Category Archives: Alt-right

Satirizing the recent trend of fake fact-checking warnings on Twitter, The Boys shared an anti-supes one using the colorful rhetoric of Billy Butcher.

The Boyshas jumpedin on social media'slatest meme trendof producing fake Twitter warnings with a statement that, in typical The Boys fashion, reminds fans that superheroes are more problematic than whattheir PR campaigns suggest.

At first, thetweet offered a seemingly innocuous and uplifting message: "The world needs more Supes!" However, in what feels like a direct rebuttal from Billy Butcher himself, that quotewas followed up by a more "truthful" disclaimer: "This claim is a load of fucking horse shit. Fuck Supes and fuck Vought."

RELATED:The Boys Are Confused by Pro-Trump Group's Use of Homelander

Some Twitter userswere unable to read the faux-warning due to its bolded font, however. One user posted an image of thetweet with its lower half redacted and replaced with rectangles,writing, "what a fantastic tweet, if only I could see it though." In response, The Boysposted an image of the original, fully uncensored post below, reassuring that user, "We got you, mate."

This jab at Twitter's warning labels -- atrend thatarose out of mockery towards the disclaimers put on DonaldTrump's false claims aboutelection fraud in the 2020 Presidential election --feels on-brand with howThe Boys regularly satirizesmodern pop cultureobsessions likesuperhero fandom and social media. The latter was heavily featured in Season 2as a toolused by Stormfront to generate support for her alt-right/literal Nazi crusade, winning over millions of devoted followers through memes and livestreams to the initial annoyance, and later admiration, of Homelander. It also pokes fun at how Vought -- a pharmaceutical mega-corporation with departments for running the variousmedia campaigns whichpaintthe Seven and other supes as altruistic figures -- works against the purposeof Twitter warnings calling out suchfalse statements.

Amazon Studios' The Boys stars Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie, Laz Alonso as Mother's Milk, Tomer Kapon as Frenchie, Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko, Erin Moriarty as Annie January, Chace Crawford as the Deep, Antony Starr as Homelander and Aya Cash as Stormfront. Seasons 1 and 2 are currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

KEEP READING:The Boys: Why Season 3 Will Be the Show's Most Political Outing Yet

Star Trek: Discovery Debuts Multiple New Starfleet Ships

Ben Wasserman is a graduate of NYU's M.A. Cinema Studies Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. He's previously written for the pop culture websites ComicsVerse and mxdwn Movies- as well as mxdwn's film editor from 2019-2020- and currently writes reviews for the website Film-Forward. Ben loves all things film, television, gaming and comic-related, especially when it comes to Marvel.

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The Boys Have the Last Word on Twitters Latest Meme | CBR - CBR - Comic Book Resources

When Candice Owens prominent conservative commentator and poster girl for the alt-right attacked Harry Styles for wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue, she also implied that Eastern men are manly because they dont wear dresses.

There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack.

Bring back manly men.

Unfortunately for Owens, Eastern men have been wearing dresses for centuries and continue to do so while being just as manly or unmanly as they wish to be. And that includes the big man himself, Jesus Christ.

Men all around the world, at all points in history have rocked dresses and skirts. Some of the arguably most manly men, from gladiators, to kings and emperors, sultans, to warriors. Today, while the West has largely abandoned wearing skirts, probably due to men riding horses while women staying home riding horses is very uncomfortable in a dress, not that Ive done it. Because it was mostly men who needed to wear pants, they slowly became masculine while dresses and skirts became feminine.

It wasnt actually until the 19th century these ways of dressing up within the gender binary became set in stone.

A man named Beau Brummel, the 19th century equivalent of a male fashion influencer, embraced menswear as we now know it, and everyone else followed. Menswear became simple, structured, made of military fabrics, and monochromatic. This left behind European mens previous obsession with flamboyant clothing made of silky fabrics and laces, also abandoning the makeup and wigs they had once loved these all became feminine things.

But the same did not happen in the East.

While men in the East have embraced the masculine look, its not so much because its masculine, but because of Western and often colonial influence. Still, tradition remains strong across the East. Men in South Asia continue wear kurtas, in Japan men wear kimonos and haoris, in East Africa men wear kanzus, and in the Middle East even the King of Saudi Arabia wears the thawb.

Elijah Wood sums it up right. Masculinity does not make a man. And neither does wearing pants.

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Conservatives Are (Unsurprisingly) Wrong About Eastern Men, Masculinity, And Dresses - Junkee

(Courtesy of Amazon Studios)

Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

Join the Nation Festival for four days of essential conversation and commentary in the wake of the 2020 election.

When Sacha Baron Cohen sprang Borat on the American public in 2006, a midterm election year, I thought I was clever to observe that nimble, improvisational, disrespectful laughter had won a landslide victory over the deep emotions and classical filmmaking of Clint Eastwoods World War II diptych, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Like a blind seer, I had no idea how horribly right I was.

Since then, vast sectors of the audience have abandoned the moviessuperhero sagas exceptedfor the rapid, random snickers of meme swapping. Meanwhile, the kiss-my-ass attitude that I detected in the publics embrace of Borat went on to transform the political landscape, though not as Id hoped. It was Donald J. Trump, rather than any tribune of The Nations fed-up legions, who rose to bestride our narrow world like a Colossus of the Raised Middle Finger.

For these reasons, the release of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, 11 days before the 2020 elections, posed sharp questions. In a political landscape where the presidency had become a 24/7 Don Rickles set, was Cohens insult comedy a weapon against Trumps or more of the same? And could any movieeven if perpetrated with jumpy rhythms and delivered digitallycompete in a new audiovisual environment made for 60-second attention spans?

