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Benevolent philanthropist? Brilliant financier? Evil genius of the left?

A lot has been said in recent years about George Soros, the Hungarian Jewish billionaire known for his support of NGOs around the world. Hes been demonized by the right, while the left has sometimes sat uneasily with his hedge fund background.

Who is the man behind the name, and what does he stand for? Thats what the 2019 documentary Soros attempts to answer. The film was directed and produced by Jesse Dylan, the son of Bob Dylan, and it should be noted that Jesse Dylans production company, Wondros, has done promotional video work for Soros Open Society Foundations previously. It will play Feb. 28 at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco as part of the Jewish Film Institutes WinterFest.

George Soros, or Soros Gyrgy in his native Hungarian, was born in 1930, the son of a prosperous Jewish family in Budapest. Though some 565,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the Soros family survived in Hungary by living as non-Jews on forged papers. The brutality that Soros saw, even as he himself escaped it through the foresight of his father, was a formative experience.

That shaped my outlook on life, he says in the film. Preparing me to face harsh reality and instead of giving in, actually trying to prevail.

It was compounded by seeing how harshly the socialist dictatorship that ruled Hungary after the war treated those who dissented. Soros had moved to London in 1947, and eventually became the manager of a successful hedge fund. (Soros has long been famous in finance circles; he took advantage of an unstable financial situation in the U.K. in 1992 to make $1.5 billion in a month by betting against the pound.)

In between work hours, Soros read a book that made a huge impact on his life. Karl Poppers The Open Society and Its Enemies, published in 1945, described the similarities between fascism and communism in stifling freedom of thought.

He proposed the alternative, which is an open society which is based on the recognition that nobody is possession of the truth, and therefore you need a critical process and you have to respect other peoples opinions, Soros said in an earlier C-SPAN interview, excerpted in the documentary.

This idea of the open society reportedly is behind all of Soros giving, which amounts to something in the area of $32 billion since the late 1970s, according to his Open Society Foundations. Thats a lot of money, and the list of causes that he has supported is long, including marriage equality in the U.S., Roma rights in Eastern Europe and early childhood education in Liberia.

At 88 minutes, the documentary has a few too many talking heads, and some might consider the use of graphic historical footage of violence a bit gratuitous (it seems to be there to show what happens when the values of the open society disintegrate). Through interviews with the man himself, his family, and even with the adamantly anti-Soros Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the film raises a few interesting questions about ego, the role of money in politics and the shifting political landscape.

As a whole, the documentary is laudatory, showing the many ways in which Soros money has helped grassroots activism around the world, beginning with those resisting apartheid in South Africa and continuing today in the face of direct and personal threats to Soros ideals and even his life.

And thats the sad kernel within the mostly idealistic film.

Soross long arm has made him truly hated by not only the alt-right but the traditional right wing of American politics. Even in his country of birth, he was the subject of a series of government-funded billboards painting him as the enemy of Hungarian culture.

Soros himself admits to feeling, at times, depressed and overwhelmed, not only by the hatred but by the way his values have not translated into the kind of society he expected. But, he says, he has accepted that the results of trying to improve the world cant be quantified like an investment.

The contribution that you make to what you might call this nebulous thing, the common good, thats the return, he says.

Go here to read the rest:
New documentary tells the full story of George Soros - The Jewish News of Northern California

Indigenous, Social Movements February 26, 2020 Jeff Shantz

Fascism is bare knuckle capitalism. A key element of fascist mobilizations is a fighting street force. Vigilantes ready and willing to attacked organized members of the working class, exploited, and oppressed. With fascism on the rise across many of the so-called Western liberal democracies, including Canada, we can see horrible manifestations of far Right vigilantism. And we can see how it is legitimated by mainstream conservatives, including elected members of governments. The street fighting groups are key parts of fascists terror to break resistance of the exploited and oppressed. And they operate with the approval of the formal parliamentary party wings.

