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nebris · 2 years

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Why Is So Little Known About the 1930s Coup Attempt Against FDR?

Business leaders like JP Morgan and Irénée du Pont were accused by a retired major general of plotting to install a fascist dictator.

Donald Trump’s elaborate plot to overthrow the democratically elected president was neither impulsive nor uncoordinated, but straight out of the playbook of another American coup attempt – the 1933 “Wall Street putsch” against newly elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

America had hit rock bottom, beginning with the stock market crash three years earlier. Unemployment was at 16 million and rising. Farm foreclosures exceeded half a million. More than five thousand banks had failed, and hundreds of thousands of families had lost their homes. Financial capitalists had bilked millions of customers and rigged the market. There were no government safety nets – no unemployment insurance, minimum wage, social security or Medicare.

Economic despair gave rise to panic and unrest, and political firebrands and white supremacists eagerly fanned the paranoia of socialism, global conspiracies and threats from within the country. Populists Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin attacked FDR, spewing vitriolic anti-Jewish, pro-fascist refrains and brandishing the “America first” slogan coined by media magnate William Randolph Hearst.

On 4 March 1933, more than 100,000 people had gathered on the east side of the US Capitol for Roosevelt’s inauguration. The atmosphere was slate gray and ominous, the sky suggesting a calm before the storm. That morning, rioting was expected in cities throughout the nation, prompting predictions of a violent revolution. Army machine guns and sharpshooters were placed at strategic locations along the route. Not since the civil war had Washington been so fortified, with armed police guarding federal buildings.

FDR thought government in a civilized society had an obligation to abolish poverty, reduce unemployment, and redistribute wealth. Roosevelt’s bold New Deal experiments inflamed the upper class, provoking a backlash from the nation’s most powerful bankers, industrialists and Wall Street brokers, who thought the policy was not only radical but revolutionary. Worried about losing their personal fortunes to runaway government spending, this fertile field of loathing led to the “traitor to his class” epithet for FDR. “What that fellow Roosevelt needs is a 38-caliber revolver right at the back of his head,” a respectable citizen said at a Washington dinner party.

In a climate of conspiracies and intrigues, and against the backdrop of charismatic dictators in the world such as Hitler and Mussolini, the sparks of anti-Rooseveltism ignited into full-fledged hatred. Many American intellectuals and business leaders saw nazism and fascism as viable models for the US. The rise of Hitler and the explosion of the Nazi revolution, which frightened many European nations, struck a chord with prominent American elites and antisemites such as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford. Hitler’s elite Brownshirts – a mass body of party storm troopers separate from the 100,000-man German army – was a stark symbol to the powerless American masses. Mussolini’s Blackshirts – the military arm of his organization made up of 200,000 soldiers – were a potent image of strength to a nation that felt emasculated.

A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made the plot to overthrow him seem plausible. With restless uncertainty, volatile protests and ominous threats, America’s right wing was inspired to form its own paramilitary organizations. Militias sprung up throughout the land, their self-described “patriots” chanting: “This is despotism! This is tyranny!”

Today’s Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have nothing on their extremist forbears. In 1933, a diehard core of conservative veterans formed the Khaki Shirts in Philadelphia and recruited pro-Mussolini immigrants. The Silver Shirts was an apocalyptic Christian militia patterned on the notoriously racist Texas Rangers that operated in 46 states and stockpiled weapons.

The Gray Shirts of New York organized to remove “Communist college professors” from the nation’s education system, and the Tennessee-based White Shirts wore a Crusader cross and agitated for the takeover of Washington. JP Morgan Jr, one of the nation’s richest men, had secured a $100m loan to Mussolini’s government. He defiantly refused to pay income tax and implored his peers to join him in undermining FDR.

So, when retired US Marine Corps Maj Gen Smedley Darlington Butler claimed he was recruited by a group of Wall Street financiers to lead a fascist coup against FDR and the US government in the summer of 1933, Washington took him seriously. Butler, a Quaker, and first world war hero dubbed the Maverick Marine, was a soldier’s soldier who was idolized by veterans – which represented a huge and powerful voting bloc in America. Famous for his daring exploits in China and Central America, Butler’s reputation was impeccable. He got rousing ovations when he claimed that during his 33 years in the marines: “I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and for bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

Butler later testified before Congress that a bond-broker and American Legion member named Gerald MacGuire approached him with the plan. MacGuire told him the coup was backed by a group called the American Liberty League, a group of business leaders which formed in response to FDR’s victory, and whose mission it was to teach government “the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property”. Members included JP Morgan, Jr, Irénée du Pont, Robert Sterling Clark of the Singer sewing machine fortune, and the chief executives of General Motors, Birds Eye and General Foods.

The putsch called for him to lead a massive army of veterans – funded by $30m from Wall Street titans and with weapons supplied by Remington Arms – to march on Washington, oust Roosevelt and the entire line of succession, and establish a fascist dictatorship backed by a private army of 500,000 former soldiers.

As MacGuire laid it out to Butler, the coup was instigated after FDR eliminated the gold standard in April 1933, which threatened the country’s wealthiest men who thought if American currency wasn’t backed by gold, rising inflation would diminish their fortunes. He claimed the coup was sponsored by a group who controlled $40bn in assets – about $800bn today – and who had $300m available to support the coup and pay the veterans. The plotters had men, guns and money – the three elements that make for successful wars and revolutions. Butler referred to them as “the royal family of financiers” that had controlled the American Legion since its formation in 1919. He felt the Legion was a militaristic political force, notorious for its antisemitism and reactionary policies against labor unions and civil rights, that manipulated veterans.

The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR. How seriously the “Wall Street putsch” endangered the Roosevelt presidency remains unknown, with the national press at the time mocking it as a “gigantic hoax” and historians like Arthur M Schlesinger Jr surmising “the gap between contemplation and execution was considerable” and that democracy was not in real danger. Still, there is much evidence that the nation’s wealthiest men – Republicans and Democrats alike – were so threatened by FDR’s policies that they conspired with antigovernment paramilitarism to stage a coup.

The final report by the congressional committee tasked with investigating the allegations, delivered in February 1935, concluded: “[The committee] received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country”, adding “There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”

As Congressman John McCormack who headed the congressional investigation put it: “If General Butler had not been the patriot he was, and if they had been able to maintain secrecy, the plot certainly might very well have succeeded … When times are desperate and people are frustrated, anything could happen.”

There is still much that is not known about the coup attempt. Butler demanded to know why the names of the country’s richest men were removed from the final version of the committee’s report. “Like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to escape,” Butler said in a Philadelphia radio interview in 1935. “The big shots weren’t even called to testify. They were all mentioned in the testimony. Why was all mention of these names suppressed from this testimony?”

While details of the conspiracy are still matters of historical debate, journalists and historians, including the BBC’s Mike Thomson and John Buchanan of the US, later concluded that FDR struck a deal with the plotters, allowing them to avoid treason charges – and possible execution – if Wall Street backed off its opposition to the New Deal. The presidential biographer Sidney Blumenthal recently said that Roosevelt should have pushed it all through, then reneged on his agreement and prosecuted them.

What might all of this portend for Americans today, as President Biden follows in FDR’s New Deal footsteps while democratic socialist Bernie Sanders also rises in popularity and influence? In 1933, rather than inflame a quavering nation, FDR calmly urged Americans to unite to overcome fear, banish apathy and restore their confidence in the country’s future. Now, 90 years later, a year on from Trump’s own coup attempt, Biden’s tone was more alarming, sounding a clarion call for Americans to save democracy itself, to make sure such an attack “never, never happens again”.

If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.

Sally Denton is the author of The Plots Against the President: FDR, a Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. Her forthcoming book is The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-is-so-little-known-about-the-1930s-coup-attempt-against-fdr

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cobieeliseforsh · 4 years

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I'm getting pretty annoyed with the amount of bullshit in the media right now. I just read an article about the "antisemitic" conspiracy theory Qanon. Calling Qanon antisemitic is like calling the KKK a group opposed to the career of Will Smith - technically true, but clearly a small subsection of a greater whole.

So, to remedy this...

COBIE'S FRUSTRATED GUIDE TO QANON FROM SOMEONE WHO LOVES CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND WISHES THIS ONE WOULD FUCK OFF BECAUSE IT IS BORING AS SHIT BUT NOT FIZZING WITH ENERGY, EVEN ON A MOLECULAR LEVEL, BECAUSE IT IS A DUMB AND LAZY REHASH FROM THE 80S OR EARLIER!

PART 1: DA FUCQ IS QANON?

