What is QAnon? Explaining the rightwing conspiracy theory (7-31-18)

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Luke Ford

MP3: https://soundcloud.com/luke-ford-666431593/what-is-qanon-explaining-the-rightwing-conspiracy-theory

* Vox Day.

* From the Guardian:

On 28 October 2017, “Q” emerged from the primordial swamp of the internet on the message board 4chan. In a thread called “Calm Before the Storm”, and in subsequent posts, Q established his legend as a government insider with top security clearance who knew the truth about a secret struggle for power involving Donald Trump, the “deep state”, Robert Mueller, the Clintons, pedophile rings, and other stuff.

Since then, Q has continued to drop “breadcrumbs” on 4chan and 8chan, fostering a “QAnon” community devoted to decoding Q’s messages and understanding the real truth about, well, everything.

What do followers of QAnon believe?
It’s hard to say. The conspiracy theory is generally pro-Trump and anti-“deep state”, but it is not exactly coherent, and – like many conspiracy theories – is flexible enough to adapt to any new developments that might disprove it.

New York magazine and the Daily Beast have written articles explaining more of the basic beliefs of QAnon, but chances are that the more you read about it, the more confused you will be. Imagine a volatile mix of Pizzagate, InfoWars and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, multiplied by the power of the internet and with an extra boost from a handful of conservative celebrities.

* NYT: Trump Is Putting Indelible Conservative Stamp on Judiciary

* The worst drug crisis in American history.

* Steve Bannon’s comeback.

* Vanity Fair: “HE’S GOING TO FIELDSTRIP THESE GUYS”: INSIDE THE TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN’S WILD, DISORGANIZED ATTEMPT TO “KEEP AMERICA GREAT”

The president is running his re-election campaign precisely the way he governs—playing three opposing power centers off each other, and listening mainly to his own instincts. It’s going to get ugly, and soon. “We’re going to call them out,” says Steve Bannon. “Kirsten Gillibrand, show us what you got. Elizabeth Warren? Kamala Harris? Howard Schultz? He’s going to cut through these guys like a scythe through grass.”

* Washington Post: Want to be happier? Stop scheduling your free time, study says.

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Debating Ben Shapiro’s Unprincipled Position on Disgraced Disney Director James Gunn

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Luke Ford

MP3.

* Ali Alexander and Jonathan Lockwood write:

“A man may be judged by his standard of entertainment as easily as by the standard of his work,” preached arch-conservative commentator Ben Shapiro in his gospel Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism is Corrupting Our Future. These words seem empty as just days ago Shapiro hurried to the defense of far-left Guardians of the Galaxy writer and director James Gunn, who has come under fire for salacious commentary promoting pedophilia.

Gunn didn’t just make an off-color joke or engage in some dirty 21st century locker room talk. Gunn’s thousands of pedophiliac tweets, which have since been deleted, were unequivocally evil. So evil, that Disney fired Gunn faster than when ABC fired Roseanne Barr for slamming Valerie Jarrett in a tweet reply. What’s bad enough for Disney though is apparently good enough for the former author of how social liberalism literally brings about Armageddon.

The question many are asking: what additional information does Disney have on Gunn?

Late Thursday night, Mike Cernovich, a centrist social writer-activist and childrens advocate who has aligned himself with right-wing political movements over the past two years, began sharing Gunn’s insidious tweets. Less than 12 hours after Cernovich, who was amplified by One America News’ Jack Posobiec and the film, An Open Secret, which documents the systemic sexual child abuse found throughout Hollywood, began sharing this evidence with the public Disney fired Gunn from the upcoming sequel.

Gunn tweeted these comments in his forties. He is reportedly worth $100 million and the writer-director of a teen film series. These aren’t tweets from a college kid trying to get attention, or a rising standup comedian trying to bombast their way into the public spotlight. This wasn’t a careless retweet, or a foolishly shared comic. These comments should be damning to anyone, like Shapiro, who strategically positions themselves on the most archaic of social conservatism.

Strange, isn’t it? Maybe not. Shapiro grew up, and still lives, in Hollywood. His mother is a power-player within the industry and his cousins are actors Mara Wilson and Daniel Ben Wilson.

The podcaster takes every opportunity to contrast himself with Cernovich, falsely labelling the centrist “far-right” in an attempt to collude with the Hollywood powers that be; that same Shapiro who publicly and privately worked to de-platform Milo Yiannopoulos after old controversial comments resurfaced; that same Shapiro who believes “ABC was right to dump Roseanne [Barr]” from the hit show, Roseanne, after comments that were labeled racial. (They totally weren’t racist, by the way.)

