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Editors note: Our friend Danna Young is a scholar of, among other things, the intersection of entertainment and information particularly humors use within the political landscape and the ways in which its messages reach and affect audiences.

She has a terrific new book out this week from Oxford University Press: Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States. In this piece, she describes how conservative and liberal media differ not only in content, but also in form in ways that exacerbate polarization.

1996 was a banner year for Americas polarized media ecosystem.

In October, a new 24-hour news channel was introduced to American audiences. I figure there are 18 shows for freaks, the former Republican strategist and Rush Limbaugh producer Roger Ailes told the Associated Press in 1995. If theres one network for normal people itll balance out. As CEO of the new Fox News Channel, working alongside founder Rupert Murdoch, Ailes would have his chance to create that network for normal people, packed with analysis and opinion programming, with a dash of news for good measure. Among those analysis and opinion shows was The OReilly Report (later rebranded as The OReilly Factor), a conservative opinion talk show hosted by former Inside Edition entertainment talk show host Bill OReilly.

From its inception, The Factor defined the conservative television talk genre. It also exemplified a genre that Tufts Universitys Jeffrey Berry and Sarah Sobieraj refer to as outrage.

But what some people may have missed is that just three months earlier, in July 1996, another non-traditional form of news-ish programming launched also as a response to mainstream media. It was a news parody and satire program called The Daily Show, on Comedy Central. Created by Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg, The Daily Show featured headlines from the days pop culture news and introduced fictional news correspondents in pretend field segments.

Winstead and Smithberg set out to create a parody program that commented, not just on the politics of the day, but also on the emerging cable news landscape that produced politics as entertainment. In an interview with The Cut, Winstead recalled sitting in a bar, watching Gulf War coverage on CNN: We were all watching the Gulf War unfold and it felt like we were watching a made-for-TV show about the war. It changed my comedy I started writing about how we are served by the media. Their framing from the start: to do a news satire where the genre itself was a character in the show.

The twin births of The Daily Show and The OReilly Factor in 1996 were not a coincidence. Both programs were the result of changes in the economic and regulatory underpinnings of the media industry and the development of new cable and digital technologies. Both presented politically relevant information that offered an alternative (in form and function) to mainstream news. Both were reactions to a news environment being transformed by pressures stemming from media deregulation throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Both were positioned as reactions to problematic aspects of mainstream journalism. Both tapped into an increasingly polarized political electorate. And both reflected the economics of media fragmentation that replaced large, heterogeneous, mass audiences with small, homogenous, niche audiences homogeneous in demographic, psychographic, and even political characteristics.

When scholars and journalists discuss conservative outlets like Fox News, they typically position the cable network MSNBC as its closest functional equivalent on the left. While its fair to say that the MSNBC of 2019 is a liberal-leaning cable news outlet that features liberal political analysis programming, this iteration of the network is relatively recent. When MSNBC was introduced in 1996, the network featured talk shows and news analysis shows from across the political spectrum. In fact, several conservative political talk personalities (including Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter) started their cable news careers at MSNBC. It wasnt until the mid-2000s that the network, failing in the ratings war, pivoted to the left and positioned itself as a liberal alternative to Fox.

But from the moment The Daily Show launched during that fateful summer of 1996, it did reflect an overwhelming liberal ideology. Im not referring to its targets or political point of view Im referring to the ideological leaning of the packaging and aesthetics of satire: packaging and aesthetics that run counter to those of conservative opinion talk.

Thats right: What if satire actually has a liberal bias, not due to its targets and arguments, but due to its playful aesthetic, layered and ironic rhetorical structures, and rampant self-deprecation? And what if political talk actually has a conservative bias, not due to its targets and arguments, but due to its constant threat-monitoring, didactic rhetorical structures, and moral seriousness?