In the Canadian context we can see troubling manifestations of this far Right vigilantism moving specifically and openly to break the crucial struggles of the current moment the Wetsuweten land defense, and solidarity actions, asserting Wetsuweten sovereignty against an invasion by RCMP in the service of the Coastal GasLink pipeline and the Unifor pickets of the Coop Refinery in Regina by locked out workers and supporters. These mobilizations now face a dual threat of formal state repression and criminalization by police (as politicians increasingly use terms like illegal to describe them) and informal vigilante violence, specifically by far Right and neofascist elements.

According to Barbara Perry, Criminology professor and hate crime researcher at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, there are, at minimum, 130 active far Right extremist groups operating across Canada. Perry reports that this represents a 30 per cent increase from 2015. It becomes even more crucial for broader solidarity efforts to coalesce to defend these struggles against state and extra-state violence.

On Wednesday, February 19, 2020, far Right vigilantes set upon and tore down a blockade set up outside Edmonton by Indigenous people acting in solidarity with Wetsuweten land defenders. At Edmonton, RCMP, who they and politicians say are sent to the blockades as matters of public safety, notably stood by while the far Rightists confronted the solidarity blockaders and took down the blockades. It is important to point out, in the context of rule of law narratives, that no injunction had been served against the blockaders at the time the far right vigilantes assailed the blockade. They were not breaking the law.

Those who put out calls to dismantle blockades and those who showed up claimed openly to be involved with far Right groups including the Yellow Vests Canada (YVC) and wexit (western Canada exit movement), and involved people who were part of the United We Roll (UWR) mobilization on Parliament Hill last year. These are groups that have been identified as far Right, extremist hate groups and have been associated with neofascism in Canada.

In an interview with Huffington Post, McMaster University Professor Ameil Joseph, whose work focuses on race theory, immigration and mental health, identified United We Roll as a revisioned white nationalist, white supremacist movement.

The attack on land defenders near Edmonton was not an isolated event. It is one of several far Right assaults on working class communities recently. And we need to make the connections and look at these together as aspects of class violence.

On Wednesday, February 5, 2020, far Rightists identifying with United We Roll and Yellow Vest Canada rallied against the secondary picket line in Carsland, Alberta, set up by Unifor workers in support of locked out workers at the Coop Refinery in Regina. In an interview with rankandfile.ca a Unifor worker noted the anti-union stance of the Yellow Vests (despite their claim to be for resource workers) They basically said if we werent part of Unifor, then they could back us. But because were part of a union, were part of the problem. Hatred of organized labour is, of course, classic part of fascist movements, a key part of their orientation.

Derek Emperingham, a refinery worker and shop steward with Unifor 594, identified the role of the far Rightists in defending capital, not workers, in an interview with rankandfile.ca: Who do they actually stand for? Do they stand for the middle class oil field workers? Cause from what we say, they stand for the corporation, and to help knock the middle class down.

And the company took note. Federated Co-operatives Ltd. CEO Scott Banda positively referenced the presence of United We Roll and was thanked for the attention by UWR organizer Haley Wile. CEO Bandas cheer came only days after a UWR member had threatened to run over Unifor picketers in a Facebook post.

To these actions by the far Right against Indigenous land defenders and unionized workers, we should also add previous attempts by neofascists to attack tent cities organized by homeless people. In 2018 the Soldiers of Odin (SOO) mobilized confrontations and attempted assaults against homeless people on multiple occasions in Nanaimo, British Columbia, a small, historically blue collar city, now university town.

In each of these cases police (RCMP at the Unifor picket and RCMP again at the Edmonton rail blockade) stood back and allowed the far Right vigilantes to assail blockaders and picketers. In Nanaimo, community activists organized self defense to keep the fascists at bay.

Far from being simply fringe elements, far Right mobilizations like United We Roll have been openly embraced by Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) members, including the current CPC leader Andrew Scheer. We might recall that Scheer, along with leader of the newfound alt-Right Peoples Party of Canada (and former Conservative Party member and leadership hopeful) Maxime Bernier, high ranking Conservative Member of parliament, Pierre Poilievre and Conservative Senator David Tkachuk appeared at the United We Roll rally on Parliament Hill last year. Scheer went a step beyond and even got into one of the trucks with a United We Roll slogan on the side. Ontario Premier Doug Ford also gave supportive public messages to the Yellow Vest convoy along the way, as did United Conservative Party of Alberta leader, and now Alberta Premier, Jason Kenney.

