by David Sims

I LIKE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS that seekers ask on Quora, a widely read Web site. Here are some I have answered recently.

When did the Jews become so powerful?

Jews have been disproportionately influential since ancient times. A Roman lawyer once urged the judges he was speaking to to speak more quietly, lest the Jews overhear and begin making trouble.

Jews usually batten on White people with some sort of parasitism. They arent welfare bums, though. Oh no. Jews are elite parasites. They ran much of the slave trade in antiquity, following the Roman legions around and scooping up the wives and children of the defeated Germanic and Celtic tribes. Indeed, all (or almost all) of the shipping companies that engaged in the African slave trade to the Western Hemisphere were owned by Jews. White people were hired to work on the slave ships, but it was Jews who called the shots. And as far as owning slaves in the antebellum US, a much higher proportion of Jews than Whites owned slaves. (For that matter, a higher percentage of free Blacks also owned slaves, as compared with free Whites.)

But slavery wasnt the Jews only method for parasitism. Another was usury. It began when Jewish goldsmiths (in the Middle Ages) began lending gold entrusted to them by White nobles, and charging interest on the loans. The Jews werent supposed to do that, but they got away with it. They got so rich by doing it that they began having leverage over the governments of Europe. The Jews would agitate for war, and then theyd lend money (gold that they didnt even own) to both sides, so that each side could pay their soldiers and buy them horses and weapons and such. Usury plus war is why the history of Europe was so violent for so long. And theyre still doing it today.

What are politicians opinions on White nationalism?

Politicians in the West (Europe, UK, USA, and their satellites) are under constant pressure from Jewish groups, such as the ADL, to proclaim hatred for White nationalism. Often, they confuse it with White supremacism, which mostly does not exist today. White nationalism is the desire for White people to have a homeland for themselves alone, a place where they dont have to live with the ills and the dangers of racial diversity, a place where they can speak as they please, without being fired from a job or attacked on the street.

Jews have Israel. Whites, really, have nothing. Japan can be for the Japanese, and thats OK with the Jews but White countries (and only White countries) are, they say, for everybody, and White people can have no special claim to any territory whatsoever.

But Jews have power and money, so they get away with the obvious hypocrisy of this double standard, day after day, decade after decade.

Why does White supremacy exist?

First ask: What is White supremacism?

Supremacism is an ideology in which the supremacist believes his group has the right to rule all other human groups. The globalists, the political and financial elite that presently runs Western world affairs, is a supremacist group. It just isnt a racial one. There is a strong supremacist element in Zionism, which would make Israel the master of all other states.

White supremacism is a set of social ideas under which states that White people should rule all other human groups. That desire to rule other groups is the defining characteristic of supremacism, just the same in this case as it is for all other types of supremacism.

Prior to the American Civil War of the mid-19th century, lots of White Americans were supremacists. There were also white supremacists in the British Empire when it was at the height of its power. For the most part, these supremacists were relatively benign, intending to rule Africans and other savage folk for their own good, to raise them up, to educate them, to discourage them from killing each other so much as they did, to provide them with goods and services that they could not provide for themselves. But even this good-hearted supremacism was a moral error. The African Blacks did not deserve the benefit of being enslaved by Whites. However, it was not yet recognized that this was the true reason for the immorality of any attempt to uplift Africans, whether by slavery or by pushing them into dependence with humanitarian aid.

However, today there arent many White supremacists in the world. Todays White racialists are nationalists, and they are decidedly not supremacists. The Jewish-run leftist media continue to use the term White supremacist erroneously, and, further, they know that they are using it falsely. These media are in the business of dispensing propaganda more than information. A nationalist wants a homeland for his people, a place where they can be with each other without the unpleasant experience of having outsiders nearby. White nationalists dont want to enslave other groups. They basically just want to be left alone.

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Jews, White Supremacism, and White Nationalism | National Vanguard

If you want to know what the establishments all-seeing eye is maniacally fixated on, the amount of energy the corporate media orcs spend bludgeoning Christian nationalists provides a clue. Over the past 48 months, there have been dozens of hit jobs on the terror of Christian nationalism; there have been about a score of these smear pieces just this past month alone.

Their Pavlovian function is to condition Americans to associate the term with a bunch of extremists and racists who pose a Hitleresque threat to this countrys democratic institutions so that they will dutifully freak out. These articles rely on the same tactics: straw man arguments that misrepresent both Christianity and nationalism, and phony attempts to depict the movement as white.

Christian Nationalism is an un-Christian concept, opines the New York Times. The Christian right is beginning to part with democratic norms, laments NPR. Christian nationalism has a long dark history of white supremacy, bigotry and ties to the Nazi party, warns MSNBC. The movement uses Christian language to cloak sexism and hostility to Black people and non-White immigrants in its quest to create a White Christian America, explains CNN.

The trusted media sources who sold you Russiagate, the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation hoax, and transitory inflation, are at least this time right about one thing: Christian nationalism is real, and its gaining traction. Its biblical, its America First, but its not white. Its not about a white supremacist Christian Taliban installing a theocracy, idolizing the nation, or in any way rewriting this countrys great Republican constitutional model.

In fact, Christian nationalism is entirely consistent with that model. The Declaration of Independence vests the sovereign power with the people, on loan to the government, and entrusts the state with the responsibility of safeguarding the individuals Creator-endowed rights. In asserting that the United Colonies are and ought to be Free and Independent States, the signers appealed to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of [their] intentions and committed themselves to the protection of Divine Providence. If nationalists believe that government should prioritize the interests of the country and the people, Christian nationalists believe, as did the Founders, they should do so under the banner of God.

The United States isnt special because its a nation chosen by God; its special because its a nation that chose God. The implications are entirely biblical. Holy Scripture invites individuals from every race, tribe, nation, and language to freely enter into a personal relationship with the Savior, to live by His commandments, and worship Him as King.

It also envisages, from Genesis to Isaiah, from the Gospels to the Book of Revelation, the conversion of whole nations or peoples, and warns of the inevitable harm of instead embracing a culture of idolatry, depravity, and deceit. Hence, we read in Proverbs that a nation without Gods guidance is a nation without order.

The biblical message of rightly ordered praise, an objective standard of morality, and free will is a steadying hand, tempering the self-interest of nationalism and the reactionary tendencies of its close cousin populism. When, on the other hand, generic nationalism is shaped by the coercive and unobstructed power of a godless, behemoth administrative state, grave problems arise.

This was the story of early 20th-century Germany. Hitler was not a Christian nationalist but an illiberal, anti-capitalist, anti-religious national socialist. Hitlers New Order was the culmination of a decades-long counter-Renaissance revolution in Germany. The enemy one they shared with communists was the essence of Western civilization: liberal democracy, the individual man qua man, and the majesty of God.

In his 1944 book Road to Serfdom, the Viennese Nobel Prize-winner Friedrich von Hayek warned not to repeat Germanys fate by implementing the same policies of big government, central planning, collectivism, social engineering, and the subjugation of the individual to the will of the omnipotent state. Hayeks concern was not Hitlers nationalism per se, but his socialism.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Walter Lippman similarly warned about the cult of the Providential state. He wrote that a generation no longer looking confidently to God for the regulation of human affairs is now realizing what happens when men retreat from freedom to a coercive organization of their affairs.

Today, Americans are reaching the same conclusion, with evidence indicating a collapse in support for the Democrats socialist, America-last agenda. Economically, Americans recognize that the manipulation of the energy sector in the name of the bogus Green New Deal is driving up gas prices. Theyre also blaming Bidens economic mismanagement for record high inflation, a crisis the administration is now exploiting to expand the IRS by more than six times its current annual budget. Voters are losing interest in spending billions to protect Ukraines sovereignty when the U.S.s own southern border is being overrun by human and drug traffickers, sex offenders, and violent criminals.

Socially, Americans are trending toward family policies that reflect a conservative, Judeo-Christian worldview: honoring the nuclear family and parental rights, ensuring medical freedom, and fiercely protecting the innocence of children.

As much as the left fetishizes skin color, none of this is about race, although different racial groups are feeling the pain in various ways. The Biden administrations war on fossil fuels is affecting both the Native Americans whose resource-rich tribal lands bring wealth and employment to Native communities, and the predominately white Americans employed in mining, oil, and gas extraction.

Hispanics, more than any other ethnic or racial group, want the southern border closed and are registering their disapproval by flipping former Democrat strongholds on the southern border red. And with an exponential increase in business ownership to approximately 12 percent of the 27.6 million total U.S. businesses, theyre understandably not impressed by Bidens economic performance, an assessment 60 percent of black voters agree with. Parents across all racial groups overwhelmingly favor initiatives such as school vouchers and education savings accounts.

Not surprisingly then, elections in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Arizona, and Michigan, reveal a gravitation toward populist candidates united not by their race or gender but by their Christian, America First principles. The message is one of decency, not degeneracy, prosperity, not pauperdom, and self-determination, not serfdom.

Its this love of God, country, and freedom trifecta that has the enemy screeching like theres no tomorrow. But its a winning formula, and the establishment fears it, which is why its hordes in the press keep militantly pounding away at those racist white supremacists every chance they get.

Carina Benton is a dual citizen of Australia and Italy and a permanent resident of the United States. A recent West Coast migr, she is now helping to repopulate the countrys interior. She holds a masters degree in education and has taught languages, literature, and writing for many years in Catholic and Christian, as well as secular institutions. She is a practicing Catholic and a mother of two young children.

Read more:

Christian Nationalism Is Biblical And America-First, But Not White

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ISPS COSPONSORED WEBINAR CONFERENCE EVENT

What is the relationship between Christian Nationalism and other ideologies? How is the Christian Nationalist movement organized? What role will it play in the mid-term elections this November? How big a threat is it to American democracy? How does it compare to kindred movements in other parts of the world? This conference brings together scholars and journalists to discuss these and other issues.

Yale Sociology welcomes you to join us for our upcoming conference, White Christian Nationalism and the Midterm Elections. This is a 2-day conference which will be taking place at the Humanities Quadrangle, (HQ), located at 320 York Street on Friday, September 30, 2022 from 9AM-5PM in Room HQ276; and on Saturday, October 1, 2022 from 8:30AM-12PM in Room L02. The conference will be simultaneously live streamed via Zoom.

LINK HERE to register to watch the conference and type your questions via Zoom.

This event is being hosted by Philip Gorski, Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, with generous support from the Institution for Social & Policy Studies, the MacMillan Center, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Deans Office at Yale University.

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White Christian Nationalism and the Mid-Term Elections, Hosted by the ...

After New Zealand passed new gun laws this week, most automatic and semi-automatic weapons have become outlawed there as of Friday a swift response to the March 15 shootings in Christchurch that left 50 Muslim men, women and children dead at the hands of an alleged white supremacist terrorist. But guns werent the only weapon used by the shooter.

The shootings followed the release of materials some have called a manifesto but that has more accurately been called a media plan. In it are multiple medieval references, several involving medieval Vikings, which these days function as a signal to white supremacists. Along with much else from the European medieval world, the Viking past is part of the far rights standard visual and textual imaginary. That vision of a Viking world depends on contemporary digital and filmic popular culture such as the TV show Vikings and Viking-adjacent video games as well as on academic and historical sources.

But far-right Viking medievalism is not about historical accuracy. Rather, its used to create narratives. So, to resist the medieval narratives that activate violent hate, we must create counternarratives and to do that, we must understand the real Viking past and how it has been weaponized.

The term Viking possibly comes from the Old Norse word vkingr (sea warrior). As Stefan Brink and Neil Prices The Viking World describes, historically, it referred to seafaring groups who traversed the seas, oceans and rivers to raid, trade and colonize around the 10th and 11th centuries. They established settler colonies across the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black, Arctic and North Atlantic seas and waterways, maintaining a presence in regions ranging from present-day Russia and Europe to the Americas. Crucially, they were not homogeneous seafarers as is often imagined; they were multicultural and multiracial. But until recently, scholarly discussions of the Vikings in relation to race and a Global Middle Ages had been sidelined.

So where does the white supremacist vision of Viking genealogy come from?

Despite the fact that real Viking history was multicultural, academic medieval studies have historically been to blame for the upholding of that imaginary past.

In the 19th century, Romantic German nationalism metastasized into the Vlkish movement, which was interested in historical narratives that bolstered a white German nation state. The movement rewrote history, drawing on folklore such as that of Brothers Grimm, medieval epics and a dedication to racial white supremacy. Late 19th and early 20th-century scholars simultaneously drew from and reinforced this racialized imagination of the medieval past. Crucially, Vilhelm Grnbachs multi-volume work Vor Folket i Oldtiden (The Cultures of the Teutons) imagined an ancient Germanic genealogy that ran from Tacitus through the Middle Ages.

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German scholarly work during the eve of the Third Reich then added to this idea, with authors like Gustav Neckel and Bernhard Kummer blaming socialism, Jews and class revolutions for the decline of a Germanic race they saw descending from this Viking past. Another German scholar, Otto Hfler, who based his work on Grnbach, wrote of the Mnnerbunde, which the scholar Stefanie von Schnurbein has described as all-male warrior associations in so-called primitive societies. His take on Mnnerbund would become used as an explanation of the past and current Germanic race, and fueled the idea behind Nazi groups such as the SS and SA.

After World War II, despite the defeat of the Axis powers, these ideas didnt go away. Rather, they saw a resurgence in specific circles, including various far-right neo-pagan groups, like the Scandinavian Nordic Resistance Movement, known for their neo-Nazi violence. Grnbachs multivolume work, translated and available online, and the works of his contemporaries have also influenced current far-right extremists in Europe and North America.

This neo-pagan resurgence intersects with many facets of extremism today, from eco-fascism another term the Christchurch terrorist invoked to groups like the Odinists, who practice a form of white toxic masculinity based on the belief that the barbaric warriors of medieval Northern Europe functioned as a violent warrior comitatus. Odinists follow a neo-pagan medieval Scandinavian religion that is unacknowledged by the official Icelandic pagan religion, satr. The man who is accused of attacking two teenage girls (one in a hijab) and murdering Rick Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche in Portland, Ore., in 2017 has linked himself to the idea of Vinland, the concept of a Viking North America onto which an imaginary Odinist past has been superimposed.

Nor is this use of Old Norse and Viking history limited to specific alt-right subgroups. In fact, it is a generalized social fixture in these circles. For example, when researcher Patrik Hermansson went undercover among the denizens of this world, he attended gatherings where extremists drank mead from a traditional Viking horn and prayed to the Norse god Odin. The Viking past contributes to a medieval toolkit of language, allusion and symbolism used to transmit white supremacist messages.