Qanon is a grooming organisation for the Christian Far Right Death Cult that has held the Republican party in its sweaty hands since the ascent of Reagan in the 1980s. They believe in some bullshit I won't reprint here because I have no intention of spreading their ideology, but if you've heard of the Satanic panic, this is Satanic Panic 2: Now With Pizza!

Qanon is, by definition of their own supporters attacks on Muslim terrorism, a terrorist organisation. And, though it seems impossible, they're stupidier than ISIS ever were, because at least there was some twisted logic behind ISIS: poor young men fighting revolutionary wars against what they see as corrupt and immoral authorities and ideologies is nothing new. Qanon is literally the powerful declaring war on those without power out of fear that those without power (Satanists) live only to physically abuse their ugly, fat, prejudiced, stupid children. Despite the statistically most likely people to abuse them being them themselves, and there being plenty of evidence that many of these hypocrites have done that in the past (numerically many - one thing I believe Qanon followers on is that the majority are gullible Maud Flanders types, so statistically it won't be that many).

Donald Trump supports them over the "violent" Antifa (Antifa haven't killed anyone since 1993 (and that was a suicide), aren't actually an organisation, and are against facism, which Trump also claims to be against), despite Qanon followers carrying and firing weapons regularly, having shot up a pizza place in a terrorist act, refusing to wear masks, and other acts of violence designed to terrorise people.

PART 2 WHO DO THEY HATE?

Um... like, 98% of people.

Qanon is primarily an Apocalyptic Christian Far Right Death Cult. They believe in what they call SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) which happens at such a low frequency as to make it as serious a problem as being invaded by pookas. You might find anecdotal evidence here and there, but the majority of cases are hearsay spread by people who weren't there who were a part of or raised by people who were a part of the Satanic Panic. If you hear about it, it's likely bullshit. Just look at the West Memphis 3: accused of Satanic Ritual Abuse, they were sent to prison for wearing black clothes and being teenagers without any evidence. Now, whoever killed those boys is still loose, because Qanon, like all right-wing groups, is about being obeyed, not about justice.

So, with Satanic Ritual Abuse being fucking vapour, they can accuse ANYONE. And if there is no evidence, they cry COVER UP. There is no way, at all, to prove this mindset is wrong as it always self corrects, because being religious in origin, it is driven by BELIEF, not evidence.

So, whoever they believe is evil, is, as far as their reality tunnel goes.

Muslims? Evil child abusers. "But there is no evidence of that. In fact, the Muslim community is actually very protective of their children and other children. They're amongst the kindest people you can meet, even if their political leaders in their own countries are jerks." Well, says Qanon, that's because their community covers up the abuse. There wouldn't be any evidence. But my cousin went to school with a girl who was groomed by a Muslim. It's clear it is something all Muslims do. "But that's stupid. That's like saying that because Ted Bundy, a heterosexual white Republican, murdered loads of women, all heterosexual white Republicans want to murder women!" Now, says Qanon, you are just being silly. Besides, I believe Muslims are bad and Republicans aren't. You can't question my beliefs.

But we can, and we should.

Qanon followers use this vague structure to create complex webs that link up various conspiracy theories, but they aren't a complex web. They're just a list of petty grievances they have from living in their own personal echo chamber.

They hate women, they hate girls, they hate boys who don't conform to their expectations, they hate men who vote left-wing, they hate gay people, bi people, really anyone who isn't heterosexual, they definitely hate trans people (see: trans people want to use bathrooms to abuse children as merely an extension of the Satanic Ritual Abuse claims), they hate people with coloured hair, bright clothes, they hate Jewish people, they hate Muslims, they hate anyone from a fringe religion that doesn't look right, they hate foreigners, black and brown people... anyone they define as different. And to back this up, they claim to be "the majority" being dictated to be a "minority" - they aren't. They're a minority of gobby cunts, a Karen of Nazis (Karen being the best collective noun to describe these childish crybabies who were so desperate to remain in a state of childlike innocence they embraced both religion and then keep insisting their imaginary friend, Jesus, is following them everywhere, like a psychotic stalker ghost).

PART 3 WHERE DOES THEIR BULLSHIT COME FROM?

This is probably the most important part. Not what they believe, but where these ideas come from, and why they aren't new.

Qanon is a mixture of young-and-edgy YouTube/8chan influencer, white supremacist religious manipulation, pro-Capitalist Protestant religious "life is shit, embrace misery" ideology, pedophile hysteria, and "we hate the idea people have rights because we're power mad, but we're going to frame this as a backlash, normal people making their voices heard, a culture war, or whatever else we can rebrand PREJUDICE because even we don't want to admit we are bigots".

So, first of all, the angry white online teenagers: have always existed, will always exist. Their parents don't give a shit about them unless they cause trouble. So, they learn quickly that the best way to get attention is to cause trouble, which leads to kinship with other troubkemakers, forming an echo chamber of escalating troublemaking. But they're also angry, and often poor (in their eyes, or in actuality), so they're drawn to outrage, and like causing it. They're attracted to movements like this because they believe it's a chance to get some attention, someone to notice them.

And who notices them? White supremacists are always on the lookout for recruits. They feed their need for outrage and attention by misrepresenting everything. They take puff-piece news articles and shoddy journalism and further twist them into movements around positions that have no basis in reality. Vaccines? Designed to hurt you. "Uhhh, no," you say. "That's literally the opposite of what a vaccine does." I don't believe that, they say, and you can't question my beliefs. BLM? Terrorism. "No, they just want to not be shot." No they don't, they want to take over and put the Jews in power, and you can't question my beliefs! "You have no evidence!" COVER UP! they scream.

So it goes, so it goes.

Meanwhile, the Protestan work ethic of, "If you didn't suffer, you don't deserve it," goes on and on. They believe that shit things just happen, you can't stop them. Capitalism is founded on this very, very relugious principle: work should be pain for it to have value. This justifies promoting assholes, and making things difficult. But it also promotes the idea that you can't do anything to combat inequality, as that is natural, and you can't do anything to stop bad things happening, they always will, so why try? This lends Qanon a specific pattern: complain, do nothing, complain nothing is being done, still do nothing, repeat. It's wrong to intervene, you see. This allows them to say racism is bad, but God wants us to suffer so we deserve phony-heaven, a paradise they think is built on bricks of human misery... does that sound glorious to you? And if you have something, clearly you did suffer to get it, and so you are worthy, which is why Trump is a hero to them and they believe his every utterance of verbal diarrhea about him being persecuted (to be fair, he is, but he deserves it because he's lazy and incompetent).

Pedophile hysteria is also generally religiously motivated. Children should be protected, but they are not innocent angels. I've worked with children. Some are nice, some are sneaky, some are violent bullies, and so on. The one thing that unites all children is that they are ignorant. That's why we send them to school. And there are people who want to prey on children. The world we usually use to describe those who most often hurt, abuse and damage children is, "family". Promoting the idea of gangs of rampaging pedophiles snatching children into vans and harming them in shadowy rooms, or murdering them in some Satanic ritual, is laughable compared to the epidemic of children being harmed by those parents terrified the pedophiles are out there. Such fear motivates them to do untold harm to children, restricting their freedoms and their growth, teaching them that all sex is bad so they never enjoy it, forcing them to be things they aren't, and turning a blind eye to obvious abuse because those doing it are not the model of abuse being put out by the press and Internet communities. In that last way, Qanon is a driver of child abuse: it actively encourages Apocalyptic Christian Far Right Death Cult members to nit even ask the obvious question: if Epstein was abusing kids, and Epstein was hanging out with Trump, was Trump maybe involved in some way?

And then there is just the prejudiced crowd, most notably the American-exceptionalism delusional whack jobs. Let me be clear, all forms of exceptionalism are prejudiced, as they suggest that those who are exceptional are better and mire deserving than others, and the real world does not contain such hierarchies, just stuff that happens until it stops happening. A monkey may be the alpha, but one day they won't be. It's not a hierarchy, it's just a thing that happens that we project a power structure onto. Who knows what monkey culture is like? Maybe to them deference is more honourable and respected than being in charge. No-one has asked monkeys for their views of ideology or power structures.

This often manifests itself in ideas of, "We shouldn't be ashamed!" and that movements they don't like are, "Against us!" Well, if you're setting out to hurt people because you believe you are better than them, you should be ashamed. That queer Pakistani girl you keep out of college could have been the one to cure cancer! She might have had the unique perspective to make that breakthrough. And, yes, some of us are against Qanon, because Qanon is hurting people. That is the point of the movement: to harm its enemies, by denial if freedom all the way up to outright murder. It isn't a Pride parade or BLM demanding equality and an end to deaths, its a hate movement driven by a desire to punch down, and ultimately perpetuate the very system that isn't even working for those who follow its own ideology.

