Monthly Archives: January 2021

To the editor: While Im endlessly grateful that news organizations, in their coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, continue to highlight the horrific evils of the Nazis, Im also puzzled as to why the Communists are not assailed as well. (How subtle changes in language helped erode U.S. democracy and mirrored the Nazi era, Opinion, Jan. 23)

As the daughter of Nazi death camp survivors whose parents four years later quickly had to make plans for their escape from the Communists who invaded their country, I feel that it is vital to be careful not to take the rubber band that former President Donald Trump stretched to the far right and allow it now to fling wildly to the far left.

Hopefully President Biden will be able to hold the right-wingers and left-wingers at bay and allow something in the middle to prevail.

Klara Shandling, Los Angeles

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To the editor: In his odious comparison of present-day America to Nazi Germany, Martin Puchner carefully omits any mention of the woke social justice crowd that has successfully hounded speakers whom it has deemed unfit from college campuses.

Indeed, some have lost jobs and livelihoods because they dared voice a dissenting opinion to that mob. Witness the recent shutdown of Parler by Big Tech.

If there is an assault on free speech in our country, it is coming from the left, not the right.

Louis H. Nevell, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: Puchner rightly compares the Nazi use of language for lies and disinformation with that of Trump, his followers and the alt-right. Puchner wisely examines the subtleties of language.

But subtlety goes even deeper. Over the last four years, many in the media, including The Times, spoke of Trump as amoral. This was absolutely incorrect.

The first definition of amoral in the Oxford English Dictionary is this: Not within the sphere of morality; that cannot be characterized as either morally good or bad; non-moral. This definition is not even remotely accurate for Trump.

The definition of immoral is more appropriate for Trump: Not consistent with, or not conforming to, moral law or requirement; opposed to or violating morality; morally evil or impure; unprincipled, vicious, dissolute.

As we recover now and learn and relearn, may we also direct sharper attention to our language.

Tim Vivian, Bakersfield

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We keep hearing Nazi parallels. What about the Communists? - Los Angeles Times

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During the past two years, U.S. counterterrorism officials held meetings with their European counterparts to discuss an emerging threat: right-wing terror groups becoming increasingly global in their reach.

American neo-Nazis were traveling to train and fight with militias in the Ukraine. There were suspected links between U.S. extremists and the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group that was training foreigners in its St. Petersburg compounds. A gunman accused of killing 23 people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 had denounced a Hispanic invasion and praised a white supremacist who killed 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and who had been inspired by violent American and Italian racists.

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But the efforts to improve transatlantic cooperation against the threat ran into a recurring obstacle. During talks and communications, senior Trump administration officials steadfastly refused to use the term right-wing terrorism, causing disputes and confusion with the Europeans, who routinely use the phrase, current and former European and U.S. officials told ProPublica. Instead, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security referred to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism, while the State Department chose racially or ethnically motivated terrorism.

We did have problems with the Europeans, one national security official said. They call it right-wing terrorism and they were angry that we didnt. There was a real aversion to using that term on the U.S. side. The aversion came from political appointees in the Trump administration. We very quickly realized that if people talked about right-wing terrorism, it was a nonstarter with them.

The U.S. response to the globalization of the far-right threat has been slow, scattered and politicized, U.S. and European counterterrorism veterans and experts say. Whistleblowers and other critics have accused DHS leaders of downplaying the threat of white supremacy and slashing a unit dedicated to fighting domestic extremism. DHS has denied those accusations.

In 2019, a top FBI official told Congress the agency devoted only about 20% of its counterterrorism resources to the domestic threat. Nonetheless, some FBI field offices focus primarily on domestic terrorism.

Former counterterrorism officials said the presidents politics made their job harder. The disagreement over what to call the extremists was part of a larger concern about whether the administration was committed to fighting the threat.

The rhetoric at the White House, anybody watching the rhetoric of the president, this was discouraging people in government from speaking out, said Jason Blazakis, who ran a State Department counterterrorism unit from 2008 to 2018. The president and his minions were focused on other threats.

Other former officials disagreed. Federal agencies avoided the term right-wing terrorism because they didnt want to give extremists legitimacy by placing them on the political spectrum, or to fuel the United States intense polarization, said Christopher K. Harnisch, the former deputy coordinator for countering violent extremism in the State Departments counterterrorism bureau. Some causes espoused by white supremacists, such as using violence to protect the environment, are not regarded as traditionally right-wing ideology, said Harnisch, who stepped down this week.

The most important point is that the Europeans and the U.S. were talking about the same people, he said. It hasnt hindered our cooperation at all.

As for the wider criticism of the Trump administration, Harnisch said: In our work at the State Department, we never faced one scintilla of opposition from the White House about taking on white supremacy. I can tell you that the White House was entirely supportive.

