nazi known within white supremacist circles as Azzmador, appears with a sign promoting hate site The Daily Stormer during the August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Photo via Twitter.)

His disappearing act prompted the plaintiffs in the civil suit to petition a federal judge on March 11 to compel Ray to comply with court orders to turn over electronic devices.

Prosecutors and police in Albemarle County, Virginia, have been searching for Ray since June 2018, when he was indicted on a charge of illegally using tear gas during the tiki torch march on Aug. 11, 2017.

Ray did not return three emails Hatewatch sent to an address on file with the federal court.

This is our war! Ray growled during a post-rally speech in a safe house the night of the deadly rally. This has always been our war. And I wouldnt want it any other way. Death to traitors! Death to the enemies of the white race! Hail victory!

Ray, a tough-talking neo-Nazi from Frankston in East Texas, was a major player in organizing and executing the rally, along with white nationalist Richard Spencer, Elliot Kline, then the head of Identity Evropa, and white nationalist Jason Kessler.

Neo-Nazis, white nationalists and neo-Confederates from around the country descended upon Charlottesville, a town of about 48,000 tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia.

At the tiki torch march at the University of Virginia on Aug. 11, Ray and others confronted counterprotesters with chants of Jews will not replace us! as pepper spray shot through the air.

The next day, the Unite the Right rally descended into chaos, with counterprotesters fighting with white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other rally participants.

Virginias governor declared the rally an unlawful assembly, and the violence continued as participants left downtown Charlottesville. A group of white nationalists and neo-Confederates attacked and beat up a black man in a parking garage, and a neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.James Alex Fields Jr., a 22-year-old from Ohio, is serving life in prison for Heyers death. A state court jury found him guilty, and Fields pleaded guilty in federal court.

White nationalists gathered that night at a safe house for a party highlighted by Rays speech.

They declared the daya win.

This event was a huge victory for the Alt-Right, Azzmador wrote for The Daily Stormer on Aug. 31, 2017, in a refrain that has been repeated on podcasts since. Dont believe any of the crap the MSM is peddling.

Fomenting discord in pubic often comes with a price.

A group of people on the University of Virginia campus during the tiki torch march sued Ray and nearly two dozen other white nationalists and neo-Nazis in federal court in Charlottesville, seeking damages for the emotional distress and other injuries.

Prosecutors in Albemarle County indicted Ray and his bodyguard, Will Zachary Smith of Nacona, Texas, on a charge of illegally using tear gas.

Two others, known only as Sunglasses and Red Beard,are being sought by Charlottesville police for allegedly taking part in the beating of DeAndre Harris in a parking garage after the rally disbursed.

Red Beard is seen on video wearing a truckers hat and sporting a shaggy red beard. Sunglasses shows up on a video of the attack on Harris with short-cropped brown hair and a pair of sunglasses.

The identities of the two men remain a mystery. Warrants listing Ray and Smith as fugitives are pending in Albemarle County Circuit Court.

The Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorneys office and the investigating agency, the University of Virginia Police Department, did not return messages left via email and phone seeking comment.

Ray initially surrendered one computer to the plaintiffs, but since has declined to turn over a second computer, cellphone and passwords to social media accounts.

It is thus apparent Ray has not satisfied his discovery obligations in this case, plaintiffs attorney Robert Cahill wrote in the March 11 motion.

Ray isnt the only defendant to ignore court orders to turn over evidence. U.S. District Judge Norman Moon held Kline, the one-time head of Identity Evropa, in contempt and ordered him to jailin January for refusing to turn over evidence in the case.

The neo-Nazi organization the National Socialist Movement is also refusing to cooperate. In court proceedings and on the social media site VK, NSM Commander Burt Colucci has made his defiance of court orders and distaste for the plaintiffs plain.

I am not named as a defendant in that lawsuit and do not have to answer to Uncle Zog, nor can I at this point because I was not there, Colucci posted on VK on May 14, 2019. "ZOG" is a neo-Nazi slang term that means "Zionist-Occupied Government," referring to the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews control the levers of power.

And five defendants in the case have defaulted, including Andrew Anglin, the editor and founder of The Daily Stormer.

But so far, Ray is the only defendant who is a fugitive.