It's based on fear of the new, even if that new place is better than the old one, change can be scary. They think equality will hurt them, the way collective bargaining would hurt them. But we don't live in a system where resources are so finite you have to do without, we live in a system where resources are finite but we throw away an excess because capitalism couldn't make rich people richer by giving it to those who need it, so they dispose of it and introduce scarcity to drive up the cost. Working together would force them to stop doing that, which is why movements like this exist: to perpetuate a form of exceptionalism more like a cult, where only the leaders reap the rewards.

PART 4 WHAT IS THE END GOAL OF QANON?

It doesn't have one.

Qanon is a right-wing movement. Right-wing movements are about winning arguments now, and then feeling smug, even when the damage is undone later. It's about a sense of self-satisfaction, and not anything else.

Plus, Qanon has so many stake-holders who hate each other that the movement will eventually descend into cannibalism as all these things do.

Finally, being primarily religious in its design, it won't take long for many religious types to realise Q is kind if a God-like figure, a false idol, and when that happens, plenty if their leaders will become worried that their followers are so focused on Q they might "stray from the path" of donating all their money to their church.

Unless it turns out that Q is Q from Star Trek, in which case their end goal is to test Jean-Luc Picard.

PART 5 SHOULD WE FEAR QANON?

Nah. It's a group of fringe lunatics whose time in the spotlight will be fleeting. As I've already said, even their ideas aren't original - this is the Apocalyptic Christian Far Right Death Cult version of Fortnite stealing dances: everyone goes crazy about it for a bit, but it's so insubstantial in its original form, nevermind the cover band version, that almost all people with a lick of common sense will dismiss it. Plus, it doesn't serve any agenda: Trump could easily find himself on the receiving end of it, that one Qanon politician just elected will likely be marginalised the moment Trump vanishes, and having a single person won't sway any votes in such divisive times, which means they'll be proclaimed ineffectual soon enough, and with Epstein it is already showing that it isn't something which helps the powerful, meaning a lot of people who do have secrets will want it gone sooner rather than later lest it bite their own hands. Plus, they are actually harming people - and say what you like about the Republicans, they don't tend to respond well to the PR disaster of groups they side with directly attacking or killing people unless they are their own ACAB stormtroopers.

Plus, it's a bunch of saddos on the Internet. Chances are if you see someone screaming about Qanon and waving around a gun, they'd have done the same and screamed about lizards had it never got started.

PART 6 WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Stop giving them attention. This is one of the most BORING conspiracy theories ever created. Seriously, since 9/11, conspiracy theories have really gone downhill. They used to be about aliens and subterranean kingdoms, and now they're just attempts to misdirect pedophile hunters from the right-wing types who have covered up child abuse, and tie it to phony "think of the children" and "Satan is out to get us" religious hysteria.

With covid-19, the press is having a very slow news cycle, so they're desperately grabbing at anything that can drive search engine algorithm clicks to their sites, so they're covering Qanon because they've seen it trending. I doubt most people involved with it really believe in it, but it is so directionless that it wouldn't matter if they did. Qanon Con would descend into bloodshed fairly quickly because everyone would be angry and arguing that the tater tots are secret SRA code for cannibalising children or that it reveals that Hilary Clinton buries children beneath fields of potatoes. It's stupid, the people involved with it are stupid, and the bigger question is what they believe that led them to this:

Disenfranchisement. Having to respect the beliefs of others. Prejudice. Anger.

Well, boo-fucking-hoo. If these shitbags actually want to stop harm to children, maybe stop supporting gun rights so kids aren't being gunned down in schools, and black kids don't keep getting gunned down everywhere. Until you do that, Qanon, you're the child abusers.

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jewish-privilege · 5 years

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The two of us have been having the exact same conversation for the past decade. About antisemitism and Islamophobia. One of us a Muslim, the other a Jew, we have conducted it in public and in private, on Twitter and on TV. We’ve agreed; we’ve argued; we’ve even wandered off topic to trade tips on how to get through a fast. Now we’ve come together because of the urgent and common threat that we face. Both of our communities are under violent attack from far-right white supremacists.

In Christchurch, New Zealand, last month a white supremacist gunned down 50 Muslims at prayer. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, last October a white supremacist gunned down 11 Jews at prayer. Both killers were clear in their loathing of both Jews and Muslims. Both subscribed to the “great replacement theory”, which casts Muslims and other minorities as “invaders”of western societies and a threat to white, Christian majorities. In this narrative, the supposed invasion is a wicked plot orchestrated by the same hidden hand behind all malign events through world history: the Jews. The point was put concisely in an online remark reposted by the Pittsburgh murderer: “It’s the filthy EVIL jews Bringing the Filthy EVIL Muslims into the Country!!”

This is how our haters see us: Jews and Muslims connected in a joint enterprise to effect a “white genocide”. It is an unhinged and racist conspiracy theory – and it has both of our communities in its murderous sights. So there can only be one response: Muslims and Jews must stand and fight it together.

We realise this will not be easy. Both of us are deeply rooted in our respective communities, and we know them well enough to recognise that there are plenty of Jews and Muslims who have long seen the other as an opponent, even as an enemy. Given the deep connection that Jews and Muslims feel with Israel/Palestine, that is perhaps unsurprising.

We understand how this has come about. Jews and Muslims have spilled each other’s blood, in acts of violence that have left deep scars. Jihadists have targeted Jews across continental Europe, whether it be the killing of children in a school in Toulouse in 2012 or shoppers at a kosher supermarket in Paris in 2015. Muslims share the pain of Palestinians living through more than half a century of brutal Israeli occupation, with regular eruptions of violence that have left civilians, including children, dead. To be clear: we are not playing a game of moral equivalence here; rather, we are recognising the reasons for mutual antagonism.

Nor are we denying that there is much prejudice within each community towards the other. Witness the leader of a New Zealand mosque who recently suggested that the massacre in Christchurch was the secret handiwork of Mossad: an age-old, anti-Jewish conspiracy theory in contemporary garb. Or listen to the interfaith activist appalled to discover that a Facebook group of her fellow British Jews was awash with anti-Muslim racism. Across the Muslim-majority world, anti-Jewish tropes and conspiracies have been endorsed and even repopularised. In the US, right-wing Jewish figures have been among the most prominent supporters of the “Islamophobia network”. There is a shared error here: both the Muslim who hates Jews and the Jew who hates Muslims forget that the white supremacist hates them both. But that such people exist is proof that the narrative of white supremacism does not just infect white communities – it can infect us all.

Just as we acknowledge that the communities we were born into harbour prejudice, so we are ready to say the same of our chosen political community. We need no lectures on the importance of tackling antisemitism and Islamophobia on the left as well as on the right. Both of us have condemned Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party for its failure to tackle anti-Jewish racism within its ranks, while one of us has discussed the importance of avoiding antisemitic tropes in conversation with the controversial Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who herself has been the victim of liberal Islamophobes. Both of us have condemned anti-Muslim bigotry in liberal-left circles too, whether it be the British scientist Richard Dawkins comparing Islam to cancer less than a fortnight after the Christchurch massacre, or US TV show host Bill Maher referring to Islam as “the mafia”.

But this is no time for whataboutism. Yes, the jihadist threat to Jews has not gone away. Yes, some liberals have an Islamophobia problem, while some on the left are guilty of antisemitism, both of which can cause our communities to feel fearful and isolated. Fascism, however, is back with a vengeance. The growing and lethal threat to life and limb for Muslims and Jews is now coming not from the far left but from an emboldened and violent far right. In the US, in 2018, every single one of the 50 extremist-related murders was linked to the far right, according to the Anti-Defamation League. In the UK, according to the Home Office, between 2017 and 2018 the number of white suspects arrested for terror offences outstripped those of any other ethnic group – the first time in more than a decade. In Germany, official figures suggest that nine out of 10 antisemitic crimes in 2017 were perpetrated by members of far-right or neo-Nazi groups.

...That these two hatreds are linked on the right is clear, and not only in the minds of deranged killers. A recent Pew survey of 15 western European countries found that “attitudes toward Jews and Muslims are highly correlated with each other. People who express negative opinions about Muslims are more likely than others to also express negative views of Jews.”

In the US, a Gallup study in 2010 found people “who say they feel ‘a great deal’ of prejudice… toward Jews are about 32 times as likely to report feeling ‘a great deal’ of prejudice toward Muslims”. Put simply, the kind of people who hate one of us are more likely to hate the other too.

