Comedian Joe Rogan performs during his appearance at The Ice House Comedy Club on May 10, 2017 in ... [+] Pasadena, California. (Photo by Michael Schwartz/WireImage)

Joe Rogans Spotify debut has sparked intense speculation from fans, as several episodes appear to be missing from Spotifys new Joe Rogan Experience channel.

Scanning through the list of absent episodes, a pattern seems to emerge; Gavin McInnes, Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneux, and many other figures associated with the alt-right are currently missing. Most of the absent episodes (but not all), feature highly controversial media personalities, whose appearances on the podcast were heavily criticized.

McInnes founded a violent, neo-fascist organization known as the Proud Boys, Jones regularly regurgitates outlandish conspiracy theories, while Molyneux is a passionate believer in race science, also known as scientific racism, or simply, racism.

But not all of the missing episodes feature guests obsessed with skull shapes, IQ scores, and interdimensional illuminati - documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, pot activist Tommy Chong and comedian Nick Kroll are also missing from Spotify.

Longtime Rogan fans, already fearing the corporatization of the podcast due to the Spotify exclusivity deal, began to speculate wildly, many suspecting that the podcast might be shifting direction, away from the controversies of the past.

Mikhaila Peterson, famous for being Jordan Petersons daughter (and promoter of a quack diet that literally consists of beef, salt and water), was initially missing from Rogans Spotify channel, but her episode was uploaded a few hours later.

Peterson took to Twitter to call out Spotify for perceived censorship, but was quickly placated by the reappearance of her episode.

Strangely enough, Alex Jones spoke up to calm the fanbase with an uncharacteristically level-headed analysis that didnt involve time-travelling child molesters, or even human-animal hybrids. Jones claims that the missing episodes are Rogans favorite one hundred episodes, and will stay on YouTube, before eventually migrating to Spotify.

That explanation doesnt make a great deal of sense - for example, it seems unlikely that a dull conversation with disgraced comedian Chris D'Elia is one of Rogans favorite episodes. While the missing episodes might find their way to Spotify at some point, its still unclear why they are being excluded in the first place.

Perhaps Rogan really is moving away from the baggage of his past, despite being a consistent, vocal critic of cancel culture and deplatforming. Rogans previous description of the Spotify deal implied that his show would remain unchanged, platforming a diverse range of voices, from the interesting, to downright unhinged:

They want me to just continue doing it the way Im doing it right now, Rogan stated. Its just a licensing deal, so Spotify wont have any creative control over the show. It will be the exact same show."

One major appeal of the podcast was Rogans willingness to listen to a broad range of opinions. However, that attitude wasnt always consistent, or admirable. Was there ever any need to broadcast a conversation with Stefan Molyneux? Pseudoscience and bigotry arent exactly in short supply, and amplifying destructive voices isnt the same as platforming quirky outsiders.

But the Joe Rogan Experience has already changed quite a bit since its inception, having attracted enough attention to turn the podcast into a valuable marketing platform.

Whether it will lean heavily into that direction, remains to be seen.

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Joe Rogans Spotify Debut Sparks Speculation Over Missing Episodes - Forbes

If you've been online in the past few weeks, you've probably come across at least one person discussing free speech. The debate over if it is threatened, who has it, who needs it, what it is, and what form it should take goes back long before the days of social media and the 24-hour news cycle.

Recently, the debate over what limits are being put on public discourse is the center of attention, with a great deal of focus placed on the question of what conversations are worth having. Some, including the signers of the famous Harper's Letter, fear that free speech is threatened. Their detractors fear this is a front to keep the traditionally marginalized from expressing their concerns. Previous controversies have centered around who gets to speak at what institutions and if the withdraw of an invitation to speak, or the denial of it to begin with, is a kind of censorship.

But, are any of these concerns valid? What do experts on argumentation have to say about these issues? Today, we'll consider three experts' stances on when speech can be harmful, when people shouldn't be given a platform, and when we should grit our teeth and suffer their opinion.

Dr. Hugh Breakey of Griffith University lays out his case in the essay "'That's Unhelpful, Harmful and Offensive!' Epistemic and Ethical Concerns with Meta-argument Allegations."

Breakey argues that "meta-arguments," statements that focus on external features of an argument rather than an argument's soundness, can be used to critique arguments by pointing out the harm that an argument might cause.

As an example, imagine that somebody tells an armed mob without evidence that grocers are the cause of a crippling food shortage. Pointing out that this argument might cause harm provides an ethical good (the speaker might not make the argument now that they know harm may come of it) and an epistemic good (the argument might be improved or abandoned if the weakness of it is pointed out). While meta-arguments aren't good or bad by themselves, this example shows how they can be used positively.

However, other times critiques that seem clear to one party in an argument can seem groundless to others. In these cases, meta-arguments can derail discussion rather than clarify it. Worse, it can be impossible to get back on track after these allegations are made.

Big Think reached out to Dr. Breakey, who offered this elaboration on his position:

"When we call out what someone says in an argument as offensive, harmful or unhelpful, it can feel like we are applying an impartial standard. We're setting down sensible, objective rules within which constructive civil debate can occur. But the reality is that our judgments about such matters are likely to be as controversial and contestableand, unfortunately, influenced by emotional and cognitive biasesas our views on the original topic of the debate. Reasonable people can disagree on the risks of harm created by speech, the ethical weight that should be given to those harms, where the moral responsibility for those harms properly lies, and how these factors relate to the importance of freely discussing the original topic of the debate. These are all complicated and difficult questions, and will be answered differently by people with different political views and life experiences. As a result, we need to exercise great caution in leveling allegations of harm and offence during an argument. Otherwise, the very differences that led to the original debateand that make that debate worthwhilewill be used to foreclose it."

Given these concerns, the essay ends with a call for "argumentational tolerance" that is weary of using meta-argumentative allegations in general, but is open to using them when the speech in question is obviously harmful, such as instances of hate speech or calls to violence.

Another stance is taken by Professor Neil Levy of The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, in their essay "Why no-platforming is sometimes a justifiable position."

They agree with many others that free speech is valuable and that good-faith arguments are generally good. However, they find the idea of deplatforming for meta-argumentative reasons more compelling than others might.

In Dr. Levy's essay, they ask you to imagine that a university has invited a speaker who rejects climate change's existence to speak on that topic. While that position is bunk, the very act of being invited to speak by a prestigious university grants credence to what the speaker has to say, which cannot easily be refuted by other, better arguments.

Things like being invited to speak by a prestigious school or having seemingly valid credentials can be "higher-order" evidence in favor of their position. Higher-order evidence, Dr. Levy explains, influences how we evaluate arguments. Higher-order evidence in favor of our position can make us more confident in it, while opposing evidence can lead us to moderate our stances.

However, Dr. Levy points out the difficulty of countering higher-order evidence, or the legitimacy it confers, by rational argument alone. They further out the usefulness of attacking the credibility of the speaker's bunk arguments by focusing not on the argument but on the higher-order evidence's validity. Here, ad-hominem attacks and meta- argumentative critiques of their speaking at all can remove the higher-order evidence. Deplatforming, often critiqued as the suppression of speech, can also be useful, as it prevents a person from being granted the legitimacy that a speaking invitation can bring.

There is a difference between this position and that of Dr. Breakey. Dr. Levy is more concerned with matters of fact rather than debates over what constitutes acceptable discourse. However, this stance is clearly more open to the idea of using meta-argumental allegations to keep speech non-harmful and productive than other common positions are.

Lastly, we have the stance described by the University of Illinois Professor Nicholas Grossman in an essay titled "Free Speech Defenders Don't Understand the Critique Against Them."

Professor Grossman considers the current debate around "free speech" and suggests that the debate is really over what we consider socially acceptable these daysa discussion which we've had before and will have again.

