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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: The entry point to our exploration of Julius Evola is top Trump adviser and first tier NSC member Steve Bannon. Evola is a key influence on Bannon. Evola was an early occult fascist, with strong connections with Mussolini’s Italy. Eventually Evola established strong, lasting connections with the Nazi SS, both operationally and ideologically.
Evola has also influenced Alexander Dugin, a prominent Russian ideologue and politician.
The broadcast recaps FTR #233, which details Evola’s work for the SS and Kevin Coogan’s theory that Evola was involved with an SS occult network incorporating important people and institutions in both the West and behind the so-called “Iron Curtain.” Later in the program, we further develop the story of Alexander Dugin, a Russian “Alt-right” thinker and politician prominent in the Russian government. As mentioned above, Durgin, like Bannon, has been influenced by Evola.
We wonder if, in the persons of Bannon and Durgin, we are seeing “Western” and “Eastern” manifestations of what Kevin conceptualizes as “The Order.”
Drawing on material from Kevin’s seminal work Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and The Postwar Fascist International (soft cover, Autonomedia, copyright 1999, ISBN I‑57027–039‑2), the program sets forth a hypothetical construct advanced in the book. Hypothesizing an international fascist milieu originating from (though not coterminous with) the ideological orientation of the Waffen SS, Kevin terms this milieu “The Order.” (This entity is not to be confused with the 1980’s American Nazi organization of the same name.)
Beginning with analysis of Kevin’s discussion of the work of fascist occultist Julius Evola in Vienna during the conclusion of World War II, the program documents Evola’s operations on behalf of the SD (the SS intelligence service.)
Like SS chief Himmler, Evola saw the SS as the successors to the Kshatriya class (the Hindu warrior caste.) Seeing Germany and Europe as succumbing to “barbarian invasion,” Evola saw a pagan, anti-Christian mysticism as necessarily antithetical to the Judeo-Christian culture which, he felt, had led the West to decline before the “Bolshevik hordes” of the Soviet Union and the “chewing gum imperialism” of the United States.
Kevin felt that this organization (reflecting the ideological stance of an element of the Waffen SS) would be pan-European in scope and orientation, and not necessarily entirely chauvinistic from a Nordic or Germanic racial and national standpoint. Nourished by bank accounts secreted abroad, this hypothetical organization functions in an underground fashion. (The funds that nourished this institution would necessarily have derived from the Bormann Organization.) The Order appears to have established ostensibly friendly relations with the West.
This organization may very well have begun working with the U.S. intelligence apparat after the war, as evidenced by, among other things, the collaboration between post-war SS elements and the CIA. Coogan hypothesizes that CIA director Allen Dulles may have played a primary role in such an accord.
Another influence on a Dulles/Order collaborative relationship may have been psychologist Carl Jung, who was connected to Dulles and to the Third Reich.
Significantly, the Order appears to have overlapped, and also worked with, elements of the East Bloc, including former Soviet and East German national security officials. The organization also maintained contacts with “anti-imperialist,” Third World liberation movements.
Steve Bannon’s discussion of Alexander Dugin gains significance in this context.
The Order appears to have exploited its contacts within both East and West blocs to further its own fascistic and elitist agenda, playing both sides against the middle during the Cold War.
The Dugin/Evola affiliation and the Bannon/Evola affiliation may be significant in that context.
Program Highlights Include:
- Sebastian Gorka’s manifestation of the heraldry of the order of Vitezi Rend, closely associated with Nazi Germany’s Hungarian allies.
- Adbusters magazine’s publicizing of Alexander Dugin. We review the fact that Adbusters appears to have played a key role in jumpstarting the “Occupy” movement.
1a. The entry point to our exploration of Julius Evola is top Trump adviser and first tier NSC member Steve Bannon. Evola is a key influence on Bannon. Evola was an early occult fascist, with strong connections with Mussolini’s Italy. Eventually Evola established strong, lasting connections with the Nazi SS, both operationally and ideologically.
Evola has also influenced Alexander Dugin, a prominent Russian ideologue and politician.
Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.
But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola.
“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.
Evola became a darling of Italian Fascists, and Italy’s post-Fascist terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s looked to him as a spiritual and intellectual godfather.
They called themselves Children of the Sun after Evola’s vision of a bourgeoisie-smashing new order that he called the Solar Civilization. Today, the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.
More important for the current American administration, Evola also caught on in the United States with leaders of the alt-right movement, which Mr. Bannon nurtured as the head of Breitbart News and then helped harness for Mr. Trump.
“Julius Evola is one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century,” said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who is a top figure in the alt-right movement, which has attracted white supremacists, racists and anti-immigrant elements.
In the days after the election, Mr. Spencer led a Washington alt-right conference in chants of “Hail Trump!” But he also invoked Evola’s idea of a prehistoric and pre-Christian spirituality — referring to the awakening of whites, whom he called the Children of the Sun.
Mr. Spencer said “it means a tremendous amount” that Mr. Bannon was aware of Evola and other Traditionalist thinkers.
“Even if he hasn’t fully imbibed them and been changed by them, he is at least open to them,” he said. “He at least recognizes that they are there. That is a stark difference to the American conservative movement that either was ignorant of them or attempted to suppress them.”
Mr. Bannon, who did not return a request for comment for this article, is an avid and wide-ranging reader. He has spoken enthusiastically about everything from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” to “The Fourth Turning” by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which sees history in cycles of cataclysmic and order-obliterating change. His awareness of and reference to Evola in itself only reflects that reading. But some on the alt-right consider Mr. Bannon a door through which Evola’s ideas of a hierarchical society run by a spiritually superior caste can enter in a period of crisis.
“Evolists view his ship as coming in,” said Prof. Richard Drake at the University of Montana, who wrote about Evola in his book “The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy.”
For some of them, it has been a long time coming.
“It’s the first time that an adviser to the American president knows Evola, or maybe has a Traditionalist formation,” said Gianfranco De Turris, an Evola biographer and apologist based in Rome who runs the Evola Foundation out of his apartment.
“If Bannon has these ideas, we have to see how he influences the politics of Trump,” he said.
A March article titled “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right” in Breitbart, the website then run by Mr. Bannon, included Evola as one of the thinkers in whose writings the “origins of the alternative right” could be found.
The article was co-written by Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur who is wildly popular with conservatives on college campuses. Mr. Trump recently defended Mr. Yiannopoulos as a symbol of free speech after demonstrators violently protested his planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley.
The article celebrated the youthful internet trolls who give the alt-right movement its energy and who, motivated by a common and questionable sense of humor, use anti-Semitic and racially charged memes “in typically juvenile but undeniably hysterical fashion.”
“It’s hard to imagine them reading Evola,” the article continued. “They may be inclined to sympathize to those causes, but mainly because it annoys the right people.”
Evola, who has more than annoyed people for nearly a century, seems to be having a moment.
“When I started working on Evola, you had to plow through Italian,” said Mr. Sedgwick, who keeps track of Traditionalist movements and thought on his blog, Traditionalists. “Now he’s available in English, German, Russian, Serbian, Greek, Hungarian. First I saw Evola boom, and then I realized the number of people interested in that sort of idea was booming.”
Born in 1898, Evola liked to call himself a baron and in later life sported a monocle in his left eye.
A brilliant student and talented artist, he came home after fighting in World War I and became a leading exponent in Italy of the Dada movement, which, like Evola, rejected the church and bourgeois institutions.
Evola’s early artistic endeavors gave way to his love of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and he developed a worldview with an overriding animosity toward the decadence of modernity. Influenced by mystical works and the occult, Evola began developing an idea of the individual’s ability to transcend his reality and “be unconditionally whatever one wants.”
Under the influence of René Guénon, a French metaphysicist and convert to Islam, Evola in 1934 published his most influential work, “The Revolt Against the Modern World,” which cast materialism as an eroding influence on ancient values.
It viewed humanism, the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution all as historical disasters that took man further away from a transcendental perennial truth.
Changing the system, Evola argued, was “not a question of contesting and polemicizing, but of blowing everything up.”
Evola’s ideal order, Professor Drake wrote, was based on “hierarchy, caste, monarchy, race, myth, religion and ritual.”
That made a fan out of Benito Mussolini.
The dictator already admired Evola’s early writings on race, which influenced the 1938 Racial Laws restricting the rights of Jews in Italy.
Mussolini so liked Evola’s 1941 book, “Synthesis on the Doctrine of Race,” which advocated a form of spiritual, and not merely biological, racism, that he invited Evola to meet him in September of that year.
Evola eventually broke with Mussolini and the Italian Fascists because he considered them overly tame and corrupted by compromise. Instead he preferred the Nazi SS officers, seeing in them something closer to a mythic ideal. They also shared his anti-Semitism.
Mr. Bannon suggested in his Vatican remarks that the Fascist movement had come out of Evola’s ideas.
As Mr. Bannon expounded on the intellectual motivations of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, he mentioned “Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the Traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian Fascism.”
The reality, historians say, is that Evola sought to “infiltrate and influence” the Fascists, as Mr. Sedgwick put it, as a powerful vehicle to spread his ideas.
In his Vatican talk, Mr. Bannon suggested that although Mr. Putin represented a “kleptocracy,” the Russian president understood the existential danger posed by “a potential new caliphate” and the importance of using nationalism to stand up for traditional institutions.
“We, the Judeo-Christian West,” Mr. Bannon added, “really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as Traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.”
As Mr. Bannon suggested in his speech, Mr. Putin’s most influential thinker is Aleksandr Dugin, the ultranationalist Russian Traditionalist and anti-liberal writer sometimes called “Putin’s Rasputin.”
An intellectual descendant of Evola, Mr. Dugin has called for a “genuine, true, radically revolutionary, and consistent fascist fascism” and advocated a geography-based theory of “Eurasianism” — which has provided a philosophical framework for Mr. Putin’s expansionism and meddling in Western European politics.
Mr. Dugin sees European Traditionalists as needing Russia, and Mr. Putin, to defend them from the onslaught of Western liberal democracy, individual liberty, and materialism — all Evolian bêtes noires.
This appeal of traditional values on populist voters and against out-of-touch elites, the “Pan-European Union” and “centralized government in the United States,” as Mr. Bannon put it, was not lost on Mr. Trump’s ideological guru.
“A lot of people that are Traditionalists,” he said in his Vatican remarks, “are attracted to that.”
1b. An article published more than a week after the New York Times story above highlighted Evola, stressing his occult, anti-Judeo Christian orientation.
. . . . “Fascist-era anti-Semitic ideologues fall under two categories—biology-based racists and nationalism-based ones—but Evola was something different,” explained Valentina Pisanty, a semiologist at the University of Bergamo. “As an occultist, he was convinced that the world contained some mysterious truths that only the initiated could see, and one of those hidden truths was a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world.”
Evola believed in the power of magic and tried to use it to restore Roman pagan religion.
Further distinguishing Evola from other racist writers was the fact that he openly attacked the Christian religion, which he described as a “Semitic superstition” and as “one of the main sources of the decadence of the West” in his seminal 1928 essay “Imperialismo Pagano.” He opposed Christianity both because it was not native to Europe (“an Asiatic movement born to a Jew”) and because of its very message, which he deemed “incompatible” with fascism’s aggressiveness. “Which kind of State, not to mention Empire, can we build based on a Gospel preaching obedience … the pre-eminence of the humble, the abject, and the miserable?” he asked.
Evola’s fascination with esotericism wasn’t only abstract; he believed in the power of magic and tried to use it to restore Roman pagan religion. “He joined an esoteric group called the Ur Group and performed rituals with the specific aim of drawing [the dictator Benito] Mussolini away from Christianity and toward paganism,” said Simone Caltabellota, an editor and writer who researched the group’s archives for his historical novel Amore degli Anni Venti, set in Evola’s inner circle. . . .
2. The broadcast then recaps FTR #233, which details Evola’s work for the SS and Kevin Coogan’s theory that Evola was involved with an SS occult network incorporating important people and institutions in both the West and behind the so-called “Iron Curtain.” Later in the program, we further develop the story of Alexander Dugin, a Russian “Alt-right” thinker and politician prominent in the Russian government. As mentioned above, Durgin, like Bannon, has been influenced by Evola.
We wonder if, in the persons of Bannon and Durgin, we are seeing “Western” and “Eastern” manifestations of what Kevin conceptualizes as “The Order.”
Drawing on material from Kevin’s seminal work Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and The Postwar Fascist International (soft cover, Autonomedia, copyright 1999, ISBN I‑57027–039‑2), this program sets forth a hypothetical construct advanced in the book. Hypothesizing an international fascist milieu originating from (though not coterminous with) the ideological orientation of the Waffen SS, Kevin terms this milieu “The Order.” (This entity is not to be confused with the 1980’s American Nazi organization of the same name.)
3. Beginning with analysis of Kevin’s discussion of the work of fascist occultist Julius Evola in Vienna during the conclusion of World War II, the program documents Evola’s operations on behalf of the SD (the SS intelligence service.)
. . . . . Evola’s SD work at the end of the war is shrouded in mystery. Historian Richard Drake says that while he was in Vienna, ‘Evola performed vital liaisons for the SS as Nazi Germany sought to recruit a European army for the defense of the Continent against the Soviet Union and the United States.’ According to his own account, Evola spent his time living incognito while doing ‘intellectual’ research. But what kind of research? . . .
. . . . While Evola was in Vienna, the SD supplied him with a series of arcane texts plundered from private libraries and rare book collections. The SD bureau that provided him with these documents was Amt VII, an obscure branch that served as an RSHA research library. With this precious archive, Evola closely studied Masonic rituals and translated certain ‘esoteric texts’ for a book called Historie Secrete des Societes Secretes. It never appeared because Evola claimed that all his documents were lost during the Russian bombardment. . . .
. . . . But why would the SD actively involve itself in Evola’s arcane research at a time when hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers were sweeping into the Reich? And why would Evola choose to live in Vienna under a false name and devote his time to such a strange project? Could the answer to this question be found in the cryptic reference to Evola’s ‘efforts to establish a secret international order’ in the 1938 SS report?
I believe that Evola’s Vienna project was intimately linked to the development of what I will call ‘the Order,’ a new kind of Knights Templar designed to successfully function sub-rosa. Well before the end of World War II, the intelligence and financial networks of the Third Reich were hard at work preparing underground networks to survive the coming Allied occupation. Escape lines to South America and the Middle East were organized. Bank accounts were created in Switzerland and other neutral nations to finance the underground with plunder the Nazis had looted from occupied Europe. But how was this secret empire to be managed, except by a virtually invisible ‘government in exile’?
4. Like SS chief Himmler, Evola saw the SS as the successors to the Kshatriya class (the Hindu warrior caste.) Seeing Germany and Europe as succumbing to “barbarian invasion,” Evola saw a pagan, anti-Christian mysticism as necessarily antithetical to the Judeo-Christian culture which, he felt, had led the West to decline before the “Bolshevik hordes” of the Soviet Union and the “chewing gum imperialism” of the United States.
Kevin felt that this organization (reflecting the ideological stance of an element of the Waffen SS) would be pan-European in scope and orientation, and not necessarily entirely chauvinistic from a Nordic or Germanic racial and national standpoint. Nourished by bank accounts secreted abroad, this hypothetical organization functions in an underground fashion. (The funds that nourished this institution would necessarily have derived from the Bormann Organization.) The Order appears to have established ostensibly friendly relations with the West.
. . . . For years, Evola had been fascinated by knightly orders as expressions of the Kshatriya caste of warrior aristocrats. In the formal structure of the SS, he saw the precursor to a new Ordenstaat, a State ruled by an Order. He also understood the great advantages provided by medieval orders of chivalry due to their transnational composition. Crusading orders, like the Knights Templar and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, were pan-European, with separate ‘national’ sections (‘langues,’ or tongues) unified through a Council presided over by a Grand Master. After the collapse of fascist state power, a new Order, an ‘invisible college’ of sorts, was needed not only to manipulate bank accounts and travel schedules but to have policy-making functions. Nor could it simply be run under the auspices of the Vatican, since Evola believed that Rome’s downfall had been caused by the acceptance of Christianity by the dominant faction of the Roman elite. The Emperor Constantine’s official embrace of the ‘gentle Nazarene’ in 313 A.D. had culminated, a hundred years later, in Alaric’s sack of Rome. With the American chewing-gum imperialists threatening in the West, and the new Huns sweeping in from the East, was the situation in1945 really so different? The Order was a vessel for those ‘Hermetic’ elements of the conservative Revolution, old ruling class, and new Nazi elite not entirely beholden to the political, cultural, and religious ‘Guelf’ wing of the European aristocracy which remained ideologically committed to the continued propagation of the ruling Christian mythology.
This account of the origins of the Order is obviously speculative, and I advance it as hypothesis, not fact. Yet if I am correct the SD really did have a need for Evola’s unique talents. With his extensive knowledge of matters esoteric and occult; his fascination with secret societies and knightly Orders; his Waffen SS transnationalism; his ties to some of the highest figures in fascism, Nazism, and movements like the Iron guard; and his loyal service to the SD, Baron Evola was a perfect candidate to help theorize a new underground Order. As the SD’s equivalent of Albert Pike, the former Confederate Army general who designed the rituals for the Scottish Rite Masons in the late 1800’s, Evola’s task was to help create the inner organizational and ritual structure for the Grand Masters of a secret Shamballah whose financial nerve center was carefully hidden away in Swiss bank accounts.
With the war rapidly coming to an end, however, the Order lacked the time to implement its plans. With support from the top RSHA leadership, a deception game was begun with both Allied intelligence and the Catholic Church. Utilizing Wall Street and Vatican fears of communism, some of Himmler’s top cronies, like SS General Karl Wolff, became Damascus-road converts to a ‘kinder, gentler’ SS eager to establish friendly relations with both the Americans and the Holy See.
