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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 1:59:13 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 1:59:46 GMT
Why Conservatism is the Death of Conscience, Democracy, Reason, and LanguageBy 5oclockshadow - February 5, 2017 2368 3
I enjoy a healthy friendship with conservative thought leader and former Virginia Republican party spokesperson, Shaun Kenney. I disagree with him on almost everything, but I respect him.
I see our friendship as akin to the famous Christmas Truce of WWI. There, the soldiers from the trenches set aside their quarrels for some bonhomie and soccer, before they headed back to the long slog of killing one another. The major difference here is that conservatives have long been armed and have been successfully conducting a war on liberalism for a generation. Liberals have basically been sleeping.
Recently, Shaun Kenney asked me to justify my statement that conservatism is the death of conscience, democracy, reason, and language, so here goes. It’s time for liberals to finally wake up and get in the game. If you are a liberal, if you have a net worth of less than $10 million, or you are not in favor of a particular brand of conservative theocracy setting policy in this country, conservatism has been at war with you for a generation.
This is a language war, and we’re not even fighting.*
THE PURPOSE OF CONSERVATISM
First, you must understand the purpose of the conservative enterprise and what the conservative agenda means. Conservatism itself is the domination of society by an aristocracy. Call them the 1% or identify them as those with a net worth of over $10 million, but those aristocrats and those who support their absolute power in society are the conservatives. This is as old as the Pharaohs or the feudal thugs of Rome or pre-enlightenment European monarchies. In each society in which conservatism takes hold language, reason, democracy, and conscience are destroyed in a way unique to its own culture.
In America, conservatism has arisen as a reaction to the democracy, education, wellness, empowerment, and freedom that the middle class enjoyed as a result of FDR’s New Deal, and it seeks here in America to empower an authoritarian, corporate, theocracy.
To this point it is critical to emphasize that Trump is in no way an aberration of conservatism but its fulfillment, without the messaging figleaf. He is precisely what conservatives of both parties have been aspiring to and empowering in this country, either intentionally or out of ignorance. To blame the full horror of the current situation on Trump is to absolve a generation of zealots from their responsibility. Burn the fruit and the tree remains. If progressives are going to effectively uproot this tree, we must take it at the root.
That root is conservatism. There is only one force in America that can protect the nation from authoritarian, corporate, theocracy, and that is a healthy, wealthy, secure, free, and powerful middle class in control of governments worldwide. Conservatism opposes all of this. Conservatism is at war with American freedom.
Conservatism ignores history’s lesson that cultures and empires fall when the people are dis-empowered. The goal of conservatism in America has always been to move all the wealth and power of the nation into fewer and fewer hands. The welfare of the common good is the enemy of the accumulation of dynastic wealth. Because of taxes, conservatives argue, any and all efforts by the American government to ensure the well-being of the American people must be destroyed by any means necessary. Conservatives wage war on “regulations”. Regulations are simply protections for the American people and American freedom.
THE FOUR DESTRUCTIONS
In America, conservatism attacks freedom through four key types of destruction: the destruction of conscience, the destruction of reason, the destruction of language, and the destruction of democracy.
THE DESTRUCTION OF CONSCIENCE
Whenever people complain that the poor should not have healthcare, that they should not have food stamps, or that they should not have education, that is the destruction of conscience, regardless of the argument. Caring for others is defined by the conservative movement as weakness. Progressives know that we are stronger together. Many conservatives will argue that government should leave the poor to the care of churches. This is anti-American and disastrous for two reasons. First, that effort failed absolutely in the great depression. Second and much more fundamentally, we are a nation of laws, not religion. It is unconstitutional for the government to leave these responsibilities in the hands of churches.
The destruction of conscience relates back to the core goal of the conservative enterprise; corporate domination. As long as the people deny their responsibility to one another, they will continue to cede power to the super wealthy. The game is pretty horrifying, but it’s been very successful. The destruction of conscience is the poison tree and this is the fruit. Teach the middle to hate the bottom and the top gets all the money and power.
THE DESTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY
The destruction of democracy is necessary for the conservative agenda. The greater power individual people have without the wealth multiplier, the less power the wealthy have in government. With Citizen’s United and other campaign finance laws, America no longer has a democracy in any real sense whatsoever.
Unless you have a net worth of over $10 million, your opinion has zero effect on the workings of Congress. If you have that net worth, Congress reacts directly to your desires. Citizen’s United was engineered by conservatives, and conservative die-hard Justice Roberts was seated specifically to overturn the laws that were protecting democracy from the influence of money. He succeeded. As a recent Princeton University study determined, Democracy in America is over. We now live in an oligarchy. The conservative agenda to destroy democracy in America has succeeded.
THE DESTRUCTION OF LANGUAGE
The conservative destruction of language is well documented. Yet progressives don’t understand how pervasive that destruction has become. Control of language is critical to the conservative agenda of aristocratic domination of society. People would reject the actual goal of conservatism out of hand. Conservatives have effectively waged war on language for decades, so as to make the people the champions of their own poverty and political destruction.
The conservative war on American freedom is primary a war on language. Starting with the “Powell Memo” in 1977, conservatives made the intentional decision to overturn all New Deal protections, from Social Security to Medicare to clean water and air protections.
Conservatives invested in “think tanks” on a massive scale. These set out to undermine the lasting New Deal consensus that a healthy, wealthy, informed, and powerful middle class in America was the primary purpose of American government. Their core tactic was the destruction of language. Newt Gingrich was a leading purveyor of language as a weapon against American freedom His revolution in Congress, through a concerted effort to weaponize language for the destruction of liberalism succeeded in redefining “freedom” as Washington discusses it.
Freedom has traditionally meant the opportunity for every man, woman, and child, to fulfill his or her personal destiny, in health, security, and peace. Thanks to conservative language warriors, American freedom now means only the ability of the super wealthy to exploit any economic opportunity without restriction.
Now American freedom means the strong do as they will and the weak suffer as they must.
Another great example of the destruction of language is the concept of “entitlement”. Historically, entitlement is what the aristocracy receive from the monarchy. A concerted effort to rearrange language by the right, took that hate and transferred it from the super rich to the poor. Now, thanks to billions of dollars invested in right-wing thin tanks welfare payments are called “entitlements”. This is where the destruction of language empowers the destruction of conscience. It is just one example of a universe of changes successfully engineered by conservatives.
THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON
All of this amounts to the overreaching destruction of reason: the ultimate control mechanism of the right. Conservatism, based on its effective destruction of conscience, democracy, and language, may now abuse reason without restriction. It has effectively trained a generation of believers to ignore every fact, every source of fact, and every purveyor of fact.
Conservatives have named their “four corners of deceit”: science, academia, government, and media. Any organization that states any position not completely in tune with conservative doctrine cannot be trusted. This is the destruction of reason. Reasoned debate cannot be conducted. Reasoned discussion cannot take place. Conservatism wages war on fact and supporters take this holy war as a matter of religious faith.
Global Climate Change can’t exist, despite the universal scientific consensus on the matter, because conservatism says it doesn’t. Hillary Clinton is corrupt, despite the absolute absence of any proof, because conservatism says she is.
IT’S NOT THE FIGUREHEAD, IT’S THE MOVEMENT
To accuse Donald Trump of being some kind of aberration from the core tenants of conservatism is to absolve a generation of conservatives predominantly in the Republican party, but many in the Democratic Party (e.g. Joe Lieberman) as well, of lying and destroying conscience, democracy, language, and ultimately reason.
These Anti-American zealots make use of racism, sexism, theocratic Dominionism and other hate/fear movements to support their enterprise, but the goal is singular and pointed: the domination of society by a dynastic aristocracy.
It is important for progressives to understand the process by which conservatives have succeeded. In propagandizing their honest religious allies into supporting their campaign of destruction, conservatism has destroyed the capacity for debate. This is war, and conservatism has been waging it for a generation.
It is important to understand how and why they are doing this. Most importantly it is important to define American freedom in progressive terms, and to fight for progressive ends in all things. There is too much conservative insanity flying around. It is important for our movement to stay resolved and focused in our goals and energy.
When we spend our time obsessing over this racist outrage, or that theocratic destruction of freedom, we lose sight of the core enterprise and the core conflict in American politics: who is the government for? Is it for the 1% or is it for the American people? Conservatism has one answer, and progressivism has another. Keeping that distinction clear will allow activists and leaders to overcome the confusion and emerge victorious for the protection of freedom, justice, opportunity and the future of the world.
Despite conservatism’s ongoing war on democracy, language, reason, and conscience, progressivism can still win. Progressivism can still save the world.
*Note: Much of this argument is explored in Philip Agre’s seminal, “What is Conservatism and What is Wrong with It.” ca 2004. Please read it in its completion. It is critical information for all progressive activists and organizers.
bluevirginia.us/2017/02/conservatism-death-conscience-democracy-reason-language
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 2:00:19 GMT
How do republicans persuade people to vote against their own interests?
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 2:00:51 GMT
Hal Donahue, Contributor Military Veteran, Social Commentator, Political Activist, Writer and Speaker5 Reasons the Republican Party Might Be a Cult02/17/2015 10:56 am ET Updated Dec 06, 2017
Are Republicans and many conservatives in a cult? The thought arose from a letter to the editor of the Scranton Times-Tribune by Mr. William Lewis, an 89-year-old World War II veteran:
The situation in our country right now makes me wonder what my two close friends would think of what has become of this great country — if they are still alive.
People are prevented from voting through restrictive laws. Money has purchased the soul of the country. Veterans with disabilities beg for money on television. Members of Congress have been bought and paid for and the Supreme Court is under suspicion.
His friends were from Tennessee and California. I have talked to World War II veterans all over the globe; their most common personal trait is pragmatism. They, more than many, would rail against communism and our government, but when you really talked to them up close over a beer or after a meeting, they wanted things to work. They had little time for grandiose statements or quick judgments. This generation knew they were a nation and had to work together. The World War II G.I. Bill was a classic example.
The largest social welfare program in U.S. history, the G.I. Bill actually paid people to go to school. It was massively expensive and opposed by conservatives as stupid and socialist. This investment in our people paid for itself many, many times over through increased tax receipts alone. Do not say the troops “earned it”; the legislation’s main purpose was to avoid a post-World War Ii recession and keep all the returning soldiers busy and employed. It worked.
Congress identified a problem and addressed it. On June 10, 1944, a joint congressional committee vote, expected to be settled by only a single vote, passed easily out of committee when the American Legion flew in a possible deciding congressional conferee vote. The once bitterly fought bill passed unanimously and solved the pending challenge of large numbers of unemployed veterans and changed America’s future. Today, this pragmatism is missing.
Politicians cling to beliefs proven to hurt both their constituents and the nation. Are you in a cult when any hint of pragmatism or reality is excluded? The Republican Party might be a cult:
1. Fear
In many cults, a doomsday looms if extraordinary precautions are not taken and ritual beliefs not followed. No matter if it is an Iranian nuke or your neighbor next door, Republican believers are told to beware and be afraid. Heavy taxation and preparations are required to cope in this increasingly dangerous world. Spend ever more on the military and stockpile and carry ever more deadly personal weaponry. Be afraid.
2. Conformity
A solid core of beliefs, unfettered by facts, that seems akin to “The flying saucer people are coming to take us to heaven” supports the cult and serves to isolate members from society, safe from confusion. The last Republican presidential primary saw every leading candidate deny human evolution. This presidential primary looks to be little different, since the governor of Wisconsin recently told foreign press that he would take a pass on the reality of evolution.
These core beliefs support seemingly contrary demands and needs — for example, the hysteria over Ebola, where some parties wanted to imprison those heroes treating the sick in Africa, followed shortly afterwards by providing support for the right to selfishly not vaccinate themselves or their children, endangering pregnant women, infants and others.
3. Modified existing religion
In this case, taking mainstream Christian beliefs and twisting and turning them from beliefs in a better life and care for the less fortunate to a judgmental, fear-filled medieval version seeking to punish sinners in this life and creating a special, better status for true believers.
One example is their vicious opposition toward anything that could possibly be called abortion. However, they exhibit the same opposition toward policies proven to reduce abortion, as shown in Colorado. Apparently, these polices counter their need to punish the “sinner” with a baby or a disease.