These days, Azzmador mostly exists on podcasts on the neo-Nazi website, ranting about Jews, minorities and others he sees as less than himself and other white people.

Ray most recently appeared on a podcast associated with the Daily Stormer onFeb. 6, when he talked about immigrants and other minorities seeking health care among the coronavirus outbreak.

His account on Gab, asocial media platform favored by white nationalists and neo-Nazis, has been quiet since March 2018 three months before he was charged.

In podcasts, Ray refers to Texas agencies as ours, but doesnt say where he is or mention his actions in Charlottesville, the lawsuit or the warrant for his arrest.

Since Charlottesville, he hasnt made any high-profile appearances at rallies or large gatherings.

Photo illustration by SPLC

Continued here:
Once a High-Profile Neo-Nazi, Azzmador Has Pulled a Disappearing Act - Southern Poverty Law Center

Sherronda J. Brown x Mar 27, 2020

Humans are not the virus. We are not a sickness or a disease, and yall should stop singing this tired refrain as we are all reeling from the global Coronavirus pandemic. With several false reports of animals flourishing as cities slow down due to quarantine recently going viral (how ironic), a concerning amount of people have responded with the sentiment that the presence of humans living and taking up space on our planet is its own type of sickness.People are even circulating an article from 2018 about the ozone layer finally beginning to heal, undoubtedly without reading the date or anything beyond the title, and somehow connecting it to the sudden diminished presence and activity of humans as most of us uphold our social responsibility to stay home during this time.

Some have also named COVID-19 as Mother Natures vengeance, Earths vaccine for the human virus, or the universes way of making the world a better place. Self-righteously deeming it some sort of divine intervention, they imply that the massive loss of life and our collective grief over those lost lives are somehow worth it for the sake of the planet, or even necessary. This pandemic has helped to facilitate the development and worsening of trauma and grief in entire communities, and rhetoric that frames this as a blessing for those who deserve to live here and a penalty for those seen as unworthy is not only deeply insensitive, but dangerous.

It also fails to take into account the fact that those who have profited from industrialism and hazardous environmental practices will never stop seeking out ways to maintain their capital. In fact, due to the current virus, the Trump administration has weakened public health and environmental enforcement, waiving several mandates put in place for our protection to instead benefit the oil and gas industries (and this comes after Trump has already worked to roll back rules against power plant pollution and remove federal water protections).

Wow Earth is recovering

Air pollution is slowing down Water pollution is clearing up Natural wildlife returning home

Coronavirus is Earths vaccine

Were the virus

The people who are and who will continue to be impacted the most by this pandemic are poor, working-class, unhoused, incarcerated, and detained communities who are disproportionately BIPOC. This is not only in terms of a health riskwith elderly, disabled, immunocompromised, and folks with comorbidities being at the highest risk of contracting and dying from the virusbut also in terms of economic access and stability. Those who are already poor and disenfranchised are less able to self-quarantine properly if they still have to go to work or will not have the financial resources to afford rent and essentials if they are now unable to work. And, of course, those in detention centers and prisons are not able to practice social distancing in order to prevent rapid spreading of the virus, while unhoused folks have very limited access to be able to do basic hygiene practices like washing their hands. To compound this, actually contradicting the virus will leave them with a mountain of medical debt and they may not even receive proper treatment due to well-documented medical racism.

The fact is that there will be and already have been many preventable deaths due to the violently unequal systems that marginalize these vulnerable populations in the first place. To suggest that any of what is happening is due to the will of Mother Nature, a god, or the universe is beyond atrocious, especially when we have wealthy white people freely admitting their belief that the U.S. should allow 2-3% of its population to die (more than 8 million people) in order to revive the stock market. Valuing nature over human lives and valuing money over human lives are the same kind of malignancy.

Instead of critiquing the exploitative systems in place that ensure social and economic disparities, many are allowing their eco-feminist, conservationist, environmentalist, or spiritual ideologies to wade dangerously into eco-fascist territorywhich does absolutely nothing to help us, especially marginalized folks. Capitalism, white supremacy, and colonialismnot humanity itselfare the conditions that breed the destruction of natural habitats, the poisoning and polluting of our water supply, and the defiling of the health of our planet and our bodies. It is imperative that we make that distinction. When we do not, it leaves room for the most damaging systems of our world to thrive even more by throwing marginalized people under the bus.