Such people are animated by a racist ideology that goes wide and deep, amplified by powerful politicians of the right at the highest levels. Take Donald Trump, who says “Islam hates us”, and bans Muslims from five countries – but also rails against “globalists”, understood by antisemites as code for Jews, and in particular, the antisemites’ favourite bogeyman, George Soros. Or top Brexiter Nigel Farage, who speaks of a “Jewish lobby”and condemns Soros as “the biggest danger to the entire western world” – but has also denounced “wholly Muslim” areas of London and gave us the infamous “Breaking Point” poster.

In our view, it is no coincidence that the rise of Trump and Brexit has been matched by a rise in hate crimes on both sides of the Atlantic targeting both of our communities. In the US, hate crimes against Jews rose by more than a third and accounted for 58% of all religion-based hate crimes in 2017, with Muslims in second place, while in the UK, more than half of religiously motivated attacks in 2018 were aimed at Muslims, with Jews not far behind.

This is the climate in which we are both worried about the safety of our children. We share each other’s fears. And we both welcome signs that others are beginning to do the same. It’s heartening that Muslim groups raised more than $200,000 for bereaved families at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and heartening too that the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh is now raising money for the victims of the New Zealand mosque attacks.

They are setting an example for us all. It is long past time that we Muslims and we Jews looked beyond our undeniable differences, recognise that we face a common and deadly threat, and agree there is only one way to fight it: together.

#antisemitism #islamophobia #white supremacy #mehdi hasan #jonathan freedland #long post

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manticoreimaginary · 5 years

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The Rhetoric Tricks, Traps, and Tactics of White Nationalism

Common rhetoric tactics:

“SJW”s / Feminism

appeal to the status quo/appeal to law and order- “Azov is a volunteer police.” / “The Charlottesville rally had a permit.” / “Gay culture is destroying our freedom of religion.”

Claiming the person being appealed to is in some form of risk and must defend/join the neo-nazi speaker for their self-defense from an enemy (usually “SJWs”)

[__] are coming to take your [__]

Red Herring- “communism killed 100 million people”/ “antifa did [__]” derailment to drown out any discussion of their acts of murder and violence and control the conversation to talk about and highlight “other” violence

“Lügenpresse” (lying press)- [__]source of information is lying, this one is as old as Joseph Goebbels the Nazi Minister of Propaganda

straw man- an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent’s real argument

antifa and opposing fascism as evil, “antifascists are the real fascists!”

Tu Quoque- “Antifa is also violent!” / “If you don’t let us say [__] then you’re also killing free speech”

Misleading statistics- usually racial statistics from debunked studies done 80 years ago, cherry picked crime data

Bogus science mixed with taking real science out of context- Darwinism, biological determinism, race realism, phrenology, and racially biased IQ

False Cause- wrongfully attributing something as the cause, “You talking about [__] only causes them to be stronger!” / “Attacking Nazis is what makes people be Nazis!” / “This violence is merely a response to PC cultural neo-marxism.”

Gish Gallop- time wasting strategy to drown the opponent in mass ive waves of argumentative claims (see above)

Non Sequitur- a conclusion that does not follow from the statements that lead to it

Fallacy of Refication- “National Socialist, ‘socialist’ means they were Left wing!”

Loaded Question- contains a presupposition or unproven assumption that can make it difficult to give an answer that doesn’t support the questioners premise “You always support violence?” / “So you hate Free Speech?”

No True Scotsman- claiming any related murders, stabbings, beatings, or other violence perpetrated by white supremacists doesn’t apply as they are not “truly” part of the white nationalist movement see: Anders Breivik, Alex Fields, Samuel Woodward, Brandon Russell

Immigration fearmongering, Islamophobia, race baiting

“White Genocide” / “Great Replacement” / “Whites have a right to exist” / “Faith Folk Family” / “ We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” / “Asia for the Asians, Africa for the Africans, White nations for White people.”

“Political Correctness” and "thought police"- often used to silence an opponent or draw unwitting others to their defense, “This is just PC bullshit” / “De-platforming nazis is Thought Policing” / “Free marketplace of ideas”

“Post-Modernism” / “Cultural Marxism”- popular boogeymen terms that don’t really have substance or clear meaning and are easy to apply to anyone and anything they don’t like

“Diversity Quotas”- fear mongering appeal towards white men, saying that their jobs/opportunities/livelihoods are being “stolen” and given to those less worthy (meaning brown people and women)

“Frankfurt School”- commonly cited as part of antisemitic neo-Nazi conspiracies about shadowy powers controlling the world via secret elite intellectuals, see also “Deep State”, “Globalists”, “New World Order” type conspiracies. It’s all just new more appealing ways to say “Jews”.

Argumentum Ad Speculum- hypothetical examples that are factually incorrect are used to prop up the incorrect assumption. Invocations about how not allowing hate speech will lead to horrible outcomes usually relies on this.

Your silence against white supremacy in it’s myriad forms supports rising violent reactionary movements.

#racism #white supermacists #islamaphobia #anti semitism #nazi punks fuck off

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bigskydreaming · 6 years

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So, disclaimer at the top here that I’m white and aiming the following questions at other white users who are taking the Russian blogs thing and running with it in all the wrong directions. That said....

The question shouldn’t be: Are these 84 pro-BLM blogs that tumblr deleted Russian trolls?

At least, that shouldn’t be the only question.

Of just as much importance is: Why are we only hearing about 84 pro-BLM blogs being deleted for being Russian trolls? Why is the media running with the story about tumblr being ‘home to a powerful, largely unrevealed network of Russian trolls focused on black issues and activism’?

Like, okay. Let’s assume for a minute that all 84 of the blogs tumblr deleted were in fact Russian trolls and bots posing as black activists.

But where are the rest of the Russian troll blogs?

You know, all the ones we’ve been hearing about for the PAST YEAR AND A HALF. When the knowledge that Russian trolls and bots have been spreading Fake News and pro-Trump and anti-HRC propaganda for months leading up to the election has been there ever since the election?

Where are all the rightwing conservative blogs that were actually Russian trolls in disguise? Where are the Neo Nazi blogs that were actually Russian trolls in disguise? Where are all the blogs that were aimed at stirring up and radicalizing conservative or undecided white tumblr users?

We know that those blogs are there too. We literally know there is evidence that targeting right wing users of social media was a major aim of the Russian troll/bot farms, if not THE major aim.

Is it possible they cast their net widely and diversified their tactics, leading them to create superficially liberal blogs where they posed as black or pro-black activists in order to create dissent among the left? Sure, absolutely. Every one of those 84 blogs named as linked to the IRA could possibly be a Russian troll, sure.

But here’s the thing: according to everything we’ve been hearing for the past year and a half straight, there were thousands upon thousands of Russian trolls and bots aimed at generating fake news and misinformation to keep conservatives riled up. And yet.....when tumblr, notorious for not giving a single shit no matter how many times PoC or other marginalized users come to them with screencaps and physical evidence of Neo-Nazi blogs and the like running campaigns of harassment against them....when THAT tumblr finally comes forward and in an unprecedented move for them provides a list of confirmed Russian troll blogs....

It’s not pro-Trump, conservative, hate group, Neo Nazi blogs. Nope. it’s 84 pro-black activism blogs.

Umm. C’mon. Really? You’re really sitting there not thinking there’s anything kinda suspiciously backwards about that?

Like.....whether those blogs are actually legit or not isn’t even that relevant at this point, y’know? It’s kinda just as big of a deal that for ‘some reason’, the first time tumblr decided to put on its Nancy Drew hat and go digging around for fake troll blogs, they either decided to focus their efforts on looking into black activism blogs instead of like, Neo Nazi blogs....or else if they had knowledge of both conservative and liberal Russian troll blogs, they still for ‘some reason’ decided to focus on revealing and pushing forward the black activism blogs they uncovered as fake. And yes, I realize that part of this ‘investigation’ or whatever was twitter uncovering bots/trolls with the same names as blogs hosted on tumblr, and sharing those names with tumblr led to the site determining that they were trolls as well. But either way? Same problem. There are Russian trolls aimed at white users on the site, stirring them up and radicalizing them with hate speech, racist rhetoric, and the like, and apparently there are Russian trolls aimed at black users on the site, posting BLM and anti-police brutality content....and tumblr picked which was of bigger concern to them, and prioritized accordingly.

Which leads right into the second problem, and the next big question we should be asking ourselves: What purpose did this serve? Who benefits?

Like, its also just as big a problem that freaking BUZZFEED, in its Pulitzer-worthy reporting, along with several other news sites by now, decided that this was a story, a big story, and the angle to takeaway from it was: ‘tumblr is home to a powerful, largely unrevealed network of Russian trolls focused on black issues and activism’.