4. Powerful leadership
As in most cults, Republicans and conservatives worship their leaders. While specific cult leader styles may differ, the avid cult member abhors uncertainty. Their leaders must book no doubts and paint every issue as black or white. Grey is seldom allowed. When coupled with their gospel of fear, we find cult members gushing over foreign despots like Putin or the king of Jordan.
No subtlety but rather just brute force to correct what they view as wrongs. When coupled with their fear of others, we see their most timid and frightened join groups like the NRA, lugging firearms around wherever they go believing that it makes them strong. After decades of failure, war remains their highest sacrament.
5. Avoidance of strangers and unbelievers
Isolation from others and their ideas is necessary to avoid confusion in the flock of believers lest competitors poach members or contaminate the purity of core beliefs. Here is where the faithful must avoid “lamestream media” and listen to only “approved” news sources. The isolation serves two purposes. First purpose is to stoke the fires of rage against unbelievers attacking core beliefs by their statements of fact. Second, to disseminate “studies” by “experts” to reassure the faithful and cloud reality much as tobacco companies did with their expert studies proving cigarette smoking was harmless.
If the Republican Party is not a cult, it certainly acts like one.
Correction: The blog was changed to reflect that an expected close vote on the legislation was in a joint congressional committee. Further, that vote was not close when the American Legion flew in a possibly deciding vote. Details can be found in ‘Conferees Accept GI Bill of Rights’, June 11, 1944, New York Times.
www.huffingtonpost.com/hal-donahue/5-reasons-the-republican_b_6692834.html
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 2:01:41 GMT
Conservative Men Are Obsessed With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Science Tells Us Why.HuffPost Laura Bassett,HuffPost 4 hours ago
Scroll back up to restore default view. Conservatives’ bizarre, escalating obsession with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) reached a new level this week when The Daily Caller published fake revenge porn of the new congresswoman.
“Here’s The Photo Some People Described As A Nude Selfie Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” the Caller’s original headline read, before it was changed and the site posted a “we regret the error” message on Twitter. For the record, the photo is not of Ocasio-Cortez, despite what “some people” have said.
Since Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old working-class democratic socialist, unexpectedly toppled powerful white male incumbent Joe Crowley in a June primary, she’s become an object of fixation among Republicans, especially Republican men. Conservative writer Ed Scarry posted a photo of her backside on Twitter, questioning whether her black suit was befitting of a “girl who struggles.” Right-wing media discovered that she ― like a lot of people named “Alexander,” “Alexandra” or some variant thereof ― went by the nickname “Sandy” in high school. A self-proclaimed “proud Christian Dad” on Twitter circulated a video of her dancing in a T-shirt in college as if it would be a career-damaging revelation. A Republican strategist referred to her as “the little girl” on Fox News, which runs segments about her constantly.
The obvious explanation is that men have literally never seen a woman in her 20s in the halls of Congress before. She’s attractive, telegenic and good at social media. She dances outside her Cannon House office. Conservative men are confused at being drawn to this bright rising star in the Democratic Party while loathing everything she stands for.
But that doesn’t fully explain the fervor with which conservatives hang on her every word, waiting for her to slip, and dig through her past for any feeble sign that she isn’t who she says she is. There’s an existential, panicked tinge to the behavior here ― what you might call “AOC Derangement Syndrome.” Indeed, some experts say conservative men are obsessed with Ocasio-Cortez because they’re threatened by her.
Conservatives tend to respond to fear more strongly than liberals do, according to Bobby Azarian, a neuroscientist whose expertise in anxiety has led him to examine political behaviors. His research has found that the brains of conservative people are likely to display the same attention biases as the brains of people with anxiety.
“The one main cognitive difference is that conservatives are more sensitive to threat,” he said. “Their fears are sometimes exaggerated. I think they fear her.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s power is a direct threat to conservatives because her very existence in Congress as a young, Latina, working-class woman threatens to upend the social order that has kept white men in the ruling class for centuries. (Eighty-eight percent of House Republicans are white men, most are over the age of 50, and the party’s voters are majority white and male.) On top of that, she is using her position and platform to directly challenge that order ― to attempt to get money out of politics, raise taxes on the super-rich and level the playing field.
“She doesn’t just challenge the patriarchy, she’s challenging the race, class, and gender hierarchies all at once, as well as the capitalist system that requires member of Congress be wealthy before they get there,” said Caroline Heldman, a gender and politics professor at Occidental College. “That’s remarkably threatening.”
In a way, Ocasio-Cortez is the most formidable opponent to President Donald Trump the Democratic Party has put forth yet. She has even more of a knack for social media than America’s first Twitter president; she’s anti-establishment like he is; she breaks all the rules of how a politician is supposed to behave; and she has an undeniably strong emotional appeal.
“She’s engaging attention and emotion in people at this visceral level,” Azarian said. “She has some combination of a lot of features that really seems to give her this ability to go viral. And I think that’s what Trump had.”
That’s why conservatives want and need to undercut her influence. And the most time-tested way to undermine a woman’s power is to sexualize her, to make her an object instead of an agent. A 2013 study by the Women’s Media Center found that merely discussing a female candidate’s appearance has a negative effect on her support from voters.
“The moment at which you turn someone into a sex object, you put yourself in a position of authority over them, which is why sexual harassment is classified as being a form of gender discrimination in the workplace,” Heldman said. “They are the object who exists for you, and you are validating their worth.”
Or, as former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer Jess McIntosh put it: “Defining a woman’s value by whether or not men want to have sex with her is the oldest trick in the patriarchy. Either way, she’s diminished.”
The problem for these men is that Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t seem interested in what they think of her. She doesn’t seek attention for anything other than her policy ideas and ambition, even though Americans still seem to dislike power-seeking women. The typical strategies men use to devalue women ― “sexualizing, dismissing, controlling, teasing, criticizing, interrupting, psychopathologizing, humiliating, abusing,” according to one psychologist ― seem to bounce right off her.
“Alexandria presents a challenge, because conservative men or men in general who are encouraged to objectify women are attracted to her, but she’s also ‘unmanageable’ in that she doesn’t exist for them,” Heldman said. “She is a woman who not only has now formal power, but a lot of informal power, in that she doesn’t give a damn what they think of her. I think it’s a disconcerting place for men who may be used to attractive women seeking their validation.”