Eco-fascisman emphasis on the preservation of nature that disregards human lifefinds its roots in white supremacy and xenophobia, specifically because the human life that it disregards is that of BIPOC. Along the same vein of eugenic thought, which uses ableism, racism, and classism to determine who must live and who must die for the greater good of society, eco-fascism should absolutely be understood as a tool of genocidal efforts. Nazisms Blood and Soil mantra, which has now been adopted by the alt-right as demonstrated in Charlottesville, is an eco-fascist refrain asserting that only people Indigenous to a landessentially tied to the soil by bloodhave the right to live there and that the environment should be preserved by culling the population of rootless immigrants via genocide and/or deportation.

Much likeor perhaps exactly likethe tyrannical Thanos, his forced balancing of the universe, and the scarcity myth that informed his violent actions, eco-fascists are beyond willing to sacrifice people in order to preserve environments and natural resources, and they believe that they have the right to determine that people must be expelled. The El Paso and Christchurch mass shooters both held eco-fascist beliefs and cited them as their motivation for murdering Hispanics invading Texas and people praying in mosques, with the Christchurch shooter even describing immigration as environmental warfare.

A white supremacist group, Hundred-Handers, is currently impersonating a climate change organization called Extinction Rebellion in order to spread these beliefs while drawing specific connections to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eco-fascist rhetoric works to obscure the responsibility of white colonialism and its long history of destruction, as well as imperialist presences in predominantly Black and brown countries. It ignores capitalist industrialism and environmental racism, especially how large corporations actively destroy the world in pursuit of profits and territorial control. While many of the people currently regurgitating humans are the virus talking points on Twitter and beyond are certainly not intentionally promoting white nationalism, their words are still aligned with a dangerous school of thought. Regardless of their belief system, simply blaming people as a whole for the state of the environment is an insistence that many of us should take the blame for the very oppressions weve had to suffer under.

As many have pointed out, eco-fascism is a logic that finds footing when its arbiters only acknowledge a revisionist historical narrative that completely disregards the truth of Indigenous peoples relationship with nature. For millennia, Indigenous communities have demonstrated the possibility of peacefully and respectfully communing with the Earth. They have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is possible to live on this planet and respect it and allow it to thrive while feeding, clothing, sheltering, and caring for ourselves. We could learn so much by following the lead of Indigenous climate activists, heeding their wisdom, and honoring their work.

In the midst of this pandemic, with so much loss and uncertainty and even more on the horizon, we have to understand that institutional and corporate disregard for the planet cannot be divorced from disregard for marginalized beings from those same destructive systems. Know that when you post and share variations of humans are the virus online, you are parroting the rhetoric of white supremacists. Instead of doing that, I encourage you to remind others and yourselves of the capitalist, corporate, colonialist, and imperialist failings of a deeply unequal world.

Every single dollar matters to usespecially now when media is under constant threat. Your support is essential and your generosity is why Wear Your Voice keeps going! You are a part of the resistance that is neededuplifting Black and brown feminists through your pledges is the direct community support that allows us to make more space for marginalized voices. For as little as $1 every month you can be a part of this journey with us. This platform is our way of making necessary and positive change, and together we can keep growing.

Follow this link:
Humans Are Not The VirusDon't Be An Eco-Fascist - Wear Your Voice

In a new and dangerous twist to the coronavirus crisis, Donald Trump is now calling for an end to social distancing, perhaps as early as Easter. His goal is to restart the economy and avoid the worst impact of the coming recession.

Can you imagine: Trump in the crudest and most callous possible way is attempting to solve the crisis on the backs of our working class and people. It wasnt enough that the administration ignored each and every warning from the scientific community and called it a hoax and a scam. It wasnt enough that they are using the crisis to turn immigrants back at the border and bust unions.

Now, Trump is willing to risk the health and lives of millions of workers in order to satisfy the Wall Street Journal and corporate Americas quest for maximum profits. They think that, since most people under 50 years of age who contract the virus will experience only mild symptoms, reopening the country wont be a problem. The theory is that those most affected by the coronavirus will develop an immunity, and the virus will end. They call this herd immunity. And it might have worked in early January before the pandemic became widespread in the U.S.

