All during the campaign we mentioned how Trump's most loyal followers hated life, hated their families, their communities their own children, themselves and, most of all, their lot in life. They're losers incoherently crying for a fairer shot... which is what makes it hard for progressives to condemn them wholesale. We feel their pain. Until something like Charlottesville happens.KKK grand dragon of whatever they call themselves David Duke, a former Republican state senator from Louisiana, and Nazi fuehrer Richard Spencer have put themselves out as leaders of the Unite the Right movement. Duke noted that "Russia is the key to white survival" and Spencer told his supporters that "Russia is the sole white power in the world." That works out fortuitously... for the TrumpWorld money launderers and kleptocrats.But, of course, the movement isn't just Richard Spencer, David Duke, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Gorka, and Señor Trumpanzee. No, no, no... there are lots and lots of losers at life we're talking about here. Remember, these are people that identify with our country's defeated enemies, Nazi Germany and the slave-holding Confederate rebels and mythologize about their greatness. And, God bless them, the NY Daily News took it upon themselves to report on the outing of these right-wing miscreants-- in case one of them wants to marry your daughter or apply for a job doing something where you work. (Now, remember, we're anti-violence here.)
White nationalists who caused mayhem protesting in Charlottesville over the weekend can’t run away from the internet.A Twitter account dubbed “Yes, You're Racist” is exposing the white nationalists who attended the “Unite the Right” rally at Emancipation Park condemning the city's decision to take down the Robert E. Lee statue.“If you recognize any of the Nazis marching in #Charlottesville, send me their names/profiles and I'll make them famous #GoodNightAltRight,” user @YesYoureRacist tweeted Saturday.Among those identified was Peter Cvjetanovic of Reno, Nev.Photos of the 20-year-old college student showed him holding a tiki torch among other protesters during the white supremacist gathering Friday night. The snapshots quickly spread on social media with people slamming him as a racist.However, the white nationalist told KTVN-TV that he wasn’t a racist and didn’t expect to receive such backlash.“I did not expect the photo to be shared as much as it was. I understand the photo has a very negative connotation, Cvjetanovic told the station. “But I hope that the people sharing the photo are willing to listen that I’m not the angry racist they see in that photo.”James Fields, center, has been charged with crashing a car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, Va., killing a 32-year-old womanCvjetanovic, who traveled to Charlottesville to show his disapproval over the ordered removal of the statue, also defended his white supremacist beliefs.“As a white nationalist, I care for all people. We all deserve a future for our children and for our culture,” he told KTVN. White nationalists aren’t all hateful; we just want to preserve what we have.”Cole White — another protester pictured on the account-- was fired from his job at Top Dog, a restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., the company said.“Effective Saturday 12th August, Cole White no longer works at Top Dog. The actions of those in Charlottesville are not supported by Top Dog,” the company told the Daily News Sunday. “We believe in individual freedom, and voluntary association for everyone.”The “Yes, You’re Racist” page also featured shots of James Fields, the 20-year-old of Ohio who allegedly rammed his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of demonstrators, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than 20.He’s been charged with second-degree murder and other crimes. The FBI and the Justice Department have opened a civil rights investigation into the case.
Malcolm Harris, writing for Pacific Standard, used his expertise on the KKK, explained how Bannon's alt-right legions are using KKK techniques to recruit other hopeless losers.
It has been over six months since Donald Trump was elected, and the so-called alt-right is still with us. Their "God Emperor" having been elected president, these 21st-century American Nazis aren't looking to crawl back under their futons. Instead, they are expanding: propagandizing, holding recruitment rallies, and starting violence around the country. And yet, with their troll ethics, gladiator costumes, and frog-god iconography, it can be very hard to take them seriously as a threat to public safety or national democracy. The alt-right is a bunch of clowns-- how dangerous could they be?...The goofiness and so-called irony with which the alt-right goes about fascism can seem distinctly postmodern and Internet-forged, but a similar humor animated the Reconstruction Klan. All the Klannish affectations and accoutrements that seem so ridiculous today-- the alliterative k's, the costumes, the Magic: The Gathering titles like "Grand Wizard" and "Exalted Cyclops"-- were ridiculous, and self-consciously so. One of the functions of humor for the Klan, Parsons says, was to mark their transgressions as acceptable. "The right believes in the truth of racial and gender inequality and the legitimacy of domination as the engine of change," she says, "but in America after the Civil War, stating that openly becomes more taboo. So they used humor to shake loose people's refusal to talk about inequality, playfully illustrating what they thought should be reality. They creatively destabilized norms to shake people loose of comfortable pieties." Like the Klan, the Proud Boys actually do think that patriotic militias of white men should be the foundation of American political society, and as long as they perform it as a circus show, they can avoid some of the consequences for acting out that fantasy.They've stirred together an aesthetic mélange of sports equipment, American flags, Internet memes, Greco-Roman battle wear, Nazi iconography, and fetish gear. It looks laughable and absurd, but they're humoring themselves first and foremost. The Reconstruction Klan learned their costume tradition from actual costume