That kind of inability to deal with a woman like Ocasio-Cortez is, in many ways, emblematic of the broader crisis facing the Republican Party, which is moving backward in terms of gender diversity in Congress even as Democrats add more women and people of color to their ranks each year. In the 1990s, women were equally distributed across both parties in Congress; today, there are 13 Republican women and 89 Democratic women. Republicans have only ever had one black woman in the House of Representatives, Mia Love of Utah, and she just lost her bid for re-election.
That’s a self-reinforcing dynamic, said Laurel Elder, politics professor and head of the gender studies program at Hartwick College.
“The way they’ve talked about some of the new women in the 116th Congress, and the way they’ve tried to belittle or mock [Ocasio-Cortez], this just makes women feel like, ‘Oh, this party is not welcoming of women,’” Elder said. “‘This is not a place where I’d feel comfortable throwing my hat in the ring.’ Now the dynamic has a life of its own.”
The obsessive focus on Ocasio-Cortez and her past may not just discourage Republican women from seeking office ― it could intimidate any woman who grew up in the age of social media and is interested in politics but doesn’t want to see her adolescent life splashed all over the front pages.
For now, though, Ocasio-Cortez has proven able to parry the attacks, simply by holding up a mirror to the men who are convulsing in anxiety as she rises to influence.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/conservative-men-obsessed-alexandria-ocasio-184405966.html
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:01:54 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:02:21 GMT
Conservatism throughout history has been the thread of evil. It doesn't matter what political party they call home nor what religion they call home nor what economic system they claim. It is evil and rotten to its core. Their wealthy, elite masters divide, manipulate and encourage people's weaknesses and prejudices into their cult to do their bidding. The Republican Party: History Of Conservatives And Racism In AmericaBy Editorial_Staff - May 4, 2014 www.africanglobe.net/headlines/republican-party-history-conservatives-racism-america/
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt–Republicans still fighting to undo New Deal
AFRICANGLOBE – Ever since the Donald Sterling scandal erupted, conservative Republicans have been all over the airways and social media declaring that Donald Sterling was a Democrat, and that proves their ongoing contention that it is the Democrats who had the racist past, and it is the Democrats who are the racists today.
Then some of these conservative Republicans go on to wrap themselves around President Abraham Lincoln, and declare themselves to be “the party of Lincoln.” Nothing could be further from the truth and more blatantly manipulative of the American people. While it is true that Democrats, or “Dixiecrats,” were virulent racist, since that time the Democratic and Republican Parties have completely changed polarities.
The Democratic Party was made up of conservatives then. So in order to keep things in perspective, instead of thinking in terms of the Democratic and Republican parties, we need to think in terms of liberals and conservatives, and conservatives have always been this nation’s bigots, from day one, and regardless to what party they were in.
So the mere fact that conservative Republicans continue to bring up this issue, and continue to try to obscure their historic genesis, makes it abundantly clear that one of two things are at work here – either they know that they’ve always been this nation’s bigots and they’re trying bamboozle the American people with a technicality, or they’re dumb completely unaware of their own history. But considering the ideological confluence within the GOP, both issues are at work here.
The leadership of the GOP, the fiscal (corporate) conservatives, know they’re being disingenuous, while their troops, the social conservative bigots, only know what they’ve been told, and what lends comfort to their bigotry.
So is the modern Republican Party really “the party of Lincoln,” and responsible for freeing the slaves? I don’t think so.
But the GOP regularly, routinely, and with a straight face makes that claim. One Republican recently confronted me and stated the following: “It was Republicans who beat Democrats in the Civil War, thus freeing the slaves. It was Democrats who started the KKK as its military wing to intimidate the (largely Black) Republican party who were running the south after the war. Can a leopard change its spots?? Are the Democrats now the party FOR the Black people after being against them for so long? So many of you are duped by the Devil’s trickery. A few table scraps from massa’s table and you run right back to his side. The Democrat is the racist.”
The above assertions are prime example of how many Republicans can take a kernel of truth and create a banquet of lies. The truth is, Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and so was Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King. But since the Civil War the Republican and Democratic parties have completely changed their relative political positions, so relative to their political philosophy, the modern Republican party bears absolutely no relationship to its predecessor.
Prior to the Civil War the Republican Party was made up of big business interests and Northern aristocrats, and the Democratic Party was made up of Dixiecrats and Southern agrarian interests – farmers and slave owners. Thus, the Republicans were progressive liberals and the Democrats, or Dixiecrats, were Southern conservative slave owners.
The Democrats also created unemployment insurance so people would have something to fall back on if they lost their jobs, and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which set rules of conduct for corporations that allowed workers to work with some semblance of dignity. The new law set a minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor standards, and many other regulations protecting workers.
Prior to the FLSA, corporations could work employees for as many hours as they liked, and they often set wages so low that families had to send their children to work just to survive – and many of those children were maimed or killed because they had to work under the most horrific conditions, such as in coal mines and the like.
But after President Roosevelt brought relief to the people with these “big government, socialist programs,” the Democratic Party began to become associated with the common man, and the Republican party embarked upon a single-minded mission to reverse these “bleeding heart liberal” policies and return America to what had previously been the status quo.
Then during the fifties the Democratic Party came out in support of the Civil Rights Movement. As a result, during the fifties and sixties the Southern Dixiecrats became disenchanted with the Democrats and migrated to the Republican Party. At the same time, many Southern Blacks began leaving the Republican Party to become Democrats. Thus, the Republican Party is now a coalition of three separate constituencies with confluent interests. The first group is made up of traditional conservatives. These are highly patriotic Americans who believe in limited government, the primacy of the people over government, and fiscal responsibility. But the other two groups that have coalesced within the GOP are much more malevolent – international business interests, and social bigots.
It is the former of these two, international business, that controls the GOP. It’s made up of wealthy and highly educated individuals with huge amounts of monetary resources, and thus, political influence – and they use every bit of that leverage to manipulate what has become their citizen army – the social bigots. These are the people who hate any and everybody who doesn’t look, think, and act like themselves.
The social bigots are the people we see armed to the teeth at presidential speeches, disrupting town hall meetings, and fighting against their own interests. In short, these are the “Joe the Plumbers” of the world who are being deluded by corporatist propaganda. Also among their ranks are the diehard racists who are still fighting to promote a segregationist agenda.
