Category Archives: Alt-right

March 4 was supposed to be a terrible day. Based on reports of a possible attack, linked to the fact the online cult QAnon had identified March 4 as the day their predictions would come true, nearly 5,000 National Guard troops were ordered to remain in Washington, D.C. Capitol police warned internally of a Q-fueled militia plot, and FBI officials noted it was on alert as well. Congress shut down operations for the day.

And then, nothing. No plot, no protests, no Q. March 4 was a limp, dried-out nothingburger.

Dates have always played a crucial role in the cult of Q the baseless conspiracy theory that there is a global cabal of Satan-worshipping child sex traffickers, and that former President Donald Trump is involved in a righteous plan to bring these evildoers to justice. The groups predictions are often tied to some date on the horizon, when Trumps adversaries will start to be arrested and the global sex trafficking ring will be exposed. The latest date was March 4, but before that it was Jan. 20. And before that it was Dec. 5. And before that, some date in Red October.

For a long time, we didnt have to circle these dates on our own calendars. But after the attack of the Capitol building included some QAnon followers, the groups timeline has caught the attention of law enforcement. Even if the dates arent signalling the fall of a global cabal, perhaps they could help us prevent another deadly attack. Just as a doomsday cult continually reworks its calculations to account for failed end of days predictions, QAnon is always moving the goalposts for when its big day will arrive. Its the cult that cries wolf.

Just take March 4 as an example.

To understand March 4, we have to start with all the other March 4s that came before it. QAnon has long warned a storm is coming, and that at some point the shadowy group of Democratic and celebrity elites said to be pedophiles who eat babies and drink childrens blood would be brought to justice. When exactly this will take place has been a moving target since Qs inception.

Some of the earliest messages from Q, an anonymous person or group of people claiming insider knowledge on which the QAnon conspiracy theory is based, specified precisely when these arrests would begin. A post in October 2017 claimed that Hillary Clinton will be arrested between 7:45 AM 8:30 AM EST on Monday the morning on Oct 30, 2017. When this didnt happen, new dates were disseminated. Gradually, Qs posts became more vague, allowing the followers to project meaning onto cryptic messages to decipher what would happen when. That way, if nothing happened, it was simply because Q followers had misinterpreted the scripture-like missives, not because Q was bogus. The result has been a constantly evolving ephemeris of dates, culminating in a fever pitch of anticipation for Jan. 20, 2021. Most QAnon followers believed that on Inauguration Day, Trump would reveal he had actually won the election, introduce martial law and begin public trials and executions of those in the cabal.

When this prophecy failed, just as all the previous ones had, many QAnon followers were inconsolable. Some even decided to abandon the movement altogether, saying they felt duped. But others simply went back to the drawing board, hoping to find another date on which to hang their hopes. Thats when March 4 started to pick up steam.

Despite the often illogical nature of QAnon predictions, the March 4 date wasnt plucked out of thin air. As a date of significance, it predates QAnon entirely. For much of U.S. history, Inauguration Day was indeed on March 4, until the ratification of the 20th Amendment in 1933 changed it to Jan. 20. A decades-old conspiracy theory held by a group known as the sovereign citizen movement claims that at some point in the 1870s, the United States government was converted to a corporation owned by the city of London, and every president since Ulysses S. Grant has been illegitimate. According to this far-out thinking, U.S. birth certificates and Social Security cards are actually contracts of ownership, with U.S. citizens as property of this vast, foreign-owner corporation. Though the sovereign citizens conspiracy is even more elaborate, the QAnon followers only lifted the bits that served them, and decided that on March 4, the corporation of the United States would be dissolved, and Trump would take office as the 19th legitimate president.

This theory was floated in QAnon circles in early 2021. On Jan. 11, a user in a Q Telegram chat room wrote out the basics of the theory. Trump will NOT be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on January 20 Trump WILL take office as the 19th president of the United States on March 4, the post reads. I really dont know all the details involved in this. Just know the end goal has always been the destruction of that 1871 corporation and the return of America to the people like the democratic republic it always intended to be. On Jan. 15, Canadian Q vlogger Michelle Anne Tittler posted a video in which she reads out the same text, which became popular once Jan. 20 failed to deliver, as Recode reporter Rebecca Heilweil noted. The video had been cross-posted to alt-video sites, and the March 4 idea continued to spread on mainstream platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, as well as on Telegram and QAnon message boards. By January 22, the theory had spread far enough that Reuters ran a fact check debunking the rumour. Tittlers YouTube profile was eventually removed for violating the sites policies, but not before the video promoting March 4 had racked up nearly 1 million views. The cross posts of her video on BitChute and Rumble have currently been viewed 124,000 and 66,000 times, respectively.

As the idea of March 4 was picking up steam in the QAnon community, it also caught on in the news media. Dozens of stories identified March 4 as the groups latest goalpost, citing it as a potential sequel to the insurrection on Jan. 6.

But Jan. 6 and March 4 differed in a number of important ways. Jan. 6 attracted many more than just QAnon supporters. It was a rally promoted by Trump, who invited the thousands of his supporters that came to D.C. that day. Along with QAnon believers, there were also far-right militia groups with backgrounds of instigating violence who were known to be planning to come to the Capitol that day. It was also an undeniably significant date, not significant in the QAnon, cryptic puzzle sense, but in a practical sense: Jan. 6 was the day Congress was certifying the results of an election that millions of Americans wrongly believed was fraudulent, thanks to Trumps lies. Jan. 6 had all of the ingredients necessary for a dark outcome, yet law enforcement was not prepared.

In contrast, March 4 was almost strictly QAnon-focused, and even among that group, there was little consensus. Thats the norm for dates in the QAnon almanac. When someone identifies a date of interest, it snowballs into dozens more followers promoting the idea, which then sparks debate and deliberation among the community. Followers share evidence for and against a particular date, noting that Q who hasnt posted since December, the longest period of silence since the entity began posting in 2017 rarely specifies exact dates anymore.

But even when there is widespread consensus among Q followers on a given date, such as Jan. 20, QAnon rarely makes a call to action more extreme than pop some popcorn. Much of the Q philosophy is that the work is done through research on your computer, and when big events take place, all Q followers have to do is sit back and enjoy the show. The message is on this date, turn your TV on, not on this date, we take to the streets. This is such a well-hewn tenet of the QAnon cult that other alt-right groups often criticize QAnon for promoting complacency rather than the kind of violent uprising those groups prefer.

QAnon is built in part on this fantasy that you can change the world in a really grand, revolutionary way just by sitting at your computer and sharing memes, said Travis View, co-host of the podcast QAnon Anonymous, which has been tracking the movement for years. Jan. 6 was unique because it was an event specifically promoted by Trump. You really need those big advertising powers from those influencers in order to motivate QAnon followers to do something in the physical world.

Either way, as soon as the media began publicizing the March 4 date, that coverage threw a lot of cold water on the notion. Just as quickly as the idea emerged, it was being backpedaled. As early as Feb. 9, Jordan Sather, a QAnon influencer, posted on Telegram that he had the feeling the March 4 date was planned disinformation designed to dupe people into spreading probably nonsense theories that make the whole movement look dumb. Very quickly, the prevailing theory among QAnon was that March 4 was either a psychological operation or a false flag. Q supporters began rejecting the idea and mocking media coverage of the date.

March 4 is the medias baby, MelQ, a QAnon influencer on Telegram with over 80,000 subscribers, wrote on March 2. Nothing will happen.

Law enforcement in and around D.C. could very well have had reliable intelligence suggesting a more organized event on March 4, which may have been squelched by the increased security. We cant know for sure. I reached out to U.S. Capitol Police officials for comment, but they only directed me to their previous statement, which does not cite QAnon or any other group by name.

QAnon, by and large, is not a violent movement, and popular holidays among Anons are not going to be the best place to look for predicting violent events, according to security experts I spoke to.

There are organized, white supremacist and far-right militant groups that commit violence on a recurring basis, and thats the biggest element thats lost in the way law enforcement looks at these issues. They tend to look at them as standalone events, said former FBI agent Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. Theyre not looking for violence these same individuals committed in the weeks, months and years previous to the attack on the Capitol that would be significant evidence demonstrating their intent.