Digest that for a second. According to Buzzfeed, 84 Russian trolls masquerading as black activism blogs are a powerful network. Here’s the thing though.....the reason all the Russian trolls spreading fake news and misinformation among right wing social media circles is such a problem is...IT’S FAKE NEWS. IT’S LIES. THE INFORMATION THEY SPREAD ISN’T TRUE.

Look at everything Buzzfeed and tumblr et al’s investigative journalism turned up though when they dug into these fake black activism blogs or whatever. I read every article written up about these 84 blogs so far. I clicked on every link citing prof of how these blogs encouraged black users and other PoC not to vote for HRC. Problem is? Out of all of it, the only thing on those blogs I found cited as actually being misinformation was when one of them posted a video about a black girl being harassed by a cop and INCORRECTLY LABELED THAT COP A MEMBER OF THE NYPD. That’s it. That was all the misinformation. A video about a cop harassing a black girl being mislabeled as to where the cop was from.

Everything else spread by those blogs though? Actual, sourceable, verifiable news. Those articles made a big deal about how one blog got a ton of notes after posting a clip of HRC’s infamous super predators quote and calling her a monster for it. But like....she actually said that though? It wasn’t fake news? Just like the reactions of any black user who saw that and thought hey fuck you is reasonable and legitimate regardless of whether it was posted on a ‘real’ activism blog or a Russian troll blog?

Then add to that the fact that if you actually LOOK at polling data from the election, black voters and other voters of color pretty much ALL showed up to vote for HRC anyway, despite how they felt about her, and we all got screwed over because it was white people who looked at those posts and used them as an excuse not to vote for her.

So any which way you cut it, there is no angle in which those 84 blogs, even IF they really are Russian trolls, actually constitute some powerful network of misinformation which as the articles try and infer, leads to the conclusion that PS, we were right all along guys, BLM cost Hillary the election.

Yeah, reality is, at most, those blogs spread largely accurate information about HRC that confirmed what many black users already thought or felt about her and her policies but didn’t actually affect their willingness to show up and vote for her anyway if that was what it took to try and keep Trump out of office. Just like, at most, those blogs spread largely verifiable and accurate information about police brutality (including actual photographic and video content), which only confirmed what most pro-BLM users following those blogs already knew and thought?

The source of posts that aren’t actually made up of misinformation doesn’t actually invalidate content that’s, y’know...accurate information. And YET. Twitter, tumblr, Buzzfeed, and many users all seem pretty comfortable thinking that the shocking discoveries and implications extending from the reveal of these 84 blogs is far more important and newsworthy than like, uncovering Russian troll blogs spreading active misinformation among white supremacist hate groups hosted on the site.

The implicit takeaway is that if Russian trolls have invaded our social media spaces, we’re in far more danger as a result of any resentments they might foster or encourage among pro-BLM users protesting police brutality and white supremacist hate crimes, than from say, any resentments those trolls might foster or encourage among white users who already harbor violent racist ideologies. Like the Parkland shooter, who was reported to be openly antisemitic. Or the Austin bomber, who had a history of racist behavior. Or many, many others.

At the end of the day, tumblr unveiling these particular 84 blogs as Russian trolls changes nothing about the state of our government. Changes nothing about our relationship with Russia. Changes nothing about anything UNLESS you draw the conclusion from it that huh, if those pro-BLM blogs were fake, who knows how many others are, maybe they all are, maybe BLM or police brutality ISN’T that big of a deal.

Regardless of the true nature of those blogs, the problem here actually has very little to do with Russia, or Trump, or the election. It’s a problem we’ve perpetuated endlessly throughout our history in this country, and we don’t have any excuse for falling for it anymore. This is simply someone offering us a narrative that lets us justify not caring about something that for whatever reason, many of us don’t really seem to want to care about. And predictably, many of us are leaping at that justification, flimsy as it is.

Like....don’t. Just think about it honestly. Ask: what did this ACTUALLY accomplish. Who did it ACTUALLY benefit.

And if the answer you come up with is ‘any white person who wants an excuse to stay detached from black issues without feeling guilty about it’, like....stop uncritically reblogging posts that are not so subtly implying that all pro-BLM blogs and black activism blogs should be regarded with suspicion.

#long post

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xtruss · 2 years

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Why is So Little Known About the 1930s Coup Attempt Against FDR?

Business leaders like JP Morgan and Irénée du Pont were accused by a retired major general of plotting to install a fascist dictator

— Sally Denton | Tuesday, 11 January 2022

‘The planned coup was thwarted when Butler reported it to J Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who reported it to FDR.’ Photograph: Bettmann Archive

“A divided country and FDR’s emboldened powerful enemies made a plot to overthrow him seem plausible”

While details of the conspiracy are still matters of historical debate, journalists and historians, including the BBC’s Mike Thomson and John Buchanan of the US, later concluded that FDR struck a deal with the plotters, allowing them to avoid treason charges – and possible execution – if Wall Street backed off its opposition to the New Deal. “Roosevelt should have pushed it all through and then welshed on his agreement and prosecuted them,” presidential biographer Sidney Blumenthal recently said.

If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.

— Sally Denton is the author of The Plots Against the President: FDR, a Nation in Crisis, and the Rise of the American Right. Her forthcoming book is The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land | Guardian USA

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6dogs9cats · 4 years

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It’s that last part that is so infuriating to the right. Many anti-fascist activists, whether or not they identify as such, do their work from behind a keyboard. They’re basically online sleuths, who scour the fever swamps of the internet, try to identify anonymous members of extremist groups and expose them.

The point is to attach professional and social costs to membership in white supremacist, neo-Nazi and similar organizations. Whenever you read about a cop or schoolteacher being fired or a service member being discharged from the military for being affiliated with far-right groups, or for abhorrent expressions of racism or homophobia or antisemitism, an anti-fascist probably brought those activities to light. (Reasonable people can debate the ethics of “doxxing,” which is a tactic that can be turned against anyone.)

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schraubd · 7 years

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On Asking Jews To Be More Anti-Nazi

The second job I wanted to be when I grew up was a cartoonist (the first was omelet chef at a Marriott. Little kids have weird goals). I loved Calvin & Hobbes, and later Dilbert, Doonesbury, Foxtrot, The Boondocks, and many others. My ambition, alas, quickly foundered against the reality that I have no artistic talent whatsoever. But occasionally I still draw cartoons in my head (where their artistry and technical virtues are unimpeachable). My most recent imagined cartoon is set in Auschwitz, 1944, where a portal opens up and a time-traveler steps through. It is a literal "Social Justice Warrior" -- from the future, armed to the teeth, and ready and eager to "punch some Nazis". After completing his task, some Jewish inmates approach to thank him for rescu-- BAM! He clocks them too. "Did I say 'Zio-Nazis excepted'?" I was thinking about this after reading this tweet by Ferrari Sheppard, where he says "Can't be anti Nazi pro Israel."

Can't be anti Nazi pro Israel.

— Ferrari Sheppard (@stopbeingfamous) August 13, 2017

I read that tweet, in turn, shortly after reading this thread by Sophie Ellman-Golan urging White Jews to "join" the fight against the neo-Nazi resurgence we saw in Charlottesville.

To white Jews alarmed by #Charlottesville: this is the movement. Join it. It will fight for us, but we have to fight for Black folks too.