But heres the problem: because Trump refused to test earlyand even refused the World Health Organizations offer for free testspublic health experts still have no idea how many people are infected. And the rate of infection is doubling and tripling. Today in New York, the new epicenter of the crisis, hospitals are close to being overwhelmed.

The whole purpose of social distancing is to slow the rate of infection so that the hospital workers can deal with the influx of critically ill patients. But if Trumps return-to-work plan goes through, hospitals will be pushed to the verge of collapse.

The country is faced with more than a health crisis. Its also an economic crisis. In addition, its a political, social, and environmental crisis. And these crises are interlocking, interengaging, and interacting in ways that cant be anticipated.

Who would have thought that a month ago, even two weeks ago, a health crisis would shake the very foundations of the capitalist system? This is not an exaggeration; the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimated that the unemployment rate could be as high as 30%higher than during the Great Depression.

The service economy is shutting down. The entertainment industry, restaurants, and bars are closing. And because the crisis is international, its going to affect basic industry, from cars to iPhones, as supply chains are disrupted and production comes to a halt. With just-in-time production, assembly parts are scarce. If factories in other countries dont send them here, workers get laid off. Laid-off workers dont buy products, and the circulation process is affected: business shuts down, state and local governments lose revenue, and the whole thing starts to unravel. Thats whats starting to happen.

On top of all this, theres a political crisis, in the first place with respect to the elections. Already several state primaries have been postponed, and its not beyond possibility that Trump may attempt to postpone the general election in November. The conservative Rasmussen poll recently claimed that 25% of Americans support postponement.

Needless to say, such an eventuality must be resolutely opposed.

Adding to the depth of the crisis is the administrations ideologically driven approach to governing, one aspect of which is the dismantling the administrative state. One of the reasons that Trump was not prepared for the pandemic is that in 2018 the Executive Branch got rid of the office of the Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biothreats, established during the Ebola crisis. They also drastically cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control, which oversees combating the spread of pandemics in other countries.

Hence, its not an accident that they at first refused to take effective federal action and put everything on the governors or that they have refused to use the Defense Production Act to compel industries to produce the goods necessary to combat the crisis. It all grows out of their alt-right approach to ruling the country. Those who claim the president is not ideologically driven might take another look.

All of this requires a political response, but that, too, is part of the crisis. As necessary as the stay-at-home policy and social distancing is, it raises enormous issues: How do you protest when you cant gather in groups of more than ten, when doing so risks being charged. One idea is to organize car caravans with protest signs to the homes and offices of elected officials. Another is the pot-banging protests used effectively in Latin American protests. A third is the organization of rent strikes in support of tenants facing eviction.

Added to this is the fact that the crisis increases risks associated with the fascist danger that go beyond election postponement, as grave as it is. The Justice Department is reportedly considering state of emergency provisions that would end the right of people who are arrested to appear before a judge, eliminating habeas corpus. One could be held indefinitely without trial, so long as a state of emergency exists. Other plans are being contemplated for setting up military rule and martial law in the event of a collapse in the order of succession to the presidency.

Even before the crisis, Trump had initiated purges of individuals deemed disloyal in the federal government along with repeated interference in the judiciary as in the Roger Stone case. Taken as a whole, its a dangerous situation. Without the 2018 midterm elections, Trump, Barr, and his other henchmen would have had free rein to do as they pleased, limiting the working-class and peoples movements ability to struggle.

Clearly the only way forward is to struggle for a program and platform that puts people before profits as the point of departure for addressing the crisis. Even by bourgeois accounts, the $2 trillion legislation passed by the Senatealthough twice the size of the 2007 bailoutwill mitigate only the worst aspects of the crisis.

In the first place this means putting money in the hands of workerswhatever it takes to do this: whether its a livable monthly stipend, unlimited sick leave, or Medicare For All for the duration of the crisis, or eliminating student debt, ending rent and mortgage payments, or a moratorium on all debta debt jubilee. Fidel Castro used to say that the Third Worlds debt is unpayable and uncollectable: the same holds true for working-class debt here in the First World, especially for students.

