Category Archives: Alt-right

The Alt Right

Origins of the term

White supremacistRichard Spencer, who is President and Creative Director at the National Policy Institute, a tiny white supremacist organization, coined the term alternative right in August 2008 in an article in Takis Magazine, a far-right publication.

At the time, Spencer was using alternative right to refer to people on the right who distinguished themselves from traditional conservatives by opposing, among other things, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and open immigration. That same year, Paul Gottfried, a Jewish paleo-conservative, employed the term alternative right when he gave a speech entitled, The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right, at the H.L. Mencken Clubs Annual Meeting in November 2008. For this reason, some sources credit Gottfried with originating the term.

Spencer further popularized the term when he chose Alternative Right as the name for an online publication that debuted in 2010. Spencer shut the website down in 2013, but it was soon re-launched by Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki, former writers forAlternative Right. Spencer went on to found another journal,Radix. BothAlternative Right (rebranded as Affirmative Right)andRadixare forums for racists, antisemites and others who identify with the alt right.

What is the ideology of the alt right?

Alt right adherents identify with a range of different ideologies, all of which center on white identity. Many claim to be Identitarians, a term that originated in France with the founding of theBloc Identitairemovement and its youth counterpart,Generation Identitaire. Identitarians espouse racism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of their respective counties. American Identitarians, including Richard Spencer, claim to want to preserve European-American (i.e., white) culture in the U.S.

As Michael McGregor, a writer and editor forRadix,wrote in February 2015, Identitarians want the preservation of our identity--the cultural and genetic heritage that makes us who we are. Identitarians reject multiculturalism or pluralism in any form.

Others in the alt right identify as so-called radical traditionalists, people who want to preserve what they claim are traditional Christian values but from a uniquely white supremacist perspective. Some inthe alt right identify as white nationalists who want to preserve the white majority in the U.S., claiming that whites losing their majority status is equivalent to white genocide. They issue mendacious propaganda on subjects like immigration and black crime as evidence of whites imperiled status.

Another segment of the alt right refers to themselves as neo-reactionaries (those who reject liberal democracy and ideas associated with the Enlightenment. Some neo-reactionaries refer to their theories as the Dark Enlightenment.) Others call themselves race realists or alternately HBD advocates, a reference to human biodiversity (a belief that ones race governs traits such as behavior and intelligencewith non-whites being inferior to whites). However they define themselves, alt righters reject egalitarianism, democracy, universalism and multiculturalism.

Many alt righters are also blatantly antisemitic and blame Jews for allegedly promoting anti-white policies such as immigration and diversity.

In 2015, alt righters began disparaging members of the conservative movement with the derogatory termcuckservative, a combination of conservative and cuckold, that is used by white supremacists to describe a white conservative who putatively promotes the interests of Jews and non-whites over those of whites. The alt right also refers disparagingly to the mainstream conservative movement as Conservatism, Inc. or Conservative, Inc., in an effort to highlight its associations with wealthy donors (whom the white supremacists dismiss as pro-immigration globalists whose policies undermine white nationalism in America).

Who makes up the alt right?

The alt right is an extremely loose movement, made up of different strands of people connected to white supremacy. One body of adherents is the ostensibly intellectual racists who create many of the doctrines and principles of the white supremacist movement. They seek to attract young educated whites to the movement by highlighting the achievements and alleged intellectual and cultural superiority of whites. They run a number of small white supremacist enterprises, including organizations, online publications and publishing houses. These includeNational Policy Institute, run by Richard Spencer; Counter Currents Publishing, run by Greg Johnson; American Renaissance, run byJared Taylor; and The Right Stuff, a website that features numerous podcasts with a number of contributors.

Alt righters use terms like culture as substitutes for more divisive terms such as race, and promote Western Civilization as a code word for white culture or identity. They tend to avoid explicit white supremacist references like the14 words,a slogan used by neo-Nazis and other hardcore white supremacists. While alt righters share the sentiment behind the 14 words theyre more inclined to talk about preserving European-American identity.

The Groypers are the latest alt right group to grab media attention. This loose network of alt right figures want to normalize their racist and antisemitic views, and are undertaking an organized effort to publicly lambast mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote an America First agenda and for not being adequately pro white.

The subculture of the alt right

The alt right also has its own subculture and language and both tend to attract young, white men. Many of these young men are active in the Chan world, including 4Chan, 8Chan (now defunct) and Reddit. These message boards, where most people post anonymously, are a key source of internet memes and trolling efforts, which often target women and minorities. For example, it is common to find memes that belittle the Holocaust and depict well-known Jewish figures, among others, being gassed. The memes creators hold that bigoted humor and irony help attract new followers to the alt right.

Another aspect of the alt right subculture is its connection to the online world of misogyny known broadly as the manosphere. Men in this movement believe they are being stripped of power by women and pro-feminist social structures. They also are hostile to women on a personal level, with some believing that women are objects to be possessed and used for sexual gratification, while others resent women for their own inability to attract them or to form meaningful relationships with them.

One incident that preceded the advent of the alt right but anticipated its misogyny was Gamergate. In 2014, males in the gaming community expressed hostility and resentment toward certain female gamers and attacked and threatened them online. This pushed a number of women to leave that community. Gamergate showed alt right adherents the effectiveness of online harassment campaigns against their perceived enemies.

Alt right vs. alt lite

In 2015 and 2016, a number of people who considered themselves part of the alt right were not white supremacists, but held certain views that aligned with white supremacist ideology: they were anti-immigrant, anti-globalism, anti-feminism and believed that the left and/or liberals are actively working to destroy American culture.

These people became known as the alt lite. In late 2016, the alt right and alt lite definitively split when people associated with the alt lite, including Mike Cernovich and Lucien Wintrich, began to distance themselves from the negative publicity surrounding the alt rights white supremacist views. The split became very clear after Richard Spencer and some of his followers were caught on video giving Nazi salutes during a National Policy Institute conference shortly after the 2016 election.

The Charlottesville Backlash

The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a peak moment for the alt right. The event brought together between 500 and 600 white supremacists, including Klan members, neo-Nazis and racist skinheads. A torchlit rally the night before the event was attended largely by alt right adherents, and the next days gathering was the largest public white supremacist event in decades.

The alt rights moment of triumph was cut short, however, when a white supremacist named James Fields used his car to murder counter-protester Heather Heyer, and wound many others.

The repercussions were immediate for the alt right, and for the larger white supremacist community. Scores of them were doxxedtheir real identities exposed and as a result, some were fired from their jobs, had to leave their universities, or were rejected by their families or romantic partners. Many white supremacists social media accounts and websites were taken off line and some were kicked off popular crowdfunding websites, eliminating a key income source.

More than two years after Charlottesville, efforts to deplatform white supremacists continue, even as many have migrated to newer, less-scrutinized platforms like Discord and Telegram.

Alt right groups have also turned away from large rallies and have focused on distributing white supremacist propaganda, particularly on college campuses, and holding small flash demonstrations and private events.

In addition to criminal cases, Unite the Right organizers, including alt right leaders, have been dogged by civil lawsuits at both the state and federal levels, and are accused of conspiring to plan the rally and promote violence in Charlottesville.

Lawsuits are not the only irritant affecting white supremacists since Unite the Right. In July 2018, Richard Spencer was refused entry into Europe while en route to Sweden to speak at an alt right conference. Jared Taylor was banned from Europe in March 2019 and Greg Johnson was deported from Norway in May 2019.

Meanwhile, alt right leader Spencer, who helped spearhead the events in Charlottesville, has become increasingly unpopular in the alt right due in part to the perception that he failed to capitalize on the energy generated by Unite the Right.

See more here:

Alt Right: A Primer on the New White Supremacy

On June 7, Tehama County voters will decide whether Dave Kain or Chad Parker is their next county sheriff.

Kain is currently employed as a Captain by the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. He has won numerous awards.Parker formerly worked for the Tehama County Sheriffs Office, but left his position in 2018 to take up a job as an investigator with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Both men have had long careers as Tehama County law enforcement officials.

On his campaign webpage, Kain proposes to expand the Tehama County Jail, implement new technology to enhance criminal investigations, create alternative custody programs, and designate a special deputy for rural areas. If elected, Parker also plans to combat rural crime with the creation of Rural Crime Deputies.

Dave Kain and Chad Parker.

Parkers campaign slogan is Moving Forward With Trusted Local Leadership and he claims on his campaign webpage to want to restore public trust in the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. However, his close ties to Red Bluffs alt-right community may alarm Tehama County voters, even in a heavily Republican county where around 65% of the population voted for Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.

If elected, Parker proposes to name Dave Greer, a retired sheriffs deputy, the leader of his management team. Greer has 35 years of experience working in Tehama County law enforcement. He is a founding member of the nonprofit group Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County.

On its Facebook group page, the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County claims its mission is to recognize Jesus Christ as their leader and that the written guidelines in the Bible shall be subject to and secondary to the laws of California. The mission statement also says it is important for law enforcement officials to seek out people who are lost and help them with the message of Jesus Christ.

The administrator for the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County page is Rob Brinton. Brinton graduated from West Valley High School in the early 1980s and is an Air Force veteran. He worked for 28 years as a law enforcement official in Tehama County for several agencies before retiring. In 2018, he made an unsuccessful run for Tehama County Sheriff.

Brinton is currently employed as a real estate agent in Cottonwood. He is also the Northern California ambassador for the Code 9 Project, a national organization dedicated to educating, training and advocating for the prevention of PTSD and suicide for all first responders and their families.

Brinton has publicly shared a variety of extremist far-right content on his Facebook page, all of which appeared after he retired from the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. In April of 2021, Briton called U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) a Fucktard for supporting the defunding of the police in St. Louis. He subscribes to a selective far-right version of Christianity as a member of the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County.

After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in May of 2020, Brinton took to Facebook to share his unhappiness regarding the protests for justice sweeping across the country. He tagged Chad Parker, as well as former Shasta County Sheriff Eric Magrini, and other North State law enforcement officials in the Facebook post.

I stand behind my brothers and sisters. NO ONE STANDS ALONE. Im retired but not dead ill bring the fight to you and stand beside you until my last breath or drop of blood you are my family I love you and I WILL STAND BESIDE YOU. LETS BRING THE FIGHT TO THEM YOU FUCK WITH ONE OF US . YOU FUCK WITH ALL OF US..

Rob Brinton Facebook post about Black Lives Matter protests

Parker, and numerous others, liked Brintons Facebook post. One individual who commented under the Facebook post said protesters would explode like a tube of toothpaste if they decided to play frogger with motorists.

