#because Charlie was also victim of that ideology

[lordadmiralfarsight]

Revolution fetishism is a horrible political view, especially in this context

Okay, rant incoming, partially related to recent events, but also to earlier thinking on my part.

There are, on the Left, a fair few people that romanticize or outright fetishize the concept of Revolution, of violent popular uprising to wrest power out of the hands of a corrupt elite and give it to the people. Very romantic, very righteous (self-righteous pretty often), very good and nice and sexy. And by the grace of revolutionary fervor and ideological purity, everything will be better after.

Except no.

See, a lot of this romanticization of Revolution comes, to my knowledge, from my own country of France. We have romanticized our Revolution a fair bit, and honestly, looking at the first part, fair. A serious go at giving women rights, a no-cause divorce, abolition of slavery, privileges thrown out, equality between people proclaimed loud, enfranchisement given to minorities ... in 1789. A LOT of good and progress, especially for the time.

But then it got fucky, VERY fucky. The Reign of Terror, under the caring leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, was a fucking nightmare on Earth, caracterized by mass executions on political basis, and by this I mean anyone that opposed Robespierre got beheaded. Political plurality? You mean anti-revolutionary sentiment ! Unacceptable, kill everyone.

A rumor of the time said the Place de Grève was covered in a layer of blood that was ankle deep. Is that an exageration ? Yes, certainly. But the fact it got to that point should tell you something about how intense the murdering was. And that was just one square in Paris, there was the rest of the country to consider too.

But surely, after Robespierre fell victim to his own system and was executed, something better emerged, right?

No. Sweet mother of fuck, NO.

What followed was roughly 70 years of political instability and violence, warfare and civil war, several dictatorships, including attempts to restore absolute monarchy, that undid most of the good brought by the first part of the Revolution. And finally, France stumbled onto political stability in 1870 when the temporary 3rd Republic, that was supposed to wait until the presumptive heir to the throne (who wanted an absolute monarchy) croacked did what temporary things do best and became the permanent system (until its fall).

This was not thanks to the Revolution. It was pure randomness.

Did the French Revolution bring good things? Yes, it did. In its first part. The second part brought chaos and misery for multiple decades. And it took a lot of work and efforts to bring back what the Revolution, the peaceful part, had brought in.

And far too many people on the Left fetishize and romanticize the whole thing, as if we couldn't have had the first part without the second, as if the progress and hope and betterment somehow needed the chaos and murder that came after.

Yes, there would have been a period of conflict, European monarchies would not have accepted quietly a realm the size of France doing away with monarchs. But did we REALLY need the political purges ? Did we REALLY need the paranoia ? Did we REALLY need the massacres ?

But you will find people that answer yes, and say the spilled blood somehow made it pure, or good. And those same people are looking at what Hamas is doing and are cheering. These people don't celebrate the first part, the progress and hope. They claim to be, but they aren't. They celebrate the Terror. They yearn for the unjust "popular tribunal" AKA mob "justice". They dream of executing political opponents or anyone they think is "bad" on light or even absent charges.

And That's why they cheer for Hamas rockets and massacres. That's why they sing when Israeli children are murdered. That's why they attack Jews that don't live in Israel. Because they hope to vicariously live this period of unchecked violence.

Know who was celebrating the RIGHT part of the Revolution ? The Israeli working with Gazan to build understanding. The Gazan protesting against Hamas. The Israeli Arabs risking their lives to save the lives of fellow Israeli and of foreigners, regardless of skin or creed. The Gazan trying to improve things in their homes against the wishes and efforts of Hamas.

Know who IS celebrating the RIGHY part of the Revolution ? The Israeli protesting the way the IDF is bombing Gaza. The people decrying the hypocrisy of blood-thirsty leftists. The people calling for Peace and working to make the political change to allow it.

But the Robespierres of the time, drunk on their own self-assurance, condemn and insult them, claiming that blood must be spilt. But it doesn't have to be. The French Revolution started relatively bloodlessly. It didn't need some great orgy of violence. Oh it wasn't clean, but it was far cleaner than the armchair Robespierres would like it to be. Because it didn't need to be.

And that's my point, really. The people fantasizing about and fetishizing the Revolution always dream of torrents of blood washing away the injustices, of seas of corpses forming a fertile ground upon which progress can grow. But that horseshit. All you get with that is, like the Place de Grève, a sinister place that stinks of rot and death, and flocks of scavengers gorging on your crimes.

All you get is a chance for a Napoleon to arrive. Or Stalin's USSR that so casually carried on with the crimes of the Tsars. Or Polpot who murdered 25% of his population.

If you look at the French Revolution, the right lesson to learn is that you need to know when to stop, and that's before you get to indiscriminate killing. Because once you get to that point ... people that thrive in those settings get in power and perpetuate them.

And to apply that to the situation in I/P ... knowing when to stop means realizing that Israeli are still humans, that Gazan are still humans, that their lives have worth and should be protected, that supporting child killings when it's done by "brown people" is not anymore alright than supporting child killings when done by the IDF. And you people should very well consider the possibility that people inside the IDF are doing all they can to reduce Bibi's ability to order war crimes.

And you should recognize that there are efforts on the part of the IDF, sometimes token efforts, sometimes more than just that, to limit the number of dead civilians. Point me to a case where Hamas did the same. Point me to a case where they tried to get Israeli civilians out of the way instead of targeting them.

Hamas is not a Revolution you want to succeed. It's not about being free. It's about killing. This isn't a "glorious revolutionary action", it's a prelude to the wholesale slaughter and ethnic massacre they dream of. It's a tiny window into their ideal, blood soaked world.

Violent revolution should be a last resort, when there is no other option available, when the system is so utterly broken and shattered that nothing can move, and it should be stopped as soon as the system is unfucked enough to negociate. The I/P situation is not at that stage. Look at how much efforts the fascists of both sides have to invest in maintaining this. Look at how much time and money and efforts they have to invest to keep each other in place. And despite this, people of both sides reach for peace, argue and protest for it, even at the risk of their very lives (especially true in Gaza).

And if you refuse to consider all this, if you insist on following Robespierre, remember this : La Veuve came for him too, in the end.

#palestine #israel #hamas attack #revolution fetishists don't care for human lives #empathy #human lives have value #yes even if they're Jewish #Jews are humans too you fucks #and yes #Palestinian lives also have value #because they're humans too #Hamas are terrorist fucks #same ideology that shot up the bataclan #If you wonder why France supports Israel #that's why #Wonder how many Charlie are cheering for their murderers friends #because Charlie was also victim of that ideology #as for the people who weren't Charlie and cheered for that murder too #what's the limit #where does it stops being OK to kill people for living differently #for having different values #free gaza #Free Gaza from Hamas #Free Palestine from Hamas #Free Israel from Netanyahu #Free peace

[spacedykez]

16 and 23 for fandom asks ? :)

16. a tiny detail in canon that you want more people to appreciate

The way the color red is used is actually really genius. This realization started with raving over Lucifer's design, and then i started looking and realized oh, my gosh, THERE'S SOMETHING HERE.

So, Lucifer's design is mostly white. On the outside. But his coat tails, jacket, and hat are all red on the underside/inside, and his striped vest is also much closer to red than his jacket, which is pure white. The white symbolizes heaven/the angels. And Lucifer, out of all the characters in Hazbin, has the most white in his design. No other demons have that much white in their designs*. This is because white is Heaven's color.

Visually, Lucifer's design is literally covering up the red in his outfit with white, which is a perfect analogy for Lucifer's attitude towards heaven and hell. He is the sin of Pride**, after all, and also has never fully accepted that he's the king of hell, as we see in 1x05 when he is talking to Charlie and complains that "They were given free will and look what they did with it! Everything's terrible!" Lucifer doesn't really like the sinners for the same reason that Heaven gives- that they had their chance and they earned their place in hell. Ideologically, Lucifer is still thinking exactly like the angels.

And here's the best part- after Lucifer fights back against Heaven (Adam) in 1x08, he loses his coat. He doesn't have it in Finale. And I think this is very intentional. Because his red and white pinstripe vest isn't totally red, but it's much more red than his pure white coat. This is a visual indicator that Lucifer has, if only slightly, stopped covering up his place as the King of Hell. Red is Hell's color, and more red is visible in his design to show that he's embraced Hell a bit more.

BUT IT DOESN'T END THERE! No! Because looking at Charlie, what color do we see very strongly? Red! She wears a full bright red suit, because Charlie has embraced her place as Princess of Hell. She calls the sinners "her people" in 1x01 and this is very clearly reinforced throughout the show by all of her actions. Charlie sees the sinners as her subjects, and so her design is very red, because she is the Princess of Hell, and proud of it!

Next, we have Alastor, who is just entirely red. He is a demon through and through, and he knows it. Everybody knows it. He's meant to be in Hell and WANTS to be in Hell, and his color scheme reflects it. Similarly, Niffty's design is very red, and she's very demonic and likes killing things. Very hellish, very red.

On the flip side, we have Vaggie, whose hair is grey. I would argue that this shows that she is from heaven, but the grey shows that she's not really part of Heaven anymore. Not necessarily because she's part of Hell, but just because she isn't in Heaven anymore. She also wears red, which I think is far more important here, as it shows she is accepting being in Hell.

Even Angel Dust is pink, who again I would argue DOES fit this! Angel has definitely accepted that he's in hell, but he is also not actually very evil or even malicious. He's more of a victim than a villain, and the show sets him up as the prime example of someone who deserves to be in heaven. I happen to agree with this, but regardless, Angel Dust being pink suggests that he is still in Hell and doesn't hide it, but doesn't fully deserve to be in Hell. Pink is a blend between red and white, and this fits with Angel Dust being in Hell but embodying the values of Heaven.

Bonus: Lilith is... purple? Unsure how that fits in to this, but I'm very interested to see it. Her silhoutte is red in the opening animation, though, while Lucifer's stays white the whole time- she embraces being Queen of Hell and is red, while Lucifer is only ever colored in the white of Heaven.

tl:dr; this show uses red and white in a genius way to show characters' attitude towards and relation to Heaven

*angel dust doesn't count because his FUR is white which i am going to equate to his "skin color," which i am not including in this.

**i feel like some people forget this- just because he has depression and acts quirky doesn't mean he isn't prideful, and he is very prideful. i could write a whole post just on this

23. the fandom you're curious about because of a mutual tmagp

#asks #coolestguyonearth #hazbin hotel #hh #analysis #lucifer #charlie #alastor #vaggie #angel dust

[thelesbiancanary]

I was a victim of this woke lgbt-gender ideology.

I'm a lesbian woman. That's it.

But, during quarantine, I was sucked into woke ideology. I went through multiple stages in my life where I believed I was pangender, bigender, genderfluid, nonbinary, and I even was made to believe that I was trans.

I even told all of my friends that I was trans (ftm), that I would no longer be going by she/her pronouns, and that I wanted to be called a boy name. I told my mom that I wanted to cut my hair short and I started wearing more boy-ish clothes. I was made to hate my chest, and I even thought about buying binders behind my parents backs.

I changed my name every other day. One day I told my friends that I wanted to be called Blair, but then the next day, I told them that I wanted to be called Charlie, and then again the next day, I told them that I wanted to be called Skye, and so on.

I also changed my pronouns every other day, one day I would say that I go by he/him pronouns, and then the next day I'd say that I go by they/them pronouns, and it went on in a continuous cycle like that for a over a YEAR.

Now, I don't even see the point in putting my pronouns in my bio because it's obvious that I'm a woman.

I was just a young, gullible kid who just wanted to feel special.

If I didn't wake up and realize that it was all BS, I would've been able to make irreversible choices that I was far too young to make. If you would've told me that you could get rid of my chest, I would've jumped at the chance. Now, I'm so glad that I didn't. I'm glad I woke up before I ruined my life.

I love my chest, I love girly things, I love being a woman in general. We need to start teaching young girls that it's okay to be girls, we need to start teaching them that just because they may be tom-boyish, it does NOT mean that they're trans.

The woke-left claims to be against gender stereotypes, but then they claim that every man who dresses feminine is trans and that every woman who dresses masculine is trans. They're reinforcing gender stereotypes, not breaking them.

#lgbt #lgbt discourse #woke culture #woke culture sucks #transgender #woke ideology

[qu-film-history-to-1968]

The Great Dictator or The Greatest Anti-Nazi Film Made

Julia Merolle

     After watching The Great Dictator (1940) directed by Charlie Chaplin this week, it has strong anti-Nazi themes in it. It also connects to reading, The Hollywood War Film: 1942-1944 by Dorothy B. Jones. This reading discusses films that came out during World War II how they represented the war and what themes they were showing. The reading also discusses inaccurate depictions of the war through film, as not every country was involved in it. 