To ask these questions is to fall, understandably, into the mountaineering fallacy: the notion that all works of art must rise to the challenge of their time. In defiance of this error, I will later recommend three fascinating pictures that could be made to speak to the present moment only if subjected to critical torture. For now, let me acknowledge that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is focused so intently on the 2020 presidential election that its end credits include the admonition, in the title characters phraseology, Now Vote. Or you will be execute. These are words to live by, always, but when read after November 3, they stamp a best-if-used-by date on a production that was conceived to mock Trump and his allies during the campaign and then marketed so that its culminating gotcha scene, a humiliation of Rudy Giuliani, was revealed as a teaser shortly before the final presidential debate. I imagine Borat Subsequent Moviefilm might retain some life in years to come. All the same, its a hybrid: part rollicking mockumentary and part get-out-the-base video, of a piece with Samuel L. Jacksons Vote, dammit, vote! ad for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Cohen remains as savvy as ever about reaching audiences where they live, so its no surprise that discrete chunks of the movie can be plucked off like grapes from the stem. Within a day of the release, clips were already circulating on dozens of YouTube accounts and beyond, with leave from Amazons promotional department and to the benefit of the films electioneering. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm proved it could fit easily into todays smartphone competition for eyeballs, but if this picture is to be judged by mountaineering standards, lets note that it does not have the field to itself nor is it alone in trying to win hearts and minds through transgressive laughter. As Borat Subsequent Moviefilm acknowledges, in scenes about digital crap slinging and grassroots calls for violencehey, cant you take a joke?Trumpworld has its own memes and sense of humor.

As a reality check, you might watch Daniel Lombrosos documentary White Noise, produced by The Atlantic as a feature-length expos of the alt-right and its normalization (kind of) through the rise of Trump. Released on multiple streaming platforms a couple of weeks before the elections, the film offers a prolonged, close-up look at three of the movements young social media adepts and self-promoters: white-power loudmouth Richard Spencer, conspiracy theory peddler Mike Cernovich, and anti-feminist, anti-immigrant YouTube poser Lauren Southern. I doubt you will think these specialists in short-form outrages are funny, but their followers do, finding mirth in the trios assaults on liberal propriety (or, as you and I might put it, human dignity). Unfortunately, I also doubt that you will learn much from White Noise, assuming youre aware of basics such as the Unite the Right rally and Pizzagate, or that you are likely to fall in love with the films shambling narration and editing. The main achievement of White Noise is to engender a sense of dismayas if you needed that.

Still, the films study of alt-right zanies has its uses. It can confirm for you, by means of comparison, that Cohens insult comedy is not just more of the same.Current Issue

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Directed valorously by first-time-filmmaker Jason Woliner after a long career in television and scripted more tightly than the original Borat despite having been written by Cohen with eight others, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is at heart a tender story of father-daughter love. Never mind that the semi-feral Tutar (Maria Bakalova) is discovered under a layer of straw, rags, and facial grime in the corner of a barn, where Borat is astonished to learn shes part of his, as he puts it, livestock. When he undertakes his ensuing knockabout journey through America, unwillingly accompanied by the adolescent Tutar, the incidents may be designed, one by one, to deride Trumps supporters, but the plot is machined to forge emotional ties between father and daughter, until the two transform Kazakhstan into a feminist nation, like US of A and Saudi Arabia.

What unites the loose string of sketch-comedy episodes with the steady emotional arc? Satiric rage against the belittlement of women, which Cohen identifies as central to Trumps strongman cult. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm scatters its assaults against other targets, tooassault rifle enthusiasts, casual racists, Jew haters, Roma haters, and coronavirus deniers all get their lumpsbut the main enemy throughout is male supremacy, whether in the imaginary Kazakhstan or the America whose attitudes Cohen prankishly exposes.

Among the actually existing people who are played for suckers this time by a disguised Cohen and Bakalova: a coach for young women who want to sell themselves to sugar daddies, the operator of one of those crisis pregnancy centers that intercept women seeking abortions, a plastic surgeon who proposes making Tutars titties monumental, the guests of a debutante ball in Georgia (whose gentility in declaring young women marriageable is mugged by a traditional Kazakh fertility dance), and for the finale, old lech Rudy. The orange Sun King who reigns over this realm of pussy grabbing remains unseen, except for a Kazakh animated movie in Disney style and a full-body disguise worn by Cohen. Trumps influence, nevertheless, is omnipresent.

Which brings me to a contradiction. The trick of the first Borat was to concoct an impossibly crude, depraved Kazakhstan and then, through the title characters adventures, show America as its mirror image. The new Borat takes the same approach, but past a certain point the pattern breaks down. Even the QAnon adherents who shelter Borat in one sequence insist that women in America have the same rights as men and cant simply be sold or gifted. Even the members of a Southern Republican womens club, whose evening meeting is interrupted by a wandering Tutar, welcome this strange, uncouth figure with gentleness and respect, until she drives them to wonder if they shouldnt call her an Uber. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm lays bare an American culture of misogyny, except when it doesnt.

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And then there are Jeanise Jones and Judith Dim Evans.

The first, who works as a babysitter, is hired by Borat to kennel Tutar for a day but instead decides to educate the young woman, convincing her with infinite patience that she is an independent human being with a mind of her own. The second, encountered in a synagogue, is a Holocaust survivor who offers Borat food and a kiss, while gently informing him that his Jew disguise is a little off. (The talons, for exampletoo much.) Watching these scenes, which provide contrasting images of a decent America, you might feel that middle-aged Black women and elderly Jews have problems of their own and should not bear the burden, as they do so often, of being deployed as exemplars of charity and understanding. Yet these are the real Jones and Evans (to whom the film is dedicated), responding as themselves to ridiculous, constructed circumstances, and though they are far more developed in their fellow feeling than most butts of Cohens impostures, they dont stand alone in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

This is where Cohens insult comedy departs from Trumps and the alt-rights. (I should add Bakalovas comedy as well. Though seemingly runtish next to the elongated Cohen, she thwacks herself off him and everybody else in sight with a headlong mummers energy that knows no embarrassment, only joy.) One side thinks it funny to demean and dehumanize. The other gives people latitude to shame themselves but also allows glimpses of the better angels of our nature.