Rob Brinton Facebook post on U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO).

Brinton, like Parker, is friends on Facebook with Woody Clendenen. Clendenen lives in Tehama County, is a well-known member of the Cottonwood Militia, and owns a barber shop in Cottonwood which occasionally flies a Confederate flag

Clendenen also participates in Red, White and Blueprint podcasts and docuseries episodes, along with two of the co-owners of the alt-right propaganda media company, Jon Knight and Carlos Zapata.

Top: Recent profile pictures used by Woody Clendenen on Facebook; Bottom: Screenshot from a short documentary about the Cottonwood Militia.

The Confederate flag flying outside of Woody Clendenens barbershop in Cottonwood.

Red, White and Blueprint advertisement featuring Jon Knight (black shirt with yellow logo) and Woody Clendenen (gray shirt with red logo.

Screenshots from a Red, White and Blueprint Facebook story which shows the company filming scenes for the next docuseries episode at Clendenens property. Carlos Zapata stands in the middle of the group while looking toward the camera in the image on the right side.

Since the Feb. 1 recall of Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty, journalists working for national media outlets have lined up to get a glimpse of Clendenen in his barbershop environment which doubles as an alt-right man cave for him and his clientele.

Chalk the relationship between Clendenen, Parker, and Brinton up as yet another connection between the Tehama County Sheriffs Office and the North States alt-right community. As I reported in an A News Caf piece last August, Clendenen is also friends with Bill Derbonne. Derbonne is a former Tehama County Sheriffs deputy who is working as an investigator for the Tehama County District Attorney.

Derbonne is alleged to have illegally sold guns and gun supplies out of the back of his patrol car and on city property when he was employed as the chief of police in Asotin, Wash., before accepting a position with the Tehama County Sheriffs Office.

On May 10, Dave Greer, the retired law enforcement official Parker plans to put in charge of his team if elected as the sheriff of Tehama County, posted a statement on his Facebook page complaining about being told at a local candidates event in Red Bluff the he does not act like a Christian. Greer said the attendee told him this because of Greers political positions and who he supports.

Our Country, State and local government are in need of one person, Jesus, wrote Greer. I have come to a point in my life that I take time to seek His guidance in most big decisions I make in my life.

I think as Christians, we need to pray before we vote, continued Greer. I am in no way telling anyone who to vote for, but I am saying, lets take time to bend a knee before we select a name on the ballot. Seek His guidance and personally see where the candidates stand with respect to Jesus.

Dave Greers Facebook post regarding the claim that he does not act like a Christian.

Greer ended his Facebook post by writing that county residents should vote for candidates who will be bold in their faith and stand for Christian values. Greg Phelps, the youth pastor at the Cavalry Chapel in Red Bluff, liked Greers Facebook post and supports the election of Parker as county sheriff. Content shared on Phelps Facebook page shows he is against COVID-19 mandates and the vaccine, and does not believe President Biden won the 2020 election. Phelps has also shared homophobic and anti-transgender content on his Facebook page.

Screenshots from Greg Phelps Facebook page, including his profile picture.

Dave Greers wife, Shawn Greer, is Parkers campaign aid. According to Parker, she is a wealth of knowledge for me. Shawn Greer is the leader of an alt-right activist group named Tehama County Citizens for Freedom, and she has published an extensive collection of material filled with misinformation and far-right commentary on the groups webpage. Greer also runs a group known as Tehama County Citizens for Trump, and manages pages for that group, and for Tehama County Citizens for Freedom on Facebook and Telegram. She goes by Shawn Marie on Facebook.

Chad Parker stating on his Telegram page that Shawn Greer is a wealth of knowledge for me.

Left: Shawn Greers profile picture on Facebook (shes standing with Dave Greer); Top Right: One of Shawn Greers social media profile pages; Bottom Right: Dave Greers Facebook profile picture.

When Berrendos Middle School teacher Stacy Pearce went viral for wearing a yellow Star of David to compare COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the Jewish Holocaust in a brazen display of anti-Semitism at a protest in Red Bluff, Dave and Shawn Greer came to her defense. They, along with Parker and Calvary Chapel pastor Greg Phelps, signed the petition supporting Pearce on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

In addition to signing the petition to support Pearce, Shawn Greer also doubled-down in her support for the sentiments displayed by the teacher on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage by repeating and defending the toxic false equivalence between the Jewish Holocaust and COVID-19 mandates in Californias public schools.

Shawn Greer believes COVID-19 is a hoax and that President Bidens election in 2020 was not legitimate. Greer and other members of Tehama County Citizens for Freedom have shared several pieces of content on various social media platforms that supports Red, White and Blueprint, and the broader alt-right community in Shasta County.

Facebook post on Tehama County Citizens for Freedom Facebook page made by Shawn Greer which celebrated the recall of Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty in February. The post included a picture of Jon Knight, Carlos Zapata, and Lani Bangay of Red, White and Blueprint.

Greer has helped organize several anti-COVID-19 mandate medical freedom anti-Covid-19 rallies, including the School Walkout in October and the recent convoy rallies that took place on Red Bluffs 1-5 Adobe overpass.

At the convoy rallies, Greer and fellow activists wave the Gadsden Flag with the famous saying, Dont Tread on Me and homemade signs that exclaim statements such as Trump Won. At the most recent overpass protests, an old Chevy truck pulled up to display several signs. The largest one read A (Hole) C And the Squad, followed by Pathetic and God Bless America. At a convoy rally last summer, one attendee wore a T-shirt with a large Q superimposed over the United States flag signifying his support for the QAnon movement.

Photographs of recent far-right protests in Red Bluff shared on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

Photographs of recent far-right protests in Red Bluff shared on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

Elissa McEuen, one of the leaders of the movement to recall Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty, attending a medical freedom rally in downtown Red Bluff last summer.

In addition to organizing far-right protests in Red Bluff, Shawn Greer is also a QAnon believer. The QAnon movement emerged in far-right circles during the Trump presidency. It pushes a variety of false claims which include the belief that a cabal of cannibalistic sexual abusers of children, who worship Satan and operate a worldwide child sex trafficking ring, are conspiring against Donald Trump.

QAnon beliefs are rooted in anti-Semitism, and followers of the movement, which many call a cult, claim that Democratic politicians, Hollywood actors, and others, are part of the so-called cabal. QAnon followers participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington D.C.

Greer does not openly support QAnon on Facebook, but she has posted a significant amount of pro-QAnon material on the Tehama County Citizens for Trump Telegram page. Perhaps Greer does not want to share her believe in QAnon conspiracy theories on Facebook because it is a more popular platform, unlike Telegram, which is mostly used by people who follow far-right conspiracies and extremist movements.

A considerable amount of debate surrounds the identity of Q, the leader of the QAnon movement. Greer has gone as far as to post on Telegram that President Trump is actually Q. On May 2, Greer published a statement on Telegram claiming President Trump gave an AirQ to a live crowd at an event said he makes them during every rally speech.

Content posted by Shawn Greer on Telegram which shows her belief in the QAnon movement.

Over the course of the last few days, Greer has spent her time publishing material on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom social media pages and webpage that tells voters to not vote early and to take their time and pray about how God wants you to vote. Greer has also been actively pushing disinformation about how mail-in voting is not safe, and that in 2020 mail-in ballots in Tehama County were unable to be scanned by the tabulator so the elections office duplicated every single one.

Carlos Zapatas comments on Facebook about the Proud Boys who attended his arraignment.

July 2021 Proud Boys photo by Doni Chamberlain.

In addition to the activism in the Red Bluff area, Greer also communicated with a self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys who claimed he attended Carlos Zapatas July 2021 arraignment at the Shasta County Court House for his role in the May 4 assault of Nathan Pinkney. Zapata shared on Facebook at the time that he supported the Proud Boys. Allan Stellar of the Daily News newspaper claimed the members of the Proud Boys allegedly visited his Palomino Room bar and restaurant in the city.In a conversation with someone who identified as Tristan, Greer shared the trial court date and said that Zapata needed to be supported because he was becoming quite the political leader in Shasta County. Zapata was later found guilty of disturbing the peace while fighting. Zapatas two friends who joined him, Christopher Meagher and Elizabeth Bailey faced the same conviction as Zapata in addition to battery.

Unlike the arraignment, members of the Proud Boys did not show up at Zapata, Meagher, and Baileys trial.

Shawn Greers conversation with a self-proclaimed Proud Boy about Carlos Zapata.

Chad Parkers ties to the alt-right extremist community should alarm voters in staunchly Republican Tehama County. Parker claims to want to restore public trust in the Tehama County Sheriffs Office, but his campaign aid and the spouse of the man he would like to put in charge of his management team, if elected, is a far-right activist who believes a wide variety of conspiracy theories and supports the Proud Boys. On top of this, Parker is part of a network of Christian nationalists and county sheriff deputies who maintain ties to the Cottonwood Militia.

Tehama County has an important decision to make this summer. Will voters go the way of far-right Christian nationalists, QAnon believers, Carlos Zapata and the Proud Boys, or will they meet in the middle and cast their vote for Kain?

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Will Tehama Sheriff Candidates Ties to Alt-Right Extremists Alarm ...

The belief that immigrants arrive in the United States with the intent to "steal" has been ubiquitous in right-wing politics for decades: Immigrants have been accused of stealing jobs, stealing tax dollars, and stealing benefits. But lately, some of the GOP's most stalwart voices have drummed up a more explicit accusation that immigrants are here to steal the very essence of America and replace it with something foreign an idea plucked directly from far right wing media.

This week, Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who frequently promotes white supremacist talking points, made an adamant declaration during the Fox News Primetime show that Democrats were using immigration as part of a plan to "replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World" and that no one should "sit back and take that." It was the most explicit endorsement of the "great replacement" theory in Carlson's long history of white nationalism, and the segment drew an immediate backlash, including a statement from the Anti-Defamation League calling for Fox News to fire Carlson.

In the face of public backlash and advertiser boycotts Fox has encouraged advertisers to move their money from the opinion shows to Fox's other programming, branding their non-primetime and "news" shows as "safe" from the public relations nightmare of their "opinion" shows. Carlson's raving about great replacement took place not on his own show but on Fox News Primetime, where several companies that had previously pulled or refused to run ads on Tucker Carlson Tonight, aired ads that very same night.

The following night, Carlson doubled down on his remarks as white nationalists celebrated the broadcast and endorsement of their long held conspiracy theories on the most-watched cable news channel in the country.