Communities of color have in the past fought white supremacist medieval narratives at the grassroots by spreading their own counternarratives, from W.E.B. Du Bois creating an African-American vision of the medieval past in Dark Princess to the Asian Americans who pushed back against racist medievalism during the period of Chinese Exclusion. Scholars and historians not just medievalists must also interrogate their disciplines from the inside, setting the record straight about medieval race and the Global Middle Ages.

So far, however, the most widespread, concerted and effective way to fight back against this historical white supremacist Viking genealogy has come not from academics or journalists.

Rather, it has come from Taika Waititi, the indigenous Maori director and writer. His movie Thor: Ragnarok in which Thors hammer, a medieval item regularly brandished by extremists, is destroyed was a multiracial and postcolonial counternarrative to the white Viking narrative circulating through the alt-right digital ecosystem. After decades of building up the violent Viking vision, more such stories will be needed to disrupt this medieval machine.

Historians perspectives on how the past informs the present

Dorothy Kim is an Assistant Professor of Medieval Literature at Brandeis University. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Iceland.

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In Sept. 2022, President Joe Biden convened a summit called United We Stand to denounce the venom and violence of white nationalism ahead of the midterm elections. His remarks repeated the theme of his prime-time speech in Philadelphia on Sept. 1, 2022, during which he warned that Americas democratic values are at stake.

We must be honest with each other and with ourselves, Biden said. Too much of whats happening in our country today is not normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

While that message may resonate among many Democratic voters, its unclear whether it will have any impact on any Republicans whom Biden described as dominated and intimidated by former President Donald Trump or on independent voters who have played decisive roles in electionsand will continue to do so, particularly as their numbers increase.

Its also unclear whether Trump-endorsed candidates can win in general elections, in which they will face opposition not only from members of their own party but also from a broad swath of Democrats and independent voters.

What is clear is that this midterm election cycle has revealed the potency of conspiracy theories that prop up narratives of victimhood and messages of hate across the complex American landscape of white nationalism.

In my book, Homegrown Hate: Why White Nationalists and Militant Islamists Are Waging War on the United States, I detail how the white nationalist narrative of victimhood and particular grievances have gained traction to become ingrained in the present-day Republican Party.

I also examine four key strands of white nationalism that overlap in various configurations: religions, racism, conspiracy theories and anti-government views. Conspiracy theories allow white nationalists to depict a world in which Black and brown people are endangering the livelihoods, social norms and morals of white people.

In general, conspiracy theories are based on the belief that individual circumstances are the result of powerful enemies actively agitating against the interests of a believing individual or group.

Based on the interviews I conducted while researching my book, these particular conspiracy theories are convenient because they justify the shared white nationalist goal of establishing institutions and territory of white people, for white people and by white people. While conspiracy theories are not new and certainly not new to politics, they spread with increasing frequency and speed because of social media.

The great replacement theory is one such baseless belief that is playing a role in the anti-immigration rhetoric that is central to the 2022 strategies of many Republican candidates who are running for seats at all levels of government.

That theory erroneously warns believers of the threat that immigrants and people of color pose to white identity and institutions.

For months on the 2022 campaign trail, Republican Blake Masters, a venture capitalist who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona, has portrayed immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border as part of an elaborate plot by Democrats to dilute the political power of voters born in the United States.

What the left really wants to do is change the demographics of this country, Masters said in a video posted to Twitter last fall.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is another Republican leader who decries what he calls the invasion of the southern border.

Aside from the inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric, the conspiracy theory currently having the biggest impact on local, state and federal political campaigns across the country is Trumps Big Lie that he won the 2020 election.

Of the 159 endorsements Trump has made for proponents of the Big Lie, 127 of them have won their primaries in 2022. In addition, Republican candidates who align themselves with the Big Lie are also emerging victorious in races for state- and county-level offices whose responsibilities include direct oversight of elections.

On his social media site Truth Social, the former president quotes and spreads conspiracy theories from the quasi-religious QAnon. A major tenet of QAnon is the belief that the Democrats and people regarded as their liberal allies are a nefarious cabal of sexual predators and pedophiles.

Trump is not the only Republican politician who welcomes and spreads such disinformation.

Two of the most prominent politicians who have been linked to supporting QAnon are U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, both of whom have been resoundingly endorsed by Trump.

The blatant use of conspiracy theories for political gain reflects the open embrace of white nationalism in not only the United States but also throughout Sweden, France, Italy and other parts of the world.

In my view, the conspiracy theories that drive the 2022 midterm campaigns reflect the global threat of hate around the world.

Sara Kamali, Professor, Creative Writing, University of California San Diego. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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White Nationalism Is Mainstreaming Conspiracy Theories

Tucker Carlsons history of hiring extremist-linked staff

Carlson and his team have a history of working with extremist and white nationalist-linked individuals. In 2021, Carlsons team collaborated with Scooter Downey, a director of alt-right and white nationalist documentaries. Downey wrote Carlsons Patriot Purge documentary, a conspiracy theory-laden, InfoWars-style three part series about the January 6 insurrection. The series and its wild claims were nothing more than fascist propaganda.

In 2020, it was revealed that one of Carlsons writers, Blake Neff, was pushing white supremacist content and making racist posts on AutoAdmit, an online forum thats known for hosting questionable content. Tucker Carlson Tonight has also hosted numerous guests with links to white nationalism.

Escandon is the director of The Most Canceled Man In America, a sympathetic documentary following Fuentes and his groyper movement of mostly white, male, young extremists. The documentary includes scenes with fellow Fuentes-linked white nationalists, including Vincent James Foxx and Tyler Russell. Escandon himself appears to be pro-insurrection, pro-Christian nationalism, anti-LGBTQ, antisemitic, and a fan of Carlson.

Escandon and Fuentes appear to have a relationship outside of this as well:

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An associate of white nationalist Nick Fuentes claims he interviewed to work on Tucker Carlson's team - Media Matters for America

A former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division who has been arrested said he enlisted to become more proficient at killing Black people and made overt references to white supremacy.

Spc. Killian Ryan was taken into custody Aug. 26 on a charge related to lying on his secret security clearance and was kicked out of the Army the same day, according to the service. An investigation by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force discovered ties to white nationalism and threats of violence against minorities on social media accounts, according to court records.

"I serve for combat experience so I'm more proficient in killing n-----s," Ryan wrote in one social media post on May 27, 2021. That comment was posted roughly two weeks after he enlisted in the Army. His personal email address at the time was "NaziAce1488," a reference to Adolf Hitler and American white supremacy.

Read Next: Military Must Beware of 'Extreme Strain' from Political Divides, Warn 13 Former Defense Leaders

The Pentagon has vowed a crackdown on extremism in the ranks, taking measures such as modifying the vetting process to join the military and asking whether an applicant subscribes to any extremist ideology. But that line of questioning may rely heavily on the honesty of recruits.

Ryan also filled out a Standard Form 86, or SF 86, a questionnaire for his security clearance. In it, he was asked whether he ever advocated for any acts of terrorism.

He was arrested in Cumberland County, North Carolina, which includes Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, on one charge of knowingly making a false statement.

The social media posts and his email handle, which includes the common white supremacy symbol 14/88, were red flags.

The number 14 represents the words in the phrase "We must secure the existence of our people and the future for white children," coined by David Lane, a convicted felon and leader of the now defunct white supremacist terrorist organization The Order. Lane died in prison in 2007. The 88 stands for "Heil Hitler," with H being the eighth letter of the alphabet, according to extremism watchdog groups.

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Ryan was separated from the Army immediately following his arrest, according to a service spokesperson. Two sources with direct knowledge of the situation say he was kicked out due to at least two incidents of driving under the influence of alcohol, or DUI.

However, soldiers typically aren't immediately dismissed for alcohol incidents and the drunk driving was the easiest way to quickly remove Ryan, according to one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

It is unclear if the chain of command was aware of his ties to extremism ahead of his discharge. Ryan went to basic training in May 2020 and was eventually stationed at Fort Bragg in December 2021. He had no deployments.

The investigation uncovering the white nationalism ties began with Ryan's claims to have no relationship with his father, a convicted felon with a history of drug charges and auto theft. However, a probe into his social media activity found that Ryan and his father frequently talked, as well as the other posts.

The arrest comes as the Pentagon is struggling to understand scope of extremism within the ranks, especially after the Jan. 6, 2021 pro-Trump assault on the U.S. Capitol, which sought to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power to the administration of President Joe Biden. That attack included service members and veterans and brought new attention to the radicalization of troops and the use of military training by extremist groups.

There is no evidence those with a military background are more likely to become radicalized. However, experts have long warned that even the most rudimentary combat training can be attractive for extremist groups, particularly white nationalists. Veterans and service members are also seen as carrying inherent social credibility that can be force multipliers for radical causes.

Military leaders have largely kept the issue at arm's length, with some fears over tackling right-wing extremism being perceived as partisan, even as law enforcement agencies see it as one of the most prevalent domestic terrorism threats.

Military.com reported on a Montana National Guard officer who was allowed to serve, despite accusations from a major hate group of pushing white nationalist viewpoints. The Wisconsin and Virginia National Guards both had soldiers who participated in the Jan. 6 riot and took more than a year to remove them from service.

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

Related: An Accused White Nationalist Is Serving in the Montana Guard Despite Efforts Against Extremism

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Soldier Who Said He Wanted Combat Experience to Kill Black People Booted After FBI Probe - Yahoo News

Since Amazon announced actors of colour among the cast of its new series The Rings of Power in February this year, criticisms of their inclusion have gained media attention.

The coverage typically positions criticisms of The Rings of Power as backlash from true, diehard fans resisting so-called wokeness.

This misrepresents the situation. There are also fans who welcome the increased diversity over what is seen in Tolkiens novels and previous adaptations.Racist abuse of actors of colour and a review bombing campaign against The Rings of Power suggest that there is more going on than just fan disagreement about Tolkiens world.

As Tolkien researcher Craig Franson explains, far-right political actors are whipping up the controversy, weaponising it to help get fascist talking points into the mainstream. Franson shows that the right-wing outrage machine stirred up a massive hate mob through mainstream right-wing press.

Fans who feel they are defending Tolkiens legacy are being used as pawns to serve dangerous anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian agenda and siding, whether they mean to or not, with racist extremists.

Fascist appropriation of Tolkiens work may seem surprising given his anti-Nazi statements, which include calling Hitler a ruddy little ignoramus. It is not new, however. In the 1970s, the books became a favourite of Italian fascists who even held a Camp Hobbit festival to promote their politics.

In the early 2000s, the now former extremist Derek Black Jr started a chat forum dedicated to the Lord of the Rings on a major white supremacist website when Peter Jacksons films came out. He told The New York Times:

I figured you could get people who liked with such a white mythos, a few turned on by white nationalism.

Not all racism is fascist (a specific political ideology), but the far-right always has racist elements in its ideologies.

Tolkien made statements against Nazis and also apartheid, but this is not the same as being anti-racist or pro-equality. His condemnation of Hitler, he wrote in the same letter, was for

ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making forever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to preserve in its true light.

The comment shows that he believed that some people were essentially different to and better than others. This notion is foundational to racism.

Tolkiens belief in racial difference translated to Middle-earth. Within the imaginary species (elves and humans in particular) there are hierarchies. Some humans are inherently better than others; we see this when Faramir talks about High, Men of the West the Middle Peoples, Men of the Twilight the Wild, the Men of Darkness in The Two Towers.

Individuals from High races may have moral failings and become evil, but collectively they do not serve it. Physical characteristics (like hair and skin colour) are linked to non-physical traits in ways that reflect the logics of real-world racism.

There are traces of evidence that Tolkien did not imagine good peoples as exclusively white. The ways these are expressed still sometimes reinforce racial hierarchies. In The Return of the King, some people who fight against Sauron are counted as

men of Gondor, yet their blood was mingled, and there were short and swarthy folk among them" because some of their ancestors are not High, Men of the West.

"Good species and races in Middle-Earth are constructed through references to European cultures (especially northwestern Europe), and the bad races are constructed through orientalist stereotypes. Tolkiens letters show the ways that real-world ideas about race influenced Middle-Earth. He wrote I do think of the Dwarves like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations.

In a 1958 letter about a film treatment of The Lord of the Rings he wrote:

Orcs are squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol types.

There is evidence that he revised his representation of Dwarves between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to try move away from anti-Semitic stereotypes. There is no such evidence for Orcs even though he wrestled with the moral problem of a purely evil species of beings.

Read more: The new Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power, is set in the Second Age of Middle-Earth - here's what that means

The combination of racial stereotypes and hierarchies built into Middle-Earth make Tolkiens work appealing to racists and a useful political tool for the far-right. There is, however, more to the world and stories he created.

Being troubled by racism is also not just a new woke reading of Tolkiens writing. C.S. Lewis wrote a review in 1955 of Lord of the Rings that reported some readers imagine they have seen a rigid demarcation between black and white people draw along clear moral lines.

Given Lewis was Tolkiens friend, its not surprising that he defended the books. A letter in the fanzine Xero from 1963 expressed concern about subtle racism, hierarchies within humanity, and monochromatic representation of elves and orcs in Middle-Earth.

The need to overcome differences to form alliances and make the world better is a central theme in Tolkiens writing. Evil is defeated only when different peoples of Middle-Earth, such as Elves, Dwarves and Humans, fight against it together.

The prosocial values of cooperation and acting for the good of others are embedded in Tolkiens stories of Middle-earth. They are also at odds with racism and fascism which see others as not only different but inferior, dangerous, not to be trusted, that is, as enemies.

Scholar and fan Dimitra Fimi has written:

Tolkiens racial prejudices are implicit in Middle-Earth, but his values friendship, fellowship, altruism, courage, among many others are explicit, which makes for a complex, more interesting world.

Casting actors of colour to play Elves, Dwarves and Harfoots in The Rings of Power does not insert beings who are not white into the imaginary world of Middle-Earth. They were already there, constructed through out-dated (even for Tolkiens time) concepts of racial difference among humans and false stereotypes about real peoples.

Tolkiens imagination was vast and varied, but it was not without limits. The world he created reflected some of the worst aspects of reality with its racist stereotypes and hierarchies.

All adaptations, including of Tolkiens writings, change their source material in ways that reflect the time and place in which they are made.

With The Rings of Power, Amazon, the Tolkien Estate (headed by his grandson Simon) and their partners have decided to protect the positive, humane aspects of Tolkiens legacy which represented the best, rather than the limits, of his imagination.