parties of the sort that rich Southerners used to throw, and they attempted a more unruly set of ensembles than even today's alt-right: not just the infamous white-hooded ghosts, but moon men and demons and cross-dressers. "The Klan served an energizing function in part by building a new Southern white male identity that was drawn self-consciously from the newest trends, from popular entertainment to contemporary forms of organizational structure" Parsons writes in the book. The architects of the Reconstruction Klan weren't revanchist Southern gentlemen; they were memelords... [C]also fulfill another function for the far right. "Costumes tell the viewer that the thing the wearer is trying to do is cultural, that it's not a political or violent attack," she says. "They suggest that the wearer is trying to convince, or engage. If you're wearing a costume, you're thinking about the viewer, you're imagining yourself in conversation with someone else. But what people fail to understand is that cultural control is a question of power." The playful outfits give the rest of us a false sense of security by tricking us into thinking the performers are acting within the liberal symbolic order. They indicate an expressive speech-act is occurring. "Costumes tell us that they're performing, that they can come back from what they're doing," Parsons says. "But why should that be reassuring? Military uniforms are costumes in the same way." Just because it's a performance doesn't mean it's not real.When media outlets first started talking about Richard Spencer, the white supremacist who coined the term "alt-right," the profiles framed him as the "dapper fascist": a stock character in American entertainment (from Law and Order to Sons of Anarchy) who preaches faith and family while wearing a suit and pocket square, yet holds atrocious views. But as Spencer's character came into focus (jobless heir to a plantation, failed academic aesthete, more interested in young men and frog memes than in his wife and child), he started to look more like one of the bored musicians who formed the original Klan than a 20th-century chairman of the local White Citizens Council. During Reconstruction, Parsons says, white Southern men (reasonably) believed that their time for prosperity had passed, that their leadership roles in the family and community were being usurped. "They thought there was nothing for them to do," Parsons says. "These groups emerge when white men feel they can no longer exercise legitimate democratic authority, and some of them turn to violence." Purposeless losers are extremely easy to mock, and that can sometimes obscure just how dangerous they are.Think of Jeremy Christian: Most of the pictures we have of the man who stabbed two men to death on a Portland train are from one of these Nazi costume parties that their attendees call "free speech rallies." The images are of Christian standing alone, wearing an American flag around his neck, throwing up a heil with his right hand. Only anti-fascists have seized on video from the event, where you can see Jacob Von Ott, organizer and spokesman of Identity Europa (a pseudo-intellectual white supremacist group that targets college campuses), go up and shake his hand, which Christian lowers from his Nazi salute. There is no bright line distinguishing the current state of affairs from one in which white-power militias stalk the country intimidating, harassing, and even killing their enemies. Don't let the silly costumes fool you; we are already there....Fighting back also dispelled the air of comedy. In 1868, when costumed night-riders showed up at Bob Anderson's home in Knoxville, Tennessee, he came out shooting. The local liberal paper celebrated Anderson, writing, "We wonder now if the Conservative papers will deny that the Kuklux sneak about the country in the unhallowed business of stealing from the freedmen. A Kluklux has been killed, laid low by the bullet of a brave colored man who had courage to defend his home from the assaults of reckless villains." If history is to be our guide, ignoring or laughing at the alt-right isn't going to be good enough. We have to take these jokers seriously.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus is. They are demanding that Trump Fire white supremacists from the White House, remove Confederate statues in the U.S. Capitol, and re-open the Department of Homeland Security's right-wing extremism division, which Trump shut down. CPC co-chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Mark Pocan (D-WI): "Today, Americans of color and immigrant and religious minority communities are grappling with the fact that white supremacists – inspired by President Trump’s racially-charged words and policies – feel empowered to openly march and commit acts of violence in broad daylight. President Trump’s appalling and shameful reluctance to name the groups involved in the attacks until today speaks volumes about the content of his character. Mr. President, it shouldn’t take you two days to build up the courage to condemn violent neo-Nazis and the KKK. This violent outburst is far from an isolated incident and is intricately connected to the President’s discriminatory agenda, which includes construction of the border wall, the Muslim Ban, mass deportations, and the open demonization of urban communities. President Trump must demonstrate his opposition to white supremacy by immediately firing the white supremacists currently working in the White House, including Stephen Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, and Stephen Miller. Further, we call on Speaker Ryan and House Republicans to demonstrate their opposition to white supremacy by finally removing Confederate statues and imagery from the U.S. Capitol. Finally, the Department of Homeland Security should reopen the Extremism and Radicalization Branch of the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division and issue an updated report on the threat posed by domestic right-wing extremism."These are the talking points the White House sent out to all the Republican members of Congress tonight. Listen carefully to see which Trump shills use them in interviews tonight and tomorrow.You'll have to click on this to read the GOP marching orders