The white nationalist "great replacement" conspiracy theory was popularized by French writer Renaud Camus in his 2012 book Le Grand Remplacement. Often intermingled with a "white genocide" conspiracy theory, it proposes that a variety of factors, such as an influx of nonwhite immigrants, multiculturalism, and falling birthrates among white Europeans, will result in white populations losing their position as the dominant demographic.

The conspiracy theory creates a dangerous dynamic in which believers view immigrants and nonwhite citizens as an existential threat to their communities. And the theory is not a purely academic endeavor; it seeks to mobilize believers into action against their supposed "replacement." This mobilization manifests itself in various ways, including political activism against immigration, efforts to encourage white women to have more children to bolster demographic growth, and, in an extreme form, deadly violence against immigrants and communities of color.

The theory has reared its head in violent outbursts such as the murder of 51 people at the Al Noor mosque and Linwood Islamic Center in Christchurch, New Zealand, the killing of more than 20 mostly Hispanic shoppers in El Paso, Texas, and the screams of angry young men who shouted "Jews will not replace us; you will not replace us" at the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where antiracist demonstrator Heather Heyer was murdered by neo-Nazi James Fields Jr. Field's online behavior before Unite the Right indictes support for Nazi ideology and white racial purity. There is a clear link between the rhetoric broadcast to viewers via mainstream shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and the beliefs espoused by mass shooters motivated by the theory; in some cases, the language overlaps with striking parallels.

Elements of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory have also recently appeared in the statements of prominent conservative politicians. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) recently appeared on Fox News' Justice with Judge Jeanine and said that Black Lives Matter protests were part of "an attempted cultural genocide going on in America right now." Gaetz claimed that "the left wants us to be ashamed of America so that they can replace America," a message he later repeated on Twitter:

It's no coincidence that Gaetz echoed the "great replacement" talking points on Fox, as the network has played a role in promoting the conspiracy theory to American conservative audiences for years.

Fox News is home to a near-constant stream of claims that America is being subjected to an immigrant "invasion." Hosts and contributors including Brian Kilmeade, Stuart Varney, Pete Hegseth, Tomi Lahren, and Mike Huckabee have repeatedly fear mongered about a supposed "invasion" of the United States' southern border by migrants seeking asylum.

The vitriolic talking point has become ubiquitous in Fox's lineup; a Media Matters study last year found that Fox made over 70 on-air references to an "invasion" by migrants over the seven months leading up to the El Paso mass shooting, in which the perpetrator said he was responding to a "Hispanic invasion of Texas."

In addition to the open racism of its "invasion" talking point, Fox News regularly pushes the claim that Americans are being replaced by immigrants in order to benefit Democrats at the ballot box. On The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham warned in 2018 that Democrats "want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants." This May, Ingraham boosted an article from the white nationalist website VDare that attempted to link immigration to coronavirus hotspots.

Carlson tried to alarm audiences in July 2018 by saying that "Latin American countries are changing election outcomes here by forcing demographic change on this country." In January 2020, he declared that the "long-term agenda of refugee resettlement is to bring in future Democratic voters, obviously."

With the entrance of a new administration, Carlson and Fox have doubled down on hysterical claims and misinformation around immigration, particularly at the southern border.

This year Carlson has claimed the immigrants currently in America "devalue your political power as a voter" and "subvert democracy itself." He declared asylum-seekers "a human tragedy for everyone involved and a tragedy for those of us who live here," warning that immigration will "change your country forever, possibly for the worse." Carlson regularly tells viewers that allowing immigrants to settle in the United States is a way to "punish" the people who already live here.

And the rhetoric isn't limited to Carlson. The replacement theory is now a staple in right-wing media's coverage of immigration.

Fox host Jeanine Pirro got to the crux of the "great replacement" theory last August when she claimed: "It is a plot to remake America, to replace American citizens with illegals who will vote for the Democrats."

And this sort of racist conspiracy theorizing extends beyond Fox.

Following the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Ingraham broadcast an unhinged rant claiming immigrants were the real insurrectionists.

Podcast host Bill O'Reilly warned that undocumented immigration would cause "traditional America to vanish."

Conservative writer David Horowitz accused the left of waging a "war on America's sovereignty" through immigration.

Longtime conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh stated in 2018 that immigration from Latin America was intended to "dilute and eventually eliminate or erase what is known as the distinct or unique American culture. ... This is why people call this an invasion."

On Sean Hannity's radio show, Bill O'Reilly warned that undocumented immigration will cause "traditional America to vanish"

Far-right author Ann Coulter titled her 2015 anti-immigration book Adios America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole.

Radio host Michael Savage said America was "being invaded by a far more virile people" and called for Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a US citizen, to be deported "for what she's done in this country." The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles accused the left of attempting to "radically change American culture" through immigration in order to "flood this country with people who will -- are more likely to support them politically."

As the language of "great replacement" has become commonplace throughout right-wing media, the rhetoric has also made the leap from commentators to policymakers. President Donald Trump himself retweeted proponents of the theory even before the 2016 election, and in 2018 he directed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate the baseless conspiracy theory that genocide is being committed against white farmers in South Africa -- a policy that originated in a segment on Carlson's prime-time Fox News show.

Last November, a trove of emails leaked to the Southern Poverty Law Center revealed the extent of White House adviser Stephen Miller's sympathies for white nationalism. Miller repeatedly spoke of immigration in a way that would be recognizable to proponents of the great replacement theory, often referring to demographic changes in the context of immigration.

In one email to former Breitbart Editor Katie McHugh, Miller lamented the effects of the Hart-Celler Act, which eliminated race-based immigration quotas, writing that in modern politics "immigration is something that we can only vote to have more of immigration 'reform' is a moral imperative but it's impossible, evil, racist to reverse immigration."

From Carlson's nightly broadcasts to Matt Gaetz's national stage to the local politics of Florida's state Senate, conservative figures are now cheering on policies using language evoking the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, and their promotion of these talking points as an electoral issue means the hawkish anti-immigrant rhetoric that used to live primarily in fringe conservative media spaces is now a staple of conservative politics.

Allowing immigration policy, and our national discourse surrounding race relations, to be shaped by white nationalistnativist conspiracy theories that have already proved deadly both in the United States and abroad endangers the well-being of everyone in the United States. Right wing media and the conservative establishments' failure to stamp out racist, conspiratorial rhetoric from their midst has emboldened bad actors and legitimized a hateful ideology couched in white supremacy.

Nikki is a researcher at Media Matters for America, she can be found on Twitter @NikkiMcR.

Original post:

Racist Great Replacement Conspiracy Went From Alt-Right to Mainstream

Picture a split screen on your TV. On one side a parade of prominent Republican officials in the Trump administration, in the Trump family, in the Trump Justice Department, in the Trump 2020 reelection campaign are spilling the beans about Jan. 6. Finally, Americans are hearing the truth about Trumps Big Lie from his own people. And they pull no punches.

The defeated president knowingly deceived millions in the country about an election he lost. He pursued what he knew was an illegal plot to stay in office. He understood the criminality of his malfeasance but plowed ahead anyway. Thats what Trumps senior advisors, White House counsel, campaign manager, attorney general, daughter and others testified under oath.

On the other side of your split TV screen are 2022 Republican midterm candidates. Almost to a man, they dismiss the explosive truths dropping on the Jan. 6 half of the screen. These pols intentionally reinforce what they know is false about a stolen election that wasnt, and the need to restore integrity to elections based on massive fraud that wasnt.

They know there is no evidence supporting either claim but repeat them anyway. Again, key Republicans in the Trump orbit reaffirmed there was no there, there about Trumps declaration that he won but for the cheating. But there is a mountain of evidence that the former president deliberately violated the law and, as a federal judge deemed probable, corruptly attempted to obstruct Congress. New, damning revelations about the nefarious lengths Trump went to stay in power are jaw-dropping.

Yet campaigning Republicans continue to parrot Trumps Big Lie without regard for the electoral damage inflicted. So, heres a question for general election voters in Ohio Republicans, independents, Democrats: How can candidates who are asking for your vote in November be trusted if theyre willing to lie to win favor from a likely criminal still conning the country about an election his own cybersecurity chief called the most secure in American history?

Every Republican running for federal office in Ohio has pledged allegiance to a man with no allegiance to the rule of law, as witnessed by his team of Republican enablers who drew the line at insurrection. In every congressional race, in every GOP gerrymandered district, proud defenders of an indefensible crook who watched the violent attack at the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power and did nothing for hours have the gall to pitch themselves as principled politicians.

Please.

Noble these Trumpian toadies are not. Consider five Republican incumbent congressmen seeking reelection who voted, baselessly, to overturn the 2020 presidential election results after the Capitol was rampaged by a bloodthirsty Trump mob chanting Hang Mike Pence! One of those lawmakers, ranking Trump sycophant Jim Jordan from Ohios 4th U.S. Congressional District, is directly implicated in the presidents lawless scheme to seize a second term.

A participant in the Jan. 6 rally and a QAnon proponent whose devotion to the would-be dictator was splayed across his lawn with a giant painted Trump sign campaigns for Congress in the 9th District as someone who can unify our communities. You cant make this stuff up. But J.R Majewski, who also suggested that every red state should secede from the union, is in a toss-up district in a predicted red wave election year with a Trump endorsement.

That could be all it takes to unseat Democrat Marcy Kaptur, a 20-term incumbent with nearly four decades of public service.

The Ohio GOP candidate for an open U.S. Senate seat, is an elite coastal venture capitalist and carpetbagger. J.D. Vance moved back to Ohio to buy political prestige with Big Tech billions and strategically morphed from a Never-Trumper to an Ultra-Trumper. But Vances craven adulation of a man he once described as noxious and reprehensible was enough to snag a last-minute nod from the incorrigible fraud and win the Republican nomination.

Now the nominee shamelessly champions Trumps deceit as gospel. The 2020 election was stolen. Large-scale fraud. Joe Biden is a fake president. Vanity Fair wrote about an interview Vance did on a far-right podcast where he practically drew a blueprint for a successful coup in 2024. After winning (or losing?) Trump would declare himself absolute ruler, dare the courts to enforce constitutional order and unilaterally wipe out the institutions of the left in a kind of de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.

Before you panic about brownshirts clicking down Pennsylvania Avenue, be empowered to act. Be inspired by the real patriots investigating the Jan. 6 carnage and warning of the clear and present danger an unaccountable Trump presents. Be categorically unwilling, as an American, to surrender your democratic birthright to alt-right demagogues who a spin a violent insurrection to overthrow a free and fair election as legitimate political discourse.