The State Department focused mostly on foreign extremist movements, but it examined some of their links to U.S. groups as well.

There was clearly progress on some fronts. The State Department took a historic step in April by designating the Russian Imperial Movement and three of its leaders as terrorists, saying that the groups trainees included Swedish extremists who carried out bombing attacks on refugees. It was the first such U.S. designation of a far-right terrorist group.

With Trump now out of office, Europeans and Americans expect improved cooperation against right-wing terrorists. Like the Islamist threat, it is becoming clear that the far-right threat is international. In December, a French computer programmer committed suicide after giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to U.S. extremist causes. The recipients included a neo-Nazi news website. Federal agencies are investigating, but it is not yet clear whether anything about the transaction was illegal, officials said.

Its like a transatlantic thing now, said a European counterterror chief, describing American conspiracy theories that surface in the chatter he tracks. Europe is taking ideology from U.S. groups and vice versa.

International alliances make extremist groups more dangerous, but also create vulnerabilities that law enforcement could exploit.

Laws in Europe and Canada allow authorities to outlaw domestic extremist groups and conduct aggressive surveillance of suspected members. America's civil liberties laws, which trace to the Constitution's guarantee of free speech spelled out in the First Amendment, are far less expansive. The FBI and other agencies have considerably more authority to investigate U.S. individuals and groups if they develop ties with foreign terror organizations. So far, those legal tools have gone largely unused in relation to right-wing extremism, experts say.

To catch up to the fast-spreading threat at home and abroad, Blazakis said, the U.S. should designate more foreign organizations as terrorist entities, especially ones that allied nations have already outlawed.

A recent case reflects the kind of strategy Blazakis and others have in mind. During the riots in May after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, FBI agents got a tip that two members of the anti-government movement known as the Boogaloo Bois had armed themselves, according to court papers. The suspects were talking about killing police officers and attacking a National Guard armory to steal heavy weapons, the court papers allege. The FBI deployed an undercover informant who posed as a member of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, and offered to help the suspects obtain explosives and training. After the suspects started talking about a plot to attack a courthouse, agents arrested them, according to the court papers. In September, prosecutors filed charges of conspiring and attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, which can bring a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. One of the defendants pleaded guilty last month. The other still faces charges.

If the U.S. intelligence community starts using its vast resources to gather information on right-wing movements in other countries, it will find more linkages to groups in the United States, Blazakis and other experts predicted. Rather than resorting to a sting, authorities could charge American extremists for engaging in propaganda activity, financing, training or participating in other actions with foreign counterparts.

A crackdown would bring risks, however. After the assault on the Capitol, calls for bringing tougher laws and tactics to bear against suspected domestic extremists revived fears about civil liberties similar to those raised by Muslim and human rights organizations during the Bush administrations war on terror. An excessive response could give the impression that authorities are criminalizing political views, which could worsen radicalization among right-wing groups and individuals for whom suspicion of government is a core tenet.

You will hit a brick wall of privacy and civil liberties concerns very quickly, said Seamus Hughes, a former counterterrorism official who is now deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He said the federal response should avoid feeding into the already existing grievance of government overreach. The goal should be marginalization.

In recent years, civil liberties groups have warned against responding to the rise in domestic extremism with harsh new laws.

Some lawmakers are rushing to give law enforcement agencies harmful additional powers and creating new crimes, wrote Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLUs national security project, in a statement by the organization about congressional hearings on the issue in 2019. That approach ignores the way power, racism, and national security laws work in America. It will harm the communities of color that white supremacist violence targets and undermine the constitutional rights that protect all of us.

There is also an understandable structural problem. Since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, intelligence and law enforcement agencies have dedicated themselves to the relentless pursuit of al-Qaida, the Islamic State, Iran and other Islamist foes.

Now the counterterrorism apparatus has to shift its aim to a new menace, one that is more opaque and diffuse than Islamist networks, experts said.

It will be like turning around an aircraft carrier, said Blazakis, the former State Department counterterrorism official, who is now a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

The U.S. government is super slow to pivot to new threats, Blazakis said. There is a reluctance to shift resources to new targets. And there was a politicization of intelligence during the Trump administration. There was a fear to speak out.

Despite periodic resistance and generalized disorder in the Trump administration, some agencies advanced on their own, officials said. European counterterror officials say the FBI has become increasingly active in sharing and requesting intelligence about right-wing extremists overseas.

A European counterterror chief described recent conversations with U.S. agents about Americans attending neo-Nazi rallies and concerts in Europe and traveling to join the Azov Battalion, an ultranationalist Ukrainian militia fighting Russian-backed separatists. About 17,000 fighters from 50 countries, including at least 35 Americans, have traveled to the Ukrainian conflict zone, where they join units on both sides, according to one study. The fighting in the Donbass region offers them training, combat experience, international contacts and a sense of themselves as warriors, a theater reminiscent of Syria or Afghanistan for jihadis.