5. This organization may very well have begun working with the U.S. intelligence apparat after the war, as evidenced by, among other things, the collaboration between post-war SS elements and the CIA. Coogan hypothesizes that CIA director Allen Dulles may have played a primary role in such an accord.
Another influence on a Dulles/Order collaborative relationship may have been psychologist Carl Jung, who was connected to Dulles and to the Third Reich.
. . . . Behind the strategy of tension there lurked what appears to have been a devil’s pact between the Order and Allen Dulles. Until Dulles was named CIA director by President Eisenhower (and his brother, John Foster Dulles, became director by President Eisenhower (and his brother, John Foster Dulles, became secretary of state), operational links to the Nazi underground came primarily from the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), headed by Dulles protégé Frank Wisner, the former chief of OSS operations in Bucharest, Romania. After the war, Dulles, Wisner, Angleton, and OPC’s Carmel Offie virtually ran covert operations in Italy as their own private affair. . . .
. . . . The OPC’s budget was $4.7 million in 1949. Three years later, when Dulles was still only CIA deputy director, it had reached $82 million. OPC personnel had humped from 302 to 6,954. OPC was officially incorporated into the CIA in 1952 as the Agency’s directorate of Plans. In1956, after President Eisenhower established the Killian Commission to investigate the Agency, it was discovered that more than half of the CIA’s personnel and 80 percent of its budget had been devoted not to intelligence-gathering but to psychological and political warfare programs. Throughout this entire time, the Dulles network was intimately involved in complex deals with factions inside the postwar SS. . . .
. . . Did Dulles offer to protect elements of the SS in return for its support for CIA-backed anti-Soviet operations in Europe and the Third World? Did he think that granting the Order a certain amount of autonomy was a small price to pay for bringing it into the American camp? Might he even have been personally compromised in some way, or manipulated by the Dulles family psychiatrist, Carl Jung? Men Among the Ruins, then, may have been less a concession by Evola to American power than a signal that some sort of understanding reached by Dulles and Wolff at the end of the war was now fully operational. . . .
6. More about Jung, Dulles and Mary Bancroft, an OSS operative and Dulles’s mistress.
. . . . Jung also treated Dulles’s wife, clover, for years. One of Jung’s assistants, Mary Bancroft, was an OSS operative in Switzerland as well as Allen Dulles’s mistress. Like Evola, Jung was an expert in myth, symbol, and psyche with a complex and ambiguous relationship to the Third Reich. . . .
7. Significantly, the Order appears to have overlapped, and also worked with, elements of the East Bloc, including former Soviet and East German national security officials. The organization also maintained contacts with “anti-imperialist,” Third World liberation movements.
Steve Bannon’s discussion of Alexander Dugin gains significance in this context.
. . . . [Jan] Paulus then reported that the British had uncovered the fact that two Russian generals, Bulganin and Kubalov, were working closely with the Nazis; they also found that the Russians had set up a counterpart to General Matthew Ridgeway’s SHAPE, headed by a Generl Shugaev, in East Germany. The British had ‘conclusive evidence.’ That the [Werner] Naumann circle maintained close ties to General Vincenz Muller, the brains behind the East German police. Paulus thought that Churchill wanted to use this information both to warn Washington that Germany was unreliable and to gain leverage over Adenauer, even to the point of being able to topple his government if necessary.
He said that ‘Britain has an extremely extensive dossier about the Nazi activities which she will reveal later in case Eisenhower decides to push his broad German policy too far. For instance, the British have conclusive evidence that the Nazi activities have been financed by the Ruhr industrialists . . . Additional evidence that the Ruhr industrialists have been collaborating very extensively with the Nazis is the fact that when [former Nazi finance minister] Dr. Schacht opened his bank in Dusseldorf, the minister of interior and the minister of economics were present.’ . . .
. . . The British particularly feared the Naumann circle’s astonishing influence in the Middle East. According to a March 1953 report by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League (NSANL), Dr. Gustav Scheel, a Bruderschaft leader arrested with Naumann, maintained excellent ties to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. German corporations wishing to do business in the Middle East and Africa first had to approach Naumann, Scheel, Skorzeny, and the Grand Mufti. Scheel was especially close to Iran’s nationalist leader, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, and supported Iranian efforts to nationalize Western oil companies. . . .
8. In addition, the Order appears to have exploited its contacts within both East and West blocs to further its own fascistic and elitist agenda, playing both sides against the middle during the Cold War.
. . . . Any purely secular interpretation of the divisions in the far right between the ‘pro-Russian’ and the ‘pro-American’ factions of the Black International that avoids the ‘occult’ would conclude that political differences divided the two tendencies. An Order, however, is not structured along conventional political lines. Such an organization can dictate sharp turns and reversals in seemingly fixed political logics because the ‘political,’ crudely understood, is not the motivating force. . . .
. . . . Whether Yockey or anyone else tilted East or West, and at what time, and to what degree, and for how long, and under what conditions, was essentially a tactical question. The Order, like any intelligence agency, was a kind of octopus with many tentacles, not jus a ‘left’ and ‘right’ one. While I believe that there were legitimate policy arguments inside the postwar underground, as might be expected, I am not at all sure that it is meaningful to conceptualize a split inside the Order along rigid ‘East’/ ‘West’ lines. An organization like the Order was necessary precisely to prevent the total domination of postwar Europe by either the Americans or the Russians. By playing off the U.S. and USSR against one another, the Order equally ensured its own ability to survive and prosper. In music, the basic theme can sometimes be quite simple. The real test is how well you play the complex variations. . . .
9. It should also be remembered that Francis Parker Yockey, Julius Evola and “the Order” considered the United States to be the greater threat.
. . . There was, in fact, little ideological difference between Evola and Yockey. Like Yockey, Evola believed that the American cultural threat to Europe was far greater than anything the Russians could come up with. . . .
10. Another Breitbart alumnus appears to manifest fascist influence and heritage. Sebastian Gorka wears a medal strongly associated with the Horthy/Arrow Cross allies of Nazi Germany.
In a comment on this program, Pterrafractyl contributed a comment that further develops Gorka’s fascist, excuse me “alt-right” views and background: https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-947-evola-on-our-minds/comment-page‑1/#comment-118077.
“Top Trump Aid Wears Medal of Hungarian Nazi Collaborators;” Times of Israel; 2/14/2017.
A top aide to US President Donald Trump who recently defended the administration’s omission of Jews from a Holocaust Remembrance Day statement has on several occasions worn insignia tied to Nazi collaborators in Hungary.
Sebastian Gorka, a former editor at Breitbart News and now a deputy assistant to the president, was photographed and interviewed at Trump’s inauguration wearing the uniform and medal of Vitézi Rend, a Hungarian order of merit closely associated with Nazi Germany.
The order was founded in 1920 by Miklós Horthy, who served as regent of Hungary until 1944, and comprised his supporters. Horthy was an ally of Adolf Hitler and collaborated with the Nazis throughout most of World War II. During the war, confiscated Jewish property was distributed to members of the order by the Hungarian government.
Gorka, who is of Hungarian descent, may have inherited the medal and uniform from his grandfather, according to foreign policy site Lobelog.
The US State Department lists Vitézi Rend as a Nazi-linked group, which could render members ineligible for visas. Gorka became a US citizen in 2012.
Lobelog also noted that Gorka signed his PhD dissertation in 2007 as “Sebestyén L. v. Gorka” — “L. v.” being initials representing members of Vitézi Rend.
Other than at the inauguration, Gorka has worn the medal and uniform in the past, as seen in an undated photo on his Facebook page. . . .
11. In a post written shortly after the beginning of the “Occupy” movement, we noted the genesis of the movement with Adbusters magazine. edited by Kalle Lasn. Ethnic Estonians, Lasn’s family fled to Nazi Germany at the end of the Second World War.
Adbusters has touted Islamic economics as a viable alternative for the world’s poor!
Now, Adbusters is showcasing Alexander Durgin.
“Putin’s Rasputin: Modernity Has Been a Disaster for the Western Mind;” Adbusters ; 2/14/2017.
Excerpted from The Fourth Political Theory by Russian political scientist Alexander Dugin.
Modernity and its ideological basis (individualism, liberal democracy, capitalism, consumerism, and so on) are the cause of the future catastrophe of humanity, and the global domination of the Western lifestyle is the reason for the final degradation of the Earth. The West is approaching its terminus, and we should not let it drag the rest of us down into the abyss with it.
Tradition (religion, hierarchy, and family) and its values were overthrown at the dawn of modernity. All three political theories were conceived as artificial ideological constructions by people who comprehended, in various ways, ‘the death of God’ (Nietzsche), the ‘disenchantment of the world’ (Weber), and the ‘end of the sacred.’ This was the core of the New Era of modernity: man came to replace God, philosophy and science replaced religion, and the rational, forceful, and technological constructs took the place of revelation.
When we use the term ‘modernization’, we mean progress, linear accumulation, and a certain continuous process. When we speak of ‘modernization’, we presuppose development, growth, and evolution. It is the same semantic system. Thus, when we speak of the ‘unconditionally positive achievements of modernization: we agree with a very important basic paradigm – we agree with the idea that ‘human society is developing, progressing, evolving, growing, and getting better and better: that is to say, we share a particular vision of historical optimism.
This historical optimism pertains to the three classical political ideologies (liberalism, Communism, and fascism). It is rooted in the scientific, societal, political, and social worldview in the humanities and natural sciences of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, when the ideas of progress, development, and growth were taken as axioms that could not be doubted. In other words, this entire set of axioms, as well as the whole historiography and predictive analytics of the Nineteenth century in the humanities and the natural sciences, were built upon the idea of progress.
Oh what a shocker: It turns out Sebastian Gorka has a long and extensive relationship with the Hungarian far-right, including founding a Hungarian political party with two prominent members of Jobbik:
“Gorka co-founded his political party with three other politicians. Two of his co-founders, Tamás Molnár and Attila Bégány, were former members of Jobbik. Molnár, a senior Jobbik politician, served as the party’s vice president until shortly before joining Gorka’s new initiative, and was also a member of the Hungarian National Committee during the 2006 protests, issuing statements together with extremist militant figures such as Toroczkai.”
And despite all that, his Gorka’s friends and associates want to assure us that he’s not ideologically part of Hungary’s far-right. Sort of:
Well there we go: other than perhaps shared perspectives on “minority issues and historical memory”, two of the far-right’s biggest pet peeves, one of Gorka’s long-time associates is pretty sure Gorka would have major differences with aspects of “what you call the far-right”. That’s reassuring.
Although it’s true that you can’t quite refer to Gorka as part of the Hungarian far-right these days. He’s clearly part of the international far-right at this point.
Isn’t that cute: Steve Bannon unveiled what appears to be the latest catch phrase to describe the long-standing far-right agenda to defang government, gut regulations, and hand even more power over to the oligarchs (under the banner of ‘populism’): deconstruction of the administrative state
“Bannon framed much of Trump’s agenda with the phrase, “deconstruction of the administrative state,” meaning the system of taxes, regulations and trade pacts that the president says have stymied economic growth and infringed upon U.S. sovereignty. Bannon says that the post-World War II political and economic consensus is failing and should be replaced with a system that empowers ordinary people over coastal elites and international institutions.”
As we can see, with the exception of the turn against trade pacts, the Trump/Bannon agenda is basically the ol’ Koch Classic/Grover Norquist agenda: slashing taxes on rich, regulations, and getting rid of almost every government program that helps the non-wealthy. All under the banner of populism.
And as a recent report about Steve Bannon’s message to EU reminds us, the “deconstruction” agenda isn’t limited to the “administrative state” governing the US. According to Bannon, deconstruction of the EU is on the agenda too:
“The sources described a longer meeting in which Bannon took the time to spell out his world view. They said his message was similar to the one he delivered to a Vatican conference back in 2014 when he was running the right-wing website Breitbart News.”
Yes, Steve Bannon apparently gave a rehashed version of his now-notorious 2014 Vatican speech EU officials. That, of course, is the speech where he talked about his admiration for fascist theoretician Julius Evola’s views on “traditionalism”. And how a Judeo-Christian West is an an existential war against both Islam and secularism. And how “enlightened-capitalism” and a confederation of traditionalist (Evola-style) nationalist movements is the only hope for the future.
And what was that “enlightened-capitalism”, according to Bannon’s 2014 Vatican speech? Well, according to Bannon it’s capitalism that rejects both “crony-capitalism” and Ayn Rand Objectivism libertarian capitalism that views everyone as commodities. If if a rejection of Objectivism and libertarianism sounds like a rejection of the Koch brothers’ agenda, keep in mind that railing against “crony capitalism” is exactly the same language the Koch brothers have been using in their attempts to rebrand their own agenda and world view.
So instead of Koch-style libertarianism, what Bannon wants to see is presumably capitalism that emerges from the Koch-style “deconstruction of the administrative state” of low-taxes, no regulation, and no safety-net run by capitalists who fancy themselves to be really big Christians. And the way Bannon sees this coming about is through a global collection of local ‘tea party’ movements that all simultaneously “deconstruct the administrative state” and create a united capitalist/traditionalist front that goes to war perpetual war with the Muslim world and secularism (Evola-style):
“Look, we believe — strongly — that there is a global tea party movement. We’ve seen that. We were the first group to get in and start reporting on things like UKIP and Front National and other center right. With all the baggage that those groups bring — and trust me, a lot of them bring a lot of baggage, both ethnically and racially — but we think that will all be worked through with time.”
That’s right: in Steve Bannon’s language, groups like the Tea Party, UKIP and Front National in France are center-right (LOL!) and all part of a global tea party movement. But aside from describing them as center-right movements it’s hard to argue with the observation that there really is a global movement of local far-right ‘populist’ tea party-like movements. All united by “traditionalist” agenda of social conservatism coupled with a desire to “deconstruct the administrative state”. A desire that, aside from dropping trade agreements, is in lock step with the right-wing global oligarchy’s long-standing agenda of getting government out of the role protecting average people from the predations of cut-throat capitalism.
And given the concerns expressed by EU government officials over the possibility of a “trans-Atlantic crisis” if the Trump administration starts trying to help the various far-right anti-EU movements, (like the AfD in Germany), note how Bannon refers to “a new tea party in Germany (which is almost certainly a reference to the AfD):
And that all suggests that “deconstructing the adminstrative state” is going to probably mean the US government is going to start helping the Front National and AfD and similar far-right EU parties. With Julius Evola’s concepts “traditionalism” acting as the unifying theme that brings unites a collection of newly divided societies under a pan-traditionalist Judeo-Christian new Western order:
Let’s also keep in mind that while the European far-right and Team Trump clamors about wanting to break up the EU, that same global confederation of far-right movements would probably prefer it if the opportunity came around where the EU remained intact but basically becomes overtly far-right. If the whole EU (or a dominant ruling faction of countries) all elected far-right ‘populist’ governments there’s nothing stopping them from making the common EU rules “loose” enough placate demands for national sovereignty like letting nations reimpose intra-EU border and immigration controls and a roll-back a human rights standards. If almost every EU government veers far-right we just might the realization of the EU Clausewitzian super-state. Isn’t that the far-right dream?
Just because Bannon and Trump want to see a Europe where any sort of shared pan-European identity is replaced by a patchwork of mutually hostile nationalism doesn’t mean you can’t have a pan-European identity of a network of far-right nationalist societies all bound by a common “traditionalist Christianity vs everyone else” identity. Instead of a “one Europe” identity, you’ll go back to a confederation of nations where each nation is dominated by its particular far-right “traditionalist” strain of conservatism but united by a loathing of everyone that isn’t in that traditionalist Christian umbrella. That a confederation that can still operate under a modified EU structure. A basket of deplorable governments united in a shared goal of fighting a war of civilizations between traditionalist far-right Christians and traditionalist far-right Muslims, while traditionalist Christians and traditionalist Muslims unite in crushing secular society everywhere. That’s a path forward that still fits Bannon’s rhetoric.
So get ready for a grimly fascinating trans-Atlantic crisis (that’s really a global crisis) as the “deconstruction of the administrative state” accelerates. We just might see the EU dissolve under a wave of fascism that reunites as a confederation of fascism. Or maybe the EU just gets reborn as the Clausewitzian dream. Either way, Julius Evola is going to be spinning in his grave. With glee. ISIS should also be pretty happy.
Here’s another example of the global nature of the “Alt-Right’s” attempts to rebrand far-right ideologies. Check out the image on the main banner used in a Lithuanian far-right march celebrating the WWII pro-Nazi collaborationist Kazys Skirpa: Pepe the frog. Or, more precisely, Kazy Skirpa as Pepe the frog:
“The banner also included a quote attributed to the Pepe-like portrait of Skirpa, an envoy of the pro-Nazi movement in Lithuania to Berlin, that read “Lithuania will contribute to new and better European order.””
As we can see, the “Alt-Right” Pepe-fication of Europe is well underway, and it’s going to include Europe’s many WWII historical revisionism movements: all of those Nazi collaborators were actually misunderstood freedom fighters. And here’s a fun “Alt-Right” meme about them. But don’t call them Nazis.
Remember how Donald Trump asserted that his “opponents” were behind the wave of anti-Semitic acts as part of false-flag plot to fuel outrage against him? Well, it sounds like he did it again. This time during a private meeting with state attorneys general:
“Trump “made this reference that sometimes it’s the reverse” and then “used that word ‘reverse’ several times,” Joe Grace, a spokesman for Shapiro, said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. Grace was relaying what Shapiro had said publicly during a phone call with reporters earlier Tuesday.”
It sure sounds like Trump really wanted to get across the message the attorneys general that these bomb threats were part of some sort of left-wing plot against him.