It is telling how quickly and easily rule of law politicians slip into cheerleaders for vigilante aggression by far Rightists. Conservative Party leadership candidate Peter MacKay, who had earlier made statements using rule of law assertions to condemn Wetsuweten and defenders and allies acting against the CoastalGaslink pipeline and RCMP occupation of Wetsuweteen territory, quickly took to social media to cheer on the far right vigilante assault on the Cuzzins for Wetsuweten blockade. In a since deleted tweet he shouted out almost gleeful support for vigilante violence: Glad to see a couple Albertans with a pickup truck can do more for our economy in an afternoon than Justin Trudeau could do in four years. MacKay, it might be remembered served as Canadas Justice Minister and Attorney General under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Erin OToole, Conservative MP for Durham and announced candidate for leadership of the Conservative Party, asserted publicly that he would criminalize any act of blocking critical infrastructure, including railways. He would also give police the power to clear protesters without any injunction.

Alberta Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer used Twitter to amp up the rhetoric against peaceful land defenders, saying: Albertans will not be economic hostages to law-breaking extremists. Again, it must be stressed that the Cuzzins for Wetsuweten had broken no laws.

Marilyn Gladu, MP for SarniaLambton, ramped things further by saying in an interview that the federal government should deploy the military to enforce court injunctions against land defenders if the RCMP cant handle it.

All of this came a week after Andrew Scheer had arrogantly told Indigenous land defenders to check their privilege and attempted to draw a distinction with Canadians who did not have the luxury of spending days at a time at a blockade. There were clear class and racist subtexts in that message, which were noted even by other politicians.

Of note, too, the far Right vigilantes view (or justify) their aggressions as being motivated by upholding the rule of law in a context where the authorities simply lack the conviction to act. In a Huffington Post interview, Stphane Leman-Langlois, co-director of the Observatory on Radicalization and Violent Extremism, noted: These people think the state is too weak, too soft, and needs help imposing law and order. It is a classic discourse of the far-right.

And the far Rightists are using it to mobilize.

Theres the little law and order sauce. These people like being on the side of law and order. And then theres a crisis that demands urgent intervention. Thats exactly what it takes to mobilize these people.

With help from mainstream conservative politicians.

Elected members of parliament who call for tough enforcement of rule of law and far Right vigilantes acting out that enforcement (even as it is outside rule of law) come together here. Their combined words and actions and acceptance of vigilante acts on behalf of rule of law, show clearly that the rule of law is not about the right, the good, the just, or social peace, as these would-be advocates claim. It is about one-sided imposition of (brute) force. On behalf of the state and corporate interests. On behalf of the status quo. On behalf, finally, of power.

And police reinforce this through discretionary decisions to allow reactionaries to attack peaceful dissenters. A far cry from the way in which police aggressively protect fascists from antifascists at far Right rallies and marches. And a far cry from the violence police inflict on those who oppose the state and corporations.

This is in no way a call for police action police should not be at the blockades in the first place. Rather it is to note the disparity in police treatment of far Right vigilantes versus antifascists, progressive movements, and land defenders. And to highlight what police discretion in these cases say about the social role of police, and their role as defenders of status quo inequalities, and their views of public safety.

There are, of course, political effects of these outbursts by conservative members of parliament. As mainstream conservatives level accusations of extremism and non-peaceful at land defenders and trade unionists who are in fact acting on a peaceful basis, they create a climate that stokes fear and anger and positions land defenders and organized workers as threats needing to be pacified.

Law and order mainstream politicians and far right vigilantes have something of a symbiotic relationship. As I have written previously, based on my own experiences doing solidarity work with the Six Nations land reclamation at Caledonia, in multiple struggles by Indigenous people for land rights, governments at all levels in Canada have been happy to off-load the costs of crisis onto third parties, often local non-Indigenous residents in nearby towns, often explicitly reactionary groupings. In the case of Six Nations, there were anti-Indigenous rallies openly involving participation of neo-Nazis. Far Right provocateur Gary McHale infamously started a Caledonia Citizens Alliance agitating for aggressive action against Six Nations. As is the case currently in the vigilante actions against land defenders supporting Wetsuweten, governments can view these third party actions as positive in strategic terms.

