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girlactionfigure · 1 year

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The Forward Brings Back the Massacre That Never Happened

Like the proverbial old soldiers, anti-Jewish lies never die. But they don’t fade away, either. No matter how often they are proven false, they come back to incite hatred and motivate murder. Blood libels against Jews can be found before the Common Era and as recently as 1912. The pogrom-inspiring Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged document purporting to be the minutes of a meeting between Jews who conspired to promote war and revolution throughout the world, created around the turn of the twentieth century and thoroughly debunked in the 1920s, is still a best-seller in Muslim countries – and dozens of versions are available in the US as well.

Today the focus of antisemitism has moved to Israel, although the old forms of Jew-hatred still bubble up regularly in Europe and North America. So there are contemporary blood libels like the media accounts of the alleged shooting of 12-year old Mohammad Durah, an exercise in what Richard Landes has called “lethal journalism.”

One of the most pernicious and persistent lethal narratives has been the myth of the Jenin Massacre. In April 2002, the IDF entered the Jenin refugee camp in pursuit of terrorists that had committed numerous attacks inside Israel, including the Passover Seder Massacre in Netanya, in which 30 Israelis were murdered. After a 10-day house-to-house battle, 23 IDF soldiers lost their lives as well as (according to later investigation by the UN) 52 Palestinians, most of whom were fighters from various Palestinian factions. Even the notoriously anti-Israel organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International admitted that there had been no massacre (although they did accuse the IDF of various war crimes).

The media, academics and politicians exploded in a frenzy of exaggeration and condemnation. James Petras, a sociologist associated with (my alma mater!) Binghamton University compared the battle to the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Reporter Phil Reeves of the UK Independent wrote a series of articles in which he accused Israel of a “monstrous war crime,” with “hundreds of corpses entombed beneath the dust.” Saeb Erekat of the Palestinian Authority told CNN that “the number [massacred] will not be less than 500,” and his remarks were echoed throughout the media.

One of the most influential vectors of the massacre myth was a “documentary” by Arab-Israeli actor/director Mohammad Bakri called “Jenin, Jenin.” Bakri went to Jenin several weeks after the battle and interviewed Palestinians, who regaled him with accounts of atrocities committed by the IDF. He did not interview anyone connected with the IDF, nor did he attempt to validate the Palestinian testimony, because, he said, he wanted to present the Palestinian viewpoint.

The film was well done and persuasive, but most of its content was simply not true or massively exaggerated. Dr. David Zangen, an IDF doctor who was present during the battle, wrote a response called “Seven Lies About Jenin,” in which he refuted several of the more prominent atrocity stories. One of them involves a hospital wing that was supposedly destroyed by Israeli bombing. Zangen points out that the wing never existed, and that IDF soldiers carefully protected the hospital and its water, electricity and oxygen supplies. He also notes that,

In pictures shot at the site in the center of Jenin, the damage appears much larger than it was in actual fact, and the martyrs’ pictures and jihad slogans – which had been present at the time of the IDF military operation – had disappeared from the walls of houses. The film systematically and repeatedly uses manipulative pictures of tanks taken in other locations, artificially placing them next to pictures of Palestinian children.

Joshua Mitnick of the Newark Star-Ledger interviewed Bakri and described the technique he used to create a “documentary” of events that did not occur:

The film also attempts to visualize allegations of summary killings based on rumors that spread among residents of the camp. Bakri spliced together video footage shot during the offensive in which an Israeli tank [actually an armored personnel carrier – vr] appears to trample a group of Palestinian prisoners. Bakri said there was no proof that incident ever took place, but that he was trying to demonstrate what an Israeli tank symbolized to Palestinians. [!]

Given all of this, it is remarkable that a supposedly serious publication like the Jewish Daily Forward would publish an article that gave credence to the film. But that is exactly what it did, when it published Mira Fox’s paean to Bakri’s “guerrilla journalism.” Perhaps the article’s placement in the “Culture” category is supposed to absolve it from the responsibility to note that the film is a viciously manipulative piece of propaganda and full of lies, but it is still shocking when she writes that

Israel claimed they killed around 50 Palestinians, the majority of whom were responsible for bus bombings and terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis, while Palestinians alleged a death toll near 500 composed largely of civilians.

And then fails to mention that even the hostile UN and NGOs admitted that the Israeli numbers were correct! Or when she repeats the unsubstantiated Palestinian atrocity stories that appeared in the film. She writes,

Yet, today when social media has given everyone a platform to tell their personal stories, the stories in Jenin, Jenin feel almost commonplace. Now everyone has a camera in their pocket, and can capture the violence as it unfolds, unlike Bakri’s film which was limited to shots panning over rubble afterward.

Did she miss the deceptive editing, the spliced footage of tanks, that gave the film so much of its force?

Probably not. It’s clear where her sympathies lie:

While the Palestinian fight may be trendy online, the real-world changes have not been so abrupt. Palestinians still live under occupation, and Israel’s military might still greatly outstrips Palestinian insurgents. Part of the reason videos of Palestinians running down the street, throwing stones at tanks or being forcibly evicted from their homes, are so common online is because they’re so common in life.

I have no idea who Mira Fox is, but I do know that the Editor in Chief of the Forward is Jodi Rudoren, an experienced journalist who served as New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief for several years, and who is certainly aware of the facts about the massacre that never happened. Allowing this hit job on Israel and the IDF to be published was no less than editorial malpractice.

Will the Forward publish a correction? I’ll wait.

#Israel and Palestinian Arabs #Media #Terrorism #War

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eretzyisrael · 2 years

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Anti-Semitism and the US Universities

This article first appeared in Times of Israel Blogs.

UC Irvine, May 2017. Students for Justice in Palestine disrupt pro-Israel event.

Up to a few years ago, I was writing that the focal point of anti-Semitism in the US was found in our universities and that it was our task to inform the public about what was happening on our campuses. Between the years of 2007-2016, as an adjunct teacher (and a gentile) at the University of California at Irvine, I became active in speaking out against anti-Semitic speech and displays on campus, as well as the intimidation of Jewish students. What was the spark that was igniting campus anti-Semitism? Then as now, it was the constant drumbeat of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rhetoric on the part of some students, some faculty, and student organizations like the Muslim Student Union/Association and Students for Justice in Palestine.

Pro-Israel events, meanwhile, can expect to be routinely disrupted, something I have personally observed on more than one occasion including the notorious Oren disruption. Today, the problem of anti-Semitism has metastasized out into the rest of society. Jews are not just being harassed on campuses, but are now being physically attacked on the streets of major cities. But needless to say, it has not left the universities. Across the country, more and more universities in every region of the country are seeing anti-Semitic outbreaks disguised as human rights concerns for the Palestinians, who are allegedly being oppressed by Israel-a proposition that I don't buy.

I have already mentioned the Muslim Student Associations/Union and Students for Justice in Palestine. Over the years, I have attended countless events sponsored by these groups at UC Irvine and listened and interacted with their invited speakers. Most of the speakers are radical leftists, while many, not all, are Muslim (some are even oddball Jews who hate Israel), and many are virulent Jew-haters. While I believe in free speech-including theirs- I feel it is vital to document and expose their words.

This takes me to the sites of these events, the universities themselves. It would take me several pages to list all the American universities where these outrages have taken place.

Public, private, north, south, east, or west, it makes no difference. Some are worse than others. The problem, as I see it, is this: American universities, mostly all dominated by the left, have lost sight of the principle of free speech for all. That should include conservatives, Jews, Trump supporters, Republicans, and, in this case, students and speakers who support Israel. While university administrators pay lip service in condemning anti-Semitism and promising free speech for all, they fail to follow through. The concerns of Jewish students are nowhere near their top priority. In addition, administrators are afraid to confront groups like the Muslim Student Association or Students for Justice in Palestine. They have proven that time and time again. For years, Jewish students have complained about anti-Semitism, but to little or no avail. Our universities have allowed students and activists to turn the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into one of the top hot-button issues on campus. Often, the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist rhetoric made by invited speakers has crossed the line from legitimate criticism of Israel, which we all concede is free speech, into pure Jew hatred-which to be accurate- under American law is also free speech as long as it doesn't directly incite violence. Several years ago at UC Irvine, I was present when an imam from Oakland, Amir Abdel Malik Ali, made several hateful statements in a speech and expressed support for Hamas. The chancellor, Michael Drake, issued a statement to the entire UCI community that the speaker was not speaking for the university and condemned the remarks made by Ali. Yet, there was no mention of who the speaker was, what he said, who sponsored him (Muslim Student Union), or who the victimized group was.

Should a noose, which has a powerful impact for blacks given the past history of lynchings in the South, appear on a campus, as it did a few years ago at UC San Diego, the chancellor and vice-chancellor will lead the protests, which is all well and good. But if a swastika shows up on some campus, the university will condemn it, state that an investigation is underway, and move on. You never hear about it again.

As Critical Race Theory spreads into more and more universities, the problem of anti-Semitism can only get worse since Jews are generally not considered a vulnerable minority. Indeed, the California version's original draft had language not only that Israelis were oppressing Palestinians, but that Jews were simply privileged whites oppressing people of color.

So what is to be done about this toxic climate that exists on our campuses? First and foremost, donors should cease giving to schools that allow this poison. Parents and their children should find more friendly places to attend college. It would also be helpful if more Jewish organizations, who are supposed to fight anti-Semitism and stand up for their Jewish students, would take a more aggressive role against these universities. Specifically, I am referring to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the various chapters of the Jewish Federation, and Hillel. In the case of UC Irvine, they have either been missing in action (ADL) or have been a hindrance to those who want to fight the problem (Jewish Federation and Hillel). A big part of the problem is that the latter two organizations are too close to the university administration and don't want to make waves. So everybody just stands back and says that the administration and the Jewish students are taking care of the problem. And the problem continues. I wish more Jewish organizations would follow the lead of the Zionist Organization of America and the Amcha Initiative in actively fighting campus anti-Semitism.

Over the years, the Students for Justice in Palestine and Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine have all but destroyed the reputation of the institution when 99% of UCI's students have nothing to do with the ugliness. UC Irvine is a classic example of how a few bad apples can spoil the whole barrel.

Our universities are badly failing their Jewish students and students in general with their far-left dominance and inability or unwillingness to stand up to anti-Semitic hate-mongers masquerading as human rights activists. Cowardly and/or indifferent administrators have allowed a resurgence in modern-day anti-Semitism to fester and flourish. Now the cancer has once again spread into society at large. History will record that our universities have played a leading role in this latest resurgence in anti-Semitism.

Thanks a lot, Academia.

FOUSESQUAWK

#US Universities #UC Irvine #antisemitism

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moist-astronaut · 4 years

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things my friends and I have said over the last year

“I’m verbally illiterate” “Isn’t that called dyslexia”

“I’m going to chemistry and I’m gonna light myself on fire” “No” “Damnit let me burn like the witch I am!”

“Don’t worry it’s not anti-Christ it’s just anti-government”

“I’ve been getting migraines everyday and I’m considering chopping my head off” “But that would kill you” “Two birds one stone!!”

“I swear to god I will hug you” “My house is 5 miles away and my doors are locked” “Your locks are FEABLE”

*writing an email* “Bitch comma”

“Ok but I could be a top” *laughing* “What I totally could be!” *laughing and crying for literally 6 minutes straight*

*on a group call, friends cat misha walks into the room* “Tell misha I would live and die for her, whichever she prefers” “She says thank you” *cat noises*

*joins discord vioce chat at 11:26 pm* “You guys are gae but I love you” “Thank you saeren very cool” “Goodnight” *leaves chat at 11:28pm*

“Jake jake jake jjjake -j-jaaake hey jake” “W H A T” “Can I eat your pens” “I literally have a restraining order against you”

“I’m educatn’t”

“Me calling you to dumb to be a slytherin is payback for you leaving multiple handprint bruises on my legs” “It’s not my fault your skin is weak”

“He’s rolling so that we can walk” *rolling in the grass and collecting leaves on his jacket* “I’m rolling for your sins”

“There are 7 of us so we can each be a deadly sin” “I wanna be Ross” “You mean wrath?” “No that dude from Friends”

“Ok but other than his strict attraction to women, his multiple wives, his hatred of gay people, and the fact that he is dead, what is standing between me and Joseph Smith the All American Hottie from being happy together”

“Consider: Mullet” “No”

“I do my homework while loudly eating a pop tart asmr”

“No no listen, he’s my brother, he’s a bastard of my dynasty…I might just ransom him off”

“These Norwegian bastards indroduced a fucking PLUAGE to my COUNTRY”

“Ooooo meth”

“Half of my life is me resisting the urge to sing the zaboomafoo themesong, the other half is me actually singing the zaboomafoo themesong. So either way my entire life revolves around zaboomafoo.”