But the social bigots are merely the soldiers of the party. The corporatists, who control the GOP, have never lost sight of their seventy-year-old mission to undo the New Deal. But they’ve found that the safety-net that President Roosevelt provided for the people is much too popular to attack head on, so they had to devise a plan to chip away at it.
Then came 9/11, so they decided to used the war in Iraq to ravage the national treasury. They then gave themselves a $4 trillion taxcut to further deplete the treasury, and now they’re telling the poor and middle class, “Sorry, but we no longer have the revenue to fund the programs that you’ve come to depend on for the past 70 years. And in the meantime, Gov. Scott Walker is hard at work in Wisconsin trying to dismantle the Fair Labor Standards Act.
So, can a leopard change its spots? Yes it can – and with regard to the Democratic and Republican parties, the leopard has changed in a very big way.
But the modern GOP has never been prone to allowing the facts to distort a well-crafted lie. That’s why they have such a fierce aversion to a well-educated electorate.
Thus, the facts dictate that the modern GOP’s claim to have any connection with President Lincoln whatsoever – other than the enemy of everything he stood for – is not only a gross misrepresentation of history, but a blatant lie.
The fact is, if the Civil War was being fought today, the GOP would be the Confederacy.
But that began to change during the Great Depression when Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came out against the corporations and to the aid of the poor with his “New Deal for the American People.” With the “New Deal,” Democrats ushered in workers’ rights. They created Social Security so the elderly wouldn’t have to go to the “Poor House” or become a burden on their children when they became too old to work.
By: Eric Wattree
For more articles by columnist Mr. Wattree please see wattree.blogspot.com
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:02:49 GMT
KEVIN FOLEY: Reptilian brains and secret societiesKevin Foley Feb 1, 2018 www.mdjonline.com/opinion/kevin-foley-reptilian-brains-and-secret-societies/article_af166fc4-07c4-11e8-a8c4-77401238bc4a.html 3 min to read
In each of us resides a “reptilian brain.” It is the oldest part of the noodle and it controls basic functions; breathing, heart rate and the instinct to fight or flee when threatened.
Luckily, the human brain has evolved since our slimy ancestors crawled out of the primordial soup. Today, it is highly sophisticated and discerning when it comes to threats. For example, we don’t run away from a child wearing a scary Halloween mask because our higher brain tells us it’s just a child in a scary Halloween mask.
Your dog, with his less evolved brain, however, might perceive the child in the scary mask as a threat. The dog may get aggressive or perhaps run.
Unfortunately, many modern human beings neglect to engage their higher brains when they listen to conservative politicians and propagandists. Their reptilian brains take over and phony threats are perceived as real, perhaps because it affirms their fears, resentments or prejudices.
Here’s a real-life example: after I debated former 11th District Congressman and NRA National Board Member Bob Barr on guns some years back, I took questions from the crowd. One gentleman wanted to know why the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama had purchased billions of rounds of ammunition. I said I didn’t know, but added there was probably a good reason.
The guy made that “yeah, right” face.
I researched the question and it didn’t take me long to discover the DoH ammunition story was all over right-wing conspiracy websites. Something sinister was afoot, they claimed: Obama was planning to distribute the ammo to federal authorities as part of a forcible gun-takeaway.
With a little more research of credible media sources, I learned the DoH had indeed purchased billions of rounds of ammo. That’s because it has dozens of law enforcement agencies under its jurisdiction such as the Coast Guard, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service and others that require ammunition for training and to protect America.
The bulk ammo purchase simply ensured the government paid the lowest possible price for all those the bullets.
Another example is Jade Helm, a military exercise in 2015 that involved moving troops and trainloads of tanks, artillery and other weaponry across the Southwest. The same conspiracy websites were at it again, warning Jade Helm was Obama’s plan to impose martial law and/or to stockpile weapons so Chinese troops could disarm Americans. The sites told their paranoid audiences to arm themselves, hunker down and prepare for Armageddon.
“Marines fired on near Jade Helm training site,” crackpot conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote on his Infowars website, “Training exercise gone awry? Or as planned?”
Thus, two perfectly rational things, an ammo purchase and a military exercise, were treated as national threats. This wouldn’t be possible unless there were Americans predisposed to taking full flight from reality.
President Trump has figured out how to exploit this predisposition. After promising “law and order,” with the help of Republicans and the right-wing media, Trump is attempting to defame federal law enforcement officials because they’re investigating him.
Like more than half of all U.S. voters, a couple of FBI agents working on Robert Mueller’s staff believed Donald Trump was unfit to be president — and, yes, Justice Department officials are allowed to hold independent political views. In texts, one jokingly mentioned a “secret society” of like-minded DOJ personnel.
“That secret society … we have an informant that’s talking about a group that was holding secret meetings offsite,” warned Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., last week.
Within 48 hours, Johnson admitted the comment was a joke, but the conservative media had already latched on to his first statement. Fox News tweeted, “@senronjohnson on alleged ‘secret society’ mentioned in @fbi agents’ texts: ‘That ‘secret society’ — we have an informant that’s talking about a group, they were holding secret meetings offsite.’”
“People at the highest level in the DOJ and the FBI ... must be investigated, they must be indicted and probably many of them thrown in jail,” Sean Hannity told his viewers. “There needs to be serious ramifications if we are going to save our country.”
Fox host Lou Dobbs declared it “may be time to declare war outright against the deep state, and clear out the rot in the upper levels of the FBI and the Justice Department.”
On Sunday, without a hint of irony, Fox’s Chris Wallace asked Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., “Don’t Republicans hurt their credibility on real issues of bias when they make such a big deal about secret societies and palace coups?”
Here’s why, Chris: Scared people do irrational things. Fear overrides the higher brain. We fight or flee — and that suits conservatives just fine.
Kevin Foley is a public relations executive, writer and author who lives in Kennesaw. You can contact him through his website at kevinemmetfoley.com.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:04:06 GMT
Why Conservatism FailsUpdated on April 13, 2017 soapboxie.com/us-politics/Why-Conservatism-Fails
There are 3 components of American political philosophies: social policy, economic policy and foreign policy. Modern conservatism is a theoretical failure in each. I say this as a former conservative, and as someone who has no sympathy for ideological liberalism (but that is another article).
