Category Archives: Antifa

The French presidential elections brought what many were dreading, a standoff between what has long been called the authoritarian liberalism of Emmanuel Macron and the avowed fascism of Marine Le Pen. For a small month-long window before the elections people who dont usually vote began to talk about voting for Jean Luc Mlenchon, whether matter-of-factlyhis program is correct, said my favorite barman Kamel at the Mouton Blanc in Strasbourg St Denis as he served me a pint-sized spritzor resignedly, its the only chance we have against Le Pen because its not a given that people will vote for Macron against her.

A couple of weeks before the elections tensions ran high against the Jadotistesthe kind of bourgeois-bohemians who might have voted for Mlenchon in the last election (the problem with such a leopard is hes always changing his spots, his party, his discourse) who were now voting Jadot, an ecological candidate whose program was actually less green than Mlenchons. Bruno Latour himself had come out and supported Jadot publicly, along with a scattering of left-wing intellectuals who clearly refused to see that the only candidate who could get any kind of traction against the Le PenMacron black hole was Mlenchon, according to the polls.

In the rain in Belleville a few days before the first round I found some surprising green-haired steam punks distributing tracts for Jadot, telling me that even though he wouldnt win it was important to vote for what we believe in. These are the words of a Green party of bureaucrats in its death throes; they want the racket to exist after the election, or they have to reimburse their campaign money. The week before the election I sat in a bar in the 12th Arrondissement with people who dont usually vote, making paper airplanes and origami frogs and birds out of Mlenchons campaign leaflets, which used the 1968 slogan another world is possible. We read his program, which everyone found not so bad after all: freezing the prices of basic necessities and energy costs in the face of the gas and inflation crises, raising unemployment benefits, requisitioning empty houses and second homes for public housing, outlawing eviction, reforming the police, and reinstating retirement at sixty.

Perhaps Fabien Roussel, the Communist Party candidate, who seemed to have lost his mind and was framing his campaign solely on anti-ecological solutions on the basis that ecology is anti-working class, telling anyone who would listen that he would continue to eat meat and at all costs keep using nuclear power, ought to have stood down in the interests of a left coalitionhe garnered only 2.28% which could have pushed Mlenchon into the second round. Viewed this way, we could consider Jadot and Roussel to reflect each other: both make a kind of identity politics out of suggesting that an ecological position, or a working-class culture are incompatible with the Left, Mlenchons program seemed to defend both working-class and environmental interests without suggesting that they are opposed. Jean-Luc came in at 22%, behind Macron in first place with 27.8%, and Marine Le Pen at 23.1%. Two candidates from the far and center right followedEric Zemmour with 7.1%, Pcresse, the Rpublicain, with 4.8%. One has to gain over 5% of votes for campaign money to be reimbursed: much to everyones amusement, Pcresse had invested 5 million euros of her own money in her dream.

How will the rest of the votes recompose into votes for Macron, Le Pen, or abstention on the 24th? It would seem to depend on how many voted Mlenchon as a blockade against both of the main candidates and therefore may abstain, or simply against Le Pen and therefore will vote Macron, how many believe in the protectionism of his program and are unbothered by the racism of Le Pen and will vote for her national preference socialism. How many voters will have really had enough of Macron and will give up, therefore allowing the far-right candidate to pass

The conversations in Paris: In any case, she has no chance of winning (not true); If she passes, she wouldnt have a majority in the National Assembly and shell be less able to pass laws than Macron (she wants to change the constitution for this reason); At least there will be better street mobilizations (at what cost, and then the afterthought); the Constitution; and then: It isnt a choice, between the aggressive neoliberalism of Macron and the fascism of Le Pen, Macron is just fascism by another name; All this falls a little flat now that the choice between the two candidates is upon France once again. There are those who sacralize abstention, and those who sacralize the vote. There are those who say, grit your teeth, its not a choice but you can choose the enemy you want to fight with. There are those who point out that although its a bad choice, there must be a strong street movement.

Monday, April 11, about 400 students occupied a wing of lUniversit de la Sorbonne following an antifascist general assembly called in response to the results of the first round of the elections. Elsewhere in Paris, a building of lcole Normale Suprieure (ENS, one of the grandes colesthe French equivalent of the Ivy league or Oxbridge) was also occupied. Paris 8, the university in the northern suburb of St Denis, was blockaded to demand the regularization of students without documents (whether from Ukraine or from other countries), against student precarity, the exploitation of workers at the university, and the inaction of the administration in the face of sexual and sexist violence. Both the communiqu of the Sorbonne and of the ENS, explained Our mobilization isnt about advising people to vote or to abstain, but about bringing to light the hatred of, and the current obfuscation of the stakes by, the two programs (Le Pen/Macron). The absence of what we want, and the danger our rights are put in, our fear of the future and of racist, sexist, sexual, classist, and queerphobic violence, omnipresent in the presidential campaign and in the programs of both candidates, have obliged us to react.

Many of the student communiqus outline the non-choice, but also emphasize that they dont endorse either voting (for Macron), or abstaining. These students see the situation as so dire that its understandable that people would want to build a dam against Le Pen, and also that they have trouble doing so since so many of Macrons policies have instituted harsh austerity and institutional racism.

Monday night, police surrounded the occupied Sorbonne and made it difficult for others to come and go freely. The occupation continued impressively throughout the week, however, further securing its place with general assemblies and public demonstrations in front of the building, and in the neighborhood, in support of the occupation. Students also sent out Subcommandante Marcos-esque video communiqus1 in which masked students explain their choice to protect their anonymity in view of the repressive strategies of the university administration. These students are very young, they have spent the last two years inside in springtime due to COVID measures which closed high schools and universities and moved classes online; for many it was their first experience of a student occupation, as a third-year philosophy student who had taken part explained to me.

On Thursday morning, students at Sciences Po, another grande cole, blockaded the university in the interests of visibilizing and affirming student demands, absent from the presidential campaign, and even more so from the second round.2 They highlighted that neither candidate responded to their worries about social justice, the environment, feminism, disability, racism, antifascism, the precariousness of student life and income, discrimination against non-European students; they wanted to reinsert these worries into public discourse. Thirty or so identitarian (far right) militants kicked these blockaders out, wearing balaclavas and screaming, Were at home here. According to a student witness, the left-wing students began running. The group La Cocarde tudiante, alongside some members of Generation Zemmour and lUNI (the nationalist student union, created in 1968 against the uprising, to reinstate order in the universities) dismantled the barricade aggressively, tweeting In the face of the inaction of the authorities we took things into our own hands. Everyone ran off. They should accept the verdict of the ballot box: their defeat!.

A 6pm demonstration of several hundred people demanding the regularization of students without French nationality at the Panthon tried to join the occupiers at the Sorbonne, just a few streets away. The police tear-gassed the place and there were a few fights, arrests, and injured. Police used the opportunity to evict the occupation, at the request of the university rectorate, and some of the occupiers did leave. The choice of the rectorate to close the university ahead of the holidays was understood as a choice to stop students from having spaces to organize in and to repress their mobilization against the elections. About fifty people remained inside, the police having conditioned their leaving with an identity check.