“I just don’t think I would hire a gay man-wait no I’m not homophobic”

*chucks half a gallon of milk in a gas station* “-ah- got milk?”

“Gimme your sternum boy”

“Nooooooo he stole my sternum!!!” (Side note these were two separate occasions)

*being force fed milk duds* “No!! This is the worst way to die!!”

“Hey babe come over I have a hammock and a heated blanket”

“Be afraid, be prepared- IN THE WORDS OF SCAR”

“Stress eating stress gummies Stress eating stress gummies Stress eating stress gummies stress eating-”

“I thought to myself ‘Y’know if I die today this is how I want to be remembered- a leather skirt and leg warmers’”

“I think I’m telling you to go to sleep” “You’re gonna have make me” “I can’t tell if this is cry for help or flirting” “Yes”

“This is at best cannibalism and at worst being straight”

“Oh look Percy Jackson’s here now, ooh they replaced every character’s face with Mr. Bean. I hate it”

“You can’t be mean to me! I’m gay AND a woman! That’s a hate crime!” “Yeah well I’m brown and Muslim! Square the fuck up bitch!”

“Babe it’s not very metal to be afraid of your hair dresser” “It’s not very metal to have a hair dresser and yet here we are” “It’s fine you’re into glam metal”

“Hey augie, got any grrrrrrapes?” “I’m doing IXL :(“

“Can I come?” “No” “What if I bring watermelon?” “You can come, leave the watermelon, then leave” “:(“

“What in the jersey shore”

“Rad’nt”

“Ok but consider: Mullet-hawk” “I can and will divorce you”

“Dee-vorce 👏 Just to 👏 re-vorce 👏 👏 “

“Ah yes, that’s why I’m fat…for combat reasons…”

“You fool I consent!”

“My Boston fern is being a bitch but that’s because it’s winter and that’s BITCH season”

“You walk through the rest of the house and it’s like ‘ooo witchy and aesthetic’ then they’ll get to the guest room and it’ll just be a tacky twink Fever dream”

“Who needs a scalp”

“HeHe, sexing”

“Council has decided, your vibes are rancid (and not the band)”

“You’re never to young to hate women”

“Look at me I did the dishes I’m a 1950s housewife with a strangely new jersey accent and affinity for lesbianism”

“Well look who has the table now”

"contrary to popular belief, fuck you"

"There's nothing here that requires whisking, i'm just problematic"

"If you could go anywhere in the world with two people, who would you choose?" “New Orleans!”

"So he proceeded to bite me on the butt...like, really, really hard."

“I don’t cheat, I win. It’s not cheating if it’s consensual.”

“My mouth, my choice”

“Do you like my ombré of a tan"

“Who’s the cutest in the chat right now then?” “It’s Paige!” “No, it’s obviously Augie.” (paige's boyfriend)-said by a straight man

“Francis is just a one and done.”

“Would you ever have a threesome?” “...yes...” *To Francis* “Sure!”

“How do you feel about anal sex?”

“Of the people in this room, who would you most want to make out with?” “Augie” “The answer is yes, but only if it’s 6 feet apart.”

“Square, flat, and overcooked.”

“The virus would be over if everyone would breathe underwater for 5 minutes.”

“I have daddy issues, but not with my father.”

“You’re a ladies man but you have two boyfriends.”

“That means lesbian in sign language” “No, that means fuck boy in American”

“I’m like a parasite, you can’t get rid of me. I’m here forever.”

“You’re like my long term hit man”

“Is it Jake?” “No, why would the evil Russian man be Jake?” “Because he would never hire a gay man and you don’t look like a gay man”

“Jake is homophonic, Augie is racist, and Francis is a woman hater!”

"Grew a korean radish, 1 star"

"I've got more cause i'm a rich boy, and by that i mean my father sometimes buys avocados. And that's on what? Upper middle class"

"Tell your good for nothing boyfriend to stay away from my mom"

"It's not inciting violence it's just ~inspiring it~ "

"Listen bitch just because you have avacados and a roomba doesn't make you better then me"

"i would totally let narthex ruin my life. and that's on what? daddy issues and bisexuality"

"who is titty"

"how is he racist" "he hates the french and russians right?" "don't forget italians" "that's just self loathing"

"This is the last time i wear a thong- it's for educational purposes"

"babe come over i'm a burrito"

"he put bread with milk. luckily he passed away"

"you touched my wiener!" "you offered it!"

"foot'nt"

"i took a shower and realized the floor doesn't bounce"

"i love ass whoooaaaaaa i meant cassie"

"Rosalie you're the deciding vote. Be decisive." "Dude i'm bisexual and a gemini. what're you talking about?"

"Okay so to recap: jake is homophobic, augie is racist, francis is a woman hater, and now paige is a bunny abuser?"

"Just bring a watermelon keychain and it'll be fine" "Whooaaaa i'm gonna need a big key then"

"If you were blind what would you even see"

Post Traumatic Youth, plus D for danny's disorder"

"i think she's past the phase where she likes people just because they're russian"

"francine is a lesbian, but only during quarantine"

"don't be a home wrecker!" "i can't help it!"

"we are not doing coed tents" "i wanted to go purple-ing though"

"if it's not perfect i'm gonna through hands" "with who" "i don't know, the CEO of stupid"

"don't make me feel guilty for bullying you"

"it doesn't look very cash money cool but okay"

"slinky cat" (ferret)

"The pond behind my house didn't freeze all the way through this winter, so i couldn't go ice skating" "okay, so i have an idea. we can go to walmart and get-" "ANTI FREEZE!" "well, yes- wait, no. No, the more i think about that definitely no."

"The amish will win, the amish will prevail" "the amish will conquer us all!"

"He do be kinda mafia doh"

"i'm being sneaky sneak. stairs go creaky creak. and i need. DRUGZ"

"brain on shutdown, power saving mode"

"Somebody go tip her, she's dancing like a stripper" "thatd be nice- oh wait no!"

"fellas, is it gay to lick your homies eyeball?"

"it's not racist if you're only targeting one group of people" "that literally racism" "but what if they're french"

"i'm not racist yet but the option is available, and it's good to have options"

"they don't call me Mr. Steal Yo Boy for nothing!" -a straight man who has a girlfriend

"i think he has a bad habit of not dating girls"

"kinda hot tho 🥵 in a Santa Claus kinda way...hoe hoe hoe"

"i'll be your hot jacuzzi bubble dealer"

"when deceit and doubt fills you up, you cleanse your mind through creative activities, such as making organic soap"

"friendly reminder #4: you're never to old to eat a freezie-pop"

"sorry i'm just nervous" Chinese Teacher: (Waving her hand in front of her face) “Just pretend I’m cabbage.”

"me when my dads name is publicly broadcasted on the radio for his 14 felonies and assorted war crimes"

"<@!523669420435046401> I sentence you to a solid nine by the banhammer. For your crimes against Humanity, God, Satan, and Matt Frank. See you in hell."

"Danny, just because you're playing *Just Cause* doesn't mean you need to Just Cause our friendship!"

"Silly Matt! You fell for the ole’ Heimlich maneuver!”

"i got a bunch of new shirts over quarantine" "you would"

"Ok, there's a 32 year old doctor in new Jersey dying right now" "Yeah, but to be fair everyone in new jersey has a pre-existing condition"

“This is the longest period of time we’ve had without a Nintendo direct” “Maybe they’re gonna make a Nintendo indirect?”

"you’re looking extra white today.” "thanks i've been practicing"

"do you have any batteries" *looks inside shirt* "not yet"

"let's go colonize the middle school!" "yyayayyayayay!!!" " wait I gotta ask my mom first" What happened next is know called the *Juniors burden*

"oh so you're a DOWNSTAIRS milk kinda guy"

"you are literally the human embodiment of crumbs in a bed"

"The Berk-ey Creamery isn’t a place, it’s a people!”

"He shoved a floating joy-con straight up his flux-capacitor.” "great! now it's paired"

"No, that isnt armor, the real armor are the friends you made along the way"

"This one goes out to all my lady friends out there *proceeds to kill himself in game*

"i'm a coward" "that's what a coward would say!"

"rest is for cowards and fools"

"every time you speak you take years off my life"

"Shark dick hoo ha ha"

"Me and the boys brushing our teeth at 3 AM"

"remember if you kill yourself the fascists win"

"The Beatles aren’t real. Have you ever seen a beatle? No? Exactly." "Babe” "Shut up I’m right."

*reading over these quotes* "god i hate that" "you said that!"

#ghost talks #long post

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firstruleofmethclub · 5 years

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Yes Eggboy is of course a national treasure, but if you’ve only seen the ~5sec version of the video that just shows the event itself (the most widely distributed version of it) you won’t have seen the horrific things Fraser Anning was saying immediately leading up to this, and more importantly, you won’t have seen the fact that this man in his 60s, a representative of the Australian Government, responded to the egging (an embarassing and annoying, but also completely harmless act) by repeatedly punching the person responsible, a literal teenager. He went absolutely fuckin’ ham, and only stopped hitting him because there was people between him and the kid. To that point though, the vast majority of those people were restraining the kid, which sounds fine on paper, but if you actually watch the footage, you will see that while he is restrained prone, multiple people are (or at least are attempting to) strike him, and one has him held by the throat so tightly he cannot speak and is turning purple. These were not Anning’s security, these were his psychopathic fans, that had come to hear his hate speech. These were people who had been given the okay by Neil Erikson, (who has previously been hosted at other white power rallies, and held a mock execution in public to incite hatred against Muslims... You can Google him if you want, he’s famous for a lot stuff, only most of it racist, but all of it proving he is a garbage human being) so of course they were violent white supremecists with a hardon for the prospect of torturing children. The media were the only people trying to stop him from being chocked (not very hard, but still). Seriously, if William Connolly wasn’t white, there is a massive chance he’d be dead right now. Or even if he still was white, but the media had been there to film everything, he could very well be dead.

For those who come to defend Anning by saying that “You can’t treat elected officials like that”, I’ll remind you that Fraser Anning was never elected, he scored a whopping nineteen first preference votes in his electorate. The fact that he is in Government at all is thanks to the exploit of like, three seperate technicalities, which he took advantage of to get in as a member of One Nation, then, on his very first day on the job (where he also gave his famous “Final Solution” speech), he quit One Nation and declared himself an Independant so that the seat couldn’t be given back to the One Nation party member he took it from. So not elected at all. Also, I would put genuine money on betting that about 99% of the right wing nutjobs that are “shocked and appaled” at what happened to Anning, thought it was fuckin’ hilarious when someone chucked a sandwhich at Julia Gillard (an incident which she laughed off instead of throwing hands at the kid responsible), and yes, even when a shoe was thrown at conservative US President George W. Bush (a much more hazardous projectile than an egg), I can guaran-fuckin’-tee you, they thought that shit was gold and they’ve shared about 47 memes about it over the years. You don’t think what happened was “inappropriate” at all - so stop wasting everyone’s time and just admit that you hate brown people, and love people that talk openly about how it’s okay to kill brown people. That’s all this is.

People who hold stations like politicians and cops should be held to a higher standard than everyone else, corruption and hatemongering and bigotry should be even less acceptable when it comes from these people than when it comes from anyone else, so why are theses the people who are constantly defended for it?

If you can ignore all of that, and truly think that an egging is as heinous a crime as there can be, and that Fraser Anning is a perfect Angel who has been victimised by this yolk-wielding teenage beast, then at the very least, think about the fact that this all happened in the first place, because Anning wanted a platform to talk about how in New Zealand, the worst massacre in the country’s history just took place, and he wants to tell you, that the 50 people who were senselessly murdered by a white man with a gun, has precisely zero to do with white men, murderers, or guns, and the blame exclusively lies at the feet of the Muslim immigrants in the country. After all, if they weren’t there, they couldn’t have been shot. And that is the genius fucking logic you are throwing your weight behind. Somebody commited violent acts against Muslims, and he thinks should prove to the world “the link between Muslims and violence”. By his own logic, if someone burnt Fraser Annings house down and chopped his arm off, all this would serve to do is “prove the connection between Fraser Anning and Arson/Mayhem”. Or in this particular example “The connection between Fraser Anning and juvenile pranks”.