As he points out, most people would agree that there is nothing wrong with deciding that Holocaust denial is odious. Furthermore, they would likely also agree that private actors can (and should) use their capacities to limit the space available for a Holocaust denier to speak in. Most people would also hardly shed a tear if the denier faced social consequences for their speech. However, not everybody agrees on giving the same treatment to J.K. Rowling in light of her statements concerning transgender individuals.

Professor Grossman argues that our current discussions are really about where the line of "acceptability" is. Are people, like Rowling, crossing that line when they imply transgender women are not women? If so, what social consequences should they face, if any? What else might be on the other side of that line now? How do we know? The line has moved before, consider how common the public use of racial slurs was in the past, is the idea of moving the line now any different?

They agree with Dr. Breakey in thinking that these are big questions without easy answers. However, Professor Grossman suggests that, in determining what speech is socially acceptable, these discussions can, and must, take place for debate to move forward. In contrast, Dr. Breakey suggests that these concerns can derail other debates if not used properly.

Perhaps the most obvious take away is that all three of these thinkers agree that certain speakers, notably those inciting violence or those deliberately trying to cause harm using racial slurs, can (and perhaps should) be challenged. It suggests a semblance of agreement exists around the idea that some speech does harm and that this legitimizes certain follow up actions to prevent the speech.

This idea is nothing new; even John Stuart Mill agreed with the idea of censoring speech that could cause immediate violence.

The three thinkers considered here also all agree on the importance of open debate in general. None of them are suggesting that you should be arrested for giving an unpopular opinion. They all argue in favor of using reasoned, respectful debate to advance our understanding of various issues.

However, they disagree on how easy it is to know what is respectful debate and what is speech worthy of critique, deplatforming, and social consequence, and what to do when that line is crossed. While the three do seem to be concerned with slightly different scales, Professor Grossman focuses on societal debates while Dr. Levy focuses on institutional level problems, the differences endure, and each stance can be applied at various scales.

Despite this lack of agreement, they all provide strong arguments for their position and a launchpad for further debate. Though, we might need to already agree on a few points before that debate can even happen.

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Three thinkers on when we should call out harmful speech - Big Think

Day One

+ The Republican convention began, as all conventions should from now on, by deplatforming its platform. The stale ideologies of the pre-Trump party were replaced over the course of four days by a parade of the ridiculous and the repugnant, gun-slingers and fetus-worshippers, conspiracies and histrionics, white grievance, fake piety and unabashed money-grubbing. The convention itself unfolded like a mockumentary of the last four yearspolitics as sophomoric trolling, all wrapped in an obsequious salute, not to the flag-spiked stages, but to Trump himself. The party doesnt a platform, a policy map, a daily briefing. The platform is whatever Trump says it is and that is subject to change, week to week, day to day, hour to hour. Consistency is for losers. Ideologies are for the weak. And the new GOP, Trumps GOP, dominated by his own bloodline, is all about winning the moment.

+ With Trumps speaking every night, the big question on Monday was: will Donald, like some enfeebled Plantagenet monarch, announce the line of succession?

+ Law and Order week kicked off with Trump and Pence vowing to defend cops no matter what. They soon got the chance to prove they meant it.

+ Does Mike Pence realize that the thin blue line refers to the police omert code of law enforcement officials not enforcing the law against dirty, and even killer, cops?

+ As Pence yowls about the thin blue line (cops who refuse to rat out dirty cops), Jacob Blake fights for his life after being shot in the back 7 times by Kenosha cop in front of his family after breaking up a fight between two women..

+ It happens multiple times a day, day after day

+ Mini-Trump tyro Charlie Kirk kicked the day off by proclaiming: Trump is the bodyguard of Western CivilizationI can see it, as long as by civilization you dont include literature, art, drama, music, dance, science, medicine, ethics, moral philosophy or spelling.

+ Heres a nice Christian-looking couple gazing admiringly at a segment of Trumps border wall, declaring: We want this nation to continue to be the beacon of hope for the world.

+ Its refreshing to see Andrew Cuomo get hoisted by his own fat mouth

+ In his rant, gun-pointing, St. Louis trial lawyer Mark McCloskey called activist, nurse and pastor Cori Bush the Democratic nominee for Missouris 1st congressional district that Marxist revolutionary. Heres how Bush responded

+ A pro gun school shooting dad says, Thank god Mike Pence was vice president the day my daughter was killed. Thats weird, isnt it? Did he check with Alex Jones that the Parkland shooting really took place?

+ During the GOP roll call, of 55 people speaking:

42 were men, 13 women.

5 of the 55 were people of color, 4 Latinx and 1 Asian-Pacific Islander.

+ Kimberly Guilfolye: If you want to see the socialist Biden-Harris future for our country, just take a look at Californiaa place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation [and] an immaculate environment that has been transformed into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.

+ Guilfoyles attack on California was a kind of revenge porn blasted at her ex

+ Kimberly makes Pat Buchanan seem like a wimp.

+ Are they cosmopolitan elites or Marxist revolutionaries, Kimberly?

+ Did anyone check Guilfoyles decibel level, close to The Who after the Ox died?

+ I am Trump woman, hear me roar!

+ Guilfoyles speech was on tape and they didnt reshoot it?

+ Back to the permission mechanism trope, tonight youve got permission to be a fascist, America.

+ Does the Cuban exile oil executive, who fled Cuba with his family at the age of 13, understand that under Trumps policies, he would have been jailed and sent, not back to Cuba, but Honduras?

+ Eagerly awaitingBidens revelation of his inner Castro

+ Wheres ASAP Rocky?

+ TimScott pretty thoroughly skewers Biden for reactionary views on race, but then claims two minutes later that Biden and Harris are promising a socialist utopia.

+ Didnt Scott get the memo that hes got to mention Trump at least every 30 seconds?

+ How Chick-fil-A saved Tim Scott

+ Two South Carolina politicians speaking at GOP convention, neither of them Lady G

+ Kevin Alexander Gray: The only sympathetic outrage a black man gets from US public opinion is after being shot & most likely killed by a police until the case against cop is dropped or he/she is acquitted in court. Black women, shot & killed under similar circumstance are still not even given that.

+ Cancel Student Debt Culture!

+ Imagine the life you want to have. You can have it: with Trump steaks and ZPak.

+ Do all Trump men suffer from nasal drip?

+ Dont worry, Jr. Papas got a brand new bag

+ Not sure I really want to be part of the radical left, if Joe Bidens also a card-carrying member

+ This was the antithesis of Empathy Night, call it Great Balls of Ire.

Day Two

+ Peter Navarro says that Melania is the Jackie Kennedy of the Trump White House. Does he know something we dont about Trumps future?

+ Overnight ratings for night one of the conventions. Six networks combined,10-11p ET: Democratic 14.6 Republican 11.6. The solution for these soft ratings is pretty clear: Dr. Phil interviews the Falwells on family values

+ If only the CDC would issue a warning about violent cops

+ Maine lobsterman Jason Joyce: 4 years ago, the Obama-Biden Admin. used the Antiquities Act to order thousands of square miles of ocean off-limits to commercial fishermen. Although Maines lobsterman dont fish there, President Obamas executive order offended us greatly.

+ By the time he was done, the Maine lobsterman seemed more enthused about Trumps attempts to overturn Roe v. Wade and move the US embassy to Jerusalem than the lobster haul over the last four years

+ Anti-immigrant activistMary Ann Mendoza waspulled from RNC schedule of speakers tonight hours after she tweeted an anti-Semitic conspiracy thread referring to QAnon. Ok, but what was the real reason they cancel her? Did she stutter?

+ David Bernstein: The one useful thing we did get tonight was a delineation of exactly how blatant the anti-Semitism you promote must be to get excluded from official Trump/GOP company. That is, you can promote a theory that places rich Jews such as Soros and the Rothschilds behind vast global conspiracies, including one to obtain the blood of Christian children but not if it actually mentions the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by name.

