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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:50:28 GMT
The Threat to Democracy Isn’t Coming From Its PeopleBy JAMELLE BOUIE
SEPT 14, 20181:40 PM
Donald Trump flanked by senators including Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Tom Cotton, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Thom Tillis, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and Sen. Mike Lee. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Alex Edelman - Pool/Getty Images, Zach Gibson/Getty Images, Zach Gibson/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/democracy-threat-from-minority-rule-not-people.html
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:50:54 GMT
Rigging the vote: how the American right is on the way to permanent minority ruleIan Samuel Underhand Republican tactics – gerrymandering, voter suppression, more – underpin a vice-like grip on power www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/04/america-minority-rule-voter-suppression-gerrymandering-supreme-court Sun 4 Nov 2018 07.55 EST First published on Sun 4 Nov 2018 03.00 EST
‘With the deck this stacked, it isn’t enough to win.’ Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images
The American right is in the midst of a formidable project: installing permanent minority rule, guaranteeing control of the government even as the number of actual human beings who support their political program dwindles.
'Every vote should count': North Dakota ID law threatens Native Americans’ vote in key Senate race Read more www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/29/north-dakota-id-law-native-americans-vote-senate-race
Voter suppression is one, but only one, loathsome tactic in this effort, which goes far beyond just winning one election. Minority rule is the result of interlocking and mutually reinforcing strategies which must be understood together to understand the full picture of what the American right wants to achieve.
Examples are everywhere. Take North Dakota. In 2012, Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, won a surprise victory in a Senate race by just 2,994 votes. Her two largest county wins were in the Standing Rock and Turtle Mountain Reservations, where she won more than 80% of the vote. Her overall vote margin in counties containing Native reservations was more than 4,500 votes.
Observing that Heitkamp literally owed her seat to Native voters, North Dakota’s Republican legislature enacted a voter ID law that requires voters to present identification showing their name, birth date and residential address. There’s the rub: many Native voters do not have traditional residential addresses, so this law effectively disenfranchises them.
With the supreme court in hand, all those other tactics – partisan gerrymandering, voter ID and the rest – are protected Or take Georgia, where the Republican nominee for governor, Brian Kemp, is the secretary of state and in that capacity has placed more than 50,000 voter registrations on hold, many from urban areas with high black populations. That is in keeping with Kemp’s privately expressed “concern” that high voter turnout will favor his opponent – Stacey Abrams, running strongly to be the first black female governor in US history.
Exacerbating voter suppression is the ongoing partisan gerrymandering effort – the redrawing of electoral maps to favor one party over another. After the 2010 census, the Wisconsin legislature (controlled by Republicans) drew a map for the state’s legislative districts explicitly designed to ensure they would retain control of the legislature even if they received a minority of votes. It worked: in 2012, despite receiving only 48.6% of the vote, they won 60 of 99 seats. Democrats won an outright majority of votes cast but secured just 39 seats.
To this, Wisconsin added a voter ID requirement designed to make it harder to vote at all. Voila: voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election was the lowest since 2000 and Donald Trump carried the state. (To be sure, there were other factors at work.) The combined, national effect of partisan gerrymandering is such that in the 2018 midterms, the Democrats might win the popular vote by 10 points and still not control the House.
Legislative maps designed to promote minority rule plus voter suppression of the constituencies opposed to it is a potent combination. And there’s more.
The two most recent Republican presidents have entered office despite receiving fewer votes than their opponent in a national election, thanks to the electoral college, which systematically over-represents small states. (California gets one electoral vote per 712,000 people; Wyoming gets one per 195,000.) With the presidency in hand in the run-up to the 2020 census, minority rule will be further entrenched by adding a citizenship question to the census. This will result in systematic undercounting of the population in heavily Democratic areas, which will in turn further reduce their influence as legislatures draw maps based on the data.
Then there’s the Senate. Because of its bias toward smaller, rural states, a resident of Wyoming has 66 times the voting power in Senate elections as one in California. Thus, in 2016, the Democratic party got 51.4 million votes for its Senate candidates. The Republicans got 40 million. And despite losing by more than 11 million votes, the Republicans won a supermajority (22 of 36) of the seats up for election, holding their majority in the chamber.
The hideously malapportioned Senate and electoral college permit the last piece of the minority rule puzzle to snap into place: the supreme court. In 2016, after losing the contest for the presidency and the Senate by millions of votes, the Republicans were able to install two supreme court justices. There may be more.