And be repelled by those campaigning to represent you who defiantly stand with the only president in our history who trashed the peaceful transfer of power, cracked a fundamental pillar of our government and threatens to do it again. On your split TV screen one side is fighting for the rule of law and accountability. One is openly marching lockstep with a narcissistic fascist who knowingly tried to steal another term.

Nov. 8 will decide whether truth wins.

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Trump and his mob tried to overthrow American democracy and threaten to try again - Ohio Capital Journal

For me, John Lennons mega-hit Imagine was always a song popular for the wrong reasons. Imagine that the world will live as one is the best way to end in hell.

Those who cling to pacifism in the face of the Russian attack on Ukraine remain caught in their own version of imagine. Imagine a world in which tensions are no longer resolved through armed conflicts Europe persisted in this world of imagine, ignoring the brutal reality outside its borders. Now its the time to awaken.

The dream of a quick Ukrainian victory, the repetition of the initial dream of a quick Russian victory, is over. In what looks more and more as a protracted stalemate, Russia is slowly progressing, and its ultimate goal is clearly stated. There is no longer any need to read between the lines when Putin compares himself with Peter the Great: On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it He was not taking away anything, he was returning He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well.

More than focus on particular issues (is Russia really just returning, and to what?) we should read carefully Putins general justification of his claim: In order to claim some kind of leadership I am not even talking about global leadership, I mean leadership in any area any country, any people, any ethnic group should ensure their sovereignty. Because there is no in-between, no intermediate state: either a country is sovereign, or it is a colony, no matter what the colonies are called.

The implication of these lines, as one commentator put it, is clear: there are two categories of state: The sovereign and the conquered. In Putins imperial view, Ukraine should fall into the latter category.

And, as it is no less clear from Russian official statements in the last months, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Finland, the Baltic states and ultimately Europe itself fall into the latter category.

We now know what the call to allow Putin to save his face means. It means accepting not a minor territorial compromise in Donbas but Putins imperial ambition. The reason this ambition should be unconditionally rejected is that in todays global world in which we are all haunted by the same catastrophes we are all in-between, in an intermediate state, neither a sovereign country nor a conquered one: to insist on full sovereignty in the face of global warming is sheer madness since our very survival hinges on tight global cooperation.

But Russia doesnt simply ignore global warming why was it so mad at the Scandinavian countries when they expressed their intention to join Nato? With global warming, what is at stake is the control of the Arctic passage. (Thats why Trump wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark.) Due to the explosive development of China, Japan and South Korea, the main transport route will run north of Russia and Scandinavia. Russias strategic plan is to profit from global warming: control the worlds main transport route, plus develop Siberia and control Ukraine. In this way, Russia will dominate so much food production that it will be able to blackmail the whole world. This is the ultimate economic reality beneath Putins imperial dream.

Those who advocate less support for Ukraine and more pressure on it to negotiate, inclusive of accepting painful territorial renunciations, like to repeat that Ukraine simply cannot win the war against Russia. True, but I see exactly in this the greatness of Ukrainian resistance: they risked the impossible, defying pragmatic calculations, and the least we owe them is full support, and to do this, we need a stronger Nato but not as a prolongation of the US politics.

The US strategy to counteract through Europe is far from self-evident: not just Ukraine, Europe itself is becoming the place of the proxy war between US and Russia, which may well end up by a compromise between the two at Europes expense. There are only two ways for Europe to step out of this place: to play the game of neutrality a short-cut to catastrophe or to become an autonomous agent. (Just think how the situation may change if Trump wins the next US elections.)

While some leftists claim that the ongoing war is in the interest of the Nato industrial-military complex, which uses the need for new arms to avoid crisis and gain new profits, their true message to Ukraine is: OK, you are victims of a brutal aggression, but do not rely on our arms because in this way you play in the hands of the industrial-military complex

The disorientation caused by the Ukrainian war is producing strange bedfellows like Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky who come from opposing ends of the political spectrum Kissinger serving as secretary of state under Republican presidents and Chomsky one of the leading leftwing intellectuals in the United States and have frequently clashed. But when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both recently advocated for Ukraine to consider a settlement that could see it dropping claim to some land to achieve a quicker peace deal.

In short, the two stand for the same version of pacifism which only works if we neglect the key fact that the war is not about Ukraine but a moment of the brutal attempt to change our entire geopolitical situation. The true target of the war is the dismantlement of the European unity advocated not only by the US conservatives and Russia but also by the European extreme right and left at this point, in France, Melenchon meets Le Pen.

The craziest notion floating around these days is that, to counter the new polarity between the US and China (which stand for the excesses of western liberalism and oriental authoritarianism), Europe and Russia should rejoin forces and form a third Eurasian block based on the Christian legacy purified of its liberal excess. The very idea of an Eurasian third way is a form of todays fascism.

So what will happen when voters in Europe and America, faced with soaring energy costs and broader inflation driven by sanctions against Russia, might lose their appetite for a war that seems to have no end, with needs that are only expanding as both sides head for a protracted stalemate? The answer is clear: at that point, the European legacy will be lost, and Europe will be de facto divided between an American and a Russian sphere of influence. In short, Europe itself will become the place of a war that seems to have no end

What is absolutely unacceptable for a true leftist today is not only to support Russia but also to make a more modest neutral claim that the left is divided between pacifists and supporters of Ukraine, and that one should treat this division as a minor fact which shouldnt affect the lefts global struggle against global capitalism.

When a country is occupied, it is the ruling class which is usually bribed to collaborate with the occupiers to maintain its privileged position, so that the struggle against the occupiers becomes a priority. The same can go for the struggle against racism; in a state of racial tension and exploitation, the only way to effectively struggle for the working class is to focus on fighting racism (this is why any appeal to the white working class, as in todays alt-right populism, betrays class struggle).

Today, one cannot be a leftist if one does not unequivocally stand behind Ukraine. To be a leftist who shows understanding for Russia is like to be one of those leftists who, before Germany attacked the Soviet Union, took seriously German anti-imperialist rhetoric directed at the UK and advocated neutrality in the war of Germany against France and the UK.

If the left will fail here, the game is over for it. But does this mean that the Left should simply take the side of the west, inclusive of the rightist fundamentalists who also support Ukraine?

In a speech in Dallas on 18 May 2022, while criticizing Russias political system, the ex-president Bush said: The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. He quickly corrected himself: I mean, of Ukraine, then said Iraq, anyway to laughter from the crowd, and added 75, referring to his age.

As many commentators noted, two things cannot but strike the eye in this rather obvious Freudian slip: the fact that the public received Bushs implicit confession that the US attack on Iraq (ordered by him) was a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion with laughter, instead of treating it as an admission of a crime comparable to the Russian invasion of Ukraine; plus Bushs enigmatic continuation of his self-correction Iraq, anyway what did he mean by it? That the difference between Ukraine and Iraq doesnt really matter? The final reference to his advanced age doesnt affect in any way this enigma.

But the enigma is dispelled the moment we take Bushs statement seriously and literally: yes, with all differences taken into account (Zelenskiy is not a dictator like Saddam), Bush did the same thing as Putin is now doing to Ukraine, so they should be both judged by the same standard.

On the day I am writing this, we learned from the media that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges extradition to the US has been approved by the UK home secretary, Priti Patel. His crime? Nothing other than to render public the crimes confessed by Bushs slip of tongue: the documents revealed by WikiLeaks revealed how, under Bushs presidency, the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan, while leaked Iraq war files showed 66,000 civilians had been killed, and prisoners tortured. Crimes fully comparable with what Putin is doing in Ukraine. From todays hindsight, we can say that WikiLeaks disclosed dozens of American Buchas and Mariupols.

So while putting Bush on trial is no less illusory than bringing Putin to the Hague tribunal, the minimum to be done by those who oppose Russian invasion of Ukraine is to demand Assanges immediate release. Ukraine claims it fights for Europe, and Russia claims it fights for the rest of the world against western unipolar hegemony. Both claims should be rejected, and here the difference between right and left enters the stage.

From the rightist standpoint, Ukraine fights for European values against the non-European authoritarians; from the leftist standpoint, Ukraine fights for global freedom, inclusive of the freedom of Russians themselves. Thats why the heart of every true Russian patriot beats for Ukraine.

Slavoj iek is a philosopher. He is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London

The rest is here:

Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine - The Guardian

On Ottessa Moshfeghs Lapvona and the medieval turn

Ottessa Moshfegh is a perv. Ottessa Moshfegh is sad girl summer. Ottessa Moshfegh is on Depop. Ottessa Moshfegh is walking in New York Fashion Week. Ottessa Moshfegh isa medievalist?

For those who know Moshfegh mainly through the cultural commentary that sprung up in the wake of the mind-boggling success of her second novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), the thought of the author as anything other than an oracle of the contemporary might seem strange. Heralded as the laureate of lockdown for her depiction of a socialite in social hibernation sleeping through a year in a narcotic-induced haze-cum-frenzy Moshfegh is often thought of spearheading the modern trend for fictions of alienation and disaffection, featuring a cast of recognisably contemporary outsiders. Alcoholic divorcees, catatonic party girls. So, despite the fact Rest and Relaxation was in fact a work of historical fiction (an eccentric yet meticulous account of New Yorks pre-9/11 culture; its downtown art scene and existential ennui), and that her debut, McGlue (2014), takes place on a nineteenth-century pirate ship, when it was announced her new novel, Lapvona, was set in a medieval fiefdom, there was an undeniable frisson of surprise.

Although, really, we should have seen this coming. Firstly, because Moshfeghs novels are abject and pervy; deviant and corporally charged. While it might be convenient to think of these qualities as unique to literature of the post-internet, and certainly the post-Reformation age, in truth they are closely aligned to many of the affective and aesthetic traditions of the Middle Ages. Indeed, the second reason why we should have expected Moshfegh to go medieval, is precisely because the contemporary popularity of grotesque, absurdist fables like hers points to a wider resurgence of medieval tropes and trends. Lapvona is landing at a time when, from the club to the catwalk, neo-medieval fashion, Catholic aesthetics, mysticism, chamber chorals, and pagan ritual are all the rage.

