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Staunch Trump supporter, alt-right sympathiser and GOP congressman Matt Gaetzfound himself a cosy spot in his happy place: Fox News.

And because middle-aged Republican men are literally obsessed with everything AOC(as are we, tbf) that was the topic of conversation. Specifically, her comments last week that the Democratic party is a "center or center-conservative party."

In response, Gaetzcalled her "a socialist" (he also called her "Alex" which we suppose is better than when he kept calling her "attractive"). The actual dictionary definition of socialism relates to the means of production being controlled by a collective (such as the government) as opposed to individuals. But Gaetz had an altogether different definition which we've never heard of, and are pretty sure would be pretty baffling to Marx too.

She wants to fundamentally change everything, where unless the government is forcing you to eat nothing but kale and quinoa while you're riding around on your non-gender specific unicorn to your next Pocahontas rain dance, you're just not woke enough.

The clip has been widely circulated on Twitter overnight after it was posted yesterday by the actual show it was aired on. Somehow they must have thought it made them look good...

Delightfully, it appears to have backfired.

Gaetz might like to know that actually quinoa is now problematic and unicorns are genderless anyway. Next time maybe he could find a more accurate cliche.

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Trump supporting congressman bizarrely claims AOC wants to 'force you to eat nothing but kale and quinoa' - indy100

Welcome to Fan Theory Madness, your guide to what fan theories, good and bad, are taking the internet by storm!

With so many fan theories floating around the web, it can be hard to know which ones to take seriously and which ones are wildly off the mark. Some theories are brilliant breakthroughs that reveal a whole new understanding of what a work of fiction means, or they're spot-on predictions about what's going to happen in the next installment. Others are specious bunk, deeply flawed theories that nevertheless get aggregated by some of the less scrupulous news sites.

It wasn't the busiest week for fan theories, but there were still a couple of theories that made the rounds that are worth noting. First, there's a cockamamie theory about Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Then, we'll address a Spider-Man: Homecoming extra who sparked a Morbius fan theory. Finally, we'll finish with some news that is not a fan theory in the traditional sense, but it was packaged as one because you gotta get that sweet, sweet SEO juice, baby!

LEIA USED THE FORCE TO PROJECT KYLO REN'S BODY TO SAVE REY

This fan theory "solves" a problem that didn't need solving. Essentially, it argues that Kylo Ren actually did die when Palpatine threw him into that pit during The Rise of Skywalker's big final battle. It wasn't actually Kylo who climbed up from the pit to revive Rey after she defeated her grandpa. Instead, the theory posits, that was Leia, Force-projecting herself but altering her appearance to look like her son for Rey's comfort. This is why "Kylo" disappears so quickly after saving Rey, and why Leia's comatose body disappears at the same time because they were one and the same.

This is insanity. From a narrative perspective, it makes no sense that Leia and Rey would share their final moment, as the entire point of the trilogy seemed to be focused on the relationship between Rey and Kylo. For Leia to swoop in, even if she's essentially wearing her son's skin, misses the point of their relationships and it means that Kylo's actual last moment on screen was when he got chucked into a hole. That's not fulfilling storytelling.

Also, this theory would make the much-debated Rey-Kylo kiss even weirder, because it would mean that it was actually Leia going in for the smooch. This is one of those theories that's too busy looking for upvotes on Reddit and clues that aren't actually there, and as a result, it totally ignores the fundamentals of storytelling in favor of a nonsensical twist. It's bad.

MORBIUS WAS IN SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING'S POST-CREDITS SCENE

There's actually going to be a Morbius movie, which is still kind of unbelievable. But, it's not as far-fetched as this theory, which is really reaching to draw a connection between the MCU and Sony's Spider-Man franchise. Granted, Michael Keaton's appearance in the Morbius trailer seems to suggest that his Homecoming villain, Vulture, might really be in Morbius, but this theory attempt to retroactively create a cameo in the other direction.

In Homecoming's post-credits scene, a now-imprisoned Vulture encounters another Spider-Man villain (believed to be the MCU's Scorpion). As they talk, other inmates walk by them, including an out-of-focus man with long hair and a short beard. He kind of looks like Jared Leto's Morbius. Does this mean that Morbius was in Homecoming from the very beginning?

No, no, no, no.

Spider-Man: Homecoming came out in July of 2017. The Morbius movie wasn't announced until November of that year, and Jared Leto wasn't cast until June 2018. It seems pretty impossible, then, that Sony and Marvel Studios could have snuck him into the background of a Homecoming scene. It's definitely an extra, not Leto, and almost certainly not intended to be a Morbius cameo. (There's a chance that Sony could retroactively make the cameo canon, as Marvel did with the fan theory that young Peter Parker appeared in Iron Man 2, but that's a whole different beast).

Also, if we want to get too deep into this misguided theory, if Morbius is in jail in Homecoming, that would mean that the events of the upcoming solo film would need to take place in 2017 because Morbius the bold doctor certainly doesn't seem like an ex-con.