Instead, German said law enforcement should focus on individuals and groups with a known track record of violence, and rely on intelligence rather than random dates tossed around on Q forums for predicting and preventing violence. Thats not to say we should brush QAnon off as harmless: after all, there are QAnon supporters who have been involved in violent plots, including a man arrested in Wisconsin last week for threatening to commit a mass casualty event. And even beyond these outlier offenders, the QAnon movement, including its ever-evolving calendar of predicted catastrophes, comes with its own very real risks in undermining trust in our democratic institutions in a very real, insidious and growing way.

We need to worry about Q not because its about to overthrow the government, said Mia Bloom, a professor of communication at Georgia State University and an expert on QAnon and extremism. We need to worry about Q because the long-term effect is corrosive to democratic values.

The cult who cried wolf is not one whose cries should be written off for good.

Go here to see the original:

QAnon Has Become The Cult That Cries Wolf - FiveThirtyEight

The past year has been a tough one for the movie business. But despite the widespread closure of theaters and delays in releases,an impressive bunch of films related to the arts have come out.

From dueling documentaries on the infamous Knoedler forgery scandal to biopics on artists M.C. Escher DavidWojnarowicz, here are 19 new art movies and where to stream them.

Undoubtably one of the biggest art scandals of the 21st century, the Knoedler forgery ring saw the eminent U.S. gallery sell some $80 million in forged mid-century masterpieces. Those involved said they did so unknowingly, despite an unverifiable provenances, wildly anachronistic materials, and, most damningly, a misspelled signature. Daria Price covers it all in this documentary. (Bonus: The film features expert commentary from Artnet Newss senior market editor Eileen Kinsella.)

Knoedler forgery scandal, take two. This documentary interviews Ann Freedman, the gallerys president, and a central figure in the forgery ring. She presents herself as the scams biggest victimbut was she actually its mastermind?

Chris McKim draws on the audio journals of the late artistDavid Wojnarowiczplus commentary from the likes of Fran Lebowitz, art dealer Gracie Mansion, and art critic Carlo McCormickto paint a full picture of the queer painter, photographer, writer, and activist, who died in 1992 of AIDS. The obscene title comes from a graffiti message that Wojnarowicz found scrawled on the street and appropriated for his art.

Artist Matthew Taylor directs a love letter toMarcel Duchamp, who changed the course of art history not once, but twice. First with his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2,which ignited controversyat the 1913 Armory Show in New Yorkeven as it ushered the Modernist movement into the mainstream, and then withThe Fountain, his urinal readymade that became a legendary Dada masterpiece.

Jennifer Trainer, who spent decades as the head of public relations at MASS MoCAin North Adams, Massachusetts (and is married to Joseph C. Thompson, its former director), directs a film celebrating the institution and the way it revitalized a rural town after local factories shut down. Meryl Streep offers some star power as the documentarys narrator.

Artist Ursula von Rydingsvard, known for her monumental wooden sculptures, shaped from towering cedar trunks, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the studio machinations that make her large-scale public artworks possible.

Novelist and filmmaker Veronica Gonzalez Pea spent two years interviewing the painterPat Steirin this intimate portrait of the groundbreaking feminist artist and her beloved waterfall paintings, made by dripping, splashing, and pouring paint.

For this documentary, director Dennis Scholl gained access to the personal life of Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Stillin the form of 34 hours of audio recordings of the artist, as well as interviews with his daughters, Diane Still Knox and Sandra Still Campbell.

Carlos Almarazwas a Los Angeles artist and Chicano art activist who died of AIDS in 1989. His widow, artist Elsa Flores Almaraz, along with actor Richard J. Montoya, co-direct this Netflix documentary about his life and legacy, including his struggles to come to terms with his identity as a Chicano and his bisexuality. Watch to find out why David Hockney, Richard Diebenkorn, Jack Nicholson, and Cheech Marin have all been fans ofAlmarazs work.

This HBO documentary is largely narrated by artist and curator David Driskell, who died last year. The film explains the influence of his seminal 1976 group show Two Centuries of Black American Art, and features prominent Black artists working today, includingTheaster Gates,Kehinde Wiley,andJordan Casteel,

After decades of supporting institutions behind the scenesincluding more than a decade heading the board at the Museum of Modern ArtNew York City art philanthropist Agnes Gund gets her moment in the sun with this documentary directed by her daughter Catherine Gund.

Illustrator Matt Furie never could have predicted the afterlife of Pepe the Frog, a character from his comic book seriesBoys Club. This documentary from Arthur Jones unravels the mystery of how the slacker frog morphed first into an internet mascot and a symbol of hate for the alt-rightand how Furie attempted to reclaim his most famous creation.

Martha Cooper, who in the 1970s became the first female staff photographer at the New York Post, has made a name for herself as the foremost documenter of graffiti art in New York City. Now, her unlikely career is itself the subject of a documentary film, directed by Selina Miles.

Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree found a pair of unlikely documentary subjects in Barbora Kysilkova, a Czech painter, and Karl-Bertil Nordland, a thief that stole two of her paintings. The movie tracks their unlikely relationship as Kysilkova attempts to paint a portrait of the heavily tattooed criminal who committed the robbery because, she says, they were beautiful.

You might not know the name Gustav Stickley, but the late designer was a key figure in the American Arts and Crafts movement, which rebelled against industrialization. Director Herb Stratford provides a full picture of Stickleys life and career, and whats behind his lasting significance.

The mind-bending work of M.C. Escher, known for his optical illusions, was an exploration of both art and mathematics. Director Robin Lutz explores the evolution of the Dutch printmakers increasingly intricate work, animating his illustrations to stunning effect, with voiceovers from actor Stephen Fry.

This documentary from Aurlia Rouvier and Seamus Haley explores the various theories as to the identity of anonymous British street artist Banksy and praises his high-profile stunts, likeLove Is in the Bin, the shredding of aBalloon Girl print after it sold at auction. Its likely to be enjoyed most by diehard Banksy fans (one talking head apparently claims that Banksy is the Picasso of the 21st century).

In this indie film, directed by Michael Walker, three art school grads are determined to navigate the New York art world, even if they that means resorting to blackmail, betraying their friends, andperhaps worst of allpainting their own mothers in the nude. (Full disclosure: a group of real-life art-world professionals were called in as extras in the penultimate scene at a gallery opening, so keep an eye out for the writer.)

Director Halina Dyrschk continues the important work of restoring the legacy of pioneering Swedish painter Hilma af Klint, who began experimenting with abstraction five years before it was invented by Wassily Kandinsky. The film recounts Klints life and career, her descent into obscurity, and ultimate rediscovery, including theblockbuster 2019 exhibitionof her work at the Guggenheim Museum New York.

Read the original here:

19 Art Movies Available to Stream Now, From an Appreciation of Banksy to Dueling Documentaries on the Knoedler Scandal - artnet News

Whats Next? PAW asked two writers with different views to consider the future of our major political parties. Read Julian E. Zelizers take on the Democrats here.

There is an American elite, and if youre reading this magazine, you are very likely part of it. In terms of educational attainment, social status, income, and net worth, most Princeton alumni are at the most privileged end of the spectrum.

Elites seem to have benefited massively from the policies accepted or championed for decades by both major parties establishments. On paper, we have flourished under globalism and you-do-you social liberalism. International trade and relaxed borders havent put us out of jobs; our salaries havent been stagnating for 50 years; and with the luxuries of wealth and practical cunning, our peers have embraced the liberties of the sexual revolution without bearing many of its most visible costs: Most of us still get and stay married and rear children in stable homes.

Thats on paper. At a deeper level, our material privileges havent made us or our kids all that happy. The constant demand to strive and produce to win in a meritocracy undermines joy. No wonder mental-health care is now the main function of our universitys health services. Still, we arent dying the deaths of despair highlighted by Princeton professors Anne Case *88 and Angus Deaton: suicides, drug overdoses, and liver disease. Many of our compatriots are. We seem to have mastered the art of overlooking these forgotten Americans.

Ryan T. Anderson 04 is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which describes itself as Washingtons premier institute dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy.

Photo courtesy Ethics and Public Policy Center

The future belongs to whichever party does for them what the establishments of both parties have done for us: prioritize their needs and interests. That means building an economy that works for everyone. It means rebuilding the cultural and moral order that gives more people the central blessing of a stable, two-parent family. It means prioritizing policies that serve the non-elite.