By 11 Thursday night, there was little trace of the occupation except for the police presence, which cordoned off rue St Jacques and rue Victor Cousin from the sparse presence of tourists, businessmen, and whoever the hell else would go drink in the Latin Quarter. Four young women were arguing with police on the Place de la Sorbonne, and a sadly draped banner clung to the bars on a high-up window. The splendid square was desolate and even the fountains were switched off. The police were obviously finding the experience of being harangued by four beautiful young zoomers perversely pleasurable. Unmanned police barricades cordoned off the square from the street. Behind these, heavily equipped riot police were dismantling a barricade made of chairs on rue Victor Cousin. Imagine that you wanted to be a cop for the fantasy of fighting crime, rescuing young women from peril, being a brutal and violent hero, and your job is to tidy up some school chairs? In violent retaliation against such humiliation, the cops sat down on the chairs and started taking selfies.

Around the back of the Sorbonne, on rue Toullier, a crowd of sweet- seeming zoomers remained until about midnight, waiting for their friends to leave the occupation, which was by now entirely over. Excuse me, a very responsible-seeming young person wearing a surgical mask asked us. Are any of the legal guardians of those still inside still here? Some of the people inside were, as the philosophy student I talked to had confirmed, very young16 and 17. They all wore surgical masks. Under the pressure of their presence, the few left inside were able to leave without being arrested or having their identities checked. Eventually they all came out, walked three meters down to the end of this small ruelle chanting, On est l! Mme si Macron le veut pas, nous on est l! Pour lhonneur des travailleurs et pour un monde meilleur, mme si Macron le veut pas, on est l (Were here! Even if Macron doesnt like it, we are here!). A fringe group tried Grve, blocage, manif sauvage! (Strike, blockade, illegal demo!) but it didnt really catch on. The liberated students seemed tired and happy to see their friends, they had very little air of defeat about them.

A very bourgeois looking young man with a shiny face and lips stained with red wine like a vampire came up and asked me if Im a demonstrator. I said, No. But theres a demonstration, he presses. I say, Yes, the Sorbonne was occupied and it looks like everyone will go home. But you were in the demonstration. Sadly, Noits the truthbesides theres an undertone to his question that I dont like. Who will you vote for? he asks aggressively, still trying to categorize me somewhere amongst the answers hes already made up for himself. He has a less aggressive friend with him. A pair of drunk 19-year-olds. I dont know if youve caught on to my accent, I say, but I cant vote.

He says, Yeah, you seem like youre from Eastern Europe. I dont know what he means by this; its something thats always been coded, and is currently coded differently. So I say, still using the formal vous, with a big smile but irritated by his mauvaise foi, You know what, you can go fuck yourself. I must have hurt his national pride somewhere deep, for he spit out: This country doesnt want you. Perhaps hes just a 19-year-old, perhaps hes a Macronist, or perhaps hes a budding far-right militantafter all, the 5th Arrondissement is their stomping ground. A few weeks ago Loik le Priol, former leader of the Groupe Union Defense, hunted down and shot the Argentinian rugby player Martin Aramburu dead in front of his hotel, after a bar fight which began with the rugby player intervening when Loik and his friends verbally abused a non-French homeless person asking for money in a bar. There are constant spats over territory between Paris Antifa and groups of fascists whove been trying to claim the neighborhood since 68. So, you know, you have to be wary. His friend persuades the guy bothering me to leave and he, still not having understood that none of us foreigners can vote, threatens, Youll choose, youll choose, on election day youll choose between Le Pen. Its not a choice! screams a young student, exhausted.

There was a demonstration against the extreme right on Saturday the 16th, starting at Nation, in which various positionssyndical and autonomous, for abstention and for voting for a strategic blockade against Le Penwere all represented. The demonstration was huge, calm, boring, lined with policea kind of moving kettle. As it reached its end at Rpublique, not much happened either. The spirit of anti-fascism was generalized beyond Antifaeveryone was chanting siamo tutti antifascist,i for exampleto the extent that the Antifa themselves were invisible. At the demonstration ran confusingly into a Pakistani pro-Imran Khan rally. The statue of La Rpublique was adorned in blue and yellow (for Ukraine) several weeks ago in a semi-environmentalist, semi anti-war protest. Some determined young black bloc people tried to amass bottles from recycling bins and were reproached by some moderate seeming demonstrators. Some people lit a fire. The absence of much of the habitual spectacular property damage made for a loud silence. It is the first spring that weve been outside without sworn declarations or curfews that confiscate the night, and I get the feeling that the normal spring movement in Paris is only just waking up.

Despite the administrative closure of the Sorbonne, the students had called for other universities and high schools to mobilize, starting from Tuesday 19. Lyces (high schools) Louis le Grand, Fenelon, Lamartine, Jean Jaurs, Henri IV, Monet, and Victor Hugo were all blockaded. On the way to the library I happened upon Lyce Lamartine which was joyfully blocked by a hundred or so high-school students, who had arranged themselves in a stunning tableau on top of bins that had been repurposed to block the doors of the school. They had signs reflecting the concerns of the last few years and about the election: Sorbonne everywhere, Paris Antifa, Black lives matter, along with banners articulating the problems raised for young people by both electoral programs. They were joining in on all kinds of rhythmic chants against Macron and Le Pen, but especially Le Pen. At one point they were yelling the words to Brurier noirs iconic 1985 punk song Porcherie: La Jeunesse Emmerde Le Front National.3 They were joyful and a beautiful presence, some masked, some with the retro goth makeup characteristic of zoomers and doomers. On the other side of the road from the students explicitly holding the fort, another fifty or so students stood looking on shyly yet proudly. Cars honked for them frequently, and several wandering high-schoolers did a good job of charming cars and trucks into honking as well: Klaxonne sil te plat!

I try to lock up my bike but concerned young girls in hijabs tell me that my bike will be in danger despite how peaceful the protest is. A young man comes up to me: Madame, would you like to lend me your bicycle so I can go buy fumignes (flares). I hesitate for two seconds, but he and his entourage have a mini assembly, and decide they should do this using Lime scooters since they need to take cash out first. I ask another boy with braces on his lower teeth how long hes been up. Since 6:30. I went and distributed leaflets at two lyces, and then I came here. How did they organize this? On Instagram, a call from the Sorbonne went out on Instagram so we decided to blockade. Was he, or others, in the Sorbonne occupation too? Not him, but he moves off when I tell him Im writing an article. I ask another with a backpack how long hes been here. Since 10am. I had no idea it was happening, no one told me. Its cool, though. Another tells me its the first time hes blockaded his high school, hes in seconde, he was too young to participate in blockades the last time. There are no police, just the school security guard or janitor standing idly by. A sympathetic teacher with long hair and a hoodie congratulates them on their efforts. A man who looks like a gilet jaune motorcyclist, wearing a RIC (Citizens' Initiative Referendum, promoted by Mlenchons party) button, looks on sentimentally. Its difficult to get hold of students to ask them more about it, and I dont want to kill their vibe, so cool and complete. Im less involved than the pair of Trotskyists with red scarves who have come to turn this tableau into permanent revolution.