DC AND MARVEL AREN'T RIVALS WAIT THIS ISN'T A FAN THEORY

In a tweet, Guardians of the Galaxy and The Suicide Squad director James Gunn claimed that there isn't actually much of a rivalry between the Marvel movies and the DC movies. This is a worthwhile little news story. Gunn is one of a few directors who has worked for both franchises, as Warner Bros. hired him to direct The Suicide Squad after Disney fired him when a targeted alt-right campaign recirculated some of his old offensive joke tweets. (Disney later re-hired him to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, although it was delayed because he needed to finish his DC movie first.)

"I can't remember anyone at either Marvel or DC ever condemning the other company," he tweeted. "I think there's probably slightly less competition between Marvel & DC than between Marvel or DC & all other movies. After all, we are in very similar boats, relatively speaking."

While I'm sure both Disney and Warner Bros. would prefer that their superhero movie dominate the box office rather than the competition's, Gunn's probably right that there isn't a fanboy-style rivalry or any real animosity. It's just weird that at least one entertainment news outlet framed Gunn's tweet as debunking a theory. Is it really a fan theory to think that Marvel and DC have a rivalry? Maybe not, but it apparently does make for a more clickable headline.

More here:
Fan Theory Madness: Rewriting the Rise of Skywalker ending and a Morbius mystery - SYFY WIRE

Photograph courtesy of U.S. Navy

On the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the

On the 75th anniversary of Auschwitzs liberation by the Russian Red Army, it is necessary to look back at our past and what has happened since that fateful day of Jan. 27, 1945. We must recognize where we are now in relation to those dark times so that we do not repeat our history.

In an age where facts no longer matter and history is malleable, we must never forget the horrors of the Holocaust and the six million Jews who were killed, over 960,000 of whom were murdered in Auschwitz alone. And yet, it seems that we already are starting to. There are many Holocaust survivors still alive today who witnessed the original rise of Nazism in the 1930s, its defeat and the emergence of a post-war world order designed to foster peace and understanding between the nations of the world.

Yet at the same time, these survivors are now witnessing the resurgence of Neo-Nazis, and some original Nazis, as well as the return of authoritarian, almost Orwellian, national orders led by demagogues, such as Trump and Putin, who seek to bend history to their own ends. All the while, these final survivors look on in shock and horror as they see the world so easily forget what happened to them within their lifetimes. This is not even to speak of the youth of the world, even including Jewish youth, who know very little about the Holocaust. As in the case of American Jewish rapper Lil Dicky, many even want us to move on and forgive Germany, as he states in his hit charity song Earth. But all of this pales in comparison to the actual fact that there are many atrocities (luckily not on the scale or horror as the Holocaust) taking place once again.

Most recently, there has been the attempted ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and the imprisonment of Uighur Muslims in Chinese re-education camps. However, as far as we know, they are not being murdered.

In the words of Piotr Cywinsky, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland, Anti-Semitism, racism, demagogy, contempt and hatred. We are becoming more and more indifferent, introverted, apathetic and passive. Most were silent as the Syrians were drowning, we silently turned our backs on the Congolese people and the Rohingya people, and now the Uighurs. Our silence is our severe defeat.

Even here in the United States, we are seeing this trend play out with not only the worst anti-Semitic hate crime in our history carried out in the relatively nearby city of Pittsburgh at The Tree of Life Synagogue, but also in Monsey, New York and in the random attacks on noticeably Jewish people in Brooklyn.

Even on our own campus, we are seeing a rise in hate in the form of the alt-right group Turning Point USA, which, since sending paid workers to campus, has infiltrated the Drexel Republican club. They have used that connection to both host a known racist filmmaker Michael Hansen and screen his film Killing Free Speech Part II. To top that off, they also hosted the Proud Boys, who are a known violent hate group as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Despite these events and guests being against university policy, as none of them were approved, nothing has been done to my knowledge.

As the number of Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle and hate crimes against Jewish and other minority groups continue to rise, we must ask ourselves: can we honestly say Never Again to those survivors? If we let these other, admittedly smaller, atrocities continue to happen, where do we as a species draw the line? It clearly wasnt at the aforementioned attempted ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, or the Syrian refugee crisis, and it certainly wasnt at the refugee crisis at the Southern Border of the United States.

I do not have a clear answer to this question because my answer would have been that, as a species, we should have come together to intervene in these situations on the behalf of the oppressed years ago. But what has happened cannot be changed. We must now focus on the future and ensure that we will stand up to hate in all forms. We must come together to fight atrocities, both at home and abroad, against any hate group so that we can say Never Again and truly mean it.

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The 75th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation calls for a look into the past - Drexel University The Triangle Online

It has long been accepted that the comments section of YouTube is not the most wholesome of places, especially when it comes to videos on divisive issues. According to new research presented at the ACM FAT (Fairness, Accountability and Transparency) conference this week, the comments section could also have a radicalising effect on YouTube users.