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The Rings of Power is suffering a racist backlash for casting actors of colour but Tolkien's work has always attracted white supremacists - The...

Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest documentary and discussion begins Sept. 8

By Matthew Kincanon

Starting Sept. 8, Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest a new six-session documentary and discussion series kicks off at St. Lukes Episcopal Church in Coeur dAlene.

Organized through a partnership between the Human Rights Education Institute, Museum of North Idaho and the church, the series is intended to create opportunities for thoughtful small group public discussions about realities, challenges and opportunities that are part of life in the Inland Northwest.

Many of us live and work here in North Idaho, but do not know what has shaped and what is shaping the culture and social realities of this region, said The Rev. Dr. David T. Gortner, rector of St. Lukes Episcopal Church. We are creating space for our community to come together to explore multiple topics affecting our region, from both a historical and current perspective. It is our hope that we can foster an environment for learning and greater understanding through shared stories and experiences. We are especially grateful to Idaho Community Foundation for its support of this series through a generous Project Neighborly Grant.

Each session will offer segments of relevant documentaries, a brief presentation by area experts and facilitated small group table discussions to help people think together and share experiences and insights inspiring opportunities to seek wisdom among neighbors.

The discussions are made possible through the leadership and training of The Langdon Group, a subsidiary of J-U-B Engineers, Inc., which specializes in public involvement, facilitation and conflict resolution.

Dates, Topics, and locations are as follows:

This first session focuses on what happens when country becomes city when population influx changes the landscape. This is especially relevant to the Coeur dAlene region with the rapid influx of people and our prairies region quickly filling with housing tracts. The growth has outpaced city planning efforts to anticipate growth. What are costs and benefits? What happens to land and how is land use planned?

History of mining and owner-labor relations. It is part of our life today in the worlds of mining, lumber, farming, healthcare, and the hospitality industries of this resort region. How do owner-worker relations affect life today in our region?

Poverty and working-class conditions in the region.

Experience of Native American Tribes of the region.

Race relations, racism, and efforts against racism in the region.

White supremacy and white nationalism, and their effect on the region.

The events are free and open to all, regardless of faith or other affiliations. Space is limited, and people are encouraged to register to reserve a space through Humanitix.

For more information, please contact St. Lukes Episcopal Church at 208-664-5533.

See the original post here:

Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest documentary and discussion begins Sept. 8 - spokanefavs.com

BATAVIA, N.Y. (AP) The crowd swayed on its feet, arms pumping, the beat of Twisted Sisters Were Not Gonna Take It thumping in their chests. The people under the revival tent hooted as Michael Flynn strode across the stage, bopping and laughing, singing the refrain into his microphone and encouraging the audience to sing along to the transgressive rock anthem.

Well fight the powers that be just/Dont pick our destiny cause/You dont know us, you dont belong!

The emcee introduced him as Americas General, but to those in the audience, Flynn is far more than that: martyr, hero, leader, patriot, warrior.

The retired lieutenant general, former national security adviser, onetime anti-terrorism fighter, is now focused on his next task: building a movement centered on Christian nationalist ideas, where Christianity is at the center of American life and institutions.

Flynn brought his fight a struggle he calls both spiritual and political last monthto a church in Batavia, New York, where thousands of people paid anywhere from a few dollars to up to $500 to hear and absorb his message that the United States is facing an existential threat, and that to save the nation, his supporters must act.

Flynn, 63, has used public appearances to energize voters, along with political endorsements to build alliances and a network of nonprofit groups one of which has projected spending $50 million to advance the movement, an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series Frontline has found. He has drawn together election deniers, mask and vaccine opponents, insurrectionists, Proud Boys, and elected officials and leaders in state and local Republican parties. Along the way, the AP and Frontline documented, Flynn and his companies have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his efforts.

READ MORE: Twitter bans Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell in QAnon purge

The AP and Frontline spoke with more than 60 people, including Flynns family, friends, opponents, and current and former colleagues, for this story. The news organizations also reviewed campaign finance records, corporate and charity filings, social media posts and similar open-source information, and attended several public events where Flynn appeared. Reporters examined dozens of Flynns speeches, interviews and public appearances. Flynn himself sat down for a rare on-camera interview with what he calls the mainstream media.

I dont even know why Im talking to you, honestly, Flynn said as the interview got underway.

Throughout 2021 and 2022, Flynn made more than 60 in-person speeches in 24 states, according to a count by the AP and Frontline. When he speaks, the former top adviser to then-President Donald Trump spreads baseless conspiracy theories, stoking fear and fueling anger and division and grievance.

Flynn is one of the most dangerous individuals in America today, said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian and expert on authoritarianism and fascism who wrote the book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.

He is spearheading the attack on our democracy, which is coming from many quarters, and he is affiliated with many of these sectors, from the military to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist groups, she said. All of this comes together to present a very live threat. And hes at the center.

Flynn has, with mixed success, supported like-minded candidates around the country, and has said his immediate goal is to influence this years elections. In Sarasota, Florida, where he lives, he has worked in concert with members of the extremist group the Proud Boys to influence local politics. Their favored candidates in August won control of the county school board.

Local action has a national impact is his mantra.

We need to take this country back one town at a time, one county at a time, one state at a time, if thats what it takes, he told a crowd in Salt Lake City.

Flynns advocacy of falsehoods and conspiracy theories hardly makes him unique in a fact-challenged America, but his pedigree, military career and high-powered Washington contacts set him apart. Hesa retired three-star generalwho less than two decades ago developed wartime strategies for countering insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His selection as Trumpsfirst national security advisermade him the ultimate insider, giving him nominal control if only for a matter of weeks of the administrations national security strategy. When he later found himself in legal trouble on suspicion that he had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, he cooperated with the same government establishment he now crusades against.

In the weeks after the November 2020 presidential election, Flynnpicked up a presidential pardongrantedto forgive hisguilty plea to lying to the FBI. He immediately became a chief promoter of the Stop the Steal effort and championed bogus claims about foreign interference and ballot tampering that werent supported by credible evidence. But for some voters, Flynns status as a retired general and top intelligence officer gave weight to the empty theories.

Hefalsely said Trump won, called the election outcome part of a coup in progress, suggested Trump should seize voting machines and said Trump could order up the military in some states and rerun the election. In December 2020 he evenmade his way into the Oval Officeto push his ideas directly to Trump.

Called before a congressional committee investigating the Capitol insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, Flynn refused to say whether he believed the violence was justified or even whether he believed in the peaceful transition of power. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

WATCH: How new technologies could accelerate the spread of conspiracy theories

Retired Brig. Gen. Steven M. Anderson, who served with Flynn in Iraq, called Flynns ideas antithetical to core values of the American military and the nation itself.

Anderson worries that Flynn is a role model for thousands and thousands and thousands of soldiers and former soldiers, and that his ideas can empower them to take actions that hurt the country.

Weve got a retired three-star, former NSA, who says we can overthrow the election, use our military, Anderson said. The thinking goes, he said, Well, then yes, sign me up for the Proud Boys.

Flynn uses the three stars he earned in the military as his symbol, a shorthand that reminds people he came from the highest levels of the nations power structure and that suggests he has a special knowledge of how things work in the shadowy world of Washington and global affairs.

Its a crying shame that essentially he has evolved into the person he is now, said Anderson, who described his former colleague as a subservient buffoon that unfortunately has forsaken his oath of office.

Doug Wise, a former CIA and military officer who knew Flynn for decades and briefly served as Flynns deputy at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said even in the military, Flynn often pushed the envelope of what was permissible and demonstrated extreme thinking. He believes Flynn hasnt transformed, hes just become more comfortable acting on the anger that burns inside him.

I understand the reasons why he gravitated to the right wing because as his behavior and beliefs became more bizarre, I think they were very welcoming. Because who wouldnt want a highly respected Army three-star to join your group? Wise said.

I think he believed, post-government, and he was right in this that he was too well-connected to fail, Wise said. And he got pardoned.

Flynn sees conspiracies in just about every corner of American life.

Hes repeated falsehoods about Black Lives Matter and said that so-called globalists created COVID-19. He tells the tens of thousands of people who have paid to see him speak that there are 75 members of the Socialist Party in Congress, and has said the left and Democrats are trying todestroy the country. He asserts, above all else, that the United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. The bedrock, he warns, is crumbling.

The country, Flynn often says in speeches and interviews, is in the midst of a spiritual war, and he goes after many of the institutions and ideas that stand as pillars of American democracy.

He has told audiences he doesnt trust the U.S. government or government institutions that oversee the rule of law. He called the media the No. 1 enemy and said it has done a horrible, horrible disservice to the country by just constantly lying and trying to deceive us. He says elementary schools are teaching filth and pornography. He continues to assert, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, that elections cant be trusted. He says, over and over, that some of his fellow Americans are evil.

They dress like us and they talk like us, but they dont think and act like us, he told a podcaster recently. And they definitely do not want what it is that we want.

Survey data showsmany Americans believe what Flynn says that the 2020 election was stolen and have bought into COVID-19 misinformation and other conspiracy theories that he spreads, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who studies the evangelical movement.

Any of these factors alone could be considered dangerous. But all of them together and the distrust it is sowing in our democracy, Du Mez said. I think its extremely dangerous in this moment.

She points to Flynns role as headliner of a multicity roadshow known asthe ReAwaken America tour, an event that is a potent mix of politics, religion and commerce that has become a prime example of the Christian nationalist movement.

Flynn helped found the tour in 2021 with Clay Clark, an entrepreneur from Oklahoma who had been running business conferences before the pandemic. In his interview with the AP and Frontline in February, Flynn said he considered himself a senior leader of the team thats running it.

The thread of Christian nationalism runs through many of Flynns events. At one fundraiser, a preacher prayed over him saying that America would stay a Christian nation and that Flynn was heavy armaments in the Lords quiver. At the Christian Patriots Rally at a church in Northern California,Flynn was presented with an assault-style rifleon stage. In Virginia in July, he said pastors need to be talking about the Constitution from the pulpit as much as the Bible. In Texas last November, Flynn told a crowd this is a moment in time where this is good versus evil.

WATCH: Examining the crisis in Americas democracy and the polarization of its politics

If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion.One nation under God, and one religion under God, right? he said.

Christian nationalism seeks to merge the identity of Christians and Americans, so that to be a true American is to be Christian and a certain type of Christian. The ideology pushes the idea that the United States was founded on biblical principles and has a favored relationship with a Christian God, said Samuel Perry, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma who studies conservative Christianity and politics.

It is distinct from the practice of Christianity, and Perrys research has found that many Americans who are inclined toward Christian nationalism dont go to church.

This has nothing to do with Christian orthodoxy. It has nothing to do with loving Jesus or wanting to be a good disciple or loving your neighbor or self-sacrifice or anything like that, Perry said. It has everything to do with Christian ethno-culture and specifically white Christian ethno-culture.

Flynn casts himself as a victim of the deep state who paid a steep price for supporting Trump. Besides Trump, his supporters say, no one has been persecuted more than Flynn.

Flynns rhetoric us versus them, good versus evil, the idea that God is on our side has been a staple among conservative Christians for decades, and is mainstream in conservative evangelicalism, Du Mez said.

The thinking, she said, can fuel violence.

Theyre out to get us. Therefore, we need to strike first. And the threat is always dire, Du Mez says the thinking goes. And if the threat is dire, then the ends justify the means.

These values arenot unconnected from the violencethat we saw on Jan. 6, she added.

(When the AP and Frontline asked Flynn in February if he is ascribes to Christian nationalist views, he dodged. He first asked what the term meant, then said he was an Irish Catholic then a follower of Jesus, before criticizing the reporter: That was a stupid question to ask me, he said, because that means that you really have not studied Mike Flynn.)

Last October, Flynn was the star attraction at the WeCANAct Liberty Conference, a gathering in Salt Lake City for Utahs Platform Republicans PAC.

The program includeddozens of speakers and exhibitors talking about a grab bag of ideas and causes that have seized and panicked the right about vaccines, human trafficking, elections and the QAnon conspiracy theory.

WATCH: Their loved ones are obsessed with QAnon conspiracies. Its tearing their families apart

Among the sponsors and exhibitors were the John Birch Society; businesses selling everything from texting services for political campaigns to food dehydrators; Ammon Bundys anti-government Peoples Rights group; and Americas Frontline Doctors, which hasspread false informationabout COVID-19 andpromoted unproven treatmentssuch asivermectin, a drug used to treat parasitic infections. State lawmakers from Arizona and Utah spoke, and members of the Utah Republican Partys governing committee were among the organizers.

The program kicked off with an invocation by a preacher who brought the crowd to its feet as he described a prophecy of a Great Awakening where Americans are going to rise up and defeat the cabal.

We are in a spiritual war, and you cant win a war without attacking, he said.

The preacher ended by leading the crowd in what he called a new version of the Lords Prayer that fits the Great Awakening. The crowd repeated after him as he said: Deliver us from the cabal, and from Satans influence. For yours is the kingdom, and the power and the glory. Forever and ever and ever. Amen.

Flynn appeared a few times throughout the day, at one point sitting in the audience. Across the Salt Palace Convention Center, people jostled their seatmates to point him out and craned their necks to see him.

That evening, he gave a meandering speech that he referred to as an ass-chewing from a general. He falsely declared once again that Trump had won the 2020 election, said our government is corrupt, and called for the FBI to be abolished, a surprising applause line in October 2021 that has now being taken up more broadly by some Republicans.

He called the left our enemies and said they are godless and soulless.

One of Flynns companies, Resilient Patriot LLC, was paid $58,000 by the conference. An AP and Frontline review of state and federal campaign finance filings documented nearly $300,000 in payments to Flynn and his businesses from candidates and political action committees since 2021, for things such as speaking fees, travel, book sales and campaign consulting. (Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomerreported paying his company $1,100 in Mayfor public relations services.)

After Flynns keynote concluded, a podcaster helping to wrap things up for the evening came onstage and called him one of the new founding fathers of this republic.

As Flynn speaks and stumps to persuade people to join his movement, he has also been busy building a network of political candidates at the federal, state and local levels.

The AP and Frontline found that Flynn has endorsed 99 candidates for the 2022 election cycle. (He subsequently withdrew a handful.)

The countrys most influential Republican is paying attention. Flynns brother Joseph told an interviewer in May that during a visit the Flynns made to Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate this spring, Trump himself produced a list comparing the success of his endorsed candidates with Flynns.

At least 80 percent of Flynns chosen candidates have publicly spread lies or sown doubt about Trumps 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden, or even participated in efforts to overthrow the election, the AP and Frontline found. Several have suggested they would use their power if elected to change the way elections are run and how people are allowed to cast their vote.