Im not going to kid myself that audiences are watching Borat Subsequent Moviefilm for the sake of its passing visions of kindness. People want to laugh their asses off at the dumb, the rude, and the grotesque, and theyre getting their moneys worth. What will be left of the movie, though, now that its electoral purpose is obsolete and even the most prominent of its political targets, such as Mike Pence and Giuliani, begin their inevitable fade-out from popular memory? After rising to the challenge of its moment, must this film fall off the peak and be forever buried in snow?

I think something does remain alive after November 3: hope in the power of decency, hope in women, and pride in constructing a fully thought-out 97-minute film, even if a lot of people no longer want anything but clickbait. Thats hardly enough of a foundation on which to rebuild America, but its more than we were owed by a British comedian and a young actress from Bulgaria, home of the world-famous Museum House of Humor and Satire.

If you cannot remember the last time a film deeply excited you, please do yourself a favor and watch Pietro Marcellos Martin Eden, now available through various virtual cinemas, including Film at Lincoln Centers. Marcello and his co-screenwriter, Maurizio Braucci, claim to have based their film freely on Jack Londons semiautobiographical novel, but except for relocating the action from Oakland, Calif., at the turn of the 20th century to Naples, Italy, in the 1970s (more or less), theyve been stunningly faithful to Londons story of the intellectual and emotional awakening of a young proletarian writer and the personal and artistic catastrophe of his failure to awaken politically as well. By cleverly mixing tinted archival footage from Londons time into the re-creation of 20th century Italy, Marcello implicitly expands the title character from an individual case to a recurring type: the working man of exceptional talent and energy who struggles against all odds to educate himself and win a daughter of the bourgeoisie, only to discover in the end that the world is stronger than me. Marcello deserves credit for the bold conceptual move, but the true author of the movie might be Luca Marinelli, who plays Martin. With shoulders broad enough to bear the yoke of a two-ox team and a loose, slant-lipped smile that invites and offers confidences, Marinelli charges not only the character but the entire film with power, intelligence, and an allure that ultimately turns tragic.

Oliver Laxes Fire Will Come, available at virtual cinemas such as the Metrograph in New York and the Acropolis in Los Angeles, is a film of changing seasons and impressive yet fragile landscapesincluding the facial topographies of the nonprofessional performers Amador Arias and Benedicta Snchez, who play the main characters. Amador, in the story, is a taciturn, middle-aged man with sorrowful features that could have been carved with a pocketknife. Released from prison after serving a sentence for arson, he returns to his 83-year-old mother and her three-cow farm in the mountains of Galicia in Spain and settles into the annual round, meanwhile suffering abuse from townspeople who regard him as both an idiot and a threat. In the first half of the film, the neighbors get ready to accuse him of starting the next of the devastating fires that rage each summer through the woods. In the second half, as the screen explodes in flame, you hold your breath shot by shot to see Laxe and his crew daring to capture this infernowhile you wonder how any one man could be blamed for something so overwhelming.

Finally, moving on from the transhistorical drama of Martin Eden and the ecological cycle of Fire Will Come, you can go all the way to Neverland, otherwise known as the Three Treasures Temple, thanks to the new restoration of King Hus 1979 Raining in the Mountain. One of only two films that the master of martial arts sagas made in South Korea, Raining in the Mountain places Hsu Feng, as a thieving adventuress, amid towering vistas, labyrinthine architecture, balletic chase sequences and fights, and massed ensembles in color-coded costumes, all assembled for the sake of a folkloric fable and synchronized to a bang-up musical score by Ng Tai Gong. The experience is no more substantial than our transient world (to adopt the viewpoint of the storys Buddhist monks), so why not escape to it? Raining in the Mountain is streaming exclusively at the virtual cinema of New Yorks Film Forum.

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Living in Borats America - The Nation

Contrary to former Republican Del. David Ramadan's insistence that Republicans have to "denounce Trumpism" and go back to the "basic conservative principles" which cost them several elections, especially with Mitt Romney as their 2012 candidate, Trump's stronger than expected showing shows them the way forward is by reaching out to the very constituencies conservatives in the past ignored. Nearly one-third of black Midwestern men backed Trump because they understand that today's Democratic Party is one of free trade, internationalism, and Wall Street, which appealed to former Republican constituencies at the expense of American workers. Black rappers Li'l Wayne and Ice Cube, whose lyrics appeal more to non college-educated black men than to college grad or female blacks backed Trump's re-election.

Ramadan insists Republicans have to stop "winking at white supremacy and nationalism." Now that he's ensconced in the ivory tower at George Mason University, shouldn't he wonder what would become of the Republicans if voters he might shove into these categories didn't vote for them?

Nationalism is in full flower the world over -- in India, Great Britain, Brazil, Hungary -- because the alternatives' answers to public policy challenges have been so inadequate. Ramadan's "basic conservative principles" presumably include the interventionist notion that, "When the World dials 911, America picks up the phone," which Trump has been loath to do thanks to the many quagmires into which this "basic conservative principle" has mired us. "Trumpism" and "nationalism" offer an opportunity for the former "Party of Wall Street" to reach out to Main Street which the modern economy has grievously failed and which the Democrats, who have cornered all the country's financial centers and their suburbs, have abandoned.

Some would have us believe that America's founding documents embody "white supremacy," but far from "winking" at white supremacy, Trump showed the "alt-right" and "alt-light" elements of his coalition such as Steve Bannon the door, while, almost as soon as he dumped his hard-line tough-on-crime Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he helped revive the First Step Act giving felons, disproportionately minority, early release from their federal prison sentences. His actions supporting blacks were so far-reaching that former Alexandria resident and white nationalist leader Richard Spencer announced he's so fed up with Trump that he's voting for Biden. In Florida and Texas, Trump's Latino support reached mid-40%, dashing Democrat hopes of flipping either state. The more generations Latinos have been here, the more the high levels of immigration Wall Street wants, with the job competition, wage depression, and social costs they entail, disadvantage Latino citizens.

Trumpism shows the way forward for Republicans -- it nearly proved enough to save Trump from the personality defects which cost him re-election -- because it appeals to large constituencies which the alternatives -- both the Democrats and those Republicans espousing "basic conservative principles" who defected to Biden -- have abandoned.