Yes, the content, effects, and aesthetics of liberal satire and conservative opinion talk are completely different. So it can seem counterintuitive to conceptualize satire as any kind of liberal equivalent to conservative opinion talk. But we know that the two genres serve parallel functions for their audiences: highlighting important issues and events, setting their audiences agendas, framing the terms of debate, informing them on ideologically resonant issues, and even mobilizing them. And we know that the audiences of both liberal satire and conservative outrage show low trust in news, low trust in institutions, and enormous political efficacy (meaning confidence that they are equipped to participate politically). And both showed up in Americas living rooms within three months of each other in 1996 each framed as a response to problematic aspects of television news.

In my book Irony and Outrage, I argue that the modern birth of these genres can be traced to the same set of political and technological changes in the political and news ecosystem in the 1980s and 1990s. I also argue that the distinct look and feel of these genres can be traced to underlying differences in the psychological profiles of people on the left and the right differences that shape how we orient to the worlds around us and the kinds of content we are most likely to create and consume.

Decades of research from political psychology points to important psychological and physiological differences between liberals and conservatives that hinge on how we monitor our environments for and engage with threat. Conservatives, who are more prone to threat monitoring, have a lower tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity a trait that correlates with various lifestyle, occupational, and even artistic preferences. Liberals, who are less cognizant of threats in their environments, are less likely than conservatives to rely on emotional shortcuts or heuristics, instead thinking more carefully and evaluating information as it comes in.

Conservatives (especially social and cultural conservatives) tend to value efficiency and clarity. They prefer order, boundaries, and instinct. I find that that these inclinations shape their political information preferences preferences for didactic, morally serious, threat-oriented content that leaves very little doubt about what viewers should be worried about and who is to blame. Content like we find on Hannity or The Ingraham Angle.

Liberals, on the other hand, are more comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. With a lower threat salience, they are more open to play and experimentation. These inclinations shape their political information preferences for layered, ironic, complex arguments that often never really say exactly what they mean. Content like we find on The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

While these genres have shared roots and may even serve parallel purposes for their viewers, the symbiotic relationship between each sides preferred aesthetic and the psychology of their viewers renders their impact quite asymmetrical.

The underlying logic and aesthetic of conservative outrage make it an ideal mechanism for tactical, goal-driven political mobilization. With its use of emotional language and focus on threats, it constitutes what philosopher Jacques Ellul refers to as agitation propaganda. Writing in 1962, Ellul described hate as the most profitable resource of agitation propaganda:

It is extremely easy to launch a revolutionary movement based on hatred of a particular enemy. Hatred is probably the most spontaneous and common sentiment; it consists of attributing ones misfortunes and sins to another

Importantly, it is not only the content of conservative outrage that renders it powerful. Rather, its the symbiosis between the threat-oriented content and the unique psychology of the conservative audience that facilitates its political impact. These conservative audience members, psychologically oriented towards protection and the maintenance of a stable society, are poised to respond to the people, groups, and institutions that have been identified as threats. The fact that these are the very characteristics of outrage content that have been harnessed by the conservative wing of the Republican Party should not come as a surprise.

In contrast, satire is a genre that remains in a state of play, downplays its own moral certainty and issues judgments through implication rather than proclamation. As a result, liberal political elites ability to harness satire and use it to their own ends is compromised. While the symbiosis between outrage and conservatism lends itself to strategic persuasion and mobilization, the symbiosis between the aesthetic of irony and the underlying psychology of liberalism render satire fruitful as a forum for exploration and rumination, but not for mobilization.

Consider one of the most critically acclaimed and influential pieces of satire of the past decade: Colberts 2011 creation of an actual super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

Colberts coverage of super PACs and Citizens United influenced public opinion and knowledge of the topic. But, according to Colbert, he didnt create his super PAC with political or persuasive intentions at all. He didnt push the limits of campaign finance in an effort to fuel activism on the issue of campaign finance reform. Rather, the whole thing came about by accident.

