National security only one of many reasons McCarthy had no business giving J6 video to Tucker

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Wednesday February 22, 2023 · 3:04 PM PST

2023/02/22 · 15:04

Tucker gets J6 videos — Tucker Carlson: 'We believe we have the right to see whatever we want to see.'

It’s pretty easy to predict what kind of disinformation is going to emerge from Tucker Carlson’s exclusive examination—courtesy of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy—of those 40,000-plus hours of Capitol Police evidentiary video from the Jan. 6 insurrection. As my colleague Mark Sumner commented today in our Slack channel: “I can't imagine what two-second clips he's going to splice together to prove the police baited Trump supporters into storming the Capitol, while simultaneously using freeze frame images to prove these were not Trump supporters at all. And just where was Nancy Pelosi walking in this shot? Was she opening a door so Antifa could get in?”

Coming on the heels of the revelations about Fox News’ behind-the-scenes behavior around the 2020 election and Trump’s election denialism—behavior that ineluctably demonstrated that Fox is not a news operation, it is a propaganda organ for the Republican Party—it’s easy to understand Democrats’ outrage that McCarthy shared the video only with Carlson and Fox News, and no other news organizations. But we all should be even more outraged by the national security breach inherent in McCarthy’s breathtaking recklessness.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Tuesday February 21, 2023 · 3:59 PM PST

2023/02/21 · 15:59

Ottawa County board prays — Ottawa County, Michigan, commissioners bowed in prayer to open a recent meeting.

One of the first acts of the new far-right governing board for Ottawa County, Michigan, after taking over in January was a symbolic one: changing the county’s motto. The old one, “Where You Belong”—instituted in 2017 by the old mainstream Republican board—was deemed to have promoted “the divisive, Marxist ideology of the Race Equity movement,” and so replaced with “Where Freedom Rings.”

As symbolism goes, the change rang true: As we have seen with far-right takeovers of local democratic institutions around the nation, the new cadre running the show has embarked on a path of dysfunction and disruption, not to mention malfeasance and incompetence. At the same time it changed the motto, the board also fired the longtime county administrator, shut down the county’s relatively new Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and replaced both the county’s administrative health officer and its corporate counsel.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Tuesday February 21, 2023 · 9:26 AM PST

2023/02/21 · 09:26

ScreenShot2021-11-11at12.30.03PM.png — Members of the Goyim Defense League burned a swastika last year as part of a Texas campaign of threats and intimidation against Jews. A shooter who targeted Jewish people in Los Angeles was inspired by the group's rhetoric.

The whole purpose of eliminationist rhetoric, as I’ve often remarked, is to create permission: a rationale for committing acts of violence and intimidation against a targeted scapegoat. This is how stochastic terrorism—the kind we’ve seen directed recently at the LGBTQ community, for instance—has always worked. Someone with a megaphone demonizes the target group and encourages violent expulsion, and someone listening makes that their excuse for acting on it.

So like night following day, the recent spate of eliminationist antisemitism spewing from cultural figures like Kanye West and enabled by social media moguls like Elon Musk is already generating a fresh round of terrorist violence directed at the Jewish community. This weekend, police arrested a Los Angeles man ginned up on conspiracist hatred of Jews who had been shooting people as they left their synagogues, and charged him with hate crimes.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Sunday February 19, 2023 · 11:21 PM PST

2023/02/19 · 23:21

Tucker Carlson blames Biden for train disaster — Tucker Carlson not only blames the Ohio train derailment response on Biden administration retaliation against Trump voters, but wondered if those power-grid attacks were part of the same program.

Republicans have a long track record of creating real-world disastrous outcomes from misbegotten policies and politics and then blaming those outcomes on Democrats. The fiasco in Afghanistan after Donald Trump negotiated the U.S. withdrawal was only one of many recent examples. So when conservative policies specifically allowing corporations to neglect worker and public safety—such as Trump’s repeal of railroad safety regulations in 2017—result in a major public disaster like the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, you can predict like clockwork that their response will be: It’s Biden’s fault!

Of course, that’s now the story we’re hearing from Fox News, and in particular, the Tucker Carlson Zone, which is running with a narrative that the slow and questionable response at the scene was the fault of the Biden administration (and not Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who goes unmentioned), which doesn’t care about rural Ohioans because they’re Trump voters. And predictably, the white nationalist-adjacent bloc like Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk promptly took that ball and ran with it: Biden is waging war on white people!

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Thursday February 16, 2023 · 3:39 PM PST

2023/02/16 · 15:39

A man wearing military camouflage stands at the entrance of the 'PMC Wagner Centre', associated with the founder of the Wagner private military group (PMC) Yevgeny Prigozhin, during the official opening of the office block on the National Unity Day, in Saint Petersburg, on November 4, 2022. (Photo by Olga MALTSEVA / AFP) (Photo by OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images) — A mercenary soldier stands outside the Moscow headquarters of the private neofascist paramilitary organization The Wagner Group.