#auspol

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militant-holy-knight · 5 years

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Islamophobia: A “Zionist Plot”?

In response to Hating Muslims, Loving Zionists: Israel a Far-Right Model, where Al Jazeera gets everything wrong

Al Jazeera penned an opinion piece trying to lump anti-Muslim terrorism, rational critics of Islamism with Zionism of all things. The “logic” goes that “x Israeli politician is a far-righter”, many leading political figures in far-right politics that criticize Islam have expressed affection and approval for Israel; Palestine is oppressed by Israel and as such all of these things are related to each other. They even used the censored picture of Brenton Tarrant to drive the point home that “See? if you hate Islam, you are also just like this guy and oh, you support Israel too”.

I can’t even begin pointing out what is wrong with this “some x are y, some y are z, therefore x are y” fallacy, I am even more surprised that right-winged critics of Israel didn’t even try to debunk it. In one hand, it’s pretty observable that support for Israel is strong among mainstream conservatism than other movements across the political spectrum. On the other hand, there is one figure who is never discussed when the topic of alt-right and Zionism overlap, being very little-known outside of Israel.

This is Meir Kahane, a ultra-Orthodox Jewish rabbi from the USA who migrated from to Israel and was a co-founder of the Jewish Defense League and the Kach political party. Also known as “Israel’s Ayatollah”, he urged the establishment of a Jewish theocracy codified by Maimonides (a Reconquista-era Spanish Jew), the immigration of all American Jews to Israel before a “second Holocaust” could take place and was very vocal about advocating the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, violence against Palestinians and those he deemed as “anti-semites”. He was extremely divisive: there were people who found his Jewish supremacist rhetoric intolerable and equated him to the Nazis, while in other camp you had those who supported him largely because of Arab aggression as The Los Angeles Times reported that “[he] is a reaction to the wanton murders of innocent men, women and children in Israel” (which you can find many parallels with modern day politicians supported by the alt-right). Kahane was arrested at least 62 times by Israeli authorities for inciting hatred.

While in prison, Kahane wrote a manifesto titled “They Must Go” where he advocates the complete exile of Palestinians and the necessary process how to do it arguing that if they didn’t they’d begin outbreeding the Jewish population and take over Israel in 20 years (he wrote it in the 80s). His manifesto reads a lot like the anxiety Europeans feel about Muslim migrants which isn’t alleviated in the slightest by them speaking out in the open how they will establish a European caliphate.

Kahane was popular enough with the Israelis that he was elected with one seat to the Knesset. However, he was never really popular with his fellow parliamentarians, whom he regarded as “Hellenists” (Jews who assimilated into Greek culture after being conquered by Alexander the Great), since Kahane thought they weren’t Jewish enough. Most of his proposed laws included: imposing compulsory religious education, stripping citizenship status of all non-Jewish citizens (including Christians) and demanding that relations with Germany and Austria being cut but monetary compensation for the Holocaust being kept.

In 1990, Kahane was assassinated by an al-Qaeda member (it’s believed he was one of the first victims of the terrorist group), who was initially cleared of the murder, but was arrested later for being implicated in the 1993 WWC bombing attempt, where he confessed his first crime and was jailed to life imprisonment. His death made him a martyr leading to Kach member Baruch Goldstein to swear revenge and in 1994, he walked into the Cave of the Patriarchs on the West Bank and shot up the place, killing 30 Muslims before being lynched by the survivors. Given the Cave of the Patriarch status as a important religious site to Islam, this atrocity would have provoked probably worse reactions than Christchurch.

While researching about these things, I couldn’t help but see so many parallels between that and the Christchurch mosque incident. Kahane’s manifesto reads a lot like Tarrant’s own. Even if they were not familiar with Kahane’s own views, it was probably not lost to those that really read into Tarrant’s manifesto that not once he denounces the State of Israel for the current state of Europe - instead he blames Angela Merkel, Reccep Erdogan and Sadiq Khan, straight up calling for their deaths. This seemed enough for many people to conclude Tarrant was an Mossad agent.

To those reading this you may be asking: you listed so many things in common with the alt-right, Islamophobia and Zionism, so what did Al Jazeera get wrong?

Ah, if you actually paid attention to the fringe discourse, you realize that nothing discredits you faster than declaring yourself far-right and voicing support for Israel. I sincerely doubt that white supremacists would have liked a Jewish supremacist like Kahane, specially his demands that Germany to continue paying reparations forever. The fringe right actually finds lots of solidarity with Palestinians and common ground with the liberal left than either side cares to admit. Sure many right-wing politicians happen to be Zionists, but those are the mainstream old guard.

I also observed that they also are overwhelmingly in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in large part because he is an authoritarian model that stands up against Israel. Does it mean that all people who support Assad are also the same? No. Many support Assad because he is considered a bulwark against Islamism (even though he is a Muslim himself, albeit not considered one by terrorist extremists because he is Alawite). Despite his many flaws, normal people are willing to stand up for him because he represents stability in Syria.

I also take huge issue with Palestinians being referred to as exclusively Muslim because it erases their small and long-suffering Christian minority, which is never on anyone’s minds every time someone discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that Palestinian Christians played a huge role in resistance against Israel before the rise of Islamism ended up alienating them and Christians across the Middle-East aren’t necessarily thrilled about Israel either, not even Israeli Christians themselves.

It’s probably no coincidence that Al Jazeera, who denounces both Israel and the Assad regime who are antagonistic to each other, also happen to be big Islamist apologists which explains why they insist in portraying the Palestinian cause as a religious struggle rather than a nationalist one. It’s in their interest to denigrate critics of Islamism who run across the board in the political spectrum from atheists like Bill Maher and Sam Harris, Christians like David Wood, Brother Rachid and Zacharias Botros and Muslims like Majid Nawaz, Ed Hussein and Mohammed Tawid and many, many, many people worried about the dangers of Islamism, which they use so vociferously the term “Islamophobia” coined by the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization disguised as political party. This way they can lump all the opposition into one camp and paint them as Zionist Islamophobes.

With all that said, the rise of conservatism and nationalism across the world is co-related with the modern liberal left’s weakness to confront the Islamist Question. One of the key reasons that led to Donald Trump’s election were fears of Hillary Clinton increasing immigration as observed by the skyrocketing of sexual abuse cases in Western Europe. Even though he is a more despotic and authoritarian figure than Trump, Erdogan from Turkey is subjected to much less scrutiny from the Western media when he locks up more journalists anywhere in the world.

And this isn’t contained to the West either, the Bharatiya Janata Party characterized as Hindu nationalist and anti-Islamic continues being elected into power because of India’s spats with Pakistan and being formed in the first place because of Indian secularists appeasing to Muslims. And if the future is any indication, you can expect more persecutions of Muslims in Sri Lanka by Buddhists and Christians after the Easter bombings from this year. Those has less to do with Zionism and more with the fear of Islamism.

There is a good reason why I brought up Kahane into this editorial: much like modern day politicians, he was considered too radical by the status quo of the time yet gained the support of a silent majority like modern day because the current status quo proved intolerable. The same thing happened in my country with Jair Bolsonaro, who was already saying absurd things as early as the 90s and would never be considered as President of Brazil yet here we are, though Kahane was assassinated before he got the chance of being Prime Minister.

How many times are we going to deflect the problem like Al Jazeera before we confront it straight in the eye?

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berniesrevolution · 5 years

Photo

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

If you go by most of what you see in the media, you would think politics is governed by some strange version of Newtonian physics. “Both sides” are perennially to blame, and if there’s ever dangerous excesses on one end of the political spectrum, then they must of course be evened out by the existence of equally dangerous excesses on the other end.

It’s why, after George Soros was mailed a bomb, Chuck Schumer felt the need to announce that “despicable acts of violence and harassment are being carried out by radicals across the political spectrum.” And why the New York Times, after more explosives were sent to individuals hated by the Trump-loving Right, decidedthe explosives were adding “to [a] climate of overheated partisan rancor.”

Yet we’re now at a moment when it’s indisputable that only one of these “sides” has actually become a vehicle for dangerous, violent extremism.

I’m speaking about the quickly fading line between the far Right and “mainstream” conservatism. This isn’t really a new phenomenon. The dividing line between US conservatism and fringe bigots of various kinds has always been pretty flimsy; the old, “respectable” conservatism represented by William F. Buckley and pined for by today’s centrist pundits was also a deeply racist one. It’s not a mystery why the Klan endorsed Ronald Reagan for president twice.

But just consider some of the events of the past few weeks. The “theory” that the bombs sent by Trump superfan Cesar Sayoc were a “false flag” orchestrated by the Left quickly moved from far right internet message boards to being broadcast by “mainstream” conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, various Fox News guests, and even a Republican lawmaker, Matt Gaetz. Gaetz, along with “mainstream” conservatives like Newt Gingrich, also floated the idea that the thousands of Central American migrants traveling to Mexico and the US-Mexican border were being funded by some mysterious agent of chaos. One of these conservatives was pundit and prolific conspiracy theorist Erick Erickson, who for some reason was invited this past Sunday onto Meet the Press where he play-acted as a sober moderate and lectured conservatives to drop the crazy talk.

It called to mind the recent episode in which conservative legal thinker Ed Whelan invented an alternative“explanation” for Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged assault of Christine Blasey Ford that involved a Kavanaugh doppelgänger, defaming an innocent man in the process. It also calls to mind that, even now, a majority of Republicans believe Obama was born in Kenya.

This is far from the only recent instance of crossover between the far and “mainstream” Right. British far-right figure Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (a.k.a. “Tommy Robinson”) was invited by Republican congressman Paul Gosar to speak to the Conservative Opportunity Society, a group of right-wing House Republicans founded by Steve King. This is only a few months after Gosar traveled to London and spoke in support of Yaxley-Lennon at a protest peopled with other far-right figures, where he called Muslim men a “scourge.” The Arizona GOP said nothing.

Speaking of Steve King — the Republican congressman who, whoopsie daisy, just happens to somehow constantly retweet, meet with, and sound exactly like neo-Nazis — his “mainstream” colleagues seem to have a hard time condemning him. Here’s a parade of local GOP officials defending King and whitewashing his various racist comments (“he’s a godly, upright man”; “I think that he says what he means”;“maybe it’s crude, maybe a little mean, but it gets the point across”). One GOP county chair, when asked if King’s statement that “we can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies” was racist, responded: “I think it’s a reality.” (The head of the Republican Congressional fundraising arm did finally criticize King on Tuesday.)

King has helpfully made clear an obvious truth that would be considered too “partisan” if uttered by anyone in the media. Referring to the Freedom Party of Austria, a far-right party of actual Nazis, King said: “If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans.” And he’s not wrong: this November features a gaggle of real-life, no-kidding neo-Nazis and white supremacists running as GOP nominees.

Meanwhile, the Proud Boys, a ridiculous but nonetheless violent fascist gang led by Vice founder Gavin McInnes, have been welcomed into the Republican Party fold, with McInnes invited by the Metropolitan Republican Club of New York City — traditionally a hub for the GOP’s establishment elite — to give a lecture. The talk involved McInnes re-enacting the 1960 assassination of Japanese Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma, complete with caricatured Asian eyes, and concluding, “Never let evil take root,” a line reportedly met with hooting and cheering by the Republican audience. The Proud Boys also acted as “security” for Joe Gibson, a far-right activist who was briefly a Republican Senate candidate from Washington, and a recent protest by the gang was organized by a local GOP official in Florida.

We can also see this shift in Fox News, the most popular and powerful media arm of the conservative movement. Fox has long been a bastion of racist dog-whistling, as Megyn Kelly’s tenure at the network can attest, but it’s recently opted to swap the dog whistle for a bullhorn. Tucker Carlson runs shows about the dangers of Roma immigration and supposed anti-white discrimination in South Africa, while Laura Ingraham told viewers that “massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people” through both illegal and legal immigration, and that “the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore” in parts of the country. Earlier this week, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade suggested that the migrants headed toward the US are carrying unnamed “diseases,” which Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale accurately called “a staple of racist and anti-semitic incitement for hundreds of years.”