Many Beltway pundits spent January and February analyzing the internecine battle within the GOP as between QAnon forces (embodied in Marjorie Taylor Green) and establishment forces (embodied in Liz Cheney). This isnt where the real debate is. After all, everyone smart on the right knows that just as William F. Buckley had to run the Birchers out of the conservative movement two generations ago, so too today the Republican Party will have no future if it provides safe haven to the alt-right, QAnon, racism, anti-Semitism, or xenophobia.

The real intra-GOP struggle to watch is the one between what we might call the Mitt Romney of 2012 and the Mitt Romney of 2021: It is about whether Republicans will advance a policy agenda that promotes the flourishing and core values of the forgotten Americans (which would also, incidentally, prevent them from being coopted by conspiracy theorists and bigots). Pundits will analyze day-to-day political weather; PAW readers should consider the underlying climate changes.

Fast forward to today, and Romney introduces the most generous federal child-assistance program to ever come from a Republican. No longer does he refer to himself as a severe conservative. Meanwhile, the Marco Rubio who focused on freedom when he ran for president in 2016 gave an address in late 2019 titled Common Good Capitalism and the Dignity of Work, backed by policy initiatives such as expanding the child tax credit and paid family leave. These arent Chamber of Commerce priorities.

If the Republican Party of the past two generations was marked by the fusionism that came out of Buckleys National Review, the question now is what a 21st-century fusion looks like. The old fusionism combined the religious right with anti-communists and libertarian economists, with an eye to protecting the American way of life from its enemies at home (including, in this view, Big Government) and abroad (the USSR).

But the American family and American worker werent saved. And the GOP fell into the rut of assuming particular policy applications were its lodestar principles. Today, a new fusionism is forming that evaluates social, economic, and foreign policies by asking how effectively they defend core American values like life, marriage, work, and religion.

After all, the way of life that the Founders sought to protect was a blend of the Declaration of Independence and the Bible. Where people are made in the image and likeness of God, subjects of inalienable dignity. Where people are created male and female, to unite in marriage and raise children together in a family. Where people assemble in a variety of houses of worship to give thanks to the Creator so central to the Declaration. And where they spend their labors in service of others and in keeping with their obligations to God to support their families.

The real intra-GOP struggle to watch is the one between what we might call the Mitt Romney of 2012 and the Mitt Romney of 2021: It is about whether Republicans will advance a policy agenda that promotes the flourishing and core values of the forgotten Americans.

Now this way of life isnt just for Americans its based on human nature. Most people want to form families, worship God, and find dignified work. A political movement dedicated to this vision would be broadly attractive.

On social issues, Americans dont want to be judged by their race, sex, class, or religion. A smart GOP would reject identity politics, critical race theory, and gender ideology. A commitment to human dignity and equality would demand not only protection of the unborn, but also rejection of racial identity politics (both left-wing and right-wing) and assaults on religious liberty. As the left has set its face against faith traditions that uphold historically normative understandings of marriage and family, Republicans must step up to defend these basic values.

On economic issues, Americans dont want to maximize GDP, property rights, or economic freedoms at all costs. They want to find decent jobs, support their families, meet their needs, especially on health care, and not worry that theyre one pink slip away from eviction. Rights and liberties matter. But as fellow alum George Will *68 once wrote, the most important four words in politics are: up to a point. The GOP is the party of economic freedom, up to the point where it ceases to serve human flourishing. All liberties have limits. So do markets, for all the blessings theyve brought.

This doesnt mean that conservatives should embrace the lefts class-warfare rhetoric or aggressive taxation, redistribution, and regulatory expansion. The goal is to craft policies that serve the flourishing of human beings and their communities. Not government-run institutions replacing the authority of families, religious communities, business, and other institutions of civil society, but policies that, to quote the theologian Richard John Neuhaus and sociologist Peter Berger, empower people and the free institutions that mediate between individuals and the state. Its already happening, as Romney, Rubio, and Mike Lee, for example, have all introduced the pro-family federal policies mentioned.

When it comes to jobs, we need policies reflecting the fact that a job is more than a paycheck. It provides meaning and community, purpose and direction. And along with religion and other elements of civil society, it contributes to what Harvards Robert Putnam calls social capital. Government transfer payments, including a universal basic income, wont do much to stop the decimation of the economies of small towns or the breakdown in marriage and family.

Republicans must also creatively apply timeless principles to Big Tech, woke capitalism, and cancel culture. A GOP of the future will learn from the GOP of the past that Big Government can threaten human freedom and flourishing, but it will also understand that Big Business can too especially when oligarchic global corporations attack basic American values. We need a culture, not just a legal system, that fosters the free exchange of ideas.

A smart GOP would reject identity politics, critical race theory, and gender ideology. A commitment to human dignity and equality would demand not only protection of the unborn, but also rejection of racial identity politics (both left-wing and right-wing) and assaults on religious liberty.

We also need a foreign policy no longer focused exclusively on free trade and democracy-building, but concerned with the rise of China, the creation of a class of global citizens with no particular loyalty to their homelands, and the impact of immigration and trade on American workers.

The question for the GOP, then, is whether this new fusionism achieves policy prominence in the party. Watch to see whether the GOP speaks not just about fair procedures and rights and liberties (essential as these are), but also about the way of life they would promote. Doing so would force it to put its money where its mouth is, championing policies to make this way of life possible. Because it belongs to no single race, or class, or religious tradition, this way of life and related political agenda would enable the GOP to be multiethnic and interfaith. Any viable Republican Party must seek out working-class voters from all ethnic and religious backgrounds and represent their interests.

As the privileged keep doubling down on neoliberal economics and identity and gender politics, the Democrats will undoubtedly become even more the party of the elites. So the Republicans must become a working-class party, championing the values and policies that make for the real happiness were all after. Some Princeton elites might want to join the cause.

More:

What's Next? The Republicans | Princeton Alumni Weekly - Princeton Alumni Weekly

In February, the video game publisher Victura announced it would launch what it described as a realistic video-game portrayal of the Second Battle for Fallujah. Based on dozens of interviews with troops who fought in the 2004 battle, Six Days in Fallujah was billed as more of a documentary than an action experience. We track several units through the process and you get to know what it was like from day to day. Peter Tamte, Victuras CEO, told The Wall Street Journal. He explained that the game would avoid the politics of the Iraq war and the perspectives of civilians who experienced brutality at the hands of U.S. forces, since that was a divisive subject. Instead, the game would engender empathy for the U.S. Marines who fought in the battle.

This promotional campaign encountered immediate opposition. Veterans of the battle argued that a documentary story about a controversial battle in a controversial war could hardly be stripped of its politics while remaining true to its subject. War is inherently political, the Fallujah veteran John Phipps explained to The Gamer. So to say youre going to make an apolitical video game about war is nonsense. Show me a war that wasnt started because of politics. You cant. War is politics. Its just a different form of politics.

The controversy about Six Days in Fallujah is really a larger story about video games, militarism in the media, and the expanding boundaries of politics. Video games are not only a contested cultural space in America, but also a contested political space in which governments and corporations, journalists and activists, and players of every stripe, are competing to tell stories and shape perceptions about the world. This multi-billion dollar industry plays an increasingly important role in shaping the world-view of its participants and the politics of their societies. It is far past time that the policy community writ large treat this industry with a rigor equal to its influence.

A game about the Iraq War might not seem like it poses big questions about the politics of war, but as a hugely popular form of mass media, video games can influence peoples emotional states, thought patterns, and perceptions. Every year, military-themed first person shooters (FPS), which simulate combat from the point of view of a combatant, generate billions of dollars of revenue. The most popular franchises, like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Counter-Strike and Halo, have sold hundreds of millions of copies and feature varying degrees of realism, inspiration from real-world events, and science-fiction elements. Unlike print, radio, television, or movies, video games are an interactive format that allows them to affect people differently than more traditional forms of broadcast media. Ian Bogost, a professor of media studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has argued that the interactive nature of video games makes them an inherently persuasive mediuma system of procedural rhetoric that encourages players to create abstract mental models for how systems work and to form judgments about those systems through the act of playing. The design of a games models and systems of interactions are intentional choices by the designers, and they set the terms for how a person encounters the game. One video game designer called this effort to induce a certain type of player reaction emotion engineering in the design process.

