Daily Archives: August 24, 2020

White nationalist Richard Spencer has said he will be backing Democratic candidate Joe Biden in November's election after previously distancing himself from Donald Trump.

Spencer, who was one of the key figureheads of the alt-right movement, tweeted how he is "on Team Joe" on Monday, adding in a self-made campaign slogan, "Liberals are clearly more competent."

In a series of tweets, Spencer further explained his reasoning for backing Biden.

"The MAGA/Alt-Right moment is over. I made mistakes; Trump is an obvious disaster; but mainly the paradigm contained flaws that we now are able to perceive. And it needs to end," Spencer wrote. "So be patient. We'll have another day in the sun. We need to recover and return in a new form."

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In another tweet, Spencer added: "I will never flip on my fundamental principles. (My principles were never voting for the supposed 'the lesser or two evils' or 'stopping big government.')

"Walking into certain defeat, even death, is not heroic. It's foolhardy. I have no sympathy for martyrs. I admire winners."

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Spencer as "a suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old."

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Spencer first rose to prominence in 2016 after shouting "Hail Trump!" and being greeted with Nazi salutes at an event in Washington shortly after Trump was elected.

However, Spencer said earlier this year that he regrets voting for Trump, following the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.

Spencer feared that Trump's approved airstrike which resulted in the death of Soleimani brought the U.S. to the brink of war with Iran.

"I deeply regret voting for and promoting Donald Trump in 2016," Spencer tweeted. "To the people of Iran, there are millions of Americans who do not want war, who do not hate you, and who respect your nation and its history.

"After our traitorous elite is brought to justice, we hope to achieve peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness," he added.

Spencer also led a protest against the Trump administration launching an airstrike on a Syrian airbase in 2017.

Credited with creating the term "alt-right," Spencer was also one of the main organizers of the neo-Nazi "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 at which counter-protester Heather Heyer died after being struck by a car driven by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr.

In a statement released on the third anniversary of the deady rally, Biden said: "Three years ago today, the world watched in horror as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and far-right extremists with torches in hand descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, spewing the same anti-Semitic bile that was heard in Hitler's Germany in the 1930s.

"It was a moment of testing for our country, and a wake-up call to the fact that hate never diesit only hides. And when our leaders give it oxygen, it can come roaring back to life.

"And then our president claimed that there were 'very fine people on both sides.' Donald Trump had the audacity to assign moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those who stood against it.

"I knew then that we were in a battle for the soul of this nation. And I knew then that I could not stand by and let Donald Trump destroy the core values of this nation. Now, three years later, we can see even more clearly that everything that has made America, America, is at stake."

Spencer and Biden's campaign team have been contacted for comment.

Excerpt from:

Richard Spencer Backs Joe Biden, Says 'MAGA/Alt-Right Moment is Over' - Newsweek

A middle-aged lawyer recently sat down at a pok restaurant in a North Georgia town. He was sniffling and dabbing his eyes with a napkin. Dont think its corona, he said, pulling up a Web site on his phone with statistics on diagnoses worldwide. Then he looked at Twitter and began talking about a different sort of virus. When Donald Trump first announced his Presidential bid, I told my wife, immediately, Hes going to be the President, he said. The lawyer welcomed the candidacy. How to put this and not sound fifteen? he said. I like chaos. I thrive in it.

For years, the lawyer, who asked not to be identified, worked in Washington, D.C., for the Republican Party. He moved his family south a few years ago, having realized, he said, that D.C. is just Hollywood for ugly people. He found that he had time on his hands. Id never been interested in social media, he said. I cant stand Facebook. But he became intrigued by the power of Twitter. Really repulsive meme-ing, the stuff that makes you laugh, makes you remember, he said. The right, he went on, is great at it instinctively. Whether its a 4chan board or basement neckbeards, they nail it. They can distill a huge talking paragraph into a cat picture. He considers Trumps digital facility absolutely genius, and believes that his frequent Twitter misspellings (Barrack Obama, covfefe) are intentional. In 2015, while the lawyers young children napped, he began trolling. Id have a glass of wine, talk to my wife, watch Netflix, and see what kinds of things we could do, he said. He would sometimes pass four or five hours a day this way.

The lawyer is not a mainstream Republican; he likes Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders. He was also unbothered by the recent Senate report on Russias election meddling. (If youre not interfering with elections, he said, youre not doing it right.) Out of curiosity, he attended a far-right gathering, where he found the younger attendees to be maybe a little misguided, but well intended. He began creating fake Twitter accounts, he said, to see whether I could get more interactions, more retweets, by being a little more radical. The Confederate flag was often his avatar, or the Bonnie Blue, a lesser-known Confederate banner. For his handles, he made up acronyms with a nationalistic tinge, such as FFK: Faith Folk and Kin. He fashioned the accounts ersatz users as boomers or gun-rights activists. The latter, he said, were easy: Just follow Dana Loesch and interact with those crazy girls who stay up all night tweeting Second Amendment stuff. He added, Id get them to retweet me and then my following would blow up. By the time the 2016 race was under way, he had about twenty accounts, each with a few thousand followers. His fake alt-right accounts amplified Trumps messaging and distorted Hillary Clintons. (Something about her makes me nervous, he said.) His fake Antifa ones spread what he called disinformation and false stories to benefit Trump.