     In the film, The Great Dictator (1940) directed by Charlie Chaplin, there are many instances of anti-Nazi themes. Charlie Chaplin plays two characters, a Jewish barber and Adenoid Hynkel, a parody of Adolf Hitler. The plot has an A plot and B plot type of story where it switches between the Barber’s life and Hynkel’s life. In a quote by Jones, she states, “During 1942 and 1943 the quality of home-front stories was consistently low. In most films, such activities were given a comedy treatment.” This connects to The Great Dictator, even though it came out two years prior to the years Jones listed. Chaplin uses comedy in the film, between the traditional “tramp” chase scenes between Chaplin and the parody Nazi soldiers and the comedic banging of the pan on the soldiers' heads from Paulette Goddard’s Hannah. Chaplin took a terrifying situation that victims of the Holocaust had to endure and decided to turn it into a comedy as a way to cope with it. Instead of the terrible outcome that happened in history, Chaplin makes the soldiers lost in the scene and the Barber the winner, as seen below.

     Another scene that stood out to me when watching The Great Dictator was the scene where the Barber switches places with Adenoid Hynkel. This was probably the most important scene of the film because it determined the outcome, which was peace. The Barber pretends to be Adenoid Hynkel and makes a very serious speech about war and all of Hitler’s ideologies. This is important because Chaplin is known for comedies and at this moment, his most famous film, is one of the most serious parts of cinema ever, which is shown above. This scene in addition to the scene with Hannah hitting the soldiers with the pans shaped the wartime messages in this film because it shows how stupid the soldiers and leaders of the war are in the eyes of Chaplin and that peace, laughter, and comedy are the answer.

  Sources:

Jones, Dorothy B. “The Hollywood War Film: 1942-1944.” University of California Press, University of California Press, 1 Oct. 1945, online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-abstract/1/1/1/37212/The-Hollywood-War-Film-1942-1944?redirectedFrom=fulltext. 

#submission

[robbyrobinson]

Smiling Friends Villains: Least to Most Evil

The gold medal of evil goes to Mip a Hobbit-like creature that Pim and Charlie met in the Enchanted Forest when they were tasked to make the princess smile. At first, he seems helpful and friendly quickly hitting it off well with Charlie, but it is revealed that he was actually the reason the princess was unable to smile because he stalked her until she had to relocate and disconnect from her social media. The gift that he wanted to give the princess actually turns out to be a bomb he was intending on killing her with, uncaring that Charlie and Pim would also be in the blast, likely his way of spiting Pim. Worse is how his actions slightly correlate with the attempted murder of Ricardo Lopez.

The Prince of Darkness stabs his way to the silver medal. While he is the Devil, after all, he causes Hell to freeze over due to his mismanagement. When Charlie is sent to Hell, he sees that the Devil was in the same situation as him: demoralized and unmotivated having become addicted to junk food, gaming, and vaping. In fact, he comes off as being a pretty chill guy even politely interacting with a food deliveryman. However, once Charlie tries to give him constructive criticism, the Devil reveals how much of a sadist he could truly be by having Charlie get tortured for his amusement and back out of his deal to let Charlie go because he pissed him off. Luckily, Gilbert Gottfriend descends from up high and rescues Charlie.

Bronze goes to the Smiling Friends' counterparts the Frowning Friends. Consisting of Grim and Gnarly, the two resolve to make everyone in the world frown and eradicate the Puerto Ricans. Grim, being Pim's counterpart, is the more vocal of the two when spreading the word of his ideology, and yet like any faux-nihilist, he quickly exposes himself as a hypocrite when the Boss threatens him with a gun. The bliblies are a race of critters that are completely chaotic and psychotic committing acts of malice for no seeming rhyme or reason. When Alan's precious cheese is stolen, he finds one of them who appears harmless enough. But when Alan goes to get his cheese, the bliblie stabs his finger with a paperclip. Swarms of these chaotic evil monsters crucify Alan and wreak havoc in the facility but thankfully at that moment, Desmond realized his purpose in life. If it had to be further stated that these creatures are evil, they reappear in the season 1 finale to join in on the torture Charlie was receiving.

The Forest Demon appears in the Halloween special where he tries to kill Pim. His death is horrific, but you can't deny he had it coming.

Hello, Mr. Frog is next. Hello. The star of the Mr. Frog show which ran for 47 seasons, Mr. Frog gets canceled for stuffing a TMZ journalist in his gullet. But that is the least of his problems: Mr. Frog turns out to be a complete psychotic who takes heavy drugs and commits acts of violence while being completely affable. Even when he gets his show back, it only happens when he eats his former boss in about two seconds. That, and he wasn't completely cured with the ending implying that he will continue his insane ways to some degree.

DJ Spit comes off as a seemingly okay Critter if a little scatter-brained. But that all goes out the window when he mistakes Pim and Charlie for the Frowning Friends and whips out his gun.

Mr. Man at first is a victim of the Frowning Friends' lies and has a similar reaction to Pim and Charlie like DJ Spit had. But he openly states that he actually wanted to kill the Puerto Ricans.

The least evil goes to Rex, Mr. Frog and Glep's former boss. While he is right in that Mr. Frog was toxic, what he failed to realize was people were outraged with what Mr. Frog did OUTSIDE the show and not what he always did in the TV series. He is clearly meant to be a take that to the hypocrisy of executive producers when he hires Glep to be Mr. Frog's replacement for his spitting, only to then force him to quit it due to it being "toxic." Even when that was the exact reason he hired him to begin with. Suffice to say, no one misses him when he gets nommed.

#smiling friends

[stagtic]

Send me a character and I’ll say ... [ x ]

@ladiesofhell​ said:

Charlie?

What I love about them: i’m a sucker for optimistic, kind goofballs and i love that she’s aware that bad people exist, she just ... wants to give them a chance to prove they can be more. What I hate about them: how the FUCK does her nose work. what IS it. it confounds me. Favorite Moment/Quote: “ yeah, well ... how does it feel i got your pen, huh? BITCH. ” also her jumping behind the pop up video of angel dust to try and block it because that shit kills me. What I would like to see more focus on: her ideology, how it’s gonna hold up. rewatching the pilot, i notice that her song emphasizes the fact she seems to see her job as just ... taking people’s sins away rather than addressing the actual issues that cause them and none of the demons she supposedly “ helps ” look very happy afterwards. so i’m curious to see how she’s gonna actually operate, what her plan is. What I would like to see less focus on: her as some helpless victim to alastor. she KNOWS he’s bad news. she’s aware he has bad intentions. she’s putting faith in him because it’s what she believes in, not because she’s stupid. Favorite pairing with: chalastor because i’m a fuckin’ FOOL for opposing viewpoints learning to find some kind of harmony with each other. i also super love husklie. very glad chaggie’s canon as i’d prolly ship her with all the girls in the show anyways PFF. Favorite friendship: I WANT HER AND ANGEL TO BE FRAAAAANDS. terribly underrated dynamic imo. NOTP: nothin’ i can think of? Favorite headcanon: my hc is that since she’s a rich kid she had TONS of extracurriculars. to include really physical stuff like boxing so she’s toned. something like the kind of physique serena williams has, where she’s got curves but is also quite fit.

#;ask #;out of broadcast #;meme response #ladiesofhell #chalastor // #husklie //

[reasonandempathy]

News: Andy Ngo, a gay Vietnamese journalist who is the child of immigrants was viciously attacked by white thugs in masks in Pride Month. However, because he is conservative who writes for a independent paper and the masked attackers are Antifa, too many liberals are cheering for the attackers instead since Andy is not their ideal victim. Because if he was a liberal journalist writing for a Liberal paper who got attacked by Neo Nazis/Klan instead, the same liberals would be outraged by now.

Firstly, I am walking into this with no knowledge of what happened.  While searching for new employment I’ve largely stopped doing much of anything political.

That being said:

I actually tried to find “liberals are cheering” and couldn’t actually find it.  I found a Daily Caller article that tries and fails to paint it as a left-wing positive reaction.

Daily Caller linked a politico writer who was doing anything but cheering.

Jill Filipovic, btw, has 10x the presence as Alheli, and is a fellow at New America.

Some random dude Nathan Bernard is being a complete jackass on twitter about it, but he’s also a left-wing troll and “mainstream” liberal outlets have been denouncing him since 2018, so while he is celebrating, he’s a troll, so I don’t take him seriously in any fashion, nor do I ascribe him to the general intent of a political ideology. Troll gonna troll, and trolls are horrible people.

There’s also CNN and New York Times people denouncing what happened, calling antifa agitators, and more.  In the same daily caller article.

CNN’s Brian Stelter had a different reaction, writing on Twitter Saturday that authorities should get to “the bottom of this.” Antifa should not be “attacking a messenger,” he added.

New York Times writer Charlie Warzel also chimed in on Antifa’s actions.

“This is whole event should be seen through the context of what it is … an information war. A number of people who go to these protests are looking for fights or to document them. they’re all livestreaming. When tensions boil over, it’s meant to be ammunition for a culture war,” Warzel wrote in a Saturday tweet.

So you’ve got the Daily Caller bringing up 4 liberal reactions to this:

Someone from politico with 10k followers denouncing antifa but saying that this isn’t particularly new or unexpected, and saying that it shouldn’t happen, is unacceptable, and hurts the cause.

A left-wing troll being a troll.  A shit, but him being horrible isn’t new.

CNN saying that Antifa should be investigated and whoever attacked Andy should be arrested, with Antifa being in the wrong.

Someone from the NYT implying antifa are actively stoking culture war and are going out there looking for fights.

So...Anon...I tried.  I can’t find anything indicative of “liberals celebrating” as a trend or something noteworthy.  The Daily Caller couldn’t even do that.

The concept of Liberals (side-note: antifa aren’t liberal, by any definition of the word) yet another instance of right-wing grifters and ideologues just making shit up wholecloth to smear political opponents.

Not making up the assault, but making up its relevance, its support in left-wing politics, and its import. EDIT:

Andy Ngo knows damn well antifa ain’t anybody’s friend and are more than happy to attack people on the left (this isn’t news, but to some people it might be) but he’s still more than happy to call them far-leftists when he’s being curt and glib, while defending Proud Boys, who literally have it in their requirements for joining that they proactively attack people on the Left.

I have zero empathy for the man.  I don’t endorse what happened to him, but he isn’t entitled to anything more.

#andy ngo #politics #antifa #liberals #liberalism #original content

[bountyofbeads]

Jeffrey Epstein and When to Take Conspiracies Seriously https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/opinion/jeffrey-epstein-suicide.html

When you have the #POTUS pushing conspiracy theories about the former president we are in DANGEROUS territory. The #ClintonBodyCount is being pushed by Russia and bots. We can't jump to conclusions until we have the facts. BEWARE

Jeffrey Epstein and When to Take Conspiracies Seriously

Sometimes conspiracy theories point toward something worth investigating. A few point toward the truth.

By Ross Douthat | Published August 13, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 13, 2019 |

The challenge in thinking about a case like the suspicious suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, the supposed “billionaire” who spent his life acquiring sex slaves and serving as a procurer to the ruling class, can be summed up in two sentences. Most conspiracy theories are false. But often some of the things they’re trying to explain are real.

Conspiracy theories are usually false because the people who come up with them are outsiders to power, trying to impose narrative order on a world they don’t fully understand — which leads them to imagine implausible scenarios and impossible plots, to settle on ideologically convenient villains and assume the absolute worst about their motives, and to imagine an omnicompetence among the corrupt and conniving that doesn’t actually exist.

Or they are false because the people who come up with them are insiders trying to deflect blame for their own failings, by blaming a malign enemy within or an evil-genius rival for problems that their own blunders helped create.

Or they are false because the people pushing them are cynical manipulators and attention-seekers trying to build a following who don’t care a whit about the truth.

For all these reasons serious truth-seekers are predisposed to disbelieve conspiracy theories on principle, and journalists especially are predisposed to quote Richard Hofstadter on the “paranoid style” whenever they encounter one — an instinct only sharpened by the rise of Donald Trump, the cynical conspiracist par excellence.

But this dismissiveness can itself become an intellectual mistake, a way to sneer at speculation while ignoring an underlying reality that deserves attention or investigation. Sometimes that reality is a conspiracy in full, a secret effort to pursue a shared objective or conceal something important from the public. Sometimes it’s a kind of unconscious connivance, in which institutions and actors behave in seemingly concerted ways because of shared assumptions and self-interest. But in either case, an admirable desire to reject bad or wicked theories can lead to a blindness about something important that these theories are trying to explain.