+ As the nation celebrates the centennial of womens suffrage, RNC is featuring Abby Johnson, an antiabortion zealot who has supported policies that would bar women from voting. This is the very same woman who said she understands why the police might want to profile her adopted Latinx son: Statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.

+ Trump himself once supported late-term abortions.

+ Imagine the adjectives this anti-abortion woman would use to describe a botched execution in Oklahoma or Alabama

+ Speaking of cocaine, its Larry (hey, leave me some kids) Kudlow, to let us know Covid is a thing of the past and, once freed from Draconian banking regulations, the economy will lift off into the stratosphere

+ Fred Kaplan: Kudlow keeps up his spotless record of being wrong about everything. This time hes wrong about not just the future but the present and past too.

+ At this point is it really possible to sully the grounds of the White House?

+ Oh, no, theres another generation of the Billy Graham clan!

+ In America we have not yet experienced physical persecution, warned Jane Graham Lynch. Whos she mean by we?

+Save a fetus, kill your granny.

+ Its Margaret Sangers time in the barrel (deserved)

+ In the words of my grandfather Billy Graham, Dick, you should bomb the dikes outside of Hanoi.

+ Last night Tim Scott said Trumps GOP was a safe space for the LGBT community. But after hearing Ms. Graham, I think thats a trap to lure them in. Get out!!!!

+ Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron slams Joe Bide for his long history of specious remarks on race: Mr. Vice President, look at me. I am Black. We are not all the same, sir. I am not in chains. My mind is my own. And you cant tell me how to vote because of the color of my skin. Good for you, Cameron. Now arrest the killers of Breona Taylor

+ I prefer to listen to LeBron James, I know people get tired of hearing me say it, but we are scared as Black people in America. Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrified.

+ Beware the Chinese Communist bankers!

+ Tiffany Trump, who only saw her father a couple of times a year after his divorce from Marla Maples, is making her bid tonight for a bigger slice of the Trump estate (debt)

+ Tiffany:A country founded on ideas not identity? I mean, identity is inscribed into the Constitution, in the most appalling ways

+ During her time at Georgetown Law,Tiffany seems to have gone full Qanon

+ This evenings festivities are weird and unsettling, but also boring and dull. Why didnt they bring Joni Ernst out to castrate a hog

+ The word narrative is getting canceled tonight. About time. Alex and I sent it to the tumbrils 10 years ago

+ Trump wants you to try unapproved drugs, but still wants to jail you for smoking pot.

+ Heres Pence in a video shot outside the Lincoln Boyhood Home in southern Indiana. Theres a reason Lincoln fled Indiana for Illinois: people like Pence.

+ It may come as a shock to Mike Pence, but the party of Lincoln was the party of Marx, at the time

+ As governor,Pence oversaw the rise of the opioid crisis in Indiana and a spike in new AIDS cases.

+ This patriotic music is nauseating. Come on Neil, let him use some of yours again

+ Unborn babies are getting much more airtime than the babies in cages.

+ Some immigrants are more equal than others. And Cuban exiles are more equal than all others. Floridas Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nez swayed before the microphone, rhapsodizing how great her family had it under the Batista regimen and warning how the US crumble into a Cuban-style socialist utopia under Biden and Harris. The whole presentation was farcical, especially her depiction of Colombia as a model ally of democracy in Latin America, a regime where police, the army and paramilitaries have conspired to murder thousands of indigenous people and labor activists.

+ Fidels been dead for four years and still scares the hell out of them

+ They must be desperate for the Cuban exile vote and money. Otherwise, why would they invite Nez to speak, given that during the 2016 Republican primary, when she was backing Marco Rubio, she called Trump the biggest con man there is and implied that he supported the Ku Klux Klan

+ How many times are they going to trot out that threadbare Reagan adage about If we lose freedom here in America, theres no place left to go? Ive counted four tonight and Ive scarcely been listening.

+ Enter Sandmann, the teenage MAGA-hat wearing, abortion-hating, tomahawk-chopping Catholic high schooler, who became a cause celebre on the FoxNews right after a confrontation with Native American activists in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

+ Sandmann denounced his nemesis,Nathan Phillips, Lakota, as a professional protester.

+ Chad Wolf, the person giving the citizenship oath, demanding that the new citizens abide by the law is violating at least two federal laws while presenting the oath

+ At least two of the immigrants who participated in the naturalization ceremony at the White House that was later aired during the GOP convention said they were not told they would be used as props during the convention.

+ Is the new price of citizenship under Trump being forced to take your oath without wearing a mask and with no social distancing?

+ Of course, if theyd raised any objections, ICE was there to jail them

+ No matter how hard he tries, Eric will never win hes dads affection

+ Still Eric Trump delivered some stunning news: Peace in the Middle East! Never-ending wars ended!!

+ Every day my father fights for the American people, especially in the sand traps.

+ Eric Trump going poetic is not a pretty sight.

+ Eric Trump: In closing Id like to speak directly to my father

+ Couldnt he just text?

+ Calling Dr. Freud

+ Whens Bari Weiss speaking?

+ Anarchists seem to have eclipsed Antifa as the GOP bogeymen of the week

+ The camera must have been shooting north when Pompeo Maximus gave his belligerent, China-bashing speech atop the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, otherwise wed have been seeing the ongoing Israeli air strikes on Gaza in the background

+ In a weak attempt to evade the restrictions of the Hatch Act, Pompeo Maximus claims to have traveled to Jerusalem as a private citizen. Yet under Israels COVID restrictions, foreigners, including U.S. citizens, who are not Israeli citizens or permanent resident,s are banned from entering Israel.

+ When violating federal law is described as destroying a norm

+ Pompeo Maximus is clearly one of the most blood-thirsty secretaries of state since, well, HRC

+ Has anyone ever told Trump the eschatological reasonsbehind the evangelicals desire to have the US embassy moved to Jerusalem?

+ Too bad Gore Vidal isnt around to write a sequel to Live from Golgotha

+ In Pennsylvania earlier in the day, civil rights marchers were shot at with a rifle by a white man, who fired into the crowd, put his rifle down and then started talking about Jesus

+ Mark Meadows today: Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares about Hatch Act.

Mark Meadows in 2014 onApril Sands, a former attorney for the Federal Election Committee, who had posted Tweets in favor of Obamas reelection. She actually violated the Hatch Act its troubling.

+ Trump getting a wave of applause for successfully walking down the new sidewalk in the Rose Garden without stumbling or need to take the arm of a US Marine

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Roaming Charges: Great Balls of Ire at the RNC - CounterPunch

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An LA-based music producer who discovered Lady Gaga. The billionaire co-founder of Home Depot. InfoWars founder Alex Jones.

These are just a few of the people who took a gamble on far-right troll Laura Loomers political aspirations by pouring thousands of dollars into her bid for Floridas 21st Congressional District which is home to Mar-a-Lago and where President Trump is registered to vote.

Loomer, who has described herself as a proud Islamophobe, landed a surprise upset in the GOP primary on Tuesday by beating out five other candidates. But winning in November will be a steep challenge. Hillary Clinton won that district by nearly 20% in 2016, and Loomer is facing Democrat Rep. Lois Frankel, who has won reelection twice.

Still, Loomer has so far managed to out-raise her Democratic opponent. Shes pulled in $1.6 million, compared to Frankels approximately $850,000, according to the most recently available FEC filings.

Loomer, who has worked as a correspondent for conspiracy website InfoWars, made a name for herself in far-right and MAGA circles through bizarre publicity stunts and extremely offensive statements. Shes called Islam a cancer on society and referred to Muslims as savages. Shes also spread baseless conspiracy theories about survivors of school shootings. And after a white supremacist killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand last year, Loomer wrote, Nobody cares about Christchurch. I especially dont. I care about my social media accounts.