After having mentioned a fictional super PAC at the end of a political parody on The Colbert Report, Comedy Central expressed resistance to the idea of an actual Colbert super PAC. Are you really going to get a PAC? a network representative asked Colbert. Because if you actually get a PAC, that could be trouble. To which Colbert replied: Well, then, Im definitely doing to do it.

And so began the largely organic and experimental process of launching and raising funds for an actual super PAC and learning about the (nearly nonexistent) limits of campaign financing. As Colbert explained: [At] every stage of it, I didnt know what was going to happen next. It was just an act of discovery. It was purely improvisational. And, you know, people would say, What is your plan? My plan is to see what I can and cannot do with it.

When The Daily Show and Fox News both appeared in 1996, it would have seemed ridiculous to suggest they had much in common. But I say that they do, especially in terms of the technological, political, journalistic, and regulatory changes that gave rise to both. Ironic satire and political outrage programming look and feel different because of the unique values, needs, and aesthetic preferences of the kinds of people who create and consume each one. But the potential for these two genres to be used strategically towards partisan mobilization is absolutely not the same.

If outrage is a well-trained attack dog that operates on command, satire is a raccoon hard to domesticate and capable of turning on anyone at any time.

Does satire have a liberal bias? Sure. Satire has a liberal psychological bias. But the only person who can successfully harness the power of satire is the satirist. Not political strategists. Not a political party. Not a presidential candidate. Outrage is the tool of conservative elites. But ironic satire is the tool of the liberal satirist alone.

Continued here:
Why liberal satire and conservative outrage are both responses to mainstream media but with very different powers - Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard

WASHINGTON (JTA) The young man in the smiley face baseball hat and the Teddy Spaghetti t-shirt had a question for Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump youth movement. It was about an incident that long predated both of their births, and Kirk knew just what to say.

Why do you deny the attack on the USS Liberty which is well documented by both U.S. and Israeli sources and which resulted in the deaths and injuries of over 200 Americans? the man asked Kirk at an October event at the University of New Hampshire organized by Turning Point USA.

I deny that it was a deliberate attack by the Israeli government, Kirk replied coolly.

U.S. and Israeli officials long ago concluded that the attack on the Liberty was a tragic mistake. In the midst of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel mistakenly identified the ship as Egyptian or Soviet and launched an airstrike, killing 34 crewmen. Israel apologized for the attack and paid damages to the United States and the families of the victims, but the incident has nonetheless been embraced by conspiracy theorists as a code for Israeli nefariousness.

It has also been embraced as part of a strategy by the far-right to publicly confront mainstream Republicans and insinuate their ideas into establishment conservatism. Led by Nick Fuentes, a 22-year-old YouTube personality, the so-called groyper army has regularly and publicly challenged mainstream conservatives for their views on the USS Liberty as part of a broader effort to paint them as subservient to Israel and unworthy heirs of President Donald Trumps America first agenda.

RT if you think that Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA are not for America First, Fuentes says in a tweet pinned to the top of his Twitter feed.

At events around the country, groypers have heckled mainstream conservatives and asked provocative questions often about Israel, immigration and LGBTQ rights in an effort to unmask them as fake conservatives and frauds. Named for a more grotesque version of the cartoon Pepe the Frog, which has been coopted by white nationalists, the goal appears to be to move conservatism closer to white nationalism, according to Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism.

What theyre trying to do, theres this whole grouping who refer to themselves as the dissident right, they want to move the Overton window, said Mayo, using a a term that refers to the spectrum of acceptable political discourse. They want to make racism and anti-Semitism mainstream.

Turning Point is a particularly ripe target for that effort because of its emergence as the vanguard of Trumps following among young adults. Last month, young people disrupted a Turning Point appearance by rising GOP star, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, at Arizona State University. Days later they made headlines when they drove Donald Trump Jr. off the stage at an event the group organized at UCLA.

What a HUGE victory today, Fuentes posted on Telegram, a secure messaging app favored by white nationalists, according to The Daily Beast. Cannot be understated what an incredible win we saw at UCLA.