A cross-university general assembly was planned that morning at University Paris 8. The university followed the example of the Sorbonne rectorate to stop it from happening, and closed the university. This was also the case at University Paris 4 at Clignancourt. Students called for a last-minute assembly at University Paris 7 Grand Moulins at midday and the CROUS (the body which takes care of student welfare, benefits, accommodation, and things like food stamps) was occupied by 200 students. Whereas administrative closures following blockades have in previously been seen as a victory of sorts, the shutdown of the post-COVID university infrastructure means that exams will nonetheless be held online.

On Wednesday April 20, students barricaded the Condorcet campus in the suburb of Aubervilliers, and held general assemblies or hung out on the roof. The police did not come to break up the occupation and it continued into the weekend. Although a security guard patrolled the front of the campus, he also opened the gate for visitors so that they would only have to climb one of the barricades, and not the fence. That night was the presidential debate.

Its very longtwo and a half hoursand timers in front of the candidates show how long theyve spoken. Marine Le Pen, too afraid to use the words gilets jaunes since shed publicly opposed them in 2018, nonetheless gestured at them: Monsieur Macron is afraid of the People. She positioned herself as the Peoples candidate, bringing out well-rehearsed statistics about buying power and inflation and pensions. Macron failed throughout the debate to point out how extreme is the side of the spectrum she occupies. It was like watching two technicians pick over the bureaucratic details of laws and policies. There were very few of the grand ideas, takings of positions, talk about literature and philosophy, or romanticisms that usually characterize the French presidential debate.

Marine Le Pen had had good media training; she smiled a lot and kept to her allotted time slot. Macron was aggressive and cut her off. Were you an alien who didnt understand anything of what was going on youd mainly notice that hes a very condescending person, you might want to throw your drink at him. Someone on Twitter called him a mansplainer. A sticky moment came over the war in Ukraine and Le Pens relationship with Putin.

Towards the end they spoke about immigration and Islam, where Marine Le Pen really revealed her true racism, and Macron presented himself as the most tolerant person in the world, obscuring the racist laws his government has passed. Its just a scarf, he said of the hijab; we arent going to send police officers after people for a scarf. You did for masks, Marine Le Pen quipped, referring to the COVID measures. Macron managed to incorporate this new burst of tolerance into a republican discourse: Its unconstitutional to deny people access to public space, and then tilted toward an extreme right-wing, clash of civilizations idea of Muslims as a violent underclass: If you went into the projects and took peoples scarves off, it would be a civil war.

70% of France's Muslims voted Mlenchon in the first tour so Macron would have been more than invested in publicly defending the image of himself as a tolerant centrist at this point in time. Under his rule Darmanin passed the Islamophobic separatism law and there has been all kinds of public hysteria about the headscarf, so this seemed disingenuous. That said, the move he made in his speech echoes the strategy of the law: it splits the community, creating an inner enemy out of Islamists as a way of assimilating, and gaining popularity in, the Muslim community. Hes nonetheless a safer president for foreigners and Muslims. Almost foaming at the mouth as Macron told her she was in contradiction with what it means to be French, wide-eyed, Le Pen lost the cool shed unnervingly managed to maintain throughout. At the end Macron actually thanked her, and said something about them not being so different, and something vague about the children being the future.

On election night, the polling stations close at 8pm, but the Belgian radio station RBTF, not bound by French law, releases exit polls and fairly accurate projected results long before, to the horror of French journalists and ministers, who say that this is undemocratic. Its true that voters who didnt want to vote for Macron might have depended on this information in deciding on whether to vote or not at all. By 5pm, it seemed he had won. He had a strong majority: 58.5%. The abstention rate, however, hasnt been so high since the elections after 1968. Marine Le Pen did a lot better in the Outre-Mer, which might be informed by the politics of the health pass: in Martinique (60.87%), Guadeloupe (69.60%) and Guyane (60.70%). The restrictions in the Outre-Mer were harsher, and there have been huge uprisings and general strikes, particularly in Guadeloupe, protests which amplified and were amplified by struggles against the (post-) colonial form of governance employed by metropolitan France, and by struggles against the use of poisonous pesticides such as Chlordcone in agriculture (in Martinique and Guadeloupe).

Demonstrations had been called in many cities, irrespective of the result. In Paris there were three: at the Panthon, Chatlet and Rpublique. The election fell on a holiday, Parisians were out of the city, and it felt like a non-event. La place de la Rpublique was deserted at 8pm. Thats to say, there were no protesters, just some drunk people yelling that they were from Cameroon and liked Macron, and hapless persons from Le Quotidien, wandering around and trying to find something to film. A man with a bicycle came up to us as we sat by the statue of the Republic trying to work out what to do next and said, So hes won. It was all planned from the beginning, do you find it normal? I ask if he means the exit polls, but no, he means the political blackmail people have been subjected to, about having to vote for Macron against Le Pen. He means the exceptional power that the president has in the constitutional structure of the 5th Republic, which Mlenchon had pledged to change. What do they talk about in the debate? Muslims, immigrants, do you find that normal? I say, no. I dont really know what his point is, hes preaching to the converted, and anyway I cant vote. Youre welcome here in France young lady, he says with great conviction.

We move to Chatlet, where there are the materials for a riotthat is, enough people and police amidst the shopping crowd that it looks like onebut it never quite materializes. The demonstrators are being chased in all directions by hordes of BRAV (Mad-max-esque police mounted double on motorbikes, one to chase you and one to hit you), and shiny new metallic grey police trucks (a present to the force?) which swirl around the Boulevard Sebastopol-Les Halles axis, as confused but more violent than the demonstrators. A crowd manages to gather on the boulevard Sebastopol, about 500 people, very young, yelling A-Anti-Anti-capitaliste, Ni Macron ni Macron ni Macron. Seemingly bourgeois Parisians from their windows even joined in chanting Siamo tutti antifascisti. Has the demonstration been forbidden? None of us know, in any case it feels impossible and dangerous to demonstrate, because of the increasingly militarized and belligerent character of the police under Macron. The demonstration runs without knowing why its running, cuts down side streets, and tries to make its way to Rpublique.

Initially there are violent charges and the BRAV circle the place. Everyone assumes their roles and places. The police, after these initial charges stay back and are unprovocative. The demonstration assembles slowly over several hours, a few hundred people chanting around the statue. I dont recognize anyone from other demonstrations Ive been to. From what I can make out, there is a presence of Paris Antifa Banlieue, groups of gilets jaunes, young students, lycens, some people (Trotskyists?) who have been singing the Internationale for several hours (they were singing it on Sebastopol as well), but there arent that many people. It feels rather despairing and confused; people certainly know why they are there, but there are no witnesses to their political understanding and conviction. At one point the demonstration makes a valiant attempt to break out, wild demo, to go somewhere as crowds often did from the same starting point years ago during Nuit Debout, but is pushed back by a violent police charge. Absolutely nothing feels possible.