She even chained herself to the outside of Twitters headquarters in New York wearing a T-shirt that said Stop the Bias when she lost her account after tweeting Islamophobic remarks at Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Loomers racism also got her permanently banned from Facebook, which branded her a dangerous individual. Shes also banned from PayPal, Venmo, and GoFundMe. Even Uber and Lyft banned Loomer, after she complained how difficult it was to find a non-Muslim driver.

Loomers unfiltered bigotry and the hurdles she faces to win in November would normally make her an odd choice for political donors looking to shape the future of the GOP. And yet shes managed to drum up attention among deep-pocketed financiers across the country.

Its just the latest evidence that the GOP is embracing fringe candidates and their ideologies. Loomer celebrated her victory on Tuesday night with the likes of Gavin McGinnes, who founded the Proud Boys, a far-right street-fighting gang, and far-right commentator Milo Yiannoupolous. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene a QAnon believer who won the GOP nomination in Georgias 14th district took to social media to congratulate Loomer, whom she described as her great friend. Loomer also got a de-facto endorsement from President Trump himself, in the form of a tweet.

Among Loomers donors is Jolene Cherry, a top music industry executive based in Los Angeles who famously discovered Lady Gaga and has worked with Sony and Universal. Public records indicate that Cherry donated to Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee in 2008 and 2012. She didnt make another donation in her name again until last year, when she gave money to Trump, the Republican National Committee, Rep. Steve Scalise, and Rep. Devin Nunes.

But the biggest check she wrote was to Loomer, for the maximum single-donation amount of $2,800. (People, however, are allowed to donate to both the primary and general election campaigns.)

Loomer also received a total of $11,200 from recycling mogul Anthony Lomangino and his wife. The Lomanginos are members of Mar-a-Lago and stalwart supporters of the president. They even gave $150,000 to a legal defense fund for Trump associates who got caught up in Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into the campaigns possible ties to Russia, according to Politico.

One of Loomers biggest donors is Karen Giorno, former senior advisor and Florida chief strategist to Trumps 2016 campaign, and now working on Loomers campaign. Giorno is also a contributor to conservative news outlet Newsmax TV.

Loomer has also raked in maximum donations from ardent Trump supporter Bernie Marcus, the billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Home Depot.

But many of Loomers major donors also have ties to organizations and individuals that have been accused of peddling Islamophobia.

Take Myron Zimmerman, for example, a real estate mogul from San Francisco who contributed $2,800 to Loomers campaign. Through his MZ Foundation, Zimmerman has given tens of thousands of dollars to the David Horowitz Freedom Center and American Freedom Defense Initiative (also called Stop Islamization of America), both of which are designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Tech billionaire Robert Shillman and his wife June gave the maximum of $11,200 to Loomer. Shillman is a major donor to GOP organizations and candidates and also sits on the board of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Shillman was part of a vast financial network supporting Tommy Robinson, a far-right anti-Islam activist in the U.K, according to a 2018 investigation by the Guardian. Shillman reportedly bankrolled a fellowship for Robinson with Rebel Media, a far-right Canadian media company, on a salary of about $6,700 per month. Shillman has also given money to Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politician who in 2016 was found guilty of inciting violence against Moroccans.

Some of Loomers supporters have stirred controversy and outrage over the years. For example, she received generous donations from Steven Alembik, a Republican activist in Boca Raton, Florida,who went on a racist tirade against Obama online and called him a FUCKING MUSLIM N-----.

Alembik, a data and email services provider, gave $20,000 to help get Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis elected in 2018 and even helped set up a speaking appearance for him at Mar-a-Lago. But DeSantis had to distance himself from Alembik after he went after Obama. Alembik, who is white, later complained about what he saw as a double standard when it came to using the n-word. So somebody like Chris Rock can get up onstage and use the word and theres no problem? But some white guy says it and hes a racist? Really? Alembik told Politico.

Connecticut-based Lydia Brimelow, who donated $2,800 to Loomers campaign, is listed as an advancement officer for VDARE, an anti-immigration blog founded by her husband, Peter. VDARE, which is permanently banned from YouTube for violating its policies on hate speech, has been accused of trafficking in anti-immigrant hate and publishing white nationalist writers.

Nobody understands censorship and deplatforming issues like Laura. Shes an immigration patriot, and I trust her passionate persistence. Her defiance of guilt-by-association is truly liberating, Brimelow told VICE News via email. She stands for what I care about and she treats me like a human being, unlike most public figures in America today.

When asked what they liked about Loomer or her views, none of the other people mentioned in this article responded.

Cover: Political activist Laura Loomer stands across from the Women's March 2019 in New York City on January 19, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)

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The Big-Name Conservatives Bankrolling This Far-Right Troll's Run for Congress - VICE

Polemics after the Harpers Letter

The military-industrial complex of the country that takes the entire world hostage hint, this does not refer to Iran has also recently signed up to the polemical culture wars, joining themedia and cultural establishment.

In anannual defence billof$740 billion inmilitaryfundingfor the 2021 fiscal year, the US included one important caveat, predictably protested from the pulpit of the Trump entourage: military bases named after Confederates must undergo a name-change.

Iraq-invader David Petraeus had, after all, longpointed outthe absurdity of bases named after Confederates. Such gestural politics havehad theirripple effectsin Europe.

Signs indicate that thewar-machine is playing catch-up with the art world and with journalism (of the variety that Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald derisively calls Resistance journalism).

The renaming of military bases spread over the planet, pays tribute, for example, toHBOstemporary deletionof the1939historic film Gone with the Windand otherelite rites of atonement such asthe ban on thephrase master bedroom byreal-estate dealers. Rehabilitation of the very weapons of state violence by simply removing Confederate names, only adds to thegrotesqueness of the state-sponsored violence which sparked the protests.

Stuntsshould not distract from the danger of militarised police, who for example arrestedblack CNN journalist OmarGimenez on camera, as he covered the Minneapolisriots.

While hotly debated, many in DiEM25 already acknowledge the gravity of the situation that made a seemingly innocuous statement like Harpers LetterOn Justice and Open Debate necessity. They include professor Noam Chomsky (who proudly forms part of DiEM25s Advisory Panel). His signature joins that of exiled Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud, among a host of other fellow travellers on the left as well as our adversaries in the extreme center.

This happened shortly after UCLA authorities placed a researcher under investigation for allegedly undermining the movement after he readMartin Luther Kings Letter from a Birmingham jail. Such reactionary instances of censorship are now affecting journalism, and not only the usual suspects in academia.

Investigative journalist Lee Fang, for example, recently faced accusations from his mostly-white colleagues at The Intercept, who campaign online to have Fang firedbecause he retweeted this interview of Max, a black BLM supporter at a protest, who said I always question, why does a black life matter only when a white man takes it? If a white man takes my life tonight, its national news, but if a black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of .

Fangs interviewee perhaps calls for a radical next-step: towards a socio-economic understanding of racism, and an end to the worlds indifference towards the circumstances of many or most black people. Maxs understanding should resonate in Europe as well would white Europeans so casually dismiss the results of Europes unbridled trade of weapons in Africa, were it not for post-colonial indifference at the non-news of one African killing another?

At The Intercept, however, Fangs co-workers reached the opposite interpretation American journalist Matt Taibbi reports campaigns involving HR going after Fang, on a mission to have him sacked for having undermined the BLM movement.

New paradigms, new understandings of the other, and new cultural forms can only be attained by exchange and discussions without penalties for wrong opinions and never by inquisitions or exorcisms. We see an important difference between the just struggle to transform the way the police receive financing, and to reverse the militarisation of police in the Western World, from the United States to Latin America to France.

But protesters who toppled statues of anti-slavery abolitionists likeUlysses Grant,or Victor Shoechler in Martinique,and even statues ofGandhi like those who lobby behind Democratic politicians to remove a Lincoln Emancipation Memorial in Washington DC, like those who attacked images of the former slave and anti-authoritarian Miguel de Cervantes, all participate in rites of exorcism, rather than in forces of lasting political change.