The far right was not a priority for a long time, the European counterterror chief said. Now they are saying its a real threat for all our societies. Now they are seeing we have to handle it like Islamic terrorism. Now that we are sharing and we have a bigger picture, we see its really international, not domestic.

The assault on Congress signaled the start of a new era, experts said. The convergence of a mix of extremist groups and activists solidified the idea that the far-right threat has overtaken the Islamist threat in the United States, and that the government has to change policies and shift resources accordingly. Experts predict that the Biden administration will make global right-wing extremism a top counterterrorism priority.

This is on the rise and has gotten from nowhere on the radar to very intense in a couple of years, a U.S. national security official said. It is hard to see how it doesnt continue. It will be a lot easier for U.S. officials to get concerned where there is a strong U.S. angle.

A previous spike in domestic terrorism took place in the 1990s, an era of violent clashes between U.S. law enforcement agencies and extremists. In 1992, an FBI sniper gunned down the wife of a white supremacist during an armed standoff in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The next year, four federal agents died in a raid on heavily armed members of a cult in Waco, Texas; the ensuing standoff at the compound ended in a fire that killed 76 people.Both sieges played a role in the radicalization of the anti-government terrorists who blew up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people, including children in a day care center for federal employees. Oklahoma City remains the deadliest terrorist act on U.S. soil aside from the Sept. 11 attacks.

The rise of al-Qaida in 2001 transformed the counterterrorism landscape, spawning new laws and government agencies and a worldwide campaign by intelligence agencies, law enforcement and the military. Despite subsequent plots and occasionally successful attacks involving one or two militants, stronger U.S. defenses and limited radicalization among American Muslims prevented Islamist networks from hitting the United States with the kind of well-trained, remotely directed teams that carried out mass casualty strikes in London in 2005, Mumbai in 2008 and Paris in 2015.

During the past decade, domestic terrorism surged in the United States. Some of the activity was on the political left, such as the gunman who opened fire at a baseball field in Virginia in 2017. The attack critically wounded Rep. Steve Scalise, a Republican legislator from Louisiana who was the House Majority whip, as well as a Capitol Police officer guarding him and four others.

But many indicators show that far-right extremism is deadlier. Right-wing attacks and plots accounted for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the country between 1994 and 2020, according to a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Anti-Defamation League reported in 2018 that right-wing terrorists were responsible for more than three times as many deaths as Islamists during the previous decade.

There have been more arrests and deaths in the United States caused by domestic terrorists than international terrorists in recent years, said Michael McGarrity, then the counterterrorism chief of the FBI, in congressional testimony in 2019. Individuals affiliated with racially-motivated violent extremism are responsible for the most lethal and violent activity.

During the same testimony, McGarrity said the FBI dedicated only about 20% of its counterterrorism resources to the domestic threat. The imbalance, experts say, was partly a lingering result of the global offensive by the Islamic State, whose power peaked in the middle of the decade. Another reason: Laws and rules instituted in the 1970s after FBI spying scandals make it much harder to monitor, investigate and prosecute Americans suspected of domestic extremism.

Critics say the Trump administration was reluctant to take on right-wing extremism. The former president set the tone with his public statements about the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, they say, and with his call last year telling the far-right Proud Boys group to stand back and stand by.

Still, various agencies increased their focus on the issue because of a drumbeat of attacks at home notably the murders of 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and overseas. The Christchurch massacre of worshippers at mosques in New Zealand in March 2019 caught the attention of American officials. It was a portrait of the globalization of right-wing terrorism.

Brenton Tarrant, the 29-year-old Australian who livestreamed his attack, had traveled extensively in Europe, visiting sites he saw as part of a struggle between Christianity and Islam. In his manifesto, he cited the writings of a French ideologue and of Dylann Roof, an American who killed nine people at a predominantly Black church in South Carolina in 2015. While driving to the mosques, Tarrant played an ode to Serbian nationalist fighters of the Balkan wars on his car radio. And he carried an assault rifle on which he had scrawled the name of an Italian gunman who had shot African immigrants in a rampage the year before.

Christchurch was part of a wave of violent incidents worldwide, the perpetrators of which were part of similar transnational online communities and took inspiration from one another, said a report last year by Europol, an agency that coordinates law enforcement across Europe. The report described English as the lingua franca of a transnational right-wing extremist community.

With its long tradition of political terrorism on both extremes, Europe has also suffered a spike in right-wing violence. Much of it is a backlash to immigration in general and Muslim communities in particular. Responding to assassinations of politicians and other attacks, Germany and the United Kingdom have outlawed several organizations.

Closer to home, Canada has banned two neo-Nazi groups, Blood and Honour and Combat 18, making it possible to charge people for even possessing their paraphernalia or attending their events. Concerts and sales of video games, T-shirts and other items have become a prime source of international financing for right-wing movements, the European counterterror chief said.