And keep in mind that the technology the perpetrators of these bomb threats are using appears to have given them the ability to act with impunity. At least so far. So it’s not impossible that a non-anti-Semite is behind this multi-month long wave of bomb threats that’s terrorizing the American Jewish community. Just as it’s not impossible that any unsolved crime has some sort of ‘reverse’ ulterior motive. But if this really is all part of some sort of ‘reverse’ plot of non-anti-Semites terrorizing the American Jewish community in order to make Trump look bad, it’s apparently being done by non-anti-Semites who don’t mind the fact that they’re terrorizing the American Jewish community. Or maybe Trump was suggesting it was Jewish community itself carrying out ‘reverse’ attacks? Who knows at this point. All we know for sure is that Trump really, really, really doesn’t like to seriously entertain the idea that legion of white supremacists enthusiastically backing his campaign might be behind.
Also keep in mind that if this was all a plot to make Trump look bad, it’s a diabolically sneaky plot that must be carried out by individuals with keen insights into Trump’s psyche and the ability to predict how he’s going to respond. Why? Because the only thing making Trump look bad during this whole terror campaign was his response. First he didn’t respond at all, and then he gave a totally bizarre press conference where he claimed to be the least anti-Semitic person you’ve ever seen and suggested that it was his opponents behind it. And now he apparently told a group of attorneys general that they should really look into it being a ‘reverse’ plot. Did the ‘reverse’ bomb threat plotters know Trump was going to behave like that? Because their devious scheme wasn’t going to work unless Trump behaved that way. After all, it’s not like Trump couldn’t have forcefully condemned these threats right away and called for an aggressive investigation, in which case the bomb threats wouldn’t have actually been an attack on Trump at all but potentially a political boon. And Trump certainly wasn’t forced to de-list white supremacist groups from the counter-extremism federal task force, sending these groups over the edge with joy. He didn’t have to do stuff like that which totally plays into the ‘Trump pals around with white supremacists’ meme that the alleged ‘reverse’ bomb threat plotters apparently wanted to propagate. That was all Team Trump. Did the ‘reverse’ plotters know he was going to do that?
In other words, if there really is a ‘reverse’ bomb threat plot by Trump’s political opponents designed to make it look like Trump unleashed a wave of unchecked white supremacy, the key individual carrying out this plot appear to be Donald Trump. It must be a very complicated plot.
Awesome. I’ve been wondering when you’d tackle Dugin. As for Bannon–horrifying that All that strange third way fascism stuff I learned about from you last year is now controlling the White House.
That’s why you figured prominently in this interview on I did on Iran/Contra WACL and my favorite researchers on Deep Politics which include Dave Emory, Peter Dale Scott, Doug Valentine, J. Patrice McSherry, and Sibel Edmonds. I should have mentioned Hospicker. I bought Coogan’s book along with the Beast ReAwakens by Martin A. Lee although I haven’t had a chance to read them yet.
http://anti-imperialist‑u.blogspot.com/2017/02/hugo-turner-on-deep-politics-of.html
Donald Trump gave his first speech to Congress, a speech that was largely and bizarrely hailed by the press and polls as ‘optimistic’ despite being largely a pack of lies that was only slightly less dark and inflammatory than his ‘American carnage’ inauguration speech. But if you’re a fan of a creeping Hitlerian agenda, it was definitely an optimistic speech:
“In The Nazi Conscience, Duke historian Claudia Koonz notes that the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer ran a feature called “Letter Box,” which published readers’ accounts of Jewish crimes. When the Nazis took power, the German state began doing something similar. Frustrated by the failure of most Germans to participate in a boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933, Adolf Hitler’s government began publicizing Jewish crime statistics as a way of stoking anti-Semitism. In Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, the historian Saul Friedlander notes that, until 1938, Hitler’s Ministry of Justice ordered prosecutors to forward every criminal indictment against a Jew so the ministry’s press office could publicize it.”
A new DHS department that will be focused on immigrant crimes and “providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests” (yes, he managed to suggest that there’s a conspiracy to no report crimes by immigrants). And keep in mind that as chilling as the idea is of Trump using his new DHS program to demonize non-whites and immigrants and eventually blanket the airwaves with stories about immigrant crimes in his 2020 reelection bid, that office is going to be used by GOPers all over the country. Especially in TV ads reminiscent of the infamous ‘Willie Horton’ ad George H. W. Bush used to demonize African Americans as criminals in his 1988 race. And US elections have a lot more money spent on TV ads today than they did back in 1988.
So get ready for ‘dangerous violent (non-white) immigrants are coming for you and your family’ to be the GOP’s theme for the foreseeable future. And get ready for the billions of dollars in political advertising to make sure that Americans receive that message over and over. Feeling optimistic?
Here’s a reminder that Steve Bannon’s vision of an international network of Breitbart branches pushing a far-right, pro-corporatist ethno-nationalist agenda — in other words, corporatist globalism with an ethno-nationalist patina — isn’t limited to Breitbart’s expansion into Europe. Breitbart India is on the agenda too and has been for a while:
“Another country Bannon had eyed for setting up shop was India, so his right-wing news and propaganda network could lend its support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, another nationalist, hugely controversial figure whom Bannon has come to admire greatly.”
Keep in mind that Narendra Modi is going to be facing reelection in 2019, so while Breitbart may not have set up its Indian branch yet we probably shouldn’t be surprised if one pops up over the next couple of years. Although probably not in the near future. It’s not the best time at the moment for a Trump-associated media venture in India.
Well look at that: So not long after Donald Trump claims that his “opponents” were actually behind the wave of bomb threats of Jewish centers, Juan Thompson — the disgraced ex-reporter for the Intercept who was dismissed after he was discovered to be a serial fabricator — makes at least 8 bomb threats. Using his own name along with the name of an ex-girlfriend he was cyber-stalking while claiming that she was actually making the threats in order to frame him, which probably has a lot to do with investigators describing Thompson’s arrest as unrelated to much larger wave of over 100 “robo-call” bomb threats:
“No one has been arrested for making the nationwide robocall JCC threats,” New York State Police’s Beau Duffy said. “That’s still an active FBI investigation.””
As we probably should have expected, we get copycat of whoever is doing to the much larger wave bomb threats. Although it was somewhat surprising that the copycat appears to actually be trying to draw attention to himself as part of some sort of weird cyber-stalking thing.
And the fact that it turns out to the be an former Intercept reporter is quite a twist. Especially since the specific fabrication that led to Thompson’s downfall was a fake quote attributed to Dylann Roof’s cousin claiming Roof’s racial animosity may have started after Roof’s love-interest left him for a black man, something with bizarre parallels to not only Thompson’s own relationship with his cyber-stalking victim but also the strange fabricated story he recently created in just the last week:
“In the past week, a Twitter account that seemed to be created solely to retweet Thompson’s main account started tweeting a link to what was basically a fan fiction story — about Thompson. The writer claimed to have had a crush on Thompson since high school, but was angry when he chose a white woman over her.”
So at the same time Thompson is engaged in this bizarre self-incriminating bomb threat plot that’s apparently designed to incriminate his white ex-girlfriend cyber-stalking victim he’s also creating a fake fan fiction site allegedly written by a woman with a crush on him who was angry when Thompson chose a white woman over her. And this was apparently all part of the larger plot to incriminate his ex-girlfriend:
As we can see, there’s no shortage of twists in the increasingly strange tale of Juan Thompson. The kind of twists that must be filling the Trump administration and the perpetrators of the rest of the bomb threats with joy. Now the right-wing media can run around claiming that all those bomb threats were actually false flag hoaxes by Trump’s “opponents” despite the fact that authorities have made it clear that the this was a copycat actor who was not behind the vast majority of the threats.
So get ready for a wave of stories trying to suggest that the anti-Semitic bomb threats were all part of some sort of ‘reverse’ plot, as Trump recently put it. And while this case only explains a small fraction of the bomb threats, it does indeed appear to be a ‘reverse’ plot. Except it’s actually a reversal of the ‘reverse’ plot Trump was floating: it was a plot designed to back up Trump’s ‘reverse plot’ assertions. Whether or not that was actually part of Thompson’s motivation and one of his goals, validating Trump’s ‘reverse’ claims was unambiguously part of his plot. It’s quite a twisted twist.
Here’s the latest in the GOP’s attempts to frame Barack Obama as a super-villain and the source of all the Trump administration’s many current and future failures: GOP Congressman Mike Kelly told an audience recently that the reason the Obama family is still living in Washington DC is not because they are waiting for the their youngest daughter to complete high school. No, the the reason he remains in Washington is for “one purpose only ... to run the shadow government that is going to totally upset the new agenda”:
“A video clip posted to YouTube shows Kelly saying that Obama remained in Washington for “one purpose only ... to run the shadow government that is going to totally upset the new agenda.””
Beware the Obama shadow government. Apparently. And don’t forget that Trump himself has already claimed that all those anti-Trump protestors were Obama’s handiwork too. The shadow government is vast.
So that looks like one of the go-to memes the right-wing is going to be pushing for the foreseeable future. Any government employee that isn’t a far-right nut job is going to be labeled part of Obama’s shadow government and a subversive who must be fired. And with that in mind it’s also worth noting that there is actually a real shadow government of sorts already in place. Trump’s “beachhead” shadow government of temporary unnamed officials who will likely need permanent positions eventually:
“Unlike appointees exposed to the scrutiny of the Senate, members of these so-called “beachhead teams” have operated largely in the shadows, with the White House declining to publicly reveal their identities.”
Non-publicly identified temporary government officials operating in the shadows with significant influence:
“The beachhead team members are temporary employees serving for stints of four to eight months, but many are expected to move into permanent jobs.”
So as we can see, while the White House doesn’t want to name its shadow “beachhead” government teams, they’ll have to do so eventually if these people are going to get permanent positions. And that’s part of what makes turning Obama into a shadow government boogeyman so useful for this agenda: creating hysteria about Obama’s shadow government is probably going to make it a lot easier to create the hysteria needed to overturn federal employment protection laws so they can purge the government of all the non-Trump cronies and make way for the Trump shadow government:
““One of the things I have suggested to Donald is that we have to immediately ask the Republican Congress to change the civil service laws. Because if they do, it will make it a lot easier to fire those people,” Christie said.”
We need to make it really easy to fire federal employees to stop Obama’s devious shadow government plot. That’s clearly going to be a meme. And look who they just might replace all these fired employees with:
That was the Trump team’s plan back in July: Let’s have CEOs serve in government positions...while still being CEOs. Have those plans changed? There’s certainly no indication of that.
So get ready for a steady uptick in the “Obama’s shadow government” meme and an eventual overhaul of civil service jobs so the White House can clear everyone out of government that isn’t a far-right Trump crony and “part time” CEOs can formally become the actual “shadow government”. More so.
Inside out
It’s interesting how Trump — and other fascists — uses rhetorical distraction to keep the heat off himself, but also — I think — tips his hand and gives us a premonition of his future plans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/deep-state-trump.html?_r=1
“WASHINGTON — President Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama tapped his phone and his assertions that the bureaucracy is leaking secrets to discredit him are the latest signs of a White House preoccupation with a “deep state” working to thwart the Trump presidency.”
Now, we know that the term “Deep State” has been bruited about by Trump’s handler, Bannon. I think the idea is to bring it up first, to claim it, and when it later emerges eventually, Trump/Banoon can imply that the term was stolen from them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-of-nixonwatergate-plot-to-wire-tap-trump-tower/?utm_term=.4529fbc1f117
“President Trump on Saturday angrily accused former president Barack Obama of orchestrating a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap the phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election.”
“While citing no evidence to support his explosive allegation, Trump said in a series of four tweets sent Saturday morning that Obama was “wire tapping” his New York offices before the election in a move he compared to McCarthyism. ‘Bad (or sick) guy!’ he said of his predecessor, adding that the surveillance resulted in ‘nothing found.’ ”
Trump, on one hand, is again accusing his opposition of this pre-emptively, and revealing his admiration and respect for these power-grabs.
“The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it.”
‑Goebbels
The English. Goebbels first accused the English of using the Big Lie, like fighting fire with fire.
Iowa’s far-right Congressman Steve King, who recenty recommended to Donald Trump that he ‘purge’ the administration of ‘leftists’ before they ‘sink us’, added some addition forms of purging he’d like to see for the US in tweet over the weekend:
“Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny”, King wrote on Twitter. “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” According to the BBC, King is a strong advocate of ending birthright citizenship, which gives all babies born in the United States citizenship to the country, even if their parents live there illegally.
It’s not quite ’14 words’ in that tweet, but it’s close! Really, really close.
So is Steve King suggesting that non-white babies are threat to Western civilization? Well, clearly yes, but if you ask him he’ll add a little clarification: it’s not that he’s opposed to these non-white babies coming to America because they’re non-white. No, according to King, he’s opposed these babies because of the cultures they come from and a sense that there’s no hope of these babies eventually culturally assimilating, which is similar to the comments he’s made in the past about there is no record of non-white groups making a significant positive contribution to “civilization” (he said this just last year). And then King added that part of his concern is that there’s an attempt to supplant American culture by promoting abortion in America and allowing non-white to illegal immigrants to “fill the void”. No hint of racist motivations there!
“Chris, we’re a country here that if you take a picture of what America looks like, you can do it in a football stadium or a basketball court and you see all kinds of different Americans there. We’re pretty proud of that, the different looking Americans that are still Americans. There’s an American culture, American civilization. It’s raised within these children in these American homes. That’s one of the reasons why we require that the president of the United States be raised with an American experience. But we’ve also aborted nearly 60 million babies in this country since 1973. And there’s been this effort to say we’re going to have to replace that void with somebody else’s babies. That’s the push to bring in much illegal immigration into America, living in enclaves, refusing to assimilate into the American culture and civilization.”
Undocumented immigration is part of a push to replace all the aborted American fetuses with the children of illegal immigrants. That’s how Iowa’s Steve King see it! Now you know why white nationalists love him so much. And loved him long before his latest tweet:
“This isn’t just one ‘controversial’ member of Congress. King is part of American white nationalist, far-right political movement. That’s not a softer way to say ‘racist’. He’s also a racist. But there are plenty of racists who have more conventional politics. He’s part of a movement. So is Bannon. So is Trump.”
Yep, what Steve King tweeted might be controversial, but it’s also pretty typical. Typical for a far-right white nationalist like Steve King. Or Steve Bannon. Or, of course, the white nationalist in chief Donald Trump.
House Speaker Paul Ryan responded to the uproar over the comments by fellow House GOPer Steve King about civilization was going to be destroyed by non-white babies: Ryan was hopeful King merely misspoke. That was it. And this statement from Ryan came of course after King already told reporters that morning, “I meant exactly what I said”.
So with that in mind, you have to wonder what Ryan’s excuse is going to be for Steve King’s prediction of a black vs Hispanic race war in the next couple of decades:
“King said it was more likely that “Hispanics and the blacks will be fighting each other” before white people become a minority in America.”
As we can see, the idea of people of different races living together in harmony is a rather foreign concept to Steve King. Or rather, another reminder of what we already knew about Steve King.
But there’s another aspect of this King-controversy that’s a reminder of something else that we should probably keep in mind that King/Trump/Bannon American branch of the global white nationalist movement proceeds towards enacting its vision of the future: when Steve King keeps talking like a white supremacist and framing the world in terms of race and tribal conflict, but then implausibly attempts to defend himself by saying things like “I’m just talking about culture, not race!” it’s a reminder of two critical points about the larger Trump/Bannon white nationalist movement controlling the GOP and US government at this point:
1. When Steve Bannon warns/dreams about a looming WWIII/clash of civilizations scenario, he talks about it in terms of religious and cultural conflicts (primarily between Christians and Muslims). And it’s possible that some people expecting/pining for a giant clash of religions really do primarily view it in those terms. But for folks like Bannon and King, who have extensive histories indulging in outright racism, we really should recognize their cheerleading for a giant clash of cultures as cheerleading for race war.
2. And if they do try to start this kind of WWIII scenario they’re not going to try to spark a ‘white supremacists vs everyone else’ kind of race war. They’re going to try to start an ‘every race vs every other race’ kind of conflict. That’s probably the plan and Steve King just reminded us of it.
Sebastian Gorka is out there denying a new report by Forward that appears to demonstrate that Gorka was indeed a full fledged member the order of Vitezi Rend. And while we should expect these kinds of denials for a variety of reasons, the report by Forward lists a pretty big reason why Gorka would want nothing to do with these reports coming out: is could invalidate his immigration status:
“Gorka’s membership in the organization — if these Vitézi Rend leaders are correct, and if Gorka did not disclose this when he entered the United States as an immigrant — could have implications for his immigration status. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend “are presumed to be inadmissible” to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
That’s quite an ‘uh oh’ for Gorka. And don’t forget, the only reason all this came to light is because Gorka just had to wear the Vitézi Rend medal on his lapel during a presidential inaugural ball:
It’s all a reminder that while the Trump administration might be part of one giant ‘dropping the mask’ movement of cryptonazis and fellow travelers it’s a slow motion process. Donning your cryptonazi-collaborator outfit (which included the ‘bocskai’ jacket too) during a presidential inaugural ball was, you know, maybe a little soon. Although that probably depends on the ball.
It’s that time again. Time for another look into Steve Bannon’s psyche. It’s that deeply disturbing time again *shudder*:
“According to Politico, Bannon approvingly cited Maurras’ distinction between what the French philosopher called the “real country” of the people and the “legal country” led by government officials. Maurras put Jews in the latter category, according to Brown, and referred to all Jews as foreigners.”
Yes, Bannon approvingly cited a French Nazi collaborator’s “Us vs them” Nazi framing designed to “other” large swatches of society. To a French diplomat:
Trumpian diplomacy in action! That must have gone over well.
And don’t forget that all signs indicate Bannon basically wants to start WWIII so he can create a new global far-right order, so at least we have a better idea now of how he’s planning on explaining the nightmare he’s trying to unleash: it was the Jews!