It feels like music is returning to some kind of medieval folk medium where we are bards again, self-promoting in the streets or taking the occasional commission from patrons, pop-cyborg Caroline Polachek said last summer. Perhaps this feeling is partly why she has, in the past, chosen chainmail, plate armour, and fantastical, elven costuming to accompany her vocals which themselves have been described as diaphanous and otherworldly, somewhere between the call of a siren and the religious arias of an eleventh-century abbess. And shes far from the only one at it. The worlds of music, fashion and visual art have been flirting with folklore and pagan iconography for some time now. Arrows raining down on models at Paris Fashion Week. Ravers dressed as medieval forest dwellers, dancing to fantasy-inspired techno. Artists merging emergent technologies such as AI and machine learning with myth and mysticism to imagine alternative worlds, which seem to hover and glitch between the ancient and the futuristic. Cinemas folk horror boom.

While all this has been seething, it might seem like literary fiction has been lagging somewhat behind its gaze resolutely set on grappling with text-speak, or, in cultural criticism, circling the unending debate over which books men and women should read. Yet, here too, a particular strain of neo-medievalism has been rising to the surface, often in the form of an ongoing obsession with female mystics. Hildegard von Bingen, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe keep recurring in contemporary texts, usually symbolic of an urge towards alternative female authority, power and sources of knowledge. A similar urge can be seen in the copious literary reanimations of Simone Weil, who, despite living in the twentieth century, had a curiously medieval approach to faith and spirituality one in rapture to sacrifice and suffering. Taken together, the interest in these figures suggests a growing infatuation with medieval forms of devotion, characterised by corporeal and psychic intensity.

So, Lapvona. During the pandemic, as Moshfegh was being hailed as the queen of modern malaise, she was penning a novel truly befitting an era of pestilence and plagues. On the surface, it seems purposely designed to drive her Tiktok stans into a frenzy. Where, in Rest and Relaxation, there was a beautiful blonde girl who was slim but sad in a vague, yet vaguely sexy way, in Lapvona there is Marek, a 13-year-old disabled boy, who is born of incest, beaten by his father, possibly a murderer, and, if that wasnt enough, deeply annoying. Where there were New York bodegas, now there is an unspecified hamlet in a quasi-Eastern European locale; a hut in a sheeps pasture; a manor on a hill, protected by guards. The capricious whims of a feudal lord and the obsequious enablings of a servile priest. A blind female mystic who breastfed a whole town and still allows Marek to nurse from her now empty teats. It is utterly disgusting. While Moshfegh has always been an excremental writer a devotee of shit here, the novel also features humiliation, flagellation, murder, incest, rape, a drought, dismemberment and cannibalism. Sacrifice and suffering. There is also though, a lot of shit and anal gags. Excrement, the lord Villiam wonders. Is that like sacrament? In Moshfeghs hands, it absolutely is. Lapvona is a sublime work in the truest sense mighty, irrepressible and terrifying.

Some early reviewers have already taken against it. One notably likened the setting and characters to Shrek (2001). Yet, while this may be a wry, internet-y scrap of criticism, those calling it flat, or tedious, or excessive are, to my mind, entirely missing the point. Saying Lapvona is either flat or excessive is like saying the same of Robert Eggers The Northman (2022). Lapvona should not be read as a modern narrative, but akin to a fable, allegory or epic. More than anything, perhaps, it is a kind of medieval sci-fi, and, given sci-fis long history, perhaps what I really mean is a kind of myth.

Yet, this is certainly not to say that it is untethered to the present, or that the medieval turn we are witnessing is a turning away from the specificities of modernity. And, by modernity, I of course mean capitalism. Just as Polacheks notion about returning to a bardic culture is, in fact, a biting critique of the contemporary music industry, streaming services, and the flexibility and self-reliance required of artists in the neoliberal age, so too Moshfeghs medieval fantasy is not just about shit and blood and supposedly timeless human impulses to violence. If Lapvona is a myth, it is one of exploitation, wealth hoarding, and ecological disaster at the hands of uncaring, greedy men. Indeed, the entire cultural flirtation with medieval aesthetics can be read as an attempt to grapple with the perverse conditions of today a neo-feudal billionaire class (or, as economist Yanis Varoufakis puts it, techno-feudalism); a lack of access to land ownership; a new era of pandemics; food poverty; the existential threat of climate apocalypse. Time for a peasants revolt?

Of course, the risk with any cultural or aesthetic turn to the past, is that it tips into idealisations false fetishisations that construct convenient and, often, dangerous narratives. If thinking of The Northman, for example, it would be ignorant not to also think of the way Viking mythology and attire has been adopted in the modern day by the alt-right. The myth of white racial purity; the horned helmets in the Capitol. Music, fashion, and arts shift towards the neo-medieval may not have such an explicitly racist underpinning, but we should be wary of which histories are being reclaimed as trends.

Perhaps one answer to this problem lies in resisting romanticisation in depicting the past, whether real or imagined, as a site of brutality and struggle. The historical fictions crafted by writers such as Moshfegh, AK Blakemore and Olga Tokarczuk, for example, are brutal affairs concerned with power, control, and the origins of capitalism. They wield history like a blade, cutting through the fabric of contemporary reality. Blakemores exquisite novel, The Manningtree Witches (2021) is about the witch trials of the seventeenth century, but it is also about persecution, suspicion, and how easily fear, pride and conspiracy can tip into violence. This is true of Lapvona too, which is, in a deep and essential way, about faith about truth, knowledge, scepticism, and how easily people can fall sway to the empty words of demagogues. I feel stupid when I pray, reads the epilogue a Demi Lovato lyric that proves that, while everything from that point onward may be new territory, Moshfegh still has her eye firmly trained on the details of the current moment; on contemporary blindnesses, barbarity and fears.

Read more here:

How Culture Went Back to the Middle Ages - ArtReview

Cell culture

NCTC1469, a liver cell line established in the 1957 from a neonatal mouse36, was obtained from the FuDan IBS Cell Center (FDCC, Shanghai, China). NCTC1469 cells were cultured in Dulbeccos modified Eagles medium (DMEM) (Corning, USA) supplemented with 10% (v/v) Horse serum (Hyclone, Logan, UT, USA), 100 units/ml penicillin and 100g/ml streptomycin (Gibco, USA), at 37C in a 5% CO2 incubator. Culture medium was replaced every 23days and cells were passaged when they reached 80% confluence. Cells were mycoplasma negative through treatment with LookOut Mycoplasma Elimination Kit (Sigma-Aldrich). Gene silencing was achieved by transfecting predesigned siRNA duplexes (Supplementary Table 3) designed and synthesized by RiboBio (Guangzhou, China).

Stable knockdown of the FoxO3 gene in NCTC1469 cells was achieved by lentiviral based short-hairpin RNA delivery37. FoxO3 specific shRNA or negative control were cloned into pLOX-U6-Puro vectors for viral particle package in HEK 293T cells. Infected NCTC1469 cells were selected by puromycin and expanded to form a stable sub-line. Knockdown efficiency was confirmed at both mRNA and protein levels. The shRNA sequences are as follows: FoxO3-shRNA: 5-GGA ACT TCA CTG GTG CTA AGC-3; negative shRNA (NC): 5-ACT ACC GTT GTT ATA GGT G-3. Stable cell line generated by FoxO3-shRNA and negative shRNA were named as shFoxO3 cells and shNC cells, respectively. To establish FoxO3 overexpression stable cells, NCTC1469 cells were transfected by pLOX-FoxO3 lentiviruses19 and screened by puromycin and expanded to form a stable sub-line.

For cell proliferation assay, NCTC1469 cells were incubated for 48h in 24 well plates with different treatments. DNA synthesis was then analyzed by 5-Ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) labeling, using Cell-Light EdU Apollo567 In Vitro Imaging Kit (RiboBio, Guangzhou, China) according to the manufacturers instructions. At least seven images were randomly taken per well using a Zeiss LSM 700 laser confocal microscope (Carl Zeiss). The population of EdU+ cells was determined by counting at least 500 cells per well. The EdU+ cells were quantified as the percentage of total cells. In addition, cell proliferation was also analyzed by evaluating cell count using the Enhanced Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8, Beyotime Biotechnology, China) according to the manufacturers instructions.

Total RNA was isolated using RNeasy kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA) from NCTC1469 cells according to the manufactures instruction. The cDNA was transcribed from total RNA using SuperScript III Reverse Transcriptase (Roche, USA). The coding sequence (CDS) of Nox4 (NM_015760.5) was amplified by the KOD-Plus-Neo Kit (Toyobo, Japan) and cloned into the pcDNA3.1 expression vector to construct the pcDNA-Nox4 plasmid. Constructed overexpression vector pcDNA-Nox4 and control plasmid pcDNA3.1 (pcDNA) were transfected into the FoxO3-overexpressing NCTC1469 cells to explore the effect of target gene on FoxO3-mediated proliferation and apoptosis.

FoxO3-LoxP-targeted (FoxO3fl/fl) mice (C57BL/6 background) were created by Cyagen Biosciences (Suzhou, China)19. The exon 3 region of the FoxO3 gene was flanked by LoxP sites and deleted upon Cre-mediated recombination (Fig. 2a). The Albumin (Alb)-Cre transgenic line was obtained from the Jackson Laboratory (stock number 003574). Alb-Cre mice were genotyped using oIMR5374 (GAA GCA GAA GCT TAG GAA GAT GG) and 20240 (TTG GCC CCT TAC CAT AAC TG) primers and identified by a 390bp PCR product. For Alb-Cre mice, Alb promoter drive Cre recombinase expression primarily in hepatocytes with variable expression in cholangiocytes depending on the floxed gene38,39. FoxO3fl/fl mice were intercrossed with Alb-Cre mice to generate FoxO3fl/+::Alb-Cre (FoxO3+/-, heterozygote). Heterozygotes were then crossed with FoxO3fl/fl mice to generate FoxO3fl/fl::Alb-Cre mice (FoxO3-/-, hereafter termed AKO) with constitutive loss of FoxO3 in hepatocytes. The FoxO3fl/fl mice obtained from the same breeding were used as control mice (Con). Age-matched FoxO3fl/fl mice were used as control (Con). To induce conditional knockout of FoxO3 in adult liver alone, adeno-associated virus serotype 8 (AAV8) was constructed to specifically express Cre recombinase in liver. To confirm the recombination efficiency of Cre, AAV8-Tbg-Cre (AAV-Cre) virus was intravenously injected into R26-CAG-LSL-EGFP mice (Shanghai Model Organisms Center, Shanghai, China) with different concentrations. Two weeks later, the percentages of EGFP+ liver cells were then checked to evaluate Cre recombination efficiency. We found that AAV-Cre adeno-associated virus with the concentration of 51011 gc/mouse has a highest efficiency (Supplementary Fig. 11). Therefore, AAV-Cre or negative control (AAV-NC) adeno-associated virus was injected intravenously at a concentration of 51011 gc/mouse in FoxO3fl/fl mice 2weeks prior to partial hepatectomy (PH). For knockdown of Nr4a1 in adult AKO mice, AAV8-mediate shRNA targeting for Nr4a1 (AAV-shNr4a1) or negative control (AAV-shNC) adeno-associated virus was injected intravenously at a concentration of 51011 gc/mouse in AKO mice 2weeks prior to partial hepatectomy (PH). To overexpress Nox4 in AKO mice, AAV8-Tbg-Nox4 (AAV-Nox4) or negative control (AAV-NC) adenovirus was injected intravenously at a concentration of 51011 gc/mouse in FoxO3-deficient mice 2weeks prior to liver injury. For experiments using adult animals, male mice were used in this study. All animal protocols and procedures were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Jinan University. Data and methods are reported here in accordance with ARRIVE guidelines40.

