FOX NEWS is the MEDIA OUTLET FOR WHITE SUPREMACISM

[_EAllusion]

On a separate note, federal agencies have been sending employees articles from white supremacist (and other far right) websites since Trump was elected:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ha ... poch-times

[_EAllusion]

This may or may not be the right thread for this, but here you go:

Politico has an article up on a alt-right book/manifesto that has captured the imagination of some people surrounding the Trump administration:

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/ ... mp-1472413

I find the way this is written to be quite frustrating. The tone is obviously negative, but it also manages to portray the phenomenon as quirky extremism rather than just point-blank describing what they are reporting on.

They describe the book in terms that are identical to the primary elements of Nazism. That's not an exaggeration. "Nietzschean philosophy with critiques of contemporary Western society, denigrating homosexuality, Judaism, Islam, feminism," fixating on "population genetics," and an "affinity for Slavic and northern European cultures" while imploring those of like-mind to "join the armed forces in preparation for the onset of military rule" are its core components. Aside from liking Slavs, that's literally what Nazism is. It's not even generic fascism. That's basically Nazism. If you understand what Nazism is beyond the level of swastikas and roman salutes, you probably should be able to pick up on this.

Yet, somehow, this article never manages to draw that connection explicitly. Instead, it compares Trump officials liking this modern version of Mein Kampf to early 2000's liberals liking the West Wing. The words are there for the reader to draw the connections themselves, but they buried the lede 6 feet deep. Instead, we get a, "look at what those jokers are up to. lol" tone that is inappropriate for the news they are reporting.

[_honorentheos]

From the article -

Much like the Trump phenomenon itself, it can be difficult to tell where to place “Bronze Age Mindset” along the spectrum between elaborate joke and deadly serious. Reached via direct message on Twitter, Bronze Age Pervert, declined to discuss his real-world identity. In a rambling note, he said he was influenced by a book about homosexuality in the Nazi army and claimed, “I’m largely responsible for the Trump administration's push for universal worldwide sodomy promotion,” an apparent reference to the administration’s campaign to abolish laws that criminalize homosexuality. (This appears to be a joke. A source close to the White House who is familiar with the initiative scoffed at the claim.)

Satirical nonsense aside, events such as recent mass shootings inspired by far right ideas, as well as acts of violence by believers in the fantastical QAnon conspiracy theory, underscore the gravity of this corner of internet culture.

“There’s a whole generation of younger guys who are reading this and buying into this, but there aren’t a lot of paths to channel that constructively,” said one organizer on the Trumpist right, who declined to be named in an article that contained the term “alt-right.”

“Insofar as people are worried about radicalization on the right towards violence, one of the things I worry about is this generation of younger guys are going to conclude there’s no space for them or their voice in the political process, and the only way they can express themselves is in these ugly, corrosive ways,” the organizer said. “In my opinion, the way to help these people is not to turn them 180 degrees, but to turn them 15 degrees.”

[_EAllusion]

OG Nazis themselves loved to play around in the grey area of “are they joking or serious?” The number of articles on Hitler from the American press in the 1930’s that suggest he’s doing what in modern terms we’d call trolling feels limitless. It’s not a modern alt-right or Trump specific phenomenon. Exploiting ironic ambiguity is a red flag feature of fascist movements.

The part you quoted Honor is an example of my frustration. It’s not hard at all to point out that “Maybe he’s joking about all this Nazi stuff” is a thing Nazis do. The words are there to make the connection, but there’s no effort to educate the reader in the context.

[_honorentheos]

I took it more as an honest question of whether it's best to try and oppose/flip people suseptable to the message or redirect their view to something consistent with a traditional viable political position but not a reconversion as if it's a cult. I think how a person answers that comes down to how seriously a person takes the possibility there are reasonable alternatives outside of ones own views. If one can't fathom that, then there is only Nazis and racists on one side and the opposing woke binary on the other.

[_EAllusion]

I took it more as an honest question of whether it's best to try and oppose/flip people suseptable to the message or redirect their view to something consistent with a traditional viable political position but not a reconversion as if it's a cult. I think how a person answers that comes down to how seriously a person takes the possibility there are reasonable alternatives outside of ones own views. If one can't fathom that, then there is only Nazis and racists on one side and the opposing woke binary on the other.

My complaint is that it elides making obvious connections to inform the reader because of an implied editorial bias that obscures and inadvertently downplays.

That Trump admin people seem interested in a modern Nazi book that has gained a cult following is an interesting story that Politico wouldn’t allow itself to tell in a straightforward way. If you give them the motive you supplied - strategy about how to dissuade people from joining them - that’s just bad journalistic ethics. Avoiding just spelling out the truth in a potentially misguided attempt at making reporting a battle over conversion is not helpful.