Memed, by corporate media, as the intellectual of the conservative millennial generation, this controversy exposed a glaring lack of consistency that even his allies aren’t willing to defend. In more than a decade of politics, I can’t recall two situations with so few variables. This is where Shapiro’s “facts don’t care about your feelings” axiom appears to be more of a disarming debate tactic than a tenet he holds true in his own life. Both Barr and Gunn made comments using the Twitter platform. Disney is the parent corporation for both productions in question. Shapiro claimed he used a free market standard to reason away Barr’s firing and now we know that not to be the case.

* New York Times: “The 487 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List”

* Indiewire: ‘Succession’ Is an Unblinking Critique of White One Percenters’ Control Over Wealth — And Funny Because It’s True: Jesse Armstrong and Adam McKay spoke to IndieWire about calling out America’s disproportionate distribution of wealth through scathing honesty.

* Succession: Episode 9 recap.

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‘How To Win A Race War’

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Luke Ford

Playwright Ian Allen writes in the New York Times:

Among the many titles in the white supremacist canon, “The Turner Diaries” is the most important and one of the few titles recognized by mainstream Americans. Written by William Pierce, then-head of the neo-Nazi group the National Alliance, and published in 1978 under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, it is a fictitious diary written by its hero, Earl Turner. A young white man, Turner joins a terrorist group called “the Order,” which commits a series of attacks designed to incite a wider race war. One thing leads to another and a nuclear-armed battle is waged between Turner’s forces and the government, which in Mr. Pierce’s telling is run by Jews and blacks. The plot climaxes with the establishment of a white ethno-state, and Turner is martyred. The novel ends with a memorial: “He gained immortality for himself on that dark November day,” it reads,

and in so doing he helped greatly to assure that his race would survive and prosper, that the Organization would achieve its worldwide political and military goals, and that the Order would spread its wise and benevolent rule over the earth for all time to come.

“The Turner Diaries” was an innovation of sorts, a hybrid of fantasy and how-to, and it has inspired hundreds of terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people and injured 684 others. The attack was a copycat of the one Mr. Pierce outlined in the book, right down to the time of day and type of explosives used. Pages of the book were found in a plastic bag in the car of the plot’s leader, Timothy McVeigh. The mainstream attention caused a kind of miniboom in the genre that lasted into the early 2000s, as other would-be authors, Mr. Kendall and Ms. Williams among them, tried their hand at writing fiction.
Sitting beside “The Turner Diaries” at the top of the white supremacist best-seller list is Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel, “The Camp of the Saints.” It is a brooding parable that warns of the dangers of immigration and is something of a standout for being relatively well written, even in translation from the original French. Mr. Raspail’s caustic, often-humorous, ellipses-littered prose is reminiscent of that of his fellow countryman Louis-Ferdinand Céline, whose own history as a Nazi sympathizer cast a shadow over his otherwise brilliant work.

The book’s central “problem” begins in Belgium, where priests are encouraging the adoption of Indian children as a form of charity. In an early scene, a roiling sea of desperate Indian mothers — “wretched creatures” — storms the gates of the Belgian embassy in Kolkata, each with a child in her outstretched arms. The country is soon swamped with these adoptions, and authorities announce an end to the policy.

But it’s too late; the mob gains strength as the Indians are joined by Arabs and other nonwhites. They eventually grow to one million strong, board a flotilla and set sail for France. The country’s liberal government hesitates to defend against the onslaught, and as it stammers and acquiesces, the immigrants begin to enter the country. France’s whites retreat northward, but are eventually absorbed by the demographic shift, and the trend spreads throughout Europe, as indigenous populations and other “hoards” are inspired to rise up. They eventually take over the world, erasing the white race from existence.

White supremacists seem convinced that the novels’ “white genocide” is coming to life, and are petitioning Mr. Trump for help. This past spring, Andrew Anglin, the deeply sinister and darkly clever force behind Daily Stormer, the most Millennial-y neo-Nazi site on the web, started to spread the news of a “migrant caravan” that was moving through Central America, toward the United States-Mexico border. It was a protest march, organized by the Central American pro-immigration activist group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. The march has taken place every year since 2010 without ever getting much traction in the press.

But Mr. Anglin saw an opportunity in the implication of a literal enactment of “The Camp of the Saints.” He rallied his troll army to petition Mr. Trump to use the word “caravans” publicly, and on April 1, he did. In fact, he and Vice President Mike Pence used the word multiple times, then issued an order to send the National Guard to the border. The story dominated the news cycle for days, and Mr. Anglin took a well-deserved victory lap, bragging that “the media was not talking about this, only the alt-right was, and Trump is posting about it — so he does hear us.”