Historical-revisionists today struggle to scrub and comb the past clean of its demons, by removing sculptures, or in the older campaign to destroy murals by the artistVictor Arnautoff a committed socialist and apprentice of Mexican painter Diego Riviera in San Francisco; as others typically cheerlead theremoval of paintings of female nudes from museumsor even the removal of a mildly erotic Bolivian poem from a muralin Berlin.

Those who lobby to delete words from the dictionary, and to neuter and destroy the grammar of Latin languages because of the inherent sexism of Spanish cannot understand why progressive Elizabeth Warren lost popularity amongthe Latino voters whom she addressed as LatinX.

Among many perceptions shared between centre-right and fashionable progressive pundits, we see a prevalent notion that riots in the US erupted from a socio-economic vacuum, and had nothing to do with the absence of an emergency system of provisions to help populations weather a mass-quarantine and epidemic shutdown of economies. Hunger and despair, caused by life in limbo under an oddly managed quarantine, lacked channels of support and basic aid let alone a Universal Basic Dividend during the emergency.

Inevitably, predictably, in a time of forced unemployment and shutdown, bread riots broke out. Leftist broadcaster Michael Brooks, who left us too soon this July, aptly observed that while anger at police murderousness and discrimination sparked the riots in the US today, in a less formal way these arethe first bread-riots of the Trump era.

DiEM25 believes in a common political project of economic transformation to permanently exit the current economic and ecological crises to be achieved not only through a Green New Deal for Europe, but also by shutting down the war-machine.

Todays progressive elitescapitalise on clichd relics of thethen-transgressiveachievements of the late 1960s counter-cultural revolution, contemporaneouslyreduced to background music for advertising and hip liberal anti-Russia activism.

In the 1960s, a greatly diverse range of Western social movements, with contrasting and conflicting visions of life and expression, during their most successful moments shared certain unifying common goals: to stop the Vietnam war, towards the utopian goal of ending militarism, poverty and imperialism.In these latter, essential projects, manyanti-war religious conservativesalso joined forces, despite having a radically different vision of life to hedonist students or black revolutionaries.

By contrast, present-day 21st century tribal rivalries in what was once the left,owe mostly to the abandonment of any common project, let alone the combined goals of anti-imperialism, anti-war and economic transformation. All of this, we must now recover.

As the ancient Greekphilosopher Zeno rumoured to have beenone of the first anarchists believed, everything heterogenous (diversity) can only exist thanks to a basein shared qualities, just as the branches of a tree sprawloutward in different directions. Difference within the left can exist in concert and effectively, provided we share a common basic project underlying it all.

Arturo Desimone is an Aruban-Argentinean writer and visual artist, currently based between Argentina and the Netherlands (www.arturoblogito.wordpress.com). Hes also member of DiEM25sThematic group on Peace and International Policy.

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Against de-platforming and other stunts - DiEM25

Are you going to E-Viction on Friday? If you want to see the virtual show, then youre going to have to make time for it. It only runs for 12 hours, 12pm ET to 12am ET, and then it disappears like it was never there in the first place.

What a familiar feeling.

My friend once compared using sites as a sex worker to a game of whack-a-mole: A new platform appears, sex workers and adult creators come in, we make it popular, then the executives up top gradually cull us while trading our hard work for civilians (or non-sex workers). Once were kicked off, were forced to find a new platform, and the process starts all over again.

Tumblr is a case study in deplatforming sex workers and throwing safety nets to the wind. Due to the sites popularity among millennials, its NSFW ban was of the biggest vectors for bringing sex workers rights into the mainstream among teens and 20-somethings. But deplatforming is a history that goes far beyond Tumblror SESTA-FOSTA, for that matter. For sex workers, its like a bar being burned down. Sure, we can archive the net on the Internet Wayback Machine, but we cant archive the sense of community that came with it.

Thus, the idea behind E-Viction: Sex workers agree to deplatform and censor themselves en masse as a sort of consensual, nonconsent role-play. Its just as much an invitation to build a sex worker-centered community as it is performance art about doing online sex work.

Youre probably familiar with gentrification. The Urban Displacement Project describes it as a process of neighborhood change that includes economic change in a historically disinvested neighborhood along with demographic changes not only in terms of income level, but also in terms of changes in the education level or racial make-up of residents.

When we talk about gentrification in the U.S., we usually use the term specifically in reference to the gentrification of Black and brown urban communities by white transplants. Brooklyn, New York, is perhaps the poster child for gentrification in the 21st century: White, middle- and upper-class suburbanites settle into the boroughs predominantly Black communities and bring their taste for whiteness with them.

But gentrification is about community space, not just real estate, and so gentrification also happens outside of apartment buildings and grocery stores. One of the most important non-real estate forms of gentrification today is digital gentrification, a term E-Victions art collective Veil Machine uses to describe its events commentary.

E-Viction is a self-destructing platform where sex workers and artists create intimate encounters and exchanges to imagine a world beyond SESTA/FOSTA [] before dramatizing the otherwise invisible censorship of sex workers by self-destructing, the collective writes in a press release. E-Viction is a direct response to our urgent need for a digital public sphere and the challenges of sex worker survival in COVID-19.

Like its offline counterpart, digital gentrification targets the most marginalized communities and cannibalizes their spaces. Online, thats sex workers, particularly queer and trans sex workers of color. Many of E-Victions performers are queer, trans people of color themselves. Black and brown marginalized gendersparticularly Black and brown women, femmes, and trans peoplehave always been at the forefront of sex work, violence, and movements toward Black, trans, and gay/queer liberation, Veil Machine member, E-Viction performer, and sex worker cherubirl told the Daily Dot.

The majority of our performers are sex workers who work as kink professionals, full-service workers, cam performers, strippers, sugar babies, porn producers, and full body sensual masseuses, to name a few, cherubirl said. Over half our members identify as people of color, a third are nonbinary and/or trans, and almost all are identified or socialized as queer. Not everyone is in the business of exploiting their identity or oppression in their sex work or artmaking [] but our [artwork] speaks to nuance and inspires dialogue beyond identity politics into the nitty-gritty of what sex workers have always grappled with.

In offline gentrification, the first wave of gentrifiers are generally oppressed in some ways while having privilege in others. Historically, this happened in the gayborhood, where white gays would create predominantly white enclaves at the expense of residents of color. Public sexwhich once flourished in the Greenwich Village gayborhoodbecame a vector for the New York City government to target gay men by blaming them for the AIDS crisis, which sparked a moral panic that tore the gay community in half. Some queer men saw this as a sign that they could never again trust the state. Others began licking its boots. As the latter gained social (and financial) capital, their neighborhoods became more and more gentrified over time.

That legacy continues today. After the AIDS Crisis, gay West Village residents increasingly encouraged the New York Police Department to police its streets, if not did the policing themselves. Ironically, the same gays who had bathroom sex and pier hookups during the 70s and 80s now call the cops on the trans people of color and sex workers hanging around in their community.

As queer theorist Benjamin Joseph Nobile Kampler argues, the mainstream gay rights movement has conceded to an imagined homogeneous white, heterosexual, middle-class entity, the Public. Because the mainstream gay rights movement believes it must alter gay people, cultures, and sexual practices into a form of homonormativity that mirrors the imagined Public, the LGBT community (emphasis on only four letters) began self-regulating itself to meet the Publics needs. In other words, gay hustlers were sacrificed for Pete Buttigieg.

The assumption that sex is unethical was solidified in the minds of the Public as well as state officials and became increasingly solidified in the minds of queers, particularly gay men, Kampler writes. The best way to fight the spread of HIV, it seemed, was to try to conform to the ideals of the Public. The states attempts at bathhouse closures can be understood as an attempt to infuse gay male life with heteronormative values; for the U.S. government, stopping the spread of HIV amongst gay men meant forcing them into homonormativity.