Dino Drudi

Alexandria

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Opinion: Letter to the Editor: Trumpism Shows Way Forward for Republicans? - Virginia Connection Newspapers

I FEEL the response to Boris Johnsons analysis of Scottish devolution has been a tad harsh. In a private briefing on Monday night with MPs, the Prime Minister is reported to have described devolution as a disaster. Too right its been a disaster, Prime Minister, but only for you and the far-right cultists whom youve permitted to run your party.

Those who were present at this briefing were probably startled at such honesty from Johnson, something which is about as common as vegan sharks. Perhaps such refreshing candour from the Prime Minister will be regarded as the first green shoot of veracity in the post-Dominic Cummings era.

The chatter amongst the special advisers must have spread like news of a decent investment opportunity: By jingo, Boris has actually said something he really means. And yet, our response has been churlish in the extreme.

You can see why Johnson is exasperated by devolution. He and his party had been long assured by their glove puppets in Scottish Labour that devolution would leave the independence movement dead in the water. Why, dear old George Robertson, the red Baron of Port Ellen (insert laughing emojis here) had assured his Unionist chums that Scottish independence wouldnt even last as long as the century in which it was conceived. In 1995, when he was plain old George Robertson, MP for Hamilton South, he said: Devolution will kill nationalism stone dead.

READ MORE:Kevin McKenna: Englands north is learning the lesson No voters did in 2014

Less than two decades later as the spectre of Scottish independence began to haunt his worst nightmares, the Baron began to panic. The loudest cheers for the break-up of Britain would be from our adversaries and from our enemies, His Lordship told a Washington business group.

Later he would compare the battle for the Union with Abraham Lincolns fight against slavery in the American Civil War.

This was a comparison that only the very delusional or the very infantile would seriously entertain. Which is probably why it became the entire basis of Scottish Labours position in the first independence referendum.

Those of us who wondered why Baron Robbie seemed to be deploying allegories with American history and policy to US audiences received a confirmation of sorts a few years later. This was when the laird of Port Ellen became an advisor to the Washington-based Cohen Group, a consulting and marketing firm.

The Baron later became General-Secretary of Nato.

Shares in Russian and Chinese weapons manufacturers must have seen a sharp spike in their value when that announcement was made. I also had visions of those wee aliens in the old mashed potato television adverts pishing themselves at the humans stabbing potatoes with their steely knives.

Its not difficult to understand Boris Johnsons vexation at devolution. Life would have been so much easier in the knowledge that a key component of the United Kingdom was safely in the hands of a collection of the Tories Scottish Labour lickspittles. All that was required in those good old days to keep the tribunes of the people sweet was to hold out to them the prospect of a few gongs and life peerages as a reward for a career bending the knee to their superiors in Westminster.

By the time the SNP had gained power in Scotland in 2007 a collection of dutiful Scottish Labour stalwarts were beginning to form an orderly queue at the Westminster trough. Jack McConnell became Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale; Alistair Darling became Baron Darling of Roulanish and dear old George Foulkes is still to be seen slumbering away in the Upper House as Baron Foulkes of Cumnock.

Indeed if I were advising the UK Prime Minister Id suggest getting these old political trenchermen together (a few bottles of decent Scotch and a small non-exec should do it Prime Minister) and Id be asking them what in the name of the wee man was happening to Scotland while they were all collecting their baubles and telling the Tories that everything was cushty in the northern approaches.

Well, I think we all know what was happening while the UK Tories and their Labour scouts were asleep on the job. The people of Scotland began to realise that there was a clear divergence of doctrine and philosophy between Scotland and England in key areas such as education, health and attitudes towards immigrants and refugees.

AS Tony Blair and Gordon Brown squandered a three-term Labour government pandering to big business and reneging on commitments to reverse Margaret Thatchers anti-trade union legislation questions were being asked in Labours Scottish heartlands. Just what do this pair of political opportunists actually stand for?

As the New Labour project crashed and burned under the weight of its own hubris and Cool Britannia trinkets it morphed seamlessly into David Camerons Conservative government. Cameron, who possessed as few political scruples and principles as Tony Blair, benignly gave way to a hard-right form of Conservatism. This would immediately impose a one-sided austerity programme on the UKs working-class communities while fashioning a suite of tax breaks and other fiscal inducements for its traditional fanbase.

READ MORE:Kevin McKenna: Are we Unionists, Nationalists or something else altogether?

Inevitably, immigrants and refugees would come to be blamed for the resulting economic hardship in Englands northern communities. The Windrush generation would soon be receiving their orders to pack up and leave and Nigel Farage would weaponise extreme xenophobia and become the conscience of a new and insidious form of mainstream conservatism.

In Scotland, a collection of indolent and worthless Tory fanboys gained some seats at Westminster and deployed a studied policy of looking the other way as Scottish interests and existing devolved powers were being traduced during the Brexit process. With all this going on you neednt have been a lifelong, Saltire-waving devotee of Scottish nationalism to have begun to view independence in a favourable light.

And all the while, Scottish Labour was asleep, only coming groggily and shambolically to life to shout Feck! and Drink! at appropriate times like old Father Jack on Craggy Island. You can see them still asleep in their comfy Holyrood chairs any day of the week.

Following Boris Johnsons clumsy burst of honesty, Laura Kuenssbergs ubiquitous Downing Street source, attempted to clarify his remarks. Devolution is great but not when its used by separatists and nationalists to break up the United Kingdom.

The truth of the matter is well-known to the 58% and counting of the Scottish population who now favour independence. English nationalists not Scottish nationalists have hastened the break-up of the United Kingdom. Theyve done this by turning their country into a theme park for the alt-right and a klondyke for global, organised crime.

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Kevin McKenna: Devolution has been a disaster for the Westminster Tory cult - The National

Stormfront does truly unforgivable things during her time onThe Boys.In an interview with Refinery29, Cash mentions how she's received some hatred from fans of the show, saying, "I guess I wasn't expecting people to confuse me with my character. But that's because I know me, and people don't know me."