But the fact that Fox has never been far from these more alarmingly explicit appeals to racism is key, because the same goes for “mainstream” conservatism. As the Left has been at pains to point out for the past three years, other than on trade and some aspects of foreign policy, there is very little real substantive difference between Trump and “mainstream” conservatives, which is why Republicans, including his fiercest“opponents”, vote almost exactly in line with Trump’s policy positions most of the time. It’s also why Trump’s approval ratings are sky-high among Republicans and why “mainstream” conservatives have walked back their previous disapproval of Trump and now declare they’re “thrilled” with him. As one pollster has said, the “Never-Trump” Republicans that tend to appear on TV and in op-ed pages don’t really exist in real life.

Take a look at the recent midterms, which have seen the entire GOP heavily stoking racism in advance of voting day. The Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, affiliated with House speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership, has been running some breathtakingly racist ads. But the GOP’s “moderate” elements have been flirting with extremism for a while now.

Hatred of refugees, which motivated the latest far-right terrorist attack, was stoked by the “mainstream” Right in 2015, when 31 governors (all but one of them Republican) refused to resettle any Syrian refugees in their states. Hapless “moderate” Jeb Bush suggested letting in only the Christian ones. The following year, Ted Cruz, then another “moderate” alternative to Donald Trump, ran a campaign ad that was essentially Willie Horton for immigrant communities.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual confluence of “mainstream” conservatism’s brightest lights, has for many years been a cesspool of far-right talking points, ideas, and figures. Figures like Pamela Geller and Frank Gaffney were fixtures for years (Gaffney, a conspiratorial, anti-Muslim hate-monger, was also an adviser to Ted Cruz in 2016, and other GOP hopefuls that year lined up to be associated with him). Geert Wilders, the far-right Dutch politician, turned up once at CPAC to a forty-second standing ovation. This was the same year Wilders had been invited to the Capitol by Jon Kyl, the extremely conservative Republican former congressman who was considered a “pragmatic” choice to fill John McCain’s seat in Arizona.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #jacobin #jacobin magazine #conservatism #republicans #bigotry #economic inequality

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unicornprincessinthetardis · 5 years

Text

My (often relatively reasonable) dad: ...so Enoch Powell was right, what he said has happened.

Me: and you don't think maybe he could've said it without inciting racial hatred and literally saying that in time the rivers might run with the blood of 'native' British people because of immigration, do you?

My dad: no, you're being ridiculous, it had to be said, and there really are areas of cities that are majority black or Muslim now so he was right in his predictions, and it didn't change how things were anyway

Me: *goes away to calm down and read up on the 'Rivers of Blood' speech*

[I already knew some of this but here's a précis for those unfamiliar: in April 1968, in Wolverhampton, UK, a Conservative MP, Enoch Powell, made a speech, about the proposed 'Race Relations Bill' (which subsequently made it illegal to refuse housing/ employment/public services to people on the grounds of race/colour/ ethnic & national origins).

The speech was strongly anti-immigrant, calling for 'voluntary re-emigration' and for moves to be made to stem the tide of immigration, else Britain would be 'overrun' and sooner or later white British people would find themselves fully second-class citizens, and that in some ways they already were. He also talked about a "tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic", which I take to mean immigration in the USA to the similar end of white people no longer being in charge - which in 1968 was so far from the truth, and just horrible baseless fear-mongering, playing on people’s xenophobia and racist prejudice - and compared pro-immigration/anti-discrimination newspapers to the ones that had denied and hid the rise of fascism and threat of war in the 1930s. Plus, he talked about a constituent of his, a woman who lived on a street that had become occupied by mostly black people, who lost her white lodgers and complained to the council for a tax rate reduction because she wouldn't take black tenants, and instead basically got told not to be racist, and presented it as a bad thing that she'd been treated like that.

The speech's common name comes from a phrase he quoted from the Aenid (because he was also a Cambridge-educated classics scholar), 'I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood"', although he just called it 'the Birmingham speech' and seemed to be surprised by the uproar he caused.]

Me (to self): So it didn't change things did it? How do you explain the attacks against nonwhite people where the attackers literally shouted his name and repeated his rhetoric? Oh, they would definitely have happened if he hadn't made that speech, wouldn't they? And the British people of foreign descent who were so afraid they might be removed from their lives just for not being white they always had cases packed to go? And the fact that experts says he set back progress in 'race relations' by about ten years and legitimised being racist/anti-immigrant in the same way UKIP and some pro-Brexit types have done within the last few years here (fun fact: immediately after the Brexit vote, people were being racially and physically abusive to visibly Muslim and/or South Asian people, telling them to leave because of Brexit, which was of course extreme nonsense because their presence would be nothing to do with the EU, and more likely the British Empire and the Commonwealth, but they were doing it because it seemed suddenly okay to be openly racist, because Nigel Farage and his ilk, and a legally non-binding vote surrounded in lies, said so) and others have done elsewhere, in the US and Europe and Brazil and so many other places.

Powell was interviewed about the speech in 1977 and stood by his views, said that because the immigration figures were higher than those he had been 'laughed at' about in his speech, he was right and now governments didn't want to deal with the "problem", were passing it off to future generations and it would go on until there was a civil war!

He also said he wasn't a 'racialist' (racist) because he believed a "'racialist' is a person who believes in the inherent inferiority of one race of mankind to another, and who acts and speaks in that belief" so he was in fact "a racialist in reverse" as he regarded "many of the peoples in India as being superior in many respects—intellectually, for example, and in other respects—to Europeans." (I mean, I know I can't hold him to our standards but a) that's still racism and b) he did think that mankind was divided into very distinct, probably biologically so, races, which, yes, normal for the time, but the whole 'each with different qualities and ways in which they were better than others' is iffy)

Me: *goes back to Dad to make my point and definitely not get upset* So here are some things that literally happened as a consequence of the 'Rivers of Blood' speech...

So even if he was correct to say what he did (I mean, he wasn't but you have to tiptoe around Dad and I had points to make), he shouldn't have said it the way he did

My dad: so you think the truth should be suppressed? You're only looking at this from one perspective (he thinks he knows better because he was alive at the time and my brother and I weren't despite the fact that we're both into politics and history and, y'know, not into scapegoating, behaving oddly, and laying blame because people are different to us - he and mum also have issues with trans people and we're trying so hard to change their views/behaviours but I'm not sure it's working & that's a whole different story) and there are these areas that really are Muslim-only (because informal lending and wanting to keep the community together is such a crime, right?) and they don't integrate and want to impose Sharia law (only he couldn't remember what it was called right then) and you don't know what it's like (he is an engineer surveyor and travels all over to inspect boilers and cooling systems and all sorts of stuff, and this includes into majority-Black or -Asian (Muslim and otherwise) areas in Birmingham - which is not a no-go area for non-Muslims, I'm a deeply agnostic white woman, it's my nearest big city and I wish I went there more often but it's tricky as I don't drive, public transport is bad/inconvenient, and I have no friends to go with except depression and anxiety [which are worse 'friends' than the ones that I found out only liked me in high school because I always had sweets and snacks at lunch so when I got braces and my mouth hurt too much to eat much of anything which meant I certainly didn't have snacks, they dropped me pretty quickly] so apparently he's the expert on all such matters)

What I wish I'd said: *staying very calm* well, and that's your opinion, I'm going, I've got sewing to finish *leaves*

What actually happened:

Me: have you considered that they are able to buy up areas like that because white people leave because of their prejudice against the 'influx'?

Dad: they buy up great areas because they buy in groups (I think this refers to a sort of community lending thing to be compliant with various parts of Islam? [Please correct me if I'm wrong] which is effectively what building societies/credit unions were, at least to begin with, and he doesn't take issue with those) and want to stay together. Why do they do that? Sikhs don't do that, they buy big houses and aren't bothered about being close together.

Me: different religious ethoses? I don't know... But you do know that they people who want the UK to be a caliphate ruled by Sharia law are just a minority, and that most Muslims would not want that at all, just like you?

Dad: but they still do want it, and it could happen, if there was a charismatic leader,

Me: *incredulous* you know it's about as likely for that to actually happen as for strictly Orthodox Jewish people to be able to make this country into another Israel, right? Besides, there are the police, and the armed forces, and intelligence agencies, not to mention the Government and civil service (thought I'd got a win there, he hates the unchanging upper-class-public-school-Oxbridge nature of the people who effectively really run the government, constant no matter the leaning of the elected party, but no) who have a vested interest in preserving themselves in their current state so would be able to stop anything like that

Dad: yes, but the cutting of funding to police and public services means they might not be able to stop it (I realise now that he's oddly economically left-wing but also really quite socially conservative in some ways)

Me: *getting angry* but it's still an absolute minority, most Muslims would be horrified if it really did happen, and have you ever considered that maybe they wouldn't be so ill-disposed to us and to integration if we didn't demand it of them the moment that they arrive, demand that they assimilate or go away (he often uses the phrase "yes, but they're in somebody else's country, they should make an effort") and maybe young people wouldn't be so easily radicalised and people generally mistrust the people who don't try to understand them, you know, want them to change everything about themselves (for instance, Dad is violently opposed to the burqa etc and not really a fan of the hijab - still doesn't get that it's a choice and people can do what they want because apparently 'anyone could be wearing one of those things' - burqas/niqabs, I presume - and that it must all be forced because who would possibly choose to dress like that - I have half a mind to show him those sites about Christian modest dressing (one was a shop and a lot of their range was pretty cute!) that I once found, just to see if that'll prove to him it is a choice thing) *tries to leave*

Dad: *angry* You stay there and listen to me! You're just looking at it from one perspective and that's not the truth, you're so biased and closed-minded, you only look at things your way!

Me: *furious* Really? Really? Am I? *Scoffs/incredulous exhalation* I'm closed-minded, am I?... *Storms out, shouts as I go* I'm not the one who said Enoch Powell was right!!

This is all heavily paraphrased, because I've been writing this for literal hours now and I was angry and don't remember well at the best of times, it may have been worse than how I'm writing it

Also, going to be tricky to patch up but right now I stand by what I said, because I know my perspective is limited, but at least I actually admit that and try to find out what people different to me think, rather than basing all my opinions and things on my own experiences which can't be universal, as he seems to

Other bs my dad said during the two conversations: "don't get so upset about it, it's only history" (which is bold, considering it was the 50th anniversary this year and he was literally 11 years old when it happened so probably saw/heard news coverage)... "Yes of course far right groups use 'Enoch was right' as a slogan, it doesn't mean anything"... Reiterating the 'nothing changed' thing multiple times... Dismissing the fact that Powell said there'd be a civil war because apparently just because the British/Europeans were aggressive conquerors anyone else who came in numbers anywhere would eventually have that aim and how ridiculous that view actually is... Dismissing the fact that Powell basically incited racial hatred and violence with the inclusion of an irrelevant Classical phrase which spread fear on all sides...

I could go on but I'm so tired and don't want to make myself more upset

I love my parents but I really don't like them very much lately but I don't know if I just put up with it or leave sooner or later and if I do leave I don't know where I'd go because no friends

Basically I'm so sorry for my parents' prejudices which I'm still trying to unlearn myself - I apologise wholeheartedly to all Muslim and Jewish people and honestly pretty much everyone they're prejudiced against

#personal #personal post #my ramblings #my rambles #ramblings #rants #my rants #family #british politics #politics #rivers of blood #enoch powell #religion #anti-immigrant sentiment (not mine #i'm so done #and so alone #i just want a friend #and ideally an income of some description #but if i register for jobseekers' allowance/universal credit i will have to try all the time to get jobs of all kinds and i don't know what #i want to do/am qualified to do/can do bc potent cocktail of autism/anxiety/depression/no self-esteem/perfectionism/home situation #im just horribly stresssed and worried about everything and mum won't go to the doctors about her failing physical health to spite me #and dad has the cheek to say don't worry!! oh thanks i'd never thought of that before!#mum had an ovarian cyst when i was a kid & she didn't go to the dr till it was so bad she could hardly walk so she was in hospital for week #and it could've been dealt with so much more easily if she'd gone earlier so i'm so scared it'll happen again #i mean i'll be able to look after us if it does happen again which is good bc grandparents absolutely can't now #anger #very long post #long post #islamophobia tw #racism tw

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unpopularfanopinion · 6 years

Note

Oh ffs, you're one of those "liberals" who thinks "free speech" EVEN IF IT'S HATE SPEECH that INCITES VIOLENCE upon marginalized people, matters more than peoples LIVES. How charming. Like, you should have stopped and at least thought that hmm, maybe nazi ideology has KILLED PEOPLE in the MILLIONS, but sure, let them have free speech! You are an idiot and complicit in promoting fascism under the guise of "human rights (for some)".