“Everything is Nazism with you guys” would be a hell of a reply to pointing out an almost exact equivalent of Nazism. At a certain point ones standards for what Nazism is become so strict that “never again” is a meaningless concept because Nazism is sui generis and therefore is impossible to repeat.

[_honorentheos]

Here are all of the quotes from the article where people in Trump's orbit are mentioned:

Since its publication in June 2018, the book has gained a following online, and its author, known to his fans as BAP for short, has come to the attention of notable figures on the Trumpist right. Earlier this month, the book was the subject of a 5,000-word review by Michael Anton, a conservative intellectual who served as a spokesman for Donald Trump’s National Security Council. Anton concludes by warning, “In the spiritual war for the hearts and minds of the disaffected youth on the right, conservatism is losing. BAP-ism is winning.”

Anton is just one of the Trump world figures who has taken notice. "It’s still a cult book,” said another former Trump White House official. “If you’re a young person, intelligent, adjacent in some way to the right, it’s very likely you would have heard of it.”

Right-wing agitator Mike Cernovich said he knows of young staffers in the White House who are fans of Bronze Age Pervert’s Twitter account — where the author posts photos of buff, shirtless men and promotes far-right positions on the culture war — though he does not know if they have read the book.

...

The book’s ascendance in online, far-right circles is indicative of the latest phase of the culture war that has fueled Trump’s presidency.

...

While the loose alt-right network that became infamous in 2016 was filled with attention-seeking provocateurs who cheered on Trump’s rise, the new voices in this space are alienated and ambivalent about Trump. And far from being inspired by his signature call to “Make America Great Again,” their view of contemporary American society is decidedly dystopian.

The memes — catchy ideas and images that are widely shared online — produced in such far-right internet circles, such as Pepe the Frog, regularly intrude on mainstream political discourse, sometimes even getting adopted by Trump himself. And the current fixations of these figures offer a glimpse of the concepts gaining traction there.

Figures in this space frequently refer to their belief that elite media is preparing Americans for a future in which their quality of life is greatly diminished and they are reduced to eating insects for protein.

“What is up with all these ‘we need to learn to eat cockroaches and maybe each other haha’ articles,” tweeted Just Loki on Wednesday, linking to a Newsweek article referencing cannibalism. “Perfect beer food—wash down your meal worms with a nice IPA!” tweeted 17thCenturyShytePost sarcastically in response to another article about eating insects earlier this month.

The accounts also oppose mass migration, echoing the themes of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory invoked by the gunman who perpetrated the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre, and apparently again by the El Paso shooter. The idea, articulated in a 2011 book by the French writer Renaud Camus, claims that European elites are secretly conspiring to replace their countries’ white majorities with immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.

In his book, Bronze Age Pervert describes Western societies as ruled by “bug men” and “lords of lies,” urging readers to pursue a life of “sun and steel” — that is, tanning and weightlifting.

Across 77 chapters of cryptic musing, the book describes social justice as “disgusting parasitism,” opines that women who succeed in traditionally male domains are “spiritual lesbians,” and complains that the U.S. intelligence services employ too many Mormons.
...

Anton, in his review, earnestly reckons with the book’s critique of Charles Darwin and notes that at one point it cracked the top 150 bestsellers on Amazon. Anton writes that the book was given to him by Curtis Yarvin, an internet philosopher who writes under the name Mencius Moldbug, favors a return to monarchy and reportedly communicated with Steve Bannon through an intermediary while Bannon was in the White House.

After encountering the book’s intentional spelling and grammar mistakes, Anton gave up on it until former White House speechwriter Darren Beattie urged him to read it in its entirety. Beattie was fired from Trump’s White House last year after it was revealed he spoke at a 2016 conference attended by Peter Brimelow, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a white nationalist. Beattie, who denounced the firing as guilt-by-association, now works as a speechwriter for Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a close ally of Trump’s in the House.

Much like the Trump phenomenon itself, it can be difficult to tell where to place “Bronze Age Mindset” along the spectrum between elaborate joke and deadly serious. Reached via direct message on Twitter, Bronze Age Pervert, declined to discuss his real-world identity. In a rambling note, he said he was influenced by a book about homosexuality in the Nazi army and claimed, “I’m largely responsible for the Trump administration's push for universal worldwide sodomy promotion,” an apparent reference to the administration’s campaign to abolish laws that criminalize homosexuality. (This appears to be a joke. A source close to the White House who is familiar with the initiative scoffed at the claim.)

“There’s a whole generation of younger guys who are reading this and buying into this, but there aren’t a lot of paths to channel that constructively,” said one organizer on the Trumpist right, who declined to be named in an article that contained the term “alt-right.”