Male animals aged 8~9weeks were kept on a 12h-day/night cycle with free food/water access, and were used for partial hepatectomy (PH) experiments. During anesthesia induced by isoflurane, mice were subjected to 70% PH or 30% PH surgery. The surgery was performed between 8 and 12am to remove the median and left lobes and the mortality was <5%. The weight of regenerated livers as well as the whole body was measured at 07days post-PH (dpH). The ratio of wet weight of the remaining liver after PH over the weight of the whole animal was taken as the liver to body weight ratio. The 0 dpH denotes the time point in quiescent animal before PH. To induce another classic liver injury model, male adult mice were injected with CCl4 (0.6mL/kg, intraperitoneally) diluted in olive oil three times a week (every 48h) for 4weeks and euthanized 48h after the last injection as previously reported41.

Mouse livers were flushed via the portal vein using perfusion buffer containing Collagenase Type IV, followed by primary hepatocyte isolation and purification. Isolated and purified hepatocytes were fixed at 4 with 70% ethanol overnight at 4C, washed three time with PBS, and incubated with propidium iodide (PI, 50g/ml, Sigma)/RNAse A (ribonuclease, 1mg/ml, Sigma) solution for 3h at room temperature, followed by flow cytometry analysis with a FACS Aria cytometer (Becton Dickinson) to determine DNA content and ploidy distribution using ModFit LT 5.0 software (Verity Software House). Growth assay of primary hepatocytes were performed as previously report21. In brief, isolated hepatocytes were cultured in mouse hepatocyte growth medium (MHGM) with or without mitogens including EGF and HGF (Gibco, 40ng/ml for each) for 4days as described previously. DNA synthesis were then analyzed by 5-Ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) labeling, using Cell-Light EdU Apollo567 In Vitro Imaging Kit (RiboBio, Guangzhou, China) according to the manufacturers instructions.

Liver tissues were fixed in 4% formaldehyde and dehydrated in a series of ethanol. The fixed liver was embedded in paraffin and sectioned to 5m thickness. Sections were subjected to hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining for morphological and mitotic analysis. Paraffin-embedded liver sections were deparaffinized in xylene, followed by rehydration through a graded ethanol series and staining with hematoxylin and eosin stain (H&E). Mitotic activity in liver was examined and quantified as previously described2. In brief, mitotically active areas were first screened under lower magnification. For quantification, total mitotic counts in five high-magnification fields in the most mitotically active areas were considered for each mouse using a light microscope coupled with a digital image acquisition system.

Liver sections were subjected to immunofluorescence staining to analyze the expression of cell proliferating markers using a confocal fluorescence microscope42. In brief, livers were embedded in paraffin and cut in 5m sections, followed by deparaffinization and rehydration. Antigen retrieval were routinely performed using Citrate Antigen Retrieval Solution (Beyotime Biotechnology, P0081) according to the manufacturers instructions. Sections were permeabilized with 0.5% Triton X-100/PBS and then blocked with 5% goat serum (Jackson ImmunoResearch Laboratories, USA) for 1h at room temperature, and incubated with appropriate primary antibodies overnight at 4C. After washing with PBS, sections were incubated with corresponding secondary antibodies conjugated to fluorescence for 1h at room temperature, followed by counterstaining with DAPI (Sigma). Secondary antibodies used are following: Alexa Fluor 488 donkey anti-rabbit IgG (Abcam, 1:500), Alexa Fluor 405 donkey anti-goat IgG (Abcam, 1:200), and Cy3-conjugated Affinipure Goat anti-rabbit IgG (Proteintech, 1:100). For immunohistochemistry staining, sections were stained with primary antibody overnight at 4C. SignalStain Boost IHC Detection Reagents (HRP, CST) and SignalStain DAB Substrate Kit (CST) were used for amplification and development, respectively. The detailed information of primary antibodies used in this study can be found in the Supplementary Table 4. For immunostaining in liver tissues, species isotype (Santa Cruz) was used as negative control to confirm the specificity of primary antibodies. Images were captured by laser-scanning confocal microscope (LSM 700, Zeiss) and analyzed by ZEN 2012 software (Zeiss). Given that FoxO3 was predominantly expressed in nuclei of liver cells (Fig. 1a, b), FoxO3 fluorescence intensity in nuclei were normalized to nuclei size (mean fluorescence intensity, MFI) over total slides using ZEN 2012 software (Zeiss) to evaluate the total expression levels of FoxO3 protein. For the quantification of cell proliferation, the proliferation of hepatocytes (HNF4+ cells) was quantified by the percentage of proliferating hepatocytes (Ki67+ HNF4+ cells, or pH3+ HNF4+ cells) relative to total hepatocytes (HNF4+ cells). For some experiments, the proliferation of non-hepatocytes (HNF4 cells) was quantified by the percentage of proliferating non-hepatocytes (Ki67+ HNF4 cells, or pH3+ HNF4 cells) relative to total liver cells (DAPI+ cells).

Hepatocyte size was evaluated by -catenin staining. In brief, following deparaffinized, rehydrated, slides were then incubated with anti--catenin (BD, 1:500) overnight at 4C, followed by a further incubation at room temperature for 1h with goat anti-rabbit IgG H&L (Alexa Fluor 488) preadsorbed secondary antibody. Nuclear DNA was labeled in blue with DAPI. To quantify the cell size, 5 independent livers per group (at least 300 cells) were captured with laser-scanning confocal microscope (LSM 700, Zeiss). ZEN 2012 lite software (Zeiss) was used to quantify the relative size of each cell. Moreover, the relative size of primary hepatocytes was also evaluated by the forward scatter (FSC) intensity in flow cytometry.

For EdU labeling experiments, mice were intraperitoneally injected with 100l of a 1mg/ml solution of EdU (RiboBio, Guangzhou, China) dissolved in PBS. Livers were embedded in Tissue-Tek optimal cutting temperature compound (OCT) (Sakura, USA) for frozen section (4 m). Sections were rinsed three times in PBS and fixed in 4% parapormaldehyde for 30min. After rinsing three times again, citrate antigen retrieval was performed as described above. Sections were then incubated with 2mg/mL glycine solution for 10min, permeabilized with 0.5% Triton X-100 in PBS for 10min, and then rinsed with PBS once for 5min. This was followed by incubation with Apollo576 staining solution (1) at room temperature for 30min. Sections were washed three times in PBS, stained with DAPI for 10min to label nuclei, and mounted in Antifade Mounting Medium. Images were captured by a laser-scanning confocal microscope (LSM 700, Zeiss) and analyzed by ZEN 2012 software (Zeiss).

To analyze hepatocyte proliferation at the indicated time points, EdU was injected 2h prior to liver collection. For EdU pulse-chase experiments, EdU was multiply injected at indicted time points to label all proliferating hepatocytes during the whole period of liver regeneration. The last injection was performed 2h prior to liver collection. Sham-operated mice underwent the same procedure without the liver resection. For the quantification of cell proliferation, the proliferation of hepatocytes (HNF4+ cells) was quantified by the percentage of proliferating hepatocytes (EdU+ HNF4+ cells) relative to total hepatocytes (HNF4+ cells). But the proliferation of non-hepatocytes (HNF4- cells) was quantified by the percentage of proliferating non-hepatocytes (EdU+ HNF4- cells) relative to total liver cells (DAPI+ cells).

Blood was collected by shearing the right atrium and was allowed to coagulate for 2h on ice. Serum was the isolated as the supernatant fraction after centrifugation at 2000rpm for 5min. Hepatic function was analyzed using serum ALT and AST activities, which are markers of injury. Serum ALT and AST activities were determined using the Hitachi 7600 automatic biochemical analyzer (Japan) and were expressed as units per liter (U/L). In addition, enzyme activities in liver tissue were determined using commercial kits produced by Jiancheng Institute of Biotechnology (Nanjing, China). Tissue enzyme activities were normalized to total protein weight and were expressed as units per gram protein (U/g).

For total RNA isolation, liver tissues were extracted in sham and injured mice at 4days post-PH (dpH), respectively. Three mice per group were used for RNA-sequencing analysis. RNA preparation, library construction and sequencing on GBISEQ-500 platform was performed. After filtering the reads with low quality, clean reads were then obtained and mapped to the reference genome of mouse (GRCm38.p6) with the HISAT43. Gene expression level was quantified by a software package called RSEM44 and expressed as fragments per kilobase of exon per million fragments mapped (FPKM). Differential expressed (DE) genes were detected using NOISeq method45 with Probability0.8 and fold change (FC) of FPKM2. Only those genes were considered for the differential expression analysis, which displayed FPKM1 in either of the two samples under comparison. GO analysis was performed using online tool DAVID 6.8 (https://david.ncifcrf.gov/summary.jsp), and terms with p-value0.05 were included. Differentially expressed gene heat maps were clustered by hierarchical clustering using cluster software46. RNA sequencing data have been deposited in NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under the accession code SRP224045.

Total RNA was isolated using RNeasy kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA) from cells or liver tissue according to the protocol of the manufacturer, respectively. Reverse transcription to cDNA was performed with 30ng of total RNA, random primers, and SuperScript III Reverse Transcriptase (Roche, USA). The qPCR was performed using a Light Cycler 480 SYBR Green I Master (Roche, USA) and the MiniOpticon qPCR System (Bio-Rad, CA, USA). After denaturation for 10min at 95C, the reactions were subjected to 45 cycles of 95C for 30s, 60C for 30s, and 72C for 30s. GAPDH was used as the internal standard control to normalize gene expression using the 2Ct method. The sequences of the qPCR primers were listed in Supplementary Table 5.