In fact, when the Senate confirmed Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, it was a watershed moment in American history. For the first time, a president who lost the popular vote had a supreme court nominee confirmed by senators who received fewer votes – nearly 22 million fewer – than the senators that voted against him. And by now, it will not surprise you to discover that the senators who voted for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh represent 38 million fewer people than the ones who voted no.
Trump's attack on birthright citizenship betrays his ignorance – and his weakness Corey Brettschneider Read more www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/03/donald-trump-birthright-citizenship-14th-amendment-constitution
With the supreme court in hand, all those other tactics – partisan gerrymandering, voter ID and the rest – are protected from the only institution that could really threaten them. But it doesn’t stop there. The supreme court can be used to do more than approve the minority rule laws that come before it. It can further the project on its own.
In 2015, the court came within one vote of holding that independent redistricting commissions (which reduce partisan gerrymandering) are actually unconstitutional. The swing vote in that case, Anthony Kennedy, is gone. And the court in 2013 famously invalidated a major portion of the Voting Rights Act which put checks on voter-suppression efforts of the kind now taking place all over the country.
Taken together, this is a powerful set of tools. Draw maps that let you win even when you lose. Use the resulting power to enact measures to suppress the vote of the other side further. Count on a minority rule president to undercount your opponents in the census, and a minority-rule Senate to confirm justices who will strike down any obstacles to the plan.
With the deck this stacked, it isn’t enough to win. Wresting control back from the entrenched minority will take overwhelming victory. It may take, in other words, a genuine political revolution.
Ian Samuel is Associate Professor of Law at Indiana University Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law. He is also the co-host of @firstmondaysfm
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:51:21 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:51:47 GMT
OK. This is scary!RPI News NEWS CATEGORIES RESEARCH news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/2902 July 25, 2011Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas * * In this visualization, we see the tipping point where minority opinion (shown in red) quickly becomes majority opinion. Over time, the minority opinion grows. Once the minority opinion reached 10 percent of the population, the network quickly changes as the minority opinion takes over the original majority opinion (shown in green). Image credit: SCNARC/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
* Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.
“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”
As an example, the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt appear to exhibit a similar process, according to Szymanski. “In those countries, dictators who were in power for decades were suddenly overthrown in just a few weeks.”
The findings were published in the July 22, 2011, early online edition of the journal Physical Review E in an article titled “Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities.”
An important aspect of the finding is that the percent of committed opinion holders required to shift majority opinion does not change significantly regardless of the type of network in which the opinion holders are working. In other words, the percentage of committed opinion holders required to influence a society remains at approximately 10 percent, regardless of how or where that opinion starts and spreads in the society.
To reach their conclusion, the scientists developed computer models of various types of social networks. One of the networks had each person connect to every other person in the network. The second model included certain individuals who were connected to a large number of people, making them opinion hubs or leaders. The final model gave every person in the model roughly the same number of connections. The initial state of each of the models was a sea of traditional-view holders. Each of these individuals held a view, but were also, importantly, open minded to other views.
Once the networks were built, the scientists then “sprinkled” in some true believers throughout each of the networks. These people were completely set in their views and unflappable in modifying those beliefs. As those true believers began to converse with those who held the traditional belief system, the tides gradually and then very abruptly began to shift.
“In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion and are always seeking to try locally to come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models,” said SCNARC Research Associate and corresponding paper author Sameet Sreenivasan. To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models “talked” to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener’s belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.
“As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change,” Sreenivasan said. “People begin to question their own views at first and then completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influenced their neighbors, that wouldn’t change anything within the larger system, as we saw with percentages less than 10.”
The research has broad implications for understanding how opinion spreads. “There are clearly situations in which it helps to know how to efficiently spread some opinion or how to suppress a developing opinion,” said Associate Professor of Physics and co-author of the paper Gyorgy Korniss. “Some examples might be the need to quickly convince a town to move before a hurricane or spread new information on the prevention of disease in a rural village.”
The researchers are now looking for partners within the social sciences and other fields to compare their computational models to historical examples. They are also looking to study how the percentage might change when input into a model where the society is polarized. Instead of simply holding one traditional view, the society would instead hold two opposing viewpoints. An example of this polarization would be Democrat versus Republican.