Although keep in mind that the way Bannon’s style of implement his far-right agenda means that Bannon himself probably won’t blame the Jews for the hell he’s trying to unleash. That will be left for his Nazi fellow travelers to do.
Remember the Trump team’s talk of bringing in CEOs to work part-time running the government? Well, it looks like that plan is sort of coming to fruition. In the form of a new government agency, the White House Office of American Innovation, to be run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The office will be staffed by former CEOs who will meeting with current CEOs to brainstorm about ways to get more government services out of fewer dollars spent. And will have sweeping powers to put those ideas into place. Or recommend privatizing a government service entirely.
So basically the CEOs are going to be given the job of finding things to privatize so those services can be run for-profit. That should save lots of money, LOL!
“The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.”
A new government agency run by Jared Kushner staffed by former CEOs to work with current CEOs to do figure out how to make government run more
profitablyefficiently *wink*. Just imagine all theprofitsefficiencies they’ll come up:“In some cases, the office could direct that government functions be privatized, or that existing contracts be awarded to new bidders.”
And in case you feel like your memory is faulty because you have all these memories about Jared Kushner already getting assigned one Herculean responsibility after another, those weren’t false memories and if anyone’s memory should be checked at this point it’s Donald Trump’s. Just a double-check to make sure he’s aware that he’s made Jared Kushner responsible for just about everything at this point:
“So, if you’re keeping track, Jared Kushner, who comes to Washington with no government experience, no policy experience, no diplomatic experience, and business experience limited to his family’s real estate development firm, a brief stint as a newspaper publisher, and briefly bidding to acquire the Los Angeles Dodgers, will be working on trade, Middle East policy in general, an Israel-Palestine peace deal more specifically, reforming the Veterans Administration, and solving the opioid crisis.”
That’s going to be quite a political resume for Kushner...assuming he actually accomplishes something. Although even if Kushner doesn’t accomplish any of his growing lists of responsibilities at this point it’s not like he can’t fail up. It’s a Trump-family specialty. The bigly-er the better. Look out world.
Given Donald Trump’s growing paranoia about leaks emanating from the intelligence community, one of the interesting questions regarding the Trump administration’s privatization plans is what on earth he’s going to do with the already extensively-privatized intelligence community. It’s an especially interesting question now that Jared Kushner has been granted his new role as the government privatizer-in-chief. So is the further privatization of the intelligence community a given at this point? That seems very possible since it’s hard to see the Trump team not privatizing everything it can get its hands on. But as the article below by Tim Shorrock reminds us, if Trump really does want to see fewer intelligence community leaks privatizing what’s left of the non-privatized intelligence community probably isn’t a very viable leak-minimizing strategy:
“But this is a liability built into our system that intelligence officials have long known about and done nothing to correct. As I first reported in 2007, some 70 cents of every intelligence dollar is allocated to the private sector. And the relentless pace of mergers and acquisitions in the spies-for-hire business has left five corporations in control of about 80 percent of the 45,000 contractors employed in U.S. intelligence. The threat from unreliable employees in this multibillion-dollar industry is only getting worse.”
Yep, the profit motive doubles as a leak motive. Or rather, a don’t-spend-too-much-avoiding-leaks-because-that-reduces-profits motive:
Just imagine how many future intelligence leaks are going to be enabled by the further privatization of the already profit-maximizing privatized intelligence complex. Now imagine Donald Trump’s paranoid mind imagining all those future intelligence leaks that are going to be enabled by the profit-maximizing privatized intelligence complex. That’s all part of what makes the looming hyper-privatization of intelligence under Trump so fascinating.
Well, we’re finally here. We made it! Yay. So where’s here? Here is the ‘100 days into the Trump presidency’, that somewhat arbitrary point a new American presidency when the punditocracy stops to assess what the new president has accomplished during their initial ‘honeymoon’ period. But as Josh Marshall notes below, 100 days is not an entirely arbitrary guidepost to conduct this assess. Why? Because the first 100 days of a new presidency isn’t just a ‘honeymoon’ period in the sense that a newly elected president is generally going to have the most political momentum to push their agenda through Congress. There’s also a series of arcane schedules and congressional procedures that suddenly kick in after around 100 days that make pushing through big legislation A LOT harder after that 100 days. So, as Marshall also points out below, not only is Trump’s 100 day review going to inevitably center on his distinct lack of legislative accomplishments, it should also include a recognition of just how little momentum Trump has built up to actually accomplish in the future all the things he tried and failed to accomplish up until now. In other words, the 100 day review is also a forecast of how much of their overall agenda they’ll be able to make reality over the next four years:
“You can dig into the formal and informal rules of American governance. But the upshot is that in the first months of a presidency the stars are aligned to get things done. A complex and perhaps sclerotic mix of governmental gears and pulleys are in a brief phase of alignment. If you look historically at the last forty years, the first months in office (whether or not precisely in the first 100 days) are when presidents got their big legislation passed.”
Yep, the ‘first 100 days’ isn’t just a ridiculous standard, as Trump recently put it. It’s a unique window to get the big legislation passed in a system that makes passing big legislation difficult:
And, thus far, not only has Trump pushed no significant legislation through Congress, he doesn’t even have any momentum to do so now that things become a lot harder:
As we can see, if you’re expecting the next 100 days to be significantly different from the last 100 days, don’t. Sure, it’s possible he’ll have a slew of legislative victories. Maybe Obamacare will be repealed and his big tax cut package will become reality along with the big infrastructure bill, but it’s only going to be a harder to do all, or any, of that ambitious agenda. In part because that ambitious agenda turned out to be wildly unpopular, as we saw with the public’s widespread rejection of Trumpcare.
So it’s not going to be all ponies and roses for Trump’s presidency. Who knew. But while it might seem like Trump is poised to preside over a spectacular failure of a presidency, let’s keep a couple things in mind about the Trump phenomena: 1. His enthusiastic support among white nationalist who would love to see a violent revolution and race wars break out in America so they can drag the US back to the 18th Century. And 2. When Trump’s campaign was at its lowest moments, hinting at revolution and civil war was part of the Trump campaign’s playbook and it wasn’t entirely clear that he was going to be willing to accept electoral defeat if that happened. In other words, while Trump campaigned as the guy that could transform the country with ease once elected, he also campaigned as the guy who was going to burn the country down. Perhaps in a violent insurrection of sorts. So there’s a major component of the Trump campaign theme that had nothing to do with legislation and everything to do with indulging in white nationalist insurrection fantasies and hinting that he would make them a reality:
“The AP examined the social media feeds of more than 50 current and former campaign employees who helped propel Trump through the primary elections. The campaign has employed a mix of veteran political operatives and outsiders. Most come across as dedicated, enthusiastic partisans, but at least seven expressed views that were overtly racially charged, supportive of violent actions or broadly hostile to Muslims.”
It’s easy to forget, now that Trump is president, that one of the big worries if he lost was whether or not his supporters were going to flip out and get violent. But winning power through the democratic process doesn’t change the fact that this was a campaign that pushed the illegitimacy of the democratic process as one of its major themes. And that didn’t suddenly go away. So when we’re thinking about what trump’s going to do over the 100, or 1000 days, it’s going to be important to keep in mind that he had a solution for not getting what he wanted via democratic means. And that solution was the same kind of solution we’ve been hearing from the violent fringes of the far-right for years: violence, race war, and secession. And the worse things were going for Trump, especially when it looked like he might lose (like right after the “Hollywood Access” video, the more he was willing to indulge in those kinds of violent fantasies:
““If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.””
That was the zeitgeist of much of the American far-right not too many months ago: If Hillary Clinton wins, it’s time for bloodshed so ‘real Americans’ can take their country back from the cabal of elites, as described by far-right white nationalist and neo-Nazis for years. With Trump doing the lead stoking:
Again, the above article was from October. That’s not too long ago. Did winning suddenly exercise the neo-Nazi demons from the Trump movement? If not, they’re still there. And that’s going to be critical to keep in mind as Trump’s presidency moves forward: if he fails as passing his spectacularly dangerous agenda legislatively, that doesn’t mean the Trump team doesn’t have difference kind of spectularly dangerous agenda they could accomplish...because the kind of violent agenda that Trump was stoking during the campaign didn’t require the Trump campaign to actually do anything. It would have been accomplished by random far-right nut-jobs and their various leaders scattered across the media, politics, and the internet. And, sure, with Trump being president and the GOP in control of Congress that complicates the narrative of any sort of wave far-right violence that could be unleashed, but it’s not like far-right governments haven’t unleashed far-right violence against their own populace. Plus, it’s not like we aren’t seeing a steady cry from the usual suspects on the Right about “the violent Left”, and how “something” needs to be done about it:
“The president, who has just discovered, much to his surprise, that his new job is harder than being a reality-TV star and heir to a real estate fortune, will no doubt feel relieved to be back in the bosom of his most ardent admirers. Unfortunately, he is also highly susceptible to suggestion, so let’s hope LaPierre cools it with the declarations of war on the “violent left.” Trump’s so desperate for action at this point that he might get carried away and take him seriously.”
The “violent left” is coming to get you. That’s the message from Wayne LaPierre, the head of one of the powerful lobbies in America a man who’s been peddling far-right conspiracy theories for years. And if it seems like just coincidence that he’s pushing the same far-right conspiracy theories about left-wing elites plotting to destroy America that you hear from your standard neo-Nazi propaganda outfit, not the over ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazi who just become one of the NRA’s public faces:
“To that end, it appears the NRA has gone full “alt-right.” Media Matters issued a report on Bill Whittle, a new commentator for the NRA’s news outlet NRATV, who “has promoted the racist notion that black people are inherently intellectually inferior to people of other races and suggested that races could be divided along the lines of ‘civilized man’ and ‘barbarian.’” The organization is consolidating the entire Trump worldview under the NRA imprimatur.”
Yes, this January, with the GOP set to control of the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, the NRA hires an Alt-Right media provacature to be part of his public face. A provacature who likes to promote ideas like blacks are too genetically inferior for civilization and Muslims are a different species and that we can’t separate race from policy because race determines character. In other words, a promoter of neo-Nazi race war ideas was hired by the NRA this January to be its public voice:
“During a 2016 appearance on libertarian-turned-“alt-right”-commentator Stefan Molyneux’s webshow, Whittle revealed his acceptance of theories commonly called “academic” or “scientific” racism that tie together IQ scores, race, and crime. He also positively cited a white nationalist to claim people in inner cities “don’t have access to cognition.””
It looks like the NRA has replaced its “Obama is coming to take your guns!” slogan with “Minorities are coming! Get your guns!” And this is one of the most influential right-wing lobbying groups in America whose rhetoric in during the campaign last year was basically the same as Trump’s rhetoric (along with the rest of the GOP field, for the most part). So if you’re assuming, “oh, there’s no longer a threat of a far-right violent coup like there was last year because the far-right has all the power now,” the NRA would beg to differ.
And that’s all something to keep in mind as we reflect on Trump’s first 100 days: yes, he accomplished next to nothing in the traditional sense of “accomplishment.” But in terms of maintaining that far-right frustration that ‘democracy doesn’t work’ and ‘the system is rigged’, Trump’s first 100 days have been a wild success. Sure, the frustrations much of Trump’s base must be feeling from his failures to implement almost all of his major promises is undoubtedly directed partially towards the GOP in general at this point since they control almost everything. But it’s hard to see why that would tamp down that itch to just take up arms and enact some sort of neo-Nazi white nationalist insurrection that was bubbling just under the surface less than a year ago.
This is all a reminder that while it might seem like ‘neo-Nazi Warlord Trump’ is no longer a threat now that he’s President Trump, the more he fails as President, the more tempted he’s going to be to revert to neo-Nazi Warlord mode. Especially with groups like the NRA doubling down on the neo-Nazi coup craziness. And especially now that Trump is calling for changes to Congress to give him more powers to push through his agenda:
“Whether this is just him blowing off steam or signaling what lies ahead, it’s significant. Because it suggests a president, yet again, who doesn’t agree with his own powers being limited or even questioned. Remember when senior policy adviser Stephen Miller declared “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned?” This is more of that kind of attitude.”
President
ErdoganTrump is frustrated that he can’t get what he wants. So now he wants more power to get what he wants. Surprise. And what happens when he doesn’t get it? We’ll find out.Overall, while it’s pretty clear that Trump hasn’t has a successful “first 100 days” by traditional standards, in terms of maintaining the momentum towards that terrifying goal that he appeared to be working towards on the campaign trail — burning down democracy in a white nationalist insurrection driven by far-right disinformation and conspiracy theories that suggest the system today just can’t work because of a subversion by minorities and ‘liberal elites’ — it’s hard to say his first 100 days hasn’t been quite a success.
It looks like the Freedom of the Press part of the 1st amendment of the US constitution might be getting an amendment. It’ll now be the “Freedom of the press to praise, and only praise, Trump” amendment to the amendment. Once the White House figures out how to implement it. And yes, they really are looking into exactly that amendment. Which is wonderful news. Wonderful news from the greatest presidential administration ever. An administration run by a man who is totally not a wannabe dictator but actually a wonderful person. A wonderful person who is not remotely a Nazi at all:
“PRIEBUS: And I already answered the question. I said this is something that is being looked at. But it’s something that as far as how it gets executed, where we go with it, that’s another issue.”
Best. Not-A-Wannabe-Dictator. Ever. Thickest. Skin. Ever. Too. Really, the worst thing one can say about President Trump is he overwhelms us with the myriad of positive things to say about him. Most. Positive. Options. Ever.
Ok, if there’s one minor negative thing you can say about the guy is that he’s kind of flighty, and just sort of jumps around from one sparkly political object to the next, so it’s sometimes hard to know how serious he is about what he says. But in this case we can’t even level that minor degree of negative criticism, because Sean Spicer just doubled down on the notion that they’re seriously looking at gutting the first amendment:
““I think the chief of staff made it very clear that it’s something that is being looked into, substantively and then both logistically, how it would happen” Spicer said. “But that’s nothing new. It’s something the President talked about on the campaign trail.””
Yep, they’re seriously looking into this. This very positive and very presidential idea that only someone who is very confident in their leadership skills and non-criminal nature would consider. Someone who is definitely not a Nazi in the process of dropping the mask. Someone like
Mein FuhrerPresident Trump.Death and taxes. They’re inevitable, as the saying goes. And according to Yale historian Timothy Snyder — author of the very topical On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century that’s come to become the ‘resistance manifesto’ in the Trump era — we can add a new inevitability to that short list of the inevitable: the inevitability that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy:
“Let me make just two points. The first is that I think it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try. The reason I think that is that the conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them. The conventional way to be popular or to be legitimate in this country is to have some policies, to grow your popularity ratings and to win some elections. I don’t think 2018 is looking very good for the Republicans along those conventional lines — not just because the president is historically unpopular. It’s also because neither the White House nor Congress have any policies which the majority of the public like.”
The way Snyder sees it, the primary driving force that prompts the Trump crew and GOP to attempt a coup could be unpopularity. Unpopularity with Trump but also unpopularity with the whole Trump/GOP agenda. Uh oh. Although all the other signs of fascism are a pretty big hints of what’s coming too:
“And Mr. [Steve] Bannon’s preoccupation with the 1930s and his kind of wishful reclamation of Italian and other fascists speaks for itself.”
Yes, Steve Bannon’s preoccupation with Italian and other fascists does indeed speak for itself. Or rather, shouts for itself, “let’s have a coup!”
So unless Trump and his agenda suddenly becomes popular, we should expect a coup attempt to be one of the stops on the way to the bottom of the polls. Of course, if he does suddenly become popular we’re going to get all the fascist policies anyway, just maybe without a formal coup. And who knows, popular Trump might be even more likely to try a coup. Maybe his historically low levels of support are the only thing saving us at this point. That’s the kind of situation we’ve created for ourselves in the US: probably damned if you do support Trump and probably damned if you don’t.
Death, taxes, and a Trump coup attempt. Life’s three inevitabilities. Although if Trump does manage to get his unpopular tax reform package passed which eliminated the Alternative Minimum Tax we can probably remove “taxes” from the list of inevitabilities. But only for Trump and other really, really rich people.
So death, taxes, and a Trump coup are inevitable for the masses, but it’s just death and a hopeful coup attempt for ultra-wealthy. Even life’s inevitabilities are unequal now. It’s one of the perks that comes with electing a blatant fascist.
Ok, so assuming Donald Trump isn’t executing some sort of massive premeditated trap where he drops all sorts of clues pointing towards Russian collusion intentionally because he’s confident it won’t pan out, is he instead taking a dive and trying to get removed from office? To make way for President Pence or something? It’s a question worth considering now that he’s publicly admitting what amounts to obstruction of justice:
“Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt: “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’ ””
Ok, let’s see. So in the last 24 hours Trump...
1. Admitted that his firing of Comey amounts of obstruction of justice on TV regarding the Russia investigation by saying, “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said ‘you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’ ”.
2. Tweeted a threat to James Comey about “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press”. That’s not exactly legal.
3. Threatened to end press conferences.
Anything else? Oh yeah...
4. By tweeting that threat, Trump strongly suggested that there is indeed tapes of their conversations (and who knows how many other conversations).
5. By totally contradicting the initially story of his justification for firing Comey, Trump strongly buttressed the growing suspicions that he’s a pathological liar who can’t be trusted.
Yep, now we’re in open obstruction of justice territory. Obstruction of justice by a pathological liar. Uh oh. And that means that even if the Trump team was setting of the Russian ties as some sort of pre-planned ‘gotcha’ trap to distract from all the rest of his scandals he’s still openly committing potential crimes that are crimes regardless of whether or not he was setting a trap. So, again, is he trying to get impeached at this point?