Research has demonstrated that some game design choices improve the way people focus and increase feelings of well-being. Other design choices can trigger addictive behavior. While research is ongoing, experimental studies have shown that some military FPS games can cause players to become measurably more militarist in outlook. In a realistic military FPS game, the presence or absence of rules of engagement, for example, will dramatically change how the player approaches a mission. When the military itself consults on the design of such a game, this leads to a number of uncomfortable questions about why those choices were made. Consider Full Spectrum Warrior, a 2004 game that began development as a training simulator for U.S. Army soldiers. The company behind it, Pandemic, modified the game into a commercial release that so the Army could send the game downrange for soldiers to play while deployed. Set in a fictionalized version of Iraq, the game features an empty, crumbling urban landscape coded to be obviously Middle Eastern, filled only with Arab men to shoot. The strongest incentive not to engage in combat isnt to safeguard civilians, but to avoid personal injury to your squad mates. Despite its marketing as realistic and messaging that it was developed with input from the Pentagon, the game-world it creates removes the complexity of urban insurgency and substitutes simplified moral dilemmas that portray the military in unambiguously good termsan enjoyable setting for a game, but hardly reflective of the reality of the war in Iraq.

Examples from traditional media help elaborate why this is a concern. Emotionally resonant media about real issues have changed publics perception. Researchers have found, for example, that ostensibly realistic films like Argo (depicting the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis) or Zero Dark Thirty (chronicling the search for Osama bin Laden) altered public opinion about those events. There is also evidence that such media can result in real world behavioral change in agents of the state. In his 2008 book, Torture Team: Rumsfelds Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, Philippe Sands interviewed a former lawyer stationed at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who claimed that the television show 24 inspired interrogators to go further than they otherwise might. The journalist Jane Mayer interviewed an Army interrogator in Iraq, who said that after people watched 24, they would walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things theyve just seen.

This is perhaps one reason why the Pentagon has collaborated with Hollywood since the early 20th century to create sympathetic portrayals on television and in film through the Entertainment Officean arrangement often called the military-entertainment complex. For television shows like 24 and films like American Sniper, the office will not only analyze the scripts for accuracy, it will also alter scripts to improve the portrayal of the military on screen. The Entertainment Office is in enough demand to be selective in what it will advise, reportedly turning down 95% of the scripts or story treatments it receives. Were not going to support a program that disgraces a uniform or presents us in a compromising way, Captain Russell Coons, director of the Navy Office of Information West, told Al Jazeera in 2014. This selectivity creates a powerful incentive for writers, producers, and directors to cede narrative ground to the Pentagon in order to secure access to their expertise, equipment, and approval.

In many ways, video games are just another branch of the military-entertainment complex, since developers will collaborate with the Pentagon to ensure a degree of realism. The developers of the 2014 title Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which is set in the near future, not only consulted with soldiers and futurists to generate realistic combat scenarios and rules of engagement, they also recruited a Pentagon scenario planner to the design team. The Pentagon scenario planner helped the game developers think through a realistic set of threats for a futuristic war scenario, which prompted them to select private military contractors as the most plausible enemy over their first choice, Chinas Peoples Liberation Army. In doing so, the Pentagon influenced the design of the game to shape how players will envision future real-world threats. Considering the game sold more than 21 million copies, this represented an enormous audience for the Pentagon to influence. (It is notable that one of the games directors was later hired by the Atlantic Council think tank to advise the military on future warfare scenarios, cycling the same threat model from the Pentagon to video games, to think tanks, and back to the Pentagon.)

The U.S. military also appears to have been involved in the production of Six Days in Fallujah, which raises questions about how it is intended to shape perceptions of the Iraq war. In the mid-2000s, Tamte led a different video game developer named Destineer, which partnered with the Japanese publisher Konami to release a version of Six Days. Back then, Tamte claimed the game had no stance on the politics of the war in Iraq, as he repeated this year. At the time, Destineer ran a thriving side business making training simulations for the Pentagon and the intelligence community. The U.S. Marine Corps was an official consultant for the companys first game, Close Combat: First to Fight. And In-Q-Tel, the CIAs venture investment arm, partnered with the company in 2005. The suggestion that a company with such deep ties to the government could make a game without politics sparked an outcry, and Konami deemed the game too controversial. They canceled its publication in 2009. No one is canceling Six Days in Fallujah anymore. Tamtes current company, Victura, is also a publisher, so he is moving forward with a new developer contracted to update the games code and gameplay. The game is slated for release later this year.

Today, the global video game industry is one of the worlds largest culture industries. According to market research firm IDC, the global video game market topped $179 billion in revenue in 2020, making it larger than the global film industry ($100 billion) and North American professional sports (around $75 billion) combined. Video games cultural impact skews young: According to the Entertainment Software Association, 70% of people under the age of 18 regularly play video games. Younger players also tend to be male: According to a Pew survey, almost twice as many young men regularly play games as young women. That doesnt mean all players are young; 64% of players are between 18 and 54 years oldprime voting age.

The Pentagon certainly views gamers as a high-value target for outreach and has spent 20 years using video games for recruitment. The most famous of these efforts, Americas Army, was a free-to-play military FPS game launched in 2002 to persuade young players to enlist. Its portrayal of army service was neutral and de-politicized and avoided portraying the hardships of basic training or graphic bloodshed during combat sequences. It instead focused on exacting detail in weaponry, uniforms, and mission design.

While Americas Army did not result in a recruitment boom, by the 2010s, as the number of new enlisted flagged, the U.S. military revisited video games as a way to boost its numbers. In 2018, the Pentagon created a new service track of professional video game players to compete in the growing field of esportsprofessional, competitive video game play. These new service tracks are part of the recruiting commands in the Air Force, Navy, and Army, a recognition of the power of the growing power of esports to generate interest among younger people. I would argue that in looking at these generations, we have to begin thinking about how they approach this question of where they will apply their talent, Dr. E. Casey Wardynski, an Army recruiting official, told journalists about the program. We have to confront this question of, will we wait until theyre 17, or will be start talking to them at age 12, 13, 14, 15, when they form the set of things they are thinking about doing with their life?

The growth of online streaming has only expanded the audience for video games and has had a powerful effect on culture. Popular online streamers, using services such as Twitch, livestream feeds of the games they play alongside their commentary. They interact with viewers via chat functions and build loyal followings. The streamer popularly known as PewDiePie (real name Felix Kjellberg) is the highest-earning creator on YouTube, pulling in roughly $8 million per month mainly by broadcasting himself playing video games to the more than 100 million subscribers to his channel. He briefly had a lucrative partnership with Disney that the entertainment giant ended after a series of his videos featured anti-Semitic imagery and slurs. While Kjellbergs beliefs are all but impossible to pin down, he has used racist and anti-Semitic slurs on his livestreams and for a time was a cult-hero on the right. The gunman who attacked a New Zealand mosque in 2019 urged those watching a livestream of the attack to subscribe to Pewdiepies channel before opening fire. Kjellberg has disavowed the far-right and has spoken about his struggles to balance the tongue-in-cheek style of video game livestreams with the real-world political fallout such talk can have. Kjellbergs successand the controversy around himspeaks to the centrality of video games and video game culture in online life.

The policy implications of video games

Video games are not neutral spaces stripped of politics in which people engage in neutral play together. They are vibrant, contested, growing, lucrative, politicized spaces, where actors of all sizes and ideologies compete to influence the minds of their audiences. Video games are where politics happen. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a leader in using games to reach voters. She recognizes, just as the Pentagon does, that games are an important site for political speech, especially when live-streamed. This past October, she hosted a get-out-the-vote event on the video game streaming service Twitch that attracted more than 430,000 live spectators to her channel, the third-largest audience the site had ever attracted to a single stream.

Games can tell us a lot about how the world works. Johan Huizinga theorized in Homo Ludens that play is essential to culture and the formation of society. The concept of play, he argues, is foundational to how humans form their beliefs about rule-based systems, which are the foundation of modern civilization. Video games began as a new way to play with computers but have evolved into rich texts filled with politics and arguments for how the world should work.