The Boysmakes a strong attempt to show that Stormfront's ideology is wrong. Even the main villain in the show, Homelander, looks baffled when she brings up the idea of white genocide. The show uses Stormfront to talk about the very real presence of neo-Nazis in the United States in the form of the alt-right.

Cash also says she only took on the role because it took a critical approach to the ideas being perpetuated by Stormfront, saying, "It's a satire, so, obviously, Stormfront flies these people don't fly in our world. But they do a lot of the other things that she does. It was important to show that and to show the newer dangers of white supremacy: the way that they have been using the internet and using narratives."

While Stormfront is the villain ofThe Boysseason 2, it seems like the role has caused Cash more problems then she expected, with some fans thinking the character was a reflection of the actress when that couldn't be further from the truth.

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The woman playing Stormfront is different in real life - Looper

Here, Isayamas convoluted racial coding comes to the foreground, because Isayama does construct many symbolic parallels between the Eldians and an ideal Nazi state. Eldian society is ethnically homogeneous, with the exception of a single Asian woman, and all the named Eldians have European names. (It is not clear if they are intended to be white. The pale mukokuseki or stateless default character design template used in most Japanese anime is often interpreted as Japanese in Japan and white in the U.S.) The coup against the state could be read as an anticolonial revolution, but the alt-right interprets it as a nationalist putsch against a pacifist state. The opening theme music of the show is even sung in German.

There are also parallels to Imperial Japan. Isayama explicitly based one heroic general on Imperial Japanese Army General Akiyama Yoshifuru, while fans on both the left and the right see close parallels between another character and Nazi General Erwin Rommel. Another character, Mikasa, shares her name with an Imperial Japanese battleship. Given these aesthetic decisions, perhaps it is unsurprising that one poster opened their thread, When did you realize this was fascist propaganda and that its commentary on how the good guys lost WW2?

Theres fodder for many other, sometimes contradictory, racist interpretations of the show. The Marleyan state is controlled secretly by an Eldian family, reminiscent of right-wing conspiracy theories around Jewish cabals and financiers. On the chan boards, alt-right Attack on Titan fans who detest the Eldians tend to think of the walled city as Israel and consider their expulsion and ghettoization well-deserved punishments.

A contingent of liberal commentators also identified the series as careless at best, and intentional at worst, in its invocation of antisemitic tropes. As one user tweeted, This boneheaded metaphor has the people analogous to holocaust victims literally turning into giant horrid man-eating monsters. As another observed, Attack on Titans whole Jews used to rule and brutally oppress the world and fled after losing a war and are the only people who can turn into Titans and literally eat people thing is, yknow, pretty gross and maybe a reason not to buy/read/watch it, just FYI.

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Why "Attack on Titan" Is the Alt-Right's Favorite Manga - The New Republic

Two main crises increasingly characterize the twenty-first century. The first is the climate crisis, which is leading to a dangerous and destabilized world. The second is the crisis of democracy, which is driving the rise of the authoritarian far right. The way in which these two crises intersect will have profound implications for the future of our species. For those of us on the Left, this raises uncomfortable questions that must be taken very seriously.

From Donald Trump to Jair Bolsonaro, right-wing politicians have repeatedly rejected the scientific consensus on climate change, spread deliberate misinformation, and opposed policies to reduce emissions. This pattern of denial and delay creates a negative feedback loop between these two crises: as trust in democracy is eroded, the climate and ecological emergency grows ever more dangerous.

Climate denial may have started as a far-right conspiracy theory, but today it is a mainstream political project, promoted by opaquely funded conservative think tanks, disseminated online by big tech companies, and written into law by paid lobbyists for the oil and gas industry. Capitalists have tied themselves to this far-right project because their short-term goals increasingly align with those of the far right. Both groups want to protect the profits of big business and shift the blame away from the rich and the powerful.

As the Right attempts to block action on climate change, it is tempting to think of environmental issues as an exclusively left-wing concern. We know that in order to meaningfully address the climate and ecological emergency, we must democratize the economy, redistribute wealth, and ensure decent living standards for all people. Surely, then, it follows that any real attempt to combat climate change will have much more in common with international socialism than with neoliberal capitalism or indeed modern-day fascism.

However, there is also a long history of right-wing environmentalism, which we ignore at our peril. Right-wing activists are now cultivating their own ecological philosophies. To conserve the environment, they argue, is a naturally conservative idea. It is therefore quite possible that a right-wing movement will emerge in the years to come that not only acknowledges the severity of the crisis, but also uses the reality of climate change to justify an increasingly authoritarian and reactionary response.

Climate change is an opportunity as much as a challenge, and the authoritarian right has always found it helpful to manufacture a crisis. Is it then so difficult to imagine that climate change, the ultimate threat to civilization, will one day be used to justify conservative politics? When resources are limited and huge portions of the globe are rendered uninhabitable, do we really think that capitalism is going to just give up and admit defeat?

It is not hard to see how environmental concerns can be incorporated into a right-wing ideology. Throughout history, capitalists have pointed to the natural world, which they claim is based upon competition and survival, to justify the systems that we, as humans, have created. This tradition also tends to emphasize the natural hierarchy of any society, contending that the strong will always outcompete the weak.

Thus, the right-wing imagination sees the natural world as a key part of our national identity that we, as patriots, are called upon to protect. In this worldview, the degradation of the living world is inextricably bound to the degradation of modern society. It perceives anything that is considered foreign or alien to be unnatural and unnecessary. This racist philosophy, also used to explain eugenics, is currently experiencing a deadly resurgence.

Last year, a white supremacist carried out a terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. He killed fifty-one people in a barbaric shooting that targeted two nearby mosques. Before carrying out this attack, the killer published a manifesto online proudly referring to himself as an eco-fascist. His manifesto railed against water pollution, plastic waste, and a society that is creating a massive burden for future generations.

This apocalyptic vision of collapse was intended to gain maximum attention online and should, therefore, be regarded with some skepticism. The alt-right has memeified modern-day fascism, and this so-called manifesto is littered with references to video games, social media, and popular culture. It is possible that the references to climate change are another deliberate distraction, but that is not how his supporters interpreted it.