Lets not forget that there will be a racist and sexist dimension to this crisis. Most African Americans and Latinos never recovered from the wealth loss of the subprime rip-off and the consequent impact of the Great Recession. And the majority of those going to work now are black and brownthose most unable to have the resources to respond when and if laid off. These issues will undoubtedly play out with respect to who lives and who dies today.

Special attention has to be given to the incarcerated, including immigrants held in detention in overcrowded conditions, veritable breeding grounds for epidemic. Demands are being placed for an amnesty for elderly prisoners as well as for the release of non-violent offenders.

The point here is that special compensatory measures are required to address the more aggravated social and economic consequences of the crisis on people of color, women, and LGBTQ persons.

In many ways, this crisis has heightened the significance of the socialist moment. In a profound way it has laid bare the gross inequities of the capitalist system. Its laid bare how privatization, austerity, cutbacks, and profiteering wreak havoc on the working-class public. The socialist moment arises precisely in those areas where capitalism begins to fail.

Its also revealed the ruling classs indifference to working-class plight and circumstancethe rich just dont care. Workers will be sent back to work sick or not, so long as the bosses maintain their profit margins. What will happen when they realize this? Or to be more precise, what will be done to help workers come to this realization, the understanding that there are common interests as a class, that survival requires workers as a class to take the future into their hands. This is not only a question of education but also of platform, of connecting partial demands today with more long-term ones tomorrow.

In this regard, the crisis has raised some tactical questions with respect to the all-peoples front and the placing of publicthat is, socialistsolutions to the crisis. Depending on how the crisis unfolds, the question looms: can the working classs problems be solved, can the countrys crisis be addressed without putting forward socialist solutions? Do not, in circumstances such as these, the national interests coincide with working-class interests? Can a 30% unemployment rate be addressed without massive public works jobs on the order of the WPA? Will the health crisis be met without Medicare For All or universal health care? In the eventuality of a banking crisis, can a solution be found thats in the publics interest absent socializing the banks? What about the airlines? Calls are already being made for their nationalization.

On the other hand, more limited and therefore more winnable issues have to be considered.The most radical demands are not always the most revolutionary. What happens when the $1,200 checks run out? In many places thats one months rentif you are lucky. What demands will address whats needed when the extension in unemployment compensation runs dryand thats coming sooner than later. Consideration always has to be given to what will move the largest and broadest numbers of people around the most effective issue. Politics begins with the millions.

The election campaign does not preclude addressing these issuesin fact this crisis demands it. The 3040% who voted for Bernie will expect it; those in the center radicalized by the crisis need it; and the future of the country may depend on such a discussion and action.

The country, indeed, the capitalist world system may be entering a new period of profound weather, health, and economic calamities. Consider, for example, this summers coming fires in the West, or this falls hurricanes in the South and East as the inevitable second wave of the coronavirus strikes.

The role of the Party in these circumstances must be to bring our revolutionary working-class communist plus to an analysis of these issues. And on the basis of this analysis, the CPs job must be to, in concert with others, agitate and organize while spreading the word. How do we unite our class and people against the right and big business in these new circumstances? This is a question for peoplesworld.org and for cpusa.org. And its an issue for every club and district.

In this regard, the Party has got to up its social media and social networking game. For years weve been trying to improve our online activities, not without some progress but not nearly enough. Social distancing now demands it. Everyone must now learn to work in a different way.

This means greater use of the PW and sharing of our articles, not only on the district parties pages but on the members personal pages. It means developing an electronic paper route. It means sharing of video, podcasts, and images.

It also means joining local neighborhood mutual aid networks or setting them up to assist people in need. Weve often talked about the importance of neighborhood concentrationthe technology exists to achieve it via social networking.

In the near future, were going to develop plans for national schools, local study groups, as well as ongoing webinars. But lets start with a national town hall meeting on addressing the crisis, and lets do it soon.

Comrades, the time is now! A decisive moment has arrived. How the Party acts now will help determine not only our Partys future but also, if we act correctly, the countrys.

This report was made to the National Board on March 25, 2020.