Groypers carefully couch their views in code and irony. Provocative questions about race are often wrapped in anodyne terms like identity and demographics. And at a recent Turning Point USA event in Ohio, a questioner asked Kirk if there were any awesome, fun dance parties at a recent speaking engagement in Israel, an apparent reference to the myth that Israelis were caught on video dancing after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In an interview last year, Fuentes said he avoids the term white nationalist for purely tactical reasons.

The reason I wouldnt call myself a white nationalist its not because I dont see the necessity for white people to have a homeland and for white people to have a country, Fuentes said. Its because I think that kind of terminology is used almost exclusively by the left to defame and I think the terminology and the labels that we use I dont think that we can look at them outside of the context of their connotations in America.

The strategy appears to be bearing some fruit. In April, Ann Coulter retweeted a Fuentes tweet on immigration. Michelle Malkin, a Fox News regular, criticized efforts to silence groypers, who she described as truth-tellers.

Theyve been trying to figure out since Charlottesville what new tactics can we do to recruit more people and get the attention of the media, said Mayo. What were really seeing is that some of the views that these white supremacists present at these Q&As are views that some people who are considered mainstream have adopted.

There has been some skilled pushback from mainstream conservatives. When a heckler in Arizona shouted that Crenshaw is pro-sodomy, the congressman capably parried.

Bring it out guys, Crenshaw said. Let everybody know who you are.

Ben Shapiro, the Jewish conservative pundit, last month called out the groypers at an event of the Young American Foundation, another conservative youth movement that has denounced Fuentes. Shapiro noted that despite his best efforts, Fuentes was not always successful at maintaining an ironic distance from his bigotry.

You also happen to have the unfortunate habit of saying really disgusting things when you think other people arent listening, Shapiro said, recounting an incident in which Fuentes questioned the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust by considering whether Cookie Monster could have baked six million cookies in five years. Shapiro then quoted a Nazi official describing how Jews were murdered.

But maybe he was just being ironic, bro, Shapiro said.

Howard Graves, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, who tracks the extreme right, said he saw in the groypers a new iteration of the 2016 election, when Trump pushed the Republican party rightward on issues like immigration.

It is recapturing that spirit of the 2016 election where there is this kind of no-holds-barred insurgent campaign against conservatism, he said.

Originally posted here:
Meet the 'groyper army,' a movement that wants conservatives to be racist and anti-Semitic - JTA News

On Wednesday, theU.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee launched impeachment hearings just hours afterthe Intelligence Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., concluded its own impeachment inquiry.

The 300-page Intelligence Committee report concludes that President Donald Trump placed his own personal and political interests abovethenational interests oftheUnited States in asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, calling it the act of a president who viewed himself as unaccountable and determined to use his vast official powers to secure his reelection.

It is nowthe Judiciary Committees task to decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment. And whilethe officials who appeared before Schiffs committee were fact witnesses who describedthe events surroundingthe Ukraine scandal, Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., brought three witnesses all constitutional scholars that he hoped would outline a theory of impeachment.

All three witnesses are Jewish: Noah Feldman of Harvard, Pamela Karlan of Stanford and Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina. So are Schiff and Nadler, and so wastheDemocrats counsel who directedthe first 45 minutes of questioning, Norm Eisen.

Well, predictably, it mattered to anti-Semites.

Ann Coulter,the right-wing agitator, tweeted, Too little ethnic diversity amongthe professors for me to take them seriously.Consideringherpast flirtations with anti-Semitism, one could conclude that she wasnt faultingtheprofessors just for being white.

TruNews,the YouTube channel run by ananti-Semitic Florida pastor who has coinedthe term Jew coupto describethe impeachment process, took to Twitter to accuse Jewish socialist Jerry Nadler and his three Jewish witnesses of escalatingtheJew coup. TruNews also helpfully informed us that Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University scholar and witnesses called by theRepublicans who testified thattheevidence for impeachment simply does not add up, is a Roman Catholic.