I admit I was tempted to simply delete the nonsense but I wanted to point a few things out.

One: speech that incites violence isn’t protected under free speech laws and ideals. The tricky part however is in distinguishing when speech crosses that line. It’s something that’s been debated for decades, and likely will continue to be debated for decades more. Which considering how language can change, and how hate groups will adopt new symbols and language as older ones are identified and banned(remember what happened with Pepe the Frog.)

Two: I am a liberal that is keenly aware of the dangers of limiting free speech, and the expression of ideas. I am, quite rightfully, scared and worried that accepting the idea that some ideas are so dangerous they can’t be discussed or spoken of. I am rightfully worried about how accepting “We, as a society don’t accept that language and you’re not allowed to speak” and how easily that idea can be used to silence marginalized people speaking out against their oppression.

The Intercept has a nice article going over some of the ways hate speech laws have been used to attack and silence racial minorities, and LGBT activists. https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are-often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/ It’s worth looking over, and thinking about the chilling effect similar laws could have here in the US. In France 12 Palestinians were convicted of inciting hatred and violence for wearing t-shirts advocating a boycott of Israel products. Also in France an LGBT activist in France was tried and convicted of hate speech for calling a Pro-life, anti-marriage equality protester a homophobe. In the UK a Muslim teen was arrested over a facebook status. And I feel the need to quote here

In the UK, “hate speech” has come to include anyone expressing virulent criticism of UK soldiers fighting in war. In 2012, a British Muslim teenager, Azhar Ahmed, was arrested for committing a “racially aggravated public order offence.” His crime? After British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan, he cited on his Facebook page the countless innocent Afghans killed by British soldiers and wrote: “All soldiers should DIE & go to HELL! THE LOWLIFE F*****N SCUM! gotta problem go cry at your soldiers grave & wish him hell because that where he is going.”

The police spokesperson justifying the teenager’s arrest said: “He didn’t make his point very well, and that is why he has landed himself in bother.” So those of you craving European-style hate speech laws want to empower the police — and then judges — to decide when a point is sufficiently ill-made and offensive to justify arrest. Ahmed escaped a jail term, and was ultimately given “merely” a fine and community service, but only “because he quickly took down his unpleasant posting and tried to apologise to those he offended.”

Can you imagine what it would be like if we had similar laws in the US? Can you picture what would happen. I can. After yet another violent and unjustified shooting of an unarmed black man. When emotions are running (justifiably) high and hot, someone posts on twitter and facebook “FUCK THE POLICE!! ALL PIGS SHOULD DIE” could then find themselves arrested. Or for attending a BLM protest. Are you ready to throw BLM under the bus for a vague promise to silence and reduce nazis. Because I’m not.

Especially when, as the article notes, the Nazis like it when you try to silence them. Trying to silence them in an attempt to weaken them, actually strengthens them. Feeds into their righteous martyr complex and makes them more determined. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists 10 ways to combat hate in your community and oddly “Use the law to silence bigots” isn’t on that list. https://www.splcenter.org/20170814/ten-ways-fight-hate-community-response-guide What does seem to work is speaking out against bigots, organizing and showing them just how unpopular they are. Seriously what do you think is more demoralizing to the alt-right. Attempts to silence them, making them think people are just so scared of them, and that they’re more powerful then they actually are, or them attempting a rally where only a half dozen people show up(if that,) while in another park a couple hundred people show up for a BLM protest, or a fund raiser for an LGBT organization.

#Anonymous

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cassandra3333 · 7 years

Text

Grand Old Party

Anti gay

Anti black

Anti Mexican

Anti Muslim

Anti women

Anti immigrant

Anti government

Auntie Betty

Just checkin'

to see if

you're payin'

attention.

But what are ya for?

Besides war

and more

money and power.

Oh, that's right.

Assault rifles,

prayers in school,

pretendin'

climate change

don't exist,

and teachin'

children

the myth

of creation

and, of course,

the Constitution,

written

when women

weren't worthy enough

to be “created equal.”

As long as you get them tax cuts

and write-offs,

you're as happy as a clam.

Why else would you help people?

Your generosity is a sham.

No empathy

or sympathy,

but plenty

of apathy.

Do you feel anything?

Anything at all?

Or have your hearts

completely atrophied?

Dirty water

in the Wolverine state.

Sick kids,

but

you don't care

'bout their fate.

Do ya?

Anything to save money.

Ain't that right honey?

Don't jabber on 'bout Christian family values.

You're like all them

hypocritical white men.

Pillars of 1800's

Southern society.

Goin' to church

every Sunday mornin',

then home to beat

your slave workin'

in the field.

And somehow managin'

to squeeze in rapin'

your “darkey” in the kitchen,

where your wifey is turnin'

a blind eye,

before you've

even started

kneelin'

for your evenin'

prayers.

Gotta be 18 to smoke,

but only 12 to shoot a gun,

as long as daddy is around.

Used to be younger,

but I guess

there were just too many

accidental deaths.

Imagine that.

But remember,

guns don't kill people,

people kill people.

Who cares how many people

die each day.

You're all bought and paid for

by the NRA.

The planet will be destroyed,

but so what?

You'll be dead by then.

Just to keep all your loot,

you will continue to pollute

the water, the air, and the earth.

Refusin' to follow

them EPA regulations,

because a clean Earth

is just not worth

one less jet or yacht.

“Government is useless,

should stay out of everything.”

But when a hurricane

hits your state

Mr. Congressman,

then by all means,

allocate another billion.

That's the Federal Emergency

Management Agency,

in case you've forgotten.

Fox News = Lies,

Propaganda,

Fear-mongerin'.

Why so much vitriol?

Here's a clue -

Jesus was betrayed

for a few

pieces of silver.

If I didn't know better

I'd swear Judas

was a Republican.

Then they tortured

and crucified

the Lord.

The Left has always

been hated

by the Right.

As we all know,

Darkness

abhors the Light.

No experience

or knowledge

of foreign affairs,

American history,

world history,

geography,

and has

the vocabulary

of a child.

Loves those

adjectives,

the bigger,

the better.

He's intellectually,

emotionally,

and morally

bankrupt.

But despite all of that,

you just don't see why

he gets so much flak.

You can say

he's stupid and lazy,

but please, stop

callin' him crazy.

For you're implyin'

he ain't accountable

for his actions.

Stop the speculatin'

'bout his mental state.

It's not up for debate.

He's just your

run-of-the-mill

soulless asshole,

a bully with

no decency

at all.

His nomination

means the blood shed

by our nation

is on your hands

Ladies Macbeth.

Our enemies

hacked our email,

our election.

Used fake identities

to incite hatred

and confusion,

and you're not

even pretendin'

you're makin' sure

it don't happen

again.

Oh women,

how you must

loathe yourselves,

to support a man

who obviously holds you

in such contempt.

Don't underestimate us.

Our memories are long.

Wouldja like to hear a story?

One with no guts or glory.

Once upon a time,

a poor man from Arkansas

became President.

But one party

was so obsessed,

they began a witch hunt

that had no precedent.

Some of the more crazy ones

actually said

the man needed killin',

but most of them

just wanted to know

whose orifices

he was fillin'.

Our Dictator-in-Chief

committed treason,

colluded with Russians

to rig our elections.

Obstructin' justice,

turnin' Allies into enemies,

bringin' us

to the brink of

war.

“That's nothing,”

you say.

“Who cares?”

“Fake news.”

“But...but...HE lied under oath!”

you stutter

with proper

indignation.

Ignorin'

the fact

that

the man was

just protectin'

his family.

“Hillary used a private email server!!”

Well, I'm glad to see

everyone's priorities are in order.

Was that really the problem?

Or maybe, just maybe,

you don't like the fact, Jack,

that there's a lil ole “of State,”

tacked

on the end

of Secretary.

So sorry to break it to ya,

but women can do

much more

than type.

More than cookin',

cleanin',

and bringin'

babies into a world

they never wanted.

Wait! Hold up now!

What's this I hear?

Five minions

from Herr

Trump's regime

did the same thing?

Lock 'em up!

Crooked Ivanka!

Crooked Jared!

Old? Maybe.

But not grand,

not grand at all.

Karen B-R

#poem #donald trump #republicans #gop #fox news #anti-women #russians #collusion

4 notes · View notes

hellofastestnewsfan · 5 years

Link

When the two strangers accosted Chelsea Clinton, she was attending an NYU vigil for the Muslims murdered by a terrorist in Christchurch, New Zealand. “This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the words that you put out into the world,” one declared as the other recorded the encounter. “I want you to know that, and I want you to feel that deep down inside. Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there.”

The accuser’s blend of callous indignation and extravagant nonsense brought to mind charges that Chelsea’s parents murdered Vince Foster or that her mother committed treason when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was attacked. But these critics weren’t right-wingers parroting talk radio. They were leftist NYU students.

It would be absurd to blame any anti-racist New York City cosmopolitan for an ethno-fascist’s decision to murder Muslims in a gambit to start a race war. The choice to blame Chelsea Clinton is particularly silly. Her recent activism includes attending a 2017 Muslim solidarity rally, protesting Donald Trump’s attempts to prevent Muslim immigration, extolling the response of Muslims to a hate crime in Portland, Oregon, and lamenting a horrific crime against a young Muslim.

Despite the glaring unfairness of the very serious charge, however, BuzzFeed published a column by the two NYU students, who doubled down on their attempted public shaming. Meanwhile, CNN, Time, The Washington Post, the Daily Mail, ABC News, The Jerusalem Post, Jezebel, USA Today, The New Zealand Herald, People, and many other mass-media outlets covered the altercation. In a world rife with dangerous anti-Muslim bigotry, why did student activists, Twitter users, and the media focus public debate on an outlandishly frivolous accusation?

[Read: The evolution of shaming]

One instructive place to begin: Last month, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, told reporters that punitive action should be taken against two Democratic House members for their statements on Israel. “It’s not clear what McCarthy particularly found offensive,” Haaretz reported, “but both lawmakers embrace the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, and both have been accused of tweets that cross the line.”

On Twitter, the journalist Glenn Greenwald flagged that article for his followers. “It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans,” he declared.

Representative Ilhan Omar responded, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby.”

Some saw her tweet as a standard leftist claim that donor money was corrupting politics, others as an unwitting or intentional echo of an anti-Semitic trope.

“Please learn how to talk about Jews in a non-anti-Semitic way,” the journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon tweeted. “Sincerely, American Jews.” Chelsea Clinton quoted those words, adding, “Co-signed as an American. We should expect all elected officials, regardless of party, and all public figures to not traffic in anti-Semitism.”

That callout upset the NYU students. They felt that casting Omar’s comments as beyond the pale was itself beyond the pale—that it made Chelsea Clinton an anti-Muslim bigot. Fast-forward to the vigil, where they called out Chelsea Clinton in turn. Though it happened face-to-face, it was, in essence, an IRL quote-tweet. The “likes” were provided by classmates who snapped in solidarity.

[Read: The destructiveness of callout culture on campus]

In all those callouts, different readers will take different sides.

Just notice that at every link in that chain of events, public discourse was dominated not by efforts to persuade or debate anything on the merits, but by attempts to cast, locate, or portray the target of one’s opprobrium as out of bounds.

The lesson isn’t that stigma is never appropriate. If someone incites violence against Jews or Muslims, for example, the words ought to be summarily condemned, not considered fodder for debate about whether violent attacks are, in fact, desirable. Still, this episode illustrates that when the constant focus is on the boundaries of legitimate speech, little time or attention is left for substance. And what’s said to constitute bigotry keeps expanding without any apparent limit.

Nowadays, the journalist Damon Linker observed in The Week, “the point is less to convince your opponent that she has made an error of reasoning or is wrong on the facts as to convince your own side, as well as the dwindling crowd of neutral observers … that they are excused from having to take your opponent seriously because she has crossed a line beyond which people shouldn’t be granted a hearing.”