— Sophie Ellman-Golan (@EgSophie) August 13, 2017

It is, she says, a fight Jewish institutions have been "shamefully late" in adopting as our own. I reflect on this, and I'm torn. My thoughts are scattered; they fly all over the place. Consider the ADL -- called out by name by Ellman-Golan. I recall excoriating them for selling out liberal Jews in their appalling silence on David Friedman's "kapo" comments. Then I think of the immense pressure the ADL has come under from the right, which accuses it of taking too hard a line on right-wing racism. I remember the shamefully equivocating tweet ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt put out yesterday, drawing equivalence between Nazi and "antifa" violence. Then I remember the following tweet thread which was so much better. I also remember how a sizable chunk of the negative responses to Greenblatt's original equivocation somehow managed to work "Israel" into the message -- because that's what it's always about, isn't it? I consider how it seems many of the ADL's critics are eager, even happy, to infer the worst about it. They like the idea of "Jews who don't really oppose Nazis". They seem to revel in the idea that the Jews aren't anti-Nazi to their satisfaction. The Jewish community -- institutionally and otherwise -- is a varied and diverse bunch. That variation and diversity applies as much to our presence in social justice organizing as anything else. The explanations for this diversity will be similarly varied. After all, I, too, have written fusillades decrying the tepidity of many Jewish groups in calling out the ascendant tide of right-wing racism. So clearly I concur there's a problem here. At the same time, I also think that there's something truly grating at the idea that Jews have to prove themselves "anti-Nazi." Mia Steinberg wrote something very telling about how this debate plays out for Jews: "Instead of 'would I have stood up to Nazis in WW2', the thought experiment for me has always been 'would I have survived?'" The Holocaust was not an arena for Jews to prove our moral valor, and when our reaction to Nazism doesn't adopt appropriately heroic tones that is not proof of Jewish "complicity" in anything. The celerity with which people seem eager to tell Jews we're the new Nazis, or we don't care about Nazis, or we're not responding to Nazis in a way that gives non-Jews sufficient confidence that we're really anti-Nazi, is degrading and infuriating. Yet again -- I can't fully go down that road either. Surely, the groups like ZOA who have explicitly lined up behind the Trump/Bannon alt-right wing have no moral legs to stand upon. And even as I bow to no one in downplaying the seriousness of the growing clouds of antisemitism, Ellman-Golan is simply right -- I refuse to tolerate people denying this -- that in its current manifestation in the United States Black people are more violently targeted by the forces of White supremacy than are Jews. That doesn't mean Jews aren't targeted, and aren't targeted in ways that are worthy of genuine fear and concern. But it is not wrong for there to be a focus on racist violence, so long as that focus doesn't come via denying the reality of antisemitic violence. But (once more around, and here's where I really want to land) can we honestly say -- unblinking, looked-in-the-eye, full-stop -- that when Jews don't throw themselves into these movements that the primary explanation ought to be "because Jews don't care about Nazism"? Can we be so confident that the movements in question "will fight for us"? The fact of the matter is, too often Jews -- from Chicago Dyke March to Creating Change to Slutwalk -- do try to participate in these movements, and are cast out, or turned aside, or subjected to humiliating ideological litmus tests where we're guilty until proven anti-Zionist. That's part of the reason -- not the sole reason, but part of the story -- why I shy away from protest movements. I don't know that they "will fight for us". That is not something that simply can be wedged into our presuppositions as a demanded default. Much the opposite:

As a Jew, I can't completely cheer at these expressions of left-wing activism because I know there is a real and non-negligible risk that in that crowd someone wants to say the whole thing they're fighting against is a Zionist plot, and there is a real and non-negligible risk that if that person gets a hold of the mic and says so the crowd will erupt in cheers.

It grates when this is denied, when people act as if the only reason Jews "don't show up" for social justice (to the extent that we don't) is because we're too indifferent or too fragile or too embedded in our own privilege to really care. Such a view doesn't take seriously real practices of exclusion; it assumes them away because it takes "they will fight for us" as an axiom rather than a (often quite dubious) proposition that must be demonstrated. It's the "why do all the black people sit together in the cafeteria" question of Jewish social activism. If Jews are "late" to the social activist party -- and I don't necessarily concede that we are -- perhaps part of the reason is that social convention requires a truly grotesque amount of preparation, costuming, covering, hedging, eliding, and self-effacing before the Jew is admitted through the doors. It's exhausting. And it's hard to blame people for not wanting to show up, when those requirements are allowed to persist unexamined. Finally, when talking of these exclusions we should be clear that this is not even primarily, let alone solely, a POC thing. Indeed, Black people in America have consistently demonstrated their intolerance of antisemitism and their willingness to stand with Jews against antisemitism even in their own community. That history has to be part of the story too. The story of Black-Jewish relations simply isn't -- much as conservative hagiographers might wish it so -- one of self-sacrificing Jews altruistically defending civil rights only to be sold down the river by ungrateful African-Americans who dived headfirst into antisemitic conspiracy-mongering. What it boils down to is this:

Jews are genuinely threatened by the rise of the alt-right. This is a movement that affects us in a real, tangible way -- not as allies, not as "fragile" White people, but as a vulnerable group that is genuinely imperiled by these social forces. Acting as if Jews don't have skin in this game is a form of antisemitism denial.

Currently, the tangible manifestations of extreme-right identity politics have a greater impact on the material conditions of black and brown lives than they do that of White Jews. That assessment in no way falsifies the first bullet point.

All non-Jews, to varying degrees, benefit from the social privileges and prerogatives that exist under conditions of antisemitic domination. This assessment in now way falsifies the second bullet point, it merely establishes a kyriarchical relationship where (in the contemporary American context) racial domination has greater punch than also-extant antisemitic domination does.

The relationship between (proximately-European) Jews and Whiteness is a complex one. Such Jews clearly do not enjoy an unadulterated White privilege (as the seething hatred of White supremacists makes clear). But it is also clear that we enjoy a great many of these privileges and prerogatives on a day-to-day basis. While possession of these privileges does not falsify the existence of antisemitism, neither does experiencing antisemitism falsify the existence of these privileges.

Some Jewish groups have been derelict in their duties to combat this right-wing menace. It is our obligation as Jews to insist that our communal representatives fight against far-right extremist movements both because they threaten us as Jews and because they threat others -- Black people, brown people, queer people, and more -- who may or may not be Jewish.

To the extent that some Whites Jews haven't partaken in anti-right resistance movements in the stock ways typically demanded of White allies, the explanations that apply to White people generally who don't "show up" are not always inapposite. But they are frequently incomplete, and a serious conversation needs to be had about the politics of antisemitic exclusion that afflicts Jews who very much do wish to be involved in left-wing activist spaces or otherwise participate in contemporary progressive politics. This conversation cannot take "they will fight for us" as an axiomatic entitlement.

Do these not fully fit together? Then they don't fully fit together. As I said, I'm torn. I don't claim to fully fit together on this.

via The Debate Link http://ift.tt/2uBzEN4

#anti-semitism #Black #far-right #leftists #nazis #progressives #racism #white supremacy #Whites

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comrade-jiang · 7 years

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Tactics of Liberalism (Intro, #1)

This is a new series I'm starting to tackle the most nefarious tactics used by modern-day liberals in defense of authoritarianism, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Unknowingly serving as a pawn for authoritarianism serves the same function as doing so on purpose, and the responsibility and consequences for such an action must be present in both cases.

Without further ado, let's get into Tactics of Liberalism #1: Meatshields for Fascists.

Make no mistake- liberalism has invaded our society and pushed out outside politics, decrying them as "extreme", "radical", "violent", and "terrorist". By doing this, liberals further the state's own monopoly of violence, for the government and police they often defend fit the definitions of the words they use for their opponents.

Most liberals ignore or justify the killings by the states they hold near and dear, with some even saying mass casualties are acceptable "because they get the job done". In reality, mass casualties are acceptable to them because they're happening to people they don't know and can't see.

Talking to the average liberal about defending oneself from fascism usually results in a dismissal from the liberal. Their answer, if they bother to give one, usually goes something like this.

"Neo-Nazis are nonviolent, and if you stoop down to their level, you become just as bad as them. They have a right to free speech and you can't assault them because you disagree with them."

We'll pick this apart piece by piece. Use this as a resource when dealing with your own liberals.

"Neo-Nazis are nonviolent."

Easily disproven by a simple Google search, liberals continue to say this lie as a means of protecting fascists from the consequences of their actions. Within the last 20 years, neo-Nazis and white supremacists have killed at least 60 people. High profile cases like the Charleston Church shooting and the murder of Heather Heyer are included.

Other neo-Nazis applaud these murders and call for more. Their end goal nowadays is to ignite a race war, where they belive their whiteness will assure them victory. To ignore this is to allow it to happen again, and again, and again, until we live in a society of fear, moreso than we already do.

Well-known, high-profile murders by white supremacists include the following. The Charleston Church shooting was a mass shooting, that took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on the evening of June 17, 2015. During a prayer service, nine people were killed by domestic terrorist Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist. Three other victims survived. The morning after the attack, police arrested Roof in Shelby, North Carolina. Roof confessed to committing the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.

The Portland train attack occurred on May 26, 2017, when a man fatally stabbed two people and injured a third, after he was confronted for shouting what were described as racist and anti-Muslim slurs at two teenage girls on a MAX Light Rail train in Portland, Oregon. Jeremy Joseph Christian had previously been convicted in 2002 of kidnapping and robbery of a convenience store, and was sentenced to 90 months in prison for that offense. He was also arrested in 2010 on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and theft, but those charges were later dropped. He held extremist views, posting neo-Nazi, antisemitic, and far-right material on social media, as well as material indicating an affinity for political violence. Christian had been participating in various "alt-right" rallies in Portland. One month prior to the stabbing, Christian spoke at a right-wing "March for Free Speech" in Portland's Montavilla Park, where he wore a Revolutionary War-era flag of the United States and carried a baseball bat, which was confiscated by police. He gave Nazi salutes, and used a racial slur at least once.