The research was funded by the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) through SCNARC, part of the Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS-CTA), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
The research is part of a much larger body of work taking place under SCNARC at Rensselaer. The center joins researchers from a broad spectrum of fields – including sociology, physics, computer science, and engineering – in exploring social cognitive networks. The center studies the fundamentals of network structures and how those structures are altered by technology. The goal of the center is to develop a deeper understanding of networks and a firm scientific basis for the newly arising field of network science. More information on the launch of SCNARC can be found at news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2721&setappvar=page(1)
Szymanski, Sreenivasan, and Korniss were joined in the research by Professor of Mathematics Chjan Lim, and graduate students Jierui Xie (first author) and Weituo Zhang.
Contact: Gabrielle DeMarco Phone: (518) 276-6542 E-mail: demarg@rpi.edu
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:52:16 GMT
Commentary: Living under the rule of a minority-dominated government Senate Judiciary Committee
Senators' nameplates are organized on Sept. 26, 2018 before Senate Judiciary Committee hearings with Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh lashed out against Democrats during his testimony. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty-AFP) Anne Applebaum The Washington Post
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-minority-rule-washington-brett-kavanaugh-anne-applebaum-1009-story.html
ow that the predictable result has been achieved, it’s worth taking a moment to think about the longer-term impact of the bizarre, emotional events of the past two weeks in Washington. Reasonable people can still disagree about what happened in a house in suburban Maryland in the summer of 1982; reasonable people can even disagree about whether now, more than three decades later, those events should matter. But reasonable people cannot disagree about the political orientation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In his testimony, he revealed himself to be an extreme partisan, a Republican Party activist and a man at least willing to bend the truth in public.
He did not reveal himself to be a man dedicated to upholding a neutral idea of the rule of law. On this point, Kavanaugh’s opponents and supporters are in total agreement. Just after he was sworn in to the job he might hold for many decades, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, tweeted: “Congratulations Judge Kavanaugh! Instead of a 6-3 liberal Supreme Court under Hillary Clinton, we now have a 5-4 conservative Supreme Court under President @realdonaldtrump, cementing a tremendous legacy for the President and a better future for America.” Note the expression “under President @realdonaldtrump”: This was a partisan contest, and the winning side is crowing in triumph that one of the partisan faithful has been victorious.
But what now? Thanks to the quirks of our Constitution and the vagaries of our politics, the result is that all three branches of the U.S. government are dominated by minorities. In the White House, we have, for the second time in less than two decades, a president who did not win the popular vote. He was elected thanks to the Electoral College, a system originally designed to block demagogues but which no longer does. Electoral College delegates are not independent, as they once were; instead, they vote as their state party chairman decides. The effect is to skew the result.
For many years now the Senate, our senior legislative body, has been grotesquely out of line, too. The 40 million people who live in California get the same two votes in the Senate as the 740,000 people of Alaska. The 20 million people of New York state get the same two votes as the 755,000 of North Dakota. A system created in the 18th century, originally designed to protect smaller states against the larger ones, now has the opposite effect. The inhabitants of rural America have a far louder voice in Congress than the inhabitants of urban America, well out of proportion to their numbers. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the confirmation of Supreme Court justices.
The minority-dominated Senate and the minority-elected president have now chosen Justice Kavanaugh. And, thanks to his appointment, our Supreme Court may well cease to reflect the views of the majority, too. One recent poll found, for example, that a very large percentage of Americans do not want to overturn Roe v. Wade. The majority of Americans prefer legal, though restricted abortion; they support affirmative action; they also prefer legal same-sex marriage. Of course, these are not the only (and maybe not even the most important) issues that the court will adjudicate in the next decade. But they are good proxies for “liberal” and “conservative” attitudes on social issues — and on all of them, the new “5-4” court seems likely to be well out of line.
There is an irony here: When they were writing it, the authors of our Constitution were worried about the tyranny of the majority, not the tyranny of a minority. But two centuries after the fact, they have achieved the opposite effect. If the coming midterm elections do not reverse at least one and preferably both of the houses of Congress, that minority will have two years to entrench its power further, through gerrymandering, voter registration laws, court appointments, even changes to electoral law. And then all bets are off as to whether minority rule can ever be reversed.
The experience of other countries in similar circumstances is not encouraging. Historically — think of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or, indeed, Bashar Assad’s Syria — a minority’s attempt to rule over the majority has led to terrible violence. I don’t predict anything like that in the United States, where the rules and traditions are different, but I don’t see how this ends well, either. Young Americans’ faith in democracy is now at an all-time low. As the decisions taken by the U.S. government become ever more distasteful to ever more of them, those percentages will only continue to grow.