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Eikev (Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25)

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Luke Ford

Listen here.

Wikipedia: “The parashah tells of the blessings of obedience to God and the dangers of forgetting God, directions for taking the Land of Israel. Moses recalls the making and re-making of the Tablets of Stone, the incident of the Golden Calf, Aaron’s death, the Levites’ duties, and exhortations to serve God.”

* Deut. 7:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2 and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.[a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3 Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4 for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5 This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles[b] and burn their idols in the fire.

What is the reward for following these directions?

12 If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. 13 He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and olive oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. 14 You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor will any of your livestock be without young. 15 The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. 16 You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you.

17 You may say to yourselves, “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” 18 But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. 19 You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the Lord your God brought you out. The Lord your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear. 20 Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. 21 Do not be terrified by them, for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a great and awesome God. 22 The Lord your God will drive out those nations before you, little by little. You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you. 23 But the Lord your God will deliver them over to you, throwing them into great confusion until they are destroyed. 24 He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them. 25 The images of their gods you are to burn in the fire. Do not covet the silver and gold on them, and do not take it for yourselves, or you will be ensnared by it, for it is detestable to the Lord your God. 26 Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction. Regard it as vile and utterly detest it, for it is set apart for destruction.

* Is Moshe trying to sound like a hard man because he was so weak in Numbers when the Israelite men went whoring with Moabite women and worshiped Moabite gods and Pinchas had to settle things down with vigilante violence? When Moshe says something, is that the same as God saying something?

* Moshe is mad at the Jews and but does not bother to take his own moral inventory. He does not engage in introspection. He just yells at the Jews. Deut. 9:24: “You have been rebels against HaShem from the day that I knew you.”

* New York Times:

New Hampshire, 94 Percent White, Asks: How Do You Diversify a Whole State?

New Hampshire, like its neighbors Vermont and Maine, is nearly all white. This has posed an array of problems for new arrivals, who often find themselves isolated and alone, without the comfort and support of a built-in community.

It has also posed problems for employers in these states, who find that their homogeneity can be a barrier to recruiting and retaining workers of different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds.

The issue prompted about 100 business leaders, government officials and members of nonprofit organizations to meet Thursday to search for ways that New Hampshire — which is 94 percent white — might lure other racial and ethnic groups, as well as younger people.

Will Arvelo, New Hampshire’s director of economic development, said the gathering appeared to be the first broad-based effort in New England, if not the country, to focus on how to diversify an entire state.

With nonwhites poised to make up a majority of the American population in the next three decades, he said, diversity has become a bottom-line imperative for companies competing for talent, especially for workers who can speak other languages. As it stands, New Hampshire is 3 percent Latino, 2 percent African-American and 3 percent Asian, according to the census, with some people identifying as more than one race. The nation as a whole is 17 percent Latino, 14 percent African-American and 6 percent Asian.

There’s not the slightest whisper of a suggestion in this article that diversity might not be a wonderful thing.

* Andrew Doyle:

THE DEATH OF GODFREY ELFWICK

This spoof SJW tweeter was a work of satirical brilliance

In November 2016, the Guardian published a comment piece in which the anonymous writer described how he was radicalised into the ‘alt-right’. It started when he watched a few ostensibly harmless videos by the American liberal Sam Harris. From there, he graduated to material of an anti-SJW (Social Justice Warrior) and anti-feminist disposition, before eventually becoming a fan of the dreaded Milo Yiannopoulos. As the writer dramatically put it: ‘The indoctrination was complete.’

Soon after, a well-known Twitter troll called Godfrey Elfwick claimed to be the author. It made complete sense, even though it wasn’t true. Elfwick was a brilliant caricature of the excesses of the liberal-left. He, or rather xe, identified as a ‘genderqueer Muslim atheist’ who was ‘born white in the #WrongSkin’. His ‘transblack’ status began as a satire of Rachel Dolezal, the US civil-rights activist who was born to white parents but identifies as black. ‘I have light skin’, he tweeted, ‘yet I know in my heart I am black and act accordingly’. Elfwick’s #WrongSkin hashtag soon began to trend worldwide on Twitter, fooling many in the process. Even the Mirror and the BBC published articles which did not rule out the possibility that the campaign might be authentic.