During the past two years, officials at the FBI, DHS, State Department and other agencies tried to capitalize on the deeper expertise of European governments and improve transatlantic cooperation against right-wing extremism. Legal and cultural differences complicated the process, American and European officials said. A lack of order and cohesion in the U.S. national security community was another factor, they said.

There was so little organization to the U.S. counterterrorism community that everybody decided for themselves what they would do, a U.S. national security official said. It was not the type of centrally controlled effort that would happen in other administrations.

As a result, the U.S. government has sometimes been slow to respond to European requests for legal assistance and information-sharing about far-right extremism, said Eric Rosand, who served as a State Department counterterrorism official during the Obama administration.

U.S.-European cooperation on addressing white supremacist and other far-right terrorism has been ad hoc and hobbled by a disjointed and inconsistent U.S. government approach, Rosand said.

The semantic differences about what to call the threat didn't help, according to Rosand and other critics. They say the Trump administration was averse to using the phrase right-wing terrorism because some groups on that part of the ideological spectrum supported the president.

It highlights the disconnect, Rosand said. They were saying they didnt want to suggest the terrorism is linked to politics. They didnt want to politicize it. But if you dont call it what it is because of concerns of how it might play with certain political consistencies, that politicizes it.

Harnisch, the former deputy coordinator at the State Department counterterrorism bureau, rejected the criticism. He said cooperation with Europeans on the issue was relatively nascent, but that there had been concrete achievements.

I think we laid a strong foundation, and I think the Biden administration will build on it, Harnisch said. From my perspective, we made significant progress on this threat within the Trump administration.

Originally posted here:

Global Right-Wing Extremism Networks Are Growing. The U.S. Is Just Now Catching Up. - ProPublica

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Corbould said although active case numbers are dropping in Edmonton, the current provincial restrictions in place will likely remain in place until the strain on the health-care system has been reduced further. When the rules are lifted and recreation centres can reopen, Corbould said it will take between one and seven weeks to prepare and bring back staff.

It seems we have passed the peak in active cases for the second wave. We may have turned a corner, but we are not out of the woods yet, he said. Recent data shows the trend for active number of cases, hospitalizations and ICU admissions is tracking in the right direction, but theyre still too high.

Mayor Don Iveson raised concerns about rallies flouting the rules and called for strict enforcement of provincial health orders around gatherings and distancing.

Rallies of anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and alt-right hate groups, continuing to gather and have mini-festivals of their own, are really starting to vex Edmontonians including myself, Iveson said. I am hearing more and more frustration from Edmontonians about the enforcement approach.

Police have issued 102 fines under the public health act throughout the pandemic. So far in January, the city issued 58 tickets for violation of the mandatory mask bylaw, with an associated $100 fine, and 12 fines for $1,200 under provincial orders.

Council is scheduled to receive the next COVID-19 update Feb. 10.

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City-owned facilities being looked at for vaccination centres as part of province's distribution plan - Edmonton Journal

Here are three observations about culture and politics as viewed through the prism of the last days of the Trump administration and the first days of the Biden one.

Everyone is making media at all times, CNN reporter Elle Reeve reported of January 6 capital siege. Its crazy. Its like, Were you there if you didnt livestream it? And theyre all hoping for that viral moment that will give them more clout on social media.

The commitment to postingeven though this particular viral moment would ultimately provide authorities ways to track down the riotersshows the degree to which politics has been recoded, in the Trump Galaxy Brain, as some kind of media project. Politics is downstream from culture, Andrew Breitbart, founder of the eponymous hard-right web outlet, once said.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the Capitol as tear gas fills the corridor on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.)

You dont need an army of content-creating goons to have reactionary violence in the United States, of course. Reactionary mob violence, against the Indigenous and minorities, against the poor and the working class, has been an aspect of life in this country since before the creation of the Republic.

But whats become apparent to me is that the dynamics of the networked DIY media economy are particularly catalytic to reaction, in ways I havent heard talked about. Not just because it is an efficientvehicle for spreading unvetted misinformation, though this is true. Nor because it creates filter bubbles or incentivizes mob mentality, though this is also true.

After four years, everyone should know that the deepest reservoir upon which the Trump base drew was not the white working class, but the white petit bourgeoisie. Its a lot of small business owners.

The social media-ization of everything has added to that layer in a particular way. Social mobility may have declined in the United States, inequality has certainlysoared, debt has ballooned, and physical infrastructure is crumblingbut media has gotten easier and easier to access and consume. This expanding cornucopia of tech and entertainment has served as a compensatory narrative of progress and advancement for an empire in decline. The future seems more and more constrained, materially, but, on the flip side, you are freer and freer to build your own virtual worlds and get lost in them.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the US Capitols Rotunda on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.)