Months later, there was another shooting in El Paso, Texas, directly inspired by the first shooting in Christchurch. The killer referenced similar ecological themes in his own manifesto and declared himself a supporter of the Christchurch shooter. Just one week later, another white supremacist launched afailed attack on a mosque in Norway. He described the Christchurch shooter as a saint and called on others to emulate the attacks.

For now, proponents of eco-fascism are mostly organizing online. However, there have been concerted attempts to take this movement off the internet and onto the streets. Richard Spencer, the man who popularized the term alt-right, does not deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change. In fact, he sees it as an important part of his politics.

Spencer once tweeted that population control was the obvious solution to the ravages of climate change, and wrote a manifesto for the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, arguing that European countries should invest in national parks, wilderness preserves, and wildlife refuges, as well as productive and sustainable farms. The protesters in Charlottesville picked up this theme, marching through the streets chanting an old Nazi slogan, blood and soil.

Fascism is not a new ideology, of course and neither, for that matter, is eco-fascism. The slogan blood and soil was originally coined by Richard Walter Darr, a high-ranking functionary in theNazi Party, to create a mystical link between the German people and their sacred homeland. This ideology stressed that ethnic identity was based on blood and thereby sought to portray Jews, whom Darr referred to as weeds, as a rootless race, unable to forge a true relationship with the land.

Fascists have, in the past, been able to synthesize far-right ideology with a kind of basic, unnuanced environmentalism. Indeed, many people in the Nazi Party thought of themselves as environmentalists. In their book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience, Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier reject the notion that the green wing of the Nazi Party were a group of innocents, confused and manipulated idealists, or reformers from within:

They were conscious promoters and executors of a vile program explicitly dedicated to inhuman racist violence, massive political repression and worldwide military domination.

The Nazi green wing had, at one point, a significant sway over the movement. Hitler could extoll the virtues of renewable energy in detail, once declaring that water, winds and tides were the energy path of the future. The youth movement was also an important recruiting tool: by synthesizing their love of nature with the violent doctrine of white supremacy, the Nazis were able to indoctrinate a new generation of young, patriotic fascists.

The term eco-fascist is now used so frequently that it has been rendered almost meaningless. It is, for example, often used by right-wing climate deniers in an attempt to smear all environmentalists as authoritarian zealots. In Britain, James Delingpole is the author of The Little Green Book of Eco-Fascism, which frames environmental concerns as a left-wing plot to frighten your kids, drive up energy costs and hike your taxes.

Delingpole has previously described climate activist Greta Thunberg as a 16-year old autistic kid and stated that hanging is far too good for climate scientists. According to Delingpole, climate activists want to usher in the eco-fascist New World Order, while actual fascists like the El Paso shooter are not quite the right-wing, Trump-voting, white nationalists that they have been played up to be in the media.

On the other end of the political spectrum, many left-wing commentators now see eco-fascism as one of only two choices ultimately facing us. Rosa Luxemburg once popularized the slogan socialism or barbarism. Today, many eco-socialists speak of a choice between eco-socialism or eco-barbarism. There is, therefore, an unhelpful tendency on the Left to categorize any right-wing response to the climate crisis as a direct product of eco-fascism. Often, what they are actually referring to is a natural product of capitalism. Environmental racism is, after all, not the preserve of fascists.

However, we shouldnt allow ourselves to be derailed by a futile terminological debate about what constitutes eco-fascism. The contemporary far right is not a homogenous entity. It is a complex alliance of individuals, groups, and parties with a wide range of beliefs. Their ideology is constantly in flux, and fascism is just one part of a wider political ecology, which has a way of attaching itself to other movements.

Today, the most pressing concern is not a small subculture of online eco-fascists. It is the various ways in which eco-fascist ideas are taking root in mainstream right-wing politics.

Last year, right-wing populist parties won almost a quarter of the seats in the European Parliament. These parties are generally united on the issues of immigration, defense, and international security, but they increasingly diverge on the question of climate change.

While many parties still engage in the right-wing project of climate denial, others have started taking an altogether different approach. In France, Marine Le Pen claims to believe in climate change. In fact, she says that she wants to turn France into the worlds leading ecological civilization.

This is a very sudden shift in the politics of the far right, which should be approached with great caution. Le Pen supports nuclear power as the energy source of the future and talks about the natural world in a distinctly nationalistic tone. She refuses to engage with other countries in issues of international diplomacy and has nothing substantial to say on the greatest issues of our age. When her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, led the party, the National Front denied that anthropogenic climate change even existed. Today, his daughter is desperate to detoxify the party.

In Britain, a similar pattern is emerging. While far-right parties in the United Kingdom tend to downplay the scientific consensus on climate change, they often speak confidently about protecting the English countryside. The United Kingdom Independence Party has a vision of England rooted in a pastoral vision of old Albion. The British National Party peddles a similar line, but spells it out more explicitly, claiming to be the only party to recognize that overpopulation whose primary driver is immigration, as revealed by the governments own figures is the cause of the destruction of our environment.

Right-wing parties frequently present an array of contradictory beliefs about the environment. An older generation often still supports the project of climate denial, while younger activists are much more likely to accept that anthropogenic climate change is real and are keen to use it to their advantage. In a similar way, the alt-right movement is made up of both climate deniers and eco-fascists, two seemingly disparate groups that happily coexist online. When push comes to shove, they are fascists first and foremost, with any environmental sensibilities distinctly secondary.

Right-wing leaders also understand that the world we live in is increasingly divided. Different messages work on different people and can be individually tailored to distinct subcultures, thanks in part to the internet. It is a strategic advantage if your ideology is adaptable and ambiguous enough to accommodate as many people as possible.

Recently, the QAnon conspiracy theory has undergone a deadly resurgence. Right-wing activists have mobilized their networks to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, targeting groups that one might not naturally associate with the far right. A recent survey concluded that one in four Britons now believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory.