Whispers in the crowd tell us it might want to go to the Champ de Mars, to the Eiffel tower where Macron is already celebrating. The last time he celebrated, a friend points out, it was at the Louvre, right in the center of Paris, and now hes acknowledged his distance from the People (or the paintings, or the patrimony, or the public character of the museum) and is way off in the more bourgeois reaches of the city. That evening a friend went through the Marais, and the people on the trrasses popped open champagne when the results came in, in complacent victory. The police semi-kettled the place and reinforced their ranks, their aim being a minimal amount of conflict, to get the largest number of people to go home through the still open Metro out of sheer boredom. The cops themselves are bored;they mock a few Italians for their accents as they try to leave, probably needled because their candidate didnt win. And as it gets later they begin to throw gas and grenades as the crowd gets smaller. Everyone eventually does go home.

See the article here:

Between a Rock and a Hard Place The Brooklyn Rail - Brooklyn Rail

It was, by any measure, an extraordinary and unsettling set of exchanges. President Donald Trumps chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the right-wing political activist Virginia Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, texted each other at least 29 times in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Their purpose was not to lament the result; it was to encourage efforts to overturn it.

That would be worrisome enough, but what makes it doubly so is the arguments invoked, the sources cited, and the mindset revealed in these raw, unfiltered texts. They are a window into a very distorted, very disturbed world. A world of true believers. And a world that has largely influenced and defined the American right during the Trump era.

David Frum: The real Ginni Thomas problem is Trump

The texts, which were first reported by The Washington Posts Bob Woodward and CBSs Robert Costa, were among the 2,320 that Meadows provided to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol by insurrectionists.

Twenty-one of the texts were sent by Thomas, eight by Meadows. The first was sent on November 5, 2020; the last on January 10, 2021, four days after the Stop the Steal rally, which Thomas said she attended, and the violent assault on the Capitol. (Committee members and aides told Woodward and Costa that they believe the messages may be just a portion of the pairs total exchanges.)

So what did the texts between Thomas and Meadows disclose? Thomas in particular wasnt just skeptical about the election results but fully marinated in QAnon conspiracy theories. For example, she was intrigued by the idea that Trump and others in his orbit might have set up an elaborate sting operation in which millions of secretly watermarked ballots would catch Democrats in the act of stealing the election. Thomas thought that the attorney Sidney Powellwho at a December press conference blamed Cuba, Venezuela, the Clinton Foundation, George Soros, and antifa for making Trump votes disappearshould be the lead and the face of Trumps legal challenge. Thomas believed that the Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators were being arrested and detained for ballot fraud before being shipped to Guantnamo Bay for military tribunals. And she believed that Joe Biden and the left were attempting the greatest Heist of our History.

The text exchanges revealed Thomass belief that America was at the precipice and faced an existential threatand that a Trump victory was the only thing that would save us from the left taking America down. In January, Thomas was more desperate still: We are living through what feels like the end of America, she wrote to Meadows. We were witnessing the end of Liberty.

We learned from the texts that Thomas agreed that the most important thing you can realize right now is that there are no rules in war. And: This war is psychological. PSYOP.

The communications between Meadows and Thomas disclosed her anger that so few Republicans were rallying behind Trump in the way that Representatives Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, and Chip Roy were. Do not concede, Thomas told Meadows. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.

We witness, too, her contempt for Mike Pence. Most of us are disgusted with the VP and are in listening mode to see where to fight with our teams. Those who attacked the Capitol are not representative of our great teams of patriots for DJT!! Thomas also expressed concern that the Trump team might cave to the elites and that millions, including herself, might simply walk away from politics. I think I am done with politics, and I dont think I am alone, Mark. Meadows replied three minutes later: I dont know what you mean by caving to the elites, to which Thomas responded, I cant see Americans swallowing the obvious fraud. Just going with one more thing with no frickin consequences ... the whole coup and now this ... we just cave to people wanting Biden to be anointed? Many of us cant continue the GOP charade. Meadows later told her, Youre preaching to the choir. Very demoralizing.

We learned that Mark Meadows believed, This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it. To which Thomas replied, Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!

What are we to make of all this?

There have always been people with bizarre ideas at the fringes of politics, but Ginni Thomas is hardly relegated to the fringes. Although not a dominant figure on the American right, she has for decades now been well knownand, as these texts show, she was a highly influential figure during the Trump era, with a direct line to the White House chief of staff, one of the most important individuals in American government.

What these texts reveal isnt the White House chief of staff telling Thomas, politely or not, that shes spreading crazed conspiracy theories and needs to accept that Trump lost the election fair and square; his responses suggest that he either buys into those conspiracy theories or is willing to play along. Meadows and Thomas are aligned, allies in the same cause, speaking the same language. The fact that the chief of staff and the president were on the same page as an activist with rabid political views was a distinct and distinctly terrifying feature of the Trump years.

David French: The worst Ginni Thomas text wasnt from Ginni Thomas

And its not simply that Meadows and Thomas share an affinity for freakish conspiracy theories; it is that they believe were engaged in a war without rulesthat anything goes because Trumps victory was stolen and he was all that stood between America and its destruction. One senses from both Thomas and Meadows not just fear of the left, but hatred for it. As for Meadows, he frames it as a fight of good versus evil. And then he invokes Jesus (the King of Kings) not just to ratify his political ideology, which is bad enough, but to advance a lie in order to overturn an election.

To assume that the majority of Republicans hold all the same views that Thomas and Meadows expressed in their texts would be a mistake. But they dont have to for there to be a problem. Plenty of people on the right, although not as radical as Thomas and Meadows, share their basic attitudes, at least for now. They arent necessarily at the same points on the continuum as Thomas and Meadows; they may not buy into the watermarked-ballots story or view Sidney Powell as a great legal mind, but they do believe that the election was stolen. They view the Democratic Party as an existential threat, and regard Democrats with contempt. They disdain Republicans who dont share their fervor, especially those who have spoken critically of Trump. They fear that America is on the edge of the abyss. And they view our politics as a battle between good and evil. They see themselves, too, as Gods instrumentshis foot soldiersin this great political-spiritual battle.

It has been said that we do not see things as they are; we see them as we are. All of us do this to some degree; it is part of what it means to be human. Reality is always interpreted, at least in part, through the prism of our own lives, our own experiences, the communities we have been and are now a part of. But reality is also independent of subjective human experiences, and when people superimpose an imaginary world on the real world, bad things happen.