We need to be clear that the racist, far Right, mobilizations play a political role that opens space for governments to deploy formal state violence. As I put it at the time of the Six Nations reclamation, the racist mobilization by groups like the Caledonia Citizens Alliance works to create a climate in which the most reactionary and militaristic politicians, at all levels of government can be emboldened to make aggressive and provocative statements against Indigenous land defenders. These groups also serve to escalate tensions and create the conditions that might clear the way for harder police, or even military, repression.

As James Lawson suggests the high visibility of protest in many aboriginal land cases (just as with labour disputes) can mobilize the non-protesting third parties as a kind of spontaneous human shield for the status quo. This can even be used by governments to claim cynically the excuse that heavier police or military action are needed to protect Indigenous people from the racists. Such was the situation during the Oka Crisis of 1990, when non-Indigenous residents engaged in several attacks on Mohawk people, including destroying food and an infamous attack on a convoy of vehicles evacuating women, children, and elderly people from Kahnawake by bridge.

Stphane Leman-Langlois notes with regard to vigilante violence at Oka: During the Oka crisis, there were many serious incidents before the army was called in. It really got out of hand. And this provided a cover for state action.

The attack on the Edmonton blockade came as multiple calls have been put out by self-identified far Rightists on social media to show up and forcibly tear down various barricades set up in solidarity with Wetsuweten. In an interview with the Toronto Star Evan Balgord, a researcher with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, reports that actions in solidarity with Wetsuweten land defenders, particularly rail and road blockades, have become the number one topic of conversation among fascist and far Right hate groups in online fora. And many of these discussions explicitly call for violence against land defenders.

Fascists are the shock troops of capital. So it is perhaps not surprising that we see far Right vigilantes targeting those they see as opposing extractives capital (oil and gas companies) in the context of a Canadian state deeply tied to extractives industries. As resistance to oil and gas capital increases and potentially spreads, connecting opposition among Indigenous land defenders, climate justice activists, and organized workers, it is likely that neofascists supportive of extractive capital, or using extractives industries as symbols of Canadian nationalism and national development (a term used by mainstream Liberal and Conservative party members it might be added), will focus their aggressions against those movements.

This has already been signalled by wexit campaigns and the United We Roll Canada mobilizations. Both use so-called Western alienation and calls for extractives projects as markers of nationalism with not so hidden elements of white supremacism (against Indigenous opponents of development and foreign agitators and the neofascist dog whistles of cosmopolitan urbanites/activists/hipsters).

The role of official political entities in fanning fascist flames must also be recognized and openly contested. Only collective organizing and self defense provide counters to all of this. Fascists fear collective organization of the exploited and oppressed for solidarity and social and economic justice. In the absence of organized solidarity, they see an open ground for organizing on an openly violent basis.

Jeff Shantz is a longtime union member, currently with Local 5 of the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators (FPSE, BC Federation of Labour). He is a founding organizer with Anti-Police Power Surrey, a grassroots community group in Surrey (Unceded Coast Salish territories). He teaches on corporate crime and community advocacy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. His publications include Manufacturing Phobias: The Political Production of Fear in Theory and Practice (U of T Press), and the Crisis and Resistance Trilogy (Punctum Books).

Excerpt from:
Far Right Vigilantes Attack Land Defenders and Organized Workers - The Bullet - Socialist Project

Victorian students will now be required to learn about the Holocaust in a bid to combat rising antisemitism and far-right extremism around the world, Premier Daniel Andrews has announced.

The move would affect all Year 9 and 10 students in Victoria, and comes after a spate of antisemitic incidents in the state and elsewhere.

While the Holocaust is already in the Victorian high school curriculum, it is not necessarily taught in all schools. It is also not always taught as well as it should be, the government added.

It is vital that each generation understands the horror of the Holocaust to ensure it can never be repeated and to educate the community on the damage caused by antisemitism, racism and prejudice, Education Minister James Merlino said.

This is about using this terrible historical event to talk to students and educate them about the broader issues of racism and prejudice in our society.