He pulled up an old account with the handle Ruthless Lessruth. This was supposed to be a girl who was married to an alt-right guy, he said. He explained how hed used the account to trick an Antifa group into protesting an alt-right rally that didnt exist: I P.M.d the head of the Atlanta Antifa and told him that my husband was alt-right and that I was repulsed by it. Then, in the guise of the wife, he directed the Atlanta Antifa group to a would-be rally at a Marriott Marquis. A bunch of people showed up. That was hard to do, to pose as a girl with political views that Im not familiar with. Some of his Antifa accounts also pushed veganism. You have to find some community to exploit, he said. Id find an approved vegan account with Antifa leanings and interact with them a bit. It was really tedious. But Im a lawyerI get into the minutiae. Manning accounts on both sides of the political spectrum had its risks. There was always the fear of tweeting something out of the wrong account, he said. Like praising immigration to my alt-right followers or something.

The lawyers trolling dropped off in 2017. Hed become disillusioned by Trump. He hasnt done anything he said he was going to do, the lawyer said. But Id vote for him over Biden. No one is excited about Biden. (I would have pulled for Bernie, he said.) He recently opened a new Twitter account. I just dicked around on it, he said. I watched some of the trending tags. Im not a conspiracy theorist. Theres nothing I think is being hidden from us that I care a lot about. He sighed. Maybe Ive just gotten old.

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Confessions of a Trump Troll - The New Yorker

Red Pill Hari Kunzru

Knopf

September 2020

"You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe," Morpheus tells Neo in the Wachowski Bros.' 1999 film, The Matrix. "You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

It is with The Matrix that the term "red pill" entered our vocabulary and later memedom as we grew into our collective, online consciousness, but the dilemma between living in blissful ignorance and confronting the truth about reality is nothing new. Neither is the idea that our reality might be simulated, or at least manipulated. From Ren Descartes' Evil Demon to Gilbert Harman's Brain in a Vat, thought experiments have often sought to tease out whether it is possible to trust our perception of reality, to determine whether we can know with certainty that what we seem to experience with our senses is an accurate assessment of some larger truth.

It is this larger truth that the far-right, emboldened by the emergence of a reactionary political class all too willing to stoke the flames of panic and prejudice, have laid claim to in recent years, claiming also, in the process, the term "red pill" to describe their process of awakening to uncomfortable realities they accuse the left-leaning of not wanting to come face to face with. British-Indian novelist Hari Kunzru, author of five previous novels and PEN/Jean Stein Book Award finalist, addresses the intersection of such existential quandaries in his latest novel, aptly titled Red Pill.

The premise of Red Pill is simple enough; clichd, almost. The unnamed narrator, a struggling writer suffering a dry spell, embarks on a retreat to clear his mind and restore his creative faculties. Any overused tropes end here, though, as Kunzru weaves an intricate fabric from a multitude of seemingly disparate elements German romanticism, the legacy of the Third Reich, the Stasi, the European migrant crisis, the 2016 US presidential election all of which come together to create this haunted tale that merges questions of privacy, transhumanism, the political ascendency of the Right in Europe and the US, and moral responsibility, among others.

Water drop by qimono (Pixabay License / Pixabay)

Kunzru's protagonist a man of Indian heritage, married and father to a young daughter is awarded a fellowship at the Deuter Center in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee. If that latter name sounds familiar, it is because it served as the location of the eponymous 1942 Wannsee Conference, in which the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was discussed a tragic and macabre past that weighs on the setting in much the same way the cold, stark, unforgiving weather does. Rather than use his fellowship to any industrious effect and develop his work on the concept of the self in lyric poetry, however, the narrator finds he is unable to fall in step with the center's rather aggressive communal work policy, which dictates that he must research and write in the presence of others.

In between calls with his wife back in Brooklyn and visits to the grave of Romantic poet Heinrich von Kleist, he binge-watches Blue Lives, a disturbingly violent police show that peppers its scenes of torture with obscure quotes, which the narrator believes might be intended as subtext.

Interestingly, the fictional Blue Lives airs at a time in which another nihilistic group fixated with the brutalization of the body is filming its own horrors for the world to see. Although ISIS is not explicitly mentioned by name, the footage from "jihadi propaganda" videos is referenced in one of several instances in which the narrator juxtaposes death with spectacle, the dignity (and what he assumes to be the inherent human right) of privacy with violent and humiliating invasiveness. Meanwhile, his initial topic of investigation the lyric "I" suffers from his frustrated attempts to secure for himself isolation and, if he is being honest with himself, plain old disinterest.

"Deep down I had no real desire to understand how lyric poets had historically experienced their subjectivity. I wasn't that interested," he admits. "It was a piece of wishfulness, an expression of my own desire to be raised above the pleasures and pains of my life, to be free from the reigning coercions of a toddler, the relentless financial pressure of living in New York. I wanted to remain alone with myself as inwardness. I wanted, in short, to take a break."

Photo by Advait Jayant on Unsplash

His desire for solitude and clarity is inexorably thwarted, and he happens upon surveillance footage that leads him to believe that residents at the center are being watched, even in (what ought to be) the privacy of their own rooms. It is thus that his paranoia at being spied upon and his preoccupation with the creator of Blue Lives, Anton, and the show's underlying meaning converge to form the catalyst for his own descent into madness, mirrored, no less, by the poet Kleist, who also "had a crisis, brought about by reading Kant, who taught that the human senses are unreliable, and so we are unable to apprehend the truth that lies beneath the surface of things."