The study, which was conducted by researchers at Switzerlands Ecole polytechnique fdrale de Lausanne and Brazils Federal University of Minas Gerais, says the comments section exposes users to several right-wing ideologies.

Non-profits, as well as the media, have hypothesized the existence of a radicalization pipeline on YouTube, claiming that users systematically progress towards more extreme content on the platform. Yet, there is to date no substantial quantitative evidence of this alleged pipeline, reads an extract of the study titled Auditing radicalization pathways on YouTube.

According to the study, it found that users who engaged with a moderate amount of right-wing content on the platform showed a likelihood to migrate towards far-right content. As always it is worthwhile noting that users who show an interest, even a passing one, might also be drawn deeper into the subject matter they are looking for.

That said, the evidence that this study has uncovered is hard to ignore.

We analyze 330,925 videos posted on 349 channels, which we broadly classified into four types: Media, the Alt-lite, the Intellectual Dark Web (I.D.W.), and the Alt-right, it adds.

Processing 72M+ comments, we show that the three channel types indeed increasingly share the same user base; that users consistently migrate from milder to more extreme content; and that a large percentage of users who consume Alt-right content now consumed Alt-lite and I.D.W. content in the past, the study continues.

The larger question is whether or not platforms like YouTube can or should do anything about this. Increased moderation and regulation could lead to an abuse of freedom of speech, and the sites history in tackling such issues has been spotty at best.

Either way it seems like the best thing to do is steer well clear of the comments section.

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Study says YouTube comments section can have radicalising effects on users - htxt.africa

When Jair Bolsonaros culture secretary published an official video paraphrasing Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, it wasnt just Brazilians who were stunned. The video, in which Roberto Alvim called for a rebirth of art and culture in Brazil while Adolf Hitlers favourite Wagner opera played in the background, sent shockwaves around the world.

Alvim was sacked within hours, as Brazilians asked: was this an aberration, a one-off, or even a communist trick? And what did it say about the far right presidents communications masterplan?

Analysts said the use of such extremist tactics is typical of the brinksmanship, trolling and meme tactics used by the US alt-right who are often referenced by powerful members of Bolsonaros government.

The term alt-right was popularised by white supremacist Richard Spencer and has been linked to Stephen Miller, a white nationalist and senior adviser to Donald Trump who has himself benefited from far-right support and at times nodded to it.

Pushing the limits and goading liberals are classic alt-right tactics, said Rodrigo Nunes, a political philosophy professor at Rio de Janeiros Pontifical Catholic University.

This is done in the US by people on the fringes of the public debate, and here it is done by people in the government, Nunes said. Sending messages to people in the most extreme fringes of the far right.

Alvim denied knowing he had quoted Goebbels. Brazilian media reported that he was well aware that he was echoing Hitlers propaganda minister and even joked he would be called a Nazi.

The playbook is the American alt-right, Nunes said. In that sense, Brazil is the first alt-right government in the world.

Its not hard to find other such rightwing dog-whistle messages around Bolsonaros government.

His congressman son, Eduardo, and special adviser of international affairs Felipe Martins both have Twitter profile pictures which use a sci-fi, collage aesthetic called vaporwave or fashwave associated with the alt-right.

Martins profile quotes Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night the Dylan Thomas poem quoted in the manifesto of far-right terrorist Brenton Tarrant, accused of killing 51 people in the Christchurch mosque attacks.

These are common tropes, said Alexandra Minna Stern, a professor in the American Culture department at the University of Michigan and author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate. In turn, the US alt-right is interested in Brazil because they like Jair Bolsonaro and the way he and his supporters have used social media, she said.

Another alt-right favourite is the Latin phrase deus vult (God wills it) a Crusader slogan which has often been used by figures in the alt-right as well as Alvim and foreign minister Ernesto Arajo.

The Bolsonaros also use offensive statements to distract media attention from damaging scandals. In the past month alone, the president told a reporter he looked terribly like a homosexual as explosive details about a money laundering inquiry into his senator son Flvio swirled. Last week, he said on Facebook live that Indigenous people are increasingly becoming human beings just like us.

Thats part of the spectacle, like the shock and awe going on in the US, said Stern.

Like Trump, leading Bolsonaristas are good at plausible deniability making an extreme comment, then withdrawing it or claiming it was misconstrued.

Eduardo Bolsonaro and finance minister Paulo Guedes have both said Brazil could reintroduce notoriously repressive legislation from Brazils military dictatorship if street protests like those in Chile were to erupt. Both later backed off, but the subject had entered the national conversation.

And while Alvims conservative art competition has been suspended, many Bolsonaristas still believe that Brazilian culture is decadent, infested with leftist ideals, and in need of a conservative transformation.

Its back to Nazi ideas of what is degenerate art, how young families are being corrupted, Stern said. [The idea] is out there and its entering the discourse.

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'The playbook is the American alt-right': Bolsonaristas follow familiar extremist tactics - The Guardian