Twitter removedthe tweet. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblattscreenshotted it for posterity,calling on social media platforms to take action against blatantly anti-Semitic posts.

Because the fringes no longer have pariah status: TruNews has been accredited for White House news conferences.Trump has taken questions from them (about his plans for Israeli-Palestinian peace, of all things)and his son, Donald Jr., gave TruNews an impromptu interview earlier this year at a Michigan rally. (Trump Jr.s spokeswoman told The Washington Post that he was not aware atthe time of TruNews outlook.)

Those views have crept intothe mainstream discourse.

While the hearings were underway, Breitbart News,the Trump-boosting news site, posted a story, Norm Eisen, Democrat Impeachment Counsel, Linked to George Soros.Breitbart reportedthat Soros Open Society Foundation had helped fund an ethics watchdog Eisen founded, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tothe tune of $1.35 million in 2017. (This is not a secret: Its on the Open Society website.)

Butthe Breitbart story failed to explainthe relevance. Eisen is not pretending to be nonpartisan or unaffiliated from a liberal outlook; there is no suggestion that Soros money is reachingthe committee itself.

Soros,the liberal Jewish billionaire philanthropist, is incessantly attached to conspiracies. Fiona Hill, a former senior National Security Council staffer, noted last month how the baseless Soros conspiracy theories besetthe Ukraine scandaland called them anti-Semitic.

Republicans onthe panel attempted to depictthe three scholars onthe Democratic side as effete elitists, another classic trope.

Democrats still dont get it, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Twitter. They are pushing ahead with impeachment based on opinions from liberal law professors from coastal universities.

McCarthy, from California, attended a coastal university (Cal State, Bakersfield), and Turley, the GOPs scholar, teaches at one, George Washington but never mind.

I got texts from leading Jewish Democrats during Wednesdays hearings wondering, with not inconsiderable trepidation, whether thescholars were indeed Jewish.

The trepidation is a shame because considerations of how being Jewish shapes ones outlook should be free of anxieties about what anti-Semites will make of it. And there are meaningful Jewish stories behindthe decisions of these witnesses to become constitutional scholars:

I grew up in Alabama, and I grew up Jewish in Alabama inthe1960s,Gerhardt told C-Span last year, and that was a time of great turbulence, andthe timethecivil rights movement was sort of unfolding, and it was all unfolding in front of me, and I paid attention to it, and that those events that arose inthe 60s and early 70s really shaped my interest in civil rights, but also my interest in law.

Karlan, delivering closing remarks in 2006 at theannual meeting oftheliberal American Constitution Society, called herself one ofthesnarky, bisexual, Jewish women who wantthe freedom to say what we think, read what we want and love who we do,calling on listeners to seize backthe high ground on patriotism and on love of our country from the rich, pampered, prodigal, sanctimonious, incurious, white, straight sons ofthe powerful.

Feldman, who in 2015 launched Harvards Julis-Rabinowitz Program in Jewish and Israeli Law, also helped draftthe Iraqi constitution; he is gripped by how and whether religious and civil law can coexist.

Jewish law and Israeli law are distinct and different,Feldman was quoted as saying by Tablet atthe time ofthelaunch oftheHarvard program, yet they also interact and make claims on each other.

Georgia on my mind:Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a conservative narrowly elected a year ago with a boost from Trump, this week named businesswoman Kelly Loeffler to filltheSenate seat vacated by Johnny Isakson, who is ill.Thetwist is that Trump wanted Kemp to name Doug Collins,theranking member ofthe Judiciary Committee who ledthecharge Wednesday againsttheimpeachment and now Trump and Kemp are onthe outs. Trump is losing his luster in the South (gubernatorial candidates he backed were defeated in Kentucky and Louisiana and won narrowly in Mississippi) and women in Atlantas suburbs, emboldened since Trumps election, are thehinge on whether Georgia turns blue next year. Kemp does not want to further alienate them.