Here are some diverse examples. Start with U.F.O. theories, a reliable hotbed of the first kind of conspiracizing — implausible popular stories about hidden elite machinations.

It is simple wisdom to assume that any conspiratorial Fox Mulder-level master narrative about little gray men or lizard people is rubbish. Yet at the same time it is a simple fact that the U.F.O. era began, in Roswell, N.M., with a government lie intended to conceal secret military experiments; it is also a simple fact, lately reported in this very newspaper, that the military has been conducting secret studies of unidentified-flying-object incidents that continue to defy obvious explanations.

So the correct attitude toward U.F.O.s cannot be a simple Hofstadterian dismissiveness about the paranoia of the cranks. Instead, you have to be able to reject outlandish theories and  acknowledge a pattern of government lies and secrecy around a weird, persistent, unexplained feature  of human experience — which we know about in part because the U.F.O. conspiracy theorists keep banging on about their subject. The wild theories are false; even so, the secrets and mysteries are real.

Another example: The current elite anxiety about Russia’s hand in the West’s populist disturbances, which reached a particularly hysterical pitch with the pre-Mueller report collusion coverage, is a classic example of how conspiracy theories find a purchase in the supposedly sensible center — in this case, because their narrative conveniently explains a cascade of elite failures by blaming populism on Russian hackers, moneymen and bots.

And yet: Every conservative who rolls her or his eyes at the “Russia hoax” is in danger of dismissing the reality that there is a Russian plot against the West — an organized effort to use hacks, bots and rubles to sow discord in the United States and Western Europe. This effort is far weaker and less consequential than the paranoid center believes, it doesn’t involve fanciful “Trump has been a Russian asset since the ’80s” machinations … but it also isn’t something that Rachel Maddow just made up. The hysteria is overdrawn and paranoid; even so, the Russian conspiracy is real.

A third example: Marianne Williamson’s long-shot candidacy for the Democratic nomination has elevated the holistic-crunchy critique of modern medicine, which often shades into a conspiratorial view that a dark corporate alliance is actively conspiring against American health, that the medical establishment is consciously lying to patients about what might make them well or sick. Because this narrative has given anti-vaccine fervor a huge boost, there’s understandable desire among anti-conspiracists to hold the line against anything that seems like a crankish or quackish criticism of the medical consensus.

But if you aren’t somewhat paranoid about how often corporations cover up the dangers of their products, and somewhat paranoid about how drug companies in particular influence the medical consensus and encourage overprescription — well, then I have an opioid crisis you might be interested in reading about. You don’t need the centralized conspiracy to get a big medical wrong turn; all it takes is the right convergence of financial incentives with institutional groupthink. Which makes it important to keep an open mind about medical issues that are genuinely unsettled, even if the people raising questions seem prone to conspiracy-think. The medical consensus is generally a better guide than crankishness; even so, the tendency of cranks to predict medical scandals before they’re recognized is real.

Finally, a fourth example, circling back to Epstein: the conspiracy theories about networks of powerful pedophiles, which have proliferated with the internet and peaked, for now, with the QAnon fantasy among Trump supporters.

I say fantasy because the details of the QAnon narrative are plainly false: Donald Trump is not personally supervising an operation against “deep state” child sex traffickers any more than my 3-year-old is captaining a pirate ship.

But the premise of the QAnon fantasia, that certain elite networks of influence, complicity and blackmail have enabled sexual predators to exploit victims on an extraordinary scale — well, that isn’t a conspiracy theory, is it? That seems to just be true.

And not only true of Epstein and his pals. As I’ve written before, when I was starting my career as a journalist I sometimes brushed up against people peddling a story about a network of predators in the Catholic hierarchy — not just pedophile priests, but a self-protecting cabal above them — that seemed like a classic case of the paranoid style, a wild overstatement of the scandal’s scope. I dismissed them then as conspiracy theorists, and indeed they had many of conspiracism’s vices — above all, a desire to believe that the scandal they were describing could be laid entirely at the door of their theological enemies, liberal or traditional.

But on many important points and important names, they were simply right.

Likewise with the secular world’s predators. Imagine being told the scope of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged operation before it all came crashing down — not just the ex-Mossad black ops element but the possibility that his entire production company also acted as a procurement-and-protection operation for one of its founders. A conspiracy theory, surely! Imagine being told all we know about the late, unlamented Epstein — that he wasn’t just a louche billionaire (wasn’t, indeed, a proper billionaire at all) but a man mysteriously made and mysteriously protected who ran a pedophile island with a temple to an unknown god and plotted his own “Boys From Brazil” endgame in plain sight of his Harvard-D.C.-House of Windsor pals. Too wild to be believed!

And yet.

Where networks of predation and blackmail are concerned, then, the distinction I’m drawing between conspiracy theories and underlying realities weakens just a bit. No, you still don’t want to listen to QAnon, or to our disgraceful president when he retweets rants about the #ClintonBodyCount. But just as Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s network of clerical allies and enablers hasn’t been rolled up, and the fall of Bryan Singer probably didn’t get us near the rancid depths of Hollywood’s youth-exploitation racket, we clearly haven’t gotten to the bottom of what was going on with Epstein.

So to worry too much about online paranoia outracing reality is to miss the most important journalistic task, which is the further unraveling of scandals that would have seemed, until now, too implausible to be believed.

Yes, by all means, resist the tendency toward unfounded speculation and cynical partisan manipulation. But also recognize that in the case of Jeffrey Epstein and his circle, the conspiracy was real.

Epstein Suicide Conspiracies Show How Our Information System Is Poisoned

With each news cycle, the false-information system grows more efficient.

By Charlie Warzel | Published August 11, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 13, 2019 "|

Even on an internet bursting at the seams with conspiracy theories and hyperpartisanship, Saturday marked a new chapter in our post-truth, choose-your-own-reality crisis story.

It began Saturday morning, when news broke that the disgraced financier  Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself in a Manhattan jail. Mr. Epstein’s death, coming just one day after court documents from one of his accusers were unsealed, prompted immediate suspicion from journalists, politicians and the usual online fringes.

Within minutes, Trump appointees, Fox Business hosts and Twitter pundits  revived a decades-old conspiracy theory, linking the Clinton family to supposedly suspicious deaths. #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily trended on Twitter. Around the same time, an opposite hashtag — #TrumpBodyCount — emerged, focused on President Trump’s decades-old ties to Mr. Epstein. Each hashtag was accompanied by GIFs and memes picturing Mr. Epstein with the Clintons or with Mr. Trump to serve as a viral accusation of foul play.

The dueling hashtags and their attendant toxicity are a grim testament to our deeply poisoned information ecosystem — one that’s built for speed and designed to reward the most incendiary impulses of its worst actors. It has ushered in a parallel reality unrooted in fact and helped to push conspiratorial thinking into the cultural mainstream. And with each news cycle, the system grows more efficient, entrenching its opposing camps. The poison spreads.

Mr. Epstein’s apparent suicide is, in many ways, the post-truth nightmare scenario. The sordid story contains almost all of the hallmarks of stereotypical conspiratorial fodder: child sex-trafficking, powerful global political leaders, shadowy private jet flights, billionaires whose wealth cannot be explained. As a tale of corruption, it is so deeply intertwined with our current cultural and political rot that it feels, at times, almost too on the nose. The Epstein saga provides ammunition for everyone, leading one researcher to refer to Saturday’s news as the “Disinformation World Cup.”

At the heart of the online fiasco is Twitter, which has come to largely program the political conversation and much of the press. Twitter is magnetic during huge breaking stories; news junkies flock to it for up-to-the-second information. But early on, there’s often a vast discrepancy between the attention that is directed at the platform and the available information about the developing story. That gap is filled by speculation and, via its worst users, rumormongering and conspiracy theories.

On Saturday, Twitter’s trending algorithms hoovered up the worst of this detritus, curating, ranking and then placing it in the trending module on the right side of its website. Despite being a highly arbitrary and mostly “worthless metric,” trending topics on Twitter are often interpreted as a vague signal of the importance of a given subject.

There’s a decent chance that President Trump was using Twitter’s trending module when he retweeted a conspiratorial tweet tying the Clintons to Epstein’s death. At the time of Mr. Trump’s retweet, “Clintons” was the third trending topic in the United States. The specific tweet amplified by the president to his more than 60 million followers was prominently featured in the “Clintons” trending topic. And as Ashley Feinberg at Slate pointed out in June, the president appears to have a history of using trending to find and interact with tweets.

On Saturday afternoon, a computational propaganda researcher, Renée DiResta, noted that the media’s close relationship with Twitter creates an incentive for propagandists and partisans to artificially inflate given hashtags. Almost as soon as #ClintonBodyCount began trending on Saturday, journalists took note and began lamenting the spread of this conspiracy theory — effectively turning it into a news story, and further amplifying the trend. “Any wayward tweet … can be elevated to an opinion worth paying attention to,” Ms. DiResta wrote. “If you make it trend, you make it true.”

That our public conversation has been uploaded onto tech platforms governed by opaque algorithms adds even more fodder for the conspiratorial-minded. Anti-Trump Twitter pundits with  hundreds of thousands of followers  blamed “Russian bots” for the Clinton trending topic. On the far right, pro-Trump sites like the Gateway Pundit (with a long track record of amplifying  conspiracy theories) suggested that Twitter was suppressing and censoring the Clinton hashtags.

Where does this leave us? Nowhere good.

It’s increasingly apparent that our information delivery systems were not built for our current moment — especially with corruption and conspiracy at the heart of our biggest national news stories (Epstein, the Mueller report, mass shootings), and the platforms themselves functioning as petri dishes for outlandish, even dangerous conspiracy theories to flourish. The collision of these two forces is so troubling that an F.B.I. field office recently identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat. In this ecosystem, the media is frequently outmatched and, despite its best intentions, often acts as an amplifier for baseless claims, even when trying its best to knock them down.

Saturday’s online toxicity may have felt novel, but it’s part of a familiar cycle: What cannot be easily explained is answered by convenient untruths. The worst voices are rewarded for growing louder and gain outsize influence directing narratives. With each cycle, the outrage and contempt for the other build. Each extreme becomes certain its enemy has manipulated public perception; each side is the victim, but each is also, inexplicably, winning. The poison spreads.

#u.s. news #politics #donald trump #trump administration #politics and government #white house #president donald trump #us: news #republican politics #international news #must reads #world news #democrats #democracy #criminal-justice #impeachthemf #jeffrey epstein #trumpism #sex trafficking #justicedept

[dearmrsbitch]

March 29, 2019 - Mrs. Bitch says “Fuck off Nazis!”

         Q. Bad time for the radicalization conversation: For the last nine months or so, my younger cousin has been using social media as an outlet for making increasingly brazen dog whistle posts about white nationalism. Horrifyingly, his latest escalation was a post using language borrowed from the New Zealand mosque shooter’s manifesto.        

         Prudie, I follow these issues closely, and it’s possible I’m the only member of the family who recognizes this cousin’s rhetoric for what it really is. I also realize that families, friends, and neighbors often must intervene when young men show signs of radicalization. The problem? This is all coming to a head as our grandfather, the family patriarch, is likely at the end of his life. The whole family is pulling together to make his last days comfortable ones, and I don’t know if now would be a rotten time to potentially create a huge rift by talking to my cousin, and whether it would even do any good. We’re not close and there’s already tension between me and his MAGA-aligned family anyway.        

         So what should be my approach? Talk to him right now, before his awful worldview further solidifies? Wait to talk to him until after things with our grandfather are settled? Bring my concerns to another relative that he has a better relationship with? Or should I just ignore him and hope he wakes up to the hatefulness of his views?       

Dear Head on Straight,

Radicalization is often catalyzed by events like this.  What happens if when grandpa dies, he goes on a shooting spree?

Far too often in America, we let young white men rant and rave online for years, thinking they’re just “venting” etcetera, when stats show that they are the most likely to grab the gun and kill. 

We know that the pattern is - “Violent right wing rhetoric / religious rhetoric = possible shooter.”  We don’t see that with other ideologies, etc.  At least, not a lot.

Generally, you also have to have some mental issues if you think “dem Mexicans is tekking mah jobs!” or that “All Muslims er terrists!” or “Trump is a good president.”  Your mind isn’t exactly rooted in reality - but instead in reactionary. That’s the difference between liberal radicals and conservative radicals - I may be radical and liberal, but I’m not stupid enough to shoot up Charlie Hebdo or a black church because I live in the reality where that doesn’t do anything towards my end goals. 