And that’s all the stuff that Trump did to himself in the last day. It doesn’t even include all the other incriminating reports. Like how Trump reportedly asked James Comey for a loyalty pledge
“President Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey more than once about whether he could be loyal over the course of a dinner meeting, according to sources familiar with the meeting.”
Loyalty oaths for the FBI director. Because that [Like a fascist dictator] how Trump rolls! And who knows how many other people got asked to take one of these oaths.
That’s the situation. We have Trump seemingly openly inviting a constitutional crisis that’s targeted at the rule of law itself. Does Trump have the power to shut down DOJ investigations he doesn’t like? He sure thinks so. And does so. It’s a crisis. A crisis that he appears to be openly fueling each day.
So is he taking a ‘dive’ to make way for President Mike Pence? Is that what we’re seeing here? Well, if so, he’s going to have to get much, much more openly dictatorial. Because it doesn’t look like GOP voters care about any of this very much:
“Initial news for Trump looked bad: NBC’s polling found the majority — 54 percent — of Americans found Trump’s move to be inappropriate. But looking deeper into those numbers unearths more partisan reactions. That same poll found that a strong majority was among Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters; 79 percent of Republicans thought it was fine. In contrast, 84 percent of Democrats found the decision to be “inappropriate.” The poll found 61 percent of independent voters found the firing to be inappropriate as well.”
Both GOP leaders and voters appear to be totally cool with all this. And as long as that’s the case it’s hard to see what Trump is going to stop behaving in this openly criminal manner. So if he’s taking a dive he’s apparently going to have to go much, much lower. Which raises a incredibly dark possibility: If Trump is taking a dive, is that dive going to take the form of trying to stoke a civil conflict? A conflict that’s basically a fight over Trump? Actions speak louder than words, but if you listen to the words Trump has been using lately it hints towards to very dark actions:
“The fact that Trump’s comments about Andrew Jackson stopping the Civil War came at a time when his supporters started declaring a “second Civil War” amid violent confrontations with antifascist protestors is crucial. Few things evoke more sentiment for the neo-Confederates, pan-secessionists and ethno-separatists of the far right than the notion of a “second Civil War.””
Yes, not only is Trump apparently declaring war the rule of law (at least laws applied to the president) but this is all happening as Trump invokes Andrew Jackson, probably the most favorite president of the far-right, as his template. A fascist template:
So while Trump’s behavior forces us to ask whether or not he’s actually trying to ‘make way for Pence’ or something like that, we’re also forced to ask a much more dire question: Is Trump trying to pick a fight? A really, really, really big fight? It’s a question we unfortunately have to ask. This is where we are. In a place where the possibility that the president doesn’t have incredibly sinister Machiavellian motives but is simply an out of control mad man who can’t control his actions is the best case scenario.
The Associated Press has a rather fascinating new piece about what’s going on in the Trump White House as the growing crisis triggered by the firing of FBI director James Comey continues to play out. Part of what makes the article so fascinating is that it’s based on the anonymous interviews of a dozen White House staffers and others close to Trump who depict an increasingly isolated Donald Trump who is relying on just a handful of long-time advisors and family members to make his decisions due to a growing distrust of the rest of his staff. And that distrust is growing in large part because of all the White House leaks. So it’s a leak-based article about Trump’s leak-induced isolation which will no doubt make Trump even more paranoid and trigger the kind of behavior that will produce even more article about Trump’s paranoia. Until he just goes berserk or something. We’ll see.
And as we’re going to see, when you compare the messaging coming from these anonymous White House staffers and others close to Trump, it’s not like they aren’t circling the wagons around the Trump White House. It’s just that they’re circling those wagons apparently around Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon. At least that’s one way to interpret the fact that this article from all these anonymous White House insiders doesn’t mention Pence’s role at all in the decision to fire James Comey, says Trump views Priebus and Bannon with suspicion, and claims that just found out about it one television (which makes you wonder about the identities of these anonymous White House insiders):
“More than a lack of momentum on major policy goals, Trump is said to be seething over the flood of leaks pouring out of the White House and into news reports. He’s viewed even senior advisers suspiciously, including Bannon and Priebus, when stories about internal White House drama land in the press.”
All these leaks are just enraging Trump and sending him into some sort of White House coccoon where even Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus are viewed with suspicion. As we learn from the article based on a dozen Trump insiders:
And so what details are these insiders providing? Details like how Trump was so fearful that his decision would leak that he kept key staff in the dark. Apparently including Steve Bannon, who just learned about it on TV:
Yep, apparently Bannon has been so marginalized in major decisions after his fight with Jared he learned about the firing of Comey the same way Comey did: on TV. At least that’s the line coming from this broad swathe of a dozen Trump insiders who anonymously commented for this article.
And what of Mike Pence? No mention. The implication being that Pence had no idea what was happening and that he was being completely honest when he forcefully argued that, yes, the reason for Comey’s firing was due to the unfair treatment Hillary Clinton got during her email server investigations. But as we’re already learning from other reports, that’s a pretty false implication since Pence was reportedly part of the inner circle who made the decision to fire Comey:
“And he was in the middle of Comey’s firing as well. According to the New York Times, Pence was among the small group of staff members with whom Trump had mulled the decision after he became angry over Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. So Pence knew very well that Trump had decided to fire Comey for his own reasons when he went before the cameras and said that the president had merely “accepted the recommendation” of the Deputy Attorney general.”
Yep, according to reports from several days ago, Mike Pence was part of that inner decision-making circle that Trump relied on when discussing what to do about Comey. And you know what else was in that report: That Steve Bannon was also sitting in on those meetings. Sure, according to reports, he thought the firing of Comey was bad timing and poor form (because he’s apparently not as tone deaf as the rest of Trump’s inner-circle), but Steve was indeed reportedly there and part of the discussions...along with Reince Priebus who apparently backed Comey’s firing:
“The chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has been sharply critical of the F.B.I., questioned whether the time was right to dismiss Mr. Comey, arguing that doing it later would lessen the backlash, and urged him to delay, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, at one point mulled similar concerns, but was supportive of the move to the president.”
That sure sounds like Bannon and Priebus were very much part of those discussions. And yet we had a dozen White House insider give a big detailed internal anonymous expose depicting Bannon and Priebus as two senior staffers on the outs with Trump and Bannon learned about the whole thing on TV. And no mention of Mike Pence. It sure looks like the White House staff is circle the wagon...to protect themselves from Trump’s taint.
Will it work? That probably depends on how well the ‘Trump and in tiny inner-circle was behind all this alone’ story holds up. And it had better hold up if Mike Pence is going to remain a viable replacement for Trump if this whole thing ends up with him leaving office given how forcefully Pence was arguing that the original excuse for Comey’s firing — Hillary’s email server investigation and not concerns/hysterics(/theatrics?) over the Russia investigations — was real. And whether or not that story holds up is going to depend on a lot on whether or not it becomes widely noticed that Mike Pence was reportedly supportive of the move to have deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein write up that document detailing Comey’s wrongs against Hillary as a cover story for their real reason for firing Comey:
“He asked Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to draft a letter documenting Mr. Comey’s shortcomings to leave the impression that it was Mr. Rosenstein’s judgment and not his own that led to the dismissal — an idea that was reinforced by Vice President Mike Pence, who was part of the small group of advisers who planned Mr. Comey’s ouster in near secrecy.”
Rosenstein’s memo was intended to “leave the impression that it was Mr. Rosenstein’s judgment and not his own that led to the dismissal.” And Pence supported it. That’s what the New York Times reported just yesterday. And yet we have that AP report with a dozen anonymous insiders who describe a paranoid Trump with a tiny inner-circle that making these decisions and no mention of Mike Pence at all.
So with Trump having put his presidency in serious danger after publicly admitting what could be an obstruction of justice motive for firing Comey, and then arguably obstructing justice with his threatening tweets to Comey, it’s looking like the White House wagons are circling...around Mike Pence. And maybe Bannon and Priebus. For all the talk about Trump’s history of treating his staff as disposable people, it’s increasingly looking like one of the most disposable people in this whole situation is Trump.
That’s probably not going to help with his paranoia.
It’s that time again. Time to ask, “Is Donald Trump trying to get himself impeached? Or at least trying to generate as much public interest and anxiety about his alleged Russian government ties for some mysterious reason?” It’s not a fun question to ask, but when Donald Trump decides to host a meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador Kislyak (who Michael Flynn had his now notorious phone conversation with) just one day after firing the FBI director and then admitting on TV that he did it to thwart an investigation into those alleged Russian ties it’s a question we have to ask. Especially after reports that highly sensitive intelligence information that came from a foreign ally was shared during that meeting. We just have to ask, is he trying to ratchet up the anxiety or is this guy just really, really, really bad with optics? We’ll maybe eventually find out, but in the mean time, here’s a look a the highly sensitive information that was shared. It couldn’t have been too highly sensitive since CNN apparently had it too. But that’s kind of beside the point in this instance, since the big scandal isn’t necessarily the disclosure of that particular set of intelligence. The big scandal is the apparent anti-intelligence in Trump’s head that made him think this was a good idea to share this kind of intelligence during a controversial meeting with two Russian diplomats a day after he fired the FBI director who was leading the investigation into the Trump/Russia ties:
“But aspects of the intelligence include information from allies in the region — outside the Five Eyes — and there’s a protocol that includes seeking permission before sharing such information with Russia.”
So there was a protocol against such intelligence sharing outside the Five Eyes and also a protocol against sharing intelligence with Russia without asking first. Aha, that was at least part of the problem. Doesn’t everyone know that Trump doesn’t follow protocols? And if we are to believe the accounts of his national security advisor H.R. McMasters, it’s not like Trump planned out this breach of protocol. He was unaware of the source of the information and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to share it. And if that sounds shocking, it shouldn’t since, as the following article also points out, the ally in question is Israel and the Israelis were warned by the US officials back in January about sharing intelligence with Trump for this very reason:
“Israel’s concerns about the Trump White House’s handling of classified information were foreshadowed in the Israeli news media this year. Newspapers there reported in January that American officials warned their Israeli counterparts to be careful about what they told the Trump administration because it could be leaked to the Russians, given Mr. Trump’s openness toward President Vladimir V. Putin.”
Well, that’s probably not going to help with the US’s intelligence sharing agreements. And not only are the Israelis reportedly pissed, but a senior intelligence official from an unnamed European ally is now indicating to the press that their nation might stop sharing intelligence with the US if it’s determined that Trump did indeed share that intelligence with the Russians (which Trump already admitted he did).
So Trump maybe have created an international crisis of confidence by majoring dissing the Israelis in a manger that could result in intelligence not being shared with the US. Once again, is he trying to do this? Prepping the US for a Serpent Walk attack, perhaps? Creating favorable conditions for a military coup? What’s the plan here? Or is the plan to have no plan at all and let chaos do the work? Who knows, but if Trump’s plans included somehow spiking the Russia investigations by begging James Comey and then later firing him when that didn’t work, he’s going to need new plans:
“After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Mr. Comey shared it with senior F.B.I. officials. Mr. Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret — even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation — so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.”
Uh...ok, so Trump first tried to get a loyalty pledge from Comey in January, and then Trump has a meeting with Comey where he basically requests that they call off the investigation....a day after firing Flynn for lying about his call to ambassador Kislyak. And we’re just learning this now...right after learning about he he may have fractured the US’s intelligence sharing relationships by sharing highly sensitive intelligence with ambassador Kislyak the day after he fires James Comey.
Once again, is he trying to get impeached? Well, if so, he’s going to have to try harder since it’s pretty clear that the GOP has absolutely no interest in impeaching Trump as long as he goes along with their agenda of tax cuts, deregulations, and gutting health care. Seriously, that’s basically what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just said:
“I read the Washington Post story and I read General McMasters response, which tends to refute the story, rebut the story. I think we could do with a little less drama from the White House on a lot of things so that we can focus on our agenda, which is deregulations, tax reform, repealing and replacing Obamacare.”
It’s pretty hard to interpret that statement as anything other than a message to Trump, “stick with the agenda and you’ll be fine no matter what you do.” And yet, it’s as if Trump wants to be impeached. Either that or he wants to not be impeached while doing the kinds of things that would normally get a president impeached in order to establish some sort of horrible precedent or something. Who knows. But as Josh Marshall puts it:
Yes, the President appears to be trying to get impeached (or either out of control or actively tring to damage the US’s defenses) but his GOP colleagues won’t let him be impeached because he has more important work to do. Passing their far-right domestic agenda.
At least that’s how things appear. Who knows what’s going on under the surface or between Trump’s ears. But if he isn’t trying to be impeached there’s probably something Trump, and the rest of the US, should keep in mind. Qhile it’s possible that the GOP will let Trump do almost literally anything as long as he agreed to sign a big tax cut and help repeal Obamacare, it’s also possible that it’s a slightly different scenario: that the GOP will let Trump do almost literally anything until he agrees to sign a big tax cut and help repeal Obamacare. Because let’s say Trump and the GOP push through some sort of Obamacare repeal, a giant tax cut, and all the deregulations they could imagine. Ok, well, what good is Trump to hte GOP at that point? He’s unpopular, erratic, and increasingly seen as a subversive and impeachable figure. So why not impeach him at that point after all those horribly unpopular GOP policies are passed under the ‘Trump’ brand and the GOP can move on and rebrand. Because don’t forget that the most likely thing to trigger a GOP impeachment of Trump is if Trump and the GOP get so unpopular that the party’s power is seriously threatened. And what could threaten that popularity more than passing the GOP’s horribly unpopular agenda?
So hopefully someone passes that along to Trump: If he doesn’t actually want to be impeached, he better keep stringing the GOP along for as long as possible. Just keep making it look like he’s about to push through those giant tax cuts, but somehow botch it in the end. If last-minute acts of self-destruction that derail the broader GOP agenda become part of his actual plan, a successful presidency is almost inevitable.
Et tu Jared? Yep. Jared Kushner is reportedly on Donald Trump’s ‘Comey firing’ sh#t list. And if the reports are right he’s on there for a good reason. Not only was he apparently a prominent voice in pushing for Comey’s firing but, as the article below notes, it’s quite possible that he was pushing for the firing for rather personal reason: he may have freaked out after news reports exposed the Kushner family business practices involving Jared’s sister soliciting investments in China in exchange for an implied ease in getting US citizenship.
If true, this suggests that the firing of FBI may not have simply been about Trump’s desire to shut down the investigation into the Trump administration’s alleged collusion with Russia. It also could have also involved a desire to see Trump put in place an FBI director who would be willing to turn a blind eye to good ‘ol fashioned nepotistic corruption:
“CNN national security analyst Juliet Kayyem suggested that Kushner had ulterior motives for firing Comey. Kayyem said that after news broke that Kushner’s sister Nicole Meyer was using her proximity to the White House as a selling point to Chinese investors in a Jersey City development project “and that the FBI probe was expanding to financial dealings.””
Keep in mind that we have no idea if fears over an FBI investigation into the Kushner clan’s influence peddling was really the primary impetus for Kushner backing Comey’s firing. But it does at least kind of make sense as an additional motive. Sure, the timing and incredibly bad optics of Comey’s firing never made sense, with or without the Trump/Russia investigation to worry about. But given the wide array of corrupt activities the Trump/Kushner familes are clearly engaged in at this point, getting someone friendlier in the FBI makes sense as a medium/long-term Trump Team priority. A lot more sense than the “Comey’s abuse of Hillary’s emails” explanation Trump gave. It’s a reminder that whether or not the Trump/Russia probe was the primary reason for Comey’s firing, it’s not like there aren’t plenty of other perceived potential threats from the FBI that the Trump Team would have really wanted to confidently put a lid on by putting in place a ‘Team Trump’ FBI director.
So if Jared is losing his influence over Trump after all these reports about how Trump is pissed at basically everyone on his staff, who’s left? Well, how about the one person who reportedly cautioned against Comey’s firing. That’s right, Bannon is back:
“Stephen Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, who had fallen out of favor within the West Wing after butting heads with Kushner, has also appeared back in the fray. One White House aide noted to me on Tuesday that Bannon, whom the aide had called “irrelevant” a week earlier, had been in meetings with the president and senior staff over the last week. He was among those shouting in Spicer’s office Monday evening, and notably, Bannon was reported to be the only one of Trump’s advisers who had strongly counseled against firing Comey and predicted the fallout. On Tuesday evening, Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s brusk initial campaign manager who helped transform him from vanity candidate to primary front-runner before being replaced, was spotted going into the White House.”
Death stalks the halls of the White House. And is in good standing again. Or at least isn’t in worse standing than anyone else. Oh joy.
And it’s not just Bannon. Stephen Miller has apparently managed to stay on Trump’s good side through all this too:
So it would appear that Trump is re-embracing his White Nationalist roots during this time of crisis. At least until they advise him to do something stupid again. Or he does something stupid on his own and then blames them anyway. So when should we expect the next shakeup, one that puts Jared back in good-ish standing? We’ll see how long the Bannon/Miller dynamic duo last before another Trump rage and the staff-rotation process begins anew. Give it a couple weeks.
The investigations into the Trump team’s Russia ties took another dramatic twist yesterday. Former FBI director Robert Mueller was appointed the special counsel to lead the investigation. As for the particular nature of the drama and whether or not this is really the horrible news for Trump that almost everyone appears to be assuming it is, well, that’s an interesting question. The answer of which probably depends on whether or not with Mueller’s history of leading highly sensitive investigations that threaten to take down a Republican president and somehow end up not ‘going there’ is a hint of what’s to come. And probably also depends a lot on just how murkey and sensitive Trump’s relations with people like Felix Sater — who has deep ties to the Russian mafia and a history of CIA cooperation — are and whether or not a thorough investigation of Trump would significantly disrupt any ongoing operations/sources.