[_honorentheos]

Not exactly deeply embedded in the Trump admin by my reading.

Anyway, I'm not sure what could just as easily be a gorilla marketing campaign for the rerelease of Zack Schneider's 300 with serious homoerotic overtones is easily confirmed as overt Nazism. It's target audience are the 4chan types who are underemployed and of a generation hit disproportionately by the great recession facing hard new realities. I think there are ways to deal with this that don't involve shouting at people they are all Nazis. Because odds are they'll just embrace that and turn it back around on you. Oh, yeah. That's actually what's happening.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

From a Reddit post I recently saved, which I think addresses what's going on with the 'alt-right' or the trolls from 4chan and other venues:

The way I see it, populism can be used to describe two things:

A popular backlash when the establishment of a society starts using their institutional powers in a way that is anathema to popular wishes, leading to a revolt against the establishment by people.

A systematic distrust of elites and establishment, with trust placed instead in the ordinary people at the bottom of the pyramid, under the view that those who live with the consequences of social decisions are better placed to understand their ramifications and to choose better paths.

What Piers Morgan describes is the first type of populism. The reality is that progressives have over time taken over most political and social institutions. Whether that was conscious (long walk through the institutions) or not is not that important in the end, the result is the same. Academia is the gate-keeper of the establishment in Western societies, as positions of institutional power usually require degrees and networking enabled through the academy. As academia became more and more progressive, all establishment institutions downstream from it (civil service, the judiciary, public and private administration, the education system, the media, etc...) started also turning more and more progressive. The result is that progressive rhetoric has become dominant and the establishment keeps pushing progressive policies that are often at odds with what most people think, creating the sentiment of abrasive "political correctness".

Now, people have a certain degree of tolerance for the establishment acting in ways they dislike. Taking a stand against policies they dislike has a cost, and many may choose to tolerate the indignity in order to minimize disturbances to their personal lives. But when people have enough, and someone comes along who is willing to push back, taking aim at the establishment, then you have the conditions for a populist backlash on your hands.

FTR, when I say "establishment", I mean people who hold stable positions of influence within social institutions that are able to influence and shape society's evolution. They can be university professors or administration, major civil servants, major media, judges, influential members of political parties (whether they're elected or not, but they must be long-term fixtures with influence), etc...

Anyway, a typical criticism of "populists" is that they don't attack the existence of elites/the establishment, they simply want to be in it. That's not entirely wrong, but neither is that necessarily hypocritical. In the case of a "populist backlash", the system is not always attacked directly, instead, the "populists" are generally saying that the system is being perverted and misused by those currently in power in the institutions, and that what is wrong with it can be fixed by replacing the current crop of arrogant and out of touch "elites" by new "elites" who are more in touch of the population, more respectful of it and who will use their power in a more responsible manner.

It's not that different from the "loyal opposition" party in a democracy... this is a party that is not opposed to the political system, they are loyal to the system, they just think the people running things within that system are making a pig's mess of things and are arguing for being put in their place.

An ideological populist on the other hand would argue that the problem isn't just the current group of elites, the system itself is at fault. It doesn't suffice to remove the current elites, the establishment's power must be curtailed and subjected to popular opinion far, far more. For instance, an ideological populist would favor elected judges, elected police chiefs, strict term limits for politicians, local control of schools and universities, breaking up big media companies for the sake of local media, etc, etc... This would signify a systematic distrust of any kind of establishment, and the desire to break up and destabilize any institution to reduce their power and influence.

I think we saw this rebellion happen on the Left in the 60's through the 80's until they wrested control of these various institutions, in my opinion, organically.

What we're seeing now is a similar, but weirdly absurdist, revolt by the masses against Liberals (or whatever you want to call them). It seems much more chaotic and disenfranchised than what we saw from the Leftists. They at least believed in the institutions in that they could serve as vehicles to benefit the masses. However, the 'tune in, drop out' mantra isn't a new one and we can see this is a theme for a good percentage of the population during any given era; they just have 4chan now rather than vinyl records to spread the message.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

I think the American alt-right being described as populist is just a misnomer derived from a pretense of economic populism that doesn’t actually exist in the movement. European far right parties are fairly described as a right-wing form of populism, but their similarities to the American equivalent are primarily in the affinity for ultranationalist messaging and broader fascist tendencies.

I think “populist” is primarily used as a euphemism because beltway journalists don’t like calling millions of Americans, people they are often culturally distant from, labels with more negative connotation.

Besides being not being cowards, it’d probably help if they absorbed the idea that most people’s ideological commitments aren’t that deep. You can like those “populists” without understanding a whole lot about what you are liking.