The promise of viral fame has also provided a new-model rags-to-riches story to keep gas in the tank of Americas myth of itself as a middle-class nation of self-defined, self-made people, despite the pervasive sense of narrowing opportunity (even as Big Tech consolidated its monopolies). Whether you are an independent journalist looking to Substack, a sex worker on OnlyFans looking to survive the pandemic via a paying fanbase, or a QAnon wingnut decoding breadcrumbs and monetizing the resulting notoriety via T-shirts and Trump merch, the recent past has held out the individual internet hustle as the path to some form of stable autonomy.

In her great book,Labor in the Global Digital Economy, theorist Ursula Huws makes the point that online attention economies are built around begging and bragging, creating systematic psychic stresses. There is, she writes, a cumulative battering of the ego that cannot be good for anyones self-respect even for those who (by definition a minority) emerge from the process as winners most of the time.

After the Capitol assault, the New YorkTimes wrote of participants that a number of the feeds we reviewed suggested that those whod made a sharp pivot to sharing misinformation were similar in their desire to cultivate a public persona. The protesters the Times interviewed

shared an entrepreneurial streak. They expressed a desire for connection with others and sought to achieve it online. But their attempts at conventional influencing (via modeling, reality television, running a small business and sharing motivational content) brought only modest attention.

Until, that is, they found an audience in extreme conspiracies, and a plausible route to the micro-influencer fame that was otherwise out of reach. Jake Angeli, the QAnon Shaman who became the face of the Capitol attack, is similarly a failed actor and web spirituality entrepreneur. Scotty the Kid, who single-handedly built last years Save the Children rallies, is a failed model and rapper (specifically rapping about BitCoin.)

The squeezed small-business-owner class has been, classically, considered the popular base for fascism. Official ideology privileges and glamorizes the dream of economic independence, yet small proprietors are slammed by competition, atomized, and relatively powerless. Thenetworked web economy specifically holdsout a dream of glamorous independence and celebrity inflated way beyond its ability to deliver to large numbers of people, creating a substantial and volatile base of thwarted small-media entrepreneurs looking for salvation.

This idea of digital medias role inthe fix we are in may make it seem that the unprecedented, coordinated action by Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Stripe, and more to deplatform both Trump and his more extreme fans in the last weeks can only be a positive development.

In the wake of the bans, everyone is now waiting to see what effects they might have beyond serving as a kind of temporary emergency brake that has been pulled.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump enter the US Capitols Rotunda on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images.)

But, actually, most experts already agree what will happen.

Bottom line is that de-platforming, especially at the scale that occurred last week, rapidly curbs momentum and ability to reach new audiences, Graham Brookie of the Digital Forensic Research Lab told the Washington Post. That said, it also has the tendency to harden the views of those already engaged in the spread of that type of false information.

And those who are already engaged, keep in mind, are literally millions of people at this point. For those committed to sharing Stop the Steal memes, the coordinated action of Big Tech was further evidence of a diabolical scheme against them and against Americawhich is the very sense that created the conditions of reaction in the first place. Way back when Trump was first running in 2016, RAND found that how you answered the question do you feel voiceless? was the best predictor of his support among Republicansbetter than age, race, college attainment, income, or attitudes towards immigrants or Muslims.

So, peace in the information sphere is bought at the price of further extremism, probably on a large scale.

Make no mistake, the loss of internet platforms is a huge blow for the right-wing culture warriors and internet conspiracy addicts, disorganizing, demoralizing, and dispossessing them. But there were, after all, much more sinister groups in attendance at the Capitol, dedicated to forms of militia actionIRL war instead of just the meme war. Theyve been prepping for years for a showdown and are actively looking to recruit.

Its easy to imagine that, in turning off the online attention spigot, you have not only radicalized a sense of grievance on the level of belief but also redirected a lot of thwarted energy towards groups more dedicated to the non-virtual world as the center of the action.

Marchers parade past an Apple Store in San Francisco, protesting Apple Incs profits held in tax exempt overseas accounts in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images.)

On the other side of the radicalization funnel, Big Tech absolutely does have way too much control over peoples livesthat is hardly a sense that only ultra-reactionaries share. There is a huge, unfocused mass of anger at tech that goes beyond political affiliation. Just as vaccine skepticism that crosses class and demographic lines has been a conduit into broad right-wing growth during COVID, this general angst opens dangerous pathways of solidarity.

We risk allowing righteous resentment at techwhich is only going to grow as more and more as people see these platforms as the last avenue of social advancementto be tangled up and channeled into the racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic narrative of those who are the most evident target of the ban and the loudest voices against it.