See the original post:
The struggle of our lives: Coronavirus and capitalist crisis - Communist Party USA

Bernie Sanders Calls on Nintendo to Release Animal Crossing Early declares a wish-it-were-true headline from the tech and gaming-focused satirical website Hard Drive. Gamers of all classes, both social and character, shouldnt be forced to wait any longer for an adorable little game that is ready now, said Senator Sanders, according to the article. On Twitter, the story was eventually retweeted more than 12,000 times and liked 55,500 times.

Articles that people share are the ones that make them say oh my god, thats me, said Hard Drive editor-in-chief Jeremy Kaplowitz in a recent interview with VICE Games, and right now, everyone is thinking about the quarantine and the virus.

Satire is hard, which is why most people fail when they attempt it. At its best, satire is cathartic truth telling, processing complex emotions through the lens of comedy.

One reason comedy is hard is because its easier to punch down instead of up. See: Any number of comedians constantly complaining about how political correctness has ruined their ability to tell a joke. What makes Hard Drive unique, especially in the meme-driven economy of video game culture, is how its comedy goes out of the way to still punch up.

It has been important to us to be unapologetically leftwing when we get into politics or social issues at all, said Kaplowitz. If were not going to make a site about how much gamers suck, were also not going to make a site that caters to the people those jokes are about.

Its how you end up with headlines like Amidst Panic, Naughty Dog Allows Employees to Sleep at Home next to President Trump Honored to Throw Out the First Slur at Call of Duty Tournament and Gamer Who Hasnt Had a Glass of Water in a Week Says He Gets Physically Ill Seeing Game at 30 FPS. Its comedy with a surprising ideological throughline.

We made an effort right from the beginning to avoid jokes about that stereotype, said Kaplowitz. We wanted to make sure people knew that this was supposed to be a funny website for people who like nerd culture and wanted good, smart jokes about the topic.

For a long time, the most popular article on Hard Drive was Nintendo Confirms Waluigi is Uncircumsized for Some Reason, published only a few months after it launched. It was recently dethroned by JK Rowling Announces You, The Reader, Were Gay All Along.

Their approach is also how you get a website that sarcastically describes itself as ethical gaming journalism, a riff on GamerGates vapid attempt to spin legitimacy into a hate group, authentically apologizing when the incorrect pronouns are used. A tweet re-sharing a piece about the renowned fighting game player SonicFox was written before SonicFox came out as nonbinary. An old version of the article referenced SonicFox as he/him, not they/them.

This is an old article, read a tweet after people, including SonicFox, criticized the articles language. We have updated the pronouns. Thank you to those who pointed it out.

Oh yeah you got to appease the people with phony outrage, said someone in response to the apology.

Whenever we talk about the big gaming controversy of the day, we try to have a take that we think is correct, said Kaplowitz. Were a video game comedy website on the side of LGBTQ+ gamers, developers trying to unionize, those affected by GamerGate, etc.

It has been important to us to be unapologetically leftwing when we get into politics or social issues at all."

Kaplowitz said the site doesnt see much pushback from the uglier communities in games, despite their political positions, and often sees their content shared in alt-right subreddits.

I guess everyone appreciates a good Mario joke, he said.

Hard Drive is a spin-off of The Hard Times, pitched as The Onion for millennials.

If The Onion's everyman had a wife, a job, and a lawn to mow, said The Hard Times co-founder Matt Saincome, The Hard Times everyman was going to have a band, shitty roommate, and depression.

The Hard Times was supposed to be a zine, an amateur magazine only read by Saincome and his friends, before he teamed up with comedian Bill Conway and it became a website. It was the right choice; more than a million people read The Hard Times in its first month.

Saincome, like many adults his age, grew up with video games, and the moment The Hard Times proved viable, he wanted to start a dedicated video game publication. Other comedy nichescombat sports, conspiracy theories, a few otherswere toyed with and all failed.

The one that finally connected with people was Hard Drive.

The most popular creation of Hard Drive is Ace Watkins, aka the only Gamer running for President. The Twitter account for Ace Watkins, who recently said hes friends with Joe Biden on Switch and hasnt seen him log on in weeks, has more followers than Hard Drive.

The idea started as a shitpost by Kaplowitz, an experiment without an end. Other pieces were tangentially connected to it, including a Comic-Con video asking people if gamers should be a protected class, and an opinion piece about needing a gamer president.