About two dozen were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 5-6, 2021.

One-third have served in the military.

At least 38 have used Christian nationalist rhetoric. Keith Self, a congressional candidate in Texas, has said hes running for Congress to defend the Judeo-Christian foundations of this nation. Christine Villaverde, a congressional candidate in North Carolina, has vowed to fight to keep America a Christian nation. Anthony Sabatini, a Florida state lawmaker who just lost a bid for Congress, recently posted on Facebook, Only when Christians stand up & get loud, will we take this country back.

READ MORE: Trump should not run for president in 2024, majority of Americans say

Flynns support can be a sought-after prize. An AP and Frontline analysis of Facebook and Instagram ad data found ads from more than 20 candidates promoting their endorsements. Jackson Lahmeyer, an Oklahoma pastor who was defeated in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate by Sen. James Lankford, mentioned Flynn in 48 Facebook and Instagram ads, more than one-quarter of his total buy on the platforms.

Pastor Leon Benjamin, a Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia who denounced homosexuality and called gay marriages illegal in an August speech, said in an interview that Flynns endorsement represents that affirmation and that understanding that weve got to have the right candidates in, and its not always popular, not always goes along with the grain.

If we keep doing the same things over and over again, thats the definition of insanity, he added. So we got to do some different things to get different results.

More than 40 of Flynns endorsements were for candidates seeking state or even local posts, the AP and Frontline found. Flynn endorsed two school board contenders in Camdenton, Missouri, candidates for sheriff in Florida, Nevada and Illinois and a city council candidate in North Carolina. He endorsed candidates for the state legislature in Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, Texas and Missouri. In Arizona, Michigan, California and Colorado, he gave his approval to candidates for secretary of state, a position that typically involves the administration of elections.

A dozen gubernatorial candidates won Flynns backing, including Pennsylvanias Republican nominee, Doug Mastriano, a state lawmaker whom Flynn introduced at his campaign launch. Mastriano, a retired U.S. Army colonel, floated a plan to undo Bidens victory in his state, organized buses to the U.S. Capitol for Jan. 6 and was filmed walking past barricades and police lines that day. Mastriano has denied breaking the law and has not been charged with any crimes. Another Flynn endorsee, Dan Cox, who also organized buses for Jan. 6, won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Maryland.

Still, Flynns endorsement doesnt guarantee a win. Josh Mandel, the Ohio U.S. Senate candidate, was defeated by JD Vance, who got a late endorsement from Trump. Some Flynn-backed candidates, includinggubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbertin Nevada and Coloradosecretary of state candidate Tina Peters, made baseless claims of election fraud after they lost.

Flynn and his allies have suggested he wants to get back into government, and the growing influence that flows from the network hes building may help him get there, said Ron Filipkowski, a lawyer in Sarasota and longtime Republican activist who now tracks Flynn and other far-right figures online.

Hes going to build this grassroots movement, local elected officials beholden to him, loyal to him, Filipkowski said.

Flynn has expanded his influence further through well-financed groups that advocate, among other things, changes to the way elections are run, based on the false premise that there is widespread voting fraud.

Flynn and Patrick Byrne, founder of Overstock.com, last year launched The America Project, with Flynns brother Joseph as president. The group said it planned to spend $50 million in the 2021 budget year, according to a filing with North Carolina charity regulators. But Joseph Flynn and Byrne separately told AP that it had spent tens of millions less, though each gave different totals.

While Flynn himself is not listed among its officers, he is the face of the group, and its described as General Flynn and Patrick Byrnes America Project. Byrne says Flynn is his closest adviser, telling the AP and Frontline that Flynn is his Yoda and rabbi.

In April 2021, Flynn was named chairman of Americas Future, one of the countrys oldest conservative nonprofit groups. The organization was founded in 1946 and was previously led by ultra-conservative stalwarts, including Phyllis Schlafly and retired Maj. Gen. John Singlaub. Since Flynn took over, the group hired his sister, Mary ONeill, as executive director and appointed Joseph Flynn to its board of directors. The group had about $3 million in assets at the end of 2020, its most recent IRS filings show. Flynn told the AP and Frontline in February that he had raised an estimated $1.7 million for Americas Future since becoming chairman.

The two groups worked in close coordination last year,together donating more than $4.2 millionfor a widely criticized and misinformation-driven review of the 2020 presidential election results commissioned by Arizona Republicans.

The America Project has given about $5 million to grassroots organizations around the country, Joseph Flynn said in a July appearance on an online show.

NEWS WRAP: Trump lashes out in first rally since FBI search of Mar-a-Lago

Many of the groups they support back what they call election integrity, a term often used by election deniers to justify making it more difficult to vote based on the falsehood that American elections are corrupt.

Campaign finance records show The America Project has given more than $150,000 toConservatives for Election Integrity, a group that has supported several secretary of state candidates who have worked to undermine trust in 2020 election results.

The America Project gave $100,000 to a Colorado group,Citizens for Election Integrity, which used it for ads and text messages attacking a Republican candidate for secretary of state who ran against Flynns endorsed candidate. In Michigan, The America Projectgave $100,000 in Mayto Secure MI Vote, whichhas reportedly pushed to roll back voter access.

In Georgia, they just announced theyrebacking an effort to challenge voter registrationsfor tens of thousands of people.

Joseph Flynn said during a speech in May that The America Project also funded and advised many of what he termed audits of elections around the country, including in Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin, though he did not give specifics.

In February, Flynn stood in a burger joint in Orlando, Florida, to announce The America Projects most public initiative, Operation Eagles Wings, the goal of which is to mobilize and train poll watchers and precinct captains, and to drive get-out-the-vote efforts.

I think every single person in this country, every American citizen, now has to pay attention to politics. You know, when people go, I dont get involved. I dont do that political stuff. Thats for the politicians. Well, thats exactly why we are here. OK? Flynn told the AP and Frontline during a contentious interview. So, its something else that you wont write or speak about or itll be edited out.

As part of Operation Eagles Wings, The America Project has created affiliate groups inat least nine states. Its Florida affiliate said in a Facebook post last month its seeking America First Poll Watchers and will train organizations for free. Stateaffiliates in IllinoisandVirginia advertisedtrainingsin July and Auguston grassroots social activism, poll watching and how to get out the vote. The promotions also promise to teach attendees to expose weaknesses, monitor and evaluate absentee voting and conduct investigative canvassing.

The initiative has raised alarm bells with pro-democracy advocates.

If people who tried to overturn the 2020 election, or who are fueled by election conspiracies, are trying to recruit their followers or allies to be election workers or volunteers as part of an election denial agenda, that poses real risks to fair and free elections, said Jacek Pruski, of the nonpartisan group Protect Democracy.

With his speeches, endorsements and outreach groups, Flynn has built a legion of acolytes who are listening closely to what he says and are ready to take action. They include Karen Ballash, 69, vice chair of the Summit County Republican Party in Utah, who heard Flynn speak in Salt Lake City.

I totally believe in his message. We have to be the ones who make the change, she said. If we dont do it, we wont have a country.

They include neophytes like Delainna Prettyman, who said shes just become politically engaged in the past year. That sent me deep down a rabbit hole. I dont watch any news, any TV, anything. And I do a ton of research, said Prettyman, who lives in the Salt Lake City suburbs.

She came to love Flynn, and believed everything he says.

Hes got a lot of intel and insight about everything thats going on. Of course, he cant say everything, she said. We need more people like General Flynn.

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Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn at the center of new movement based on conspiracies and Christian nationalism - PBS NewsHour

Media Matters for America (MMFA):

Tucker Carlson has been one of the medias most outspoken opponents of diversity, stating that diversity isn't our strength and workplace diversity policies lead to warring tribes fighting each other for the spoils. But postings for jobs with the Fox News host contain language claiming that we are deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion and that diversity makes great things happen.

Carlsonis the host of Fox NewsTucker Carlson Tonightand Fox NationsTucker Carlson OriginalsandTucker Carlson Today. He uses his top-rated Fox News program topushwhite nationalisttalking points. One of Carlsons go-to narratives has been complaints against pro-diversity rhetoric and policies, including in the workplace.

As MMFAs Eric Hananokipoints out, anti-diversity efforts are a majorpart of Carlsons shtick, whether hes defending the workplace from People Who Are Not White, or protecting real Americansfrom immigration.

In the past, Carlson has also fretted that our leaders are radically and permanently changing our country, wholly on the basis of their faith that diversity is, in fact, our strength. And in case youre still not grokking his meaning, he spelled it out clearly in black and white. Mostly in white, though: Diversity isnt our strength.

He also insists that diversity is dangerousto white people.In May,The New York TimesNicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish noted that

No public figure has promoted replacement theory more loudly or relentlessly than the Fox host Tucker Carlson, who has made elite-led demographic change a central theme of his show since joining Foxs prime-time lineup in 2016. A Times investigation published this month showed that in more than 400 episodes of his show, Mr. Carlson has amplified the notion that Democratic politicians and other assorted elites want to force demographic change through immigration ...

Still not convinced that Tucker thinks we should all retreat to our demographic silosso that my lifelong dream of seeing Chuck Grassley and Emmanuel Lewis briskly oiling each other up at a Des Moines Long John Silvers never comes true(it was a weird dream, and I should probably avoid spicy foods and bath saltsright before bed)?

Consider this September 2018 quote from the fascistic seafood scionthat would make even Rudy Giuliani flinch:How precisely is diversity our strength? Since you've made this our new national motto, please be specific as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don't know, marriage or military units, in which the less that people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Do you get along better with your neighbors or your co-workers if you can't understand each other or share no common values?

Yes, God forbid we make an attempt to understand and appreciate coworkers from different cultures and backgrounds. As we all know, life is only worth living if the guy sitting in the next cubicle likes the same brand of processed bologna slices as you do.

Of course, Carlson, whose family fortune was built on middle-class Americans penchant forshoving unhealthy, warmed-over garbage into their heads on a near-daily basis, is now making money hand over fist by following the same formula. But his venture depends on a uniformity of purpose that simply leaves many diverse candidates out. That said, frothing right-wing agitators are always welcome to apply, as MMFA reported in June!

Paul Escandon, a far-right documentary filmmaker, podcast host, and associate of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, claimed on social media that he interviewed to work with one of Fox Newsmost-watchedtelevision hosts Tucker Carlson and his team.

Escandons alleged interview continues a pattern of Carlsons team collaborating with and hiring white nationalist and extremist-linked staffers.

[...]

Carlson and his team have a history of working with extremist and white nationalist-linked individuals. In 2021, Carlsons team collaborated with Scooter Downey, a director of alt-right and white nationalist documentaries. Downey wrote Carlsons Patriot Purgedocumentary, a conspiracy theory-laden, InfoWars-style three part series about the January 6 insurrection. The series and its wild claims were nothing more than fascist propaganda.

In 2020, it was revealed that one of Carlsons writers, Blake Neff, was pushing white supremacist content and making racist posts on AutoAdmit, an online forum thats known for hosting questionable content. Tucker Carlson Tonight has also hosted numerous guests with links to white nationalism.

No word yet on whether Escandon, director of a sympathetic film about the walking hate crime that isFuentes,ever did get thatgig with Tucker. Given Carlsonsdedication to diversity, one can only imagine he has interviews lined up with a wide range of incels whose basements all smell like quiet desperation and Funyuns.

Of course, none of this should surprise us. Without hypocrisy, all conservatives have left is their gauche Ronald Reagan Franklin Mint shit. But if Tucks ever wants to rejoin polite society, maybe he should think about readinghis own companyshiring policy before popping off again.

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthingsfour-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale,Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Lettersto Donald Trump, atthis link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you candownload theepilogue toGoodbye, Asshatfor the low, low price of FREE.

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Tucker Carlson's job ads claim he values diversity, but that's not what he tells his viewers - Daily Kos

If you watch cable news, youd be forgiven for thinking the United States is a country that has split itself in two, divided not only by divergent opinions, but also by two very different political realities. This is the way cable news likes it, mind you. A pot well-stirred keeps viewers turning in.

On the Tuesday after Labor Day, my lap through the usual morning news shows proved more cognitively dissonant than usual. This was primarily because CNNs New Day programing included John Avlons consistently eye-opening segment, Reality Check. His lesson focused on whether the United States is as extremist as people seem to think it is.

In short, just how crazy are we? Not that crazy, it turns out. Sure, were polarized, but only 29% and 28% of Americans identify as Democrat or Republican, respectively, according to Gallup. Most of the rest, 41%, identify as independent. Yes, 67% of Americans think democracy is on the verge of collapse, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. But 66% of Americans also say that Biden is the legitimate president.

And, sure, weve sacrificed friendships over presidents and may yet again. But were not as divided as some pundits and ratings-driven TV producers would have us believe. Not even close. In fact, were really talking about a relatively small percentage of Americans who would qualify as extremist.

Avlon, who has dedicated most of his career to advancing centrism and fighting extremism, heaps credit on The Washington Posts Philip Bump, who did most of the number-crunching that Avlon used in his own analysis. Both journalists focused, logically, on trying to understand the depth of support on the far right for undermining democracy.

To be an extremist by this definition, one must reject the 2020 election results; embrace candidates who also reject the results; approve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; and approve of violence as a political tool.

Surely, there cant be many of those folks, I hear you thinking. and youre right. There arent. Heres where actual numbers come in handy: Remember, only 28% of Americans identify as Republican. Even if 66% of Republicans believe that Biden is illegitimate (as a July CNN poll found), thats just a little over 18% of American adults. As Avlon pointed out, even if you add in the one-third of independents who lean Republican, youre still talking about a minority.

A smaller portion of Americans say theyd support an election denier, or approve of the Capitol riot, or think violence is justifiable. So, yes, were divided on what happened in 2020, but were not talking halvsies here. We often talk of our nation as split right down the middle. But the data show that were really only talking about a slice that qualifies as extremist.

Wait, wait, what about all those Democratic socialists on the other side? Arent they extremists, too? They may be, but theyre also a tiny sliver of the population. If you count the Democratic Socialists of America, thats probably fewer than 100,000 people, or about .03% of the U.S. population, says Avlon. Thats not scary at all.

Here is the larger point: We should be spending much less time talking about the extremists on the right or left. Weve always had them and survived. We may be at a turning point in TV viewing there is evidence people are turning away from both broadcast and cable. The ugly cultural issues that politicians and activists have long used to divide us obscure the fact that Americans tend to agree on many things: About 70% of Americans support same-sex marriage and cannabis legalization, according to Gallup, and about two-thirds of Americans are pro-choice.