In the case of Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows, we are able to glimpse a fearful, angry, imaginary world that a significant part of our country, including Americas 45th president, inhabits. It is one reason our political culture is so damaged, why dialogue is often so hard. Its difficult to sustain a democracy when there arent shared truths, when false perceptions become false gods. And what becomes really dangerous is when people with powerof whatever party or ideologydont just enter a hall of mirrors but try to force the rest of us to follow them there. They have to be resisted by individuals who speak out and institutions that step up.

Over the past decade, too many people who knew better didnt speak up and too many institutions didnt step up. As a result, fanatics took power, and as the events since November 3, 2020, have shown, they dont give it up without violence.

So in light of this, how do we repair the breach and achieve some measure of social peace? Its a complicated question, of course, but for now let me suggest that part of the answer is disaggregation. We must distinguish between those who cant be reached by reality and those whose partisan passions are inflamed but who canover time, if dealt with in the right waybe reached. The former need to be defeated; the harm they do needs to be contained. The latter need to be provided an on-ramp back to reality.

Thankfully, theres a rich and growing body of work on the cognitive reasons people adopt rigid ideologies and on how to overcome virulent polarization. Polarization creates a substrate thats favorable to propaganda, the author Jonathan Rauch told me. We need to learn from social psychologists such as NYUs Jonathan Haidt and Columbia Universitys Peter Coleman, the author of The Way Out: How to Overcome Toxic Polarization. There are things we can do, including, on an individual level, listening well and berating others less. This approach wont work with everyone, but it will probably work with more people than you might imagine. And although one person acting alone might not make much of a difference, a lot of people acting together create a culture.

Striking the right balance in this inflamed political eracombining a fierce resolve to defend what is true and honorable with civic grace and a measure of charity; confronting those who spread lies that inflict deep wounds on our republic without adopting their no rules in war tactics; seeing the damage that fanatics are doing without dehumanizing them; believing that people can hold misguided and even harmful ideas without being irredeemableisnt easy. I struggle with achieving that balance all the time. But it is urgent that we try, because we cant keep going down the road of indiscriminate mutual contempt.

The incandescent words of Martin Luther King Jr. are worth holding close to our hearts: Ive seen too much hate to want to hate, myself Hate is too great a burden to bear.

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Ginni Thomas's Texts Are a Barometer for the Far Right - The Atlantic

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis office issued a warning Tuesday to Antifa cells operating in the Sunshine State, warning them not to conduct any violent actions in response to Floridas anti-grooming bill.

The anti-grooming bill, HB 1557, which has been incorrectly referred to as the Dont Say Gay bill by Democrats and members of the press, has faced increasing resistance from the left.

Christina Pushaw, DeSantis press secretary, told Townhall.com that journalists and TV personalities who have uncritically repeated the Dont Say Gay narrative are partly responsible for stirring up radical leftist activists.

As detailed by Townhalls Julio Rosas, the so-called Florida Youth Liberation Front, a far-left activist group and branch of the Antifa movement, called for a mobilization of their members to carry out actions in opposition to the anti-grooming bill.

Yes, at least in part. We believe individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions, but the irresponsible, misleading and inflammatory media coverage of this bill has prompted these protests and calls to action, said Pushaw.

The governors office respects the right of any U.S. citizen anywhere to peaceably exercise their First Amendment rights and express their opinions, even if we may find those opinions objectionable or uninformed. In Florida, we do not tolerate violent protests or rioting, and anyone who riots or engages in political violence will be brought to justice regardless of which groups they may be affiliated with, she continued.

As previously detailed by Rebel News, the Parental Rights in Education bill bans educators from promoting woke sexual identity and gender orientation for children ages five through seven. Critics of the conservative-led bill have found support among Hollywood actors and the White House, who have pulled out every stop to oppose its passage.

We hope the truth becomes more widely expressed to the public. Most people in Florida and in the nation support this legislation, and most parents do not feel comfortable with classroom instruction for very young children on topics like gender transition and sexuality, added Pushaw.

Citizens can advocate for or against any legislation they want, but Governor DeSantis will always stand for parental rights and child protection, she said.

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DeSantis' office warns Antifa not to hold violent rallies in response to anti-grooming bill - Rebel News

A Moms for Liberty member known for making social media posts supportive of the Capitol insurrection and being photographed on a boat flying the QAnon flag has been appointed to the Florida Board of Education.

Gov. Ron DeSantis named Esther Byrd, a former Marine who lives in Neptune Beach, to the state board earlier this month. Because her appointment came on the last day of this years legislative session, her Senate approval will not take place until 2023, the governors press office told The 74.

I am excited for the opportunity to serve the students and families of Florida on the Board of Education, Byrd said in a March 14 statement released by Moms for Liberty, a conservative parent group that started in Florida in 2021 and now has chapters in 34 states. Parents are extremely frustrated with being cut off from the decision-making process on issues impacting their children. I will work to amplify their voices, address their concerns, and fight to put children first.

Byrd is the wife of Republican state Rep. Cord Byrd and works as a legal assistant in his office. According to his website, hes a firearms law expert who handles many Second Amendment cases.

Esther Byrd could not be reached for comment. Her appointment has sparked controversy because of her support for extremist views.

ANTIFA and BLM can burn and loot buildings and violently attack police and citizens, Byrd wrote on her personal Facebook page. But when Trump supporters peacefully protest, suddenly Law and Order is all they can talk about! I cant even listen to these idiots bellyaching about solving our differences without violence.

Byrd, who served in the military from 2002 to 2010 and is president of the Republican Womens Club of Duval Federated, has also talked about an approaching ideological showdown.

In the coming civil wars (We the People vs the Radical Left and We the People cleaning up the Republican Party), team rosters are being filled, Byrd wrote. Every elected official in DC will pick one. There are only 2 teams With Us [or] Against Us.

Shes announced her support for the statesParental Rights in Education Bill, often called the Dont Say Gay bill. The Board of Education, according to the Florida Times Union, would hear administrative appeals for violations of the law.

DeSantis also appointed Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a Miami radiologist, to the six-member board. Christie is currently the senior policy advisor for The Catholic Association and the treasurer of the Catholic Association Foundation.

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Moms for Liberty Member Supportive of Capitol Insurrection Appointed to Florida Board of Education by DeSantis - The 74

Representative Mo Brooks, an Alabama Republican who was deeply involved in former President Donald J. Trumps effort to use Congress to upend the 2020 election and stay in office, claimed on Wednesday that the former president had asked him repeatedly in the months since to illegally rescind the election, remove President Biden and force a new special election.

Mr. Brooks made the extraordinary charge as the two onetime allies were engaged in a bitter political feud, and it was not immediately clear how their falling out related to the accusation. But the account from the Alabama congressman, who played a central role in challenging electoral votes for Mr. Biden on Jan. 6, 2021, suggested that Mr. Trump has continued his efforts to overturn his defeat and be reinstated.

It marked the first time a lawmaker who was involved in Mr. Trumps attempts to invalidate his election defeat has said that Mr. Trump asked for actions that, were they possible, would violate federal law.