We need to report people who openly post violent rhetoric that glorifies shooters, etc.  You can’t really do anything personally except make it known, take screenshots, and give those screenshots to the local police.  They need to know if someone like him is out there.  You don’t have to tell anyone that you went to the cops, okay?  But you should tell members of the family that you worry that he may be idolizing a shooter and that can lead to him possibly acting out his own issues in a moment of stress.

If they ignore him, and you, then you can’t do much else.  I mean, this isn’t minority report, so we can’t predict and we don’t want to get into a territory where we are all reporting on each other like McCarthyism, but we do know that there are certain indicators.

We know serial killers are often socio or psychopathic, we know they tend to torture and kill animals, etc. 

We know that spree and mass shooters like these guys tend to have far-right views and ideology, they tend to advertise what they are going to do, they write manifestos, etc.  We know a pattern, that’s why you’re recognizing this and calling it on the mat is responsible. 

Trust me, there’s nothing they could do you that would be worse than if you woke up in a week and saw a video of a bunch of bloody, slaughtered children on a mosque floor that you said nothing about.  At least if you said something... at least if you had said something... conscience conscience.

The pig who shot up New Zealand advertised what he was going to do, he even posted a link to his facebook profile, well in advance, and invited message board members to view it live. 

Now, what if someone had said something?

Mrs. Bitch is going to confess something here - I have seen the New Zealand shooting video.  (Not in real time, but shortly after the events happened) It is not worth watching, but I saw it in the middle of the night when someone reposted it on my feed and I watched it before the whole “take it down” thing started up in the morning East Coast time.  At the time, I thought it was a joke or a hoax or something just sick and put my phone away, not realizing that some of my friends down under were wondering what had already transpired in NZ and if it was true themselves. 

I’m saying this because, when I looked at the board where he threatened to do this, it was obvious that tons of people were actively watching this play out in real time as per their comments and time stamps.  Secondly, the video, does have a considerable amount of time, where someone, with a head on their shoulder, with a heart, could have called the cops and said, “This guy is threatening to do this, he’s in his car, he is saying that he’s driving there now, here’s his car description, and license, please just perform a check.”  A routine traffic stop would have exposed him, since in the video, any cop would have seen the arsenal he was carrying just by looking inside, and there was enough time to catch him between the start of the video, and the start of what he did.

If - someone - had taken the clues and the initiative.  Maybe?  One less life lost is one less at least.

Speak up.  Believe people when they say “I’m gonna shot up a mosque” or “I’m gonna hit a black guy.”  When people show you who they are - believe them. 

Mrs. Bitch

(Oh yeah, and fuck PewdiePie.  He’s not a victim, and you need to unsubscribe.  More people are lead down the right wing rabbit hole through gateway assholes like him than Saargon the fucker, and they are bad people.)

#dearmrsbitch #dear prudie #new zealand #fuck nazis #report nazis

[xtruss]

People Forget Just How “Woke” Osama bin Laden Was

In the 1990s the CNN and al-Qaeda agreed that West didn't bomb Serbs "quickly enough" because of how racist it was to Muslims

“There often seems to be an interplay between the Western culture of victimhood, which sees being a Muslim as one of the highest forms of victimhood, and the terroristic culture of grievance”

When the politics of victimhood turned violent

9/11 was an act of apocalyptic identitarianism.

— Brendan O’Neill | Anti-Empire | Spiked

Twenty years on from 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still viewed as the ultimate evil outsider. The foreign enemy who brought death and destruction to America. The implacable foe of the West, and of modernity more broadly. The footage of him in modest dress and humble surroundings in some holdout in Afghanistan, belying his Saudi origins and his vast wealth, contrasts with the gleaming opulence and swagger of the city he sent his men so savagely to attack on 11 September 2001. And yet the truth about bin Laden, and about 9/11 itself, has always been more complicated than this. In many ways, bin Laden was as much a product of the West, and in particular of its politics of grievance, as he was its most feared terroristic enemy. His reign of terror can be seen as a violent manifestation of what has since come to be known as wokeness.

Al-Qaeda and bin Laden in particular were keen followers of the fads and thinking of Western opinion-formers, particularly radical and liberal ones. Of course bin Laden’s speeches were peppered with the thoughts of Islamist ideologues and Muslim Brotherhood leaders. But these seemingly religious declarations sat oddly alongside quotations from Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky, a feverish embrace of Western conspiracy theories, concerns about climate change, and a bristling against ‘Big Media’ and ‘bloodsucking’ corporations. Bin Laden was an ideological magpie, always seeking the on-trend woke concern through which his desire to manifest his ‘intensely personal feelings’, to give voice or violence to his movement’s culture of grievance, might be most aptly and impactfully expressed.

At times he sounded indistinguishable from Michael Moore. The war in Iraq is ‘making billions of dollars for the big corporations’, he said. He spoke in a self-consciously therapeutic style, even on manifestly political issues like Palestine. So in 2004 he spoke of the need to ‘raise awareness’ about the ‘justice of our causes, primarily Palestine’. Bizarrely, he implored the ‘scholars, media and businessmen’ of Europe to assist in this raising of awareness. (1) Most notable was his fascination with Western environmentalism. At times he sounded like an ageing hippy. His plea to Americans to ‘save humanity from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny’ would not sound out of place at an Extinction Rebellion gathering.

Bin Laden’s eco-commentary was testament to the extent to which his worldview was shaped as much by the Western ideas swirling around in the globalised networks that al-Qaeda also inhabited as it was by classical forms of Islamic fundamentalism. In 2002 he reprimanded the US for having ‘destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases, more than any other nation in history’.

President Bush is interrupted at 9:07 a.m. during a school visit in Sarasota, Florida., by Andrew Card, his chief of staff, and informed that a second plane has hit the World Trade Center. Paul J. Richards / AFP

Hilariously, he upbraided President George W Bush for ‘refus[ing] to sign the Kyoto Agreement’. There is something undeniably surreal about a mass-murderer outlaw lecturing Western leaders for failing to adhere to global treaties drawn up by the UN. In 2007 he said, ‘all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations’. Guardian reader much? Then, in 2009, to mark the election of Barack Obama, he essentially implored us all to join Greenpeace. ‘The world should put its efforts into attempting to reduce the release of gases’, he nagged.

Bin Laden’s XR-style declarations, his imbibing of woke fears for the future of the planet, initially appeared incongruous. He kills thousands of people and then worries about the deaths of thousands of people in a future climate catastrophe? And yet the fact that al-Qaeda was an environmentalist outfit as well as an Islamist one actually makes sense. It revealed much about both the form and the content of this strange and modern movement.

In terms of form, as Devji has controversially argued, what al-Qaeda and other modern movements, including environmentalism, share in common is a post-nation worldview, a self-consciously globalist approach: ‘The issues of concern to them are strictly global. They cannot be dealt with by solutions at [the] national level.’ In common with ‘global movements like environmentalism’, al-Qaeda had ‘no coherent political programme’, says Devji.

And in terms of content, the temptation of the green outlook to bin Laden seems clearly to have lied in what environmentalism fundamentally facilitates: an expression of disdain for contemporary society, especially industrialised society. If bin Laden was anti-Western, which he undoubtedly was, his view appears to have been shaped as much as by the anti-Westernism that is central to woke thinking in the West itself as by traditional Islamist hostility to the West as infidel.

Given its sensitivity to Western thought, especially anti-Western Western thought, it is not surprising that al-Qaeda embraced the culture of complaint too, and even the politics of offence-taking. Alongside bin Laden’s reliance on the therapeutic categories of ‘humiliation’ and ‘degradation’ to explain why al-Qaeda and its violence must exist, his movement also embraced an early version of cancel culture. Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, pursued this theme vigorously in the 2000s. He released numerous statements chastising Western leaders and thinkers for their alleged insults to Islam. In 2007, when it was announced that Salman Rushdie would be knighted, al-Zawahiri denounced ‘malicious Britain’ and directly criticised the Queen for decorating someone who had insulted Islam.

In 2006, al-Zawahiri entered into the Danish cartoons controversy – the fury over the publication of depictions of Muhammad in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten towards the end of 2005. Again, he considered these cartoons to be hurtful, insulting. Strikingly, he adopted the Western identitarian view that insists Muslims are more oppressed than other social or religious groups. ‘[No] one dares to harm Jews or to challenge Jewish claims about the Holocaust nor even to insult homosexuals’, he said. Jews and gays – protected categories. Muslims – permanent victims. He echoed the view of much of the Western intelligentsia at the time, which said that insulting Muhammad could not be described as a freedom-of-speech issue because it was punching down. ‘The insults against Prophet Muhammad are not the result of freedom of opinion [but rather] because what is sacred has changed in this culture’, he complained.

Al-Qaeda militants were early adopters of cancel culture, of raging against that which gives offence. Again, this outlook appeared to come less from the external world of realpolitik, of interests and aims, and more from the internal world of feeling and sentiment. It was not surprising when al-Zawahiri, who appears to have been al-Qaeda’s chief No Platformer, celebrated the assault on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Indeed, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), of which al-Zawahiri was leader, claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack. Al-Zawahiri made a statement shortly after the attack, describing it as payback for the blasphemers, as a just attack on ‘immoral Westerners who left their Christianity and assaulted the Prophet of Islam’. I have argued before that the two mass murderers who carried out the assault on Charlie Hebdo were essentially ‘the armed wing of political correctness’, seeking to punish, to cancel, those who hurt their feelings. This was a theme developed by al-Zawahiri himself in the years before the Charlie Hebdo massacre – the need to censor, with violence if necessary, those who seek to erase our identity.

That al-Qaeda leaders moved from organising the worst terrorist attack in history to issuing statements about Muslims’ hurt feelings or riding on the coattails of smaller-scale attacks like the one at Charlie Hebdo can of course be seen as a sign of how defeated, how shrivelled, their movement had become in the years after 9/11. The ‘war on terror’ undoubtedly reduced al-Qaeda’s capacity to organise terror events. At the same time, though, there is a logical flow from the apocalypticism of 9/11 to the cheerleading for the Charlie Hebdo attack, from al-Qaeda’s use of unprecedented terroristic violence in New York and Washington, DC to its angry, finger-wagging statements about ‘malicious’ Westerners who insult Islam. In all cases, we were witnessing a therapeutic deployment of violence and threats; a use of terrorism not to effect certain ends or to make gains in the political universe, but rather to express an amorphous, often unnamed sense of grievance against societies that are viewed as uncaring, insulting, hurtful.

Left: On Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers attacked New York City's World Trade Center. Sean Adair / Reuters

Right: Smoke comes out from the Southwest E-ring of the Pentagon building September 11, 2001 in Arlington, Virginia after a plane crashed into the building and set off a huge explosion. Alex Wong / Getty Images

This use of terror as a form of grievance has continued following the sidelining of al-Qaeda. Recent terror attacks, in London, Manchester, Paris and elsewhere, appear to have been motivated as much by the terrorists’ cloying sense of victimhood as by their juvenile desire to establish an Islamic caliphate in Europe. What is striking is that this terroristic cult of the victim sits neatly alongside a more mainstream cult of the victim. Indeed, mainstream figures sometimes unwittingly flatter terrorists’ ridiculous sense of victimhood, their seemingly unlimited capacity for self-pity, by arguing that it is indeed Western society’s mistreatment of Muslims that very often pushes them into the arms of al-Qaeda or ISIS.

For example, following the various terrorist attacks in France in 2015, commentators wondered out loud if ‘discrimination against Arabs’ played a role in tempting so many in France to align with ISIS. A writer for the New York Times argued that ‘a feeling of exclusion and disrespect’ can be ‘fertile soil’ for radicalism to take hold. The Grand Mufti of Australia, though he firmly condemned the 2015 attack in Paris, said we have to look at the ‘causative factors’ to such terrorism, which might include ‘racism and Islamophobia’. One of the most disturbing public debates I have been involved in in recent years was at Trinity College, Dublin in 2015, where I sensed a level of sympathy, or at least of understanding, for the terrorists who carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

There often seems to be an interplay between the Western culture of victimhood, which sees being a Muslim as one of the highest forms of victimhood, and the terroristic culture of grievance. Indeed, the Islamophobia industry in the West has thoroughly mainstreamed the idea of Muslim victimhood and inflamed a culture of grievance among those who believe Islam should never be insulted or even criticised.

In the late 1990s, the Runnymede Trust included within its seminal definition of the word ‘Islamophobia’ any view which says that Islam is ‘inferior to the West’. Instead, Islam must be seen as ‘distinctively different but not deficient’ and as being ‘equally worthy of respect’. This fear of ‘Islamophobia’ has generated two decades’ worth of sensitivity and even censorship in public discussion about Islam. It has helped to intensify a culture of separatism and even of injury among some in the Muslim community. If, in these circumstances, some Muslims in the West come to view Western society itself as hostile, as damaging to their identity and their self-esteem, should we really be surprised? Such self-regarding anguish will in part have been cultivated by mainstream thinking around Islam, identitarianism and offence.