The cultural dominance of video games lends them political salience. Studying how video game communities form and discuss issues can offer unexpected insight into how audiences are built and come to share common beliefs, including malignant ones. As an example, consider how video games presaged the rise of the alt-right in American politics. In 2005, the far-right provocateur Steve Bannon started a business to pay Chinese players to farm assets in the online multiplayer game World of Warcraft to sell to other players at a profit. The business itself flopped, but Bannon learned from the experience that video game players can be mobilized outside the game. These guys, these rootless white males, he told the journalist Joshua Green, referring to his perceived customers, had monster power.

When he took over the online news outlet Brietbart, Bannon realized he could use video games to power the online alt-right that ultimately helped Donald Trump win the White House. In 2014, Bannon led Breitbart to take an active role in publicizing and encouraging Gamergate, an explosion of organized, violent, and misogynist harassment carried out by some video game players angry at the rise of feminist perspectives in games. Mobilizing gamers to fight for conservative values in the culture war turned out to be wildly popular. Bannon turned the rhetorical strategies and organizing tools of Gamergate into powerful weapons for the Trump campaign, and with them, he mobilized a small army of very angry, very online young men into effective political operatives.

Gamergate had a transformative effect on the nature of online discourse. One of its most enthusiastic proponents, Mike Cernovich, moved on from Gamergate to write fake news stories attacking Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election and later hosted a show for Alex Jones conspiracy show Info Wars. The pattern of coordinated abuse, harassment, and threats perfected by GamerGate has come to define much of the Trump-supporting internet. Charlie Warzel, a technology journalist at the New York Times observed last year that Gamergates DNA is everywhere on the internet.

Obviously not all video game players are misogynist harassers, just as not all games are funded by the Pentagon to present tailored narratives about a controversial war. But all video games do present a worldview to the player, whether it is explicit or not, and understanding that world view can help us understand what the players themselves believe. As an inescapable part of public discourse and an enormous media market we ignore at our peril, video games are not just video games: They are the site of political contention, of negotiation over social boundaries, and of free speech itself.

Joshua Foust is a PhD student studying strategic communication at the University of Colorado Boulders College of Media, Communication, and Information. His website is joshuafoust.com.

Go here to read the rest:

Video games are the new contested space for public policy - Brookings Institution

In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated a set of galleries to Philip Johnson, who had served asthe institutions founding architecture department head during the 30s. He staged some of the museums most memorable architecture shows, among them 1932s influential International Style show, which helped pinpoint a mode of modernist design that was cropping up around Europe. He also transformed the institution that housed such pioneering exhibitions, designing its famed sculpture garden in 1953. He even gifted MoMA several masterpieces, including Jasper Johnss Flag (195455). His genius helped define the Museum in its formative years, William S. Paley, chair of MoMAs board, said upon the gallerys dedication.

For more than 30 years, a sign bearing Johnsons name has been visible on a wall on the museums second floor. All that changed, however, earlier this month, when the Black Reconstruction Collective, a group of 10 architects, temporarily covered it. They were participating in the museums current Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America exhibition, and they were responding to recent protests over Johnsons name at the museum. For the run of Reconstructions, the Philip Johnson Galleriess sign will be hidden beneath a denim textile bearing out the groups manifesto, which reads, in part, We take up the question of what architecture can benot a tool for imperialism and subjugation, not a means for aggrandizing the self, but a vehicle for liberation and joy.

Protests over Johnsons name have been brewing since November, when a group of Black architects and artists signed a letter demanding that MoMA remove it from its walls. The letter, circulated by the Johnson Study Group, claimed that Johnson relied on his MoMA connections as a pretense to collaborate with the German Nazi party and that he effectively segregated the architectural collection at MoMA by not hiring Black curators and by not acquiring work by Black architects. While it is unclear when MoMA acquired its first work by a Black architect, scholar and Reconstructions curator Mabel O. Wilson has argued that the museum was maintaining the logics of racism during its early decades by focusing on white European and American designers, even when their work related to affordable housing for Black communities.

For some, Johnson can be can be considered an architect whose output, while variable in quality, helped define a sensibility, with his Glass House ranking as one of the most celebrated modernist structures in the U.S. For others, his legacy cant be separated from his explicitly fascist and anti-Semitic views. Protests over Johnsons politics are not newhis fascist leanings are well-documented, most recently in a 2018 biography by Mark Lamster, and even during his lifetime, various individuals, both within MoMA and outside it, attempted to bring attention to them.

But with the Johnson Study Group letter, new questions are arising: How can MoMA effectively right Johnsons wrongs? What would a MoMA without recognition of Johnson look like? Those who oppose the removal of Johnsons name counter with another question: Should MoMA have to contend with the political views of a figure who has been dead for almost two decades?

V. Mitch McEwen, an architect included in Reconstructions, said that she signed the Johnson Study Groups letter partly in an effort to address concerns that the architecture department at MoMA was vested in fascism and white supremacy, she told ARTnews. As far as we could tell, no one had investigated that beside concerns about anti-Semitism. To be exhibiting work in a gallery with the name of a white supremacist doesnt sit well with me.

According to McEwen, she and others met with MoMA director Glenn Lowry in January to discuss how the museum could begin to reconcile with Johnsons history. His response, McEwen told Hyperallergic, was that MoMA didnt create the problem.

Lamster, the Johnson biographer, said that, because of Johnsons outsized influence at the museum, it would be nearly impossible for MoMA to scrub him from its history. To cancel Philip Johnson is to cancel MoMA, Lamster said. That does not mean that the moment isnt ripe for reflection, Lamster continued. There is no canceling Philip Johnson. Hes already deadthats as canceled as you can get. The question is how you understand his legacy. If canceling means we dont grapple with that history, thats a big mistake. If canceling means removing his name, thats a different story.

A MoMA spokesperson did not respond to a list of fact-checking queries about Johnsons time at the museum and the institutions response to the signatories of the Johnson Study Group letter. In a prior statement made when the Black Reconstruction Collective covered Johnsons name, a spokesperson said that the Museum currently has underway a rigorous research initiative to explore in full the allegations against Johnson and gather all available information. This work is ongoing.

Johnson began working in MoMAs architecture department in 1930, when the museum, founded a year earlier, was still in its infancy. His first stint at the museum ended in 1934, and there were extended periods where he was not formally employed by the museum. During the late 1930s, in a period while he was disconnected from the department, Johnson began to push anti-Semitic and fascist political views in a series of essays. In one written for the fascist journal the Examiner, he claimed that the U.S. was committing race suicide and advocated for a restoration of national values. In another, written for Social Practice, for which he served as a European correspondent, he addressed the Jewish question in France, writing, Lack of leadership and direction in the State has let the one group get control who always gain power in a nations time of weaknessthe Jews.

During the late 30s, Johnson spent extended periods in Germany, where he found himself carried away by Adolf Hitlers politics, as he once wrote, and he started consorting with Nazi leaders. Prior to this, Johnson had briefly been involved with the U.S.s Young Nationalist movement, which Lamster characterized in his 2018 Johnson biography as an alt-right avant la lettre, with pro-Nazi German-American Bundists, Klansmen, and members of the Black Legion, an Ohio-based secret society that took the Klan as its model, among its supporters. As the Young Nationalist campaign began to fizzle out, and as the spotlight turned to his collaborator, Alan Blackburn, Johnson departed the movement. Meanwhile, the Nazi party continued to rise in Europe.

As the war raged abroad the FBI investigated Johnsons activities in 1940 on the suspicion that he was acting as a Nazi spy. The architect admitted to the Bureau that he attended Nazi party rallies in New York, including the most infamous one in 1939 at Madison Square Garden. (He later denied this.) Although it found evidence that Johnson could be linked to members of the Nazi party, the FBI never charged him with espionage. After the war, in 1947, Johnson rejoined the architecture department at MoMA. For the rest of his career, he was still intimately connected to the museum, even when he was not formally on staff.

Johnsons activities during the 1930s would continue to haunt him throughout his career, and he was later forced to address them during the 90s, after the BBC produced a documentary that focused largely on his foregone fascist politics. Johnson, who at one point called himself a philo-Semite, defended himself, citing his friendships with Jewish architects like Louis Kahn and Frank Gehry, as well as with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, as proof that he had changed. He told the TV host Charlie Rose, If youd indulged every one of your whims that you had when you were a kid, you wouldnt be here with a job either. It was the stupidest thing I ever did, and I can never forgive myself and I never can atone for it. Theres nothing I can do.