His statement came after Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in the Republican primary for Alabamas Senate seat, undercutting the congressmans already slim chances in a crowded intraparty race.

President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency, Mr. Brooks said in a statement on Wednesday. As a lawyer, Ive repeatedly advised President Trump that Jan. 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period.

In a subsequent text message, Mr. Brooks said Mr. Trump had made the request of him on multiple occasions since Sept. 1, 2021. He said the former president did not specify how exactly Congress would reinstall him as president, and Mr. Brooks repeatedly told him it was impossible.

I told President Trump that rescinding the 2020 election was not a legal option. Period, Mr. Brooks wrote.

Mr. Brooks said Mr. Trump brought up the matter to him repeatedly over the past six months. He said he had initially hoped the requests were not connected to his endorsement in the Senate race, but now believes that Mr. Trump was dangling public support of Mr. Brookss candidacy as leverage to try to get a new election.

I hoped not but youve seen what happened today, Mr. Brooks said in a text. For emphasis, the conversations about Jan. 6, 2021 being the only 2020 remedy have been going off and on for 6+ months.

I know what the legal remedy for a contested presidential election is, he continued. There is one and only one per the Constitution and U. S. Code and it occurs on the first Jan. 6 after each presidential election. Period. Game over after January 6.

Mr. Brookss high-profile break with Mr. Trump raised the possibility that he might cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, providing information the panel has so far been unable to secure about what Mr. Trump told his allies in Congress before, during and after the riot. Other Republicans involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania have refused requests from the panel for interviews.

Mr. Brooks did not immediately respond to further questions. In his statement, he said he had fought on behalf of Mr. Trump between Nov. 3 and Jan. 6 when it counted.

On Dec. 21, 2020, Mr. Brooks and other House Republicans met with Mr. Trump at the White House to discuss plans to object to the election. On Jan. 6, he wore body armor as he addressed the throng of Trump supporters who gathered at the Ellipse near the White House, telling them to start taking down names and kicking ass.

Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America? Mr. Brooks said, prodding the crowd to cheer more loudly. Will you fight for America?

Later on Capitol Hill, after a pro-Trump mob rampaged through the building, Mr. Brooks tried to object to electoral votes from several states for Mr. Biden. He also spread false claims that people who identify with antifa, a loose collective of antifascist activists, might have been responsible for the violence, and gave a speech on the floor falsely claiming the election was stolen from Mr. Trump.

Noncitizens overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden in exchange for the promised amnesty and citizenship and, in so doing, helped steal the election from Donald Trump, Republican candidates and American citizens all across America, Mr. Brooks said at the time.

In retracting his endorsement of Mr. Brooks on Wednesday, Mr. Trump abandoned one of his most loyal acolytes in the House after months of simmering frustration and as polls showed Mr. Brooks falling behind in his states Republican primary.

In a sign of the former presidents continued focus on the 2020 election, he cited Mr. Brookss remarks at a rally last summer urging voters to move on from Mr. Trumps 2020 defeat.

Virginia Thomas text messages. In the weeks before the Capitol riot, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent several text messagesimploring Mark Meadows, President Donald J. Trumps chief of staff, to take steps to overturn the vote.The messages appear to have exposed a riftwithin the House committee investigating the attack.

Potential contempt charges. The House committee investigating the attack on Jan. 6 said that it would consider contempt of Congress chargesagainst Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff, for refusing to comply with its subpoenas.

Requests to rescind the election. Representative Mo Brooks, who challenged President Bidens victory on Jan. 6, claimed that Donald J. Trump had asked him to illegally rescind the election. The statement came after Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks in the G.O.P. primary for Alabamas Senate seat.

When I heard his statement, I said, Mo, you just blew the election, and theres nothing you can do about it, Mr. Trump said in a statement on Wednesday. Very sad but, since he decided to go in another direction, so have I.

After Mr. Brooks released his statement, Mr. Trump responded with a second statement in which he did not address Mr. Brookss allegations, but said the congressman went woke and decided to drop everything he stood for.

Mr. Trump said he would endorse another candidate in the race to replace Senator Richard C. Shelby, who is retiring. The former president has privately met with both of the other leading candidates: Katie Britt, a former top aide to Mr. Shelby, and Mike Durant, who was in one of the Black Hawk helicopters that was shot down in Somalia in 1993. Mr. Durant was in Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trumps residence in Palm Beach, Fla., for a meeting with him this week, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Brooks has struggled to raise money and has seen his support in the contest evaporate. Some private surveys had Mr. Brooks sagging to third place. Mr. Shelby recently told Politico that he planned to use his leftover campaign funds as much as $6 million to help Ms. Britt, a financial infusion that further narrowed Mr. Brookss pathway to victory.

The Trump endorsement has been so central to the Brooks candidacy that his official campaign logo included the fact that Mr. Trump had endorsed him.

In a last-ditch effort to keep Mr. Trump in his corner, Mr. Brooks released a television ad last week that used footage from his speech at the Jan. 6 rally. Looking straight into the camera, Mr. Brooks said in the ad, On Jan. 6, I proudly stood with President Trump in the fight against voter fraud.

Mr. Brooks has repeatedly defended his actions in challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn its results.

But on Wednesday, he lashed back at Mr. Trump.

I repeat what has prompted President Trumps ire, he said in his statement. The only legal way America can prevent 2020s election debacle is for patriotic Americans to focus on and win the 2022 and 2024 elections so that we have the power to enact laws that give us honest and accurate elections.

He added: Ive told President Trump the truth knowing full well that it might cause President Trump to rescind his endorsement. But I took a sworn oath to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution. I honor my oath. That is the way I am. I break my sworn oath for no man.

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Mo Brooks Says Trump Asked Him to Illegally Rescind Election - The New York Times

President Biden confessed in private that he didn't understand Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who helped stymie his biggest legislative dreams, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns write in the first major book about the Biden-Harris administration, coming May 3.

Sneak peek: "One person close to the president likened Biden's perplexity at Sinema to his difficulty grasping his grandchildren's use of ... TikTok. He wanted to relate, but he just didnt quite get it," the authors write in "This Will Not Pass," about the 2020 election and President Biden's first year.

Biden aides complained that Sinema sounded more like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) than a Democrat, the book says:

Between the lines: The title alludes to this period of political tumult not passing with the 2020 election.

On Jan.6, an enraged Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) telephoned White House counsel Pat Cipollone and told him that if President Trump didn't act more aggressively to denounce the mob "well be asking you for the 25th Amendment" to remove Trump from office.

Burns and Martin were represented by Matt Latimer and Keith Urbahn of Javelin.

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Biden book: "This Will Not Pass" on 2020 election and Biden's first year - Axios

As a former resident of Washington, D.C., I have seen how the Capitol Police prepare for largely nonviolent protests. For my own safety during protests I attended, I learned to watch for large groups of cops and avoid them, and to recognize street medics and legal observers in a crowd.