Islamist terrorism comes across as a violent manifestation of the culture of victimhood. It looks to me like a function, or at least a product, of the ideology of multiculturalism, of the West’s own cultivation of religious and ethnic separatism and the invitation to anti-Western loathing that multiculturalism implicitly makes to certain communities.

From 9/11 to Charlie Hebdo, from 7/7 to the Manchester Arena bombing, what has tied these divergent barbaric attacks together is an absence of interests as they were traditionally understood and their replacement by violent sentiment, militant self-pity, and an urge to punish or erase the disrespecters of Islam. Islamist nihilism is a species of identity politics in this sense. It is identitarianism turned apocalyptically violent. It is the West’s own self-loathing turned against the West, in bloody form.

Twenty years on from that terrible day in September 2001, it is worth reflecting on the true and complicated nature of Islamist violence. Yes, anyone who attacks or plans to attack our societies should be ruthlessly pursued, and stopped by any means necessary. At the same time, let us explore, honestly, how the regressive ideologies of identity, victimhood and censure mix with neo-fundamentalist Islamist dogma to give rise to forms of violence that threaten our lives and our liberties. And we cannot do that without freedom of speech – including on everything to do with Islam.

On the anniversary of 9/11 it is worth reflecting – for the millionth time, no doubt – on just how unusual this act of barbarism was. Despite a rush of commentators in 2001 shamelessly claiming that the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was violent payback for America’s geopolitical crimes – an apocalyptic revolt against its ‘unabashed national egotism and arrogance’, in the words of then Guardian writer Seumas Milne – in reality 9/11 lacked any of the tangible statements or sentiments of traditional forms of anti-Western terrorism. There were no demands, no list of complaints, no requests to release certain prisoners or to remove Western armies from certain countries. Indeed, the only audible statement made by an al-Qaeda operative on 9/11 itself was ‘We have some planes’. Those words were uttered by Mohamed Atta, the chief hijacker, to air-control chiefs, shortly before he crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

We have some planes. That was it. There was no information as to why they had those planes, why they crashed them into certain targets, what it was for. Indeed, bin Laden initially disavowed responsibility for 9/11. Two weeks after the attack, on 28 September 2001, he made statements suggesting that America had attacked itself. This was proof of how keenly he was following the fallout and, in particular, the rise of conspiracy theories claiming that the Bush administration masterminded the 9/11 spectacle as a way of justifying a cranking-up of the American war machine. Maybe this terrorist attack was carried out by ‘persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity’, he said. It wasn’t me, it was ‘a government within the government in the United States’, he claimed. Of course he later spoke more openly about his role in 9/11. But this early performance of non-responsibility, alongside the striking dearth of treatises or explanations, confirmed how new 9/11 was, how distinct it was from the realpolitik era that preceded it. It lacked ownership, it lacked reason.

As Faisal Devji noted in his fine study of al-Qaeda – Landscapes of the Jihad – this strange terror movement tended to speak in the language of feeling rather than politics. When bin Laden did issue further statements in the 2000s, before his execution by American forces in Pakistan in 2011, he spoke in a style that was more therapeutic than political. As Devji says, al-Qaeda inhabited a world of ‘hurt’. Even when its leaders spoke of traditionally ‘Arab concerns’ – such as the subjugation of Palestine, or later the invasion of Iraq – they did so in the language of ‘humiliation’ and ‘degradation’. And such ‘intensely personal feelings’ are ‘not elements in realpolitik’, Devji argued. ‘Rather, they suggest its opposite: the reduction of a politics of needs, interests and ideas to the world of moral sentiments… For Osama bin Laden, violence is meant not merely to defend Muslims or retaliate against their enemies, but to gain self-respect.’ (My emphasis.)

This was something new. It was distinct both from Arab terrorism in the 1970s and 80s, which was tied to Arab interests, and from the various forms of political Islam in the late 20th century. So where the Islamic Revolution in Iran from 1979 onwards represented an Islamicisation of social interests, an Islamic form given to political and civil society, 9/11 and subsequent acts of Islamist nihilism have lacked any kind of social or political component. Al-Qaeda violence was fundamentally ‘symbolic’, in Devji’s words; it was about ‘effects’ rather than ‘political interventions’. And one of those effects appears, clearly, to have been the expression of grievance, the use of violence to state and perform a sense of woundedness, of victimisation. It is tempting to continue viewing al-Qaeda as the supreme alien force, with its execution of one of the worst acts of violence of modern times, but if we are honest with ourselves we will admit that its replacement of the ‘politics of needs’ with the violence of ‘moral sentiments’ does not feel a million miles away from the cultures of complaint and self-regard that have emerged in the West and have come to be globalised in recent decades.

— Source: Spiked

— Brendan O’Neill is Editor of Spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy

[surly01]

A Bloody Week In Doom March 17, 2019

Prayers for the victims in Christchurch attacks.

“The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

 ― Antonio Gramsci  

The latest monster came to call in Christchurch, New Zealand in a story that dwarfed all others this week. I had some other ideas for what might fill this space this week, then the news from Christchurch, New Zealand, followed by the one-two punch of a Twitler emission rendered all moot. Brenton Tarrant strapped on a helmet camera, loaded a car with weapons, drove to a mosque in Christchurch and began shooting at anyone who came across his line of vision. His helmet-cam helped broadcast the act of mass terror live for the world to watch on social media. As of Sunday, the death toll had reached 50.

Tarrant thus joined the roll call of monsters alongside Stephen Paddock (Las Vegas), Anders Breivik (Norway), Robert Gregory Bowers (Tree of Life Synagogue, Pittsburgh), Omar Mateen (Pulse, Orlando), Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook), Nikolas Cruz (Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school), Devin Patrick Kelley (Sutherland Springs church in Texas), James Holmes (Aurora), Dylann Roof (Charleston, SC), and, of course, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who kicked off the 21st century with the Columbine massacre.

In ancient Rome, an interregnum was a period between stable governments when anything might happen, and the "the blood-dimmed tide" might be loosed:  civil unrest, competition between warlords, power vacuums, wars of succession. In 1929, in such an interregnum found Italian Marxist philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci languishing in a fascist prison, writing about the forces tearing Europe  apart. He anticipated civil unrest, war between nations and changing political fault lines.

Interestingly, it was Gramsci who gave us the term "hegemony" now in use. Hegemony is a three dollar word representing a simple idea: the coercion of smaller fish by bigger fish. When the powerful use their influence to convince the less powerful their best interest lies in doing what is actually in the best interest of the powerful, that's hegemony. When we consider the above list of overwhelmingly white terrorists with a nationalist/supremacist bent, we can see terror is one way the powerful preserve their hegemony when they feel their power begin to wane when frightened by demographic changes posed by immigration.

Trump has the sensibility of a spoiled child tearing the wings off of flies. When asked whether white nationalism has anything to do with the tragedy in Christchurch, he replied in the negative. Echoes of “good people on both sides,” a la Charlottesville. The prime minister of New Zealand indicated late Friday coming changes to New Zealand's gun laws. A striking contrast that makes one wonder how many will have to die, again and again and again, until our own politicians, beholden to the NRA and their sea of laundered rubles, are moved to similarly act.

You'll recall that when it was his time to serve in Vietnam, the self proclaimed White House tough guy came up missing like Dick Cheney and his five deferments. Chickenhawks like Cheney always find "other priorities" to service, but are eager to send the disposable sons and daughters of the poor into harm's way, because what else are they for but cannon-fodder? Real military men who have seen battle are loath to commit their fellow citizens to needless battle; but chickenhawks, untroubled by loss or nightmares, send their non-relatives readily into the Valley of Death. 

The mob-boss stylings of Citrus Caligula make a tough sound, especially when talking to the far right media like Breitbart.

Trump said: "I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher. Like with all the nonsense that they do in Congress … with all this investigations]—that’s all they want to do is –you know, they do things that are nasty. Republicans never played this.”

When you can't bully a majority of the people and the House of Representatives into accepting your will as fiat, that is apparently vicious tactics. Especially on the part of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who Trump refers to as "Nancy."

"So here’s the thing—it’s so terrible what’s happening,” Trump said before discussing his supporters. “You know, the left plays a tougher game, it’s very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don’t play it tougher. Okay?"

Uh, not OK. This is Trump engaging in stochastic terrorism, or

the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.

Trump is actively encouraging people taking the law into their own hands, in the same way Putin has his Night Riders (see below), as Mussolini had his black shirts, and Hitler his brown shirts. The purpose is unmistakable: to be bullyboys who operate outside of the law and through violent intimidation. For the last two years we've had a president who fundamentally does not believe in democracy, and whose recent utterances show no loyalty to either the Constitution or the traditions of American governance. This IS a time of monsters. And now this: 

Trump’s Breitbart Biker Threat Came From the Putin Playbook—Then Tweet Deleted After Mosque Massacre

Trump told Breitbart there could be biker violence against leftists. It sounded even worse after Brenton Tarrant's mosque massacre manifesto called Trump "a symbol of renewed white identity." It does not get much clearer than that.

The Daily Beast Explains the Putinesque origins of Twitler's latest veiled threat: 

"They call themselves The Night Wolves, “a new kind of motorcycle club,” or, sometimes, “Putin’s Angels.” And just as much as the Orthodox Church or the military, the Wolves have become a symbol of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But the idea that they might be used as his extra-legal enforcers in times of trouble is usually implicit—embedded in their flag-waving Putinized patriotism—never really spelled out....Trump is not so subtle, however, especially when he takes his cues from the Kremlin. Leave it to him to put the potential for violent defense of his interests by a motorcycle gang front and center in the public view."

On Friday morning, as news broke of the massacre, the murderer's manifesto called Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” the Breitbart tough-guy tweet came down. Note a wider pattern of American racists and white supremacists looking to Russia for both moral and tactical support.

The New Zealand Massacre Was Made to Go Viral

Outside a mosque in Christchurch on Friday. Mark Baker/Associated Press

Charlie Warzel noted that the attack marks a grim new age of social media-fueled terrorism.

A 17-minute video of a portion of the attack, which leapt across the internet faster than social media censors could remove it, is one of the most disturbing, high-definition records of a mass casualty attack of the digital age — a grotesque first-person-shooter-like documentation of man’s capacity for inhumanity.

Videos of attacks are designed to amplify the terror, of course. But what makes this atrocity “an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence,” as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described it, is both the methodical nature in which the massacre was conducted and how it was apparently engineered for maximum virality.

Even though Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube scrambled to take down the recording, they were no match for the speed of their users or for their algorithms which make connections for people consuming such content. In minutes, the video was downloaded and mirrored onto additional platforms, and ricocheted around the globe.

Warzel notes,

Internet users dredged up the alleged shooter’s digital history, preserving and sharing images of weapons and body armor. The gunman’s apparent digital footprint — from the rantings of a White Nationalist manifesto to his 8chan message board postings before the murders — was unearthed and, for a time, distributed into far-flung corners of the web.

The killer wanted the world’s attention, and by committing an act of mass terror, he was able to get it.

It was not the first act of violence to be broadcast in real-time. Yet this one was different because ofd the perpetrator's apparent familiarity with the darkest corners of the internet. The recording contains numerous references to online and meme culture, including name-checking a prominent YouTube personality. Tarrant knew his audience.

Tarrent's digital trail depicts a white supremacist motivation for the attack. His 87-page manifesto, for instance, is filled with layers of  commentary apparently written to specifically enrage the communities that appear to have helped radicalize the gunman in the first place. It seems he understands both the platform dynamics that allow misinformation and divisive content to spread but also the way to sow discord.

I recently came across an article by Ezra Klein who identifies an ecosphere of YouTube prophets and avatars who populate the "intellectual dark web:" The rise of YouTube’s reactionary right: How demographic change and YouTube’s algorithms are building a new right. Many right wing publishers benefit from YouTube’s algorithms to build the new right. 

YouTube’s recommendation engine follows the digital footsteps we all make. And it sees connections, not context. It knows when audiences repeatedly come together, but does not grasp why. And it predicts what they’re likely to view next. Thus are the "mainstreams" of conservative thought brought into proximity to the far right fringe.

As Klein has it,

"Many of these YouTubers are less defined by any single ideology than they are by a “reactionary” position: a general opposition to feminism, social justice, or left-wing politics."