I talk here of conservatism, as a political ideology or philosophy. Not the Republican party or its policies, which may or may not be truly "conservative."
Social policy
It is in social matters that conservatism most clearly seeks to "conserve" tradition and established norms. Often this effort at conservation is based not on any rational thinking, but on the perceived value of keeping tradition alive for its own sake.
This idea is destructive and necessarily inhibitive of human progress. Tradition does not have value in its own right. If it did, then the modern American conservative must explain why he supports women's right to vote, since this is a concept totally at odds with almost all human tradition, including his own society's tradition until the early 20th century.
Social conservatism stands for a close relationship between church and state, and a preference for Christian values in public policy at the expense of others. Public policy should:
Restrain or outlaw abortion Legally favor heterosexual relationships over homosexual ones Not teach sex education to teenagers Give equal time to creationism and evolution in science class Restrict people's sexual behavior Financially and legally support churches and other Christian institutions Keep Christian references in taxpayer-financed monuments or documents, and so on Each of these positions can be defeated in various ways. But the important point here is that the emphasis on traditional Christian values is flawed. Since there is no rational way to say this Biblical passage is "good" and that one is "bad," the Bible or Christian tradition is a poor basis for public policy, to say the least.
For example, 19th century slavers and Klan members justified themselves by pointing to the Holy Bible and Christian doctrine, while abolitionists used the very same book and the very same religion to assault slavery! Will the real Christianity please stand up?
Modernist Christians may say that their religion has generally come to support human rights, and eschew the opposite. But are we to subject public policy to the slippery "consensus" that some private religious group happens to believe today, but may not in 50 years?
Not to mention the intellectual inconvenience to the social conservative of explaining why she believes Christianity should be the basis of government, but not Islam or Buddhism.
Social conservatism is an abject theoretical and practical failure.
Economic Policy
Conservatism defers to the free market, against "big government," excessive regulation or high taxation, and in favor of "consumer choice" and "business freedom."
I have detailed many problems with the orthodox free market capitalist view, in the following hubs:
10 Things You Didn't Know About Economics: Numbers 1-3, and Numbers 4-6, and Numbers 7-10 Capitalism: Myth and Reality: Part 1 and Part 2 The assumptions of modern economics are astonishingly unrealistic. This makes any free market capitalist dogma just as naïve as Marxist utopianism. Any ideology that sees free market capitalism as the sole requirement for human prosperity leads to a pie-in-the-sky faith in the free market and an excessively negative attitude toward government action.
Case in point: I found this little pearl of wisdom on a conservative blog, in a discussion on some smoking ban:
Someone tell me why we are wasting our time trying to ban smoking? If it is profitable for a business owner to say “Come here we do not allow smoking,” then he will do that. If it profitable for a business owner to remove meat tainted with germs then they will do that. This is the free-market the market will provide the most efficient outcome.
Grammatical mistakes aside, this is an excellent example of the narrow-mindedness that is part and parcel of economic conservatism and libertarianism especially. Sure, "if it's profitable" for a business to sell clean meat, they will. And if it isn't profitable, they won't. Hence massive public health problems in late 19th century America, an age of laissez-faire.
Additionally, if there are no government regulators to check the meat, who will ever know if the meat was tainted? By the time the market discovers it, somebody will be dead.
Economic conservatism (not to be confused with fiscal conservatism or good fiscal management, which both Republicans and Democrats have failed miserably at in recent years) is a theoretical and practical failure.
Foreign Policy
Foreign policy conservatism is based on the fantastic premise that the US is such an inherently good country that any American military or diplomatic action abroad is ultimately to the benefit of the whole world. Basically, America can do no wrong. If this sounds like a simplistic characterization, I invite the reader to suggest one major military intervention that conservatives disapprove of in recent history (submit a comment below).
The default position of conservatism is toward more American involvement in other countries, more military interventionism--not less.
A key position of conservative foreign policy is blind support for Israel. This has many roots, from apocalyptic Christian theology to a pathological obsession with anti-semitism.
The unquestioning support for Israel, in spite of oppression, theft and killing of innocents committed by the "Jewish state," is an example of simpleminded and destructive foreign policy backed by conservatives.
Above all, the presumption that "America is the greatest country" stands as one of the most simplistic and least-developed bases conceivable for a foreign policy paradigm. America may have many good qualities, but it has many bad ones as well. And certainly whatever its good qualities internally, that has little to do with its effect on other societies.
This mentality has contributed to an unaffordable global empire, buttressed by the dogma that America, that "shining city on a hill" is the "last, best hope of mankind." Nationalistic mythology may be romantic and inspiring. It is insufficient for a theory of foreign policy.
Foreign policy conservatism is a theoretical and practical failure.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:04:40 GMT
The Non-Reality Based behavior of the Crazyservatives. Here's an entertaining rant on the topic, which does a good job of corroborating my long-held theory that the ultra-right-wing loonies are trying to consturct an entire alternate universe out of PURE BULLSHIT. Internal Contradictions in the GOPFor discussing the cognitive dissonance you need to be a Believer in the One True Patriotic Party.
Government needs to stay OUT of people's lives! Except for making sure people aren't performing any illegal sexual acts with consenting partners.
Government spending is BAD! When it's on poor people, infrastructure, or health care. Throwing billions away on military crapola is FINE.
We Support Our Troops! By buying magnetic yellow ribbons. Actually giving the troops armor, health care, REST, an achievable mission, or a living wage is just too much trouble. And so on, ad nauseam. --Gulik 06:01, 9 February 2008 (EST) --Gulik 06:01, 9 February 2008 (EST)
rationalwiki.org/wiki/Debate:Is_American_Conservatism_Inherently_Irrational%3F#Reality_Has_A_Liberal_Bias
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:05:05 GMT
Conservatives are always accusing others of doing what they do or what they want to do themselves. Conservatism is stagnant thought and progressivism is forward thinking away from that stagnancy from whence we came. It is a natural process and not some sort of a movement like they make it sound. I dare say most progressive minded people do not belong to any party but are independent. It is not a conspiracy. Lahren, FOX and conservatives in general are turning the natural order of things into something sinister. Anything and anyone that doesn't agree with them are evil.Tomi Lahren Says 'Liberal Indoctrination' Starts In Elementary SchoolHuffPost Ron Dicker,HuffPost 9 hours ago
Tomi Lahren said Wednesday on Fox News that schools are pushing progressive values earlier than ever ― and that’s why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats want the voting age reduced.