That said, it was a pretty dramatic move for the Drama Queen in Chief:
“This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”
That’s our Trump! The appointment of Mueller is just the worst, most unfair thing to ever happen to an American politician. Did you hear that, JFK? Oh, that’s right.
So, since Mueller’s being portrayed as a man if impeachable character whose word will be characterized as the final word on this investigation, it’s probably a good time for people to review For the Record #603 “I Told You So Part III Update on the Subversion of Operation Green Quest” for some relevant history. Specifically, on the first half of the show you can get a nice overview of the Mueller’s role in leading the investigation of BCCI (with Rudy Guiliani as #2) and how the inadequate pursuit of investigation likely protected not just George H. W. Bush from potentially impeachable offenses but also George W. Bush. And then in the second half you get a review of the FBI’s actions regarding the Operation Green Quest raids of suspected 9/11 terror financing and how the individuals in that investigation had close ties to the GOP and Bush administration. It’s the kind of relevant history that raises some grim questions about what we can expect, but if history is our guide we should probably expect some dramatic discoveries involving lower-level Trump team officials, lots of congrats about what a thorough job it was, and that’s about it. It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised! But, you know, history and all that.
So yeah, if you’re a lower-level Trump team member it’s probably a good time to start worrying. Especially if you’ve had any contact with Russians at all ever. There’s a witch hunt coming. Sure, if history is our guide it’s probably just going to be a little witch hunt. But that doesn’t mean the hunt is going to be little. It’s going to be a big hunt for little witches. Or, rather, it’s going to be the single greatest little witch hunt in American history!
It’s still that time. What time? Time to ask the question, “Is Donald Trump trying to exacerbate suspicions over possible collusion with the Russian government”? And since the primary reason we have to ask that question is the steady drip, drip, drip of evidence of Trump acting in a manner that openly invites suspicions of obstruction of justice and now more Americans support impeachment than oppose according to a recent poll, it’s also time to ask, “Is Donald Trump trying to provoke a legal showdown?”
But since the latest drip of evidence of obstruction of justice involves reports, undisputed by the White House, that Trump openly told Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador during the now infamous May 10 meeting, that, yes, he did fire FBI Director James Comey because of all the pressure Comey was creating for him with the investigation into Russian collusion — thus creating exactly the kind of “potential blackmail by a foreign power [because that foreign power now has potential leverage over you for doing something illegal]” situation that the original collusion investigation was investigating — it’s also still time to ask, “Is Donald Trump trying to exacerbate this situation as part of some Machiavellian trap, or is he just the most incompetent crooked politician in American history?”
“If past is prologue, Trump will dismiss the story as meaningless and accuse the media of being out to get him. But, if and when he says that, consider this: The President of the United States, in a meeting with two top officials of an adversarial foreign government, not only told them top secret classified information but also labeled his ex-FBI director a “nut job” and insisted he would now be more free to act with the whole Russia thing de-pressurized.”
Sure, why not admit to what amounts to obstruction of justice in the Russia probe to the Russia ambassador and foreign minister in an Oval Office meeting the day after you fire the FBI director who was leading the Russia probe? What could possibly go wrong?
So is this the next generation of applied Alt-Right trolling? Like, maybe as part of a broader scheme for how the fascist elite in the US establishment are going to drop the mask to the public and get the American public acclimated to a strongman leadership environment by just repeatedly openly defying legal norms and acting like they did nothing wrong? Or it Trump really that clueless?
These are the questions we’re forced to ask. For new reasons on a seemingly daily basis. So what’s the next reason going to be? Well, how about reports that the White House is looking into using a special ethics against newly hired government lawyers from investigating their prior law firm’s clients for one year after their hiring and using that rule to prevent former FBI Director Robert Mueller from being involved in anything involved Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. Because apparently that wouldn’t come off as wildly desperate and look just horribly guilty:
“Mueller’s former law firm, WilmerHale, represents Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who met with a Russian bank executive in December, and the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who is a subject of a federal investigation.”
They’re seriously looking into using this as a legal option. Not only that, but even if the Justice Department does grant Mueller a waiver, the Trump team’s lawyers are looking into using the rule to cast doubt on any eventual findings...because reports of how the Trump team is preemptively planning on discrediting any findings by using this ethics rule doesn’t look wildly guilty or anything:
And note that this isn’t some impulsive act of Trump behind this incredibly guilty looking PR stunt. It’s Trump’s legal team. WTF? Is everyone working for him an Alt-Right troll who only knows how to inflame a bad situation and make it worse? Is the ghost of Roy Cohn giving Trump horrible advice in order to get his wings? What’s going on here? Well, if it is the ghost of Roy Cohn slipping Trump horrible advice, the ghost of Roy Cohn has a great sense of humor:
“The law firm he has worked for since 2013, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres, has represented Trump since at least Nov. of 2001, often on cases that had to do with his reputation. The firm represented Trump in his lawsuit against journalist Tim O’Brien, for example, who claimed in his book “Trump Nation” that the real estate developer’s net worth was at most $250 million, not the billions he claimed. Trump sued for $5 billion, but lost.”
Yep at the same time we’re getting reports that the Trump team is planning on discredit Robert Mueller’s eventual findings due to Mueller’s recent work at a law firm with Kushner and Manafort as clients, we also learning the Joe Lieberman is one of Trump’s top picks for FBI director. And Lieberman...*drum roll*...works for a law firm with Trump as a client since 2001.
Is this an elaborate Alt-Right trolling attempt as part of some sort of far-right PsyOp on the American public as they drop the mask? Are they floating Lieberman intentionally in order to goad critics into pointing out Lieberman’s law firm ties to Trump in order to accumulate rhetorical ammo for discrediting Mueller’s investigation? Is this just the most incompetent public relations team in American political history run by a mad man? Is the ghost of Roy Cohn is giving Trump horrible advice in order to get his wings?
We’re running out of other options and at this point the ghost of Roy Cohn is looking like the most plausible explanation. Although it’s possible the ghost of Pepe wants to settle a few scores.
This is an intersting tidbit about the investigation into the falsehood that there is significant amount of voter fraud from the Southern Poverty Law Center:
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2017/05/11/kris-kobach-lawyer-far-right-extremists-unfit-serve-trumps-commission-study-voter-fraud
KRIS KOBACH, LAWYER FOR FAR-RIGHT EXTREMISTS, UNFIT TO SERVE ON TRUMP’S COMMISSION TO STUDY VOTER FRAUD
May 11, 2017
Richard Cohen President
President Trump’s decision to appoint Kris Kobach to help lead a new commission to study voter fraud shows that the commission itself will be fraudulent – as was the president’s ludicrous claim that millions of illegal ballots cost him the popular vote in November.
The evidence is clear – and we all know – that voter fraud is virtually non-existent in our country.
The real threat to our democracy is voter suppression. Kobach is a longtime lawyer for far-right extremist groups with ties to white nationalists and is a leader in the movement to suppress the votes of minorities. He is unfit to serve in this capacity, and his appointment is nothing less than an outrage.
The mayor of Portland, Oregon, is asking federal officials to cancel the approval of two upcoming Alt-Right “Free-Speech rallies” in downtown Portland following the stabbing deaths of two men and the critical injury of a third man after the three tried to intervene as Jeremy Joseph Christian — a white supremacist who attended a previous “Free-Speech rally” — was harassing two Muslim women in Portland last week. And while Mayor Wheeler is arguing that hate speech isn’t protected by the First Amendment, it’s not at all clear that the courts are going to be on his side. Oh well, that’s what we have courts for...to decide such things. But in the mean time, the dates for these Alt-Right rallies are quickly approaching, with the first one scheduled for June 4th. So while it remains to be seen how this showdown will be resolved, the Alt-Right is wrapping itself with the banner of free-speech and victimhood following the double murder in Portland in the mean time:
“Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center had described as someone who holds racist and extremist beliefs, is facing aggravated murder and other charges in connection to the killings. According to the hate watch group, Christian was seen at an earlier free-speech rally held by the same organizers. A photo shows him giving the Nazi salute.”
The guy who stabbed those people to death during an unprovoked racist tired against strangers was recently seen giving Nazi salutes at one of these “free-speech rallies” organized by the same people as the upcoming June 4th rally. Not surprisingly, the mayor of Portland isn’t too keen on having more such rallies, especially so soon after the attack. Still, there is the First Amendment. And as of now it appears that the June 4th rally still has its federal approval.
So the rally is scheduled to happen. At least with federal, but not local, approval. And this means some sort of conflict between the Alt-Right neo-Nazis and antifa protestors should probably be expected. And with that in mind, James Buchal — the head of the Multnomah County GOP and top Republican in the city of Portland — has a recommendation for Republicans for how to prepare for such a situation where scuffles and brawls are considered possible: how about the GOP arrange for militia groups — specifically the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters — to provide security for the right-wing rallies in the future:
“Asked if this meant Republicans making their own security arrangements rather than relying on city or state police, Buchal said: “Yeah. And there are these people arising, like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters.””
Those were the words of Multnomah County GOP chair James Buchal. Let’s have the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters become the GOP’s private security force. And this was apparently in response to the cancelation of the Avenue of the Roses Parade following threats from what was presumably an antifa group, which prompted the “free-speech rally” where Jeremy Joseph Christian was spotted throwing Hitler salutes:
So the Alt-Right is now using the antifa groups, basically found in a handful of cities, as an excuse to declare themselves defenseless unless they can turn militias into their private security force. And note the comment from the Portland police: making militias the GOPs security force for these kinds of events might actually be legal:
This could happen. And it’s currently being proposed by the top GOPer in Portland right after a Portland neo-Nazi murdered two people who confronted him during his hate speech attack on two strangers.
Donald Trump predictably pushed the United States one step further down the path of pariah nation status today. As he does everyday. But this was a pretty big push: At a time when the EU and China are doubling down on their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Trump declared he’s pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.
So now that the GOP is poised to make good on its long-held goal of preventing anything meaningful being done to prevent a growing out-of-control climate crises that could damn future generations to chronic resource shortages, eco-collapse, and likely climate-change-induced wars, it’s probably a good time to revisit the question of why? Why are the forces behind Trump and the GOP so deeply dedicated to birthing a future of increasing chaos and despair with seemingly no consideration of how devastating a destabilized world will be, even for petro-oligarchs like the Koch brothers?
Is there a method to the madness or is it really just an incredible level of short-term greed? Well, the way Jonathan Chait sees it, there is a method. But it’s purely a method in applied tribalistic trolling:
““Everybody who hates Trump wants him to stay in Paris,” argues conservative activist Grover Norquist. “Everybody who respects him, trusts him, voted for him, wishes for him to succeed, wants him to pull out.” Here is an argument that approaches, even if it does not fully reach, complete self-awareness: The Paris climate agreement is bad because it is supported by people who oppose Trump. Therefore, the opposing position is the correct one.”
That appears to be Chait’s general conclusion: It’s all about the politics. Specifically, the politics of brain-dead tribalistic “if you like it, I hate it” zero-sum reasoning. Or rather, non-reasoning. And that no doubt plays a significant role in this whole sick dynamic.
But is that it? Is there no other broader objective that the far-right thinks will be accomplished if we can sow the seeds of future poverty and ruin today? Well, as the following article suggests, that tribalistic reactionary trolling approach to policy really might be the primary driving force for the Right’s seemingly suicidal behavior. At least, that’s what we can infer from a snapshot of Steve Bannon’s whiteboard of doom:
“Bannon’s theory of the case was — and is — simple: If Trump makes good on the things he promised his base during the campaign, he will be well positioned to get re-elected. That the biggest danger for Trump is not saying impolitic things or fighting with the political establishment but looking like he “went Washington,” that all his tough talk on the campaign trail about going in, knocking heads and getting things done was just talk.”
Step 1. Trump promises his base during the campaign that he’ll pull out of the Paris accord because anything opposed by liberals is perceived as inherently good.
Step 2. After winning, Trump now has to put do it. Because he promised to. And Steve Bannon’s core strategy for re-election is to simply carry out as many campaign promises as possible.
That’s it. At least based on the analysis by Jonathan Chait and Chris Cillizza. And who knows, maybe that’s extent of the Trump/GOP reasoning on this...combined with the obvious incentive of pleasing petro-oligarchs like the Kochs.
But let’s not forget one of the other rather incredible and disturbing aspects of all this: Steven Bannon isn’t just some random political strategist. He’s Steve Bannon, far-right white nationalist political strategist and close ally of white nationalist billionaires like Robert Mercer. The guy is basically a contemporary neo-Nazi theoretician. That’s how Bannon views the world. And it’s not like his views are out of whack with most of the rest the GOP’s through leaders.
So when we’re talking about someone with Steve Bannon’s far-right worldview aggressively trying to thwart the only real attempt to do anything meaningful about potentially catastrophic climate change which could severely impact the course of events over the next century, is the motive really just an adherence to a reactionary tribalistic trolling impulse? Because let’s not forget which parts of the world are going to get hit the hardest of temperatures rise, deserts expand, and crops chronically fail: the third world...the parts of the world white nationalist like Bannon appear to loathe and wish would go away or at least agree to be subjugated. If any opportunity to unleash such a weapon upon the world had been given to, say, the Nazis, would they have passed it up?
Let’s also not forgot one of Bannon’s favorite books: The Camp of the Saints, a book written by an anti-semitic neo-Nazi about waves poor people from the third world flooding the shores of France that triggers a race war. If you wanted a tool from promoting waves of desperate non-white people flooding into places like Europe you almost couldn’t come up with a more effective tool than climate change. Just take a look at Syria. And Bannon and other far-right strategists surely recognize this. So we really need to ask: Is Steve Bannon trying to exacerbate and accelerate climate change specifically in order to create a period of massive third world crisis in order to create a massive “is us or them” global zeitgeist? The kind of crisis situation mentality that softens psyches up enough to enable the kind of race wars the Bannons of the world clearly desire? A period of global despair where societies start thinking “if we don’t let all those desperate people over there die over there they might come here, so let’s make sure they die over there.” Isn’t that a desirable outcome for someone like Bannon? It would appear to be the case based on his reading habits.
So that’s one of the very unpleasant questions we’re forced to ask: are Trump and the GOP trying to create a future global disaster as part of some sort of Bannon-esque far-right power play? Or they really just horrible trolls who value trolling above all else and care nothing for the future? A bit of both?
Remember when James Buchal, the highest ranking GOPer in Portland and the surrounding Multnomah County, suggested that maybe the Oath Keepers should be used as security for the June 4th Alt-Right ‘free speech’ rally? Well, the Portland GOP got its wish:
“In two statements issued later on Saturday, Rhodes said he had “pledged our unconditional support” to Buchal and confirmed that his group would be present at the rally on Sunday, “ready, willing, and able to effectively defend the rights of all present if there is any failure of the police to do so”.”
The Portland GOP has a militia security force. Or, rather, shares a militia security force with the Alt-Right. Welcome to Trumpland.
And note other group the Oath Keepers are offering protection for: a pair of lawyers trying to sue the DNC over the treatment of Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary while simultaneously promoting the ‘Seth Rich was murdered by the DNC because he was the real leaker’ meme:
So how did the rally go? Did the Oath Keepers make any arrests? Not exactly. They assisted federal officers in making arrests:
“The man—working security for the rally—is seen on multiple videos assisting DHS police officers from the Federal Protective Service arrest the guy. At one point, he unfurls a zip-tie handcuff from the federal agent’s belt before handing it to the agent, who then puts them on the wrists of the guy who’s pinned down.”
In Trumpland, the far-right militias that advocate sovereign citizen legal theories that all law enforcement above the level of county sheriff are illegitimate help federal police (DHS) arrest people. That’s where we are.
But it wasn’t all disturbing news from the rally. For instance, no one had their throat slit by a raving neo-Nazi lunatic. So, you know, could have been worse. Including for James Bachal and the Portland GOP. After all, another round of throat-slitting probably wouldn’t have helped with Buchal’s GOP recruitment efforts at the Alt-Right rally:
“The effort was led by James Buchal, chair of the Multnomah County Republican party, who urged attendees at the rally on Sunday to join to the GOP. Details of his efforts were uncovered in a recording from the rally.”
Isn’t that nice. Just some pleasant youth outreach. The future of the GOP is looking
all rightAlt-Rightincreasingly Alt-Right.Given the repeated disturbing one-liners, jokes, and other references to political violence that repeatedly emanated from the 2016 Trump campaign (especially Trump’s “Second Amendment solutions” remark), the hope that such rhetoric wasn’t going to spiral out of control was one of the handful of silver linings from Trump victory. But thanks to a deranged gunman — a ‘Bernie or bust’ type with a history of violence — who attacked the Congressional Republicans’ baseball team in DC, playing into all the far-right fantasies about being victimized by a violent American left, that threat of political violence is back in a big, bloody, and utterly pointless way:
“The 66-year-old home inspector’s social media accounts reveal him to have been a longtime Bernie Sanders supporter who held a vociferous grudge against Republican lawmakers and also disliked Hillary Clinton.”
So a lunatic who loathed Republicans — and many Democrats — travels to DC, lives out of his gym bag at a YMCA for a couple of months, and then attempts to gun down the GOP baseball team. And in doing so he critical wounds Steve Scalise, one of the GOP members most closely identified with white nationalism. Whether or not this guy was actively trying to spark a cycle of violence as part of some sort of “burn it all down” strategy or he was just acting out of rage, if you had to come up with an incident designed to inflame tensions in an already tense political climate it would be hard to come up with a more effective plot. Case in point:
“Gingrich, speaking on Fox News’ “Outnumbered,” offered his prayers to those injured and promptly lumped the violent incident in with what he called a broader trend coming from those opposed to President Donald Trump.”