The Washington Post
Anne Applebaum is a Post columnist.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:52:44 GMT
Minority Rule: A Culturally Transmitted Political Skill?By Andy Schmookler - June 15, 2014 488 5 ( – promoted by lowkell)
Putting a couple of things together.
Thing One: We observe how in Republican World these days, a rabid minority is often dominating the majority. Most Republicans, polls show, are in favor of a variety of measures — universal background checks, some immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, etc. — that the Republicans continually block from being enacted.
We see how even the Establishment Republicans will speak and act like Teapublicans, because they are afraid of being primaried from the right. The problem, of course, is that it is the Tea Party people who disproportionately show up for primaries — even more so for conventions — and thus a minority can dominate the majority.
With the Republicans controlling the House of Representatives, and with the Republicans intimidated by their activist fringe, it turns out that this minority not only controls the Party, but exercises veto power over the whole American legislative process. A minority of one Party — which is somewhat of a minority party to begin with — thus dominates the rest of the nation.
Thing Two: I have been developing the idea that the spirit that’s taken over the Republican Party represents the re-emergence of the spirit that took hold of the South in the decade leading up to the American Civil War. In several pieces, I’ve been outlining some of the interesting parallels that suggest that the patterns have been transmitted through the generations, maintaining rather intact the same basic destructive force, which has now — once again, in our times — gained the power to do great damage to the nation.
See for example these:
>This Evil Force Can Be Seen Moving Through Time– Introduction
This Evil Force Can Be Seen Moving Through Time- II: The Spirit of Domination
This Evil Force Can Be Seen Moving Through Time– III: The Spirit of the Lie
This Evil Force Can Be Seen Moving Through Time– III: The Spirit of War
>
Putting Thing One and Thing Two together: I recall a major theme in the fascinating book The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant 1854-1861, by William H. Frehling, was that in the 1850s, and in particular in the final push toward secession, it was a minority of Southerners who showed great political skill and strategic acumen in prevailing over the majority of their fellow Southerners to maneuver the entire region toward disunion and the war that prompted.
Frehling also showed how the Southern region as a whole was able to dominate the national majority in one political showdown after another concerning the slavery issue: They had always utilized classic nonconspiratorial tactics. Through pressure politics up front and behind the scenes, a determined minority had insisted that a less determined majority must yield concessions. Southern Democrats had squeezed gag rules, Texas annexation, the Fugitive Slave law, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act out of Northern Democrats. (p. 327)
Which all leads me to wonder: is there some component in the political arsenal wielded by this destructive force that involves the means by which a minority can prevail, in political struggle, over a majority, even within a presumably democratic framework?
Is this yet another illustration of how this force has transmitted through the generations the patterns that bolster its power to wreak havoc?
bluevirginia.us/2014/06/minority-rule-a-culturally-transmitted-political-talent
bluevirginia.us/author/andy-schmookler
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:53:08 GMT
intellectual dirty tricks
The psychology and politics of dysfunctional democracy | Drew Westen | TEDxEmory
TEDx Talks Published on Jul 23, 2014 This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. For leaders in a democracy like ours to tackle the big problems we face today, they need three things: a coherent ideology or vision of what is and should be; an ability to move people with a compelling message; and clean, fair elections. Our democracy today has none of those things -but it doesn't have to be that way
Professor Westen received his B.A. at Harvard University, an M.A. in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex (England), and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan, where he subsequently taught for six years. For several years he was Chief Psychologist at Cambridge Hospital and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. His major areas of research are personality disorders, adolescent psychopathology, political psychology, psychotherapy effectiveness, and the interface of psychodynamics and neuroscience. An active clinician, researcher, and political consultant, Dr. Westen is the Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator for two grants from NIMH. His book, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, has had a wide influence on elections internationally. He has advised a wide range of candidates and organizations, from presidential campaigns to the U.S. House and Senate Caucuses, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and a range of other publications.
About TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:53:34 GMT
Trump is (not) my president’: Nation-wide protests overtake US on inauguration day
#NotMyPresident 10,000 Protesters @trump TOWER Day After Election #TrumpRussia 11/9/16
CNG - "NOT MY PRESIDENT" Official Music Video
Trump Supporters Clash with Protesters in Chicago
Trump fans' anger at the media
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:54:02 GMT
Parkland Shooter Nikolas Cruz Registered to Vote Republican From JailReuters / Pool Officials say they were powerless to do anything after fury greeted the news that Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz was allowed to register to vote from his Florida jail cell. Cruz, 20, is charged with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Valentine’s Day. State voter-registration records show that he registered as a Republican on July 25, listing the address of the Broward County Jail as his residence. In an interview Sunday morning on Fox & Friends, Andrew Pollack, the father of Meadow Pollack, one of the 14 pupils killed in the attack, called Cruz’s registration “a dagger in my heart.” Florida law allows defendants to vote as long as they haven’t been convicted—while Cruz has confessed to the killings, he is still awaiting trial.
www.thedailybeast.com/parkland-shooter-nikolas-cruz-registered-to-vote-republican-from-jail
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:54:29 GMT
some pretty harsh images from the tea party branch of the conservative right TEA PARTY RACISM: What The Media Won't Show You About Teabagger Racism
Hey Tea Party - Why the Racism?
bravenewfoundation Published on Mar 5, 2010 facebook.com/cuentame - View the whole series and expose teabaggers once and for all.
Republican Group Mails Racist Flyers of Obama
The State of Hate: White Supremacist Groups Growing ... www.civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/white-supremacist.html
Racist images from Republicans/conservatives:
When cons can produce a list like that showing Democrats to be racist, maybe then we'll take racism accusations against liberals seriously.
“The Tea Party, they hate being called racist, even though 99.9999% of them are white and the president who drives them bat spit insane is black. The one thing they hate is being called racist. The other thing they hate is black people.” ~ Bill Maher
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 11, 2020 9:54:57 GMT
Trump Shouldn't Be Shocked Anti-Semitism Persists: Conspiratorial Rhetoric Feeds It3:50 LISTEN ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/me/2018/10/20181031_me_trump_and_anti-semitism.mp3?orgId=1&topicId=1016&d=230&p=3&story=662436272&siteplayer=true&dl=1 TRANSCRIPT www.npr.org/2018/10/31/662436272/trump-and-anti-semitism October 31, 20185:00 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Tom Gjelten 2010 TOM GJELTEN
A visitor walks by a memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue following Saturday's shooting in Pittsburgh on Monday. Cathal McNaughton/Reuters
Anti-Semitism in its rawest form motivated the Oct. 27 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. The detectives who investigated the killing reported that the gunman, once in custody, told officers that he "wanted all Jews to die."
In his initial reaction to the shooting, President Trump said, "It looks definitely like it's an anti-Semitic crime." But the president seemed surprised it had happened, saying it was "something you wouldn't believe could still be going on."
In fact, anti-Semitism — the ideology that Jews are malevolent and out to control the world — has persisted for nearly 2,000 years. Analysts who study the phenomenon say it's important to understand the roots of anti-Semitism, why it continues to flourish, and how political leaders, including President Trump, may nourish it, wittingly or not, through divisive rhetoric.
Jeffrey Herf, a historian at the University of Maryland who has written widely on the anatomy of anti-Semitism, argues that particular arguments and habits of thinking underlie its power. Most important, he says, is a willingness to buy into conspiratorial thinking.
The original conspiracy theory
"The core of every conspiracy theory," Herf notes, "is the basic notion that the world is governed by small groups of people who operate behind the scenes and are enormously powerful and enormously evil." A leader who promotes a conspiracy theory, Herf argues, is necessarily implying that, "thousands of people are liars and hiding the truth and that he is the heroic one who is revealing the secret of what they're trying to conceal."
By that interpretation, President Trump himself has promoted conspiratorial thinking on various occasions. Most notable was his contention before and during the 2016 campaign that Barack Obama may not have been born in the United States. It is a habit he has continued in office.
The caravan of Central Americans headed to the United States prompted a tweet from Trump on Oct. 22, offered with zero evidence, that the migrants included "criminals and unknown Middle Easterners."
The major television networks, with the exception of Fox News, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, report "fake news," Trump says, and he claims the protesters they interview are actually people who are hired by somebody, like philanthropist George Soros.
"They'll go to a person hiding a sign, who gets paid by Soros or somebody," Trump charged at a campaign rally in Missoula, Mont., earlier this month. "That's what happens," he said, to a chorus of boos.
Organizations supported by the Soros-financed Open Society Fund have vigorously denied paying any protesters, and there is no evidence to support Trump's charge.