The NYU students’ expansive notion of bigotry now encompasses Chelsea Clinton’s effort to call out what she regarded (whether rightly or wrongly) as anti-Semitic bigotry. Meanwhile, a Washington Examiner headline now declares, “BuzzFeed Platforms the Genocidal Bigots Who Harassed Chelsea Clinton.” Once callout culture takes hold, its perverse incentives generate inanity without end.

[Read: The excesses of callout culture]

The BuzzFeed article by the NYU students is most noteworthy for the way it elides substantive disagreements. Core to this dispute is whether or not the tweet that Chelsea Clinton published was, in fact, bigoted toward Muslims. Clinton herself obviously doesn’t think so. Yet here’s what the NYU students wrote:

We did a double take when we first noticed Chelsea Clinton was at the vigil. Just weeks before … we bore witness to a bigoted, anti-Muslim mob coming after Rep. Ilhan Omar for speaking the truth about the massive influence of the Israel lobby … we were profoundly disappointed when Chelsea Clinton used her platform to fan those flames.

We believe that Ilhan Omar did nothing wrong except challenge the status quo, but the way many people chose to criticize Omar made her vulnerable to anti-Muslim hatred and death threats. We were shocked when Clinton arrived at the vigil, given that she had not yet apologized to Rep. Omar for the public vilification against her. We thought it was inappropriate for her to show up to a vigil for a community she had so recently stoked hatred against. We were not alone in feeling uncomfortable—many students were dismayed to see her there.

The students are so short on empathetic discernment that they presumed Chelsea Clinton would perceive her own actions just as her harshest critics perceive them. They still don’t seem to recognize that she does not believe her tweet “stoked hatred against” the Muslim community, or fanned the flames of a bigoted mob, or undermined anyone’s physical safety, whether she is right or wrong in those judgments. Needless to say, the students never consider that it might be more constructive to argue with Clinton than to call her out and wish her anguish.

The article continues: “So when we saw Chelsea, we saw an opportunity to have her ear and confront her on her false charge of anti-Semitism against our only Black, Muslim, Somali, and refugee member of Congress. We took our chance to speak truth to power.” But asserting “Forty-nine people died because of the rhetoric you put out there” was neither the truth nor a confrontation on the merits of the anti-Semitism charge. The NYU students were not engaged in an attempt to “speak truth to power.” They were engaged in public shaming.

They later write: “Many have said it was unfair to connect Chelsea’s words to the massacre in Christchurch. To them, we say that anti-Muslim bigotry must be addressed wherever it exists.” Except that they’ve tried to publicly shame Chelsea Clinton while saying nothing about countless examples of clear, virulent bigotry. And they’re still begging the question. Those who believe the students behaved unfairly do not agree that Clinton’s words constituted anti-Muslim bigotry. It is easy for many to imagine her tweeting exactly the same critique, rightly or wrongly, at a non-Muslim who said the same thing about Israel policy.

The authors come closest to valid claims when they write, “Hatred and vilification against Muslims created this killer,” and “Spurred on by professional bigots, anti-Muslim hate now permeates our culture and politics …” It’s perfectly true that anti-Muslim bigotry is pervasive and dangerous. But the (currently too-soft) taboo against anti-Muslim bigotry is weakened, not strengthened, if callouts extend so promiscuously that Chelsea Clinton, of all people, is deemed an anti-Muslim bigot, let alone complicit in 49 murders.

The NYU students did not invent this doomed mode.

They learned it through peer acculturation, perverse incentives, and adults who indulge in question-begging arguments, irresponsible accusations, and careless callouts, all of which are epidemic on the social-justice left and the Republican right. Opportunists such as Representative McCarthy recognize that callout culture is a boon to his political coalition: He can call out the left, exploiting the hypersensitivity that causes leftists to constantly eat their own, confident that he’ll never suffer if and when he is inconsistent, as most of his fellow Republicans won’t call him on the hypocrisy of supporting a serial bigot such as President Trump.

Yet every day is a chance for adults to set a better example.

Representative Omar has succeeded this week with a Washington Post op-ed that sets forth a foreign-policy philosophy and makes a substantive case for it on the merits.

Whereas McCarthy claimed in another recent callout that Representative Adam Schiff is “a modern-day Joe McCarthy,” and President Trump continues to label the entire news media “enemies of the people.” If only that inane public shaming were the work of student activists rather than the most powerful GOP officials.

Public discourse will always include moral limits. Bigotry of the sort expressed by people who favor murdering Muslims or Jews does cross them, as should some words falling short of that. Drawing exact lines will always be hard and controversial. And occasional debates about edge cases are necessary exercises. But none of that comes close to justifying the state of our public discourse today.

Imagine an alternative civic culture in which Republicans applied their purported disdain for callout culture to their own, and where the left worked toward a public discourse with better incentives, lauding participants not for zero-sum callouts but for substantively engaging ideas, people, and policies on the merits. Everyone would be better off. As I write, I see that a critic of the NYU students has resurfaced bigoted tweets that one of them published in high school, extending the chain yet again. There is no one other than all of us to make it stop.

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2TPGpqZ

#Blogger

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myinnerscarlett · 5 years

Text

I’m a Little Teapot

The whistling teapot image is one granted tRump by his aides and confidants referring to his CPAC speech. To the rest of us it is “more like the delusional ramblings of someone hopped up on drugs or suffering a mental breakdown than anything resembling a normal political speech.” As the Washington Post describes it, he went through ten distinct personas, or personalities, harkening back to the idea he is mentally unstable. It begins with “the entertainer” as he mocks Jeff Sessions’ southern accent and goes from “fighter” (always on the side of the little guy) to “bully” (bully is more to the point as his taunt to Comey demonstrates “he still hasn’t gotten over getting his ass kicked, okay?”) to “victim” (as he laments the “witch hunt”) to “auditor” (reducing everything to dollars and cents but never making sense of the money as it is always exaggerated), to perpetual “braggart” (think crowd size means anything to him), to “expert” (on everything even though he fakes it all) to “fabulist” (the Wall perhaps), to “rebel” (without a cause - to anyone with a brain - but unto himself), to “pundit” (racial slurs included). This brings me to the sad side as if that performance wasn’t sad enough... As for The Christchurch New Zealand massacre, let’s revisit tRump’s anti-Muslim comments and his statements regarding arms dipped in pig’s blood, which begs the question: was it his? As for the story behind that rant, known as the Philippines story, Pershing quashed a rebellion of the Moro tribesmen (Muslims) in the southern Philippines a century or so ago. They were not terrorists but rather rebels fighting on their own soil against a foreign enemy. No proof exists that Pershing directed his army to use rifles to shoot 49 “lined up” Muslims with those now infamous bullets “dipped in pig’s blood” which would constitute a “war crime.” Such stories do nothing but conjure up hatred toward Muslims and incite more terrorism against them, which is exactly what happened in New Zealand. His CPAC speech could be reduced to a children’s nursery rhyme: I’m a little teapot Short and stout Here is my handle Here is my spout When I get all steamed up Hear me shout “Tip me over And pour me out!” But what tips him over isn’t so much the tragedies worldwide but a personal dig aimed at the misguided notion of a Fake Melania stand in. She doesn’t need a fake stand in. She’s already a fake. She’s as fake as the physician who appeared on video screen in Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont, California on March 4, 2019 to deliver news to a man that he was going to die. Even his wife was not in attendance. Those who were in attendance said it lacked compassion. Meanwhile, speaking of no compassion, tRump’s kids talk about how people in America should earn their keep. Isn’t that the pot calling the tea kettle black? I’ll say this much...as tRump ended his CPAC speech, he might have uttered a rare truth: “I’m going to regret this speech.” That ain’t all. Buddy Manafort is now looking at 7 & 1/2 years for his crimes involving the Russia investigation. Regrets all around. Some say it’s still not enough. And then there’s the WSJ article on Mensa. Something about how mensans spend more time playing games than trying to solve the world’s problems. There’s nothing fake about that statement. I’m a current member as well as a contributor to the Bulletin. As of late, however, articles written by people who hate cats, love hunting and are as obsessed with font size as tRump seems with his crowd size are dominating the pages. My email is filled with requests to renew my membership. One says: You “are” Mensa. You make the Bulletin compelling reading. As I wait to grace the pages again (which I have in the past), I wonder if my more intellectual and philosophical discussions (on topics not political because I know that’s a no-no) will once again find a home... This is another way Mensa marketing refers to the group. You have a home in Mensa. That means all members should have a voice. It’s at times like these that I believe my voice should be heard. Let’s get back to playing fair...not just playing games. And Make American Mensa Great Again!

The narcissists are running our country now. You need to understand what this means. Read and share this book today!

#Trump #washington post #jeff sessions #comey #christchurch #fakemelania #mensa #paul manafort #philippines

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

Link

In the last few days, Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify booted from their platforms podcasts, pages, and channels that belong to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his InfoWars website — one of the biggest purges of popular content by Internet giants in recent memory.

Jones and his various sites are leading purveyors of violent and sometimes racist (and anti-Semitic) conspiracy theories. The tech companies say they blocked InfoWars not because of the conspiracy theories, but because, in Spotify’s words, InfoWars “expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics.”

Facebook said they were shutting down several of Jones’s pages for “glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.” Apple said in a statement to Buzzfeed News, “Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users,” adding, “Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory.”

Jones set off a round of debate in recent weeks about whether InfoWars should be granted carte blanche on big social media outlets when he addressed Russia investigation special counsel Robert Mueller on his show, imitated firing a gun, and said, “You’re going to get it, or I’m going to die trying.” (Facebook’s statement almost certainly is in response.)

The InfoWars website gets as many as 10 million visitors a month, and Alex Jones’s YouTube channel has roughly 2.4 million subscribers, with 17 million views in the last 30 days.

Supporters of the ban on Jones — including the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting (Alex Jones has stated the tragedy never took place) — argue that the conspiracy theorists’ message constitutes a “societal crisis.” But his supporters, particularly those on the right, like Sen. Ted Cruz, believe that limiting Jones’ online reach is an affront to free speech.

Alex Jones has been a consistent, leading voice in the conspiracy theorist corner of the Internet for more than 20 years, pitching such ideas as “the government controls the weather” and “Hillary Clinton is a literal demon.” As my colleague Zack Beauchamp wrote on Jones’s views in October 2016:

The US government is secretly controlled by a shadowy international cabal called the New World Order. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is going to put Americans in concentration camps. The “Jewish mafia” controls Uber and American health care. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are literal demons — like, the kind that come from hell and smell like sulfur. … Jones and those like him believe the world has been secretly taken over by a secret global cabal, the so-called “New World Order.” These “globalists,” as Jones types derisively call them, want to take over the United States, which they see as the final stronghold of freedom on Earth.

He was also one of the biggest pushers of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which eventually led a gunman to enter a Washington, DC, pizzeria and fire several shots.

On July 24, Jones issued a threat aimed at special counsel Robert Mueller on The Alex Jones Show:

“That’s a demon I will take down, or I’ll die trying. So that’s it. It’s going to happen, we’re going to walk out in the square, politically, at high noon, and he’s going to find out whether he makes a move man, make the move first, and then it’s going to happen,” Jones said, miming a pistol with his hand. “It’s not a joke. It’s not a game. It’s the real world. Politically. You’re going to get it, or I’m going to die trying, bitch. Get ready. We’re going to bang heads. We’re going to bang heads.”

Jones is a Donald Trump supporter and promoter. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump appeared on Alex Jones’s show, saying Jones “reputation was amazing,” and Jones has repeatedly bragged that he is in close contact with the president.

Remember when then-candidate Trump went on Infowars and praised Alex Jones? “Your reputation is amazing,” Trump said. “I will not let you down.” pic.twitter.com/l9nt84xx81

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 6, 2018

In a statement on the decision to remove Jones’s content from the site, Facebook said that the company was not doing so because Jones was a conspiracy theorist, but because of Jones “glorifying violence” and “using dehumanizing language” against minorities:

As a result of reports we received, last week, we removed four videos on four Facebook Pages for violating our hate speech and bullying policies. These pages were the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page. In addition, one of the admins of these Pages – Alex Jones – was placed in a 30-day block for his role in posting violating content to these Pages.

Since then, more content from the same Pages has been reported to us — upon review, we have taken it down for glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies… While much of the discussion around Infowars has been related to false news, which is a serious issue that we are working to address by demoting links marked wrong by fact checkers and suggesting additional content, none of the violations that spurred today’s removals were related to this.