The Victorian government will work with Gandel Philanthropy and the Jewish Holocaust Centre to improve current teaching resources which are adapted from the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel.

Several European countries, Israel and some American states have laws mandating the teaching of the Holocaust in schools

Victoria has seen an alarming number of alt-right and antisemitic incidents in recent years, including a home in north-west Victoria flying the Nazi flag last month and scuffles at a far-right rally in St Kilda last January.

Just this week, Australias top intelligence officer warned of rising foreign interference and far-right extremism in Australia, and yesterday Treasurer Josh Frydenberg warned that Holocaust denialism and far-right movements were gaining traction in a speech at the Australian War Memorial. Frydenberg is the son of a Jewish refugee who escaped Hungary during the Holocaust.

And who could forget in 2018 when former senator Fraser Anning literally used the words final solution in his maiden speech?

The Victorian government expects to have the curriculum amended later in the year.

Read this article:
The Holocaust Will Be Taught To All VIC High School Students To Combat Far-Right Extremism - Pedestrian TV

At age 18, Aimee Allen climbed behind the wheel of her Pontiac Grand Am and left her home in Montana for the last time. Leaving behind a broken home, an abusive stepfather, and a spell in foster care, she trained her sights on the bright lights of Los Angeles. Parking her car in sight of the Hollywood sign, like thousands of others before her she plotted her course to the summit of the music industry.

The Interrupters are the fruits not of her success, but of her failure. Formed in 2011, the Angelino quartet came together at the point at which Allens career as a solo artist had rendered her lonely and broke. Her dream was to become the new Joan Jett, to whom she presented a bouquet of flowers at a concert in New York City my whole body was shaking, and I was sobbing, she said of the experience but after a decade spent wilting on the vine, it turned out that there was more power, and greater happiness, in a union.

I kind of feel that I was alone my whole life until I found The Interrupters, she says. But when I did, I finally felt like I was home. I was an orphan before, and now Ive got a family. And weve got each other. If a show goes badly, its on all of us; but if its great, then we all get to share that.

The Interrupters play a fluent and seamless mixture of modern ska and American punk rock. Prior to taking to the stages of increasingly large venues this month the quartet performed for 4000-people over two nights in London the band watch Dance Craze, a concert film from 1980 featuring performances from The Specials, The Beat, and The Selecter. On record and in concert, this 2-Tone template has been recalibrated by the Americans and dispatched across the Atlantic as if brand-new.

The curious thing about this is that a proportion of the groups audience is old enough to have bought singles such as Too Much Too Young and Mirror In The Bathroom on their days of release. As well as this, alongside the Fred Perry shirts and Harrington jackets are a sizeable contingent of young teenagers for whom The Specials are unknown history in the way that Van Halen are for Billie Eilish. With only three albums to their name, the range of ages on display at concerts by The Interrupters is the widest I have ever seen for an emerging act.

I take it as the highest compliment that in England we have people coming up to us after our shows saying I saw the Specials, I saw The Clash, and I love your band, says Kevin Bivona, the groups guitarist. The fact that they could even put us in the same sentence as those people is hard to wrap my head around.

On a cold and sunny February lunchtime, Kevin Bivona sits with Aimee Allen these days known as Aimee Interrupter in the downstairs lounge of The Interrupters double-decker tour bus. Parked outside the BBCs Maida Vale Studios, the band find themselves in Northwest London to record a five-song session for 6music. When the sound engineer in a soundproof booth isolates Bivonas Fender Telecaster guitar on the superior breakup song Gave You Everything I dont know why youre gone, I walk these floors like a country song its throttled precision sounds like something that could saw a car in half.

The pair are friendly, thoughtful, and, it seems to me, tight. When the singer requires new eyelash-extensions, so as to save time it is her band mate that buys them for her. Theyre also uncommonly wholesome; answers are peppered with words such as like and awesome you can take the band out of California, and all that - but are entirely free of swearing. This U-certificate approach even extends to the concert stage.

We make unity music, says the singer. We want everyone to feel like theyre part of a big family.