Johnson died in 2003, but for some, institutions with connections to him should redress his legacy. Two have already responded to Johnsons unsavory history. In 2020, amid Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, the Glass Housea boxy glassed-in structure in Connecticut that ranks as one of Johnsons most famous buildingsupdated its website with a statement referencing Johnsons own history and a need to confront the difficult histories of places where art, architecture, and racial justice intersectas part of our dedicated effort to tell the full American story. And in November, after the Johnson Study Groups letter, the Harvard Graduate School of Design renamed a structure Johnson designed while he was a graduate student there in recognition of the entrenched, paradigmatic racism and white supremacy of architecture, its dean, Sarah M. Whiting, wrote. (That structure was informally called the Philip Johnson Thesis House, and will now be referred to as 9 Ash Street.)

Over the past several months, multiple essays have taken Johnsons legacy to taskwith people on both sides. In an essay called Why We Should Cancel Philip Johnson, Aaron Betsky, director of Virginia Techs architecture school, wrote, Philip Johnson wasnt just a racist and fascist: He was a cultured, rich cad who made us forget our own failings as a country and as a profession. Others have pushed back against that logic. In a Guardian op-ed, Michael Henry Adams, an architecture historian with connections to Johnsons family, wrote, None of us only amounts to our worst mistake. Today, we all need what Philip Johnson died imagining hed found: the opportunity to evolvea chance to become better people.

Xaviera Simmons, an artist who signed the Johnson Study Group letter, said her intention was not to cancel Johnson, but rather to force MoMA to contend with its history. While some may consider removing Johnsons name a symbolic gesture, its resonance could be far-reaching. You can be subtractive in some ways and additive in others, Simmons said in an interview.

MoMA has to absorb the knowledge that has already been provided and work in concert with the Johnson letter signatories, she continued. Theyve already done the labor. The museum doesnt have to do the labor, actually, and the museum should step back. Youve got to make way for the new, and you have to make way for Black thinkers, Jewish thinkers, queer thinkers, and all the other thinkers.

Read more here:

MoMAs Philip Johnson Problem: How to Address the Architects Legacy? - ARTnews

Joseph L. Padilla faces six charges, a federal complaint filed in Washington, D.C. states.

An East Tennessee man who took part in the Jan. 6 march on the U.S. Capitol clashed with police on its steps and threw a flagpole at officers as they tried to prevent Trump supporters from storming the building, federal documents state.

Joseph Lino Padilla, 40, of Cleveland faces six charges including assaulting a law officer, obstructing law enforcement during civil unrest, entering restricted grounds without lawful entry with a deadly or dangerous weapon and violent entry or disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

He was charged by the FBI in a complaint dated Monday and filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Padilla appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga after his arrest. He waived his right to a detention hearing there, and will now face further prosecution in Washington. He was being held in the Bradley County Jail awaiting transport to Washington, WRCB-TV reported.

At one point during the riots he wore a SCUBA mask, which police jerked from his head, records state.

Padilla is also known as "Jose Padilla," according to authorities. He used that name in a Facebook account on which he posted comments about the march.

Padilla is among dozens of rioters facing federal charges as a result of the siege, which followed a Mall rally during which Donald Trump, the now former president, urged them to "fight like hell."

Hundreds of marchers, many carrying Trump banners, forced their way into the Capitol as members of Congress prepared to certify the Nov. 3 election, which Democrat Joe Biden won. Trump had been saying for weeks that the election had been "stolen," although election officials in states across the country reported no mass abnormalities in the vote.

The attack played out on live TV across the world. Professional and amateur photographers and videographers captured scores of images of people taking part in the riots.

Many of those have been used to track down participants.

Padilla was part of the crowd outside the Capitol about 1:30 p.m. that day, the FBI alleges. Several videos including Metropolitan Police Department bodycam recorded him there, the FBI alleges.

The FBI also included numerous images of Padilla at the scene.

A tipster would later tell agents he had "recently been immersed in the alt-right and had a Q-Anon mentality," records state.

According to the complaint, Padilla was pushed away from a barricade line when he approached it. He can be seen wearing a dark blue jacket, the same one he wore in a photo posted on his Facebook page dating to 2012, according to federal agents.

He also wore a SCUBA mask to protect his eyes and a black backpack.

"The MPD (bodycam) captured PADILLA pushing the barricade in front of him and shouting, Push! Push! F----ing push! the complaint states.

Moments later as he pushed against the police barricade, officers pulled off his mask and began shoving him and hitting him with batons to make him stop.

Padilla would later complain on social media that the officers had been the aggressors, hurting him and causing him to lose consciousness twice.

I was right there. I have the wounds to prove it. I pushed the rails, I pushed the stairs, and then pushed the doorway. I was beaten unconscious twice, sprayed more times than I care to count, received strikes from batons that should have been lethal (Multiple temple and carotid strikes) except that God was on my side, one post allegedly by Padilla states on a site called thedonald.win.

Padilla helped rioters as they began moving a large sign on wheels with a metal frame towards the barricade, records state. He and others began using a metal sign as a "battering ram" against Metro Police.

Later, Padilla could be seen along with other rioters massing in front of a law enforcement line inside the archway of the U.S. Capitol lower west terrace doors, the FBI alleges.

Images show him with a flagpole.

"He throws the flagpole at the officers who are simultaneously being attacked by rioters," records state.

The next day on Facebook Padilla assured his friends that the people taking part in the attack weren't "antifa."

They were "Patriots who were trying to Restore the Republic after being attacked by the cops, who struck first," the FBI says the post read. "Even those who broke the windows next to the doorway to the Capitol were Patriots trying to find a way to turn the Flanks of the cops.

On Jan. 8, Padilla posted a link to video taken from the Capitol steps the afternoon of Jan. 6. Titled "Most Beautiful thing I saw in DC on Wednesday," it was still on his Facebook page as of Tuesday.

He declined Jan. 14 to speak to the FBI, telling them, "I do not answer questions."

Authorities used Padilla's Tennessee driver's license picture to help confirm his participation in the riots. On social media he also referenced living near Dalton, which is in North Georgia south of Chattanooga. Cleveland is north of Chattanooga.

"Through a search of law enforcement databases, your affiant confirmed PADILLAs address as being in near proximity to Dalton, Georgia." the federal complaint states.

See more here:

East TN man charged with taking part in US Capitol riots, throwing flagpole at officers - WBIR.com

Breadcrumb Trail Links

Al Jazeera says Rightly is an option for Republicans who 'feel left out of mainstream media'

Author of the article:

Al Jazeera is pivoting to the right with a new platform for conservative audiences, a sea change from its original intent of becoming a go-to source for liberal news and ideas. The Qatar-based news network is launching Rightly, for Republicans who feel left out of mainstream media, Politico reported, and will be led by a former Fox News journalist.

In 2013, Qatar-based Al Jazeera launched its left-leaning Al Jazeera America news channel and website. The state-backed network closed the TV channel three years later, but its AJPlus video network and its international channel Al Jazeera English are still popular in the U.S., the Guardian says.

In launching on Thursday, Al Jazeera will join a move to the right by many news outlets, though to less of an extreme than many conservative U.S. news sources.

This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Former Fox news staffer Scott Norvell will be Rightlys editor-in-chief. Fox News has swung even further right to combat oncoming ultra-conservative TV channels NewsMax and One America News. He was said to have taken Foxs Heat Street website to the right when it was onstream in 2016 and 2017.

Scott Norvell played a part in transitioning Heat Street from libertarian, youth-oriented site as originally envisaged to pro-Trump alt-right Breitbart clone, a former Heat Street staffer told the Guardian, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Norvell did not respond to a request for comment.

The first Rightly show will be called Right Now with Stephen Kent, according to Politico. He currently presents Beltway Banthas: Star Wars, Politics & More, a podcast about the intersection of fandom and politics.

Kent also has a book deal with Center Street, a conservative book company that has published works by far-right authors including Donald Trump JrandCorey Lewandowski.

Neither Al Jazeera nor Kent immediately responded to requests for comment. Kent retweetednews of the platform on Tuesday morning.