Soros is a Hungarian-born Jew, and some writers see evidence of anti-Semitism in the accusation that he is secretly financing liberal movements.
Whether President Trump himself is promoting anti-Semitism is debatable. His daughter and son-in-law are Jewish, and a small but significant segment of the U.S. Jewish population supports him, including about 70 percent of Orthodox Jews. That support may be due, at least in part, to the president's strong advocacy for Israel, including his decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Trump's continued promotion of conspiracy theories, however, strikes Herf as "extremely dangerous," because of where it may logically lead.
"I can't think of a major conspiracy theory that at some point or other doesn't bump into the most famous conspiracy theory," Herf says, "[which is] that the Jews run the world."
Anti-elitism
Among other key elements of anti-Semitic thinking, Herf has argued, is a deep distrust of intellectuals and the elite class in general.
Here again, President Trump's rhetoric is relevant. At campaign rallies, he repeatedly singles out "the elite" for contempt.
Synagogue Shooting Follows Historic Rise In Anti-Semitic Incidents And Online Attacks
NATIONAL
Synagogue Shooting Follows Historic Rise In Anti-Semitic Incidents And Online Attacks www.npr.org/2018/10/29/661676117/synagogue-shooting-follows-rise-in-anti-semitic-incidents-adl-says "You're the smartest people," Trump told a boisterous crowd at a campaign rally in Ohio in August. "You know what they talk about? They talk about 'the elite,' the elite. They're not elite," he said, as the crowd roared. "You're the elite."
Herf argues that Jews get understandably nervous when people are encouraged to resent the elite.
"The danger for Jews," he says, "is that we are very small in number, but we are very prominent, whether it's Hollywood, academia, banking, [or] the print press."
Herf recognizes that any connection between Donald Trump and his rhetoric to an environment in which anti-Semitism grows is controversial, and he is careful how he describes it.
"I think it's unwitting," he says. "I think he loves his daughter, and he has a lot of Jewish friends, from having spent his entire life in New York. So I don't think his intention is to bring harm to the Jewish people. No."
Nevertheless, Herf says, "[Trump] wants to win, and he sees this is working. He has a special talent of knowing how to appeal to the resentments and hatreds of his base, and if, in order to win, he needs to fan the flames of conspiracy, then he is perfectly willing to do it."
Role of social media
To be sure, other factors may contribute to any worsening of anti-Semitism, some of them having nothing to do with Trump's rhetoric.
"I think what has fueled the surge [in anti-Semitism] in recent years is social media," says Nathan Diament, the director of public policy for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, representing Orthodox Jews.
"You can have individual anti-Semites who might have been very isolated in years past but now have these technology platforms in which they can not only express their views [but also] find other people that share their views and second them and urge them on," Diament notes. "It's really fostered and accelerated a climate of hate and anti-Semitism."
Whatever the reason, it does seem to be an increasingly dangerous time for Jews in America. The Anti-Defamation League says the number of anti-Semitic incidents has risen sharply in the last two years.
www.npr.org/2018/10/29/661676117/synagogue-shooting-follows-rise-in-anti-semitic-incidents-adl-says
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 24, 2020 0:10:51 GMT
If we all keep calling it "Chinese" Virus, then these hate filled reactions by non-Asians are what we are going to get. One of the most basic ways a "leader" can get people on their side is by causing hate and pinning a blame on a particular group to make solidify their stance and gain power.
Alienating ethnic groups causes a division of supporters and causes strong emotions from which people can play off of to get the masses to do their bidding. This is a cheap parlor trick used by leaders that may have unpopular ideals that they want to push.
I will refrain from using specific examples because people will consider this as hate mongering.
We should be working together as a UNITED States of America if we are to get through this tough time. Let us not think about where the virus may have started and let us think of how we are going to end it.'Run them over:' Chinese Americans face growing hate in coronavirus outbreakThe Week Kathryn Krawczyk,The Week•March 23, 20201,407 Comments
As the new coronavirus continues to spread throughout the U.S., Chinese Americans — and Asian Americans as a whole — have reported rising verbal and physical attacks suggesting they're responsible for COVID-19's emergence. It's "a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by Muslim-Americans after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," but this time, the president isn't acting like he's on their side, The New York Times reports.