A lot of those women are Jewish. I spoke to two who head up asalon of 1,500 Jewish women aimed at flippingthestatefor Democrats, and also toAtlanta-area Jews who are grappling with how to rebuild a moribund alliance with African-Americansas a means to topple Republicans.Two Jewish candidates feature in two separate Senate races next year, and I met with both.

Two states and only two states:Earlier this year, Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif, introduced a resolution backed by J Street,theliberal Middle East policy group, that wouldrecommit Congress to a two-state outcome totheIsraeli-Palestinian conflict. Theidea was to keeptheoutcome alive while boththeTrump and Netanyahu governments had retreated from it.Theresolution likely comes to a vote before this week ends, and it has had a rocky road.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., themajority leader, endeavored to sign on Republicans totheresolution. They agreed, iftheword only was removed fromthe phrase onlytheoutcome of a two-state solution that enhances stability and security for Israel, Palestinians, and their neighbors can both ensurethestate of Israels survival as a Jewish and democratic state and fulfillthelegitimate aspirations ofthePalestinian people for a state of their own. J Street forcefully objected andthe Republicans balked.The resolution will pass with only, but a look atthesponsor list features only Democrats it wont accrue many, if any, Republicans.

Bipartisanship is becoming harder:AIPAC has been asking its members for weeks to get senators to sponsor legislation that would extend sanctions to entities dealing with already sanctioned Palestinian groups. So far, it has 20 sponsors for the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2019, but until this week there was just one Democrat, Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who initiated thebill with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Ive heard another two Democrats have just signed on.

Clemmons making Clemmonade:Alan Clemmons istheRepublican South Carolina state legislator you may never have heard of who is shaking up U.S. Israel policy. His2015 bill penalizing Israel boycotters has become a template for other state bills doingthesame thing. He ledthepush in 2016 fortheGOP to removethetwo-state outcome commitment from its platform. Clemmons now chairs ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that circulates templates for state legislation themodel Clemmons pursued after passing his 2015 bill targetingthe movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. That puts him in a position of enormous influence in theconservative world. ALEC had its annual get-together this week in Scottsdale, Arizona. ALEC is a wellspring of learning of, by and for legislators, he said in a release.

Elizabeth Williamson atTheNew York TimesprofilesJay Sekulow,the un-Giuliani:theTrump lawyer not currently mired in scandal and his own legal difficulties. He is alsothe general counsel for Jews for Jesus. Politico reported this week that Sekulows son, Jordan, also a lawyer on Trumps team,gleefullyanticipated damagingthe scholars that House Democrats invited to impeachment. I cant wait to find out what crazy stuff the law professors have written, Jordan said on his dads radio show. I bet anti-Israel, borderline anti-Semitic. Maybe anti-American? That was before we learned all three were Jewish.

Seforim Chatter, an account dedicated to Jewish exegetical texts,uncoversa book on how to properly consume Hanukkah doughnuts.

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Three of the impeachment witness lawyers were Jewish, and it matters - The Jewish News of Northern California

Meet Pete D'Abrosca! Pete D'Abrosca is a Republican running for a Congressional seat in North Carolina's 7th district. He is also a big proponent of the white nationalist "Great Replacement" theory and an advocate of banning immigration entirely, on account of how he is sick and tired of seeing white people replaced with "peasants." Yes, he actually says "peasants," like he is Margeaux on Punky Brewster or some shit.

D'Abrosca has a long history of saying a lot of gross racist, anti-LGBTQ, xenophobic things, is beloved by the white nationalist site VDARE and by Ann Coulter, and in any normal timeline would be a weird fringe candidate that people cringe-laugh about for two seconds and then forget about forever. Like that "I'm not a witch! I'm you!" lady that I went as for Halloween one year.