As Doug Henwood pointed out recently on the Behind the News podcast, the giants of Platform Capitalism today seem to be playing the same role in the public discourse as the railroads did in the late 19th century. Rail let small farmers get their goods to market, but also put them at the mercy of giant monopolies, stoking resentment. Now, social media behemoths control access to an audience, to visibility, to careers, to community, and so on, stoking resentment.

Ryan Walker, I Saw the Farmer and the Consumer and they who come between (1902).

It was in the broad revolt against the 19th-century rail monopolies that a term was born so potent that it endures in our political lexicon: Populism. It started out as a left-wing movement of radical democracy and redistribution of wealth, but has been channeled into right-wing strong-man anti-elite politics.

It matters a lot who captures the resentment generated by the real injustices of corporate domination over communication. It is very bad if people preaching an apocalyptic gospel are the ones who speak for it.

The Social Dilemma, last years blockbuster middlebrow clickbait documentary on the horrors of social media, contains a scene that is meant as a parable for what social media is doing to the kids. We are shown how phone-addled suburban teens are impelled by the sinister forces behind their screens to participate in a violent street protest, ending up in cuffs.

Press image from The Social Dilemma. (Image courtesy Netflix.)

The documentary, however, specifically refuses to show what the protest is all about. The problem at hand, the implication is, is neither left- nor right-wing extremism, just extreme opinions, generically. As if that term could be defined non-ideologically.(To symbolize the docs all-sided criticism, the signs you see at the protest tout the Extreme Centerprobably not referring to Tariq Alis book of the same namecritiquing technocratic liberalisms role in paving the way for right-wing populism.)

Im sympathetic to the idea that the profit models and practices of social media capital are having socially corrosive effects. But, in general, I think that the Trump-era pundit obsession with trying to combat the growing right at the level of technology has too often ended up being about looking for a technical fix for deep-seated social problems that have developed over years of social erosionand this is dangerous.

An example of this perspective came in last years blockbuster Rabbit Hole podcast from the New York Times, which also set out to show how social media was a radicalization tool drawing people into conspiracies. The funny thing, however, was that its star example was Caleb Cain, described as a lonely young man, raised amid the decline of postindustrial Appalachia, failing to find a place for himself at college, then finding himself working aimlessly at a series of jobsDairy Queen, packing boxes at a furniture warehousewithout much of a sense of self-worth or future prospect.

From this life situation, this young man who started out as an Obama supporter discovers YouTube self-help content to fill his empty nights. This leads him to the mens-rights content that leads him to the so-called alt-light content that leads him to dipping into the deeper waters of white nationalist content.

But by the time the Times talked to him, Cain had been both successfully radicalized and then deradicalized on YouTube. At some point, he found his way to videos where his alt-right heroes debated more left-wing ideas, put out by BreadTube, a group of self-consciously ideological anarchists, democratic socialists, Marxists consciously out to engage with reactionary online entrepreneurs and counter them on their own turf.

There is actually a kind of vindication of the importance of effective intellectual engagement in hearing how Cain is won away from the abyss by watching his favorite alt-right YouTube stars get owned by online lefties rolling up their digital sleeves to engage with their arguments and offer alternate explanations for the alienation and demoralization of his actual lived condition.

Caleb Cain, aka Faraday Speaks, analyzing a Stop the Steal rally on YouTube.

Nevertheless, podcast host Kevin Roose strangely takes a totally other lesson away from this parable. Towards the end of his profile, he reveals that Cain himself has started a YouTube channel, Faraday Speaks, where he tries to use his experience to reach people like him who might be attracted to the nastier ideas he had found himself dabbling in. Seems great to me! But here is how Roose engages with Cain:

I guess what I am sort of wondering is that it seems like, you know, you went pretty far down this alt-right rabbit hole. You didnt get to the bottom maybe, but really close. And then you kind of found this path to this other part of YouTube that works kind of the same way, but with just a different ideology, and got sucked pretty far down into that by some of the same algorithms and the same forces that had pulled you into the alt-right. And I guess Im wondering if that makes you feel like the problem is still that you kind of are in the rabbit hole, but youre just in a different one. Youre still susceptible if the algorithm were to change in the future and lead you down some other path that was maybe more dangerous, that this could happen to you again.

You almost feel like Roose is about to say, Have you instead considered a subscription to the New York Times?

Figures including artist Joshua Citarella have been, for years, repeating the message that the best alternative to the right-wing online content funnel is creating self-consciously leftwing alternatives.And yet, faced with his own reporting showing actual case-study evidence that left-wing ideas helped pull Caleb Cain away from alt-right ideas, and Cains effort now to do the same for others, Rooses take on how to battle rising extremism is to tell him: stop doing that. (This Times Take, incidentally, very much fits Tariq Alis definition of an extreme center position.)

Rabbit Hole amounted to one long argument that YouTube, Facebook, et al. were derelict in their duties to stop societys far-right drift, and should be more forceful moderators. Well, now this demand has been fulfilled in the most dramatic possible way, albeit after it was almost too late.