On YouTube, tomorrow’s politics are emerging today. Tarrant noted this and made the online community work in the gunman’s favor. Our brown shirts are now digital: not only has their conspiratorial hate spread from the internet to real life, it’s also weaponized to go viral. 

Proof That White Supremacy Is an International Terrorist Threat

It stretches from Christchurch to Pittsburgh and extends out in every direction.

The always-dependable Charlie Pierce noted that Anders Breivik, the murderous white-supremacist who killed 72 people in Norway in 2011, has become one of the most significant figures in international terrorism by providing a template for the modern white-supremacist mass murderer.

From Ted Kaczynski, he borrowed the idea of publishing a manifesto. From the Columbine killers, he borrowed the idea of using both bombs and guns. And from the international white-supremacist networks, he borrowed the murderous rage and bloodthirsty rhetoric necessary to carry out acts of mass murder, and to justify his crimes through an elaborate bullshit ideological exoskeleton that he wore like body armor. He put all of this together and created the modern mode of mass political murder, one that was carried out again Thursday in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Pierce notes that Tarrant's latest manifesto

reads like a vicious form of grandiose trolling. But there seems to be little doubt that the crimes themselves speak loudly of the basic truth that this was a right-wing act of war against a target population. And, because of that, we should take the following passage very seriously. The alleged shooter called the President* of the United States "a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose." 

When asked if the rise of white natonalism or white supremacy posed a rising threat around the world, Trump replied, 

“I don’t, really. I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems, I guess.  If you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps that’s the case. I don’t know enough about it yet. But it’s certainly a terrible thing.”

On Sunday, Mick Mulvaney and other staffers made the rounds and insisted that Trump was "Not a White Supremacist." Which speaks volumes.

White supremacy now poses an international terrorist threat stretching from Norway to Pittsburgh, from Christchurch to Las Vegas, sharing objectives with the Night Riders or the Bikers for Trump, but better armed and more purposeful. Brownshirts used to intimidate; the new generation attacks to sow terror in targeted groups. This poses an existential threat to the very notion of liberal democracy. Today the target is Muslims; Tomorrow's target will be...?

For our purposes this week, Charlie Pierce gets the last word:

From [white supremacist terrorism] runs on a parallel track with the rise of a xenophobic rightwing nationalist politics that is conspicuously successful in a number of putatively democratic nations. Liberal democracy is under attack and, like any revolution, this one has both a respectable political front and a violent auxiliary that operates on its own imperatives. That one of those auxiliaries cites both a Norwegian mass murderer and the President* of the United States as inspiration for killing 49 people is not only evidence of the width of the threat, but also the depth of its commitment to the cause. This is the everyday al Qaeda of the angry white soul, and it's growing.

Now is the time of monsters.

[recalculatingthegenderwar]

Feminists use Manchester bombing to push their ideology before bodies even cold

On May 22, 2017 at approximately 22:30 local time a suicide bomber set off an explosive at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England after an Ariana Grande concert had finished. Current count has 23 killed and at least 120 injured.

More information is still coming out as the investigation continues. However, this didn't stop writers from Slate and Salon, no more than 24-hours after the attack, from using the bombing as a springboard to claim that not only were women and girls specifically target, but they are victims of massive societal oppression.

The Bombing at a Manchester Ariana Grande Show Was an Attack on Girls and Women" by Slate's Christina Cauterucci was (assuming U.S. Eastern Standard Time on the byline) published less than 6 hours after the bombing. Even now the true motives of the bomber are still being investigated, but 6 hours after the fact Cauterucci seemed perfectly comfortable suggesting the attack was in retaliation for pop-singer supposedly challenging the big, bad Patrichary.

"Like her pop-superstar predecessor Britney Spears, Grande has advanced a renegade, self-reflexive sexuality that’s threatening to the established heteropatriarchal order. If the Manchester bombing was an act of terrorism, its venue indicates that the attack was designed to terrorize young girls who idolize Grande’s image." [emphasis added]

Cauterucci even tries to subtlety weave in undertones of rape and slut-shaming:

Grande has long been the target of sexist rhetoric that has deemed her culpable for any sexual objectification or animosity that’s come her way. Her songs and wardrobe are sexy, yet she’s maintained a coy, youthful persona; the combination has led some haters to argue that she’s made her fortune by making people want to have sex with her, so whatever related harm befalls her is entirely her fault. [emphasis added]

It's confusing what Cauterucci is even suggesting here. Is she suggesting the bomber was some kind of misogynist Grande-hater? It doesn't help Cauterucci's point that attackers didn't appear to make any concentrated effort to harm Grande. The bomb went off after the concert ended, which makes sense if your goal is take out as many people as possible (people crowd together up as they rush for exists), but not if you are trying to assassinate Grande. Cauterucci even acknowledges that the attack didn't explicitly target women and girls, just a venue where there were likely to be a many women and girls:

"The victims of Monday’s bombing will almost certainly be mostly girls and women. The Grande fan demographic also includes a number of older millennial women, gay men, and general lovers of pop music, of course, but her live concerts are largely populated by tween and teenage girls and their moms."

Of course, Cauterucci doesn't have a break down of the gender ratio of the victims, because it hadn't (and still hasn't) been released. At the time Cauterucci published her article, the causality toll hadn't even been settled (Cauterucci's article still lists the death toll at 19 and the injury count at 50). Cauterucci doesn't even try to give us hard data about the gender/age makeup of the concert or Grande's fan base in general.

Salon article is worse

A Salon article entitled "Manchester was an attack on girls" by Mary Elizabeth Williams, is basically the same as the Slate article, but dialed up a few notches. It's more emotional, more bombastic and says even less. This is impressive, since (unlike Slate) Salon waited a full 19 and a half hours after the attack to publish this gem. Almost a full day!

Williams unconvincingly tries to show that young girls are constantly crushed by societal oppression and find brief precious moments of freedom in Ariana Grande's music.

"If you just happen to not be a girl or don’t live with girls, I want to tell you how truly spectacular they are and what they’re up against every goddamn day. I want to remind you what a refuge pop music is — music that speaks to you, without judgment. That makes you feel safe and joyful in a culture that seems to purposefully and ceaselessly try to tear you down. One that seeks to punish you for how you dress, that trivializes your interests and your icons, that obsesses over guarding your purity."

Williams mentions how some people wrote some not nice things on social media (with little evidence to back it up). Perhaps a high crime in the feminist world, but less concerning to most of us, especially when the subject is a deadly bombing. Williams article mostly boils down to 8-paragraphs of emotional venting about how wonderful and oppressed girls are:

"They are so, so strong, these girls — yes, these girls with their goofy Snapchat streaks and their mermaid hair and their willingness to love things unironically. Their courage and their grace would knock you out. And if you want to know what ferocious resilience looks like, take a look sometime at a young girl and her bestie, sharing a set of earbuds and dancing, in spite of it all."

Remember all of those terrorists attacks that targeted men

In all fairness, the attacker may have targeted the concert because it seemed like they would be many women and girls there (or maybe just because it was an event with lots of people). Unlike Slate and Salon, I'm waiting for the police investigation to be complete. I don't know the attacker's motivation. My point is that neither do Cauterucci and Williams, but that didn't stop them from writing their articles less than 24 hours after the bombing.

If the bomber was trying to kill a high number of women and girls, I imagine it was increase the perceived tragedy of the attack (because under "patriarchy" the deaths of women are seen as uniquely tragic for some reason).

Of course, Cauterucci and Williams really start going off rails by trying to spin the bombing into evidence of widespread oppression of women and/or girls. Here is a riddle for you. If bombing a concert where the fan base is likely mostly female is sexist, what is a shooting at club primarily catering to gay men? You would think Cauterucci and Williams might have asked themselves this question, since they both brought up the 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting in their articles as an example of terrorist/societal oppression.

Was that attack not specifically targeting men? 45 out of 49 of those killed were men (I can't find stats on the other 53 wounded). Now you might argue, that was because they were gay, not because they were men. I guess there just weren't any good lesbian clubs to shoot up. Maybe the bomber didn't mind women, just those pop-music fan women. But rather then splitting hairs over idiotic identity politics, let's have another example. How about the Charlie Hebo Massacre where attackers deliberately and systematically targeted men:

"After culling the women from the men, the victims were mercilessly shot at point-blank range, said Gerald Kierzek, a doctor who spoke to CNN after treating the stunned survivors."

""Sigolene Vinson, a freelance journalist attending the paper’s weekly editorial meeting, hit the floor and hid behind a partition but was grabbed by a gunman who pointed his AK-47 at her head. "You, we will not kill, because we don’t kill women. But read the Quran,” the gunman warned her, before repeatedly shouting “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great.”"

The Mirror seems to provide a slightly different quote from the attacker:

"She said the man told her: “I’m not killing you because you are a woman and we don’t kill women but you have to convert to Islam, read the Qu'ran and wear a veil.” She added that as the man left, he shouted “Allahu akbar, allahu akbar.""

Another Mirror article adds even more detail:

"She said Saïd Kouachi [one of the gunmen] turned towards the editorial room where his brother Chérif had shot Elsa Cayat[a woman], another Charlie writer, and shouted: “We don’t kill women,” three times. The men then left.""

Out of the 12 fatalities, Cayat was the only women. Furthermore, it seems one of the gunmen chewed the other out for killing her. It is unknown why she was the only female victim. There is suspicion that it may be because she was Jewish.

Feminists may counter these attacks don't count because they were committed by men. It doesn't matter. This is the problem with engaging feminist gender warriors. They treat the sexes like two sides in a war and one side (always the male side) has to be fault. You can't just blame ideologies or (God forbid) individuals. The point I'm making is that these terrorists attacks that largely targeted men were not considered sexist (and sexism was definitely not considered the main motivating factor), so there is no grounds to call the Manchester bombing sexist (especially when you don't know the motivation of the attacker).

The smart money is the attacker's motivate was Islamic terrorism. If so, then trying to cram the attack into a simplistic feminist gender war paradigm hinders seriously needed discussion about Islamic radicalization in the U.K.

More To Say

There is a lot more I could write about this because it touches so many nerves: how men are considered the socially acceptable recipients of violence, how tragedy is portrayed as uniquely tragic when it befalls a women("Earth destroyed - women most affected"), how men are genderless "victims" in a tragedy unless they are the villains, how feminists falls over themselves to defend an Islam that would destroy most of the basic freedoms Western women enjoy. Don't even get me started about the state of gender politics in the U.K. It's a country where vaguely defined "misogyny" has been made punishable by law and the courts punish men for rape after they have been found innocent.

There are also reports of a possible female accomplice in the bombings. What could this do the feminist narrative if it pans out?

However, I'll just stop here after pointing out that after the explosion, a nearby homeless man decided to take a break from enjoying his male privilege to help the wounded. But, you know, fuck patriarchy.

More Links

Sargon of Akhad: Never Waste A Tragedy

#antifeminism #feminism #manchester #manchester bombing #united kingdom #england

[futureplanetconcept-blog]

The Social Media Aftermath

In the aftermath of a terrorist attack social media pages go into a frenzy. This is understandable given that everyone is shocked, upset, anxious, scared, and angry that such a vile act has happened on our streets, and that such violence has become commonplace in our cities. The attack in London is, of course, being perceived as an act Islamic Terrorism; therefore, it is received in a predictable way on social media.

 First, the hashtag “PrayForLondon” spreads like wild fire on twitter. Second, everyone’s profile picture changes to the victim nation’s flag. Third, is the denial of any Islamic influence.  “Terrorism has no race, ethnicity, or religion” is the myth we embrace.

The show of solidarity on social media in the wake of the attacks in Paris and Belgium could be cynically viewed as virtue signaling. Most of us presume our neighbours would be saddened by such atrocities; we don’t expect them or need them to declare it publically. However, at this point, post Berlin and London attacks we accept that the social media action is the norm – if we want our friends to see pictures of our meals then surely we also want to share our opinion on a terrorist attack. It is the quickest and most effective way to give a public response on any given topic. I think we should absolutely show solidarity, and if social media is the way to do it most effectively en masse, then so be it. Another benefit of it being used in this way is that it is so visible. The victim’s families can see the huge support from people and that is certainly significant.

 The main problem with the profile picture changes is that the idea stems from the Charlie Hebdo massacre where we all thought we were showing solidarity and respect to the victims, but we actually gave in to the terrorist’s demands. That attack was about enforcing Islamic blasphemy laws on society. Some Muslims believe that the punishment for blasphemy or displaying images of the prophet should be death, and so this group took the law into their own hands and delivered their own justice. Instead of standing up for free speech by publishing the cartoon that triggered a group of Muslims to kill the staff of a magazine, the trend that swept social media was to share a picture of a pencil. This was not a symbol of free speech, but a betrayal of it. Out of fear, not one major media company published the “offensive” cartoon.