That’s the kind of response we should expect for Newt. Along with the broader right-wing media complex. And don’t forget that this is happening at a time when clashes between ‘Alt-Right’ neo-Nazis and ‘Antifa’ protestors is fueling a growing narrative on the right of a ‘violent Left’ that requires an extraordinary response. Like inviting the Oath Keepers to act a private GOP protection squad. Which all is part of why you have to wonder if this guy was trying to feed into that narrative and spark something larger. If so, wow is that horrible. If not, still pretty damn horrible.
Here’s the latest indication that groups like the militias, the ‘Three Percenters’ — which had a significant armed presence at the Malheur National wildlife refuge standoff with the Bundy brigade — and the KKK are all more than happy form a heavily armed far-right coalition for the purpose of ‘defending everyone against antifa’ or something like that. In the case of the recent faux-showdown in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the armed coalition was there to responding to a rumor that ‘antifa’ was going to desecrate Confederate memorials...despite local antifa groups denying the rumor and saying they had no intention of doing any such thing. But that didn’t stop hundreds of KKK, militia, and ‘Three percenters’ from showing up, heavily armed, preparing for a fight (which never happened, so instead the groups explained to reporters why the Confederacy had nothing to do with slavery or racism):
““I salute the Confederate flag,” they said in unison, “with affection, reverence and undying devotion to the cause for which it stands.””
Not surprisingly, these guys really love not just the Confederate flag, but the “cause for which it stands”. A Confederate cause that they want to assure everyone has absolutely nothing to do with slavery or racism:
So that’s where were at with the right-wing’s ongoing attempts to exploit the actions of groups like a handful of cases where people identified with the left engaged in violence: create a narrative where a coalition of militia members, Klansmen, and groups like the Three Percenters is needed to stop some sort of phantom violent left-wing plot. And as we’ve already seen, in the case of Multnoma County, Oregon, this coalition of heavily armed militia is also apparently needed to protect the Multnomah County Republicans. Now officially:
“Proposed Resolution of Chairman Buchal: Resolve that the MCRP may utilize volunteers from the Oregon Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, and other security groups. To provide security where such volunteers are certified to provide private security service by the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training. Kay Bridges moved and Janice Dysinger seconded. Resolution passed.”
It’s official. And why is the Multnomah County GOP resorting to using groups like the Three Percenters? Well, the way the main backer of this, GOP county chairman James Buchal, puts it, the county GOP has no money:
That’s the message: we have hire armed militias to protect us from those scary ‘antifa’ groups because we, the GOP, got no money. Yep.
It’s got to be one of the worst, and scariest, indirect fundraising pitches of 2017. Perhaps not the worst. That award would likely go to the NRA’s ‘get a gun to stop the violent left’ ads. Still, it’s pretty bad.
This was probably inevitable given the non-stop vilification of the media by Donald Trump, but it looks like Trump’s war on the media, which he has almost uniformly labeled “Fake News” (unless it’s Fox News), appears to be lurching into real physical violence thanks to an anti-CNN Trump meme created by a neo-Nazi-ish poster on Reddit that was tweeted by Trump, prompting a response from CNN about the nature of the Reddit user who created it which, in turn, prompting a new round of outrage and pro-Trump memes and a wave of death threats against CNN employees. And as we’ll see, these death threats didn’t pop up in a vacuum but are part of a larger far-right push to create a “journalocaust” of real-world attacks on ‘the liberal media’ intended to silence all voices that basically are neo-Nazis. This is where we are:
“So, who is HanAssholeSolo? He or she has been a registered Reddit user since December 2015 and is a frequent participant in the subreddit The_Donald, according to data from Reddit Investigator. He or she is fond of posts denigrating blacks, Muslims, women, and, of course, liberals. HanAssholeSolo was over the moon by Trump’s tweet: “Wow!! I never expected my meme to be retweeted by the God Emperor himself!!!” At the same time he appears to have gone on a bit of an editing spree, knowing his posts would be under the microscope he started sanitizing some of his most offensive screeds, deleting the N‑word and a comment about killing Muslims, for example. Quartz took screenshots of some of his posts before they were edited.”
Surprise, surprise, Donald Trump’s anti-CNN meme video came from a super-bigot poster on Reddit’s “The_Donald” forum aptly named “HanAssholeSolo”. In a normal world this would be news. Or rather, the Trump team’s repeated an unrepentant reuse of memes from neo-Nazis would be news. Again. Although in this case it sounds like “HanAssholeSolo” was sort of repentant so that’s a new twist.
But when a CNN reporter, Andrew Kaczynski, tracked down the middle-aged man behind HanAssholeSolo identity and pointed out that they won’t reveal his identity because he showed remorse — but also suggested the network could reveal his identity in the future if HanAssholeSolo returned to his shitposting ways — the entire story become “CNN is trying to blackmail a 15 year old and is super evil!” (and no, the guy isn’t 15 years old) and neo-Nazis are now threatening Kaczynski’s family:
“Like many online controversies of this era, it’s difficult to explain exactly what’s going on here in one smooth narrative. The ethical question of whether a news outlet should withhold the identity of a private citizen who posted extremely offensive things online on the apparent condition that they behave better in the future is one that resonated well beyond the bubble of the Trump Internet. But the meme that Trump supporters have picked up and spread is a mix of fact and fiction, of genuinely outraged conservatives and the gleeful meme-literate arsonists who just like to see the Internet burn with fury.”
As the article points out, while the ethical question of whether or not CNN should have included a “we’ll identify you if you misbehave in the future”-clause to their reporting is an interesting question for journalism, it’s rather difficult to have that debate when fake ‘facts’ about the case suddenly take hold — like the fake ‘fact’ that the meme creator was 15 years old — and become part of the right-wing meme-storm. Especially when Donald Trump Jr. promotes it and the Daily Stormer issues a general death threat against all CNN employees’ children:
Yep, the Trump family and neo-Nazis are joining up to promote fake ‘facts’ about a CNN response to ‘fake news CNN’ meme created by a neo-Nazi troll and tweeted by by Trump. And all for the purpose of demonizing the network in the minds of his followers. Again, this is where we are:
“Other threats appeared on related sites, particularly on 4chan, the wild west of internet forums. Here, in reference to my reporting, they talked openly about “the Journocaust,” a term some used in place of the civil war. The fantasy seemed to be open hostilities in which journalists, academics and liberals could be hung in public, an event some called “The Day of the Rope” after a plot point in William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel about a fictional race war some in the extreme right hold as a holy book of sorts.”
This is what being a journalist is like in Trump’s America: when you stumble upon references to your own reporting on places alt-right troll dens like 4chan you just might also stumble across talk of “the Journocaust” or “The Day of the Rope” inspired by The Turner Diaries in addition to the threats against specific journalists and their families.
And perhaps the worst aspect of the whole situation is that, as bad as it is, it’s no longer remotely shocking. It’s the goal from the perspective of a neo-Nazi troll army intent on normalizing neo-Nazi worldviews and the President of the United States is playing the lead role in the normalization of neo-Nazi threats of violence as a tool of control. If you think about it, it’s a pretty massive threat to the children. Everyone’s children.
Here’s a not very surprising update on the person on the Daily Stormer calling for white supremacists to threaten to kill the family members of CNN employees as part of growing right-wing hysteria over CNN and “fake news”: Surprise, that Daily Stormer author is Andrew “the weev” Auerheimer:
““We are going to track down your parents. We are going to track down your siblings. We are going to track down your spouses. We are going to track down your children. Because hey, that’s what you guys get to do, right? We’re going to see how you like it when our reporters are hunting down your children,” continued Auernheimer.”
Yes, Andew Auerheimer, the neo-Nazi hacker who is also the top suspect in the recent Macron hacks, is the guy calling for a terror campaign against CNN employees, framing it as some sort of retaliation against CNN’s awkward non-outing of the hyper-bigoted Reddit poster who created the ‘CNN Fake New’ GIF recently tweeted by Donald Trump because that Reddit poster was actually a 15 year old. And yes, the idea that the Reddit poster was a 15 year old appears to be actual ‘Fake News’ that originated solely from a false claim made on 4Chan that was amplified across the right-wing media landscape:
“The claim seems to have first appeared right before midnight on July 4, when a user on the alt-right”-affiliated 4chan forum /pol/ claimed that the “tough guys over at CNN” “doxxed a 15 year old kid.” Within an hour, in the early hours of July 5, Twitter user Kaiser Willy tweeted a photo of the 4chan user’s post, writing, “Potentially huge development in #CNNBlackmail Reddit user is believed to only be 15.” A couple of hours later, neo-Nazi and “alt-right” website The Daily Stormer pointed to Willy’s tweet to push the claim, adding that CNN “must be made to taste their own medicine.””
So, yes, ‘the weev’ is trying to use fake news to orchestrate terror campaign against CNN over a ‘CNN Fake News’ gif. And his actions, while particularly vile, are just one part of a broader and increasingly bizarre right-wing disinformation media environment that’s current waging a campaign to brand all non-right-wing news as ‘fake news’ and promoting real fake news to do it. Yes, we now have to distinguish between real ‘fake news’ and fake ‘fake news’ because the people howling the most about ‘fake news’ keep making up fake ‘fake news’ while doing it.
Given all that, it’s probably worth recalling that the Macron hacks — originally attributed to Russia due to highly questionable evidence — was later attributed to ‘the weev’ and contained fake documents that originally showed up on 4Chan:
“In this case, the documents appeared on 4chan, but promised that more would appear on the website nouveaumartel.com. Through a bit of complex technological detective work, security researchers have found the nouveaumartel.com is tied to Andrew Auernheimer, the notorious white-supremacist hacker also known as “Weev.” According to research firm Qurium, the #MacronGate documents were hosted on a Latvian server that also hosts the Daily Stormer, a leading white-supremacist website.”
Noticing any patterns here?
BuzzFeed has a long piece based on a cache of leaked emails that tell a story about the behind-the-scenes efforts at Breibart to mainstream the ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazis without seeming too neo-Nazi-ish themselves. It appears those efforts primarily revolved around Milo Yiannopoulos. Specifically, Yiannopoulos was tasked with reaching out to all sort of ‘Alt Right’ figures, getting comments from them about what the ‘Alt Right’ was all about, and then later getting feedback from them about the planned articles before they were published. It was clearly a group effort. A group effort that included Andrew ‘the weev’ Auernheimer, Curtis Yarvin (the founder fo the “Dark Enlightenment” movement), and Devin Saucier, a neo-Nazi Yiannopoulos describes as his best friend.
The emails have a sick, almost dark comedy element to them because they included plenty of back and forths between Yiannopoulos and Breitbart editors about whether or not the publication was getting too openly friendly with the Nazis, with Yiannopoulos being told at one point that it was fine to use a “shekels” joke but “you can’t even flirt with OKing gas chamber tweets.” There’s also some other fun facts in the piece, like how Curtis Yarvin said he was “coaching” Peter Thiel on politics, or how the two Yiannopoulos passwords found in the emails were “a password that began with the word Kristall”, and “LongKnives1290”.
So in case it wasn’t completely and totally obvious that Breitbart is a white nationalist publication run by neo-Nazis for the purpose of mainstream neo-Nazi ideals, here’s the evidence, in their own neo-Nazi words:
“But now Yiannopoulos had a more complicated fight on his hands. The left — and worse, some on the right — had started to condemn the new conservative energy as reactionary and racist. Yiannopoulos had to take back “alt-right,” to redefine for Breitbart’s audience a poorly understood, leaderless movement, parts of which had already started to resist the term itself.”
Yep, for Yiannopoulos, his “definitive guide to the alt right” was primarily an attempt to help the neo-Nazi movement clean up its reputation. Which is why he reached out directly to ‘the weev’, Curtis Yarvin, and Devin Saucier for the purpose of making sure his article portrayed them in the friendliest way possible without missing any of the key points they wanted him to include:
And as the bulk of the BuzzFeed piece demonstrates, pleasing the ‘Alt Right’ and making them look as non-neo-Nazi-ish as possible, while still projecting their neo-Nazi ideals and avoiding an overt neo-Nazi taint for Breibart, was the primary goal. A goal that Yiannopoulos clearly saw as part of the Breitbart “brand”, as evidenced by the fact that Yiannopoulos describes Auernheimer in one email as “one of the funniest, smartest and most interesting people I know. ... Very on brand for me.”:
“By Yiannopoulos’s own admission, maintaining a sufficiently believable distance from overt racists and white nationalists was crucial to the machine he had helped Bannon build. As his profile rose, he attracted hordes of blazingly racist social media followers — the kind of people who harassed the black Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones so severely on Twitter that the platform banned Yiannopoulos for encouraging them.”
Note how Curtis Yarvin’s advice on “handling the endless tide of [open Nazi] 1488 scum,” (by telling them their hearts are in the right place but they need to clean up their image) probably wasn’t limited to Breitbart given the email exchange shortly after the election where Yarvin talks about how he’s “coaching Thiel”:
Keep in mind that one of the big stories about the formation of the Trump team was the profound influence Peter Thiel had in shaping who would staff the Trump team. And we’ve already had reports about Yarvin’s influence on the Trump team post-election, but there was still a big of mystery over who Yarvin’s intermediary with Steven Bannon was at the time. So this is another big hint about that mystery (which was never really much of a mystery since it was either going to be Thiel or Charles Johnson).
And finally, there’s Yiannopoulos’s Nazi-loving passwords:
“LongKnives1290.” A password that incorpates both the Knight of the Long Knives Nazi purge with the 1290 expulsion of Jews from England. Note that Yiannopoulis claims to be Jewish but identifies as Catholic, not that any of that really matters since he’s clearly a Nazi troll at heart. But based on that password choice it sure sounds like Yiannopoulos is pining for some sort of GOP purge of ‘the Jews’, where ‘the Jews’ will presumably be any GOPer who isn’t fully on board the ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazi agenda. And, sure enough, we appear to be on the verge of Steve Bannon declaring ‘war’ on almost the GOP ‘establishment’ and promising to issue far(ther)-right primary challengers against almost all GOP incumbants in the upcoming 2018 mid term elections.
So might 2018 end up being “LongKnives2018” for the GOP congress? A year when the Breitbart/Mercer wing manages to secure even more control over the party? If so, it definitely won’t involve purging more than two actual Jews (that’s all the GOP has left to purge).
Following up on that massive BuzzFeed piece about how Breitbart actively worked with ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazis like Andrew ‘the weev’ Auernheimer and Curtis Yarvin for the purpose of mainstreaming their ideas, Right Wing Watch has a new piece on a similar phenomena, where far right personality get mainstreamed by ostensibly ‘mainstream’ conservatives, taking place on one of the biggest new mediums on the planet: YouTube:
“Shorenstein Center on Media fellow Zach Elexy noted in a case study of YouTube commentator Black Pigeon Speaks that in the same way that “liberals, scholars and pundits have failed to give talk radio—which is almost wholly conservative—its due,” those same observers “stand to miss a new platform that, so far, is also dominated by the right wing.” Far-right YouTube personalities are largely aware that they are at the epicenter of political talk on the platform, and openly gloat about their dominance.”
Just as the political left in the US has inexplicably largely abandoned the talk radio platform to the right-wing, it appears that YouTube is being successfully turned into a right-wing dominated format too. So much so that YouTube, responding to criticisms that its algorithms effectively draw viewers further and further into the far right, has started removing the financial reward from videos flagged for “controversial religious or supremacist content.” The videos can still be posted, but they don’t have ads so the poster won’t make any money. And this is leading to threats to create a ‘Alt Right’ YouTube alternatives:
We’ll see if any of these ‘Alt Right’ versions of YouTube take off (it’s not going to be easy finding advertisers), but it’s worth recalling one of the schemes Steve Bannon and Peter Thiel have in mind that relates to exactly this topic: regulating Google and Facebook as public utilities in order to force them to let anyone, regardless of hate speech content, to make money:
“And how does such talk sit with Thiel, who has longstanding interests in Facebook? Said another senior administration aide, “Peter has indicated that if he takes the P.I.A.B. position he intends to take a comprehensive look at the U.S. intelligence community’s information-technology architecture. He is super-concerned about Amazon and Google”—and Facebook, less so. “He feels they have become New Age global fascists in terms of how they’re controlling the media, how they’re controlling information flows to the public, even how they’re purging people from think tanks. He’s concerned about the monopolistic tendencies of [all three] companies and how they deny economic well-being to people they disagree with.” When I asked this source how likely it is that Thiel will assume the post, he answered, “He’s heavily leaning toward it. He feels there’s a lot of good he can do and it’s worth putting up with all the bullshit and scrutiny that will accompany his appointment.””
And keep in mind that the above article was mostly about how Thiel might be tapped to become the hired of the Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board, so when he talks about things he’d like to see the government do he might be formally joining that government soon. So don’t be surprised if that ends up being a Trump agenda item. Especially now that it’s very clear YouTube is an ‘Alt Right’ outreach dream machine.
@Pterrafractyl–
Brilliant work, as usual. In this whole, dizzying, nauseating Nazi pantheon, remember that Red Ice media are run by Daniel Friberg, now a partner with Richard Spencer.
He is part of the Carl Lundstrom, Joran Jermas, Julian Assange WikiFascist crew.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-951-fascism-2017-world-tour/
Ain’t we got fun.
Best,
Dave
Here’s another recent article about the successful Breitbart-led mainstreaming of neo-Nazi ideals and how this process is being driven by various YouTube and social network ‘stars’. The article is about Patrik Hermansson, a Swedish graduate student and member of the anti-racist “Hope Not Hate”, who went undercover in September or 2016, infiltrating the secret meetings and gatherings of the ‘Alt Right’ in the US and UK.
This included attending a private dinner in the UK where reclusive American far-right figure Greg Johnson discussed the mainstreaming strategy and its success. Colin Robertson a.k.a. Millennial Woes — one of the YouTube starts mentioned in the above Right Wing Watch piece on the network of far right YouTube stars — gave a talk at the dinner talk about the importance of putting forward a friendly, accessible face: “If we don’t appear like angry misfits, then we will end up making friendships with people who don’t agree with us.”. Yes, the same guy who gets exasperated seeing white women with mixed-race children feels the need to not appear like an angry misfit in order to make friends. And apparently this strategy is working.