At the "Unite the Right" white supremacist rally, a man drove his car into a crowd of counterprotestors, hitting several and slamming into a stopped sedan, which hit a stopped minivan that was in front of it. The impact of the crash pushed the sedan and the minivan further into the crowd. One person was killed and 19 others were injured in what police have called a deliberate attack. The man then reversed the car through the crowd and fled the scene. James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old from Ohio who reportedly had expressed sympathy for Nazi Germany during his time as a student at Cooper High School in Union, Kentucky, was arrested. Fields had been photographed taking part in the rally, holding a shield emblazoned with the logo of Vanguard America, a white supremacist organization.

Also, at the same rally earlier in the day: Harvard professor Cornel West, who organized some of the counter-demonstrators, said that a group of "20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy, we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the anti-fascists who approached, over 300, 350 anti-fascists." West stated, "The neofascists had their own ammunition. And this is very important to keep in mind, because the police, for the most part, pulled back." DeAndre Harris, a black teacher's aide from Charlottesville, was brutally beaten by white supremacists in a parking garage close to Police Headquarters; the assault was captured by photographs and video footage. The footage showed a group of six men beating Harris with poles, metal pipe, and wood slabs, as Harris struggled to pick himself off the ground. Harris suffered a broken wrist and serious head injury.

Fox News and the Daily Caller had instigated running over leftist protesters for years now, but puleld their articles when someone was finally murdered that way, as to avoid responsibility.

As you can see from a few relatively recent cases, neo-Nazis are not nonviolent. Their ideals are not nonviolent. To stand in real, tangible opposition to the ideology whose end goal is total extermination of all unlike them is not violent- it is self-defense.

"If you stoop down to their level, you become just as bad as them."

This one is fairly straightforward. If a liberal's only problem with Nazism is that it's too rowdy, then they are purposely ignoring what the Nazis have done, what they want to do, and what they will do if allowed to.

The only way anyone could "stoop down" to the level of a neo-Nazi is to harbor all their ideals. There are many things wrongs with neo-Nazis besides their propensity for violence, including but in no way limited to their anti-Semitism, anti-blackness, ideals of racial purity, and desire to initiate a global race war and Fourth Reich.

"They have a right to free speech."

In the United States, at least, they actually don't. Inciting genocide, no matter how likely, falls under inciting imminent lawless behavior, as per the Supreme Court's decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, as does anything that presents a clear and present danger. It falls under a type of death threat, and is on the same level, legally, as making bomb threats. However, due to law enforcement and judiciary officials either not understanding this decision or not caring, this is rarely, if ever, prosecuted. Being technically legal due to incompetence or corruption is still illegal.

On top of this, the neo-Nazis' victims have a right to live, and that right is quite a bit more important than their right to repeatedly incite violence until one of them steps up and kills someone.

"You can't assault them because you disagree with them."

This ties into my second point. If a liberal can boil the desire for extermination of an entire race into an "opinion" that you can simply disagree with, then the liberal is, in essence, shifting blame away from the ones who are calling for extermination and onto the ones who wish to stop them.

It is in these manners that liberals are often called "Nazi sympathizers" or the like- by defending aspects of Nazism from criticism or reprisals, the liberal is presenting themselves as little more than a meatshield for fascists, who will gleefully thank them for the help until it's time to round liberals up too.

I must reiterate that liberals are not the enemy, despite their position as ideological opponents. Liberals, unless actively fighting for fascists, should be coached into common sense by those who understand the ramifications of a second Nazi incursion.

#anarchism #liberalism #militant resistance #socialism #antifascism

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cartoonessays · 7 years

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“Both Sides”

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Pocahontas is a controversial Disney film. It’s not hard to see why. In its attempt to tell a story of a historical Native American figure, especially one alive during the beginnings of European colonization of the Americas, it ended up reinforcing a lot of Native American stereotypes and myths about colonization. For the sake of this post, I’m only going to address one of the sources of backlash towards Pocahontas. Which brings me to the song above, “Savages”.

The way in which Pocahontas chose to portray English/Native American relations was to compare their tension to the Capulets and Montegues from Romeo & Juliet, with John Smith and Pocahontas standing in as the eponymous characters whose love can help both sides grow past their animus towards one another. This framing is very kum-ba-yah “can’t we all just get along” in its intent, but it’s dishonest. It wouldn’t have been dishonest if, let’s say if the conflict between the two warring families in the story began with the Capulets claiming the Montegues’ property and resources as their own and spent the next several centuries removing the Montegues from their property through pillage, rape, and genocide.

In telling any story about Native American history, especially if your story takes place during the first European settlements of the US, and especially if you’re a non-Native American telling the story, the reality of colonialism cannot be ignored or soft-pedaled. Unfortunately, the song “Savages” and Pocahontas in general mostly frames the Native Americans and English settlers on equal footing. This isn’t to say that systems of colonialism didn’t or couldn’t bring about comparable individualized prejudice both Pocahontas’ Powhatan tribe and John Smith’s fellow settlers showed towards one another, but those feelings are the manifestations of living under a system based on inequality.

However, if you take a look at comment section of that “Savages” video, most of the comments proudly say “yeah, both sides are evil”, “both sides are bad”, etc. (along with a bunch of other obnoxious right-wing buzzwords like “SJW”, “PC police” or “T R I G G E R E D”)

Which finally brings me to that damned “well, both sides are bad” political talking point.

In the wake of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, VA that left numerous people injured and one person killed, President Donald Trump has been roundly and rightfully criticized on all sides for equating one side of protesters marching in support of Nazism, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, etc. and the other side of protesters marching against Nazism, racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, etc. in his statements about the tragedy over there. This type of stance of not really having a stance is not a new angle and it certainly isn’t an angle that someone who usually revels in being polarizing like Donald Trump invented.

If there is a contentious issue being debated, it is always a good idea to get a firm grasp of the arguments on each side and understanding all the nuances of each side. With all those nuances in mind, it’s perfectly fair to have disagreements or misgivings about aspects of each side. However, the “both sides are bad” view never actually does any of that. It’s a very lazy and extremely reductive way of viewing the issues that only serves to self-righteously provide a veneer for sitting on the fence that forgoes giving either side any further thought or analysis by reducing them to strawmen. Another version of this is the reflexive “well, one side says this, one side says that, so the answer must be somewhere in the middle”. The South Park episode “Chef Goes Nanners” mocked this type of thinking when various townspeople would only flaky, indecisive answers when asked by news reporters whether or not their town flag is racist.

The funniest thing about South Park criticizing that way of thinking is that this show has been the biggest purveyor of this exact type of lazy “well, both sides are bad” thinking. Their episode “Goobacks” more literally does this than any other episode by hosting a debate between two characters literally named “pissed-off white trash redneck conservative” and “aging hippie liberal douche”.

The other thing about the “both sides are bad” point of view is that while it prides itself on being even-handed and taking the middle road, it very often doesn’t even do that. More often than not, it simply takes a “softer” conservative point of view. Another South Park episode “I’m a Little Bit Country”, which centered around the debate over whether or not the US should invade Iraq, settled the conflict between the pro-war side and anti-war side by arguing “only a truly great country can go to war and act like it doesn’t want to”. What the fuck does that mean? First of all, I have to outline the way this episode defined both sides. The pro-war side was defined as “we have to go to war cuz terrorists and 9/11” and the anti-war side was defined as “we should not go to war cuz war is violent and icky”. The “middle-ground” argument that united both sides amounted to arguing that the US should go to war in order to maintain its powerful geopolitical status in the world, but the image of a robust anti-war populace makes the US look a lot less barbarous to the rest of world. This completely ignores all of the other arguments made against invading Iraq, such as the Bush Administration’s false claim of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and the Administration’s disingenuous connecting of Hussein to the attacks on the World Trade Center (and these are just two of the counter-arguments brought against invading Iraq).

I’ll stop beating up on South Park for a moment.