Similarly, Elfwick’s claim to have penned the Guardian comment piece was effective precisely because it was so feasible. The satire was double-edged. On the one hand, Elfwick had accentuated the inherent absurdities of the article in question, exposing the self-parodic nature of the Guardian. On the other, he had successfully duped public figures such as Sam Harris, Maajid Nawaz, and leading Gamergater Ethan Ralph, all of whom had been so quick to take his tweets at face value. The hoax claim was in itself a hoax.

Elfwick’s brand of satire depended on this kind of ambiguity. Those who took his posts seriously were inadvertently enhancing the impact of the joke, especially when they expressed such boiling outrage. It is no coincidence that objections to Elfwick tend to come from po-faced peddlers of identity politics who are unhappy about being ridiculed. The same goes for the ideologues of Twitter, who have an established record of deleting accounts for political reasons and have now permanently banned Elfwick from their platform.

The circumstances are complicated. Lisa Graves, the satirist behind the most recent incarnation of Elfwick, was reported to Twitter for using an expletive during an exchange on her personal account with another user. The complainant additionally made the demonstrably false claim that Elfwick was an ‘alt-right account’ engaged in ‘targeted harassment’. Before long, all of Graves’ accounts had been subject to a blanket ban. Given Twitter’s curiously draconian response to such groundless accusations, it is hardly surprising that many are assuming that the punishment is politically motivated.

* New York Times: This Italian Town Once Welcomed Migrants. Now, It’s a Symbol for Right-Wing Politics
Macerata once had a reputation for tolerance. But the killing of a woman and a revenge shooting made the Italian town a symbol of rising right-wing politics.

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Les Moonves and CBS Face Allegations of Sexual Misconduct: Six women accuse the C.E.O. of harassment and intimidation, and dozens more describe abuse at his company

Posted on July 27, 2018 by Luke Ford

Ronan Harrow writes for the New Yorker:

For more than twenty years, Leslie Moonves has been one of the most powerful media executives in America. As the chairman and C.E.O. of CBS Corporation, he oversees shows ranging from “60 Minutes” to “The Big Bang Theory.” His portfolio includes the premium cable channel Showtime, the publishing house Simon & Schuster, and a streaming service, CBS All Access. Moonves, who is sixty-eight, has a reputation for canny hiring and project selection. The Wall Street Journal recently called him a “TV programming wizard”; the Hollywood Reporter dubbed him a “Wall Street Hero.” In the tumultuous field of network television, he has enjoyed rare longevity as a leader. Last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he earned nearly seventy million dollars, making him one of the highest-paid corporate executives in the world.

In recent months, Moonves has become a prominent voice in Hollywood’s #MeToo movement. In December, he helped found the Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, which is chaired by Anita Hill. “It’s a watershed moment,” Moonves said at a conference in November. “I think it’s important that a company’s culture will not allow for this. And that’s the thing that’s far-reaching. There’s a lot we’re learning. There’s a lot we didn’t know.”

But Moonves’s private actions belie his public statements. Six women who had professional dealings with him told me that, between the nineteen-eighties and the late aughts, Moonves sexually harassed them. Four described forcible touching or kissing during business meetings, in what they said appeared to be a practiced routine. Two told me that Moonves physically intimidated them or threatened to derail their careers. All said that he became cold or hostile after they rejected his advances, and that they believed their careers suffered as a result. “What happened to me was a sexual assault, and then I was fired for not participating,” the actress and writer Illeana Douglas told me. All the women said they still feared that speaking out would lead to retaliation from Moonves, who is known in the industry for his ability to make or break careers. “He has gotten away with it for decades,” the writer Janet Jones, who alleges that she had to shove Moonves off her after he forcibly kissed her at a work meeting, told me. “And it’s just not O.K.”

Thirty current and former employees of CBS told me that such behavior extended from Moonves to important parts of the corporation, including CBS News and “60 Minutes,” one of the network’s most esteemed programs. During Moonves’s tenure, men at CBS News who were accused of sexual misconduct were promoted, even as the company paid settlements to women with complaints. It isn’t clear whether Moonves himself knew of the allegations, but he has a reputation for being closely involved in management decisions across the network. Some of the allegations, such as those against the former anchor Charlie Rose, as reported by the Washington Post, have already become public. Other claims are being reported here for the first time. Nineteen current and former employees told me that Jeff Fager, the former chairman of CBS News and the current executive producer of “60 Minutes,” allowed harassment in the division. “It’s top down, this culture of older men who have all this power and you are nothing,” one veteran producer told me. “The company is shielding lots of bad behavior.”

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