Military journalist Thomas E. Ricks wrote in Mondays Washington Post that the threat of another American civil war is, in his view, now in the past. Saying he had long worried we were cascading toward such a war because he saw right-wing groups as heavily influenced by white nationalism, hes less pessimistic now encouraged in part because, so far, other riots have not occurred.

Yet, if you channel-surf the morning and evening cable news shows, youll probably think were about to implode. One of the things cable shows noticed after President Donald Trump was defeated was that fewer people were tuning in. The electrical charge that was Trump created historic ratings spikes that enriched his critics and supporters alike.

But as viewership wanes, so, too, go tempers and resentments, leading to the conclusion that the dueling political realities of talk TV may finally have run its course.

Happily, were not crazy enough to watch it anymore.

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We're not as divided as we think - Oneonta Daily Star

(Image created in Midjourney.)

Deep indeed run the roots of Evil, and the black sap is strong in them. That tree will never be slain. Let men hew it as often as they may, it will thrust up shoots again as soon as they turn aside.

It is with this depressing thought that Borlas begins his dialogue about the nature of evil with his interlocutor Saelon in The New Shadow, J.R.R. Tolkiens scrapped sequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The text is brief, just the beginning of a novel that was meant to show the inevitable boredom of Men with the good. Amazon has brought attention to what occurred before the trilogy in its new series The Rings of Power, but it is worth examining the few pages Tolkien wrote in which he explored what came next. His understanding of human nature makes what little of The New Shadow that he wrote deeply insightful, and an unsettling warning about our own political climate.

As a devout Catholic, Tolkien believed we live in a sinful, fallen world that will never be perfected by human hands. Its a concept reflected in his works; the whole of the Middle Earth writings is a saga about the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall of evil. Over and over again, Middle Earth is faced with a dark force, which Middle Eartheans band together to defeat, only to see another malevolent threat rise after. The lesson ought to be clear: At best, evil can be guarded against and squashed out when it first starts to rear its head. But the inhabitants of Middle Earth, like those of our world, tend not to go for that strategy, falling, instead, into complacency. As Tolkien noted in one of his letters, mankind has a quick satiety with good.

This satiety is bad enough when it leads to blindness to the rise of a new evil, but in The New Shadow, Tolkien sought to explore a more frightening outcome of it: What happens when people dont just ignore the threat of evil, but forget why it is a threat to begin with. Set in one of the kingdoms of men, Gondor, 105 years after the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Sauron and his Orcs have been relegated to the stuff of legend while all the humans who fought them have died off. Only a few survive who have even the slightest memory of the War of the Ring from their childhood, and having known nothing but peace and prosperity for their entire lives, a restless sect of young Gondorians become fascinated by the evil figures of old. Boys run around committing acts of vandalism pretending to be Orcs, and there are whispers that a cult devoted to the old evil has begun. Our introduction to these goings-on is through the conversation between the elderly Borlas, who was a boy during the War of the Ring, and Saelon, a young man who subtly reveals he may be a part of the new cult. The two go back and forth, each using the conversation to probe the extent of the others knowledge of the cult while debating morality.

The storyline will sound familiar to anyone paying attention to the politics of millennials and Gen Zers today. In our time of unprecedented wealth and safety, the once-defeated foe of illiberalism has made a reappearence. Young leftists have increasingly positive views of socialism, while young right-wingers have increasingly positive views of nationalism. As Jonah Goldberg laid out in Suicide of the West, illiberal views in the West are due largely to a lack of appreciation for how good we have things right now, a lack of understanding of how we got here, and a lack of understanding of how a radical overhaul of society would alter the world as we know it. This is especially true of younger generations, who have little to no direct experience with the failures of illiberalism. Having not witnessed others try and fail, theyre more open to limiting free speech, race-based nationalism, polyamory, and a whole host of other ideas that were long thought unacceptable in America.

Tolkien has a sharp understanding of this peace-time radical mindset, and in the little he wrote of The New Shadow he managed to capture not just how they think and are motivated, but how they operate in early stages as well. In The New Shadow, Saelon never outright says hes in the cult. He hints at it, and tries to draw out Borlas view of it by using language and references that would be familiar to only those in the know. The radicals of today use the same strategies, using words that mean little to outside observers, but show a deeper, esoteric meaning to fellow travelers, like bringing up land acknowledgements to show that youre a true believer on the far left or casually dropping the white nationalist Sam Francis name in conversation to show that youre a true believer on the far right.

(Radical leftists are further along in their project on most issues and are, thus, relatively open about their views compared to the young radical right, who are still generally quiet about the full extent of what they believe. Their influences are little discussed, pulled from unsavory corners of the conservative movement that the generation before them ignoredthey had no reason to read them, these figures were driven out of the movement either directly before or during their lifetimes. As Matthew Rose noted in his book After Liberalism: The Philosophers of the Radical Right: That you might be unfamiliar with some of [the philosophers of the radical right] does not make you unusual. In congressional offices, Republican politicians wont know them all either, but their young aides will. At conservative magazines, senior editors dont read them, but junior staff do.)

Tolkien gave up on The New Shadow, saying in a letter that the story proved both sinister and depressing. (Writing on human nature often is.) What little he was able to complete serves as a reminder of the importance of engendering gratitude in every generation and of avoiding moral complacency. Never underestimate the ability of small wrongs to grow into something bigger. Hew the tree of evil at its first sign of growth.

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Socialism, Nationalism, and Tolkien - by Alec Dent - The Dispatch

Celebrated author, speaker, and cultural anthropologist, Rich Benjamin, joins Raue Center on October 14, 2022, at 7 pm for "The Divided States of America: Big National Transformations, Small Towns" a special presentation and moderated Q&A discussing his personal experiences engaging with communities in small-town America and his deft observations of modern society, culture, and politics with a goal toward building understanding and openness.

"It's important for us to have honest conversations on Race," Raue Center's executive director, Richard Kuranda. "It helps us move forward. Over the last 5 years, we have opened our eyes to the power of a community wanting to confront the ugly truth that racism does exist here. Hopefully, this discussion will help further that conversation in McHenry County."

Rich Benjamin is a political analyst, a cultural anthropologist, a speaker, an author. Benjamin's cultural and political analysis appears regularly in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, and National Public Radio (NPR). His scholarly research has received support from Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, Brown University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Benjamin was recently a Fellow in the literary arts at the Bellagio Center (Italia), Rockefeller Foundation. Rich has a BA in English and political science from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Authors Guild, the national union of writers that has been protecting authors' rights and free speech since 1912.

He is the author of "Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America" selected as an Editor's Choice by Booklist and The American Library Association (2009). This groundbreaking study is one of few to have illuminated in advance the rise of white anxiety and white nationalism in contemporary public US life. Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, calls Searching for Whitopia, "A daring feat of the 21st Century exploration that will have you laughing and shuddering at the same time." The book is now in its second printing. He is currently at work on a new book, Talk to Me.

"I believe that adaptation requires openness. It requires a willingness to understand others, a willingness to understand oneself. And I believe in that willingness comes an openness to change." - Rich Benjamin

Don't miss this timely discussion, "The Divided States of America: Big National Transformations, Small Towns," with one of America's finest scholars. Moderated by James Knight. Tickets are $20. Student discount is available. For tickets or more information visit rauecenter.org or call Raue Box Office at 815.356.9212.

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Celebrated Author And Anthropologist Rich Benjamin To Speak At Raue Center - Broadway World

by Scott Steward

You can say it this way or you can say it that way, either way you say it MAGA stands for pain. It stands for Mad Americans Gone Awry. Is there something to be angry about? Absolutely. Worshiping AR-15s is not the answer and following authoritarian Viktor Orban (Hungarys authoritarian leader) into an SS style penal society is not the answer. Going apoplectic at a school board meeting is also not the answer.

The answer is working Americans working together. The Biden administration signed laws to force pharmaceutical companies to lower drug prices, apply a minimum tax for corporations, provide veterans (exposed to military waste burn zones) medical care, and take steps to provide us with clean domestic energy security. Thats what government is for.

Most Republicans, most people, independent or otherwise, want corporations to pay taxes, want to stop being gouged by pharmaceutical companies, care for our veterans, and want to have the energy we need to heat and cool our homes and get us where we need to go without sending our dollars to Russia or Saudi Arabia. Having government for the people and not a government reaching into your doctor patient relationship that is what US people want.

Some Americans are all for lining up behind an Orbanesk dictatorship. Donald We love Hungary Trump is one of them. Trump who applies the toddler rules of possession to national security documents. If I like it, its mine. If its in my hand, its mine. If I can take it from you, its mine. For Trump, national security is not the issue. He would say, public office would just be so much better if it was just 100% me.

Who is lining up behind the MAGA minority alt-right grab America way? Who is willing to take democracy down to do it?

Thirteen Election Decertification MAGA leaders choosing Trump over democracy:

#1 Ron DeSantis: 15 week total abortion ban no exception for rape, incest or human trafficking. He, and the gerrymandered Republican legislature, overturned a 2020 law, passed overwhelmingly by Florida voters, to reinstate voting rights for 250,000 people who served their time. A king of voter suppression, he has also put in place a law that makes it a crime for public employees to say gay. Now if you say gay you might be ineligible to vote? This is not enough for DeSantis. He is jealous of other US MAGA Orban Putin power leaders who are prepared to decertify elections if their chosen candidates do not win.

#2 Ted Cruz: Texas Beautiful Ted(Trumps nickname) Cruz. A name earned while in Cancun, waiting out ice storms that knocked out power for weeks in a freezing Texas. The Texas state bar petitioned to remove Ted Cruzs license to practice law after he moved beyond his position as a United States senator by agreeing to represent President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania Republicans as an attorney in litigation contesting the 2020 election. Cruz can also be credited with the hide behind/nothing to see here bearded culprit look.

#3 Greg Abbott: Texas, so reviled he inspired the counter MAGA Mothers Against Greg Abbott movement. Abbott led Texas to become the first state to enact a 6 week near-total abortion ban.

#4 Matt Gaetz: Florida congressman suggests people shoot Silicon Valley executives calling such acts an obligation to use the Second Amendment. No matter that the second amendment has nothing to do with shooting businessmen like them or not. Gaetz recommendations to shoot those you disagree with follows a long troubling history of sexual abuse crimes. A MAGA standard bearer.

#5 Adam Laxalt: Nevada US Senate candidate earned the title of Nevadas Rudy Giuliani. Laxalt does not perspire brown streaks of lies, but he is banking his entire campaign for Senate on the stop the steal slogan and not much else. He is already lining up resources to sue if he does not win in November. Its sad that Nevada supports abortion rights.

#6 Mark Finchem: Arizona secretary of state, January 6th Stop the Steal rally attendee, espouses Qanoon conspiracy theories and is close to right wing militias. Ladies and gentlemen, we know it and they know it Donald Trump won, rages Finchem.

#7 Kristina Karamo: running for Michigan Secretary of State. Calls all abortion child sacrifice, and is certain demonic possession is real. Maybe just an old school headline grabber, she has personally testified that the election was stolen even after her own state upheld the 2020 election after 200 audits disproved fraud had occurred. This a conclusion reached by a Michigan Republican sanctioned report.

#8 JD Vance, living in SF and running for Senate in Ohio. Taking money from famed anarchist Peter Thiel (renowned hater of democracy) who suspects officeholders of imposing a brain-dead, one-world state. Vances bankroller is a short step away from believing that electoral losses can be treated as inherently illegitimate and nonbinding, reports the Washington Post.

#9 Noah Malgeri, Nevada District 3 Congressman openly called for Americas top general, Mark Milley, to be hanged before a live TV audience. Malgeri believes Milley was part of an elitist group that attempted to stage a coup against Trump.

#10 Melisa Carone: Having been barred from running for State Senate in Michigan she is running for Lieutenant Governor. Carone made bizarre statements of election fraud under oath, pushes white nationalism, voter restrictions and banning selected history from schools. Carone is a Marjorie Taylor Green protge and, unlike GAs 14th District, Michigans legislature wants no part of her, proving that not all Republicans will let MAGAs take control.

# 11 Kari Lake: running for Arizona Governor, called for Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (also a 2022 gubernatorial candidate) to be imprisoned for unspecified election crimes (make em up.) Lake believes that the topic of abortion is just a tactic to hide people from the truth (about the stolen election) and her position is that abortion should be determined at the state level echoing trend setter Lindsey Graham.

# 12 Lindsey Graham: South Carolina, framed the most recently quoted position of Republicans about abortion I think states should decide the issue of marriage and states should decide the issue of abortion. What Graham, and what most Republicans running are saying, is that who you choose to marry, what type of health care and when a woman receives health care should be up to gerrymandered Republican State legislature (or one party nation.)

#13 Sarah Palin: The Alaskan has not run for public office since 2008. Palin had this to say about COVID healthcare. Itll be over my dead body that I get a shot. I will not. I wont do it and they better not touch my kids either. Palin, after her now famous August loss to Mary Peltola in the special house election, chose these words to describe Alaskas popular ranked choice voting system, convoluted, cockamamie and untrustworthy. Calling democracy unfair we are hearing a lot of that lately.

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Guest Commentary: MAGA Abortion Banners and Election Deniers - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

The following is a transcript of an interview with Jared Holt of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Karen Kornbluh of the German Marshall Fund that aired Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022, on "Face the Nation."

INTRO: Political violence and riots can often be traced back to the rise of online extremism. We spoke earlier with two experts on the problem and its potential solutions -- Jared Holt, the senior research manager at the institute for strategic dialogue and Karen Kornbluh, the head of the German Marshall Fund's Digital Innovations and Democracy Initiative -- and we began by asking them to characterize the relationship between the internet and democracy.

JARED HOLT: Tenuous. The internet in the way that it is monetized in the current age is through attention, you can get a lot of attention saying crazy stuff and we've seen a lot of people do that, frankly. So you know, as long as the business model of the internet is built around trying to captivate audiences and keep them clicking, reacting, whether that's through rage or diehard support. It's going to be in conflict with democracy, because democracy is not about what gets the most attention. It's supposed to be about, you know, what the best ideas are, how do we compromise? How do we move forward? In this attention-based economy online, is incongruent with that mission.

MAJOR GARRETT: Karen, complete this sentence: the internet's relationship to democracy is?

KAREN KORNBLUH: Fraught, it's definitely fraught, in the early days of the internet, it offered incredible promise, and it still does, you know, all of these movements, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, were able to gain steam online and that it just continues to offer the kind of promise of educating people, informing them, connecting them. But these algorithms really have contributed to the crisis we're in. And the platforms have a real responsibility to fix them, and to help fix the problem that they've helped create.