Tissues or cells were lysed in RIPA buffer (Beyotime Biotechnology) containing protease inhibitors (Sigma) for SDS-PAGE. Protein concentrations were determined using Bio-Rad Protein Assay (Bio-Rad Laboratories). 30g of protein were separated by SDA-PAGE, proteins were transferred onto PVDF membranes (Millipore), then blocked in 5% nonfat milk/TBS-Tween 20 and incubated with primary antibodies (dilution in TBST) overnight at 4C. Membranes were then washed and incubated with corresponding second antibodies for 1h at room temperature. Bands were detected by chemiluminescence reagents (ThermoFisher Scientific). Primary antibodies can be found in the Supplementary Table 4. Secondary antibodies used are following: goat-anti-mouse horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated antibody (CST, 1:3000) and goat-anti-rabbit horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated antibody (CST, 1:2000). Regarding the visualization of housekeeping protein (-actin), the partial membrane was cropped from the same one as the target proteins of interest when their molecular weights are greatly different from each other. Otherwise, two members with same loading dose of total protein were simultaneously performed to visualize the target protein and -actin, respectively. Given that stripping and re-probing may result in errors between different bands, stripping buffer was not used in this study. Chemiluminescent signals were quantitated with Image-Pro Plus version 6.0 software (Media Cybernetics, MD, USA). The expression level of target protein was set as 100% in control group. Relative expression levels of target protein in experimental groups were expressed as the percentage of control group. All blots derive from the same experiment and were processed in parallel. The uncropped blots are listed in the Supplementary Figs. 24 and 25.

The promoter sequences (2000bp to 1bp, upstream of TSS) of the mouse Nox4 (Gene ID: 50490) and Nr4a1 (Gene ID: 15370) genes were analyzed by JASPAR 2018 online software (http://jaspar.genereg.net/)47 to determine potential FoxO3 binding sites (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2). The predicted binding site with highest score for target gene promoters were further analyzed by luciferase reporter assay, to evaluate the regulation effects of FoxO3 on the expression of mouse Nox4 and Nr4a1 genes. The pCMV-Gaussia-Dura Luc and pTK-Red Firefly Luc plasmids from ThermoFisher were used to construct the dual-luciferase reporter plasmid (pGL-RF) (Supplementary Figs. 19b and 22b), which contained both a Gaussia luciferase (GL) and a red firefly luciferase (RF). The predicted binding sites with highest score for target gene promoters were further analyzed by pGL-RF luciferase dual reporter assay, to evaluate the in vitro binding and regulating effects of FoxO3 on Nox4 and Nr4a1 genes. Briefly, promoter regions of target genes comprising predicted FoxO3 binding sites were amplified and cloned into the pGL-RF plasmid. NCTC1469 cells were co-transfected with dual reporter plasmids and pcDNA-FoxO3 plasmid (50ng for each plasmid) using LipoFiter Liposomal Transfection Reagent (Hanbio Biotechnology). Two days after transfection, luciferase reporter assay was carried out using the Pierce Gaussia-Firefly Luciferase Dual Assay Kit (ThermoFisher Scientific) according to the manufacturers protocol. Luciferase activity was measured using a BioTek SynergyTM 4 multimode microplate reader (BioTek Instruments). The relative activity of the Gaussia luciferase (GL) was normalized by the activity of red firefly luciferase (RL) and was expressed as fold change of control group. To further verify the potential binding sites, mutant luciferase reporter plasmids were generated by KOD-Plus-Mutagenesis Kit (Toyobo, Osaka, Japan), according to the manufacturers protocol.

ChIP assays were performed to evaluate the in vivo binding of FoxO3 to its consensus sequence in mouse Nr4a1 and Nox4 promoters. The assays were performed in mouse liver tissue using the SimpleChIP Plus Enzymatic Chromatin IP Kit (CST, #9004) according to the manufacturers instructions. FoxO3 antibody (CST, #2497) was used to immunoprecipitation assay. Normal goat IgG (CST, #2729) was used as a control as previously described. The DNA isolated from input chromatin fragments and from the precipitated chromatin fragments by anti-FoxO3 antibody or control IgG was subjected to PCR using primers flanking the consensus FoxO3 binding sites on Nox4 promoter. PCR products were determined on a 1.5% agarose gel. Relative binding ability of FoxO3 was expressed as the DNA signals relative to input. ChIP-PCR primers used in this study as follows: Nr4a1-ChIP-F: 5'-GGC CTC ACT TTT TCC ACC TAG T-3' and Nr4a1-ChIP-R: 5'-CCA GGG TAG GGT TGC TGT TTC-3'; Nox4-ChIP-F: 5'-TTG ACT TTG CAA TTA GCA GTA-T-3' and Nox4-ChIP-R: 5'-AGT CAG AAG CCC AAG TCT TCC T-3'.

All statistics were calculated using GraphPad Prism 8 Software. Among three or more groups, statistical analysis was performed using one-way or two-way ANOVA with Dunnetts multiple comparisons post hoc tests. Comparisons between two groups were analyzed using unpaired and 2-tailed Students t-test. All data are presented as the meanSEM. A p-value<0.05 was considered statistically significant. In this study, statistical analysis was in accordance with homogeneity of variance and normality of residuals. Homogeneity of variance was evaluated by the F-test with a p-value of >0.05. Normality of residuals was evaluated by D'AgostinoPearson test and/or ShapiroWilk test with a p-value of >0.05.

Further information on research design is available in the Nature Research Reporting Summary linked to this article.

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FoxO3 restricts liver regeneration by suppressing the proliferation of hepatocytes | npj Regenerative Medicine - Nature.com

Reached via phone, Hyde attributed all of the tweets and Reddit posts to "his assistant." Asked if he was a member of the alt-right, Hyde responded with a question: "Is that some sort of indie book store?"

Turner, which owns Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, responded to a request for comment by forwarding a written statement from an Adult Swim spokesperson:

"Adult Swims reputation and success with its audience has always been based on strong and unique comedic voices. Million Dollar Extremes comedy is known for being provocative with commentary on societal tropes, and though not a show for everyone, the company serves a multitude of audiences and supports the mission that is specific to Adult Swim and its fans."

For the Carnegie Mellon and RISDeducated Hyde, World Peace is the latest act in a years-long career of making people uncomfortable. Though MDE has been publishing videos since at least 2009 (an early one is titled "old faggot"), Hyde is probably most famous for a 2013 stunt in which he hijacked a TEDx symposium in Philadelphia and gave a nonsensical presentation called "2070 Paradigm Shift," to polite applause. More often and surely the major reason for his popularity among the alt-right he exploits, sometimes cruelly, cultural sensitivities around race, gender, and sexual orientation.

At a 2013 comedy event in Brooklyn, he performed a shocking set, a recording of which became a minor viral hit titled "Privileged White Male Triggers Oppressed Victims, Ban This Video Now and Block Him." Hyde began by mocking the "hipster faggot" audience at which point a few onlookers immediately left then removed a piece of paper from his back pocket and proceeded to read 15 minutes of anti-gay pseudo science ("homosexuality is the manifestation of intense perversion and antisocial attitudes") and outright hate speech ("next time you see a crazy gay person maybe it's not because they were bullied, maybe it's not because of homophobia ... maybe it's just because of their faggot brain that's all fucked up"). He concluded by blaming positive portrayals of gay people on television on the "ZOG (Zionist Occupation Government) media machine destroying the family." At the end of the set, he went outside to argue with some of the people who had left.

Last year, BuzzFeed News reported that a gun- and knife-brandishing internet personality named Jace Connors who became notorious for claiming to crash his car while en route to the home of Brianna Wu, one of the most public victims of Gamergate was actually the work of a member of MDE named Jan Rankowski, who created the Connors "character" with input from Hyde.

And last fall, Hyde and fellow MDE member Charls Carroll showed up near the Yale campus in New Haven bearing signs reading "All Lives Matter" and "No More Dead Black Children," then proceeded to film a highly uncomfortable 15-minute video called "Yale Lives Matter" in which Hyde, among other things, lectures a black Apple store security guard that he is "playing a part in an oppressive system," harangues the black employee of a preppy clothes store for selling "slave owner clothes," and asks two young white men if they "killed any minorities today."

This year, Hyde or his assistant seems to have decided to cast his lot in with the alt-right. Though Hyde has deleted all his tweets from before the new year, since then he's been remarkably consistent in engaging with the major concerns of and personalities in the movement.

The alt-right, which idealizes offensive speech as a principled transgression against a censorious liberal culture, is a natural fit for MDE's comedy, which combines nerdy references to anime and video games with the sinister goofiness of Tim and Eric, the anti-PC mean streak of pre-corporate Vice, and the terminal irony of meme culture. Indeed, MDE and Hyde specifically have been beloved on 4chan, one of the alt-right's incubators, for years.

If Hyde isn't quite of shitlord culture, he most certainly plays along. Earlier this year, Hyde became the possibly witting subject of a series of 4chan-perpetrated hoaxes that named him as the suspect in a series of mass shootings. A first cut of World Peace, aired online as part of an Adult Swim series called Development Meeting, featured a logo that fans quickly figured out was a copy of a symbol that Aurora shooter James Holmes scribbled in his notebooks. (It was cut from the actual broadcast.)

All of which raises the feeling that World Peace is one massive in-joke, designed to signify to a group of people online for whom the limits of irony have been misplaced and forgotten; identity content for the worst trolls in the world. After being revealed as the Jace Connors character, Jan Rankowski told BuzzFeed News that the videos had been a satire about "over-the-top, super-hyper-macho armed Gamergater."

It's a trap just to read Sam Hyde literally he's built a career out of making fun of people who take his speech too seriously. But that has not stopped Hyde's alt-right admirers from trying to divine his true politics, in the same way they scan his show for secret messages. The closest they've come is a post by Hyde or his assistant on the MDE subreddit from late last year in which he or his assistant describes himself as basically a libertarian who believes that "we're putting Western Civ on the alter [sic] as a sacrifice to white guilt because we're worried some frizzy-haired Afro transsexual will wag his finger at us" and that "whites need to regain some sort of cohesive tribal self-interest and identity right now just like everybody else has."

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The Alt-Right Has Its Very Own TV Show On Adult Swim

The reaction of the corporate media (and of progressive organizations in general) to the takeover of the Libertarian Party by the Mises Caucus is one of the more interesting metrics for determining the impact of the takeover's success.