Media coverage of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, was extremely frustrating for me. Hour after hour, I watched, perplexed, wondering where all the cops were. It didnt look like D.C. According to the Government Accountability Offices report (Better training urged for Capitol Police, Page A2, March 8), Capitol Polices plans focused on a manageable, largely nonviolent protest at the Capitol.

If antifa demonstrators had arrived in the same numbers, the Capitol Police would have been perfectly capable of responding effectively and efficiently to the threat environment. Yet somehow officers felt discouraged or hesitant to use force this time, though they had information that protesters could be armed and were planning to target Congress.

Bottom line, it should be very clear that while the GAOs recommendations might help prevent a similar event in the future, they are not an explanation for the Capitol Polices lack of response on that day.

Tim Clark

Lawrence

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Get to heart of why Capitol Police didnt gird for Jan. 6 riot - The Boston Globe

Mariposa Castro was with her husband on the famed golf course at Pebble Beach in 2006 when they were nearly struck by an errant golf ball. They turned to find out who took the shot, and there he was: Donald Trump. The reality TV host and the Gilroy stay-at-home mom had a short and friendly conversation, presaging her fandom and loyalty, according to court records.

Fifteen years later, Castro crawled through a broken glass window at the U.S. Capitol and watched as rioters tore apart furniture, creating weapons used to beat police officers defending the building from supporters of then-President Trump hoping to overturn the election. On Wednesday, Castro, 49, is expected to be sentenced after pleading guilty to one misdemeanor count of demonstrating inside the Capitol building.

While she faces up to six months in prison, prosecutors are asking for 60 days, and her attorney is seeking probation so she can be with her husband and children, who moved to Tennessee after the historic insurrection. Her case reveals the tension over how severely members of the Capitol mob should be punished and shines a light on how they ended up in infamy.

Like many of the more than 725 people from across the country arrested for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021 including four from the Bay Area Castro implicated herself with her own social media videos, photos and posts. More than 140 people have pleaded guilty, mostly defendants who did not cause injury or damage, with nearly half sentenced to punishments ranging from probation to a few years behind bars.

Castros attorney, Elita Amato, called prosecutors request for prison time a bid for an unwarranted draconian sentence in her sentencing memoranda. She went to the Capitol out of curiosity, Amato said, and because she heard Antifa would be there and she wanted to expose them. She never expected things to get as violent as they did at the hands of Trump supporters, the lawyer said.

Despite claims that Castro was nonviolent, prosecutors said prison time, rather than probation or home detention, was both necessary and appropriate.

A riot cannot occur without rioters, and each rioters actions from the most sedate to the most violent contributed, directly and indirectly, to the violence and destruction of that day, federal prosecutor Jordan Konig wrote in his sentencing memo.

A screenshot of Mariposa Castro (in red), formerly of Gilroy, is seen on a livestream video taken by another individual in Room ST-2M of the Capitol building during the attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Castro was expected to be sentenced on Wednesday, Feb. 23, after pleading guilty for her role in the riot.

Recent court filings and a letter penned by Castro to the judge paint the clearest picture yet of her role in the Capitol storming and her motivations. Castro has not spoken publicly about her charges.

Born in Mexico, she came to the United States at age 2. Later, she hoped to open a tea and yoga shop. She studied and received certificates in the practice of Reiki and sound healing therapy, and visited Buddhist temples for inner peace, her attorney said.

The mother of three and grandmother of two began attending Trump rallies during his election run, often dressing up in costumes and dancing. In her statement to the judge, though, Castro said she didnt know the difference between Democrats and Republicans before 2020.

When she heard about the Stop the Steal rally, Castro, her husband and a friend decided to travel to Washington, D.C. At the rally, they sat in the VIP section. Afterward, the trio returned to their hotel, where she watched Trump supporters march to the Capitol on television.

Partly out of curiosity, partly because she wanted to live-stream for others to see what was occurring, she decided to leave the comfort of the hotel, and walk to the Capitol, her attorney wrote. Now of course she greatly regrets this decision.

Prosecutors painted a darker picture, saying Castro had texted a friend, I couldnt stay in the room well watching in the news what is happening ... Im not taking this! NO, before walking a mile and a half to the Capitol building.

When Castro arrived in the afternoon, prosecutors said, she would have witnessed some of the most extreme violence in a tunnel area. She posted a video exclaiming, Were breaking in! We are breaking in! Were doing this ... Were taking our house back. This is our Capitol.

As she neared the building, Castro yelled, Lets go! Lets go in! before being helped through a hollowed-out window and into a conference room on the Senate side of the building. Broadcasting on her live Facebook feed, she yelled, Were inside the Capitol house. We got inside the Capitol!

After she left the grounds, Castro streamed another conversation with a woman: Its a civil war, Castro said. Were taking it back. Were not a communist country. On her way back to the hotel, she asked her followers to share her videos.

Its just the beginning. As Trump says, The best is yet to come, she said. It was so ugly. It got ugly in there. ... And Im by myself. That just shows how brave I am. If I can do this, you guys can do this.

In a Feb. 9, 2021, interview with the FBI after her arrest, Castro falsely told investigators that the people who committed violence at the Capitol were Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters, not Trump supporters. She also said she left the building only when tear gas became unbearable.

In her letter to Judge Reggie Walton, Castro said she wanted to show support and film the action, and that was it.

Of course, we were disappointed how things went during the election, and we were expressing our freedoms of speech and to assemble peacefully, she said. She said the words she used on video, such as We are at war, were hyperbole often used at protests. She called crawling through the broken window an incredible lapse in judgment.

After she left the Capitol, she wrote, she was confused and in disbelief. I still to this day find it odd that there were those people I saw in that Capitol Room that were supposedly Trump supporters rioting, she wrote. This has NEVER happened before at any of the Trump events Ive attended.

She concluded by calling herself a good American Patriot.

A number of friends from Bay Area Trump rallies wrote letters of support for Castro, one calling her a hero.

She is a passionate truth teller, not a terrorist, another wrote.

Castros attorney said her actions led her to be harassed and forced her familys move to Tennessee after her husband lost his job.

The only explanation for her being there is her support of former President Trump, her curiosity, the intention to provide a live stream of what she saw, and her then having gotten caught up in the moment, Amato wrote. She has learned her lesson and will walk away rather than walk towards incidents similar to Jan. 6.

Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: matthias.gafni@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni

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An errant golf shot launched Mariposa Castros devotion to Trump. Now the Gilroy mom will be sentenced for storming the Capitol - San Francisco...

The so-called freedom convoy, which began in January in Ottawa, has garnered international attention and sparked a flood of social media conversations.

To get a sense of how these conversations are framed, we analyzed tweets circulating in the freedom convoys social media sphere. Posts associated with #IStandWithTruckers and #TruckersForFreedom2022 claim to be fighting against state control.

Twitter can be a window into the lives of other people. The platform affords a style which enables short posts, with a limited number of words, and the posting of brief videos, images and memes.