He begs his cleaning lady, Monika, to tell him the truth about whether the center is spying on its residents, which leads to a rather long aside in the novel in which she recounts her terrible experiences at the hands of the Stasi, little assuaging his general sense of malaise and imminent doom.

The world events that unfold around the narrator are no more helpful at staying this spiral into psychosis. At the very outset of the novel, he acknowledges the role of chance in determining whether one is born into wealth or war, comfort or mortal struggle, also acknowledging the fragility of one's current circumstances, tenuous and unpredictable. "Our very happiness made me uneasy," he confesses. "It was a time when the media was full of images of children hurt and displaced by war. I frequently found myself hunched over my laptop, my eyes welling with tears. I was distressed by what I saw, but also haunted by a more selfish question: if the world changed, would I be able to protect my family? Could I scale the fence with my little girl on my shoulders? Would I be able to keep hold of my wife's hand as the rubber boat overturned? Our life together was fragile. One day something would break."

His position as a member of an ethnic minority in a white man's world compounds this anxiety, which he sees reflected in a refugee father and daughter duo he meets at different intervals in the novel and desperately longs to help in some way. "It's always people like us who go first," he tells his wife.

When the narrator at last meets Anton, he is finally afforded the opportunity to ask the burning questions that have been consuming his thoughts only the answers he receives are far from placating. His obsession becomes manic, and he follows the mind behind the show across countries, refusing to accept the man's destructive vision of a future in which humankind is divided into two groups: one that fuses with technology to transcend animal limitations an updated version of the Nazi take on Nietzsche's bermensch and the other that is destined to slavery in service of the first.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Kunzru accomplishes several noteworthy things with Red Pill, not the least of which is following nihilistic philosophies (even those that do not designate themselves as such but instead, claim to hold a utopian vision for the future that involves culling 'undesirable' elements) to their logical endpoint. In striving to fabricate an artificial, 'perfectionist' version of ourselves, we ironically (or predictably, for anyone who is familiar with history) expose the very worst in our nature.

Kunzru also addresses the bedrock humanity hits in stretching philosophy that questions reality to the extent it renders any cooperation based on that reality impossible to its snapping point. If we cannot agree on basic premises and inalienable rights, what then?

The mental crisis that ensues from having the foundations of one's belief system shattered is likewise accurately depicted: the world becomes unrecognizable, a simulation as it were. "The streetscape wasn't real. The sidewalk, the passers-by, the cars, the clouds in the sky, all were elements in a giant simulation. The sunlight was not sunlight but code."

The author excels in capturing the geist in alt-right circles, down to the language used. "Cultural Marxism has filled your brain with worms," Anton tells the narrator, after the latter confronts the Blue Lives creator and accuses him of being on the wrong side of history with his morbid masterplan for the future. Using a term favored by conspiracy theorists who allege that progressives are using psychological manipulation to topple the natural order of the world, Anton essentially equates the narrator's opposition to the erosion of basic human values with erosion of the values he personally believes to be enlightened. For that is what cultural Marxists do, according to the alt-right: They promote atheism, gay rights, feminism, all through the humanities faculties in universities and the media and all at the expense of the status quo.

Noteworthy is the Nazi preoccupation with the thinkers of the Frankfurt School, most of whom were Jewish. Another gem of an exchange between narrator and Anton: "Why are you promoting a future in which some people are treated like raw material? That's a disgusting vision," the narrator says, to which Anton responds, laughing: "I'm sorry it gives you sad feels."

Perhaps the most remarkable features of this novel are its relevance to current events and the questions it raises with regard to the ethical frameworks we take for granted and within which we operate. If "privacy is the exclusive property of the gods," as the narrator posits, is the impending class struggle between spies and those who are spied upon? Where will our steady handover of privacy in exchange for security lead to down the road?

If, again, privacy is the demarcating factor between the ruling and subordinate classes, what does it say about refugees on dinghies in the Mediterranean, whose lives and bodies are battlegrounds for political figures to build their platforms on? Is little Alan Kurdi, lying face down on a beach in Turkey, the ultimate spectacle, the ultimate "mockery of human dignity" that is simultaneously relished as a symbol, as the sacrificial animal on which humanity's sins may be pinned, and disdained for its inconvenience?

In the novel, as in reality, the very real flesh-and-blood human lives of refugee father and daughter occupy a space in the background as the theoretical tug of war between Anton and the narrator occupies the foreground, and the parallels between a past that is never too far behind and a present that threatens to rouse those ugly ghosts are all too evident.

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog [By Caspar David Friedrich - The photographic reproduction was done by Cybershot800i. (Diff). Public Domain / Wikipedia]

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Privacy and Alt-Right Transhumanism in Hari Kunzru's 'Red Pill' - PopMatters

After Donald Trump won the U.S. election in November 2016, some Republicans hoped that the new President would mellow in office and moderate his hardline campaign positions. Steve Bannon saw it as his job to make sure that didnt happen.

Bannon, a former investment banker and right-wing documentary filmmaker who served as one of Trumps principal advisers during the final months of his campaign, moved into the West Wing in January 2017, taking over an office at a crucial hallway intersection steps from the Oval Office. His perch allowed him to see nearly everyone visiting then-chief of staff Reince Priebus on one side, and Trumps son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner on the other.