MAJOR GARRETT: Jared, from a libertarian perspective, one might argue, look, people are out there, they decide what they want to consume, there is agency as you indicated, so the internet isn't a problem. These people are out there. They have their beliefs, and they're going to pursue it- or is it that you're arguing the internet is an accelerator and a multiplier?

HOLT: It's an accelerator and a multiplier, this kind of content, conspiratorial content, extremist movements have existed in America for as long as America has been around, right? These platforms are designed guiding people towards more extreme content, what they're not taking down, what they're giving a free pass to, people who are using these platforms to manipulate audiences, and guide them and steer them.

MAJOR GARRETT: From your perspective, is January 6, and it's magnitude impossible without this multiplier accelerationist effect.

HOLT: It's very safe to say that it wouldn't have happened the way that it did, at the scale that it did coming together as fast as it did, without the internet. A lot of attention was paid to fringe platforms like Parlor, after the riot. But a lot of the agitation and calls to action were happening on mainstream platforms from mainstream figures.

MAJOR GARRETT: For those on the right, who say, you're missing this whole point, the point is, we get canceled, we get de-platformed, and that's big tech silencing us. So, our rights are the ones being trampled, you would say?

KORNBLUH: This is the danger of the whack a mole solution. Not only is it ineffective, too little too late, but it also raises all kinds of free expression concerns because it takes down content and takes down people after the fact. I'd love to see the platforms not only fix their algorithms, but when they publish their terms of service, really commit themselves to enforce what they've put out there, and not have so much discretion. It's this kind of discretion that I think really bothers people and makes them feel that they can't get on these very few opportunities for speech.

MAJOR GARRETT: Jared, what happened in these places you are describing Parler, Gettr, other parts of the web that maybe aren't as well trafficked as others after the Mar a Lago execution of a search warrant?

HOLT: These spaces online, pro-Trump forums, fringe platforms, just really erupted with violent rhetoric. There's these false beliefs that the FBI or law enforcement is out to get conservatives and Trump supporters specifically. But we saw that paired with also a lot of violent rhetoric, taking their existing beliefs that the system is compromised, and ratcheting it up to the next level, saying, you know, we need to do something, whether that's protesting, or whether that's taking it as far as that individual in Cincinnati did, trying to breach the FBI office there.

MAJOR GARRETT: Karen, what can Congress do?

KORNBLUH: There's bipartisan concern, but there's really not bipartisan action. The proposals on algorithmic accountability, I think, offer real promise, but so far, they don't include any kind of enforcement mechanism. Given the tinderbox that we're in, I think we really have to turn to the platforms and ask them to step up.

MAJOR GARRETT: What are you looking at in terms of these realities? They're not going to change before the midterm elections and multiplier effects, accelerationist effect on the web, heading toward the midterms?

KORNBLUH: There are two things, two urgent things, that I would say that the platforms could do. First, they should stop siloing people, directing people into these bubbles that reinforce extremist worldviews and don't let in opposing viewpoints. And second, they should really work with the providers of important civic information, people like election administration officials, to help them amplify accurate information so that people can be empowered and actually know what- what's going on.

MAJOR GARRETT: What does this conversation and these underlying realities mean, as America grapples with what appears to be a rise in white nationalism, white supremacy?

HOLT: The internet has been a really powerful tool for extremist movements in the US, it's been a big accelerant. It's been a big boom. And we've seen consistently on platforms, you know, they all have kind of red lines, that content is not supposed to cross over, if it crosses over. If it's, you know, particularly violent, particularly racist, that kind of material will get banned. But the content that walks right up to that line, that sort of tiptoes on that line, is among the highest performing content on these websites. It's not a level playing field. And that unlevel playing field has been, you know, definitely an accelerant of these issues that we're seeing rise up in American prominence. The kind of stuff that we're talking about today, whether it's misinformation, conspiracy theories, etc. Everybody is vulnerable to this. Rich people, poor people, smart people, not so smart people, everybody can fall victim to this stuff. And it has to do with the manipulative nature of the content. And I just think it's really important to stress that.

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Transcript: Jared Holt and Karen Kornbluh on "Face the Nation," Sept. 4, 2022 - CBS News

The reparations debate is getting old. But it shows little sign of abating. Academic papers continue to parse the idea of reparations for slavery; books continue to be written on the subject, adding to the mountain of material that already exists; celebrated journalists give speeches to the UN advocating reparations. Democratic candidates in 2020 prominently and sympathetically discussed the issue on the campaign trail. The debate is not going away anytime soon. It is the more unfortunate, then, that much of it is conducted in an unserious way.

The recent national conversation about reparations is usually traced to Ta-Nehisi Coates 2014 essay in The Atlantic The Case for Reparations, but this piece only gave a shot in the arm to a conversation that was already quite spirited and publicly visible. Talk of reparations entered the mainstream in the 1990s and early 2000s, having been confined largely to circles of Black nationalism starting in the 1960s. Lawsuits were filed, and dismissed, against the U.S. government and corporations that had profited from slavery; books such as The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks (2000), by Randall Robinson, were published to advocate for reparations; magazines and newspapers across the country, from Harpers to the Los Angeles Times, presented the case, as did numerous academic papers and conferences. Reparations was in the air: Japanese-American internees during World War II had been compensated in 1988; survivors of the Holocaust were being compensated; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa recommended reparations for apartheid, and such commissions in Chile, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Sierra Leone, Canada, and many other countries made similar proposals. Year after year, the ideological momentum behind slavery reparations increased, and Coates essay increased it even further.

The New York Times 1619 Project gave yet another boost to the demand for redress, probably the most significant boost so far. As a systematic effort to interpret U.S. history entirely in terms of the oppression of Blacks, it was tailor-made to advance the reparations narrative. The immense resources of the Times, in collaboration with the corporate-endowed Pulitzer Center, went into designing and distributing a curriculum that schools could use to teach the 1619 Project. This massive nationwide campaign soon coincided, fortuitously, with the George Floyd protests in 2020 and the revival of Black Lives Matter. By then, Black identity politics was so deeply embedded in the nations culture that conservatives discovered they could capitalize on it by inventing a critical race theory boogeyman to frighten whites into supporting reactionary politicians and reactionary policies. The discourse of anti-racism and reparations continued to spread even as the right-wing backlash against it grew in intensity and effectiveness.

In the last couple of years, books on reparations have not been lacking. Their titles indicate their content: From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century (2020); Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? (2021); Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair (2021); Reparations Now! (2021); Reparations Handbook: A Practical Approach to Reparations for Black Americans (2021); Reparations for Slavery (2021); Time for Reparations: A Global Perspective (2021). Liberal America cant get enough of the reparations idea. Fewer books on the subject have been published in 2022, but Reconsidering Reparations, by Olfmi Tw, is an exception that has gotten some attention. It may be worth briefly reviewing here, because its shortcomings illustrate the shortcomings of the whole reparations discourse, indeed identity politics itself.

A debate rages on the left between the practitioners of identity politics and alleged class reductionists, but the latter seem to be decidedly in the minority. This is unfortunate, because in order to defeat the threat of the far-rightwhether its called white nationalism, Christian nationalism, white supremacy, neofascism, or proto-fascismwere going to have to build a movement on the basis of class struggle. This doesnt mean denying the legitimacy of the grievances of groups defined by race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality, but it does mean incorporating them in a broader movement organized around the old Marxian dualism: the working class vs. the capitalist class.

***

From a Marxian point of view, the inadequacies of Tws book start in its first paragraph:

Injustice and oppression are global in scale. Why? Because Trans-Atlantic slavery and colonialism built the world we live in, and slavery and colonialism were unjust and oppressive. If we want reparations, we should be thinking more broadly about how to remake the world system.

Apparently the world is unjust not because capitalism is inherently unjust, but because it began, centuries ago, in slavery and colonialism. Were called to remake the world system, but the focus is on how horrible the past was, and, admittedly, how horrible the present is for non-white people because of their past. Capitalism as such isnt mentioned; instead, as in all of the reparations discourse, it is slavery, the slave trade, colonialism, and racism that are emphasized. This fact, of course, is why the liberal establishment is comfortable talking about reparations and even invests enormous resources in propagating the narrative. It understands that it poses no threats to its own power and serves as a useful distraction from class conflict as such.

The purpose of Reconsidering Reparations is to argue that reparation is a construction project, the project of building a new world, a just distribution. Tw approvingly quotes a historian: reparation is less about the transfer of resourcesas it is [sic] about the transformation of all social relationsre-envisioning and reconstructing a world-system. He borrows a concept from Adom Getachew that has become fashionable: worldmaking. Just as the postwar decolonization movements were engaged in worldmaking, hoping to build a just society on a global scale, so we must continue their project, this time, importantly, taking into account the disasters of climate change that will disproportionately affect countries in the Global South. Reparation, according to Tw, is about more than mere income redistribution.

This line of argument is admirably dismissive of liberal technocratic tinkering with palliative policies, but there is an obvious retort to it: socialist, communist, and anarchist revolutionaries since the nineteenth century have always been devoted to this sort of worldmaking, and there is nothing original about such a formulation. There has never been a need to justify world revolution in terms of reparations for past injustices; rather, the imperative has simply been that because people of all races and genders are horrifically suffering in the present, we need socialism (economic democracy). The revolutionary project has been justified on class grounds, not racial grounds. Why the need for a new justification? The answer is clear: reparations is currently a fashionable idea, and for the sake of ones career and relevance, it makes sense to use fashionable ideas to reframe old ideologies. Doing so may be wholly unnecessary, but at least it gives ones book the appearance of originality.

It seems noteworthy that nowhere in his book does Tw use the word socialism, even though his vision for the future is the traditional socialist one: everyone in the world order should have capabilities that grant effective access to the means of maintaining their biological existence, economic power, and political agency. Our target must be a global community thoroughly structured by non-domination. Maybe he thought that using the dreaded s-word might not be wise from a careerist point of view, or maybe he thought it would associate his book with an earlier Marxist tradition and thus detract from his attempts at both originality and distinguishing his account from one that prioritizes class solidarity. Whatever the reason, the omission is telling.

Much of Reconsidering Reparations is dedicated to reviewing the history of what Tw calls Global Racial Empire and how it led to the structural disadvantages people of color face today. A historian need have no quarrel with any of this. It is an incontrovertible truth that, for hundreds of years, people of color have been systematically exterminated, enslaved, exploited, massacred, forced off their lands, stripped of their cultures, reduced to peonage, denied the opportunity to own a home, denied a decent education, disproportionately imprisoned, disproportionately consigned to unemployment, and disproportionately subjected to police brutality. A large part of the literature on reparations is concerned to establish these facts, and they certainly do need to be broadcast far and wide. Left critics of the reparations concept do not deny any of the horrifying history or the abysmal present.

What they deny, first of all, is that reparation on a scale large enough to make a difference is practicable. As Coates wrote, Broach the topic of reparations today and a barrage of questions inevitably follows: Who will be paid? How much will they be paid? Who will pay? Surely tens of millions of Blacks in the United States are entitled to reparations (not to mention the many descendants of Native Americans and arguably other groups), a number on an altogether different scale than, say, Japanese-American internees or Holocaust survivors. Each of these people, we may grant for the sake of argument, is owed a very large sum of money. Tw endorses the idea of unconditional cash transfers to African Americans, perhaps on top of a universal basic income (UBI) for everyone. It isnt hard to imagine the vast logistical and bureaucratic difficulties of administering such a plan (not the UBI but the reparations). Tws proposals are extremely abstract, like those of most reparationists, but other writers have suggested that truth commissions could assess the harm cumulatively suffered by African Americans, and on that basis the amount of each payment could somehow be determined. In Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations (2006), Roy Brooks proposes that a trust fund administer individual payments for the purposes of education and funding businesses, and the total amount of money in the trust would be determined by multiplying the average difference in income of Black and white Americans by the number of Black Americans.

Most writers (including Brooks and Tw) reject the idea of merely a one-time cash payout in favor of remedies that deal with long-term issues in the African-American community, to quote philosopher Molefi Kete Asante. Among the potential options, Asante says, are educational grants, health care, land or property grants, and a combination of such grants (cited in Alfred Brophys Reparations: Pro and Con (2006)). Community development programs are a popular idea in the literature; for example, Tw mentions the African-American Reparations Commissions plan that money be transferred to cooperative enterprises and that financing be provided for the planning and construction of holistic and sustainable villages with affordable housing and comprehensive cultural-educational, health and wellness, employment and economic services.

Whatever the moral merit of these and a myriad of other vague proposals, they face obvious and intractable obstacles. First, as mentioned, is the administrative and political nightmare of determining which individuals or communities will receive reparations, how they will be distributed, and how they will be funded. Second, and even more fundamental, is the question that Adolph Reed posed in 2000 and that has not been answered, because it cannot be answered: How can we imagine building a political force that would enable us to prevail on this issue? It is a shockingly obvious problem with the whole reparations discourse, and so intractable that it utterly vitiates the latter. Are we to believe that in an age of resurgent proto-fascism, fueled in part by white fears of something as mild as critical race theory and the very idea that racism has played a significant role in American history, a tiny minority of anti-racist activists will be able to build a nationwide movement so overwhelming that it sweeps into power a supermajority of legislators committed to radically restructuring society on the basis of reparations for slavery? Does any serious person find this scenario remotely conceivable?

Tw, like nearly all reparationists, scarcely even acknowledges these problems. Why are they so rarely discussed? A cynic would have a ready answer to this question: the politics of reparations is largely performative, a way of demonstrating ones political virtue, of surfing the wave of elite liberal preoccupations and perhaps even boldly veering off to the left, thus really proving ones revolutionary bona fides. It doesnt matter if ambitious nationalmuch less globalreparations legislation is inconceivable; the point, if youre an academic, is to have a trendy research project and to play around with various ideas for their own sake. Tw, for example, waxes philosophical on conceptual distinctions such as responsibility vs. liability, and on the strengths and weaknesses of certain arguments for reparations, including harm repair arguments, relationship repair arguments, and his own constructive view that he considers the most defensible. Its all a waste of time. The most important question is ignored: how are we to build a massive political movement that will crucially depend on the altruism of white people in a country where whites have been consistently more than 70 percent opposed to the movements goals?