More recently, Jones has been embroiled in a series of lawsuits filed by people about whom he has made repeated false assertions, like Marcel Fontaine: InfoWars declared him to be the shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida (despite the fact that Fontaine had never even visited the state of Florida). There’s also Leonard Pozner, the father of a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting, Noah Pozner, whose family has endured endless harassment by followers of Jones who believe that Pozner’s son never existed.

To be clear, this isn’t the first time Jones has been sued for making outrageously false statements. But now, supporters of Jones’s victims have started going after not just Jones, but the platforms that host him and broadcast his messages — like Facebook.

Fans and supporters of Alex Jones (not to mention InfoWars employees, like InfoWars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson) have responded to the decisions by Facebook, Apple, Spotify and YouTube by alleging that by striking against Jones’s media outlets, “Big Tech” is engaged in “collusion” and “election meddling” and are putting free speech at risk.

Big Tech is engaging in election meddling and COLLUSION.

Apple, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube (Google) all banned Infowars within 12 hours of each other.

This is unprecedented.

This is political warfare.https://t.co/7LeDltv51y

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 6, 2018

WikiLeaks also chimed in, describing the ban as evidence of a “global anti-trust problem.”

Infowars says it has been banned by Facebook for unspecified ‘hate speech’. Regardless of the facts in this case, the ability of Facebook to censor rivial publishers is a global anti-trust problem, which along with San Francisco cultural imperialism, reduces political diversity. https://t.co/xb5oY2JHzy

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 6, 2018

And they have been joined by Sen. Ted Cruz, who has repeatedly defended Jones’s right to speak freely on social media platforms while arguing that perhaps anti-trust laws should be used to “break up” companies like Facebook. In his view, those who would shut down Alex Jones’s outlets might do the same to people or entities with more mainstream perspectives.

Am no fan of Jones — among other things he has a habit of repeatedly slandering my Dad by falsely and absurdly accusing him of killing JFK — but who the hell made Facebook the arbiter of political speech? Free speech includes views you disagree with. #1A https://t.co/RC5v4SHaiI

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) July 28, 2018

To be clear, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple are all private companies, and legally have the right to ban any entity from their platforms, including Jones. As Marissa Lang wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle in August 2016:

As private companies, social networks are not required to adhere to the First Amendment. They set their own rules and retain the right to moderate content, routinely screening it for instances of gratuitous violence, harassment, profanity and other offensive material.

Facebook and other social media companies are not just massive corporations, they’re vehicles for millions of people to share their personal views and perspectives. Many observers believe that a shutting out a specific entity because of their speech, especially when based on alleged “hate speech,” doesn’t bode well for them, or others. That is particularly true when the rules determining what hate speech actually is are vague at best. (For example, in 2017, several Facebook users reported having posts taken down that referenced the well-known LGBT-themed comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For.)

Alex Jones’s online popularity notwithstanding, it is unlikely that his fanbase has the political firepower necessary to get his YouTube channel restored and his podcasts back on Spotify. But just as unlikely is an end anytime soon to the debate over who gets to say what on social media platforms, and how.

Original Source -> Why YouTube, Facebook, and Apple banned Alex Jones, explained

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

0 notes

celticnoise · 6 years

Link

Had I been fully back on my feet on Wednesday there is no way that this one would have passed me by. Had I actually been on Twitter more over the last few weeks I would have caught on to it even sooner. But it’s 6 April, and I’m all the way caught up.

And what a story this one was.

Another episode which heaps shame on our media.

Not that they’re feeling it or anything.

Our media literally has no shame, and Neil Cameron has less shame than most.

This is guy who frequently throws invective around like confetti and then tries to bemoan the lack of standards online. If he had standards, either personally or professionally, then some of us wouldn’t need to do what we do.

Let me go back to where this story begins; it starts, if I’m correct, with an email sent to the MSP James Dornan, on March 27, drawing his attention to a leaflet extolling the virtues of Smash A Fenian Day. I wrote about James Dornan on this site a couple of times before; he’s one of the loudest drum bangers for what used to be the Offensive Behaviour Act, but unlike a lot of his colleagues I get the impression he’s invested in the stated intent; i.e. he hates sectarianism and wants to see it eradicated from Scotland.

Don’t we all? My quibble with James is that neither he nor anyone else has ever explained to me how banning certain songs at the football will do that.

Anyway, this is the leaflet.

James Dornan did what any sensible person would do when faced with that; he brought in the police.

He also tweeted the offensive mail to see which other MSP’s or elected officials might have received something similar.

This, curiously, gave some of the haters an excuse to have a pop at him … asking why he would ever have publicised such a thing in the first place.

Easy answer. He didn’t. It was sent to him … and it was already out there.

I know that Dornan was not the first person to clap eyes on this thing; it’s been doing the rounds. In fact, it was Martin Beatty, Jay’s dad, who was the first person to draw my attention to it, but even trying to defend Dornan on this score is ridiculous anyway.

The accusation that he manufactured it himself, just for the purpose of causing trouble for “the PUL community” is a ghastly allegation which betrays just how sick some of the Peepul we are dealing with are. Here is a sample of what I’m talking about.

Regardless; this thing’s internet history could not be less important, because bear in mind that the very act of creating that and sending it out into the world was a crime.

A criminal offence, okay?

And not under the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act either.

Cameron is not saying that Dornan invented it.

He’s saying it was a bit of banter.

Frankly, I don’t know which suggestion is the more offensive.

There is no light-hearted way to look at that leaflet, and yes I know it’s a knock-off from similar ones that have been doing the rounds about Muslims for a while now. That’s kind of my point though; in England, those sort of leaflets are routinely prosecuted.

The people who produce them and share them know the stakes of the game, or they learn fast.

Dornan is the guy who brought it to a wider audience than it might otherwise have had … but since he did it has been reproduced, retweeted, re-posted and shared countless times, by people who agree with every single sentiment that’s on it.

It’s a matter of time before one of those leaflets is responsible for putting someone in a hospital or worse, on a mortuary slab.

That’s how serious they are.

And yet, predictably, Dornan’s entire timeline turned into a slew of invective against him, with, as I said, some people going as far as to accuse him of manufacturing the thing himself. One long-standing internet troll with a lot of followers and friends in the mainstream media – so many, in fact, that it’s not silly to speculate that said individual is a member of the press or at least used to be – decided to publicly accuse Dornan of “admitting” that he hadn’t been sent it.

Dornan called him a liar.

Of course.

As that’s exactly what he is.

That reply was in response to the following:

And that’s when Cameron first jumped into this, with this tweet which I presume he found funny.

Although I wonder whether Gerry Braiden did.

I wonder whether the victims of sectarian violence across Scotland did.

There’s an example, right there, of Cameron trying to make a joke out of something that’s extremely serious, and which was raised by an elected official who was sent it by email. A case could be made for saying it amounts to an actual threat of physical violence against James Dornan.

For Cameron, it was an excuse to indulge in cheap laughs.

Yet its public dissemination on various forums and by re-tweets and shares clearly constitutes incitement.

We have a sordid little history of all this stuff in Scotland, and it’s why people like James Dornan have become so determined to combat it and wash it away. I’ve long argued that our media does us no favours in this regard; they stir the pot, then they walk away when it starts to bubble up. They promote hate, and then panic when it threatens to (or sometimes does) become violence. None of them has done enough to challenge this kind of thing.

It is not weeks ago that the Union Bears marched to Ibrox in a paramilitary style parade, black clad, faces covered, making the Nazi salute. On Scottish streets. They had advertised their intent to do so days in advance and police allowed it.

The leaflet which promoted it included a vicious logo of a Celtic fan being kicked in the face.

The Smash A Fenian leaflet is dredged up from the same cesspool; the stinking one where anti-Catholic hate is still tolerated here in Scotland and if it comes with anti-Irish tinge all the better. They don’t call it “the last acceptable form of bigotry” for nothing.

The thing is, what happens on the internet all too often creeps off of it.

The media knows this, having played an active role in promoting hatred against Neil Lennon only to watch it morph into something infinitely worse. The morphing started online, on fan forums so filled with toxicity you need full body protection just to survey them. It deepened there until a few psychopaths were inspired into action and then it wasn’t emails getting sent to people; it was bombs. It was bullets. Lennon himself was physically attacked on the job.

But then, so was Scott Brown last year and I’m still waiting to hear what the SFA intends to do about that or the collective failure to properly steward Ibrox that day which I wrote several articles on at the time. This is all to say that this stuff isn’t a joke.

Cameron disagrees. In fact, that’s exactly what he said this stuff was.

A dark joke. A peculiarly Scottish version of it.

Something “we sort of invented” … I wonder who “we” are in Cameron’s disgusting claim?

I wonder if Cara Henderson, the girl who might have been Cara Scott had a sectarian bigot not cut then boyfriend Mark Scott’s throat outside of a Bridgeton dive, finds it funny. She formed the organisation Nil By Mouth; maybe they do. To the best of my knowledge they’ve not said a word to condemn Neil Cameron or The Herald Group for the reprehensible tweet with which they are now indelibly associated.

I just wonder if she, and they, appreciate the laugh out loud quality of it.

What was the slogan Nil By Mouth pioneered?

“Sectarian humour can have you in stitches.”

Yeah, Cameron.

You are hilarious.

A dark joke, eah? Who can beat it? It’s funny if you’re not the one sitting in the A&E. And you know what? It’s not even funny then. It’s twisted, both the act of producing that piece of filth and the act of defending it as a joke.

Not that Cameron is defending it, of course.

In fact, he seems to be trying to deny that’s what he meant.

The reason this double-blipped on my radar was that he got into an argument with a couple of folk on Twitter about it.

Before I go on, I have a confession to make; I absolutely love Bob Smith Walker and Matthew Leslie. The first is a Don’s fan, a sterling social commentator, activist and publisher who speaks his mind and isn’t afraid of controversy, much like many of the people whose work he has helped get into print; this includes Phil. Bob is, of course, the head honcho at Frontline Noir, who published Downfall. Matt Leslie is a fantastic blogger on all-things Scottish football. Like myself he doesn’t limit his writing to his own club, which is Hearts.

Neither of them found Cameron’s comments either humour or appropriate.

Bob Smith Walker called him out on them in the following tweet.

And Cameron, true to type, then got in a flap.

He claimed he’d been misquoted or misrepresented.

The exchange that follows is instructive.

No Twitter most certainly didn’t dream it, or his “I’ve booked a bus” comment either.

The following exchange should give you some insight into the kind of person Cameron is; he has publicly accused someone of lying (although they’re clearly not) and when confronted to make good on that accusation this is how he chose to defend himself:

Later on that night, he posted the following tweet.

Isn’t that pathetic? Isn’t that a pitiful response?

That sums him up to a T.

From laughing at sectarianism, and defending a criminal act as a bit of banter, to wallowing in self-pity because he was called on it … what a wretched human being.

You know what?

Scotland is full of people like Cameron.

I’m not suggesting that he’s a bigot, but here he’s treated something appalling and dangerous as if it were a giggle.

Which, as Bob Smith Walker himself pointed out, makes him a moron at the very least. I would go further though. In suggesting that this stuff was “a dark joke” and that it’s somehow woven into Scottish culture, as if something to be proud of, he’s stepped over a line.

It’s because of that I think he has questions to answer.

I think his bosses at The Herald have questions to answer.

This guy’s Twitter page has his job description down there on it.

It’s not enough for him to say “all my views” on there, as if it exonerates them.

His “views” here are repellent.

I am not asking The Herald if it’s editorial line on sectarianism in Scotland is that it’s “a dark joke” and something to be mocked.

I’m asking if they are satisfied that this contemptuous attitude towards the subject, ably demonstrated in public by one of their senior employees, helps them or hurts them whenever they have to write about the issue. If someone at their paper scorned antisemitism as a joke, or racism as something that “the sane people” didn’t get in a flap about, this “all my views” disclaimer wouldn’t fly for one second. This is a deeply disturbing incident, made a million times worse by how he’s handled it.

The ball is entirely in their court.

A lot of us will be watching with great interest.