Historians and other observers have often noted that, while fascists are very good at starting wars, they are inevitably incompetent when it comes to executing them. “Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy,” wrote Umberto Eco in his seminal essay on “Ur-Fascism.” This is essentially a cognitive flaw, caused by their fundamental insistence on trying to force reality to conform to their view of the world.

Which is why a neofascist armed force like Russia’s Wagner Group is being ground into hamburger—forming a sea of crosses in one rural cemetery, comprised mostly of the cannon fodder it has recruited out of Russian prisons—as its mercenaries wage war in Ukraine on behalf of Vladimir Putin. Wagner Group officials recently announced they were drawing back on their prison-recruitment program—in part because they were alienating potential recruits who might object to “serving with rapists and murderers,” but simultaneously have launched an effort to recruit American veterans.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Thursday February 16, 2023 · 8:44 AM PST

2023/02/16 · 08:44

AUSTIN, TEXAS - OCTOBER 06: Roger Waters performs in concert during the "This Is Not a Drill" Tour at the Moody Center on October 06, 2022 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images) — Pink Floyd cofounder Roger Waters will be one of the featured speakers at Sunday's 'Rage Against the War Machine' anti-Ukraine rally.

You might be fooled into thinking that the planned rally and march in Washington, D.C., this weekend—dubbed Rage Against the War Machine by its organizers—is some sort of far-left antiwar protest against American support for Ukraine in its defensive war with Russia, a hyper-principled attack on all war anywhere. Especially with a lineup of ostensibly leftist speakers, including Jimmy Dore, Tulsi Gabbard, Chris Hedges, and Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters.

But when you survey the whole lineup and realize that it’s an amalgamation of cultish LaRouchites, Russia Today hosts, antisemitic conspiracy theorists, and far-right figures ranging from ex-Congressman Ron Paul to “Patriot” singer-songwriter Jordan Page, you begin to suspect something amiss. Then you notice the one thing they all have in common: Fervid support for the cause of Russia and Vladimir Putin. This isn’t a peace march; it’s a propaganda operation.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Friday February 10, 2023 · 2:54 PM PST

2023/02/10 · 14:54

GLASTONBURY, UNITED KINGDOM - JANUARY 07: In this photo illustration the Elon Musk's Twitter page is displayed on a smartphone screen on January 07, 2023 in Glastonbury, England. Based in San Francisco, California, Twitter was created March 2006. In October 2022, entrepreneur Elon Musk acquired Twitter for a reported US$44 billion, gaining control of the platform. On December 20, 2022, after numerous controversies Musk announced he would step down as CEO once a replacement had been found. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) — Elon Musk's 'general amnesty' for banned accounts has resulted in major brand names appearing next to tweets from far-right accounts.

It has grown increasingly manifest over the past decade that our corporate media overlords have discovered that dividing the nation with ‘culture war’ narratives and misinformation is the road to profitability. Fox News pioneered the model, only to be superseded in recent years by social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, whose profit-driven push for “engagement” has ensured that outrageous lies and smears have become the coin of the realm of public discourse, and radicalization and organization by right-wing extremists an accepted norm.

Twitter under Elon Musk has become the apotheosis of this model. While Musk has welcomed back to the platform an array of banned accounts—white nationalists, COVID disinformation artists, conspiracists, and a variety of far-right trolls—and helped generate radicalization and violence, a new report shows that Twitter is reeling in millions of advertising dollars through these accounts thanks to their massive “engagement”—and ads from companies like Apple and Amazon are now appearing next to content created by neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and antisemites.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Thursday February 09, 2023 · 12:10 AM PST

2023/02/09 · 00:10

Stew Peters' right-wing conspiracism schtick revolves around COVID-19 denialism and anti-vaccination disinformation, especially the claims that scores of people have 'Died Suddenly' (also the title of his pseudo-documentary) from taking the vaccine.

Probably the most disturbing aspect of the conspiracist worldview is its deliberate callousness about the harm it inflicts on other people, its fanatical certainty that the cockamamie fantasies are somehow real, brushing aside any consideration of the possibility that they might be wrong, and thus heaping mountains of fresh grief on people who are often suffering the most unimaginable losses to begin with. Alex Jones’ treatment of the Sandy Hook victims and their families is, of course, the apotheosis of this.

But it’s also more than self-evident in the conspiracy theories currently being whipped into an alternative-universe half-life by the COVID-denialist antivaxxers—namely, the so-called “Died Suddenly” pseudo-documentary fraud being peddled by Stew Peters and his anti-vaccination cohorts. Their theory claims to list hundreds of people who have supposedly keeled over without warning because of the COVID vaccine—most of which are unsubstantiated, and including dozens of people who certifiably either died or were injured from other causes or are still living. The falsely identified and their families, as Matt Shuham reports for HuffPost, are starting to fight back.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Tuesday February 07, 2023 · 3:21 PM PST

2023/02/07 · 15:21

WATERBURY, CONNECTICUT - SEPTEMBER 21: InfoWars founder Alex Jones speaks to the media outside Waterbury Superior Court during his trial on September 21, 2022 in Waterbury, Connecticut. Jones is being sued by several victims' families for causing emotional and psychological harm after they lost their children in the Sandy Hook massacre. A Texas jury last month ordered Jones to pay $49.3 million to the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, one of 26 students and teachers killed in the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. (Photo by Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images) — Alex Jones' cell-phone texts reveal an unhappy, stress-filled life filled with ugly behavior.