The next problem is the denial of Islamic influence. There is a comparison that Jihadist terrorists do no represent Islam, just as Neo-Nazi attacks on immigrants do not represent UKIP, for example. The difference here is crucial. It is a difference of dogmatic belief and manifesto, and it is not simply a matter of interpretation. An “alt right” manifesto can be an ideology that is subscribed to by many, but those people are fully aware that this is just an opinion and not a God given order. However, religious doctrines are believed to be the absolute truth, and are accepted on faith alone. This makes them near impossible to counter-argue if the believer is devout. People often choose to believe that these attacks have nothing to do with religion and will discard religious motives readily. They claim the person was just crazy and had, therefore, wildly misinterpreted the religion or that the murder itself is evidence that murderer cannot be religious. This quote from the Quran is often shared in attempt to prove that.

“If anyone killed a person, it would be as if he killed all of mankind.”

When people who push back on criticism of Islam they usually say, “you’re taking it out of context” or “you’re cherry picking verses,” yet here is a verse cherry picked and misquoted to suggest that Islam has no responsibility. The actual verse reads like this: “Because of that we ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone killed a person not in retaliation of murder, or (and) to spread mischief in the land – it would be as if he killed all mankind, and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind.” – Quran 5:32

The verse clearly states exceptions for retaliation of murder and in war. There is no single person on group authority that can speak for Islam so any of its adherents can interpret this however they like and act accordingly. It is left to the attacker to decide if this is fair retaliation, or an act of “mischief in the land.” To which, no one could credibly say Islam had no responsibility. In accordance with other verses, they also decide who is “innocent.” To address the problem, we must try to understand religion as they understand it and not solely by our own conceptions.

The myth that attacks of this nature have nothing to do with religion, and specifically Islam will be harmful in the long term. How many times do we have to witness a Muslim terrorist invoke their God while murdering someone for us to acknowledge the link? Where straight lines can be drawn between the action and the religious doctrine we must call this out, criticise it, and work to eradicate such harmful beliefs. Here are some straight lines: suicide bombing and the belief in martyrdom, murder of British soldiers in retaliation for war (mischief) in Muslim lands, and death to blasphemers and the idea that God cannot be portrayed in image or insulted.

The problem with our social media trends in the aftermath of terrorism is that they get us no further to a solution and instead we pass around misconceptions of the problem. Of course, the general public shouldn’t need to be experts on Islam -  the onus is on our politicians to address the issues by speaking honestly about them, first of all. Then the public can follow suit and stop digesting and spreading false information. Our illuminated buildings and profile pictures of solidarity will be worthless if we don’t learn from each incident. This is happening too frequently and the global response is the same each time, and frankly not good enough.

#westministerbridge #westminister attack #london #terrorism #parliament #charlie hebdo #islam #Islamism #religion #britain #EU #europe #solidarity #london terror attack

[labourpress]

Peter Dowd speech at the close of tonight's Budget debates

Peter Dowd MP, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, speaking at the close of the Budget debates tonight, said:

Mr Speaker, last week the Chancellor painted a rosy picture of the nation’s finances.

He claimed the Conservative Party’s stewardship had been nothing short of miraculous.

A relaxed Chancellor attempted jokes throughout his speech.

The Prime Minister shoulders shook with amusement. 

Many members opposite chuckled away.

Some of the more experienced Members opposite were watching cautiously, as the nose dive gained velocity.

The Chancellor got it wrong – big time.

Within hours he was attacked by many of his own backbenchers.

He was left hung out to dry by the Prime Minister.

Unsurprisingly, he has faced universal criticism over his plans to raise national insurance to 11 per cent for millions of people who are self-employed.

As Sir Michael Caine, playing the character of Charlie Crooker in the iconic Italian Job movie said to his bumbling side kick.

“You’re only supposed to blow the doors off!”

Well, the debris from the explosion is still in descending.

A manifesto pledge broken - pure and simple.

And since last Wednesday No.10 and No. 11 have been in a briefing war with each trying to blame the other for the fine mess.

Ostensibly, No.10 suggests the Chancellor sneaked the NI rise into the Budget.

Apparently, other shocked Cabinet colleagues have indicated that he failed to mention, that it would break their manifesto pledge.

It’s worrying, Mr Speaker, that Cabinet Ministers don’t know what manifesto commitments they made or perhaps they don’t care?

Then again the Government has an insouciant attitude towards its manifesto commitments. 

First, the Government committed to getting rid of the deficit by 2015 – a promise broken.

Second, they said it would be pushed back to 2019/20 - another broken promise.

Third, they vowed the debt would start to come down after 2015 – another broken promise.

The Government will have virtually doubled the debt and doubled the time they’ll have taken to get it down.

And this is what they call success and fiscal credibility? 

They seem to think that they can simply press the reset button when it comes to meeting their own fiscal rules and no one will notice.

The flip side of John Maynard Keynes’ approach, namely when I change my mind the facts change with it.

When the Government’s misses a deadline it's modus operandi is to set a new one and brazenly move on.

The immutable Tory law of economics – make it up as you go along.

What happened to the long term economic plan?

Well, it didn’t last very long? Mr Speaker

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have their finger prints all over every single financial decision that has been made during the last seven years.

It’s no surprise that they have come under criticism from many in their own party including the former Member for Witney.

Or the former Chancellor, Lord Lamont, who called the NI debacle a “rookie error”.

Otherwise known, in the real world, as gross incompetence.

But regrettably it’s other people who will pay the price for that incompetence.

Mr Speaker, turning to Brexit, I’ll mention it even if the Chancellor doesn’t, it’s the tenth anniversary since the production of

“Freeing Britain to Compete: Equipping the UK for Globalisation”

This publication was a wide ranging policy document authored by the right honourable Member for Wokingham and friends.

It was endorsed by the then Shadow Cabinet which included the current incumbents at numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.

The publication was hard to track down as it has been removed from the Conservative Party website and for good reason.

But I found a copy.

Its contents were toxic and all the more so in the wake of the subsequent global financial crisis and remain so.

But in the light of Brexit, and the resurgence of the honourable member for Wokingham’s influence, it will soon be getting a second run out.

Mr Speaker, it is worth appraising the House of a few of the nuggets contained in its pages.

It includes policies such as the abolition of inheritance tax.

Charging foreign lorries to use British roads.

The potential abolition of the BBC licence fee, which it refers to as a poll tax.

The watering down of money laundering regulations.

The deregulation of mortgage finance.

Because it’s the:

“lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk.”

Try telling that to someone whose house has been repossessed.

It goes on:

“we need to make it more difficult for ministers to regulate, and we need to give the critics of regulation more opportunity to make their case against specific new proposals.”

Remember this document, dated August 2007, was rubber stamped by the current Prime Minister and Chancellor at the same time Northern Rock was about to go under.

It continues:

“the Government (the Labour Government) claims that this regulation is all necessary. They seem to believe that without it banks could steal our money.”

That is not quite the case but the taxpayer, at its peak, had liabilities for the banking crisis of £1.2 trillion.

But, Mr Speaker, many people did believe the banks were stealing their money.

It refers to wanting:

“reliably low inflation, taking no risks by turning fiscal rules into flexible friends.”

As for Europe, in search of jobs and prosperity, it says:

“An incoming Conservative Government should go to Brussels with proposals to deregulate the whole EU…”

No wonder they wanted to bury the evidence.

It’s the autobiography of the hard line Brexiteers.

It’s the Tory blue print for a post Brexit deregulated Britain.

It’s a race to the bottom.

These policies are a telling narrative of the views of the fundamentalist wing of the Conservative Party.

The Prime Minister is a hostage to the far right of the Tory Party.

She is on the hook.

The stage directions are coming from Wokingham, Haltemprice and Howden, North Somerset and Chingford and Wood Green with occasional guest appearances by the Foreign Secretary.

The forlorn, melancholic Chancellor is briefed against because he may just have a less hard-line outlook as far as Brexit is concerned.

These are the dusted off policies of the hard Brexiteers who will stop at nothing until Britain becomes a low wage, low tax, low regulation economy. 

They want to turn our country into the bargain basement of the western world.

They have the Prime Minister in tow.

Parliamentary scrutiny is a hindrance.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has put Kamikaze pilots in the cockpit.

The Chancellor knows this too well and that is why reportedly he is putting aside £60 billion, equivalent to a year’s worth of borrowing on the national debt to cope with the trauma.

It’s not Brexit proofing the economy but rather proofing the economy from the toxic ideology of the hard Brexiteers.

Mr Speaker, ultimately, it comes down to choices and values.

The Government’s choices in this Budget are informed by their values and they are not the same as the vast majority of people in this country.

The Government propose to increase Insurance Premium Tax from 10 per cent to 12 per cent, a regressive measure which will be a further hit on household finances and act as a deterrent to families wanting to obtain proper insurance cover.

It was a surprise to see this measure in the Autumn Statement, coming as it did from a government which constantly uses the high cost of insurance premiums as an excuse for curbs on victims’ right to claim compensation for their losses, with particularly damaging effects for those injured in accidents at work.

We will oppose this rise.

And while the Government drives up insurance price for millions of families, it has chosen to forego £73 billion of  revenue to give corporations and the wealthy few tax handouts between now and 2021.

A choice we would not make.

Their choice is informed by the value they put on elites and corporations, many of whom readily avoid paying their fair share of tax.  

They plan to loosen the rules on the Business Investment Relief, increasing the scope for non-doms to avoid tax when they bring funds into the UK.

This is straightforwardly a giveaway to non-doms, which we will oppose.

There is little evidence that this relief has had a significant impact on inward investment since it was first introduced in 2012.

And there is little genuine reason to believe that expanding the relief now will do anything but give non-doms even more advantages over millions of UK taxpayers.

These and other tax cuts for elites and corporations come off the backs of public sector employees who have foregone pay rises for years.

Or those in the private sector whose wages and salaries remain in the doldrums and will for another decade or more.

Or the self-employed who are increasingly driving our economy who will see an increase to 11 per cent in National Insurance contributions. 

We would make a different choice. We reject the kick in the teeth to self-employed people.

Not only does it hit many on low to middle income but will it raise anywhere near the £2 billion the Treasury projects?

It may also deter many people from setting up their own businesses, from innovating and excelling.

It’s a moratorium on aspiration.

We would choose not to give tax breaks to those who do not need them.

Mr Speaker, in this Budget the Government claims it’s giving lower and middle earners, the NHS, social care agencies, the self-employed, schools, businesses, pubs, the strivers, the entrepreneurs the thumbs up.

Mr Speaker, in practice, this Budget is not giving a thumbs up to all those people.

On the contrary, it’s two other digits being put up to those people.

That’s another choice that Labour would not make.

[phgq]

Eastern Visayas gaining ground in fight vs. NPA

#PHnews: Eastern Visayas gaining ground in fight vs. NPA

TACLOBAN CITY -- Much has been done to wipe out the communist terrorist group in Eastern Visayas this year with the institutionalization of a “whole-of-nation approach” in addressing the five-decade communist insurgency.

Although the fight against the New People’s Army (NPA) took away the lives of many soldiers, policemen, and even civilians this year, government troops are more determined to end the armed struggle with the support of national government agencies and local government units.

As of November, at least 140 local government units in Eastern Visayas have declared the NPA as persona non grata for derailing development efforts in their communities.

UNWELCOME. Copies of resolutions declaring the New People's Army (NPA) persona non grata have been issued by 10 towns in Northern Samar. At least 140 local government units in Eastern Visayas have declared the NPA unwelcome in their localities. (Photo courtesy of the Philippine Army’s 20IB)

Brig. Gen. Ramil Bitong, assistant division commander of the Philippine Army’s 8th Infantry Division (8ID), said they expect more local government units to formally reject the ideology and activities of the terrorist communist group in their areas.

All six provinces in the region issued the declaration. Also on the list are 58 towns, three cities, and 73 villages. The region has 136 towns, seven cities, and 4,390 villages.

“Executive Order (EO) 70 is just seven months old and Region 8 (Eastern Visayas) is one of the fastest. The rate of our declaration is faster than (in) other regions but we need some more. This is not just a declaration since this is a manifestation of rejection. They cannot simply do that if they are under the influence of (the) NPA. Something has to be done,” Bitong said.

The local government’s rejection of the NPA is in connection with EO 70 that created the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (ELCAC). The declaration means treating the presence of the communist terrorist group as unwelcome and unacceptable in their communities.