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elizabethleslie7654 · 6 years

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Trump Gets Blowback for Exposing Muslim Crime

all kinds of cool jewelry and no shipping or getting mobbed t the mall

by Jay Lorenz

Last Wednesday, President Donald Trump retweeted three videos of Muslims performing violent or anti-Christian acts. One shows a Middle Eastern man beating a handicapped Dutch man, one a Muslim smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary, and the last a mob throwing people off of a rooftop in the Middle East.

The content of the tweets and their source, Jayda Fransen the Deputy Leader of Britain First, have been denounced by many in America and Britain. Fransen was arrested earlier this month while giving a speech in Belfast. She has been charged with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour,” and has been convicted for hate speech in the past. A CNN headline correctly referred to her as a “convicted racist.”

Those attacking Trump for the tweets are more concerned with the exposure of the heinous crimes of Muslims and the exposure for Britain First than the crimes themselves. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted, “I hope our Government will condemn far-right retweets by Donald Trump. They are abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society.” A spokesperson for Prime Minister Theresa May said it was “wrong for the president to have done this.” Notice that Corbyn and May refer to Trump’s retweets about the issue as the problem, not the actual hordes of Middle Eastern and African invaders pouring into the West.

In America, anti-Whites and cucks came out of the woodwork to bash Trump for exposing Muslim crime. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called Trump’s retweets “bizarre and disturbing.” Congressional cuck Jeff Flake called the tweets “highly inappropriate” and “not helpful,” while Lindsey Graham whined that “We don’t want to take a fringe group and elevate their content.”

The most deranged response of all came from Texas Rep. Al Green, who, on the House floor, accused the president of inciting racial hatred and proclaimed that, “Impeachment will be voted on before Christmas.”

Trump has been unphased by the storm. Later in the day, he fired back at Theresa May on Twitter, tweeting, “Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!” Here, Trump points out that the focus should be on the actual acts of Muslims, not his tweets. At this point, “Radical Islamic Terrorism” has become a euphemism for all of the fallout from mass Muslim immigration to the West. The total of all non-terrorist crime and other detrimental impacts from mass Muslim migration is far worse than the effects of terrorism.

For his small action in defense of Western Civilization, many in Britain want to ban President Trump from the country. The Islamist Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, lashed out at Trump for criticizing his people, adding that it is “clear that any official visit from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed.” Other British politicians went even further than the Muslim extremist. Labour MP Ian Murray accused Trump of committing a crime:

Others echoed him. Labour MP Paul Flynn said, “If he’s allowed to come to this country now, he should be treated as anyone else who breaks the law and charged with inciting racial hatred.” Labour MP Chris Bryant said, “The Prime Minister, while she was Home Secretary, said homophobes and racists will be arrested in this country. That’s what should happen now.” These men are literally suggesting the British government arrest the president of the United States. That would be an act of war.

However, they are technically correct about the application of the law. The British government has labeled political opposition as “hate speech” and criminalized it. Britain, and especially London, is controlled by a cabal that suppresses any criticism of Muslims, among other protected groups. British nationalists are imprisoned, while Muslim enclaves operate with complete impunity from British law.

The reason they are freaking out so much is that Trump has violated their most sacred of rules: you cannot expose the crimes of Muslims or Jews. To do so is a criminal act. This is the most important law in Britain, and they have responded as such to the president breaking it.

They won’t win many supporters in America with these actions. Americans are largely perplexed by the idea that a tweet, which makes no threat of violence, can be criminal. Most Americans are probably not aware of the anti-free speech laws of Britain and Europe. Many are learning about them now for the first time.

The Dutch government could not help but jump in to show its ineptitude as well:

Jayda Fransen’s tweet had stated that the offender was a migrant. The Netherlands Embassy tweeter unwittingly revealed that the truth is actually much worse. Not only was the Middle Eastern perpetrator born in the Netherlands, he is again walking the streets. Given lax Dutch enforcement in these situations, one wonders if he even received jail time for the crime. Attacking the defenseless is, rightfully so, considered one of the most heinous of crimes. For Britain, the Netherlands, and the American establishment to be more outraged by the tweet than the crime is very telling of their morals and principles.

The rebuttal also gets at something deeper. It doesn’t matter that the man isn’t a migrant. He is not Dutch and he never will be. It would not matter if he came five minutes ago, five years ago, or if he was born there. He is a foreigner. No amount of paperwork or legislation can negate this fact.

Donald Trump is bringing this issue to the forefront of the public consciousness. Try as they might, there is nothing the political establishment on either continent can do about it.

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foursproutwealth-blog · 6 years

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The US Aristocracy's Smear-Russia Campaign: Big Brother At Work

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/wealth/the-us-aristocracys-smear-russia-campaign-big-brother-at-work/

The US Aristocracy's Smear-Russia Campaign: Big Brother At Work

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Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Billionaires, both liberal and conservative ones, own, and their corporations advertise in and their ‘charities’ donate to, America’s mainstream (and also many ‘alternative news’) media.

They do this not so as to profit directly from the national ‘news’media (a money-losing business, in itself), but so as to control the ’news’ that the voting public (right and left) are exposed to and thus will accept as being “mainstream” and will reject all else as being “fringe” or even ‘fake news’, even if what’s actually fake is, in fact, the billionaires’ own mainstream ’news’, such as their ’news’media had most famously ‘reported’ about ’Saddam’s WMD’ (but the’news’media never changed after that scandal — even after having pumped uncritically that blatant lie to the public).

Have America’s numerous foreign coups and outright military invasions (including Iraq 2003) been the result of fake-news that was published by the mainstream ’news’media, or only by some of the ‘alternative news’ sites that mirror what the mainstream ones have been ‘reporting’ (passing along the Government’s lies just like the mainstream ones do)? Obviously, the catastrophic fake news — the fake news that ‘justified’ America’s invading and destroying Iraq, Libya, and many other countries — was all published in the mainstream ’news’media. That’s where to go for the really dangerous lies: it’s the mainstream ’news’media. If those media, and their Government (whose lies they stenographically report to the public) will now censor the Internet, such as is increasingly happening not only in the US but in its allies including the European Union, then the only ‘information’ that the public will have access to, at all, will be the billionaires’ lies. Have we already almost reached 1984, finally, in 2017?

Two typical examples of this coordinated mass-deception-operation happened to be showing at the top of the magazine-pile at an office recently and struck my attention there, because of the ordinariness of the propaganda that was being pumped.

One of them was the cover of TIME magazine, dated “July 24, 2017” and with the cover headlined “RED HANDED: The Russia Scandal Hits Home”, overprinting onto the face of Donald Trump Jr., as their menacing-looking cover-image. That cover-story, as published inside, was titled “How Donald Trump Jr.’s Emails Have Cranked Up the Heat on His Family”, and it used such phrases as “potentially treasonous” and “Russia is the one country that could physically destroy America” (as if it weren’t also the case that US is the one country that could physically destroy Russia, and very much the case also that possession of the weaponry isn’t any indication of being evil, such as this particular propagandist was implicitly assuming). Hillary Clinton’s V.P. running-mate was reported to be “saying that these fresh revelations move the Russia investigation into the realms of ‘perjury, false statements and even, potentially, treason.’”

These mere speculations, with slimy inferences of evil, with no real facts that back them up, were the front-cover ‘news’, in TIME. The facts were thin, but the speculations were thick, and the only thing really clear from it was that almost all of America’s billionaires and centi-millionaires want Trump ousted, and want Vice President Mike Pence to become America’s President as soon as possible — before Trump’s term is up. Democratic ones certainly do, and many of the Republican ones apparently do as well. Perhaps Trump isn’t hostile enough toward Russia to suit their fancy. At least Pence would be predictable — predictably horrible, in precisely the way that the controllers of the ‘news’media overwhelmingly desire.

The other example was the cover of The New Republic magazine, dated “December 2017” and it simply headlined in its center, “HOW TO ATTACK A DEMOCRACY”, and the opening page of the article inside was bannered “WEAKEN FROM WITHIN” and below that in the printed edition (the December physical issue of the magazine) was:

“Russian manipulation of American social media in the 2016 presidential election took the United States by surprise. But Moscow has been honing an information-age art of war — through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling — for more than a decade. How can these societies protect themselves?”

The online version of that article (which was dated 2 November 2017) opened almost the same: “Moscow has been honing an information age art of war — through fake news, disinformation, leaks, and trolling — for more than a decade. How can free societies protect themselves?”

The unspoken assumption in this article is that the US CIA hasn’t been doing the same thing — and doing it even worse than the old (and thankfully expired) KGB ever did. (And the CIA, even after the end of communism as its supposed enemy until 1991, still does far worse to other countries than Russia’s FSB does or ever did.)

Underlying both the TIME article and the TNR article are unstated speculations about the American situation, which are based upon thin facts such as that “at least $100,000 in ads purchased through 470 phony Facebook pages and accounts” were “using Facebook to incite anti-black hatred and anti-Muslim prejudice and fear while provoking extremism”, and that supposedly somehow (they never say how) such puny expenses threw the multi-billion-dollar 2017 US Presidential election to Trump. How is a case such as that, to be viewed by an intelligent reader as constituting anything but propaganda for the weapons-making firms such as Lockheed Martin, who benefit from such international anti-Russia hate-spewing to NATO countries, which are those firms’ major markets (other than Saudi Arabia, and the other fundamentalist-Sunni kingdoms that together constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council or “GCC” nations, which hate Shiite Iran as much as the US regime hates Russia)?

Also among the underlying and unstated speculations in the background here is the older mass-media allegation about Russia’s allegedly having spied and swayed the US election by ‘hacking’ it, which is likewise being pumped by Democrats and other opponents of Mr. Trump, alleging that ‘Russia hacked the election’.

And, so, for an example of the flimsiness of those allegations, one of the two main ‘authorities’ who are the source of that, the Bush and Obama Administration’s James Clapper, was headlined at Politico on 7 July 2017, “Clapper: No evidence others besides Russia hacked US election”. Mr. Clapper happens to be a military-industrial-complex revolving-door ‘intelligence’ ‘professional’ whom, on 10 February 2011, even Politico was reporting to be “backing away from comments he made Thursday calling Egypt’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement ‘largely secular’,” and who had also covered-up George W. Bush’s lies about ‘WMD in Iraq’ so as to protect the liars. On 29 October 2003, the New York Times stenographically passed along his deception about the non-existent WMD by headlining, “WEAPONS SEARCH; Iraqis Removed Arms Material, US Aide Says” and reported, “The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ‘unquestionably’ had been moved out of Iraq.” No evidence ever existed that Saddam Hussein still had any WMD after the U.N. monitors (UNSCOM) destroyed the last of them in 1998; but Clapper ‘unquestionably’ ‘knew’ to the contrary — though no evidence was ever made available to the contrary of UNSCOM’s reports, and lots of evidence existed that Bush simply lied about the entire matter.

The other main source for the allegation that ‘Russia hacked the election’ is the Obama Administration’s John Brennan, whom Glenn Greenwald exposed as a fraud back on 7 January 2013, headlining “John Brennan’s extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination”.

Both of the official ‘experts’ who are promoting the Russiagate charges, are longtime, and repeatedly, exposed liars – but that’s the best they can do, always assuming that the public don’t know that these people are propagandists for the military-industrial complex, not real ‘public servants’ at all.

This isn’t to say that Trump isn’t also a liar — just that the ‘news’ in America is full of conflicting lies — and that they constantly are coming from the fake ‘news’media that are the mainstream ones who are now trying to censor out, and ultimately to obliterate, the few small news-operations (some of which, unlike any of the mainstream ones, actually are good, and authentic journalistic operations, no mere PR hackery) that are constantly exposing the fraudulence of the mainstream ones, which want to impose their dictatorship — the mainstream lies — even more rigorously than they already do. After all, the mainstream Western media still haven’t yet reported US President Obama’s bloody racist-fascist coup that in February 2014 replaced the democratically elected President of Ukraine (and his supporters in the legislature) by a racist-fascist or ideologically nazi regime that’s rabidly hostile toward its neighboring nation of Russia. Even now — nearly four years after the event. It’s already solidly documented history, but the mainstream US-and-allied press still hasn’t reported it.

The fake-news masters are certainly the mainstream ‘news’media themselves – and they, and the billionaires and centi-millionaires who own and control them, are the real megaphones by which the US dictatorship constantly fools the American people (and the publics in its allied nations), to keep in line, for the aristocracy.

#Wealth

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