Bannons official new title was chief strategist, and he saw himself as besieged by ideological rivals trying to slow-walk Trumps controversial campaign promises to build a border wall, gut trade deals, and ban Muslims from entering the country. His ascent was seen by many as bringing the fringe voices of white nationalists and the alt-right directly into the West Wing. He spent hours on calls with GOP donors and reporters painting Priebus as beholden to the old Republican establishment and Kushner as a Democrat in Trumps house. He lasted seven months, before being pushed out for leaking about palace intrigue and refusing to cede access and control to Trumps second chief of staff, John Kelly.

Bannons time in the White House may have been short, but it was influential. Within a few weeks of moving in, Bannon helped launch Trump on the hardline policy path he has rarely deviated from since. Bannon, along with senior advisor Stephen Miller, pushed for the hasty freeze of the U.S. refugee program and the halt in immigration from seven majority Muslim countries, moves that were later challenged in court and required revisions. He kept a white board on the wall next to his desk and put green check marks next to actions that weakened international trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and North American Free Trade Agreement.

It is quite a fall, then, to go from viewing himself as keeper of the Presidents to-do list to being arrested by federal agents three years later. Bannon was taken into custody on Thursday, accused of helping orchestrate a scheme to defraud hundreds of thousands of donors who contributed $25 million to an online crowdfunding campaign to build a privately funded wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York alleged that Bannon had falsely told donors he would not be compensated for his work on the We Build the Wall project, and charged him with counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Bannon was reportedly arrested off the coast of Connecticut aboard the yacht of Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese businessman.

Bannon pleaded not guilty on Thursday and was released on a $5 million bond. He wont be allowed to board private jets or boats without permission from a federal judge and must restrict his travel to New York and Washington, D.C. Bannon and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

On Friday morning, Bannon was back on the air of his podcast, War Room: Pandemic, saying that his arrest was a political hit job and an attempt to silence proponents of building a border wall. He did not address directly the charge that he defrauded donors. All these charges are nonsense, Bannon said into a large radio microphone, wearing his signature costume: two black collared shirts. This is to stop and intimidate people who want to talk about the wall.

Trump distanced himself from Bannons wall project on Thursday, saying he didnt like the project and thought it was being done for showboating reasons. Trump said he feels very badly for his former adviser, but added, I havent been dealing with him for a very long period of time. It was inappropriate to be trying to fund a wall with private funds, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a visit of Iraqs Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi.

A White House statement sought to further distance the President from Bannon. President Trump has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the Administration, and he does not know the people involved with this project, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement. One advisory board member of the private wall project, Kris Kobach, the former secretary of state of Kansas, told the New York Times last year that the effort had Trumps blessing.

Bannons path to a desk down the hall from the Oval Office was as circuitous as one of his lengthy tangents that often veer into the history of Nazi propaganda or the Roman Empire. Bannon grew up in a family of Irish-Catholic Democrats in Richmond, Virginia. His father was a telephone lineman who later moved into management. Bannon served as a Navy officer and later got a degree in national security studies from Georgetown and an M.B.A. from Harvard. He eventually went to work for Goldman Sachs before breaking out to start a boutique investment firm in Beverly Hills that specialized in entertainment deals. In the early 2000s, he began producing documentaries that lashed out at political and financial elites and eventually took over Breitbart News, a website that Bannon once described as a platform for the alt-right, a movement that has embraced racist views and anti-semitism.

It was a tweet that brought Bannon and Trump together. In July 2015, weeks after Donald Trump announced he would run for President, Steve Bannon wrote on Breitbart that Trumps book, Time to Get Tough, was a blockbuster policy manifesto. Trump tweeted a link to the story. After that, Bannon repeatedly interviewed Trump on his radio show, and a year later, Bannon was hired as chief executive of the campaign.

Bannon didnt have to bring Trump his ideas on trade imbalances, harsh immigration policies and stripping away environmental regulations Trump already had them. The two men found each other, and Bannon brought a propagandists sensibility to the fight. They both embraced a tactic in Washington of not backing down in the face of flaming criticism and not apologizing if they landed on the wrong side of the truth. Bannon was fond of likening himself and Trump to honey badgers who dont relent even after being stung by bees or bitten by snakes.

When Trump won, Bannon asked to be named chief strategist in the White House and for the first few months of the Trump administration, Bannon had broad privileges to attend meetings in the Oval Office. The Anti-Defamation League called Bannons promotion a sad day and described his tenure at Breitbart as presiding over the premier website of the alt-right a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate-crimes, described Bannon at the time as the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill. Former Ohio governor John Kasichs chief of staff John Weaver said Bannon would be footsteps from the Oval Office and represents the racist, fascist extreme right.

In the White House, Bannon was one of the few in Trumps orbit who rarely wore a suit and tie, often opting for a rumpled blazer and layers of dark collared shirts. Bannon left the white House in August 2017, in the wake of a firestorm over Trump saying both sides had responsibility for deadly violence during clashes over the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, VA. Former White House aide Cliff Sims wrote in his book Team of Vipers that Bannon was the only one in the White House entirely comfortable and thrilled, really with Trumps remarks. Bannon clashed with Trumps second chief of staff John Kelly over Trumps response and other issues, and Trump had come to believe Bannon was regularly leaking to reporters about policy fights inside the West Wing.