Digital gentrification is complicated because there are no apartment buildings, no mom-and-pop businesses, no block party spaces stalked by squad cars to document. There is an ocean of information involved in an online communitys history, and becoming a digital historian requires a level of online prowess that isnt quite the same as simply showing up to an intersection and recording. This makes it harder for online activists and organizers to not just document but also break down fascism.

When Tumblr announced its NSFW ban, some civilian LGBT users defended the move by claiming sex workers and adult creators needed to be sacrificed to stop rampant problems with child pornography on the site. Just as the West Villages residents demanded the police arrest transgender sex workers because they felt their safety was at risk, assimilationist LGBT users defended Tumblrs whorephobic policy as a lesser of two evils.

Make no mistakealgorithms that claim to be designed to protect against child trafficking are really just sanitizing measures to keep your timelines respectable, cherubirl said. One of the reasons that celebrities and non-sex worker OnlyFans users have not been kicked off is precisely because they, unlike us, dont pose a threat. This is why, like one of our members Shayla likes to say, Our very existence is resistance.'

Given purity politics and internalized shame enable the sort of online censorship that E-Viction is trying to resist, Veil Machine turns the issue on its head in the way sex workers know best: a power play. Instead of letting big tech decide when sex workers can speak and how, E-Viction calls the shots. You can watch, you can buy services, you can talk about sex workers rights, and you can pay for all sorts of erotic labor. But when midnight strikes, its done. The move lets attendees enjoy sex workers hard work while also mirroring that restless feeling of dormant emergency in the online sex trade. Even though you know when the show will end, theres never really enough time to enjoy it. If only it didnt have to come to a halt.

I think gentrification in the virtual realm boils down to this: Who is the internet for and what is the internet for? cherubirl said. Massive corporations like Facebook (owner of Instagram) and Google privatize the internet and are therefore the digital parallel of real estate developers, exacting inordinate control over the places that people consider home. Many corporations have depended on the support of the sex working community to developsee OnlyFans, Tumblr, CashAppand then toss us out as soon as they no longer need us. As in the case of its flesh world counterpart, the logic of gentrification has an aesthetic.

Exposing this aesthetic, and then breaking it, is direct action. It exposes the audience to the reality of the internet. Sex workers, particularly queer and trans sex workers of color, are the engine behind popular online culture, but big tech curates how and when they get to speak. Instead, E-Viction lets these trans and queer Black and brown sex workers lead the discourse.

It is without a doubt an issue in both the digital world and flesh world that Black sex workers and sex workers of color are statistically more often banned, deplatformed, and censored online, cherubirl said. Sex workers of color are shadowbanned and censored at alarmingly high rates which has an immediate impact on our ability to earn an income, make rent, and meet our basic living needs [] the gatekeepers of resources and the oppressive systems that exist in the flesh world/IRL has a very similar effect to the virtual world, silencing and erasing BIPOC sex workers everywhere.

Inside every story about gentrification is a story of loss. For New York sex workers, thats Times Square, the red light district-turned corporate America tourist trap. Today, Times Squares history as a sex worker hot spot is lost on most New Yorkers under 30, but writers and artists are making sure its legacy wouldnt pass away when its porn theaters closed shop. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel Delaney unravels everything from public sex during adult flicks to the hustlers and gay men that hung out in midtown before Disney (and, more specifically, the NYPD) pushed them out.

E-Viction is like the 21st-century version of Delaneys walk through Times Square. Its a microcosm of what once was and what we could lose as technological whorephobia continues to grow. But its just as much a warning as it is an invitation for change. For the civilians who enjoy E-Victed and want it to go on forever, well, the power is in their hands to make that a reality. So what are they waiting for? This show is interactive.

Youre going to censor us? Well make that a seductive mystery. Youre going to kick us off your platforms? Well make our own. Youre going to shut us down? Well turn our inevitable defeat into a spectacle not to be missed, Veil Machines Sybil Fury told the Daily DOt. Just showing up to work as a sex worker is resisting digital gentrification, and as such, weve been at the front lines of this fight for decades. Its time to pay attention to the everyday forms of resistance weve been using, and ask us how we can develop those tactics into bold, widespread strategies for change.

Veil Machines E-Viction goes live on Friday, Aug. 21, from 11am CT to 11pm CT. RSVP on Eventbrite to attend.

Facing social media crackdowns amid the pandemic, sex workers worry for their futures

E-Viction sex work event sheds light on digital gentrification

This Trumpworld operative obsessed with Kamala Harris background has a past he doesnt want you to see

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E-Viction sex work event sheds light on digital gentrification by self-destructing when its over - The Daily Dot

When a plethora of anti-identity-politics satire accounts are taken down within days of each other, can it really be chalked up to a mistake? Throughout the past few days, Twitter has taken down several accounts that tend to mock the oppressiveness of woke culture by pretending to espouse extreme versions of leftist ideology.

Among the purge was the Babylon Bee, a Christian satire site that often mocks leftist politicians and the woke mob. Their account was reinstated within hours. Twitter claimed the Bee was inadvertently caught in a spam filter, and that their temporary takedown had nothing to do with politics. However, the timing of the Bees suspension is absurdly suspicious.

This is far from the first time the Babylon Bee has been targeted by online censors. Last year, they went up against the fact-checking site Snopes.com, who attempted to label the site as misinformation and accused them of spreading lies, missing the point of satire completely. While a fact-checking site would normally not cause too much worry, Snopes was partnered with Facebook, so their label of fake news can prevent content from being seen and could lead to deplatforming from a huge avenue for reaching audiences.

Among the crowd of anti-woke satirists whose accounts were restricted is Titania McGrath, whose removal last week kicked off the purge. The account poses as a mildly exaggerated version of a woke white woman. Her faux outrage over seemingly innocuous topics has an unsettling yet humorous tendency to predict where the mob will travel next. She has regularly been restricted by Twitter for comments that are suspiciously similar to fully serious posts by the more aggressive members of the online leftist mob.

Her creator, Andrew Doyle, has kept fans updated throughout the restriction, while also calling attention to the plethora of other accounts that were not only restricted but suspended, which means not only can the person not tweet, but no one can see any of the persons old content until the ban is lifted.

Titania McGrath was reinstated yesterday evening, but many other satire accounts are still removed, with no news when or if theyll be allowed back on Twitter. Titania was banned for a thread criticizing medicine and science as oppressive, a clear parody of both the idea that science is sexist and racist and the recent trend of opinion pieces claiming some popular thing is horribly offensive due to tenuous logic and loosely related ideas.

Its disappointing to see accounts mocking the insanity of current times be banned when accounts parroting the same ideas earnestly are given free rein. The double standard applied when you go up against the woke mob is frightening and apparent.

Paulina Enck is an intern at the Federalist and current student at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service. Follow her on Twitter at @itspaulinaenck

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Twitter Bans Babylon Bee, Then Claims It Was An Innocent Mistake - The Federalist

Britains universities are in an appalling state and by no means all of it is the fault of Covid or Ofqual. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, 13 universities face a very real prospect of insolvency as a result of the coronavirus crisis, unless they receive a government (i.e. taxpayer) bailout. The least prestigious universities are at greatest risk. But when will somebody, confronted with these naked emperors, dare to ask the obvious question: why should we bail them out?

It is understandable that universities, in the face of the pandemic and closure of studies, have been financially damaged by a slump in international student enrolments, loss of income from other campus activities such as conferences, losses on their investment portfolios and the continuing need to meet pension obligations. The reality, though, is that this crisis has simply halted them in a career that was already self-destructive and also harmful to society.