Yuanyuan Zhu recalled walking to the gym in San Francisco for one of her last workouts before an inevitable quarantine a few weeks ago. Along the way, she noticed a man "yelling an expletive about China," and hearing him shout "run them over" when a bus went by, the Times writes. Zhu tried to stay away, but when she got stuck with the man waiting for a crosswalk, he spit on her.
The possibility of those kinds of attacks have the nearly two dozen Asian Americans interviewed by The New York Times "afraid to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside." Even Dr. Edward Chew, the head of the emergency department at a large Manhattan hospital, says he has noticed people covering their noses and mouths when he walks by.
Still, President Trump insists on calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus" despite medical professionals warning how that could fuel fear of and attacks against an entire group of people. "If they keep using these terms, the kids are going to pick it up," Tony Du, an epidemiologist in Maryland, told the Times. "They are going to call my 8-year-old son a Chinese virus. It's serious." Read more at The New York Times.
Trump suggests he might soon prioritize the economy over public health theweek.com/speedreads/904077/trump-suggests-might-soon-prioritize-economy-over-public-health Trump touted a drug's effectiveness against coronavirus. Now its manufacturer is overwhelmed by demand. theweek.com/speedreads/904307/trump-touted-drugs-effectiveness-against-coronavirus-now-manufacturer-overwhelmed-by-demand The worst possible president for this crisis theweek.com/articles/904068/worst-possible-president-crisis
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 25, 2020 19:17:23 GMT
Being really really white might not make a state deplorable but............ The 10 WHITEST STATES in AMERICANick Johnson Published on Dec 27, 2018 Where do the most white people live in America? We looked at the last 10 years of demographic data to find out the answer.
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 25, 2020 19:18:28 GMT
Native American Congresswoman Condemns White Teens Who Taunted an Omaha Elder“A signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration.”
MOTHER JONESJANUARY 19, 2019 3:29 PM
Teenaged boys surrounded Nathan Phillips (right) as he sang in Washington, DC, on Friday. KC NOLAND/YouTube
Footage of white teenagers taunting a Native American man in Washington, DC, has sparked outrage and prompted a Native American member of Congress to condemn their “display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance.”
A video of the incident, which occurred yesterday, shows a large group of boys, almost entirely white, some wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, surrounding and mocking a man as he sings and drums as part of the Indigenous Peoples March. Indian Country News identified the man as Nathan Phillips, an Omaha elder and Vietnam Veteran.
One boy stood directly in front of Phillips, smirking as those around him chanted and made “tomahawk chops” with their hands. The teens were reportedly in Washington, DC, to attend the March for Life as part of a trip sponsored by their school, Covington Catholic High School, in Park Hills, Kentucky.
Speaking after the incident, Shilling, looking shaken, recounted what had happened: “I heard them saying, ‘Build that wall, build that wall.’ You know, this is indigenous lands. We’re not supposed to have walls here; we never did.” He said he wished that the “mass of young men” who taunted him would “put that energy into making this country really great.”
Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), who recently took her seat as one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, condemned the boys’ behavior and linked it to President Donald Trump:
Congresswoman Deb Haaland ✔ @repdebhaaland This Veteran put his life on the line for our country. The students’ display of blatant hate, disrespect, and intolerance is a signal of how common decency has decayed under this administration. Heartbreaking.
Simar @sahluwal A group of students from @covcathcolonels harassed & bothered this Native American protestor at the Indigenous Peoples March. Appalling./video/1 …
33.4K 9:31 AM - Jan 19, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 13.6K people are talking about this The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covingtion, which operates the boys’ school, issued a statement saying was looking into the incident.
Update: In a statement to the Enquirer, the diocese condemned the boys’ actions and apologized to Phillips. “The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion,” it said.
www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/01/native-american-congresswoman-teens-taunted-elder/
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Post by the Scribe on Mar 25, 2020 19:19:12 GMT
Too many Americans are not in Trump's camp. They outnumber his followers. If our next election is above board this nightmare should be over, Trump will be gone and his followers will be neutered. We have a strong Constitution. Unfortunately we mostly have an illegitimate Supreme Court interpreting it. (justices put on the court by unelected presidents)
Trump Is Mirroring Hitler - Fahrenheit 11/9
Skateboardwonder Published on Dec 24, 2018 Michael Moore explains why Trump is similar to Hitler, and why we need action right now to put a stop to it. The knuckle draggers of this country hate liberals, but they love fascists.
Michael Moore: Fahrenheit 11/9 | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
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