Most presidents have an early ideological cheerleader like Bannon, says Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University and author of Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party. Bannon played a role for Trump that was similar to how David Axelrod was able to help Barack Obama define a new Democratic coalition, and how Karl Rove helped George W. Bush expand on his base in Texas to win the White House, says Zelizer. Bannon saw how Trump fit into the Republican party and was able to articulate how Trumps anti-establishment populism and his restrictionist ideas on trade and immigration, once seen as fringe movements, could be the new GOP orthodoxy.

He had a feel for the Republican party and how it had changed over time, Zelizer says.He played an important role in not just helping Trump, but in helping Republicans see why Trump was the right candidate for the party at that moment, says Zelizer.

But one way Bannon was different than those close advisors, Zelizer says, was his active desire to sow chaos in government and erode the administrative state. Bannons arrest comes on the same day that a federal judge blocked Trumps latest effort to protect his tax returns from being handed over to prosecutors in New York as part of an investigation into Trumps business practices. Trumps lawyers are expected to appeal the decision. Ultimately it isnt surprising that another person in Trumps orbit would find themselves in legal trouble, Zelizer notes. This is someone who was comfortable in the world of Trump where the lines of ethics are beyond blurry, he says.

Once outside the White House, Bannon continued to take aim at the Republican establishment. He has long seen himself as a revolutionary wanting to crash the existing political order and undermine the clubby circle of elites, with targets ranging from the Clintons to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Over the past few years, his support from major Republican donors waned and his direct influence over Trump dropped off. Bannon started a podcast about the COVID-19 pandemic that focused on Chinas initial coverup of the virus, and hes been a vocal critic of the Chinese Communist Party. Trump has said Bannons been a more effective advocate for him since he left the White House. Actually, Steve Bannons been much better not being involved. He says, the greatest president ever. Trump told Fox Newss Chris Wallace during an interview on July 19.

But even Bannon knows he lost sway and influence the moment he stepped out of the West Wing. Trump is always influenced by the last guy he talks to, Bannon told TIME during an interview at the dining table in his Capitol Hill townhouse in January. If you want to influence Trump, you got to be the last guy he talks to, Bannon said. That hasnt been Bannon for years.

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You Got to Be the Last Guy He Talks To.' The Rise and Fall of Trump Adviser Steve Bannon - TIME

A recent VICE article described Warhammer 40k fans who have taken issue with the direction the game is being taken by Games Workshop as both an alt-right minority and a far-right faction.

On August 12th, VICE author Paulie Doyle published an article titled The Warhammer 40k Community Is Trying to Weed Out Its Far-Right Faction.

In the article, Doyle claims that the creation of a meme depicting then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump as The God-Emperor of Mankind led to closed 40k Facebook groups becoming a repository of racism and far-right content, filled with Warhammer-themed memes mocking everything from specific ethnic minorities to gender equality.

Related: YouTuber Arch Details Next Steps In His Warhammer Is For Everyone Campaign To Save Warhammer!

Doyle proceeds to promote the feminist No More Damsels charity, which seeks to create a more inclusive atmosphere in the London wargaming scene.

The charity had previously penned a letter to Games Workshop that demanded the company further elaborate on their plans to make Warhammer for everyone.

The discussion then turns to Arch Warhammer and his ongoing campaign to push back against Games Workshops divisive statement.

Related: Warhammer Fan Pens Open Letter Criticizing Games Workshops Divisive Diversity Statement

While Doyle notes that Arch says he does not identify as a member of the far-right, this is narratively undercut by the immediate attempt that follows to hold Arch responsible for the behavior of people in his Discord server.

Doyle writes, Two months ago, screenshots from Archs Discord server were posted on /r/Sigmarxism, a left-wing Warhammer subreddit. Multiple people had used racial slurs, while Arch himself referred to Smi people (an indigenous people of northern Scandinavia) as gypsy but worse.

He added, Another poster used the term field exercises a term understood in far-right circles as referring to the activities of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, which murdered thousands of Romani people, Jewish people and communists in German-occupied territories during the Second World War as a suggested way of dealing with the group.

Doyle also notes that Arch had made a video in which he referred to the fictional Gnoblar race from the Warhammer fantasy series as house n*****s, and another in which he defended the use of the term White Lives Matter.

When asked for comment, Arch responded that he doesnt really concern himself with how extremists interpret his speech, and that he will continue to allow jokes.

Related: Warhammer Creator Games Workshop Accused Of Being Vicariously Racist To Community Members

If you are the most extreme tankie, or even the most extreme fascist, if you simply want to play a game of 40k, not talk about your politics, simply collect the miniatures I do not view that as Games Workshops duty to stop it, Arch explains.

I view that as the rest of societys duty to debate against these people and to prevent them via public discourse, and the public opinion.

Related: Marvel Comics Reveals Details On Their Upcoming Warhammer 40,000 Comic

Arch recently claimed that sources inside Games Workshop have informed him that the campaigns message had been received and asserted that We did everything we wanted to do. We have achieved our goals. And now we can sit back a bit and observe. If GW just continues doing what we wanted them to do in the first place which is just keep making miniatures, preferably something other than Primaris Marines.

If they just continue making miniatures, they continue making the lore, the hobby that we all enjoy, then we can get back to whinging about ludicrous prices or too many Primaris Marines, you know, hobby related stuff. And we can all be happy, he stated.