The Guardian noted that privately, some Al Jazeera staff wondered how Rightly would square with the networks previously stated commitments to giving voice to marginalized communities.

Sign up to receive daily headline news from the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it please check your junk folder.

The next issue of The StarPhoenix Headline News will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again

Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. We have enabled email notificationsyou will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings.

Read more:

Al Jazeera surprises with lean to the right on its new conservative platform - Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Every month, we round up our most popular and shared articles from the past four weeks. (Go deeper: See our top highlights from December, November and beyond right here)

Vaccines, CDC guidance for safe classrooms and a growing consensus that districts will need additional federal funds to facilitate reopening the conversation surrounding the nations schools turned towards the future this month, and President Bidens commitment to get many reopened within his first 100 days. At The 74, our February coverage focused extensively on the learning losses associated with school closures and new strategies to accelerate learning, as well as new research on such issues as teacher quality, socioeconomic segregation and evolving attitudes on the value of virtual learning even after the pandemic is over. Below are our most popular articles of the month. (Reminder: You can also get alerts about our latest news coverage, essays and exclusives by signing up for The 74 Newsletter)

(Getty Images)

Student Safety: Five days after extremists used the fringe video gaming platform Dlive to livestream a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, a youthful white nationalist logged on to the site and offered his take about the future of a movement he helped create a radical agenda, experts warn, thats targeted at teens. As the Capitol riot reawakens many Americans to the persistent reality of white supremacists among us, experts on extremism are sounding the alarm about the ways alt-right groups weaponize video games and streaming platforms to recruit and radicalize impressionable young minds. For teenagers whose isolation has been heightened by the pandemic, the desire for connection makes them particularly vulnerable, particularly in the current political climate. But experts say parents and educators can intervene before its too late. Read more by The 74s Mark Keierleber.

(Getty Images)

Accelerating Learning: The news about pandemic-related learning loss keeps getting worse. A recent McKinsey & Co. study predicted that cumulative loss due to COVID-19 could be substantial, especially in mathematics, with students likely to lose five to nine months of learning by the end of this school year. Key educators are advocating an unusual remedy: a national, online volunteer tutoring force. 74 contributor Greg Toppo describes it as a sort of digital Peace Corps meets Homework Helpers. The idea has been endorsed by three former U.S. education secretaries. But as Congress and the Biden administration work out their early priorities, the nonprofit sector has begun to step in. Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, has created what he and others think is a scalable blueprint for a national tutoring effort, one that could match knowledgeable adult volunteers as well as millions of young people who have mastered key concepts with students in need. Already, two states Rhode Island and New Hampshire have signed on to Schoolhouse.World, with more expected soon. This is like a lifeline, said Rhode Island Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green.

Catherine Lhamon, Miguel Cardona and Carmel Martin (Getty Images)

Education Department: President Joe Biden has assembled a domestic policy team that includes officials who held high-level positions at the Department of Education during the Obama years. Education secretary nominee Miguel Cardona would bring the voice of classroom experience to the department. With so many urgent demands on the administration related to reopening schools, some wonder whether the White House and department officials will send a unified message to schools and families about getting students back in classrooms, or whether tensions will arise. Theres a precedent for the White House taking the lead on ed policy, and former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings suggests that for now, the power center will be the White House. Speaking on the radio last week, Cardona said it will be important to make sure there is consistency in messaging, to make sure there is one message, one plan. At least one expert is calling for a blue-ribbon commission on the federal governments role in reopening a monumental task even if everyone is on the same page. Linda Jacobson reports.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announces changes to Ohios school quarantine rules for students having close contact with infected students. (The Ohio Channel)

Reopening: Calling plans by the Cleveland school district to ignore its commitment to reopen schools by March 1 simply unacceptable, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine threatened to pull early vaccines from school staff. District CEO Eric Gordon, who had moved back the reopening target to April 6, changed course in a phone call with DeWine, the governor said at a Feb. 12 press conference. Your commitment is not just to me, DeWine said. Your commitment is to the children in your district and your commitment is to your parents, your parents who said, Yes, I want my child back. A press release from the district did not commit to reopening by March 1 but said Gordon will announce plans Feb. 19, as scheduled. Reopening delays by the Akron school district and one high school in Cincinnati also drew DeWines attention. Patrick ODonnell reports.

Luis Martinez, 11 and a fifth grader in Los Angeles, next to his mother, Tania Rivera, upon receiving an award two years ago. Luis, who has autism and is non-verbal, rarely missed a day of instruction prior to the pandemic. (Tania Rivera)

Special Education: In the waning days of the Trump administration, the U.S. Department of Educations civil rights office launched four investigations into whether schools failed to serve students with disabilities during the pandemic. As 74 contributor Jo Napolitano reports, the inquiries came as no surprise to many parents who have watched their children lose skills it took them years to build. The probes covering the state school system in Indiana, as well as districts in Los Angeles, Seattle and Fairfax, Virginia reflect similar complaints from all across the country, said Denise Stile Marshall, head of The Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a group that works on behalf of children with disabilities. Many parents are desperate and at their wits end.

Summer School: Americas rapid transition to virtual learning left huge numbers of teachers discouraged and parents worried about disastrous academic setbacks for their children. Some policymakers have wondered whether schools should stay open this summer to make up for lost time, including President Joe Biden, who suggested as much earlier this week. Now, a study finds that a summer program providing remote instruction in the midst of the pandemic has earned high marks from participants. The National Summer School Initiative, established last spring by a coalition of education reformers, offered five weeks of virtual math, literacy and enrichment classes to nearly 12,000 students. Some 500 educators were paired with 15 mentors who sent videos of their own teaching, advised on methods and debriefed after classes. And according to surveys and interviews, most participants were satisfied with the results: By the final week of the program, 65 percent of students said they were happy to be participating in summer school, and 86 percent of teachers said it improved their perception of online instruction. What were finding here is that the folks who participated felt like this was a really engaging and positive kind of virtual experience, study co-author Beth Schueler told Kevin Mahnken.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Civics Education: As newly elected GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greenes embrace of conspiracy theories about the mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida, generated national headlines and calls for her expulsion from Congress, a teacher who lived through the violence did what he does best: turn the moment into a learning opportunity. Jeff Foster, who teaches Advanced Placement Government at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people died in the 2018 shooting, frequently uses current events as lessons about the importance of civic participation. Even the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol sparked lively debate among his politically engaged students. But this conversation was different: Everybody in the class agreed that the comments from Greene, a freshman congresswoman from Georgia, were reprehensible. But even more shocking, Foster and other Parkland survivors said, was the failure of Republican leadership to respond with swift action. Read more by The 74s Mark Keierleber.

(Michael Hobbiss, Sam Sims, and Rebecca Allen/British Educational Research Association)

Teacher Quality: For teachers, the development of habits is a necessary concession to the unpredictable nature of their job. Morning assignments, class transitions, even behavior management need to be governed by routines that are as predictable for kids as they are effective for adults. But according to new research, these habits may be responsible for the slowing rate of improvement after teachers first few years on the job. As classroom practices become more automatic, they are also harder to change when they stop achieving their desired results. The profession is consistently subject to so many ambitious reforms from the Common Core to the science of reading to implicit bias training that practitioners need to be open to new methods, the authors argue. Kevin Mahnken explains.

(Getty Images)

History: Contributor Chad Aldeman has some bad news: The effects of COVID-19 are likely to linger for decades. And if the Spanish Flu is any indication, babies born during the pandemic may suffer some devastating consequences. Compared with children born just before or after, babies born during the flu pandemic in 1919 were less likely to finish high school, earned less money and were more likely to depend on welfare assistance and serve time in jail. The harmful effects were twice as large for nonwhite children. It may take a few years to see whether similar educational and economic effects from COVID-19 start to materialize, but these are ominous findings suggesting that hidden economic factors may influence a childs life in ways that arent obvious in the moment. Hopefully, they will give policymakers more reasons to speed economic recovery efforts and make sure they deliver benefits to families and children who are going to need them the most.