Its been 20-years since Aimee Allen arrived in Hollywood equipped with little more than a capacity to carry a tune. A waitress by day, each night she would stand outside clubs such as the Whisky A Go Go, The Viper Room, and the Roxy Theatre, on the Sunset Strip, and ask perfect strangers if theyd like to form a band. She survived these encounters unmolested, but admits today that I got really lucky.

She joined forces with an act called No Motiv with whom she played a concert that was seen by Randy Jackson, one of the judges on American Idol. Jackson promised to secure the group a recording contract. After a fashion, he did; Allen signed as a solo artist with Elektra Records in 2002.

It was at this point that her problems began. Despite working with producer Mark Ronson, Aimee Allen did not appear to be a high-priority for her new label. When Elektra was subsumed in a merger with Atlantic Records, her debut album, the fabulously titled Id Start A Revolution (If I Could Get Up In The Morning), was viewed by her new paymasters as surplus stock. 17-years on, it remains unreleased.

I wouldnt wish being a solo artist on anybody, she says. You have people on your payroll, and you dont know if theyre saying that youre amazing because they feel like they have to, or because its genuine Its really lonely because its just you. Theres nowhere to hide. I was just part of the major label machine [and] I felt like I was floating.

In 2008, Aimee Allen recorded the Ron Paul Revolution Theme Song we dont want big government, or the Bilderberg Group that pays for it - in support of Texan libertarian Congressman Ron Pauls independent bid for president. In the same year, she made the first of several appearances on Alex Jones deeply controversial InfoWars radio programme.

Ten years later, the show was removed from all online mainstream media platforms for, among other things, claiming that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings were fake, and that the parents of the 20-children murdered by gunman Alan Lanza were actors hired by the US government.

At the mention of Alex Jones and InfoWars, the temperature on The Interrupters tour bus seems to drop by about 15-degrees. A 10-second silence ensues, punctuated only by a gravid sigh of deep displeasure.

I just want to be very careful about how I answer [this], she says. Okay, yes, I regret it [appearing on the show]. But at the time, he [Alex Jones] wasnt what he became. Would I go on his show now? Hell no, obviously [But] I couldnt see the future. And, honestly, [at the time] he was just an underground conspiracy theorist. It was entertainment; it wasnt that big of a deal. I had no idea he was going to become a controversial hate-speaker. Do you know what I mean? I one hundred-percent disavow what he stands for.

One of the worst things as a musician is when you are just trying to get your music heard and somebody co-opts you to their agenda, says Kevin Bivona. It happens quite often and its something youve got to be careful of.

At this point, my interview with The Interrupters appears to be holed below the waterline. The singer says that she wants to set the record straight [but] in a way that isnt going to create more trouble for me, a response, surely, to an online article from 2014 that accused Aimee Allen of being a stooge of the alt-right, and of supporting racist positions such as Ron Pauls opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In a thoughtful and respectful response to the piece, Bivona wrote in reply that he failed to see how you can use a young persons [sic] 2008 political songs and a few interviews she did six years ago and apply them to a creative project they are involved with [today], when you dont even know them personally.

Its perhaps worth mentioning that other performers have also appeared on InfoWars, including Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins (more than once, as it goes). Its also worth noting that The Interrupters and I do recover the ground lost during our awkward moment. But if the band display a certain skittishness about being interviewed it is almost unheard of for the singer to be questioned alone this is probably the reason why.

In the days that follow, I receive two calls from the bands organisation, one of which asks if it might be possible for Aimee to expand on her position via email.

It was a traumatic time and I deeply regret going on that show, she writes. It became a vehicle for the type of hateful rhetoric that I stand vehemently against. I would never knowingly be associated with anyone expressing racist, homophobic or any other bigoted ideals. I spend all my energy spreading love and making unity music.

The singers 11-year career as a solo artist wasnt entirely shrouded in failure. Her debut album, A Little Happiness, released in 2009, clawed its way to the lower reaches of the US Billboard Heatseekers Chart. She also collaborated with Linda Perry on the song Save Me (Wake Up Call), recorded by the punk group Unwritten Law, and scored a top-10 hit on the alternative chart. But after a decade of struggle, these relatively modest returns were not what she envisaged when she left her Northwestern broken-home.