Noting a poll in which the majority of respondents rejected Pelosi’s endorsement of lowering the minimum voting age to 16, “Fox & Friends” guest co-host Jedediah Bila asked Lahren if Democrats were backing unpopular issues. The host from the Fox Nation streaming service answered in the affirmative and used the occasion for her eyebrow-raising take on education.
Lahren said Democrats “are very well aware that the liberal indoctrination starts at a very young age. Whereas it used to start in college, now it starts in elementary school, middle school, high school. And they want to capture those kids very early. So again, this is just another way for them to pad their voting bloc.”
She added: “It sounds good. It sounds like a great talking point. It gets young people really energized. But at the end of the day, it’s just the Democrats doing what they can to try to win an election which they can’t do unless they change the rules.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
www.yahoo.com/huffpost/tomi-lahren-says-apos-liberal-171827186.html
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:05:29 GMT
It probably should go without saying, but not only doesn't anything that this blonde bimbo says surprise me, it should be patently obvious that none of what this dingbat says is anything close to the truth. But as Upton Sinclair once famously said: " It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it." And that goes for bimbos like Tomi Lahren who work for F*x so-called News.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:06:22 GMT
It probably should go without saying, but not only doesn't anything that this blonde bimbo says surprise me, it should be patently obvious that none of what this dingbat says is anything close to the truth. But as Upton Sinclair once famously said: " It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on him not understanding it." And that goes for bimbos like Tomi Lahren who work for F*x so-called News. So not as to appear sexist you need to give the "himbos" equal time as FOX is full of them. I have never seen so much stupidity lumped into one broadcast group as that propaganda channel. I suppose if you are an intentional liar it helps to be good looking at least where a certain part of the population is concerned. Must make it easier to digest.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 6:06:53 GMT
Conservatism is on the run. We need to chase it down and kill it.MatthewSmith Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.) Sunday January 06, 2019 · 8:33 PM MST
With Democrats taking control of the House and making significant inroads in statehouses nationwide, Democrats have finally established a beachhead against the dark forces of conservatism. Now it's time to launch a full-scale assault.
More than any time in the last 40 years, events are conspiring against the conservative cause. With Donald Trump as the much-despised head of the Republican Party, and with his presidency imploding by the day, conservatives are on the defensive. Trump's shocking incompetence, policy failures, venality, and cruelty have at last stripped the thin veneer of respectability from conservatism and shown Americans the rot within.
Democrats have a tremendous opportunity to do lasting damage to conservatism--but we have to think big: not just how to win in 2020 but how to fundamentally reshape America toward liberal values.
That may sound grandiose, but it isn't really. It's an achievable long-term goal, but to accomplish it, to truly seize this moment, Democrats will need to launch an all-out ideological war against conservatism. By that I mean that Democrats must pointedly and publicly begin attacking conservatism—by name—in the same way Republicans have waged war against liberalism.
For at least 40 years now we've listened to Republicans mercilessly hammer "liberals." From Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich to Karl Rove and beyond, Republicans have spent decades bashing liberals as tax-and-spend, anti-military, spineless, immoral, un-American snowflakes. They didn't just attack "Democrats." They didn't just debate issues. Their aim was to discredit the philosophical foundation of liberalism itself. And it worked. Spectacularly. Before long the word liberal became an epithet. Millions of Americans have learned to viscerally despise "libtards." To this day few Democratic politicians will publicly describe themselves as liberals; now—if they're brave—they have to call themselves "progressives."
The strategy has obviously been successful, so why haven't Democrats ever returned the favor? I hear Democratic politicians very effectively criticize Republicans, or specific policies, or individual politicians, but I rarely hear them attack conservatism.
Well, now it's time. If we are to fundamentally realign America toward liberal values, we will need to launch a relentless campaign against conservatism. We need to delegitimize not just conservative policies but their entire belief system. We need to make Americans embarrassed to call themselves conservatives.
This can be done, but it will take a strategic, coordinated, long-term game plan with four key elements:
1. DON'T JUST ATTACK "REPUBLICANS," ATTACK CONSERVATIVES.
Every Democrat, at every opportunity, should make clear: The problem isn't just the Republican Party or specific politicians—it's their horrid ideology. Again, the goal isn't just to win policy debates or elect Democrats—it's to undermine the very foundation of conservative thought.
2. DON'T JUST ATTACK CONSERVATIVE POLICIES, ATTACK CONSERVATIVE VALUES.
This is a battle for Americans' hearts, not just their minds. Framing issues in the emotional language of values is extraordinarily powerful. The message is that the Republican Party has devolved into a dangerous ultraconservatism that even Ronald Reagan wouldn't recognize. It is a heartless philosophy that lacks traditional American, humanitarian, and religious values such as compassion, concern for the less fortunate, and the belief that all of us are created equal. Conservatives are:
Immoral in their policies of rewarding the rich and punishing the poor Afraid of new ideas Narrow-minded and bigoted Opposed to American ideals of equality and personal freedom Anti-government zealots who don't believe in the ability of Americans to govern ourselves Fiscally reckless Incapable of imagining a better future Unworthy of leading a great nation
3. MAKE DONALD TRUMP THE FACE OF CONSERVATISM.
Trump is detested by a strong majority of Americans. Nothing will trash the reputation of conservatism faster than tying it to Trump. (This will be true even after he's left office.) Though Trump is hardly a doctrinaire conservative, he is the end result of conservatism's extreme anti-government rhetoric, and he fully represents its loathsome values. Make this fool the poster boy of conservatism.
4. PAINT A DEVASTATING PICTURE OF LIFE UNDER CONSERVATISM.
Democrats already do a pretty good job of this, but we need to make sure Americans graphically visualize the devastating consequences of the conservative ideology:
Growing inequality, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer Soaring deficits A tattered safety net for families in poverty Millions of Americans without insurance Devastating cuts to food stamps and Medicaid The degradation of the environment and our natural resources The declining influence of America abroad
Obviously, attacking conservatism can't be our only message. All of this has to be in concert with an inspiring Democratic agenda that truly improves the lives of average Americans. And we must constantly reinforce our own deeply held American values: fairness and equality, fighting for the underdog, personal freedom, and progress.