Arch responded in full to Doyles article in a recent video, wherein the dedicated Warhammer fan breaks down each of Doyles statements in great deal:

What do you make of Vices labeling of Warhammer 40k fans? What about Archs response to their article?

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Vice Labels Critics of Proposed Warhammer 40k Direction As Alt-Right Minority - Bounding Into Comics

The House voted on a bill Saturday to provide $25 billion to the U.S. Postal Service and halt any planned changes amid growing fears that Trump is attempting to hinder the delivery of mail-in ballots ahead of Novembers election. The vote came one day after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy a Trump megadonor testified before the Senate about recent changes at the Postal Service. This is Michigan Senator Gary Peters questioning DeJoy.

Sen. Gary Peters: Will you be bringing back any mail sorting machines that have been removed since youve become postmaster general? Will any of those come back?

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy: Theres no intention to do that. Theyre not needed, sir.

Sen. Gary Peters: So, you will not bring back any processors?

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy: Theyre not needed, sir.

Postal workers in Washington state and Dallas, Texas, said they have ignored orders from above and reinstalled high-speed mail sorting machines. Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports over 534,000 mail-in ballots were rejected across 23 states during this years primaries nearly a quarter of those in battlegrounds states. DeJoy is testifying before the House Oversight Committee today.

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House Passes Bill to Halt Changes at USPS as Fears Mount over Mail-in Ballots - Democracy Now!

C. and I arrive at Justice Center in downtown Portland on Saturday a little after 11 a.m. Unlike the night demonstrations, in which protesters pelt police headquarters with fireworks and flaming trash, the few dozen people this morning are waving American flags and shouting, "Blue lives matter!"

Which is not popular with the crew across the street, who shout back "ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS!" and that all cops must die.

Even the good ones?

"There are no good ones," an Ojibwe boy wearing a medicine pouch tells me.

He cannot name an instance where a police officer has done good for someone?

"You need to step six feet away from him," a kid at the curb tells meand, regarding my question about the police, "I am going to totally KICK YOUR ASS!"

So good morning from Day 87 of the protests in Portland, Oregon. This one is a little different: It's organized by Back the Blue, a group showing its support for police, support that includes a caravan of Trump-supporting motorcyclists who roar up and form a barrier between the opposing sides.

The call-and-response continues.

"All cops are brave!"

"Especially when they're wearing white hoods!"

"God, what a mess," says what looks to be a homeless dude, just before he wings a full water bottle at the flag-wavers.

"The Proud Boys are 100 deep and on their way in, on the MAX [light rail] train," says C. She's referring to the alt-right group behind today's "No to Marxism in America Rally," planned for noon. Last year's meet between the Proud Boys and antifa resulted in just about zero face time, in part because Portland police coordinated with various factions to keep the groups apart.

Things are different this year. Though the action is taking place directly in front of police headquarters, there is not, for the length of today's confrontation, one officer in evidence. Instead, there's a message through a bullhorn several times an hour, "This is the Portland Police Bureau. Our priority is the preservation of life and the protection of everyone's First Amendment [right] to speech We recognize there are groups with different views gathered here today"

The message's coda, to "Stop participating in criminal activity," does nothing to stop the anti-cop side from throwing eggs, throwing rocks, and shooting fireworks across the street. They are primed to fight, and they've been practicing every night since late May. The movement has grown from grief and outrage over the killing of George Floyd to demands for the abolition of all police and all forms of what it considers state-sponsored oppression.

The oppressors now appear to include anyone inside their homes at night. For two months the protestswhich during that time were mainly protests, with people of all stripes and ages marching in relative peace for the cause of Black Lives Matterwere in the main held at the courthouse blocks where we are today. But the dynamic has now changed. Each night, usually at 8 p.m., the black blocthe by-any-means-necessary wing of the movement, named for their all-black clothesmeet at a park somewhere in the city and march to the closest institution they deem problematic (police stations, social services buildings), which are graffitied, set on fire, pelted with trash and sometimes feces. Last week they added a new twist, marching through residential streets late at night and shining lights into people's homes, demanding they wake up, that they get "out of the house and into the streets!" These nightly campaigns take place citywide; residents have no idea if or when it will come down their block, which does not make for a peaceful night's sleep.

"I feel, as a community memberwe came from East Portland, Cherry Park neighborhoodand as one of many mothers in that neighborhood, we want to see the violence and the rioting end," says Christa, a petite woman standing next to a stroller holding her three children, ages four and under. "We want the city council to make a stand, to make some tough calls. We believe in peaceful protest and Black Lives Matter and all these issues. We do not agree with the collateral damage that is happening to our city. We love Portland and downtown is being ravaged by the ongoing riots; businesses are going out of business. It's just very frustrating."

She holds over her head a sign that reads "WHEELER/HARDESTYDO SOMETHING!" What does she think Mayor Ted Wheeler and Councilmember Jo Ann Hardesty should do?

"Hardesty needs to step up and support the police doing their job," she says. "People have the absolute First Amendment constitutional right to protest. They do not have the right to destroy property or assault individuals."

Christa is drowned out by the canned police announcement asking people to stop antagonizing each other.

"Right. 'Stop criminal behavior,'" she says. "The problem is, the district attorney refuses to prosecute once they're arrested. In essence, they're promoting ongoing violence by not having any consequences."

Would it be better if the police had a presence here today?

"Honestly? If the police were out here right now, it would just escalate the situation," Christa says. "When you have such a polarized issue, anything can add fodder. The police show up, this could very well turn into a violent situation."