An observation from 30-plus years of reportage: Right-wing extremism as a worldview—especially the conspiracism that is its mother’s milk—is actually exhausting. The constant rage and hatred and paranoia that it’s always generating takes a tremendous amount of energy. It wears people out, inside and out. In the end, people who go down those rabbit holes become isolated and hollowed out.

Alex Jones is, as always in the conspiracist universe, the living embodiment of this unpleasant truth. The recent reportage for the SPLC’s Hatewatch examining Jones’ exposed cell-phone texts give us a clear view of the hell that is Alex Jones’ life: a “sick joke” sinking down a “black hole” and living “in hell.” And anyone in his orbit is “traumatized.”

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Monday February 06, 2023 · 9:28 PM PST

2023/02/06 · 21:28

Sarah Clendaniel took photos of herself preparing for action as part of her preparations for attacking Baltimore-area power substations.

The neo-Nazi couple had what they thought was a perfect plan: take out five power substations in the Baltimore area, take down the grid in eastern Maryland, and wreak havoc in the process. “It would probably permanently completely lay this city to waste if we could do that successfully,” the woman fantasized—to what turned out to be an FBI informant.

Their arrest this weekend on federal conspiracy charges was another powerful indicator that neofascist accelerationists are increasingly targeting the nation’s electrical infrastructure as part of a wider attack on American democracy. The planned Maryland attack follows in the footsteps of actual and planned attacks on power substations in North Carolina, Florida, and the Pacific Northwest.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Thursday February 02, 2023 · 8:03 PM PST

2023/02/02 · 20:03

Vincent James Foxx: 'We are going to take over this state. ... And there’s nothing that these people can do about it.'

White nationalists—particularly Nick Fuentes and his Groyper army—have never made any bones about their intention to take over the Republican Party. So now we are able to observe them attempting to do so in real time, working to take control of the GOP apparatus on the state and local levels around the nation.

In Michigan, a Groyper named Alex Roncelli recently secured a seat as a GOP precinct delegate for St. Clair County, despite the full awareness of his white nationalist beliefs by local Republicans. But the scene in Idaho—where a far-right faction has already taken control of the state Republican Party apparatus—features a notorious and unapologetic white nationalist named Vincent James Foxx, who has a history of associating with neo-Nazis, as he recently led an attempt at a factional takeover of the Idaho Young Republicans (IYR) club.

David Neiwert

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Wednesday February 01, 2023 · 8:31 PM PST

2023/02/01 · 20:31

NickFuentes — Nick Fuentes worked himself into a lather thinking about how a 'brutal regime' could bring 'law and order' to America by gunning down people in the streets as part of what he calls his and Kanye West's vision for a 'Christian' America.

Kanye West, aka Ye, might be forgiven if he began having second thoughts about how his previously announced 2024 presidential campaign is being managed. After all, not only has his campaign dished out over $140,000 in expenses to his white nationalist cohorts, Nick Fuentes and the since-fired Milo Yiannopoulos, but all their work to date, as The Daily Beast reports, has produced exactly zero dollars in donations.

Moreover, while Fuentes’ work to date with Ye has so far only sucked money out of the latter’s bank account, Fuentes’ own white nationalist “Groyper” movement has been prospering vastly from the huge propaganda boost that their association with the famous rapper—including their infamous dinner with Donald Trump—has provided. Tess Owen has a full report in Vice about how being connected to Ye has given the Groypers an instant entry point for their bigoted agenda on college campuses and elsewhere.

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National security only one of many reasons McCarthy had no business giving J6 video to Tucker

When extremists take over local Michigan governance, disruption is followed by dysfunction

Authorities arrest L.A. shooter ginned up on eliminationist rhetoric who targeted Jews

Right-wing pundits leap on Ohio disaster as proof Biden administration is ‘waging a war on whites’

As Russian casualties mount in Ukraine, Wagner Group’s neofascist incompetence is revealed

D.C. ‘antiwar’ rally will mostly be a platform for far-right conspiracism, pro-Putin propaganda

Musk follows divide-the-nation-for-profit model, raking in ad revenues via restored far-right trolls

‘Died Suddenly’ conspiracists fraudulently list dozens of people who weren’t injured by vaccine

Alex Jones' cell-phone texts mostly reveal what a sad and pathetic life rabid conspiracism makes

Baltimore-area couple’s plot to bring down city’s power grid part of nationwide far-right trend

Foxx’s bid to take over Idaho Young Republicans club reflects white nationalists’ long-range plans

Fuentes’ association with Kanye is paying off nicely for Groypers, though not so much for West