[When I left Montana] I was just so nave and so hopeful, she says. Where I had come from was bad; anything was better than where I was from. I had a tough upbringing [and] I never felt like I fitted in. I never felt like there was a home for me. Everything just felt so alien and I felt so unconnected to things. But when I listened to [punk rock] I realised that there were people out there who were like me. I just had to find them.

This happened when Aimee Allen met Kevin Bivona while on tour supporting Sugar Ray in 2009. A studio engineer, occasional roadie, and sideman for such acts as The Transplants and Travis Barker, the pair began writing songs together for the singers solo career. But the Montanan was tired of being out in the cold, and from this the idea of a band was born. The groups rhythm section arrived in the form of the guitarists younger twin-brothers, Jesse and Justin Bivona, on drums and bass respectively.

From the start, The Interrupters were an independent concern in the classic mode of Southern Californian punk rock. The band signed to Hellcat Records, founded by Tim Armstrong, the vocalist and guitarist with Rancid, who also serves as their producer. In turn, this imprint operates under the umbrella of Epitaph Records, the most successful and influential punk label of the past 35-years, owned by Brett Gurewitz, the guitarist with Bad Religion.

For anyone who believes that punk rock has endured beyond its initial 1970s heyday and clearly it has then, here, The Interrupters are rubbing shoulders with royalty. Both men are among the finest songwriters in the movements history I had a paperback crime running straight down my spine, wrote Gurewitz in The Devil In Stitches but, just as importantly, both are happy to let their artists run riot.

In 1994, with the genre finally part of the mainstream, Mr. Brett sided with the Epitaph band NOFX in their decision not to permit MTV access to any of their videos, at the likely cost of hundreds of thousands of album sales.

The access we have to punk legends is just crazy, says Kevin Bivona.

Along with Tim Armstrong and Brett Gurewitz, The Interrupters have also met with the approval of Green Day, who they will support on the Oakland trios forthcoming North American stadium tour.

But as with most punk rock groups of their kind, the success of The Interrupters has blossomed without anyone really noticing. Despite the groups last album being the finest ska-themed outing of its kind for more than 20-years, outside of the pages of the rock press this is the first time the band have been interviewed by a mainstream publication.

Being completely honest, where we are at right now is far beyond what I could ever have imagined when I picked up a guitar when I was a kid, Kevin Bivona has told me. I am so happy and grateful for all the success that weve had. I definitely dont want to put a ceiling on how big I want the band to get. I just want to be able to keep making the music and writing the songs, and doing exactly what we do. I want us to be as big as the universe will allow us to get.

Fight the Good Fight by The Interrupters is available now on Hellcat Records

Continue reading here:
Pardon the Interrupters: meet the ska-punks with an InfoWars problem - Telegraph.co.uk

Last year was the first year in recent memory with credible reports of white supremacist groups spreading propaganda around the Lehigh Valley and Warren County, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL this month announced that distribution of white supremacist literature including racist, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ fliers, stickers and posters increased across the nation in 2019 with 2,713 cases, up from 1,214 the year before.

There were five documented instances of such literature locally from so-called alt-right groups.

The group Patriot Front was reportedly behind two instances last October in Allentown, including one reported on the Muhlenberg College campus. Two other occurrences in Bethlehem and Mansfield Township were from the New Jersey European Heritage Association, which the ADL says is trying to expand beyond the Garden State. Fliers with the logo of Identity Evropa, now known as the American Identity Movement or AIM, were seen in Hackettstown.

The ADL began tracking such propaganda in 2016. Similar fliers may have appeared in the Lehigh Valley before 2019 but the ADL may not have received a credible report before, according to spokesman Jake Hyman.

The organization tracks propaganda and other extremist activity on its HEAT Map, which stands for hate, extremism, anti-Semitism and terrorism. The map also documents anti-Semitic incidents in the Lehigh Valley since 2016 there were four reported in 2019, even with the two prior years and down from five in 2017.

NOTE: If you do not see the map and charts above, try opening this post in your Internet browser.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveNovakLVL and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.

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White supremacists spread propaganda in the Lehigh Valley in 2019, ADL reports - lehighvalleylive.com