President Rodrigo Duterte issued the directive to institutionalize a "whole-nation approach" policy in attaining peace and end the long-time conflict between the government and the communist group.

Among the towns that created task force ELCAC is Calbiga in Samar where the NPA launched its first tactical operation 45 years ago.

Some of the villages in Calbiga have been known as sites of clashes between government troops and armed rebels. One of the bloodiest gun battles was on April 23, where six soldiers died and another six were hurt.

Capt. Reynaldo Aragones, the Army’s 8ID spokesperson, said the creation of an ELCAC in every city and town is a big boost to their community support program.

“We are more motivated now to go up in the mountains to bring basic services to vulnerable communities, now that we have the full support of (the) task force in this campaign,” Aragones said.

National Economic and Development Authority Regional Director Meylene Rosales was upbeat that through the task force’s convergence efforts, the region would be able to resolve the decades-long insurgency.

“Peace and order should have tailor-made solutions with all government resources available. We were told to realign budget this year and propose a new budget for next year to attain our goals,” Rosales said.

Anti-recruitment drive

One of the major efforts to fight insurgency is to prevent the recruitment of NPA among teens on campuses to boost their armed struggle against the government. 

The army has tied up with schools to organize a community peace development forum in various schools joined by thousands of students.

These rounds of campus-based forums are not only meant for students but also educators to further strengthen their objective in sparing the youth from the persuasions of NPA front organizations that could lead to armed rebellion.

DECEPTION. A young soldier distributes reading materials illustrating the deception strategies of communist rebels. The Philippine Army has been raising awareness among students to save them from being recruited by communist rebels and their supporters. (Photo courtesy of 14th Infantry Battalion)

 The capture of young rebels and the recovery of documents in Northern Samar confirmed the recruitment of students and extortion activities of the NPA in the region.

An official of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) 8 has asked tertiary students to examine the fate of young rebels.

CHED-8 Director George Colorado asked students to think of the fate of their peers who joined the communist terrorist group before listening to the latter’s ideologies.

“I don’t understand why our young people join the insurgency and they can’t learn from what happened to those who joined rebellion who suffered hunger, sickness, or even death. You can choose a better life for your family instead of going to the mountains to fight the government,” Colorado told the Philippine News Agency (PNA).

The official said young people have the option to work, provide the needs of their families, become productive citizens or lead a horrible life in the mountains. 

Treacherous attacks condemned

Bitong noted that growing support in the fight against the communist terrorist group has disappointed the NPA, prompting it to launch treacherous attacks against government forces by detonating landmines.

The military reported that rebels used explosives seven times this year as they attacked soldiers and policemen.

Mines detonated by rebels this year took the lives of 13 soldiers, a policeman, and four civilians, including a boy.

The use of explosives has wounded 45 soldiers, four police officers, and 12 civilians in separate attacks in Samar provinces.

“The use of landmines is really barbaric because that does not discriminate any target. In Las Navas, Northern Samar, a boy was killed and in Borongan City, three civilians perished while several others were wounded,” Bitong added.

BOMBING VICTIMS. Passersby rescue tricycle passengers who are seriously wounded by an explosion perpetrated by the NPA in Libuton village in Borongan City, Eastern Samar on Dec. 13, 2019. The attack killed a police officer and three civilians while four policemen and 10 civilians, including three minors, were injured in the incident. (Photo courtesy of Alexis Genelex Deloria)

The latest incident was on December 13, when a junior police officer and an old woman were killed on the spot while four other policemen and 10 civilians, including three minors, were injured in a blast attack. A government employee died a few hours after while a mother succumbed to head injury after five days.

In Las Navas town, rebels detonated a landmine near a temporary patrol base of the Army’s 20th Infantry Battalion, Charlie Company last April 17 to harm soldiers but instead killed a Grade 3 pupil.

Last November 11, a civilian was wounded in Pinanag-an village in Borongan City, Eastern Samar. The landmine attack and gun battle killed six soldiers and wounded 24 others.

The other three incidents were recorded in San Jorge, Samar where 11 soldiers were injured on January 12; in Calbiga, Samar where six soldiers and six others were wounded on April 23; and in Basey, Samar where a soldier perished and six of his comrades were hurt.

The military repeatedly condemned the NPA for using landmines in their attacks, which shows disrespect to basic human rights. The rebels also disregarded the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.

2022 timeline

The Philippine Army’s 8ID is upbeat on ending insurgency in Samar and Leyte provinces by 2022 after the national government identified the region as one of the priority areas in its drive to wipe out the NPA.

Maj. Gen. Pio Diñoso III, 8ID commander, said as one of the "national priority areas" is crushing the NPA, they will be given the "best", both in personnel and assets.

“The President said that Samar (Island) is one of the priority areas. Meaning, we have the support. They will bring in all the best -- officials, armor assets, and air assets,” Diñoso, said.

“There is a marching order that before the President steps down, we can at least contain, not necessarily totally eliminate, the insurgency problem to a manageable level and it’s doable,” he said.

Samar Island comprises the provinces of Samar, Eastern Samar, and Northern Samar, where the presence of the NPA is still felt due to poor road networks and thick forest cover.

The NPA, which has been waging a five-decade armed struggle against the government, is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

As of October 2019, the NPA in Eastern Visayas has 506 active members and 447 firearms, affecting the region's 144 remote villages, the Philippine Army reported. (PNA)

      ***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Eastern Visayas gaining ground in fight vs. NPA." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1089606 (accessed December 28, 2019 at 09:50PM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Eastern Visayas gaining ground in fight vs. NPA." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1089606 (archived).

#Philippines #News #Filipino #Pinoy #Tourism #Politics #Culture #Editorial #Environment #Society #History

[everythingbychoice]

It take a full hour for “Bombshell” to resemble an actual movie.

Until that point, it’s a screeching op-ed against all things Fox News, real and imagined.

The “real” part is the sexual harassment Fox News founder Roger Ailes inflicted on female employees. The imagined? Well, that’s a laundry list of far-left talking points against the network, conservatives and a certain Commander in Chief.

Once the film clears its throat, and that literally takes 60 minutes, “Bombshell” morphs into a competent, often compelling tale of a harasser’s insidious web.

Charlize Theron’s uncanny impression of former Fox News superstar Megyn Kelly kicks off “Bombshell.” She’s shattering the fourth wall, serving as both Fox News tour guide and director Jay Roach’s mouth piece.

Remember, Roach directed previous hard-left films like “Game Change” and “Recount.”

So it’s Megyn who tells us Ailes (John Lithgow) is the reason both Ronald Reagan and George Bush the elder became president. He’s that powerful, we’re led to assume.

Already we’re in “Vice” land, that cinematic space where progressive fever dreams take hold.

We soon meet two other key women in Ailes’ orbit. Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman in distracting makeup) wants to tell real stories, but all Ailes cares about is gorgeous women, tight skirts and gams.

Why, it’s as if Katie Couric and Mary Hart never existed and female anchors wore Burkas for the nightly news.

FAST FACT: “Bombshell” earned four SAG Awards nominations, including Best Ensemble.

Margot Robbie plays another potential victim, a composite character evoking the lesser known women Ailes defiled. Kayla is a self-described Christian influencer, but within seconds she’s sleeping with a fellow female employee. Kayla’s Christian characteristics are ignored from that point on.

Oh.

“Bombshell” simultaneously hits another Fox News lech, disgraced host Bill O’Reilly. It’s not enough for the movie to out his alleged activity, though. Enter Kate McKinnon, playing a closeted liberal lesbian producer to attack O’Reilly’s viewers.

“That’s why crazies love him,” she explains of his appeal. That quip doesn’t advance the story. It’s virtue signaling to the film’s hard-left demographic (and Oscar voters, perhaps).

None of this is storytelling, and it sure as heck isn’t compelling. It’s propaganda trotted out for our inspection. We can’t care about the characters or their plight because the screenplay doesn’t, either.

pic.twitter.com/YXDXWIR61y

— Bombshell (@bombshellmovie) December 8, 2019

A funny thing happens just when you think every progressive attack line has been exhausted. “Bombshell” abandons the finger wagging and gets to the point. Ailes created an empire, one that both bulldozed the competition and allowed him to paw any comely female within reach.

That leaves his employees split in dramatic fashion. Some stick to “Team Roger,” down to T-shirts emblazoned with that very slogan. Others keep their heads down, hoping to retain their jobs at all costs.

The bravest of them all, like Gretchen, finally speak out … but at what cost?

And then there’s Megyn, who knows too much about Ailes’ appetites but remembers the many kindnesses he bestowed on her. The film recalls how Ailes paid the medical bills for various employees and boosted careers with little to gain but ratings.

It’s a shame Lithgow isn’t given more time to show Ailes the charmer and visionary. That context could help explain why some otherwise good souls rushed to his defense.

“Bombshell’s” screenplay, by “The Big Short’s” Charles Randolph, still clings to hokey sentiment even during the superior second half.

“I have to be an anchor first, and then a woman,” Megyn explains.

There’s one other moment when “Bombshell” reveals what might have been. Robbie’s Kayla meets Ailes for the first time, alone, in his inner sanctum. They engage in small talk before Ailes gets down to “business.”

He asks her to “spin” around to better ogle her curves. Then, the overt sexual harassment begins. There’s no music, no fancy camera tricks or narration. Robbie’s face captures the flood of emotions women just like her felt for decades when put in that awful situation.

It’s likely someone is enduring a similar treatment right this moment, too.

Along the way, “Bombshell” awkwardly shoehorns faux celebrity cameos with dramatically different results. A blink and you miss him Geraldo Rivera (Tony Plana) adds nothing to anything. Current Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, played by the underrated Alanna Ubach, embodies the Fox News women who refused to even consider Ailes’ guilt.

The list of “Bombshell” targets doesn’t stop at Ailes. The film repeatedly paints Fox News as a cancer on popular culture. One unnecessary moment finds Gretchen being dressed down in a supermarket.

“You guys at Fox News are doing terrible things to our country,” the stranger says to her.

The line, like many others in the film, has no real narrative purpose. It’s similar to how the film repeatedly reminds us Megyn once said Santa Claus was white.

It’s amazing she wasn’t hauled off to Leavenworth right then and there.

RELATED: 7 Tough Questions ‘Bombshell’ Cast Should Answer

We’re also told you can’t be an openly gay Fox News employee because, it’s assumed, conservatives hate gay people. McKinnon’s character hides a picture of her with a longtime female friend just in case.

Roach weaponizes the snapshot in a film that also acknowledges Ailes knew network superstar Shepard Smith was gay but didn’t care.

“Bombshell” repeatedly savages Donald Trump, of course, fixing at first on his gross attack on Megyn. Consider this cartoonish moment when Megyn tells her colleagues the mogul has a problem with women. She notices their quizzical looks, so she hauls out a file as thick as an oak tree labeled “Trump’s Women” to back up her claim.

That connects “Bombshell” directly to Roach’s “Game Change” and its over the top theatrics.

To re-create the Fox News offices in painstaking detail, #BombshellMovie‘s production designer used any photos he could find online, including selfies from employees and foot-fetish pics where you can see the office surroundings in the background

— New York Magazine (@NYMag)

December 10, 2019

We also see a highly edited montage of “misogynistic” “Fox and Friends” clips, slapped together so hastily it would make Michael Moore blush.

Plus, the film suggests Team Trump poisoned Megyn’s Kelly coffee after her tough debate questions were leaked to him.

Really.

Most of the film’s attacks, though, center on Ailes. And it’s hardly reserved to his sexual appetites. His signature creation is under fire as well.

“Is it any wonder [Ailes] created a nostalgia for a lost America?” Megyn says about Fox News. That’s not her voice, of course. That’s Hollywood, USA, a city that loathes the fact that one network speaks up for half the country.

Again, the line doesn’t advance the story or establish character.

RELATED: Here’s What the Stars of ‘Bombshell’ Really Think of Conservatives

Ailes’ victims deserve to have their stories told. Theron, Robbie and Kidman deliver powerful performances, at least when the screenplay gives them the chance to evoke real emotions.

One could defend “Bombshell’s” partisan thuggery by saying Fox News’ conservatism fueled Ailes’ crimes. So how does that explain Matt Lauer? Charlie Rose? Les Moonves?

And let’s not forget Harvey Weinstein.

Sexual harassment knows no ideology. That’s a lesson the minds behind “Bombshell” should have taken far more seriously.

HiT or Miss: The women at Fox News who endured sexual harassment deserve better than a movie that puts ideology first like “Bombshell.”

The post ‘Bombshell’ Shreds Ailes, Trump and Storytelling 101 appeared first on Hollywood in Toto.

#EverythingByChoice