There are fears that this brand of conspiracism has become particularly widespread among the well-being and wellness community, a subculture that one might expect to lean toward the left-wing politics of the green movement. Could the same thing happen to climate activists? Or is it already happening?

In March, an account that claimed to represent a local branch of Extinction Rebellion posted a photograph of a sticker with a dangerous slogan: corona is the cure humans are the disease. A white supremacist group known as the Hundred-Handers produced the stickers and disseminated them. However, many people assumed that it was the work of genuine climate activists. The fact that it seemed credible was a huge part of the problem. In Britain, the climate movement has openly struggled with issues of racial and economic justice.

Indeed, the environmental movement has always had a somewhat confused relationship with the far right. Many of the first people to call themselves conservationists were also white supremacists. Madison Grant, for example, was an American zoologist who was a staunch supporter of race science as well. In 1916, he published The Passing of the Great Race, a pseudoscientific work that lamented the loss of the Nordic people. This racist tract inspired Anders Breivik, the far-right terrorist.

Decades later, Dave Foreman became a controversial figure in the American climate movement. Foreman once said that the worst thing we could do in Ethiopia is to give aid the best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let the people there just starve. His colleague Christopher Manes welcomed the AIDS epidemic as a necessary solution to the population problem.

Foremans most recent book, Man Swarm, argues that human overpopulation is the primary cause of the climate and ecological emergency. He describes the United States as an overflow pond for reckless overbreeding in Central America and Mexico.

The vast majority of environmentalists would, thankfully, find these views abhorrent. However, concerns about population growth and immigration have often been foundational to the modern green movement. To ignore that history would be a dangerous mistake.

In Britain, for example, the modern Green Party, originally known as the PEOPLE Party, was founded by a right-wing councilor, Tony Whittaker, and his wife Lesley after they read an interview in Playboywith Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Ehrlichs book sounded the alarm about the growing population of the Global South and presented population control as the most important component of climate action.

Ehrlich recounted his experience of emotionally understanding the concept of overpopulation while looking out across a Delhi slum through the window of a taxi, and seeing people, people, people, people who were begging and defecating at every turn.

The European climate movement has always had a problem with racism. In the 1970s, Herbert Gruhl was a key early player in the German Greens, the most successful ecological party in Europe. Gruhl had previously been involved in far-right groups and called for an end to immigration for ecological reasons. He eventually left the party, claiming that the Greens had given up their concern for ecology in favour of a leftist ideology of emancipation, and went to establish a right-wing party instead, but his views remained influential in the European climate movement.

The dissident East German Marxist Rudolf Bahro expressed similar concerns. In his 1987 book The Logic of Salvation, he wrote: The ecology and peace movement is the first popular German movement since the Nazi movement. It must co-redeem Hitler. The opportunity, according to Bahro, was that today, there is a call in the depths of the Volk for a Green Adolf.

There is something about the enormity of climate change that can change people. Just ten years earlier, Bahro had identified himself as an eco-socialist, saying red and green, green and red, go well together. In Socialism and Survival, a book written nearly forty years ago with a very contemporary feel, Bahro put forward a persuasive argument on the need to combine socialism and environmentalism.

Murray Bookchin publicly debated Bahro and Dave Foreman, reproaching both men for their authoritarian approach to climate change. Bookchin argued that environmentalism without socialism was sure to end in disaster. When Bahro accused him of ignoring the dark side of humanity, Bookchin replied that the dark side of human nature emerges from a social foundation that we choose to indulge. A would-be ecological dictatorship, Bookchin told Bahro, would not be ecological it would finally finish off the planet altogether.

Today, there are still some environmentalists who turn toward authoritarianism as a solution to ecological breakdown. James Lovelock, the scientist who developed the Gaia theory, has argued that democracy must be suspended to deal with climate change:

Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war.

Another scientist, Mayer Hillman agrees:

Can you see everyone in a democracy volunteering to give up flying? Can you see the majority of the population becoming vegan? Can you see the majority agreeing to restrict the size of their families?

This worrying trend of thought appears to be growing. It is, we should note, particularly prevalent among old white men living in wealthy Western countries.

This is what happens when environmentalism gives up. In the years to come, the Right are going to offer more pragmatic and realistic solutions to climate change, based on piecemeal change and fantasy solutions. They are going to demonize climate refugees and tell us that left-wing environmentalists want the citizens of rich, developed countries to give up everything they now possess.

One of the dreadful solutions they offer will surely be population control. Right now, it is something they only dare whisper about, but this idea will inevitably spill out into the public sphere in the not too distant future. Unlike other solutions to climate change, this one has been a part of far-right ecological politics from the start.

Any modern history of population control could start with Pentti Linkola, another proponent of eco-fascism. Pentti Linkola called for a severe reduction in the human population in order to tackle climate change. He developed his own ethical framework, which he dubbed lifeboat ethics:

When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ships axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

Demography is obviously a factor in the climate change calculation, but it is by no means the most important one. Population growth is now flattening out, while other, more important parts of the calculation are growing exponentially. Consumption and inequality are far more pressing concerns. Even taking into account the current trend in population growth, we have enough wealth and resources to provide a decent standard of living for every person on Earth while still reducing emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

The Right has managed to successfully depoliticize the climate crisis. It was reportedly Herbert Gruhl who coined the slogan we are neither left nor right we are in front. Environmental movements elsewhere have taken up this slogan; Andrew Yang even used it in his bid to become the Democratic presidential nominee. For too long, the mainstream environmental movement has thought of climate change as something beyond politics. History shows that this approach can lead to devastating and barbaric consequences.

Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier give us a stark comparison with the youth movement in Nazi Germany:

The various strands of the youth movement shared a common self-conception: they were a purportedly non-political response to a deep cultural crisis, stressing the primacy of direct emotional experience over social critique and action. This posture lent itself all too readily to a very different kind of political mobilization: the unpolitical zealotry of fascism. Its countercultural energies and its dreams of harmony with nature bore the bitterest fruit. This is, perhaps, the unavoidable trajectory of any movement which acknowledges and opposes social and ecological problems but does not recognize their systemic roots or actively resist the political and economic structures which generate them. Eschewing societal transformation in favour of personal change, an ostensibly apolitical disaffection can, in times of crisis, yield barbaric results.