My fear is that this focus on moderating away the problem is ultimately a substitute for having an ideology, for doing something about it or for even having to think about postindustrial Appalachia anymore or address the real social conditions that are drawing people like Cain towards reaction.

I cant say its not nice to have silence from Trumps Twitter. But its worrisome to me to think that now that the Great Muting has happened, everyoneor everyone whos comfortable enough to do sois just going to go back to not thinking about all that he represented, as if the level of chaos and social fragmentation that we have lived through were something you could just hit mute on. As if the movie doesnt still go on even though you cant hear whats going on.

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3 Observations About Culture, Politics, and Social Media Radicalization in the Post-Trump Era - artnet News

Its been two years since we first noted the surprise resurgence of Ethan Hawke. His name doesnt lend itself to a catchy, mellifluous sobriquet like the McConaissance, but the Austin actors career has taken a similar late-bloomer pivot. Thisthe Hawkeceleration? The Great Rehawkening?kicked off in earnest with 2017s First Reformed, a haunting performance that presaged Hawkes equally electrifying turn in Showtimes recent series The Good Lord Bird. Those projects, along with Hawkes 2018 directorial effort Blaze, seemed to neatly cleave his filmography into eras, separating his sensitive, soul-patched early years in films such as Reality Bites and Before Sunrise from the more scraggly and bold roles hes assayed here in middle age. Hawke has acquired a new aura of gravity, becoming a sought-after leading man. And last week, this Ethaniphany reached the true and inevitable apex of all modern acting careers: Hawke has finally been subsumed by the Marvel Universe, as all stars eventually must be.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Hawke has joined the upcoming Disney Plus series Moon Knight, for which Oscar Isaac is on board to play the titular superheroa mercenary millionaire who sufferers from multiple personalities and a slippery grasp on his identity, even beyond his superficial resemblance to Batman. And he will face his greatest threat in Hawkes as-yet-unidentified supervillain, whos been rumored to be everyone from Moon Knights archnemesis in the comics, Raul Bushman, to more supernatural beings like the redundantly named Werewolf by Night and even Count Dracula himself. Ultimately, it doesnt really matter which comics character Hawke is playing within the Disney-Marvel machine, which at this rate will eventually get around to casting them all.

In fact, Hawke is just the latest in a growing line of Texans who are already part of the Marvel Universe in some waymany of them also playing villains. In just the next couple of years, well see Jamie Foxxs Electro return for the latest Spider-installment, Woody Harrelsons Carnage in Venom 2, and Lovecraft Country breakout Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man 3. Theres also Lee Paces Ronan the Accuser, who popped up in both Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel. Weve also seen several Texans lending superheroes their mortal human support: Forest Whitaker in Black Panther, Tommy Lee Jones in Captain America: First Avenger, and soon, Owen Wilson in the Disney Plus series Loki. Thats a pretty decent percentagealthough, in a universe of characters thats scattered across dozens of films and TV series, its notable that not a single Texan has been cast as a superhero. It probably doesnt help that the only Marvel heroes we can really lay claim to are the Rangers, a silly, Southwestern spin on the Avengers led by a guy who makes tornadoes with his body. Theres also the Armadillo, a hideous armadillo-human hybrid whos prone to depression. But let this rediscovery of Ethan Hawke be the first step toward Marvel realizing that we, too, have range.

In the meantime, Texans have to console ourselves with playing smaller, more homegrown sorts of heroes, like the Depression-era Fort Worth football team the Masonic Home Mighty Mites, who are the subject of the forthcoming film 12 Mighty Orphans. Adapted from the book by legendary Texas sportswriter Jim Dent, it finds Dallass Luke Wilson stepping back in time and across the Metroplex to play Coach Rusty Russell, who led a group of scrappy, shoeless foundlings all the way to the Texas state championship game in 1940. Orphans was shot in late 2019 all around Fort Worth, Cleburne, and Weatherford to give it authenticity, and it got a dose of extra prestige with the addition of Martin Sheen and Robert Duvall, who reunited onscreen for the first time since 1979s Apocalypse Now. And this week, 12 Mighty Orphans received a major boost when it was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, which plans to distribute it to audiences that could similarly use some uplift during so much uncertainty.

Given the climate, its possible were in for a rash of underdog sports movies in the coming months, as we attempt to vicariously recover some of our own all-American grit. In fact, one of them is literally titled American Underdog, and it, too, is a true-life football story: a biopic of NFL Hall of Famer Kurt Warner, chronicling his nigh-mythological rise from stocking shelves at a supermarket to becoming one of the sports most celebrated quarterbacks. Deadline reports that Houston native Dennis Quaid has signed on to the film starring Zachary Levi as Warner, with Quaid playing St. Louis Rams coach Dick Vermeil, who handed Warner the team in its 1999 season, then led him to a Super Bowl win. Strangely, this is Quaids second time playing a real-life football coachhe previously portrayed Syracuse Universitys Ben Schwartzwalder in 2008s The Express: The Ernie Davis Storyas well as his fourth football movie overall. Anyway, I dont really know what youre supposed to do with this information, but maybe its constancy will provide you a similar anchor in these turbulent times.