With a smart, coordinated strategy and messaging, we can win the ideological battle against right-wing Republicanism. But to achieve real victory, we can't just fight pitched battles over policy—we need to take the war to our adversary's homeland.
For the first time in years, conservatism is on the run. It's time to hunt it down and drive a stake through its cold, shriveled heart.
www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/6/1824087/-Conservatism-is-on-the-run-We-need-to-chase-it-down-and-kill-it
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 9, 2020 8:54:31 GMT
Conservatism IS extremism. Their tactics are extreme not just in the USA but around the world. The following program is well worth listening to especially if you are on the American Left or middle to know what you are up against. One almost needs to have a degree in psychology or sociology to understand what is going on around us today. Not only that, when DEEP FAKES become commonplace expect the roof to blow off.Author Says New Zealand Massacre Points To A Global Resurgence Of 'Extremism'36:59 LISTEN ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2019/03/20190325_fa_01.mp3?orgId=427869011&topicId=1004&d=2219&p=13&story=706482037&siteplayer=true&dl=1 TRANSCRIPT March 25, 20193:24 PM ET Heard on Fresh Air
Women look at tributes left at the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, following the March 15 massacre at two mosques. William West/AFP/Getty Images On March 15, a 28-year-old Australian man opened fire in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50 people and injuring dozens more. The shooter had previously declared allegiance to "white identity" — a fact that came as no surprise to J.M. Berger, an author who studies extremist movements.
"We're seeing a resurgence in various countries," he says of white nationalism. "It's a worldwide phenomenon."
Berger, who studies the online activity of extremists, notes that the New Zealand shooter praised President Trump as "as a symbol of renewed white identity" in a 74-page document he published before the massacre. That mention, Berger says, aligns with a trend he found when he studied the hashtags and language used by alt-right Twitter users.
How America's White Power Movement Coalesced After The Vietnam War RACE www.npr.org/2018/04/25/605661710/how-americas-white-power-movement-coalesced-after-the-vietnam-war
"When we do the social media analysis, it comes shouting out at you," he says. "We can count the links that they put out on Twitter and other social media platforms, and what we find is the most common is '#MAGA.' The most common description of somebody that they use in the profile, they use on Twitter, is 'Trump supporter.'"
Berger is the author of the book Extremism and co-author of Isis: The State of Terror.
Interview highlights On how Trump has brought together factions of the alt-right
Mitt Romney, John McCain [previous Republican candidates for president] — white nationalists hated these guys. ... They were really too clearly against them to be of use for the movement, and what they find with Trump is that he's somebody who's much closer to their world views, and he declines, on repeated occasions, to directly attack them.
Extremism by J. M. Berger www.youtube.com/user/JMBerger
Paperback, 201 pages purchase
How A Rising Star Of White Nationalism Broke Free From The Movement RACE www.npr.org/2018/09/24/651052970/how-a-rising-star-of-white-nationalism-broke-free-from-the-movement
So what we've seen is because Trump is a huge magnet for news attention, for media attention, he's a really useful figure to give all these diverse movements something to coalesce around. White nationalism and the far-right in general is very factional. Everybody has their own little group. The groups don't get along. They don't believe the same things. There's often a lot of infighting and they sometimes kill each other. What they have now is kind of a common theme, a common cause that they can work into their dialogue, and make it more palatable to people. It helps bring out the attitudes that are friendly to what they want, and really, support for him has become a crystallizing factor.
On how the New Zealand shooter's written statement is different from other terrorists' statements
One of the few things we really know about this guy is that he was very steeped in trolling culture. So the original manifesto and the link to his video were first posted on 8chan, which is a trolling site. There's all manner of anti-social content on a site like that, including a lot of white nationalism and a lot of other extremely objectionable kind of views. But a lot of what they do is cloaked in this sort of shroud of irony.
So they're being "funny" and it's designed to provoke people, to offend people, to get them chasing down rabbit holes of content, and to put misinformation out that has to be corrected later and kind of muddies the truth around things. ... So there's a real culture here of messing with the media; messing with the mainstream narrative. ... A lot of what's in this manifesto is really designed to mislead. It's not like some of the previous examples we've seen, which are very sincere and ideological.
There's a lot of jokes in it, and it's kind of horrifying to think that somebody would kill 50 people to get a series of bad Internet jokes out in circulation in the world. That's certainly not the only reason he did it. He certainly appears to sincerely have these kind of anti-immigration and white nationalist views, but this is sort of a new thing, and it caught a lot of media unawares. So there were a lot of reports that just unironically repeated things that were in the manifesto, that were clearly questionable, clearly meant ironically. Some of them are memes or were sort of deep cut jokes that were really pulled out of obscurity, and some of them are almost certainly incorrect.
On how gun control is viewed in the world of extremist white nationalists
If there's a mythological element that unites a long, wide variety of extremist groups, it's the threat that guns are going to be taken away. This is just a unifying fear and attitude in these groups. It's been used extensively to try and promote these movements.
A Former Neo-Nazi Explains Why Hate Drew Him In — And How He Got Out RACE www.npr.org/2018/01/18/578745514/a-former-neo-nazi-explains-why-hate-drew-him-in-and-how-he-got-out
You have a book like The Turner Diaries [by Andrew MacDonald], which is a dystopian white nationalist novel that opens with minorities taking over the government and disarming white Americans. The book successfully conveys that as an apocalyptic event so effectively that even people who are not heavily engaged with white nationalism turned to the book and talk about it as if it was prophetic. ...
What we've seen even more in the last couple of years is a wave of other books that seek to maintain the extreme gun control theme without having quite so much of the overt racism. So we've seen a lot of extremist authors. There's this incredible body of dystopian, extremist fiction that I'm currently working on for a future project, and what you see is that people from a lot of anti-government viewpoints, people with different kinds of racial viewpoints, they're all writing books that open up with guns being taken away. I don't think extremists should be able to dictate our policies and public discourse on this, but I think we should also be aware of what effect something like that here would have on them.
Amy Salit and Mooj Zadie produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.
www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706482037/author-says-new-zealand-massacre-points-to-a-global-resurgence-of-extremism
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