Most reparationists dont consider themselves Marxists, but since some do, it is worth pointing out that the movement they advocate doesnt make contact with Marxism. Eugene Debs was a true Marxist when he said, Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic element, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results. There is no shared interest or solidarity between white and Black workers when the latter demand from the former (and other whites) financial compensation for centuries of white supremacy. This is instead an idealistic appeal to mass altruism, which, given the motivating force of economic self-interest for most people (of which Marxists are well aware), is unlikely to get very far.

Therefore, it is not only the practicability of material reparations (on a substantial scale) that Marxists deny. It is also the revolutionary or socialist character of the program itself. As Reed, again, has argued, the program is profoundly anti-solidaristic, in that it pits Black workers against white workers. Weve suffered more than you, it says, and therefore deserve more, even at your expense. It tends to minimize, in fact, the suffering and exploitation of white workers, so much so that even authors who consider themselves anti-capitalist, like Tw, are apt to recognize the systemic class injustice of capitalism, if at all, only in the mode of an afterthought. This is certainly true of Reconsidering Reparations. The book evinces hardly any awareness that capitalism in its origins, its history, and its present has been a horror story not only for people of color but for the exploited and immiserated of all races. Europes peasantry wasnt exactly coddled during the transition from feudalism to capitalism, which, lest we forget, required kicking them off the land and produced centuries of mass impoverishment in cities and the countryside. Popular uprisings were crushed again and again, vast numbers were massacred, millions were subjected to forced labor of some form, millions experienced the death-in-life of slaving away in mines and early factories.

It should be unnecessary to observe, too, that even today most whites are not having an easy time of it. In the U.S., 43 percent of people on welfare are white. Death rates for whites, especially those without a college degree, have been rising for years, largely because of the deaths of despair phenomenon. And most white men (56 percent) lack a college degree (compared to 74 percent of Black men). More whites are killed by police than all other races combined, although the rate at which Blacks are killed is more than twice as high as the rate for whites. Weak unions and stratospheric economic inequality dont harm only people of color: poor whites are actually more pessimistic, more depressed, and more prone to commit suicide than poor Blacks and Hispanics. Underlying all this is the fundamental fact of capitalism: most people of all races are deprived of control over their work and ownership of productive assets, leaving them with little defensein the absence of unionsagainst high rates of exploitation, low wages, autocratic domination by investors and managers, and economic insecurity. Nor are whites unaffected by the housing crisis, the burden of student and consumer debt, environmental crises, or the cultural and psychological pathologies of life in a viciously atomized society.

It isnt hard to make a case, therefore, that working-class whites deserve reparations too. As a Marxist would argue, the wealth theyve produced for generations has been stolen from them, and theyve suffered immensely as a result. Why dont we talk about reparations that the capitalist class owes to the working class? Why is the agenda framed in terms of whites vs. non-whites? Again, the answer is clear: this sort of race reductionism is, from the perspective of the ruling class that finances it, a fantastically useful diversion from class struggle, which in its implications leads toward the sort of race war that white supremacists advocate. We see, then, that a supposedly left discourse effectively joins hands with the far-right, and even provides it with excellent talking points. (Those Blacks, lazy parasites, want to take all our hard-earned money! We already give them welfare, now they want even more!) It helps the racists. This may be an unfair thing to say, but one recalls Marcus Garveys flirtation with the Ku Klux Klan. Black nationalism or anything like itanything that treats the artificial concept of Black people or the Black community as denoting an entity with a coherent set of interests, as though it isnt riven by its own class conflictsis not a genuine left politics.

While it is important to talk about the specific problems faced by people of color, it is even more important, for the sake of solidarity and building a political coalition against both capitalism and proto-fascism, to talk about the shared interests of (so to speak) the 99 percent. The reparations discourse does the exact opposite of this.

***

How can we defeat the far-right and the stagnant center? That is the urgent question. The left has to focus ruthlessly on the question of strategy.

There is a widespread belief among leftists that the only way to defeat racism and thereby achieve working-class solidarity is to constantly talk about how terrible it is to be a person of color, how oppressed such people have been throughout history, and how saturated in racism society is. We have to, as much as possible, draw attention to race rather than submerge it under the fact of shared class interests. In her book From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016), for instance, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor chastises Bernie Sanders for essentially argu[ing] that addressing economic inequality is the best way to combat racism. This is an old argument, she says, from the pre-World War I right wing of the socialist movement, which was discredited when Communist parties around the world were able to recruit millions of non-white people by recognizing the legitimacy of their own distinctive, racially inflected and colonially determined grievances. In the U.S., thousands of Blacks joined the Communist Party because of the partys attention to the scourge of racism. Moreover, their recruitment to the left did much to energize it and, perhaps, radicalize it. Surely these facts validate a race-centered strategy?

What she fails to see is that the situation today is very different. Today the left has an imperative need to recruit Latinos and whites, who otherwise might join the far-right. There is little danger of Blacks joining a white nationalist movement. If we want to drive economically insecure, socially unmoored, and politically despairing whites into the arms of the right, a great way to do that is by telling them, in effect, that their own suffering and anxieties are of little moment compared to the suffering of Blacks, and that whites are almost universally racist. Similarly, we should tell men that their masculinity is toxic, that all of them are sexist oppressors and mansplaining chauvinists. As Steve Bannon said in 2017, the longer [the Democrats] talk about identity politics, I got em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we [Republicans] go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats. Bannon, whatever else he may be, is a savvy political operator whose opinions on strategy should be taken seriously.

The Communist Party in the 1930s had to overcome an incomparably more virulent racism among white workers and unionists than exists today. But it did so not by emphasizing race, and certainly not by calling for whites to pay enormous amounts of money for reparations. That would have gotten it nowhere, just as it has gotten the left nowhere in recent years. Instead, it focused obsessively on the identity of class interests between the races. In essence, it followed the strategy of Bernie Sanders, the Marxist strategy (not that Sanders is a Marxist). Its true that, in the effort to recruit Blacks, it also took up the cause of their distinct racial oppression, as with the Scottsboro campaign. But it didnt take this racial advocacy to such a monomaniacal extreme that it would alienate the masses of white workers and obscure the fundamental message about Black and White having to Unite and Fight.

In truth, whatever leftists who have been steeped in critical race theory or Afro-pessimism might think, racism today isnt anything like the obstacle to working-class unity it was generations ago. Decades after the historic achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, overt displays of racism are wildly socially unacceptable and are easily shamed through iPhone videos and social media. But even if we accept the very dubious premise that a deeply rooted anti-Black racism is still a major hindrance to building an anti-capitalist political movement, it makes no sense to think we can overcome such racism by expatiating endlessly on the suffering and oppression of Blacks. If people are as racist as were supposed to think, they wont care! These appeals will leave them cold, or rather will alienate them from the political organizations that are trumpeting the message. The Communist Party was more intelligent: you overcome racism by bringing people together, and you do that by ceaselessly educating them on their common interests against the ruling class.

This obvious strategy, the Marxist one, doesnt mean adopting the caricature of class reductionism that no sane person actually believes, according to which only class matters or every form of oppression can be solved through an exclusively class-based politics. The absurd, bad-faith nature of the charge of class reductionism is shown by the fact that one of its alleged exemplars, Adolph Reedwhose Marxism (i.e., emphasis on class) is so controversial in DSA that he had to cancel a talk to its New York City chapter in 2020has written a beautiful, poignant book on his experience growing up in the oppressively racist Jim Crow South. He is hardly blind to the significance of racismwhich makes all the more striking his insistence that racism is fairly trivial today compared to what it was sixty years ago.

It still has to be challenged, of course, as do sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia. But, in general, telling people theyre racist, sexist, and xenophobic is going to get you exactly nowhere, says Alana Conner, a social psychologist at Stanford. Its such a threatening message. One of the things we know from social psychology is that when people feel threatened, they cant change, they cant listen. To quote another writer, Margaret Renkl, somehow you need to find enough common ground for a real conversation about race. One way to find common ground is to talk about common interests. That can help dissolve peoples defenses against hearing what you have to say. Its also useful, Renkl notes, to remember that you yourself are hardly innocent either, so you shouldnt be too condemnatory of basically decent people who, like you, are unaware of their prejudices. Prejudice is endemic to humanity itself. There is no such thing as purity, much as the woke mob may disagree.

In short, even if it is only racism and the oppression of Blacks youre concerned aboutfor some reason being uninterested in class oppression as such, which, today, is exactly whats responsible (rather than racism) for most of the deprivation Blacks experienceyou should still situate your discussion of race in a broader, consistent emphasis on the capitalist-engendered suffering of all races. This is especially advisable if you actually want to get policies passed, including those relating to identity politics, since, as Mark Lilla reminds us, you first have to get people in power who share your values. You can do nothing to protect black motorists [pulled over by police] and gay couples walking hand-in-hand down the street if you dont control Congress and, most importantly, if you dont have a voice in state legislatures. You have to get your people elected, and you do that by showing you relate to voters shared concernsabout the economy, wages, healthcare, housing, unemployment, working conditions, wealthy tax cheats, and the like.

It is also worthy of note and bears repeating that the so-called class reductionists (the Marxists, the ones who prioritize class solidarity) are right that universal programs such as Medicare for All, Housing for All, free higher education and abolition of student debt, and redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor would massively reduce racial inequality and achieve many of the goals of race-based reparations. This is argued, for example, in Adaner Usmani and David Zachariahs article The Class Path to Racial Liberation, but one needs only a little common sense to see its truth. Given that Blacks are, for example, overrepresented in poverty and among those without a college education, it is clear that universal programs will disproportionately benefit them. Since such programs are also, as we have seen, incomparably more politically viable than reparationsunless you think a majority of ostensibly racist whites can be convinced in the near future to give up large amounts of their income to people they hateit is very puzzling that identitarians are often unmoved by the idea of class-based legislation. In effect, their political practice sabotages the only realistic ways of realizing their goals.

Reed is right, evidently, that some on the left have a militant objection to thinking analytically. Race-based politics tends to be grounded in feelings: outrage that racism still exists and that people of color are disproportionately oppressed. These are understandable feelings, but a politics of self-expression is an unintelligent and nonstrategic politics that risks handing victory to ones enemies.

***

In a Dissent interview, Tw acknowledges that much of the reparations program will probably never be politically popular. But then he gives the game away: a lot of thethings that could be part of a reparations drive dont necessarily need to be framed as reparations. Okay, so why did you write a book framing them as reparations? In doing so, youre only contributing to their marginalization. He goes on:

For instance, reducing fossil fuel use polls better than reparations, and it is likely to gain popularity as the climate crisis becomes more and more apparent. If we follow the divest/invest strategies that Black Youth Project and other groups have talked aboutthats a win from a reparations standpoint, and you would never need to use the word. You could simply explain what pollution is and why youd like less of it, and explain the better things that youd like to do with those resources, like healthcare and housing, and prevention of intimate partner violence and intercommunal violence in non-carceral ways.

So in the end he endorses Sanders-style universalism. Apparently weve been arguing about nothing this whole time.

The failures of Black Lives Matter illustrate the folly of a non-Marxist strategy. The BLM movement did raise consciousness for a while, to the point that 52 percent of the public supported it in the summer of 2020. But support has declined since then, and the movements goals have gone mostly unrealized. The Defund the Police demand didnt work out so well, as cities and the U.S. government are spending more money than ever on police departments. It might have been strategically smart to emphasize that whites, too, suffer immensely from police brutality and are killed in very large numbers, but it seems that most identitarians are uninterested in the problems of white people (particularly white cisgendered men). It is unlikely, however, that any amount of campaigning on the narrow issue of police brutality would have resulted in significant change. If you want to defund the police, the way you go about it is not by centering the police but by focusing attention on positive and universal proposals regarding housing, education, employment programs, and the like.

It is true that the universal measures in the original version of the Build Back Better bill were, likewise, defeated, despite being wildly popular. But why were they defeated? According to most of the reporting, it was because of two senators: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. If the Democratic Party had been more politically competent and managed in 2020 to get a majority of 52 or 53 in the Senate, it is quite possible that these proposals would have passed, making a major difference in the lives of Black peopleand whites too, who deserve justice no less than Blacks.

Again, none of this is to dismiss issues of identity, including abortion rights, trans rights, and gay rights. They deserve prominent advocacy. But they cannot be allowed to crowd out and marginalizeas they too often do todayfundamental, universal, and solidaristic issues of class. These should provide the continually emphasized ideological framework for every other demand, and, for moral and strategic reasons, should be ceaselessly championed by nearly every organization on the left.

In general, the political terrain of the twenty-first century, everywhere in the world, promises to be dominated by various types of populism. People everywhere are bitterly resentful toward the elite, however they define the elite. It is the essential task of the left to channel this populism in the right direction, focusing ire on the class elite rather than the supposed cultural or racial or ethnic elite, the cultural outsiders. That way lies fascism, which is becoming an increasingly threatening global phenomenon. If we want to stop fascism, we have to be Marxists.

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Race Reductionism Threatens to Doom the Left - CounterPunch

White nationalists keep showing up in the hearings of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Evidence is mounting that white nationalist groups who want to establish an all-white state played a significant role in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that left five dead and dozens wounded.

Thus far, the hearings have documented how the Proud Boys helped lead the insurrectionist mob into the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C, journalist James Risen wrote in the Intercept.

Based on July 12, 2022, testimony from a former Oath Keepers member, the white nationalist group coordinated with the Three Percenters, another group of white nationalists, and the Proud Boys in mobilizing their extremists groups to rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, as asked by President Trump in his Dec. 16, 2020, tweet.

As a cultural anthropologist who has studied these movements for over a decade, I know that membership in these organizations is not limited to the attempted violent overthrow of the government and poses an ongoing threat, as seen in massacres carried out by young men radicalized by this movement.

In 2020, for instance, the Department of Homeland Security described domestic violent extremists as presenting the most persistent and lethal threat to the people of the United States and the nations government.

In March 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that the number of arrests of white supremacists and other racially motivated extremists has almost tripled since he took office in 2017.

Jan. 6 was not an isolated event, Wray testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and its not going away anytime soon.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights group, tracked 733 active hate groups across the United States in 2021.

Based on my research, the internet and social media have made the problem of white supremacist hate far worse and more visible; its both more accessible and, ultimately, more violent, as seen on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol and the shooting deaths of ten Black people at a Buffalo grocery story, among other examples.

In the 1990s, former KKK leaders including David Duke rebranded white supremacy for the digital age.

They switched KKK robes for business suits and connected neo-Nazi antisemitic conspiracies with broader anti-Black, anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic racism.

From the 1990s to the late 2000s, this movement largely built discreet online communities and websites peddling racist disinformation.

In fact, for years one of the first websites about Martin Luther King Jr. that a Google search recommended was a website created by white nationalists that spread neo-Nazi propaganda.