The first problem is one of scale. Does a country the size of Britain really need 130 universities, plus 35 similar establishments classed as institutions of Higher Education? Does it make sense that our universities, supposedly establishments catering for the most gifted, currently house 2.3 million students? This is a consequence of decades of politicising higher education, treating it as just another vote-winning amenity on the road to embourgeoisement, like owning a car or graduating to a foreign holiday.

Far too many people are going to university the target of 50 per cent of youngsters set by Tony Blair was passed last year rendering the experience meaningless. In 1994 a total of 271,000 applicants were admitted to UK universities; by 2019 the figure had doubled to 541,000. No wonder we have a drop-out rate of 6.3 per cent, representing a scandalous waste of time and resources. The drop-out rate at some institutions suggests utter incompetence in selecting undergraduates. At the University of Bedfordshire the drop-out rate is 15.2 per cent; at the University of Bolton it is 15.4 per cent; and at London Metropolitan University 18.6 per cent almost one in five students. If the question arose of bailing out any of those institutions, how could such indulgence be justified?

The curricula, too, in many cases, are a travesty. The high culture of the mediaevalstudium generalehas been debased to the point where university courses now embrace subjects such as media studies, counselling, fashion, hospitality leisure and tourism, youth work, floristry and, of course, gender studies. This lowering of the culture of academe has been necessitated by the admission of students lacking the capability to address a serious academic subject.

The objectives of universities today are to generate as much money as possible out of their sausage factories and to flatter the public with the delusion that society is becoming more intelligent, as a consequence of progress. To sustain this imposture, since it has, predictably, proved impossible to elevate the performance of unfit students, it has been necessary to lower the bar by a progressive (in every sense) inflation of grades. Over the same period that saw student intake double, from 1994 to 2019, the proportion of Firsts awarded to a demonstrably less intelligent undergraduate population has more than quadrupled, from 7 per cent to 29 per cent.

Considering the prestige that once attached to a First Class degree, even the initial level of 7 per cent represented undesirable grade inflation. Today, the proportion of students awarded a First or 2:1 has reached 79 per cent. Employers will rightly conclude a UK university degree is not worth the paper it is printed on, unless those employers are the BBC, the public sector or, most appropriately, one of our Potemkin universities. Academics who have protested against this degrading charade have been crushed by the self-interested university hierarchy.

This tragedy has been played out against the background of a Greek chorus of pompous dons droning on about our world-class universities. Yet again,la trahison des clercshas further contributed to the discrediting of another cohort of experts drawn from the elites. Of course there is still first-class research coming out of Oxford, Cambridge and other universities, in certain subjects and at certain levels: considering the resources commanded by them, both human and fiscal, it would be extraordinary if it produced no significant outcomes.

Those reassuring successes, however, like the crowded shop windows in 1960s East Berlin, are a mere facade concealing wider failure. Yet, although the whole climate of contemporary academe is on the cerebrally challenged side of the Left, that should not absolve the Right of its share of responsibility for the decline of universities. Even if one hugely admires Margaret Thatcher, it is not necessary to endorse her attitude to universities. Yes, there was some bumbling inefficiency among dons administering university affairs, but the solution was not to turn institutions of higher learning into business corporations.

Today, having originally embraced that corporate culture, to the detriment of scholarly ideals, universities have followed the same trajectory or, more accurately, pioneered it as their business counterparts: they have become woke corporations. In past centuries there was one forum in Europe, regardless of conditions elsewhere, in which free speech, civil exchange of ideas and lively debate ensured intellectual freedom and that was the university community. Today, in the whole of our society, there is no place where freedom of speech and thought are more violently repressed than in our universities.

Years ago, an American commentator described North American campuses as small, ivy-covered North Koreas. The same now applies to Britain. It is not just a case of scuffles in quadrangles: the totalitarian woke culture has devastated the academic curriculum. To take just one example, in 2018 Oxford Universitys philosophy department, in order to attract more women students, instructed its diversity and equality officer to compose a new reading list comprising 40 per cent female authors. Since the classical canon of philosophy was overwhelmingly male, serious philosophers had to be displaced to make way for unknown women.

How patronising it is for universities to assume women would rather read Angela Davis than Duns Scotus. How long can intellectual achievement survive in such a climate of enforced stultification? Violent de-platforming of speakers disapproved of by the campus nomenklatura, both staff and undergraduate, is training a new generation that will soon occupy influential positions in society that it is not only acceptable but morally imperative to silence the views of anyone with whom they disagree.

Campuses are now police states. Policy Exchange published a paper last year on Academic Freedom in the UK the mere necessity for such a study is a grave reproach to our society which revealed a climate of intimidation on campuses. Only 39 per cent of pro-Brexit students said they would be comfortable expressing that view in class. Strangely, the authors took comfort from the fact that a significant proportion of students are consistently supportive of academic freedom, estimated at 30 per cent to 50 per cent. Yet that means half or more reject academic freedom.

The report recommended that universities should adopt an academic freedom commitment such as the Chicago Principles and appoint an Academic Freedom Champion reporting to the vice-chancellor. The government should establish a statutory duty of non-discrimination for political and moral beliefs and extend statutory protection of free speech to student bodies.

The Adam Smith Institute has published research into left-liberal over-representation in British academia, showing that less than 12 per cent of academics support conservative parties, compared with at least 50 per cent of the public; in 1964, 35 per cent of academics voted Conservative. That illustrates the long march through the institutions by the Left.

There will never be a better opportunity than the post-Covid disarray among universities for a cull of our sink institutions. It is necessary on fiscal and academic grounds. We need a leaner, fitter academe, rather than the teeming spires of overcrowded campuses teaching junk subjects. We also need strong statutory intervention to force university authorities to protect freedom of speech, with punitive fines and, eventually, dismissal from post for persistently failing to do so. Attempted de-platforming should automatically incur being sent down from university.

While it is not practical or desirable to appoint academics along political lines, a code of conduct should impose a duty to refrain from political activity on campus and to teach and mark subjects objectively. But the worst problem of all, the most atrocious example of groupthink, is the public delusion that our world-leading universities are havens of academic distinction. The public must let the scales fall from its eyes and recognise that, of all the flawed institutions in our society, the universities are in the worst state of health.

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It's time to cull and reform our sham, woke universities - Reaction - Reaction

Sturgis, SD -(Ammoland.com)- When we heard that Antifa was planning to protest the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, we thought it was a joke, but the group did end up trying to protest the biker rally. They were unsuccessful by any metric.

Every year hundreds of thousands of bikers from all around the country descended on Sturgis, South Dakota, for the worlds largest and most famous motorcycle rally. Even in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic, bikers made their yearly pilgrimage to the small town that becomes the mecca of the bike world. This year the bikers were joined by a small group of members of the anarcho-communist group known as Antifa.

Antifa decided to protest South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noems decision not to shut down the bike rally as they demanded. Antifa claims it wanted the rally shut down because of the novel coronavirus world pandemic. The group said the rally would increase the spread of the virus. Some of the bikers found the groups reason hypocritical since Antifa has been protesting by the side of Black Lives Matter around the country without regard to the pandemic.

Another reason the group gave for protesting the biker rally was that they were standing up against white supremacy and President Trump. The group believes that most bikers are Trump supporters. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally draws partygoers from all races and walks of life. Several predominantly Hispanic and Black motorcycle clubs attend the rally every year without fear of white supremacy. President Trump has never attended Sturgis or any other motorcycle rally.

One of the protesters signs read, We dont want you here. Coronavirus, White Supremacy, 45.

The number 45 is a reference to Trump. President Trump is the 45th President of the United States. Protesters and others use the number as a nickname for the President.

The protest started peacefully, with most bikers ignoring the black mask covered protestors that marched on down Main Street. One of Antifas favorite tactics is to block off a street. One biker rode his motorcycle by the group. A member of the black-clad demonstrators kicked out at bikers bike as he passed the group. Motorcycles to bikers are more than just a vehicle. They treat their bikes as a part of themselves. They are scared objects.