It's already a violent situation: Proud Boys and black bloc screaming in each other's faces, golf balls and eggs being launched, pepper spray and smoke bombs making everyone cough, and the kid who promised to kick my ass whacking the sidewalk with a thick six-foot pole.

"USA! USA!

"BLM! BLM!"

"This is the Portland Police Bureau.We recognize there are groups with different views gathered here today"

"It's a testament to the passivity of Portlanders that someone hasn't gotten shot," says Kevin. Right, I tell him. Portland is not Pocatello, or Chicago. If someone is eventually shot by, say, someone who feels their home is under threat, the protesters will then have a martyr, who will be held up as proof of a racist system. It's a bit of a finger trap, really.

"And exactly their plan," he says. "For people who claim to be anti-fascist, they're awfully fascist in their tactics."

This "free speech for me but not for thee" manifests, too, in the anti-fascists constantly taking pictures of me, taking pictures of my notes, and, one time, taking my phone. The Ojibwe boy heckles me for 20 minutes. Someone posts photos on Twitter, identifying me as a "fash."

"I don't like you," a man I have never met tells me. "You spread propaganda."

What?

"Don't deny it, I've watched hours and hours of you online," he says. When I press him for these propagandistic details, he spends 10 minutes telling me he doesn't know exactly but doesn't need to know to know I am an enemy. He then galumphs toward the black bloc side, and I think how it makes sense for him to join a movement where he can feel integral without having to substantiate his reasoning, where the cost of membership is hating the people he is told to hate. As I watch him become subsumed by the crowd, another unidentifiable figure in black, I see him as no part revolutionary, more a meat-sack of insecurity.

I've encountered black bloc activists who, when alone, fold like a cheap suit, and also those who want to talk one on one, to maybe find a way toward progress together. This is not what is happening today.

A painter who's told me he paints the demonstrations because "they need to be captured in a medium other than film" gets a face-full of bear mace. A black bloc "medic" rinses his eyes with milk of magnesia. Five minutes later, C. pukes from the pepper gas.

To quote the homeless guy: What a mess.

"And it's not going to stop until the mayor and the governor let us do our jobs," a Portland police officer later tells me. Which neither have been inclined to do, framing the protests as peaceful when they visibly and exponentially are not.

What, I ask the officer, will it take for the nightly demonstrations to stop?

Maybe violence, he says. "You have a 24-year-old white kid who lives in his mother's basement get hit upside the head? He's not going to come out the next night."

The violence right now is not being doled out by the absent police, nor by the Proud Boys, who a little after 2 p.m. have started to march south. The black bloc contingent, which grew considerably as the afternoon wore on, follows close behind. Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" plays as the Proud Boys are pursued through the empty streets of downtown. A dozen young people in black run up the ramps of the Unitus Plaza building, looking like cat burglars, looking to cut off the Proud Boys, to continue the fight. What else are they going to do in a COVID-closed city on a Saturday night?

But the Proud Boys have apparently ditched, heading not into the streets but directly to the MAX train. There will be no more fight with them tonight.

There will, apparently, be a little more pepper spray.

"I can't open it," says a young woman, her eyes shut and streaming tears as she holds a bag of eye wipes. Two blocks later, C. and I minister to another girl similarly blinded.

"I used to love this city. I used to love waking up and knowing I lived here," says C., as we walk past people cheering and sloganeering in the park across from Justice Center. "Now I just feel bad. Not for Portlanders. For Portland."

What will the park crew do on a Saturday night? What they do every night, which is take to the streets, maybe your street. They will tell you, via the same six or seven slogans, that if you are not with them, you're against them. They will call it love for their fellow man. They will claim they are righting historical wrongs, and who but a monster or a racist would object to that? They will call the destruction of property free speech, and average citizens, out of fear or confusion or not wanting to be seen as a monster or a racist (because who knows what terrors that might bring?) will say nothing, or squint hard enough to think yes, yes, it all makes sense, better to be with them than against them; better, maybe, to burn it all down.

Continued here:

When You Say Yes to Hate: Dispatch From Portland - Reason

Then it's caused by 5G towers, other times it was deliberately created in a lab in the United States. It's part of Bill Gates's grand plan to mandate vaccines and inject us all with nanotechnology, but a moment later it's part of the world government's agenda to introduce a universal basic income, destroy private enterprise and control us.

Like most families, mine is not unaccustomed to disagreement. But this is different. It's not possible to simply agree to disagree and talk about other things.

Even the attacks on September 11, 2001, are called into question by online conspiracists.Credit:AP

It is distressing to watch people disappear into the vortex of conspiracy theories, where every conversation leads back to yet another conspiracy. Standard definitions for what constitutes a fact or evidence no longer apply, and quantity of "research" is confused with quality of research.

Hours spent watching conspiracy videos is deemed more sound than a statement from a person who has devoted their life to studying the topic and is backed by regulatory bodies and peer reviews.

It is alarming to see how this media environment lays waste to people who are ill-equipped to critically analyse the content they are consuming.

"Proof" comes in the form of charismatic rants and memes with made-up quotes attributed to Hitler's Mein Kampf. The obscenity of comparing wearing masks to the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust a truth that is also denied doesn't occur to those mired in the conspiracy swamp.