In 2005, the white nationalist website Stormfront.org had 30,000 members which might sound like a lot. But as social media expanded, with both Facebook and Twitter opening to anyone with an email address in 2006, its views got a lot more attention. By 2015, 250,000 people had subscribed to become members of Stormfront.org.

Between 2012 and 2016, white nationalists on Twitter saw a 600% increase in Twitter followers. They have since worked to bring white supremacism into everyday politics.

The Tech Transparency Project, a nonprofit tech industry watchdog group, found that in 2020 half of the white nationalist groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center had a presence on Facebook.

Without clear regulations preventing extremist content, digitalcompanies, in my view, allowed for the spread of white nationalist conspiracies.

Racist activists used algorithms as virtual bullhorns to reach previously unimaginable-sized audiences.

White nationalist leaders, such as Richard Spencer, wanted an even bigger audience and influence.

Spencer coined the term alt-right to this end, with the goal of blurring the relationship between white nationalism and white conservatism. He did this by establishing nonprofit think tanks like the National Policy Institute that provided an academic veneer for him and other white supremacists to spread their views on white supremacy.

This strategy worked.

Today, many white nationalist ideas once relegated to societys fringes are embraced by the broader conservative movement.

Take, for instance, the Great Replacement Theory. The conspiracy theory misinterprets demographic change as an active attempt to replace white Americans with people of color.

This baseless idea observes that Black and Latino people are becoming larger percentages of the U.S. population, and paints that data as the result of an allegedly active attempt by unnamed multiculturalists to drive white Americans out of power in an increasingly diverse nation.

A recent poll showed that over 50% of Republicans now believe in this conspiracy theory.

In 2016, during Trumps presidential campaign, Vice Magazine co-founder Gavin McInnes formed the Proud Boys to further the goals of the alt-right by protecting white identity with the use of violence if necessary.

Proud Boys members are affiliated with white nationalist ideas and leaders, but they deny any explicit racism. Instead, they describe themselves as Western chauvinists who believe in the supremacy of European culture but also welcome members of any race who support this idea.

Along with pro-gun militias such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, the Proud Boys are an experiment in spreading white nationalist ideas to an online universe of potentially millions of social media users.

Data from manifestos posted online by white nationalist groups shows that many mass shooters share a few common characteristics they are young, white, male and they spend significant time online at the same websites.

The alleged shooter in the killing of 10 Black people in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo on May 14, 2022, described his reason as wanting to stop what he feared as the elimination of the white race.

His fears that people of color were replacing white people came from 4chan, a social media company popular among the alt-right.

In 2019, nine African American church members were murdered in Charleston by a young white man who became radicalized through Google searches that led him to openly white supremacist content.

Massacres in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and at a synagogue in Poway, California, all took place after the shooters began spending time on 8chan, an imageboard popular with white supremacists and the home of QAnon posts.

For many of these individuals, the most important part of their radicalization was not about their home life or personality quirks, but instead about where they spent time online.

The reasons men join groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers - and even some liberal groups is less clear.

A former Proud Boy member offered one reason: They want to join a gang, Russell Schultz told CNN on Nov. 25, 2020. So they can go fight antifa and hurt people that they dont like, and feel justified in doing it.

Antifa is a loose-knit group of usually nonviolent activists who oppose fascism.

Other former extremist group members describe seeking camaraderie and friendship, but also finding racism and antisemitism.

But more than any other issue, racial demographic changes are providing recruitment opportunities for white nationalists, many of whom believe that by the year 2045 white people will become the minority in the United States.

In July 2021, the most recent date for which statistics are available, the U.S. Census Bureau notes that of the estimated population of 330 million American citizens, 75.8% are white, 18.9% are Hispanic, 13.6% are Black and 6% are Asian.

What is also becoming clearer is that the spread of white nationalism endangers the idea of a democratic nation where racial diversity is considered a strength, not a weakness.

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Fueled by virtually unrestricted social media access, white nationalism is on the rise and attracting violent young white men - The Conversation...

In the wake of the attack on two New Zealand mosques, President Donald Trump said he did not see white nationalism as a rising threat around the world, but rather a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.

Experts, however, say there are a number of indicators that suggest white nationalism and white supremacy and violence inspired by them are on the rise, in the U.S. and around the world.

The issue of white nationalism came to the forefront after a gunman opened fire at two mosques in New Zealand on March 15, killing at least 50 people.In a manifesto posted by the alleged shooter, he describes himself as an ordinary white man whose goal was to crush immigration and deport those invaders already living on our soil and ensure the existence of our people, and a future for white children. In it, he answers the question of whether he is a supporter of Trump: As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.

When a reporter told Trump on March 15 about the reference in the manifesto, Trump condemned the attack, which he described as a horrible, disgraceful thing and a horrible act.

The presidentwas also asked by a reporter whether he saw today, white nationalism as a rising threat around the world.

I dont really, Trump replied. I think its a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. I guess if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps thats the case. I dont know enough about it yet. Theyre just learning about the person and the people involved. But its certainly a terrible thing.

Shortly after Trump made his comment, a reporter askedNew Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern whether she agreed with Trumps belief that he did not think white supremacy worldwide was a problem that was rising in any way.

No, Ardern responded tersely.

On CNNs State of the Union on March 17, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Trump needs to pick up the phone and call the Department of Justice.

Tlaib, March 17: Theres real data and information currently right now of the rise of white supremacy right here in this United States of America. He needs to look at the data and the information and the facts and actually listen and understand the tremendous responsibility he has in being our president, our leader of our country.

He cannot just say its a small group of people. Theres too many deaths, not only from the synagogue to the black churches to the temples to the now the mosques. We need to be speaking up against this, and it has to start with him reiterating the importance of real information and data that says its on the rise.

You cant just say it isnt, when the facts say the complete opposite.

So, what do the data show?

Lets start with the Justice Departments FBI data on hate crimes, since that was specifically referenced by Tlaib.

According to the FBI, there were 7,175 hate crime incidents in 2017, a 17 percent increase from 2016and the third year in a row with an increase. The number of incidents in 2017 was also the highest yearly total since 2008. About 58 percent of the hate crimes in 2017 were motivated by race/ethnicity/ancestry.

Digging deeper into the numbers, anti-black or African American hate crime rose 16 percent to 2,013 incidents in 2017; anti-Hispanic incidents rose 24 percent, with 427 incidents; anti-Arab crimes doubled to 102 incidents. Anti-Jewish hate crime incidents also rose 37 percent to 938 in 2017, but anti-Islamic hate crimes dipped 11 percent to 273.

Experts, however, caution that the FBIs hate crime statistics are an imperfect way to track the rise of white nationalism. Not all of the hate crimes overall were committed by white nationalists (some of the documented incidents, for example, were anti-white). The data do not identify the perpetrators that way.

There was also an increase in the number of agencies participating in reporting hate crimes to the FBI and a subsequent increase in the population covered of 5.7 percent between 2016 and 2017. So some of the increase is likely tied to that alone.

Issues also have been raised about inconsistencies in the ways different jurisdictions report hate crimes, which skews the data. There are clearly differences in reporting standards used by different agencies, Heidi Beirich, who leads the Southern Poverty Law Centers Intelligence Project, told us. She noted, for example, that there was just one assault reported as a hate crime in Alabama in 2017, compared with 242 in California which she said suggests hate crimes are under-reported in Alabama.

Beirich said there is a lot of evidence pointing to a rising threat from white nationalism, but, she said, Im not sure FBI hate crime statistics prove the point. She notes that a Department of Justice crime victimization survey in 2015 found U.S. residents experienced an average of 250,000 hate crime victimizations each year from 2004 to 2015. But the survey does not show trends over time, Beirich said.

FBI hate crime data doesnt fit into a neat package when it comes to tracking the threat of white nationalism, John D. Cohen, a former counterterrorism coordinator and acting under secretary for intelligence and analysis of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama, told us in a phone interview. But Cohen, who also served in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under President George W. Bush, agrees there are other, more telling measures.

There is pretty broad agreement among law enforcement in the U.S. and the European Union that violence as a result of far-right groups, particularly white supremacists, is on the rise, said Cohen, who is currently a professor at Rutgers-Newark. Its a growing problem. We are seeing more hate crimes and targeted attacks by people who identify with that ideology.

The Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks domestic extremism, last month reported a 7 percent rise in hate groups in the U.S. in 2018, with 1,020 groups identified. White nationalist groups, specifically, surged nearly 50 percent, growing from 100 chapters in 2017 to 148 in 2018.

Last year marked the fourth year in a row that the number of hate groups increased, after a short period of decline. The rise, SPLC says, was fueled by political polarization, anti-immigrant views and the ease of spreading those ideologies through the internet.

Beirich noted that Alexa web traffic analytics show the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer site now gets about 4.3 million page views a month.

More and more people are interested in their ideas, she said.

In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken just after the Charlottesville rally in August 2017, 9 percent of the respondents said they thought it was strongly or somewhat acceptable to hold neoNazi or white supremacist views. As ABC News reported at the time, thats equivalent to about 22 million Americans.

The Anti-Defamation League, meanwhile, reports that white supremacy groups have stepped up their propaganda efforts.

ADLs Center on Extremism (COE) continues to track an ever-growing number of white supremacist propaganda efforts, including the distribution of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic fliers, stickers, banners and posters, according to a recent ADL report. The 2018 data shows a 182% increase of incidents from the previous year, with 1,187 cases reported, compared to 421 in 2017.

The group said that level of activity far exceeded any of its previous distribution counts.

The ADL also reported that the number of racist rallies and demonstrations rose last year. At least 91 white supremacist rallies or other public events attended by white supremacist were held in 2018, up from 76 the previous year, with hate groups increasingly employing flash mob tactics to avoid advance publicity and scrutiny, the ADL reported.

We are seeing an increase in the public expression of far right, white supremacist ideological viewpoints, Cohen told us. It is more open in its expression, both online and in protests like in Charlottesville.

Cohen said he prefers to look at the issue from the perspective of an overall threat assessment. In todays climate, he said, its not just a matter of tabulating the number of members of various white nationalist groups. The internet and social media have changed the game. People self-connect with ideologies espoused by hate groups online. They often act independently of those groups, he said, though they may be inspired by their messages.

So while the number of white nationalists could have remained steady, the threat they pose may be increasing, Cohen said. Whereas people with these ideas used to be isolated geographically, they are now able via the web to reach people who are disaffected and mentally unwell, inspiring them to commit violent acts.

A November report called The Rise of Far-Right Extremism in the United States from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that the number of terrorist attacks by far-right perpetrators rose over the past decade, more than quadrupling between 2016 and 2017. There has also been a rise in far-right attacks in Europe, jumping 43 percent between 2016 and 2017.

The threat from right-wing terrorism in the United Statesand Europeappears to be rising, wrote the reports author, Seth G. Jones. Of particular concern are white supremacists and anti-government extremists, such as militia groups and so-called sovereign citizens interested in plotting attacks against government, racial, religious, and political targets in the United States.

Another indicator is the perception among minority groups about the threat they face. Cohen pointed to a December 2018 report from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights that surveyed nearly 16,500 individuals who identify as being Jewish from 12 European Union countries and found widespread fear of being targeted for harassment and attacks.

Trump may be correct that those who are members of white nationalist groups, compared with the overall population, are a small group of people, Cohen said. If one looks at the number of gun crimes in the U.S., for example, the number of violent attacks carried out by white nationalists is a relatively small subset, he said. But law enforcement officials are concerned about the rising threat of white nationalists, their growing influence through social media and the devastating impact hate-inspired attacks have on the public.

The House Judiciary Committee plans to hold a hearing in April on the rise of white nationalism in the U.S. According to the Daily Beast, the committee expects to bring in officials from within DHS and the FBI for questioning on the rise of white nationalism in the U.S and the efforts the agencies are currently adopting to combat it.

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The Facts on White Nationalism - FactCheck.org

The House select committees hearings on the 2021 Capitol insurrection, which begin on June 9, should not neglect a key driver of the attack: white Christian nationalism.

White Christian nationalism is the belief that Americas founding is based on Christian principlesand that Christianity should be the foundation of how the nation develops its laws, principles and policies, as my co-author defined it in a report we wrote earlier this year for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

This ideology played a crucial part in fomenting the insurrection, from the buildup and dry runs that occurred immediately following Election Day in November 2020 to the attack itself. It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians, D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges testified before the House in July 2021.

Luke Mogelson the New Yorker journalist who filmed the shocking video of the attack from inside the Capitol similarly remarked: The Christianity was one of the surprises to me in covering this stuff, and it has been hugely underestimated. That Christian nationalism you talk about is the driving force and also the unifying force of these disparate players. Its really Christianity that ties it all together.

The white Christian nationalist version of patriotism is racist, xenophobic, patriarchal and exclusionary. And it celebrates the use of violent force, as dramatically seen on Jan. 6, 2021.

But white Christian nationalism is not the only way Christians have understood the link between religious commitments and political activism. In contrast to those who preach white Christian nationalism, many Black Christian communities have historically embraced a different kind of patriotism, one that leads to an expansion of democratic processes, the inclusion of marginalized people and nonviolent calls for the nation to live up to its foundational ideals.

Historical leaders such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as contemporary leaders such as Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., civil rights activist and lawyer Bernice King, and LaTosha Brown of Black Voters Matter have been outspoken about their Christian faith as the foundation for their pursuit of a multiracial, participatory democracy.

And yet, despite Black Christians and other inclusive religious communities alternative visions of faith, white Christian nationalism remains the most dominant force of religion in U.S. politics and represents an urgent risk to democracy in the nation. Networks of power and money prop up white Christian nationalism and give it outsized influence in national civic life and discourse.

Its sway over political leaders depends largely on its ability to deliver significant numbers of votes in a consistent way. While there are several ways that white Christian nationalists mobilize voters, perhaps the movements biggest draw is that it reconciles two seemingly contradictory notions: that our nation, a Christian nation, is the greatest on Earth and, at the same time, it is overrun with alien and evil forces.

White Christian nationalism, for its role in the Jan. 6 insurrection alone, is a harmful and extremist belief system that deserves more public alarm. At present, it is the greatest threat to democracy and maintaining the peaceful transfer of power in the United States. We neglect this dangerous ideology at our own peril.

Jemar Tisby, Ph.D., is a New York Times bestselling author, national speaker, and public historian. He is the author of The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Churchs Complicity in Racism and How to Fight Racism.

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Jemar Tisby: White Christian nationalism fueled Jan. 6 attack