Who better to defend the plight of the conservative than a Gamer President? reads the op-ed. Taxes are the microtransactions of government, and no one understands the plight [of] the small (a.k.a. indie) business owner than gamers.

At the time, this Gamer President didnt have a name, but once they landed on Ace Watkins, they tried to capitalize by launching a t-shirt. Except, uh, no one bought the shirt. Dejected, they decided to make a throwaway Twitter account for Ace Watkins. In a single day, the account got more than 40,000 followers and the joke took on an unexpected life of its own.

We need single player healthcare, reads a recent and infuriatingly clever tweet.

But comedy, by definition, is a high-wire act. Even an outwardly progressive publication like Hard Drive is trying to find the line between offensive and edgyand sometimes screw up.

Its hard to remember which ones people didnt like because usually they just dont do very well on the site, said Kaplowitz. I searched @harddrive this aint it and came up with some examples: Facebook Tells Shooter He Could Reach More People If He Boosts Post For $50 and Its Time to Cast a Black Stan Lee, which ran the day Stan Lee died.

I think as long as we are aware of who the target is and can stand by that idea, its OK to sometimes run jokes that not everyone likes, they added. Thats generally the line for us: who are we ultimately making fun of with this joke? Is this a person we think deserves to be made fun of?

Part of what makes Hard Drive unique from other satirical websites such as The Onion is the bylines attached to stories are completely real. They also present themselves front and center to audiences, recording podcasts and running a Patreon to make the financing work.

Like running any website in 2020, the math is hard. Its especially hard for a comedy website, because youre trained to share the pithy headline and never, ever click the link.

Reviews, quizzes, and lists are all more popular than regular articles, for example, said Kaplowitz. I thinkand maybe this is really just a hopethat the only real way to get people to your site is to consistently run high quality articles. All of our headlines are a complete joke with a set-up and punchline; we never run something where you need to click the link to get the joke.

Given how dark the weeks and months ahead might be, well take all the laughs we can get.

Follow Patrick on Twitter. His email is patrick.klepek@vice.com, and available privately on Signal (224-707-1561).

Read the rest here:
The 'Hard Drive' Became The Onion of Video Games by Being 'Unapologetically Left-Wing' - VICE

Announcing their first full-length album since 2013s Sick Octave, Young Knives will release their fifth album Barbarians on 4th September.

As with every Young Knives album, me and House always need a good reason to make it, Henry explains. We often start with some high concept that we feel passionate about and use it like a framework to build lyrics and motifs around. As confirmed but self-aware nihilistic miserabilists we often have to dig our way out of a spiralling bleak world view that would make for a super depressing listen. This album is no different. But I think thats the point of the records we make: how can we turn the worse aspects of humanity into something really fucking entertaining? Obviously there was a lot going on around the world at the time we were writing the record, with the rise of the alt-right and politics designed to divide us. All this fed into a sense that humans are always going to have this battle between our collective existence and the existence of the individual, some days we give and some days we take.

I read Straw Dogs [2002 book by philosopher John Gray] after having put it off for years because of the hype. Its something you cant un-read. Its key point is that no matter what scientific progress we have made, what advances we have made in our understanding of how the universe works, we have not become better humans, we are no less barbaric. I just thought that it was such an undeniable point; we are obsessed with self and social improvement, but we dont get any better as human beings. What if cruelty to others is just part of who we are? How do we live with that?

Sharing raucous lead track Sheep Tick, accompanied by a weird AF video, Henry adds, Music videos are awful and we wanted to lean into that. The idea behind this one was to make a video that you couldnt have pitched. We just started shooting without knowing what it was, our goal to make it as baffling and entertaining as possible. Weirdly, the great thing is that some of the video started to make sense with the song after we had finished it: Houses goblin character is the voice inside that tells you how worthless you are, and you have to make peace with him. Most of it doesnt make any sense though.

Check it out below.

'Barbarians' Tracklisting:

1. Swarm

2. Society for Cutting Up Men

3. Jenny Haniver

4. Red Cherries

5. I Am Awake

6. Holy Name 68

7. Barbarians

8. Sheep Tick

9. Only a God

10. What I Saw

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Young Knives announce first new album in seven years 'Barbarians' - DIY Magazine