For the committed "truth seeker", even YouTube's conspiracy theories are too mainstream to be believed. Russian-backed websites and alt-right video sharing platforms are the preferred "news" sources. And while some articles and videos contain a grain a truth, they have been so misconstrued or extrapolated as to be beyond reason.

Working in the media I have been accused of being a handmaiden for the world government. I'm told that I write what "they" tell me to write. It's as if the person I have known and loved all my life has gone, fallen so far down a rabbit hole that there's little hope of ever finding their way out.

And the further they fall, the more lonely they become. All relationships are re-assessed on agreeing to a world view, no matter how warped. Family members are given veiled ultimatums to agree or be excommunicated. Friendships, some decades-long, are abandoned when people can't accept "the truth".

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In my case, I am not blameless in the breakdown in our relationship. In the middle of a pandemic, conspiracy theories enrage me to the point where I struggle to be civil.

If she were happy and content in her fantasy land then maybe this would all be OK. But she's not. She feels oppressed when she clearly isn't. She's terrified of shadows. She's paranoid that she's being constantly monitored with malicious intent. And having cut herself off from almost all of her friends and family, she's surely lonely too.

In lockdown, fearful and faced with uncertainty, with too much time spent watching online videos, the only winners are the shonks counting clicks and monetising lies.

Writer, author of '30-Something and Over It'. View more articles from Kasey Edwards.

See original here:

The heartbreak of loving a conspiracy theorist - Sydney Morning Herald

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Instructive bad reading, Part II: Dissecting fascism with the help of Might is Right - NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Proud Boys battle with Portland protesters on Saturday, August 22. Justin Katigbak

Here's your daily roundup of all the latest local and national news. (Like our coverage? Please consider making a recurring contribution to the Mercury to keep it comin'!)

ICYMI, on Saturday a bunch of alt-right yahoos from Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys battled counter-protesters as Portland Police made disturbing (and obviously butt-hurt) excuses for refusing to get involved. But don't fret, cop supporters! They showed up in droves to violently put down an anti-police brutality protest on Sunday night. (It's almost as if they're begging to be defunded!) Hot shot contributor Suzette Smith has the details.

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Four Portland protesters have filed a federal lawsuit against Acting DHS Director Chad "CHAD!" Wolf and 200 officers for injuries sustained from the feds' copious use of tear gas and impact munitions on peaceful demonstrators.

The Indian Creek fire in Oregon has burned close to 50,000 acres so far, and is currently only 20 percent contained.

Related: Oregon prisoners are being paid under $10 to fight the many blazes across the state, and our Blair Stenvick has more.

The Oregon Health Authority today reported 220 new positive cases of coronavirus in the state, and three additional deaths. Disturbingly, the OHA also reported on Saturday that a 34-year-old Multnomah County woman had died of the virus even though she had no underlying health conditions. WASH YA DAMN HANDS, WEAR YA DAMN MASK, KEEP YA DAMN DISTANCE.

According to a report from the AP, the governors of several states (including Oregon and Washington) were influenced by business interestssome of whom were very self-servingwhen coming up with state mandates that are being used to combat COVID-19.

IN NATIONAL NEWS:

Wisconsin's governor has called out the National Guard to respond to absolutely righteous protests following the despicable police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man who was shot seven times in the back in plain view of his three children.

President Trump accepted his corrupt party's nomination to run against Joe Biden in November today, while also making sure to note that if he loses, it'll probably be because the election was "rigged." (He didn't mention that if he wins it will definitely be because the election was rigged.)

The Republican National Convention (AKA the GOP Garbage Parade) starts tonight in case you're a fan of watching a rapidly moving slurry of lies, corruption, racism, selfishness, and gross ineptitude.

New York's attorney general is asking a court to force Trump's business associatesincluding son Eric Trumpto testify and turn over documents in her case to prove that the president has a long history of committing business-related fraud.

Evangelical Christian and Trump supporter Jerry Falwell Jr. has resigned his post as the head of Liberty University over allegations of a sexual relationship between him, his wife, and a business associate. TO BE CLEAR: One's sex life is one's own damn business and shouldn't have any bearing on one's job. However, Falwell is indisputably a grade-a conservative creep who shouldn't be allowed to be in control of anything, so... HA. HA. HA.

In other "stepping down" news: White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has announced she is stepping down from her post to "spend more time with her family" to whom we offer our deepest condolences.

Postmaster General and Trump crony Louis DeJoy testified before an angry Congress today, denying that any of the implementations that he's enacted since taking his post have slowed down the mail. (Narrator's voice: "Though they clearly have.")

Today in "headlines you probably don't want to read, but here it is anyway": Scientists say Hong Kong man got coronavirus a second time.

Are these two points related? As a Taylor Swift fan, I say PROBABLY.

YOU NEED LAUGHS, RIGHT? Then don't miss the livestream I, ANONYMOUS SHOW featuring the wildest anonymous confessions and rants from the famous I, Anonymous column that will be deliciously dissected by a hilarious panel of comedians including Simon Gibson, Steph Tovah, Ify Nwadiwe, and your host Kate Murphy! GET THEM TICKETS NOW, BABIES!

THE WEATHER REPORT: Sunny skies tomorrow with a comfortable high of 82.

And finally... posted without comment.

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Good Afternoon, News: Cops Turn Blind Eye to Violent Right Wingers, Falwell (and KellyAnne) Resign, and a Black Wisconsin Man Shot in the Back by...