Via Angry White Men:

On October 5th, D'Abrosca tweeted a short video clip depicting what appeared to be black students assaulting a white person. He captioned it with "Teaching or zoo keeping?":[...]

He has on several occasions mocked the LGBTQ community as "Alphabet People," and once wrote that the "conservative movement does not belong to atheists, sodomites, or pedophiles." In another tweet he wrote, "You didn't take your government-mandated gender transition hormones? During Asexuality Awareness Week? Are you crazy!?"

But now, thanks to a shift in the Overton Window brought upon us by Donald Trump and his supporters, he's popping up on Fox News with Tucker Carlson calling his plan for a ten-year moratorium on immigration a "sane immigration policy."

As Nikki McCann Ramirez of Media Matters points out, the interview is filled with several dogwhistles to the Groyper movement. Groyper, if you do not know, is like another Pepe The Frog type thing, and there are a bunch of creepy white nationalists who call themselves Groypers as some kind of homage to said cartoon. They are also fervent followers of YouTube idiot Nick Fuentes.

They're also the ones that have been going around to TPUSA events and yelling at Charlie Kirk for not being evil enough, and who were recently defended by Michelle Malkin, who was subsequently chastised by a bunch of regular conservatives who were shocked, shocked to discover that Michelle Malkin is actually terrible.

Like D'Abrosca, the Groypers are not only against illegal immigration, they are also against legal immigration. They also constantly talk about "demographics" and whine about how mainstream conservatives won't let them talk about "demographics" even though they really, really want to talk about "demographics." In case it is not clear, what they want to do is say things that are racist without consequences.

In the interview, Carlson talks about how Conservatives are supposedly "afraid" to come out against legal immigration, and D'Abrosca explains that while older Conservatives may be afraid, young hepcats like him are not afraid to let their immigrant-hating freak flags fly, whether "Conservative, Inc." wants them to or not. "Conservative, Inc." is a popular term among Groypers who believe that mainstream conservatives don't say super horrible things all the time because doing so would result in them losing money. Which is weird, given that they do say horrible things literally all of the time.

Everything Carlson and D'Abrosca talk about in this interview is indistinguishable from the rhetoric seen on white supremacist sites like the Daily Stormer and, as Ramirez later pointed out, some notable white supremacists were pretty thrilled by the segment.

This is hardly the first time that a Tucker Carlson segment has been praised by white nationalists. He knows exactly what he is doing here and he knows who his audience is. He is purposely repackaging completely batshit racist theories and ideas in hopes of making them palatable to people who may not feel comfortable going and reading The Daily Stormer or carving swastikas into their arms.

But back to D'Abrosca! Here is some of the bile he has spewed in the last few months, just so we can all be very, very clear about what it is that Tucker Carlson is promoting here.

PSSST! People weren't too happy when Irish people came over here, either!

Oh yeah, because people will definitely be mourning him enough to bother with that. He's so beloved!

Here he is being very clear about the fact that he is a proud racist. Kathy Zhu, by the way, is the former Miss Michigan who was stripped of her crown for saying a bunch of racist things herself.

The ironic thing here is that if it were up to the Pete D'Abroscas of the olden days, Pete D'Abrosca would not be here. Literally, all of the horrible things he says about immigrants today are things people said about "D'Abroscas" back in the day.

So perhaps he should set an example for all of us, and renounce the actions of his own "peasant" ancestors by self-deporting his ass back to Italy.

[Angry White Men]

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Tucker Carlson Dazzled By 'Sanity' Of White Nationalist Talking Points - Wonkette

The protesters gathered 2,000 strong, demanding the crowd shut down a talk about immigration by right-wing commentator Ann Coulter at UC Berkeley this week.

Some wore black. Some marched in a circle, yelling anti-Coulter chants. Some waved signs calling Coulter a racist who supports fascism, ethnic cleansing and white supremacy. In diverse and liberal Berkeley, the student and community protesters were particularly riled up by Coulters anti-immigrant slams in her 2015 book, Adios America! The Lefts Plan to Turn our Country into a Third World Hellhole.