Future of Education: Will the forced adoption of online learning accelerate innovation in K-12 education and its transformation toward more student-centered learning? Results from a nationally representative survey research project co-led by contributor Thomas Arnett offer some answers. The survey of 596 U.S. K-12 teachers and 694 school and district administrators found many teaching remotely or in a hybrid arrangement and issues with both synchronous (live class meetings over video calls) and asynchronous (via independent study materials and delayed communication such as email) approaches. One solution: A mix of asynchronous and synchronous online learning, when executed effectively, can have important benefits for students. Teachers adoption of online learning resources does not guarantee that online instruction becomes student-centered. Nonetheless, their growing familiarity with these resources makes the shift to student-centered practices much easier. When schools can go back to normal, many families and educators may be eager to say good riddance to online learning. But its encouraging to see educators discovering ways to use it to make their instruction more student-centered.

Income segregation levels within North Carolina schools increased from 2007 to 2014. (Dave Marcotte and Kari Dalane, via Annenberg Institute at Brown University)

Socioeconomic Segregation: Its a foundational premise of the American dream that through hard work and diligent study, young people can use education to access opportunities denied to their parents. However, mounting evidence suggests that segregation not just by race, but also by income within school systems may stymie those meritocratic aspirations. Previous research has documented the steady uptick in wealth gaps between schools, but a new working paper published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University finds that income segregation within schools, from classroom to classroom, is also on the rise. However, its not all bad news. The researchers also show that in North Carolina, districts with more economically integrated schools also tended to have schools with more economically integrated classrooms. Its not inevitable that when we take affirmative measures to integrate by income, that schools will invariably resegregate at the classroom level, said Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation. Asher Lehrer-Small has the story.

(RAND Corporation)

Remote Learning: A new, nationally representative survey of district leaders shows that remote coursework is here to stay and school systems will have to apply the lessons from their forced experiments with virtual learning during the pandemic to better adapt. The first survey conducted through the new American School District Panel shows 1 in 5 districts are considering, planning to adopt or have already adopted a fully online school in future years, and 1 in 10 has adopted blended or hybrid instruction, or plans to. Of all the pandemic-driven changes in public education, the creation of virtual schools was the one that the greatest number of district leaders anticipated would continue into the future. Remote instruction is a fundamentally different task than what school districts are designed for, as school systems nationwide learned when they were forced to suddenly close last spring. But, write contributors Heather Schwartz and Paul Hill, lessons from six case studies demonstrate how districts can use their pandemic-related momentum to make online learning a common staple of public schooling.

Link:

The 12 Best Education Articles from February: How Extremists Are Teaching Kids to Hate, the White House Staffs Up With Education Experts, Recruiting...

As Mr. Gourdet sat in the kitchen of Kann Winter Village last month, a side door was open to the outdoor village of 10 yurts, provided by American Express as part of a nationwide program. Tia Vanich, the projects director of operations and Mr. Gourdets business partner, was helping refresh the tents before the next service. In January, indoor dining was still banned in Portland. (Those restrictions were lifted early this month.)

Without the yurts, were not in business, Ms. Vanich said.

Mr. Gourdets attempt to create a more inclusive and harmonious work environment is most evident in Kanns kitchen. I could have staffed this place with a bunch of white males in, like, literally five minutes, he said. But as a gay Black man, and with everything that went on with the reckoning and George Floyd, I didnt want to do that.

In the kitchen, Varanya Geyoonsawat, 35, who as sous-chef is the highest-ranking kitchen employee below Mr. Gourdet, worked alongside Jasmyne Romero-Clark, 27, prepping for the three six-course tasting menus one pescatarian, one vegan, one omnivore served five nights a week. Every menu included a salad of ripe plantains, squash and pickled apples in a cashew dressing, a version of soup joumou and upside-down banana cake draped in warm coconut cream.

Kanns food, much of which is served in polished Staub pots, is considerably more rustic than the modern, pan-Asian cuisine Mr. Gourdet was known for at Departure. He acknowledges that the glitzy rooftop restaurant is out of step with the earthy, do-it-yourself aesthetic of the chef-owned restaurants that put Portland on the map.

He mentioned Ms. Geyoonsawat, who, along with Ms. Romero-Clark, worked at Departure near the end of his tenure, as a chef whose talents he didnt fully recognize in Departures busy kitchen. He said it took working with her more closely, testing recipes for his cookbook, for him to realize that she had the ability to lead Kanns kitchen.

Read this article:

Gregory Gourdet Works to Build a Better Restaurant in Portland - The New York Times

Despite Donald Trumps seeming lack of interest in the project, a number of his followers around the US have been flirting with the idea of forming a breakaway party of the right to challenge the Republican establishment. Most of these have names which use the word patriot.

In Florida, former Republican voters registered the American Patriot Party of the United States or TAPPUS, for short while at the end of January a spokesman for the former president denied reports he was planning to fundraise in cooperation with a group calling itself the MAGA Patriot Party National Committee.

Patriot was a word that surfaced repeatedly during the assault on the US Capitol in January, being repeatedly invoked to define the identities and motivations of those who invaded the nations legislative heart. Ivanka Trump herself praised the participants on Twitter as American Patriots though she deleted her tweet after being challenged by other Twitter users for her use of this word.

Patriot is a common enough word, but its modern use is often nebulous. A simple dictionary definition of a patriot is one who loves and supports his or her country. So you could call anyone who expressed their love for their country a patriot no matter where or when they lived. In the US context, though, until relatively recently the word has been used most frequently in relation to New England and especially Boston in the era of the American revolution.

Patriot has long been a convenient shorthand for those American colonists who supported or participated in the revolution, as distinct from the loyalists who hoped that the North American colonies would remain part of the British empire. New Englanders, particularly those who live in or around Boston, like to think that their city and region holds a special place in the history of the revolution, and thus of the United States. It was the home of leaders such as Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. It was also the site of the Stamp Act riots, the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The regions sole National Football League franchise is the New England Patriots, who are based in Bostons southern suburbs. The teams mascot, Pat Patriot, is depicted as a revolutionary-era soldier, wearing a Continental Army uniform and a tricorne hat. On the third Monday of April, Massachusetts, Maine and Connecticut celebrate the state holiday known as Patriots Day, in commemoration of the opening battles of the American revolution, which took place at Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy (now Arlington), Massachusetts.

The holiday is marked by re-enactments of these battles, and, more prominently, by the Boston Marathon. The 2016 film Patriots Day was so titled because its subject was the 2013 terrorist attack on the marathon.

What, then, is the connection between a regional tradition of remembrance of the revolution and the crowds of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol Building? In 2016 a small but assertive group which called itself Patriot Prayer emerged, holding pro-Trump rallies in liberal west coast enclaves such as Portland, Oregon. But the term did not gain wide usage among white nationalists and other members of the alt-right until 2020, when it became a popular way for Trump supporters to describe themselves.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager who shot three people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was hailed by Trump supporters as a patriot. Since Novembers presidential election, the word has been employed repeatedly among those who believe that the Democrats stole Trumps victory.

Trump supporters travelling from Louisville, Kentucky for the rally on January 6 referred to their group as a patriot caravan. Meanwhile the husband of Ashli Babbit the air force veteran who was shot and killed by Capitol police during the invasion praised her as a great patriot to all who knew her.

On the far-right Breitbart website, someone commenting on a story quoting Donald Trump calling for a peaceful transfer of power attracted a large number of approvals when they left the following comment:

There will NEVER be reconciliation. We have irreconcilable differences, and the fight has just begun. We need to disown the RNC until they support the Patriot Party.

The word patriot has an obvious appeal. Its difficult to argue against a person or groups love of their country and their willingness to take action to defend it. Thats particularly significant when, in the case of the alt-right, it believes that its nations core values are threatened.

But we might view white nationalists embrace of the term as inspired less by American history than by the 2000 Hollywood film The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson himself one of Hollywoods most ardent conservatives. Gibsons character enters the War of Independence only reluctantly to protect one son and avenge the death of another. In other words, for unimpeachable motives.

But is it a stretch to apply this conception of the patriot to those who, like Babbit or the QAnon Shaman, stormed the Capitol because they believed that the Democrats had stolen the election? From the point of view of someone who believes the QAnon conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party elite were behind a vast paedophile ring threatening innocent children, perhaps this really did seem to be an act of patriotism.

Samuel Johnson famously claimed that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, but as is so often true the reality is undoubtedly far more complex.

Read the original post:

'Patriots' in America: how fighting for your country has taken on new meaning for Trump supporters - The Conversation UK