It's been a week-and-a-half, and we've already had a hit piece from the SPLC and a neutral article from a Washington Post newsletter. Now The Nation joins in with another hit piece. (Apparently, you see, Mises folk are just a bunch of racist, Trump-humping, MAGA-drone fifth-columnists.) The truest measure of success, however, will come if and when the likes of the Washington Post proper, the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and the like start to pile on ...

Flak, meet target. Target, flak.

The Libertarian Party Goes Alt-RightBy embracing bigotry, Libertarians are poised to help reelect Trump.https://www.thenation.com/article/po...gop-alt-right/Jeet Heer (06 June 2022)

Third parties have a political impact far greater than their electoral successes. They are the research and development wing of the political system. Only once, during the exceptional rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s, has a third party gained enough support to actually contend for power, but there are plenty of cases where the two major parties have liberally borrowed issues and ideas from upstart rivals. Lincolns Republicans themselves took their stance against the expansion of slavery from the earlier Liberty Party and Free Soil Party. The Democrats under William Jennings Bryan filched (and watered down) the agenda of the Peoples Party. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was similarly light-fingered in borrowing ideas from the Socialist Party and other left formations. In a more sinister vein, Richard Nixons Southern strategy and dog whistles about law and order were motivated by a desire to steal the thunder of George Wallace, who ran in 1968 as the nominee of the American Independent Party.

The Libertarian Party can rightly claim to be heir to this tradition of being a seedbed for policy innovations taken over by both Democrats and Republicans. If the dominant ideology of American politics since the 1970s is neoliberalism, then the Libertarian Party has truly punched above its weight, influencing trends in both economics (the diminishment of the welfare state) and social policy (the Libertarian Party championed gay rights and drug decriminalization long before the Democrats).

In defiance of this history, the Libertarian Party now seems to have entered a topsy-turvy world where it has started mimicking the Republicans. Since Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign, the dominant political story on the right has been the GOPs becoming steadily Trumpizeda trend visible in both policy (more protectionist, more anti-immigrant, more unilateralist in foreign policy) and also cultural style (with Trumps insult-comedian routine now de rigueur among Republican candidates).

In 2016, Gary Johnson became the most successful Libertarian candidate in history, getting nearly 4.5 million votes (or 3.3 percent of the votes cast). This was three times more than any previous Libertarian presidential candidate, including Johnson in his earlier 2012 run. Johnson achieved this success by being closer to the kind of old-line establishment Republican that the GOP had just rejected: He was a soft-spoken, culturally moderate advocate of small government. As such, he seemed like an alternative to Trump for weary Republicans.

But despite Johnsons strong electoral showing, the Libertarian party was quickly wracked by its own internal strife thanks to a guerrilla faction that wanted to take up culture war politics.

In July 28, 2017, Jeff Deist, the president of the Mises Institute, named for libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises, published a blog post arguing that blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance. The phrase blood and soil already had an unmistakable fascist overtonebut it took on an even more gruesome connotation two weeks after the post during the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally of 2017, where an anti-racist protester was killed. The white supremacists who tried to dominate the streets of Charlottesville chanted blood and soil. Several of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally identified as libertarians. In the wake of that event, Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian Party, signed an open letter warning of the dangers of fascism. Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian Party, wrote a post arguing that the Mises Institute has been turned into a sales funnel for the White Nationalist branch of the Alt Right.

The ensuing arguments over blood and soil lead to the creation of a Mises Caucus, which aimed to overthrow the pragmatic Gary Johnson wing of the party and adopt the incendiary culture war politics of the hard right.

Writing in Reason, Brian Doherty, a distinguished historian of libertarianism, reports that foes say that too many Mises Caucus members and fans downplay libertarian positions that might offend the right, are intentionally obnoxious and bullying, and are often racist. Doherty cites a tweet posted by the New Hampshire Libertarian Party after it was taken over by the Mises Caucus: America isnt in debt to black people. If anything its the other way around. That tweet ran on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and was subsequently deleted after criticism. On March 7, 2021, Jeremy Kauffman, a prominent member of the Mises Caucus, tweeted: if 1,000 transpeople were murdered every year but there were no taxes, wed live in a substantially more moral world. [For] reference about 40transgender people are murdered in the US per year. That tweet was also later deleted.

In early 2021, the Mises Caucus in California invited an anti-Semitic provocateur named Bryan Sharpe (also known as Hotep Jesus) to speak at its state convention. Angela McArdle, a leading member of the Mises Caucus, defended the invitation, saying, I dont actually think that someone who is trying to be a truth-seeker and understand whats going onand asked the question about whether or not Jews run Hollywood is an antisemite.

On May 29, at the Libertarian Party Convention in Reno, McArdle won the title of chair of the partys national committee. This was a decisive victory for the Mises Caucus, which received the vote of 69 percent of delegates. The Mises Caucus is now the undisputed ruling faction of the party.

In a report for Hatewatch, a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Creede Newton assembled evidencecircumstantial but suggestivethat the Mises Caucus is aligned with Trumpist Republicans. David Valente, an active Libertarian Party member since 2012 who used to be an alternate member of the Libertarian National Committee, told Hatewatch, The purpose of what is going on with the MCis to sabotage the LP to sideline it over the next few years for Donald Trump. Ashley Shade, another disaffected Libertarian Party member and former chair of the Massachusetts Libertarian Party, also spoke with Hatewatch and characterized the Mises Caucus as a tool of the Republican Party.

Whether or not the Mises Caucus is deliberately planning this, the turmoil it has inflicted on the Libertarian Party is a boon to Republicans. Speaking on The Neoliberal Podcast, Andy Craig, a staff writer at the Cato Institute, predicted that the Libertarian Party is going to fade away very quickly. They are going to lose their ballot access. They basically already are bankrupt. All the donors [will] leave.

Brian Dohertys reporting in Reason supports this analysis:

Two former significant donors to the L.P., Kyle Varner and Michael Chastain, both with decades long history in the party, did say in phone interviews that the Mises turn, which they see as importing a level of racist edgelording they have no taste for, has made them stop funding L.P. candidates. Such defections are particularly relevant in this environment: The national L.P. has just had three months in a row of spending exceeding income, and the number of active donors has been falling for seven straight months.

Taking the Libertarian party out as a competitive force will help consolidate the right-wing vote around the Republican Party. Once the Libertarian Party becomes a husk of its former self, the alt-right faction will continue to assist a Trumpized GOP in a way that parallels groups like the Proud Boys. MAGA Libertarians will be a potent vector for spreading bigotry on social media. The Mises Caucus are the nominal winners in the internecine libertarian wars, but the ultimate beneficiary could be Donald Trump.

Link:

The Nation: "The Libertarian Party Goes Alt-Right"

In recent weeks, a number of community organizations including Voces de la Frontera, SEIU, and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) that have come out in opposition to the Republican National Committee choosing Milwaukee for its convention in 2024. The argument from many tourism, hospitality, and other industry groups has been that it will be an economic boon for the city and local businesses. As small business owners and active members of the Milwaukee community, we want to state unequivocally: We want nothing to do with the RNCs money.

We are parents to a trans son and a non binary child. Members of the RNC would like us charged with child abuse. They believe we should have all our children taken from our custody for supporting and loving our kids while they live their true identity. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stated There is no doubt that these procedures are abuse under Texas law, and thus must be halted. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has a responsibility to act accordingly. Robert Foster, a Mississippi state representative, went further and actually called for the death penalty for parents like us, tweeting: Some of yall still want to try and find political compromise with those that want to groom our school aged children and pretend men are women, etc. I think they need to be lined up against [a] wall before a firing squad to be sent to an early judgment.

Many of our friends, employees, and customers are members of the LGBT community. Members of the RNC claim this is the same as child sexual abuse. From the former Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, E.W. Jackson: I know their people say, well, Its unfair to associate homosexuality with pedophilia or some of these other perversions. But I believe that there is a direct connection, because what they really want is absolute sexual freedom. Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis spokeswoman parroted this ancient and false talking point after Floridas Dont Say Gay bill was signed into law earlier this spring, stating that the only people who would be opposed to the bill would be a groomer or at least [someone who doesnt] denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old.

For several years, we had a young man who come to the U.S. from Honduras living with us. He left Honduras because of gang violence and direct threats to his life, and applied for asylum at the U.S. border, as is his right under the Geneva Conventions. The last Republican president believed that he and other immigrants should be killed, tortured, or maimed while they tried to come to safety. Advisors told the New York Times: [President DonaldTrump] wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. Thats not allowed either, they told him. Latin American migrants werent the only targets of Trumps anti-immigration stance. He repeatedly referred to African countries as sh-thole nations and said that if we allowed in immigrants from Nigeria, they would never go back to their huts.

Many of our friends, employees, and a huge portion of the Milwaukee community are Black. Richard Spencer, the alt-right neo-Nazi who organized the Unite the Right marches in Charlottesville, Virginia that resulted in the murder of Heather Heyer and the injuries of countless others, bragged about Trump and the RNC, There is no question that Charlottesville wouldnt have occurred without Trump. It really was because of his campaign and this new potential for a nationalist candidate who was resonating with the public in a very intense way. The alt-right found something in Trump. He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public presence of the alt-right possible. While asserting that the men who chanted Jews will not replace us were very fine people, Trump called the simple assertion that Black Lives Matter a symbol of hate and made countless other disgusting statements about shooting racial justice protesters (again, like immigrants, just in the legs What a nice guy). He excitedly claimed When the looting starts, the shooting starts.

This is a small representative sampling, but we could go on. We can speak at length about Republicans crippling businesses like mine (or other Milwaukee treasures) by refusing to support federal relief for small businesses during the pandemic. We could talk about the desire to strip bodily autonomy from every person in this country with a uterus. We could explore the vicious attacks on parents whose children were murdered with AR-15s, called crisis actors, accused of politicizing their own babies murders. But discussing this further is a waste of our time.

We want no part of this grotesque groveling to the worst people in the country. We will not have our business reputation or money tied to people who would see our children, friends and neighbors subjugated or dead. We dont want our membership dues in Milwaukee business associations used to give credibility to these beliefs. Advocating for businesses is not the same as advocating for the most vulnerable members of the community. There is no amount of economic benefit to the community that could possibly make this worthwhile. Weve terminated our membership in an organization actively advocating for the RNC, and against our neighbors. Especially now, as Congress hears the horrifying testimony about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, sanctioned by Trump and defended a legitimate political discourse by the Republican Party, industry and tourism groups that support bringing the RNC to Milwaukee should stop and consider the price of doing business with this group to our community.

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Milwaukee business owners don't all want the RNC - Wisconsin Examiner