On the opposite end of uplifting American stories, Deadline reports that Don DeLillos JFK assassination novel Libra is being developed as a limited TV series by Spectrum, the cable operator that, like every other corporation, is now making a move into original programming. DeLillos 1988 book is a hybrid of historical fact and speculative fiction, reimagining the events that may have led to the presidents murder in Dallas, telling a surprisingly sympathetic (if still condemnatory) tale of Lee Harvey Oswalds life, and touching on the American obsession with conspiracy that still lingers. That said, its not immediately clear what would differentiate Libra from similar movie and TV retellings like JFK, or 11/22/63, or even that Quantum Leap episode in which Scott Bakula leaped into Oswalds body. The appeal of Libra was that it offered rich, interior lives for Oswald and others, something that doesnt always translate to the screen. Still, Libra remains one of DeLillos greatest works and the JFK assassination one of the most morbidly fascinating events in our history. We can probably stretch that out for another four episodes or so.

More explicitly fictional, yet no less traumatic, Elizabeth Wetmores debut novel Valentine hit the New York Times best-seller list last year, instantly enthralling a rapt and already uneasy pandemic audience with its gripping tale of a Mexican teenager who is found beaten and raped in a 1976 West Texas town. The book made such an auspicious splash, its no surprise that HBO has already picked up Valentine for a limited series adaptation through Salma Hayeks production banner. Although Valentine is set in a world of racist, roughneck oil men, its centered on a group of strong women whose lives are changed by the incident, offering a still-timely feminist critique that seems bound to attract the kind of Emmy-grabbing performers seen in the networks other literary adaptations of late, like Sharp Objects and Big Little Lies. And given that the book is inextricable from the big skies, unforgiving sun, and tumbleweeds of the Permian Basin, it seems a safe bet that at least some of it would be filmed there.

We have officially moved into awards season, even though Im pretty sure its still only late April, possibly May, or whatever name weve given to this endless day weve been living since the last awards season. In a year in which audiences were more captive than everyet most new movies were indefinitely delayed or dumped directly onto streaming networksagreeing on which films deserve our accolades will probably be a little more difficult than usual. But fortunately, the Critics Choice Awards kicked things off with some nice, easy nominations for the years best television, something we can all agree was plentiful and even occasionally pretty good, beyond just its ability to distract us from our phones. This years crop of nominees includes several Texans, with Metroplex native Jonathan Majors earning a best actor nod for his work in Lovecraft Country, Jacksonvilles own Margo Martindale up for best supporting actress for Mrs. America, and Burlesons Kelly Clarkson squaring off against Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers for best talk showneither of whom, it must be noted, had a digital audience of video torsos gyrating to a Vin Diesel song. Winners will be announced March 7, which was a couple of weeks ago or maybe tomorrow?

Our last week in Matthew McConaughey represented a rare stumble for an actor whos always ambled so confidently, even through an apocalyptic plague. After the cancellation of his anticipated return to prestige TV, and surrounded by a growing discomfort about his increasingly friendly attitudes toward, according to the Daily Beast, people who could be described as alt-right alt-right alt-right, it seemed the Greenlights author had finally seen a stop sign, or accidentally turned into a cul de sac. So you cant blame the guy for lying relatively low this week. McConaughey was all but invisible, andaccording to his wifes Instagrammostly spent the whole dang week playing with puppies. Camila Alves revealed that their family brought home two new rescue dogs just days apart, and perhaps because he has crating and house training and so many other things to keep him occupied, McConaughey himself has been more or less silent. In fact, his sole social media post this week found the man saying nothing, instead sitting pensively, notebook in hand and pen in mouth, under the cryptic caption trust.

Its not clear exactly what were trusting, or even whos meant to be doing it. Is this McConaugheys reminder to trust in himself and his process to lead him to another best-selling book, or even a masterfully completed shopping list? Or is he asking us to put our trust in Matthew McConaughey, to ignore all that recent scuttlebutt and renew our faith that McConaughey will always find time to drape himself in rumpled linen, gaze out at his enormous swimming pool, and dream up more motivational platitudes to inspire us? Or was he trying to type out Trust NO ONE, right before the CIA hauled him off? I dont know, man. Maybe we should just trust that theres yet more weeks in Matthew McConaughey to come.

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Just How Many Texans Are in the Marvel Universe Now, Anyway? - Texas Monthly