This trespass against the bikers ride set off the rowdy crowd. Bikers swarmed the Antifa members surrounding them. The noise from the crowd was deafening. Eggs were thrown by the bikers and hit an Antifa member. Police had to move in to protect the group from the angry bikers. The police officers had to escort the group to a safe spot away from the rally attendees.

Police Chief Geody Vandewater said the scene was little chaotic for a bit. The bikers vastly outnumbered law enforcement officers. The rallys attendees did respect the officers request that they stay back away from the protesters. The protesters want the state to defund the police but depended on the same officers to keep them safe from the massive crowd of pissed off bikers.

After the protest ended abruptly, police arrested one of the protesters from Rapid City South Dakota. The officers charge the man with disorderly conduct.

Antifa did not try to protest the rally again. The 80th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally ended on Sunday.

About John Crump

John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. He is the former CEO of Veritas Firearms, LLC and is the co-host of The Patriot News Podcast which can be found at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/patriotnews. John has written extensively on the patriot movement including 3%'ers, Oath Keepers, and Militias. In addition to the Patriot movement, John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and is currently working on a book on leftist deplatforming methods and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, on Facebook at realjohncrump, or at http://www.crumpy.com.

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Antifa Unsuccessfully Tries To Protest The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, AKA Tommy Robinson, reporting for The Rebel media on a Football Lads Alliance demonstration in London in 2017. Photo: Guy Corbishley / Alamy Stock Photo

In the autumn of 2009, a little-known figure named Stephen Yaxley-Lennon made his first appearance on Newsnight, using the pseudonym Tommy Robinson.

Yaxley-Lennon appeared on the BBCs flagship news programme as the founder and leader of the English Defence League (EDL). In a clip, he wore a balaclava and burned a Nazi flag in a disused warehouse in his home town of Luton, in the hope this would reassure viewers that the EDL was not a far-right group an impression they may have had because of the aggressive anti-Muslim protests it organised.

Yaxley-Lennon, a former British National Party (BNP) member, would go on to dominate the British far-right for the following decade. Hes been wined and dined at the House of Lords, invited to address the US Congress, frequently appeared on British TV, been invited to Russia to give a speech after being backed by the countrys foreign ministry and made a small fortune through soliciting donations and book sales. First as the leader of the EDL, then as a vlogger, he was capable of pulling thousands of his supporters onto the streets for often violent protests.

But the days of Yaxley-Lennon dominating the British far-right appear to be over, and his political career is on the wane. A recent protest backed by Yaxley-Lennon saw only a couple of hundred people show up for an event.

It has been a steep decline since his peak in the summer of 2018. After his Twitter account which had 431,000 followers was banned, Robinsons team organised a protest called Day for Freedom. This was supported by a number of prominent hard-right figures, such as former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, then-UKIP leader Gerard Batten, and then-Breitbart News London Editor-in-Chief, Raheem Kassam. Donations were flooding in from supporters, bringing in hundreds of thousands of pounds. When Yaxley-Lennon was jailed for disrupting a trial at Leeds Crown Court later that summer, these figures all backed him once again.

Yaxley-Lennons success as a YouTuber was largely down to the team of technologically savvy middle class graduates he had started working with in March of 2017 while employed by the hard-right Canadian YouTube channel Rebel Media. This team stuck with him as he left Rebel Media and became an independent YouTuber, but the summer of 2018 also saw the team break up. Camerawoman Lucy Brown was sacked after a falling out following the Day for Freedom event. Assistants Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn-John left to work with hard-right Canadian YouTuber Lauren Southern.

Yaxley-Lennon built a new team around him, with seemingly less digitally competent individuals. The production values on Yaxley-Lennons videos fell and his output became less polished. Prominent figures in the new team included former Israeli soldier Avi Yemini, who was convicted of assaulting his ex-wife while working for Yaxley-Lennon, and Daniel Thomas, who was convicted of attempted kidnapping in 2016 and now appears to have drifted away from far-right politics after encountering some legal issues.

In early 2019, Yaxley-Lennon was banned from Facebook and Instagram, losing access to a million followers. Several months later, his YouTube account was restricted and his videos are now not as easy for casual users to find.

Joe Mulhall, senior researcher for anti-racist charity Hope Not Hate, told VICE News: The deplatforming of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon has had a huge impact on his ability to spread his hateful politics. Hundreds of thousands of fewer people now see his content every month, which is a huge step forward. It also played into the severely reduced numbers we have seen at pro-Lennon events since.

The deplatforming and changes in who surrounded him was happening at a time when Yaxley-Lennons behaviour was becoming more erratic, with people close to him at the time describing him to VICE News as a self-sabotaging mess.

In May of 2018 he was due to visit Iceland to give a speech, but pulled out at the last minute, leaving the Icelandic organisers $10,000 out of pocket. Rumours circulating among the far-right at the time alleged that Yaxley-Lennon texted an associate saying he couldnt be bothered to go. This was not the only time Yaxley-Lennon pulled out of a public engagement at the last minute; this type of behaviour continued during his ill-fated MEP campaign in 2019. There are now a growing number of videos online made by former supporters expressing dissatisfaction at Yaxley-Lennon failing to show up for appearances they had arranged.

When Yaxley-Lennon emerged from prison on bail in August of 2018, he was an international celebrity. Protests calling for his release had mobilised thousands, and he was invited to address the US Congress. By the summer of 2019, Yaxley-Lennons behaviour had alienated a number of former supporters, including several of the big names who had been supporting him after his ban from Twitter and his first jail sentence for disrupting the trial at Leeds Crown Court.

When he returned to the Old Bailey in 2019 to begin a retrial for that offence, the protests outside the court were significantly smaller than the protests demanding his freedom the previous year. During a protest at this retrial, Yaxley-Lennon revealed his latest film, Shalom, about a Jewish man in east London, rather than a film his supporters had been expecting, about Muslim grooming gangs the kind of subject matter they were used to, and which was the basis for his popularity.

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon AKA Tommy Robinson speaking via video to a less-than-packed recent rally in central London. Stfan Weil

This high profile backing of a Jewish person by Yaxley-Lennon was fuel for an emerging split on the far-right, between ethno-nationalists (ethnats), who tend to be virulently anti-Semitic and believe you only belong to nations if youre from certain races for example, thinking you can only be English if you are white and civic nationalists (civnats), who dont think theres a connection between nationality and race. Yaxley-Lennon is on the civnat side of this divide, while many of his far-right critics now identify as ethnats.

As Yaxley-Lennon was serving his second sentence for the Leeds Crown Court incident, this split reached a fever pitch, with his former assistant Lucy Brown appearing on an ethnat YouTube channel and alleging that Yaxley-Lennon was using money hed received in donations from supporters to buy cocaine.

Yaxley-Lennons team hit back in a video attacking one of the leading figures on the ethnat side of the split. This ethnat/civnat divide has always existed on the far-right, but its become more pronounced over the past year, and several far-right YouTubers who had previously been vocal supporters of Yaxley-Lennon have drifted towards the ethnat side of the split, coalescing around former BNP youth leader Mark Collet and his new far-right party, Patriotic Alternative.

The deplatforming, far-right infighting and Yaxley-Lennons self-destructive behaviour have all led to our Tommy losing support. He recently announced that he would be moving to Spain for the safety of his family, but quickly backtracked, telling snowflakes that they had not gotten rid of him.

The evidence shows that he is not the figure he was two years ago. That said, Robinson has returned from the brink of obscurity before. Joe Mulhall told VICE News, None of this means his threat has gone away. While severely reduced, he has managed to amass tens of thousands of followers on smaller social media platforms such as Telegram.

@jdpoulter

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Are We Witnessing the Fall of Far-Right Figurehead 'Tommy Robinson'? - VICE