The dangerous and violent philosophy of far-right environmentalism is slowly being normalized. After the El Paso massacre, Jeet Heer noted how banal much of the killers manifesto now seemed, echoing many of the nativist passions of mainstream Trumpism.

Fascism has often been described as capitalism in decay. The ecological emergency is surely the clearest proof of this. Our political and economic elites either do not understand the ramifications of their actions, which have driven the climate crisis, or simply do not care enough to stop it.

Take the Conservative Party in Britain. Just five years ago, Boris Johnson openly engaged in climate denial. Today, Johnson is prime minister, and like many right wing-leaders across Europe, he has been forced to accept the scientific consensus on climate change. The Tory politician now claims that he wants the United Kingdom to become the Saudi Arabia of wind power, and calls himself a complete evangelist for as yet unproven technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The British government is betting on technological fixes to solve the climate crisis. Thus, one form of extractive industry will simply be replaced by another. We will continue to extract minerals from the Global South and turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in the global supply chain, pursuing infinite growth on a finite planet. At the same time, we will continue to drift ever more rightward.

Over the last year, the Conservatives have stepped up their racist rhetoric on immigration, demonizing refugees and threatening to deploy warships in the English Channel. They have considered sending asylum seekers to offshore detention centers while pushing legislation through parliament to limit the prosecution of British soldiers for war crimes and allow state agents to commit crimes like murder and torture. The British authorities have classified climate protesters as domestic extremists and banned books that are critical of capitalism from schools.

These violent and barbaric policies, pursued by the dominant political forces throughout Europe and North America, will ultimately lead to the death or displacement of hundreds of millions of people. Therefore, the struggle for climate justice must also be a struggle for economic and racial emancipation.

The two great crises of our age the climate emergency and the decline of democracy stem from a much bigger crisis: the ongoing crisis of capitalism. In order to address that, we need to oppose far-right environmentalism and build a climate movement that is both anti-fascist and anti-capitalist. We have to be ever vigilant against the threat of eco-fascism, and ensure the climate movement is not susceptible to the violent and dangerous solutions of the Right.

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The Climate Movement Must Be Ready To Challenge Rising Right-Wing Environmentalism - Jacobin magazine

Demonstrations promoted by right-wing conspiracy theorists and white nationalists are expected downtown Saturday. Will people come by the thousands, or dozens?

WASHINGTON There was intense trepidation that the 2018 Unite the Right 2 rally could live up to its namesake, serving as a sequel to Charlottesville and unleashing violence in the nations capital. Police prepared for hundreds of alt-right protesters, as the event garnered attention on social media channels and in the global press.

But ultimately, only a few dozen provocateurs boarded a train at the Vienna / Fairfax-GMU Metro station to begin their pilgrimage. When they alighted in Foggy Bottom, their bullhorns were drowned out by the jeers of a city that knew they were coming.

Far-right protesters were dwarfed in size and spirit on Aug. 12, 2018. What was supposed to conclude in a crescendo in Lafayette Park ended awkwardly without ceremony, in a whimper.

Could the same dynamic unfold on Saturday, when events promoted by conservative conspiracy theorists and white nationalists converge in Freedom Plaza?

The reason that was such a small number of people in 2018, versus the year before in Charlottesville, was the lawsuits and criminal charges that were pending related to the homicide of counter-protester Heather Heyer, retired FBI special agent Tom OConnor said. The people organizing the Unite the Right 2 rally were being sued civilly, and there was also internal strife within the organizations that brought the event together, which happens very often in extremist activity.

OConnor served for 23 years on the FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force in the Washington field office, and now serves as principal consultant with FEDSquared Consulting LLC.

Faced with the preliminary details of the weekend events and a far-right social media ecosystem seemingly unwilling to accept President Trumps defeat, OConnor said the outcome of this weekend's demonstrations will be far more difficult to predict than the events of August 2018.

My fear is that, as we go forward through this cycle, moving towards the inaugural, the side that feels like theyve had this election stolen from them, youre going to have extremist elements in these groups, that could act out in lone offender violence, O'Connor said. That would be unfortunate for the country, but it is far from unlikely.

O'Connor stressed the careful balancing act federal and District law enforcement will be undertaking - protecting First Amendment assemblies while monitoring the main events and peripheries for potential violence.

"On the outsides of these protected activities, you're going to have fringe elements that have violence in their nature," he said. "And some of these groups you're hearing about have had individuals who pare off to do violent actions."

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Could MAGA protests in DC end like Unite the Right 2 rally, in a whimper? - WUSA9.com

Amongst all the talk of the 2020 election, its easy to forget everything that led up to Donald Trump winning the presidency in 2016. But if you keep your eyes shut and concentrate you might remember a few things: heated debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton, a chaotic Twitter landscape, and an otherwise cute frog that became the mascot of internet-savvy 4chan users who were trying to meme Trump into the presidency.

Back in 2016, Pepe the Frog was added to the Anti-Defamation Leagues database of hate symbols. But before that, he was just a part of a layabout group of friends in Matt Furies comic series Boys Club. He was never intended for anything but a good time. But when the internet got ahold of him, he became a face of the NEET 4chan masses and ultimately a symbol of the so-called alt-right.

The documentary Feels Good Man, which is currently available on PBS and several streaming services, traces that journey. It also chronicles how Furie, a mild-mannered San Francisco artist, attempted to reclaim Pepe and turn him back into a symbol of love. Its a formidable task, but perhaps not impossible. As filmmakers Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini show in their doc, Pepe actually became a symbol of resistance to authoritarian rule during the protests in Hong Kong just last year.

In this weeks episode of the Get WIRED podcast, senior editor Angela Watercutter talks to Jones and Angelini about the journey they went on with the creator of Pepeand what the little green frog means now.

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Can Pepe the Frog Ever Be Redeemed? - WIRED