These posts work to amplify extremist ideas in bite-size, easily shareable and visually engaging ways. The Pepe the Frog meme is an example of Twitters successful viral speed and reach. This frog became a symbol of white supremacy after Donald Trump retweeted a photoshopped image of himself as Pepe with a video claiming, Cant Stump the Trump.

Our analysis of Twitter is part of a larger preliminary examination of social media used by right-wing extremist movements in Canada, the United States and India. What we found is a story of fascinating parallels and the discovery that seemingly disparate right-wing movements use similar logic. Their arguments rely on several myths, which are not mutually exclusive.

One is the myth of a Golden Age. This concept harks to ideas of a mythical past that is regarded as perfect. The fantasy includes the way traditional forms of authority were venerated and racial and religious superiority was uncontested.

Another myth, or old logic, is that of an us versus them, pitting immigrants and racialized others against a unified, imagined us.

And finally, the posts display a desire to restore an idealized masculinity that advances and reinforces nationalist and masculine projects. In short, a return to the fatherland.

At the base of these myths is a profound fear of losing ones culture, religion, values and beliefs. This fear then gives life to the conspiracies about others who are different, the government and authorities.

For this discussion, we conducted a digital ethnography of various hashtags related to the freedom convoy from Feb. 6-12. We focused on hashtags widely used in public conversation. Using the TAGS Twitter scraping tool, we collected more than 100,000 tweets and manually thematized the data using critical discourse analysis.

The nostalgic yearning for a golden age of freedom is a common theme across extremist movements. This is often a shared desire to return to a time when their nation was racially pure.

There is a general feeling among far-right groups that there was less state intervention in that golden age, and that men could do what they wanted as long as they could defend themselves.

By framing their struggle as one for freedom and self-determination, the convoy presents its members as saviours of a once-unsullied nation, now contaminated by immigrants, racialized peoples, Muslims and others.

Other extremist movements use the same logic. Islamophobes desire a return to a Christian nation; racists crave a return to a white nation; and Incels wish for a patriarchal society in which men had unimpeded sexual access to women.

In India, right-wing Hindus yearn to restore a Vedic golden age, aspiring to restore the purity of their mythical Hindu-only rashtra (nation).

Another aspect of rhetoric in right-wing movements is the invocation of an us versus them mentality, evident in comments posted by Twitter users. These racist statements such as taking the country back and save our country contest what are perceived as Trudeaus pro-immigrant and multicultural policies. They epitomize the myths of the superiority of the white settler nation and fear-monger concerning racialized others and the left (i.e., Antifa and BLM).

An example of a Tweet:

@PaulChampLaw This is a peaceful protest. Unless you want terrorists like #Antifa #BLM burning your businesses down, looting, breaking car windows, burning the cars, beating innocent people up and burning your federal buildings and churches. Which would you have? #EarPlugs #FreedomConvoy2022

In an analysis of patterns of language on Twitter, we note that this type of comment is not an outlier. Sentiments like these posted by so-called freedom fighters aim to instil fear among and about minority communities, threatening the violent consequences of multiculturalism versus the peaceful protest of the convoy.

Thus, the convoy seeks freedom by taking back the country from lefties, minorities, and immigrants. It seems that for them, Canada is a country that belongs to whites.

Patriarchal masculinity provides a fundamental component of the grammar of extremism. American sociologist Michael Kimmel argues that the restoration of masculinity [and] retrieval of masculine entitlement is an essential element that draws men to such groups.

The convoys exhortations of masculinity and toughness as key to re-securing the state demonstrate far-right extremists employment of hegemonic masculinity to legitimize hierarchical gender relations between men and women, femininity and masculinity, and pure and corrupt masculinities (i.e. racialized, minority and queer masculinities).

Many Twitter comments we saw have applauded the convoy for demonstrating tough, masculine ideals and acting as patriots who repudiate the feminine Liberal government.

Being tough provides a scaffolding grammar to represent the convoys freedom fighters as masculine archetypes, promoting and narrowing definitions of national identity, while positioning Trudeaus Liberal government as weak, effeminate and not man enough.

One tweet, which said Trudeau needs to show some muscle, exemplifies how freedom fighters cast themselves as real men while depicting the leader of the Liberal party as someone who ran away like a little chicken.

Based on our analysis of Twitter, it is clear to us that the current freedom convoy and their supposed fight against vaccine mandates is much more than that.

Our evidence shows that many of these Twitter conversations about Canadian vaccine mandates and masks are folded into the same type of language and ideas used to discuss ideologies of purity, racism and patriarchy.

These ongoing conversations on Twitter are helping to pave the way for the larger convoy of white supremacy to barrel along unfettered.

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A Twitter investigation reveals what the 'freedom convoy,' Islamophobes, incels and Hindu supremacists have in common - The Conversation CA

Bill Sizemore, a former Republican nominee for governor who for decades successfully ran anti-tax ballot initiatives, entered the 2022 race for governor on Feb. 7.

He says his decision was spurred in part by last weeks report by WW that Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam had in the past been part of a Portland swingers group. I did not want to run unless I saw a path to victory, Sizemore says, and there have been several events that led me to believe that this is the time when we are going to end the 30-year drought of elected Republicans for governor.

Sizemore lost to Gov. John Kitzhaber in 1998 by 34 percentage points, but he had an outsized impact on this state as a founder of Oregon Taxpayers United and in his successful effort to restrict tax increases, specifically Measure 47, which passed in 1996, limiting property tax increases to 3% a year.

He also once declared bankruptcy over $1 million in debts he incurred related to a civil lawsuit won by the states teachers union challenging Sizemores campaign finances and signature-gathering operations. I have the scars to prove I fought all of those fights, and many more, he says in a statement. Whether I won or lost, those battles have built into me the will and strength of character the next governor of Oregon will need to turn our state around.

Sizemore estimates he cut property taxes by well over $10 billion, he also says. Average homeowners across the state have saved as much as $35,000 and more due to my tax measures.

Sizemore, 70, who lives in Redmond, said there were two key factors that made him jump into the primary: First, he doesnt support Dr. Bud Pierce, who currently leads in Republican polling. He says a lot of the right things, Sizemore says, but Im not persuaded that hes truly the kind of strong conservative we need to turn the state around.

And he said Pulliams acknowledgement last week that he and his wife explored mutual relationships with other couples as WW reported last week. Stan Pulliam was making a run at it, but I think his problem, that you guys broke the news on, is going to make it very difficult for him to continue.

Sizemore says he likes his chances, not just in the primary but in the general election as well.

Theres a lot of voters in Oregon right now, reevaluating their commitment to straight line party voting, he says. Theyve seen what leftist Democrats have done to the state and to the city of Portland, all of the lockdowns and mandates and failure to deal with antifa and the homeless crisis in Portland. Thats turning Portland into another Detroit or Baltimore.

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Conservative Bill Sizemore Enters the Republican Primary for Governor - Willamette Week