Jon Stewart’s 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity was one great big exercise of “both sides are bad, the answer’s gotta be somewhere in the middle”. Besides taking a dig at Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rallies, Stewart mentioned in interviews that he organized this rally to fight against what he saw was a growing extremism on both sides. This was during a time when the Tea Party movement was on the rise, Glenn Beck’s show on Fox News was a ratings giant, and at the heels of a massive Republican sweep on the upcoming midterm elections. This was during a time when debates about Obama’s healthcare reform were characterized by one side arguing that a widely available public program would give private health insurance companies an incentive to reduce their costs and the other side arguing that Obama is a socialist attempting to implement a Nazi policy with “death panels” that will “pull the plug on grandma”. The response to this growing movement on the right by the Obama Administration was to adopt a healthcare plan formulated by the right-wing think-tank the Heritage Foundation (implemented by his future presidential opponent Mitt Romney in Massachusetts when he was governor) as his healthcare reform, to greatly reduce the government branch that tracked the activity of white supremacist hate groups while membership of these groups were on the rise, and to assist in defunding ACORN and firing US Department of Agriculture director Shirley Sherrod after doctored videos of both falsely incriminating them of wrongdoing circulated around right-wing media. This is all extremism that clearly skews on one side. The only example Stewart could bring up of “liberal extremism” was CNN’s firing of news anchor Rick Sanchez after he made veiled antisemitic remarks about Stewart (and how is that liberal extremism?). I think Jon Stewart did such a disservice to his audience by rallying thousands of them for something based on a false premise. His snide, dismissive coverage of the Occupy movement the following year further reinforced his adherence to false “both sides” paradigms by framing the Occupy protesters in similar “ha ha look how stoopid and ridiculous these people are” as their coverage of Tea Party protesters.

Which brings me to one of the major tenants of “both sides are bad” ideology, the horseshoe theory. This theory equates the left with the right without a shred of nuance or any actual thought whatsoever. In President Trump’s clusterfuck-of-a-press conference where he doubled down on equally blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville, he place a chunk of the blame of what happened there on what he called the “alt-left”. “Alt-left” is a new-ish slur used to discredit the left-wingers, particularly activists inspired by Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, by giving them a moniker similar to “alt-right”, which was just a way of rebranding all of the things like white supremacists like the ones who committed violence in Charlottesville stand for as something deceptively softer than calling it what it really is. This term “alt-left” has been used quite a bit over the past year by right-wing pundits like Sean Hannity and powerful Democratic party insiders and surrogates like MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid, Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, and Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas. Many who throw terms like “alt-left” around, particularly those invested in the Democratic party, have in the past justified their use of such terms by expressing agreement with the horseshoe theory. Both the alt-right and so-called “alt-left” are allegedly so extreme that they’ve become identical to one another, and Trump and Bernie Sanders are the respective poster boys for these extreme ideologies. This is a comparison between a cult of personality who finds absolute kinship with neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members and a cult of personality whose politics is more comparable to Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, or even Dwight Eisenhower than to Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, or Antonio Gramsci.

The near unanimous admonishing that Trump has gotten for equating both sides in his remarks about Charlottesville is encouraging. This type of vapid equivocating has been ubiquitous in political discourse for a long time, so my hope is that this will signal a complete deconstruction of this point of view.

But if I may go back to Pocahontas for a second, another major mistake the film made was framing anti-Native American sentiment as starting and ending with the villain Radcliffe. Trump himself is a very despotic and ridiculous type of character with a lot of parallels to Radcliffe, and I worry that this admonishment of “both sides are bad” type of arguments will not go further than simply denouncing him. It has been too politically expedient for the opportunists that have trotted it out for all these years, so it likely won’t go the way of phrenology or other pseudo-sciences anytime soon.

#pocahontas #savages #south park #Donald Trump #both sides #charlottesville #horseshoe theory #cartoon essays #just my thoughts

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jewish-privilege · 5 years

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When academics see a problem, many respond by writing a book. Some time ago, concerned by what I perceived as a rising tide of anti-Semitism, I did just that. I devoted the past three years to Antisemitism Here and Now. In September I submitted the manuscript to my publisher. The book went to press. I was done.

Then came Pittsburgh.

I momentarily considered asking my editor if it was possible to rewrite sections of the book. (I knew it was not, but I figured why not ask.) Then, I realized that Pittsburgh, shocking as it was, didn’t really change anything. In fact, it confirmed my two central arguments: a perfect storm of antisemitism is, not just brewing, but is upon us and too many people in the Jewish community are woefully unprepared or unwilling to honestly address it.

...So why is today’s surge in Jew-hatred different – and particularly alarming? Generally, antisemitism has come from either the right or the left. But today, it comes from three different sides at the same time.

From the right, Jews are being singled out by xenophobic populists who are increasingly setting the tenor of politics in many democracies. They also face emboldened white supremacists whose conspiracy theories have been given credence by political leaders and government officials – including in the US – who use barely coded antisemitic language (“cosmopolitan,” “globalist,” obsessive talk of George Soros) that evoke a sinister, greedy, planet-running Jewish cabal.

...On the left, the intensifying attacks are becoming increasingly institutionalized. They often come from those who cannot distinguish legitimate criticism of particular Israeli policies from bigoted attacks on Jews. Some progressives deny Jews their right to a national identity, accuse Jews of being puppet masters controlling governments’ policies, insinuate that American Jews are disloyal to the US, and make such bizarre and evidence-free accusations as the fabrication that Israelis harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.

Some on the left deploy the right to criticize Israel as a cover for overt antisemitism. For example, Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, in a recent interview, effusively praised a book so laden with antisemitism that the publisher who had contracted to publish it refused to do so. (The book she enthusiastically endorsed describes the Talmud as a racist tract and contends that the world is controlled by lizard people – Jews – who engage in child sacrifice and control the economy.) Under fire, Ms. Walker employed the fallback tactic of many when accused of antisemitism: The attacks on her, she insisted, were attempts to “smear” her to prevent her from “speaking out in support of the people of Palestine.” U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has tried similar deflections after saying that “Zionists” didn’t “understand English irony” – a clear suggestion from a possible future British prime minister that Jews are not full Britons. (Yes he said “Zionists” but if you listen to his speech its clear that he meant any Jew who has any affinity for Israel.)

...To make all this worse, some Jews have politicized the fight against this torrent of hatred. Many are prone to see antisemitism only on the other side of the political transom, even as they fail to see it within their own camp. Such was the case after Pittsburgh, when a number of right-wing media pundits and media outlets took great umbrage over analysts who laid partial responsibility for the slaughter at the door of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric. Partisans asked: Isn’t Mr. Trump an ardent supporter of Israel who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem? Hadn’t he condemned this heinous crime? Doesn’t he have Jewish grandchildren? All that is true. But Mr. Trump has also engaged in constant, vociferous attacks on minorities, immigrants and critics; he has given credence to fringe conspiracy theories and retweeted internet posts that are directly linked to antisemitic groups; he had to be dragged into disavowing the support of KKK leader David Duke; he tweeted an image of a Star of David over a pile of money; and he has described neo-Nazis who march chanting “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people.” The Pittsburgh shooter, though critical of Trump for not having gone far enough, was clearly motivated by his attacks on immigrants. There is a reason why virtually all white supremacists think he shares their view of the Jews.

Some on the left, however, are easily and rightfully appalled by misdeeds on the right while remaining oblivious to the antisemitism in their midst. They are quick to blame Mr. Trump but silent about progressives whose portrayal of the power and loyalties of the “Jewish lobby” drifts into the brackish waters of prejudice. They excoriate Jews who support Mr. Trump but stay silent on Ms. Walker or excuse the leaders of the Women’s March. (The absence of political power does not excuse the presence of prejudice.)

And when someone calls attention to the fact that Islamists have been responsible for so many violent attacks on Jews and others in Europe, some pundits on the left are quick to condemn that as Islamophobia.

Most sadly of all, Israel’s political leadership has donned blinders of its own as the threat gathers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised Hungary’s illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban as a “true friend of Israel” committed to “the need to combat antisemitism.” But Mr. Orban has waged an overtly antisemitic campaign against George Soros even as the prime minister has denied Hungary’s role in the decimation of its Jewish community in 1944. Mr. Netanyahu has been similarly misguided and ahistorical in his outreach to Poland’s own xenophobic, right-wing government. After earnestly attacking the 2018 Polish law that rewrote the history of the Holocaust by making it illegal to accuse Poles of collaborating with the Nazis (as many incontestably did), Mr. Netanyahu’s government suddenly reversed course and, after a few cosmetic changes to the bill were made, praised the Poles for their fight against antisemitism.

Israeli officials explain these strange alignments, in part, by pointing to Hungary and Poland’s willingness to support Israel in the European Union and in UN forums, something some other democracies have been unwilling to do. But making a pact with such bedfellows is a dubious act indeed.

It is too dangerous a time to give one’s political compatriots a pass on prejudice. We need not agree with all of our political allies’ positions, but there should be no compromises over bigotry particularly when it comes to the age-old scourge of antisemitism and any other form of hatred.

And if those who are singled out for prejudice cannot recognize that, how can we expect anyone else to?

[Read Deborah Lipstadt’s full piece at The Times of Israel.]

#antisemitism #antisemitism on the left #antisemitism on the right #israel

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