But Coulter came. She spoke. She left.

And it all occurred without major problems the kinds of violent protests that shut down a 2017 Berkeley appearance by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, drew national headlines and prompted President Trump to threaten to cut off the universitys federal funding.

What was significant ... was what didnt happen, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said Thursday. We did not see the sort of violence, mayhem and property destruction that attended to the event with Milo Yiannopoulos.

Police arrested five people, including three students for resisting law enforcement. One person was injured during a scuffle with a protester. There was no property damage during the talk, attended by about 400 people.

Matt Ronnau, president of the UC Berkeley College Republicans, which invited Coulter, said as many as 100 students may have been blocked from attending by protesters who linked arms as a human barricade near the entrances. He also said a few students reported that knives were pulled, but Mogulof said police have received no such reports.

Ronnau, however, said the event went well overall and praised UC police officers for their work.

The rank-and-file ... always does a fantastic job, he said. If not for them, we could have had a very bad situation similar to Milo in 2017.

Mogulof said protesters were passionate and agitated and that many came determined to end the talk. But this year the campus was ready after Chancellor Carol T. Christ, who took the helm in 2017, began working with UC police to improve crowd control methods and launched Free Speech Year with panels to demonstrate how to exchange opposing views in a respectful manner and learn about the 1st Amendment.

At the Coulter event, Berkeley kept control thanks to the extraordinary professionalism of police, crowd control lessons learned from the 2017 protest and students who followed rules for campus events, which were modified last year, Mogulof said.

Police forces from nine UC campuses, along with backup from the California Highway Patrol, stood at the ready.

Mogulof declined to provide details about how many police were deployed but said all undergraduate campuses except UC Santa Cruz sent officers. UC campuses almost always prefer to use their own police, Mogulof said, because they are specially trained in protest management and best understand the university systems priority on public safety and free speech rights.

Since the Yiannopoulos protest, he said, Berkeley has spent more than $4 million on security measures and made changes in how law enforcement gathers information, deals with outsiders coming to campus, deters plans to stir up violence and secures the speaking venue.

Berkeley has cracked down on the wearing of masks, for instance, in line with a longstanding state law barring them to avoid detection by police. The university toughened its policy after many Antifa members and other protesters wore masks while storming the campus during the Yiannopoulos event. On Wednesday, those wearing masks were asked to remove them, Mogulof said.

Another change that has helped keep the peace, Mogulof said, is that student organizations are now closely adhering to a policy that spells out the process for holding major campus events, including requirements for advance notifications, deadlines and planning meetings. The policy was modified last year to clarify the responsibilities of both the campus and student organizations as part of a legal settlement with conservative students who complained the campus arbitrarily threw up barriers to their proposed events, impeding them from hosting speakers.

Since the Yiannopoulos event, the College Republicans have held campus forums with a host of conservatives, including Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, Rick Santorum, Charlie Kirk and Sean Spicer.

Every single one of them went off without incident, without trouble of any sort whatsoever, Mogulof said.

The Coulter talk drew the most protests since 2017, however. The event was chronicled in detail on Twitter by The Daily Californian news reporters as well as members of the Berkeley College Republicans.

After her talk, Ronnau described Coulter as one of the nicest people Ive met who is the farthest thing from a white nationalist and Nazi.

She told students she supported a wall on the southern border to stop illegal immigration and a moratorium on legal immigration so the nation could first take care of its own people who are facing homelessness and crime-ridden neighborhoods, Ronnau said.

Ronnau, a senior majoring in statistics, agreed that Berkeley has significantly improved its climate for free speech.

Its definitely improved and were very grateful for that, he said.

Originally posted here:
UC Berkeley keeps a lid on 2,000 protesters, allowing conservative commentator Ann Coulter to speak - Los Angeles Times