Another interesting interaction Hermansson managed to document during his time undercover was with Jason Reza Jorjani, a founder, along with the American white nationalist Richard Spencer and others, of the AltRight Corporation, an organization established to foster cooperation and coordination among alt-right groups in Europe and North America. According to Jorjani, “We had connections in the Trump administration — we were going to do things!” And while Jorjani claims that his fellow neo-Nazis are now cut off from the White House, he admitted that, “Our original vision was the alt-right would become like a policy group for the Trump administration,” and Steven Bannon as the “interface” with the administration.
The article also talks about the importance of the more moderate extremists (the ‘alt lite’) in promoting this mainstreaming agenda, with figures like Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich playing a key role in being socially ‘acceptable’ figures who act as gateway drugs to the more overt neo-Nazi personalities and ideas:
“This latest wave of potential members is young — teenage and 20-something men (they’re mostly men) appear to be exhibiting interest in far-right ideas in numbers that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. These young men are being radicalized largely through the work of a popular group of new far-right internet personalities whose videos, blog posts and tweets have been consistently nudging the boundaries of acceptable conversation to the right — one of the explicit goals of racist extremists everywhere.”
Going undercover to hang out with neo-Nazis. It had to be rather unsettling going to private neo-Nazi dinners, watching them all get drunk, and then listening to YouTube star “Millennial Woes”, a guy who gets angry at the sight of mixed race people, talking about the importance of not acting like an angry misfit:
And then Hermansson had to meet with people like Jason Reza Jorjani at Irish pubs so they could brag about their inside contacts with the Trump administration and how “Our original vision was the alt-right would become like a policy group for the Trump administration”:
“All he meant, he said, was that he had been in touch with people who had a direct line to President Trump, though he wouldn’t say who.”
It’s another round of Guess the White House Crypto-Nazi! Steve Bannon? Peter Thiel? Charles Johnson? Perhaps Curtis Yarvin? Michael Flynn Junior? Sebastion Gorka? Who could it be?
And while it the ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazis are currently complaining about the Trump administration not fully living up to their full blown neo-Nazi ambitions, let’s not forget that having movement leaders who don’t act like a full blown neo-Nazi is part of the ‘Alt Right’s’ long-term strategy:
If Patrik Hermansson’s undercover work was part of his graduate degree work he certainly earned it.
Interestingly, Hermansson wasn’t the only person to go undercover and report on this same ‘Alt Lite’-meets-‘Alt Right’ white supremacist network. David Lewis, a journalist in Seattle, also managed to sneak into a Seattle meeting of this network by pretending to be a white supremacist film maker. This one was hosted by the same Dr. Greg Johnson who spoke at UK private dinner Hermansson attended.
It sounds like Lewis had a pretty similar experience to Hermansson, but it’s worth noting the “secret-agent” agenda Lewis was exposed to when he expressed reservations about using his film making skills for the white nationalist cause: As Johnson put it, that’s totally fine. Lewis can just be one of the many “secret-agents”: white nationalists meet in secret at conventions while paying “lip service to diversity” at their day jobs. This allows them to get into positions of power where they can hire other racists and keep non-whites from getting into the company. That’s the plan. A Good ‘ol neo-Nazi Boy secret network:
“Much bleaker is Dr. Johnson’s Seattle-suitable, “secret agent” racism plan. Basically, white nationalists meet in secret at conventions like Northwest Forum while paying “lip service to diversity” at their day jobs. They move into positions of power where they can hire other racists and keep non-whites from getting into the company. Two years ago, this method would have seemed like a total joke, but these guys really do mostly work in tech, and they were doing a lot of networking. When talking about the people he has counseled on the “secret agent” method, Dr. Johnson has written that they include “college professors, writers, artists, designers, publishers, creative people working in the film industry, businessmen, and professionals, some of them quite prominent in their fields.” When I told Dr. Johnson I was reluctant to use my super film editing skills (I can’t even work iMovie) for the movement because I was afraid I would be outed in Hollywood he said, “You know, you can always be a secret agent, there’s no shame in that.””
So was we can see, the ‘Alt Right’ neo-Nazis aren’t simply executing a plan of ‘coming out’ on the internet and using ‘Alt Lite’ personalities to channel traffic to these ‘out’ individuals. They’re also using this coming out agenda to increasingly coordinate, in secret, for the purpose of developing a secret network of racists who hide their views so they can gain power and then secretly coordinate with all the other powerful secret racists to further that agenda.
This news report talks about Katherine Gorka’s potential policy influence. One can conclude that despite Sebastian Gorka’s ouster from the Trump Administration, Katherine Gorka’s position in Homeland Security potentially is a very substantial infiltration by the Underground Reich into the US National Security Establishment and its law enforecment policies, designed to focus on Islamic extremists, but not on Neo-Nazis and White Suprepmacists.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnhudson/the-gorka-that-matters-isnt-leaving-the-trump-administration?utm_term=.fnqW8N8NM#.peo6QZQZV
The Gorka That Matters Isn’t Leaving The Trump Administration
Sebastian Gorka is out at the White House, but his wife, Katharine, remains a force in government, wielding more power than her husband ever did.
Posted on August 29, 2017, at 4:41 p.m.
John Hudson
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From Washington, D.C.
A wide array of progressive groups claimed victory on Friday following the dismissal of White House aide Sebastian Gorka, a staunch critic of Islam whose ties to anti-Semitic groups in Hungary made him the target of a public campaign dedicated to his ouster.
But the most effective advocate of Gorka’s brand of hardline policies on Islam is still in the government: Katharine Gorka, his wife and the coauthor of scores of his policy papers. She’s staying on in her role as an adviser to the secretary of homeland security, officials tell BuzzFeed News.
Though less high-profile than her husband, who regularly appeared on television to defend the president with his plummy British accent and distinctive half-beard, half-goatee, Katharine arguably has had a bigger impact on US policy.
Unlike Sebastian, whose failure to obtain a permanent security clearance barred him from some policy discussions, Katharine has dived into the weeds, advising top officials at DHS on counterterror policies, drafting the department’s reports to Congress on terrorism recruitment, and trying to instill her anti-Islamist philosophy throughout the department.
To her supporters, she is the intellectual forebear of President Donald Trump’s promise to call out radical Islam by name and shun political correctness. She is credited with convincing the department to claw back hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for countering right-wing extremism and prioritizing the role of law enforcement in combating Islamic extremism. Her detractors accuse her of downplaying the threat of white nationalism and alienating Muslim communities who could be partners in US counter-extremism efforts.
“Katie is much more dangerous than Sebastian,” said Eric Rosand, a former senior State Department official responsible for programs on Countering Violent Extremism, or CVE. “She played a significant role in denying CVE grant funding to groups that work to de-radicalize neo-Nazis and other far right extremists and Muslim-American groups that work to build resilience against violent extremism, but without the involvement of the police.”
The grants in question include $400,000 to Life After Hate, a group that focuses on neo-Nazis, and $393,800 to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a Muslim-American advocacy group involved in community-based violence prevention. (On Monday, the Muslim Public Affairs Council called on the government to release documents of internal deliberations on the decision to cancel the grant in a Freedom of Information Act request.)
Funding to those groups was part of a $10 million appropriation by Congress from December 2015 for countering violent extremism. The Obama administration had already announced the recipients of the grants, but in January, then-DHS Secretary John Kelly halted the disbursement of funds and ordered a review of the programs. Following the review, DHS terminated the grants for Life After Hate and the Muslim Public Affairs Council while awarding grants to 26 other organizations and police departments around the country.
The decision to revoke the grant came under fire earlier this month after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville led to three deaths and 19 injuries.
Officially, the grants were rescinded because they did not meet Kelly’s new three-point criteria, which emphasized support for law enforcement, sustainability and demonstrated effectiveness. But a second former US official familiar with the process said Gorka “definitely played a role in killing the grant to Life After Hate and MPAC.”
A third former official cautioned that other Trump political appointees also may have played a role, including John Barsa, the acting assistant secretary of DHS’s Office of Partnership and Engagement; Rev. Jamie Johnson, director of the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; Tom DiNanno, an assistant administrator involved in grant programs; and Frank Wuco, a former conservative radio host who now advises on homeland security issues.
Together, those political appointees have created a culture clash at DHS as career officials grapple with a new team of terror-prevention colleagues who harbor a distinctly darker view of Islam.
The infighting adds a new layer to the ongoing debate over the government’s role in CVE. During the Obama administration, critics on the left said the government had no business running terror-prevention programs that disproportionately targeted Muslims. Critics on the right often viewed CVE as a waste of money that often amounted to anti-poverty programs masquerading as terrorism-prevention.
While those views are still held by many, the Trump era has ushered in a new class of “counter-jihadists” who see Islam as a unique threat to Western civilization, and view programs like CVE as hopelessly politically correct and lacking a tougher law enforcement component.
“Why are we not shutting down the radical mosques?” Katharine Gorka said in a 2015 interview about radicalization in the United States. Her husband shares a similar disdain for current counter-extremism programs.
“I predict with absolute certitude, the jettisoning of concepts such as CVE,” Sebastian Gorka said in November, a day after Trump won the election.
In response to this array of competing opinions, the Trump administration is considering a middle road: Scrapping the name “CVE” and rebranding it as simply “Terrorism Prevention.” The change would provide a small victory for anti-PC critics who loathed the term CVE while refraining from explicitly mentioning Islam in the program title — a move opposed by experts inside and outside the administration. The name change would be administration-wide — applying also to the State Department’s CVE programs.
Defenders of Katharine Gorka inside DHS argue that the Trump administration’s changes to CVE have been modest, and accusations that she only cares about Islamic extremism are overstated. “Katie’s been helping us advance an all-forms-of-extremism approach,” said a DHS official. He emphasized that of the 26 organizations that received funding, many do not solely focus on Islam so any claims that she’s transformed the department in this regard are divorced from reality. “I’d push back against the argument that she’s pushing the department toward an Islamist-only approach to terrorism,” he said.
What current and former officials are all in agreement about is that the Gorkas came into public office with a determination to increase the government’s focus on Islam and sow doubt about mainstream scholarship on radicalization.
The Gorkas, who met in Romania in 1994 during a symposium for young leaders, have coauthored numerous articles on terrorism — a subject they took an interest in professionally after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“Our pillow talk is the Islamic State and al-Qaeda,” Gorka told an audience during a talk about his book last November.
Sebastian, who earned a PhD in political science at Corvinus University in Budapest, entered the Trump administration through his connections with ousted White House strategist Stephen Bannon, who employed him as an editor at Breitbart. Upon entering the administration, Sebastian came under almost immediate attack as mainstream counterterrorism experts questioned his qualifications and latched onto his past statements calling the acceptance of Muslim refugees “national suicide.” Reports that he belonged to the Historical Vitézi Rend, a far-right Hungarian group that had ties to the Nazi party, also caused a PR headache. He vigorously denied belonging to the group or that he held anti-Semitic beliefs.
His failure to obtain a permanent security clearance, frequent TV appearances, and insistence that “Dr.” be included in his title, fueled accusations that he overstated his influence.
“Sebastian was essentially just a talking head with lots of bluster, but little to no influence on actual counterterrorism or CVE policymaking,” said Rosand.
In contrast to her husband, Katharine has been described by colleagues as professional and courteous and lacking in the bravado and theatrics that typify her husband’s television persona. But ideologically, the two are on the same page.
“They’ve been working together as a research team for many years,” said James Carafano, a vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation who has known the Gorkas for more than 15 years.
“They’re kind of like Kim and Fred Kagan,” he said, referring to a well-known neoconservative power couple. “One brain and two bodies.”
The grant issue isn’t the only area where Gorka has had an impact, according to former officials. She has also been linked to the departure of career DHS officials who wanted the department to engage with a broader group of Muslim-American communities she viewed as too extreme.
“Her CVE ‘worldview’ was so at odds with George Selim, the head of the CVE task force, that it led to his resignation over the summer,” said Rosand.
Selim, when contacted, declined to attribute his departure earlier this month to any one person or issue.
“It was time for me to leave, and I’m thrilled and excited to continue part of my mission at DHS at an amazing new platform at the Anti-Defamation League,” he told BuzzFeed News. Selim joined the anti–hate speech group this month as a senior vice president in charge of law enforcement and community security issues.
In previous interviews about his departure from DHS, he expressed frustration that “there were clearly political appointees in this administration who didn’t see the value of community partnerships with American Muslims.”
Despite Katharine’s ability to influence policy, it’s unclear if she’ll maintain the same sway following her husband’s unceremonious ouster from the White House. One former DHS official said the knowledge that she had an ally in the West Wing gave her significant clout within DHS — something she clearly wouldn’t enjoy with his departure.
When asked if there were any plan or expectation for she, too, to leave following her husband’s ouster, Homeland Security Press Secretary David Lapan said, “there is not.”
Moving forward, CVE experts say Katharine is currently working on the drafting of a DHS report to Congress on what the department is doing to counter the exploitation of the internet and social media as a recruitment tool for terrorists. An individual familiar with the process said Katharine “keeps putting in references to the internet being something millennials use.” A DHS official acknowledged Gorka’s input on the report but said it’s only in an early draft form and is subject to change.
Sebastian, meanwhile, is returning to Breitbart where he compared his new life to that of a Jedi Master. “It’s like the last scene from Star Wars,” he said in a recent interview. “Do you remember what Obi-Wan Kenobi said to Darth [Vader]? ‘If you strike me down, I will be more powerful than you can ever imagine.’ The left thinks they’re winning. They have no idea what’s coming around the corner.”
John Hudson is a foreign affairs reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Washington, DC.
Contact John Hudson at john.hudson@buzzfeed.com.
Another article reveals her appointment is permanant to Homeland Security at a fairley high midlevel position (GS-15) and that she was a contributing editor to Breitbart. She is a policy advisor in Homeland Security so implicitly she would have access to intelligence files.
https://theintercept.com/2017/05/23/homeland-security-hires-anti-islam-activist-katharine-gorka-as-trump-makes-overtures-to-muslim-states/
HOMELAND SECURITY HIRES ANTI-ISLAM ACTIVIST KATHARINE GORKA AS TRUMP MAKES OVERTURES TO MUSLIM STATES
Alex Emmons
May 23 2017, 12:07 p.m.
DONALD TRUMP MADE overtures toward the Islamic world during his visit to Saudi Arabia, softening his outward stance on Islam, but his administration recently appointed a recognized anti-Muslim campaigner.
Katharine Gorka, a controversial national security analyst and anti-Muslim activist, has been named as an “adviser” to the Department of Homeland Security’s policy office, after serving on President Trump’s transition team for the department. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Gorka extensively criticized DHS for teaching employees — wrongly, in her view — that Islam is a religion of peace.
Gorka’s appointment is listed in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the watchdog group American Oversight. Her title, as of April 7, is listed as adviser to the department’s office of policy. The documents also list a previous “temporary transitional” appointment in the chief of staff’s office, with a pay grade listed as GS-15, the highest standard pay for a federal civil servant, indicating a salary of at least $8,600 a month.
David Lapan, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for media operations, confirmed that Gorka’s role in the policy office was permanent and did not require Senate confirmation. Her previous appointment in the chief of staff’s office was temporary and had expired.
Gorka is the wife and frequent collaborator of Sebastian Gorka, the embattled deputy assistant to the president who has come under fire for ties to far-right groups in Hungary. Sebastian Gorka, the former national security editor for Breitbart News, has called profiling Muslims “a synonym for common sense,” and, like his wife, has accused mainstream Muslim civil rights organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations of using “subversive tactics” and having ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Before joining the Trump transition, Katharine Gorka was a contributing author to Breitbart, the far-right site favored by white nationalists. In one 2014 column, she wrote that when “Presidents Bush and Obama both publicly declared Islam to be a religion of peace” it “struck a sour chord for many,” and that “American and Western leaders have preemptively shut down any debate within Islam by declaring that Islam is the religion of peace.”
In a 2014 column, she wrote in defense of five Republican members of Congress who claimed in 2012, without evidence, that Muslim extremists had infiltrated the federal government, and that Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The allegations were denounced as Islamophobic conspiracy theories even by other Republicans.
Gorka claimed that the New York Times “provided proof of Muslim Brotherhood influence” after it published a story on the lobbying influence of Persian Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia. But far from being connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, the gulf states largely view the group’s brand of populist, political Islam as a threat. The Saudi government previously banned Muslim Brotherhood activism — even designating the group a terrorist organization in 2014.
In 2014, Gorka also pushed legislation sponsored by Rep. Michelle Bachmann, R‑Minn., to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. The legislation listed mainstream Muslim civil rights organizations in the United States as “affiliates” — groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America.
With much of its top brass vacant, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has relied on temporary appointments to fill its ranks. So far, the Senate has only confirmed two positions — the department secretary and deputy secretary — leaving 14 Senate-confirmable positions vacant, and Trump has yet to even nominate assistant secretaries to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration.
The documents obtained by American Oversight list more than 25 employees with temporary, transitional appointments.
Correction: May 23, 2017, 4:28 p.m.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Katharine Gorka’s current position in the Department of Homeland Security. She is an adviser in the department’s policy office, not a temporary adviser to the department’s chief of staff. This story has been updated to reflect Gorka’s current role.”
Here is another Article that involves Ms. Gorka and shows how she influenced Congress to focus on “radical islamic terrorism” and defunding ap program to de-radicalize neo-Nazis. This is interesting given her husbands link to Nazis. The efforts support the Trump adminstration’s policy to de-emphaze Federal Law Enforcement Efforts against Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists and focus efforts on islamic extremist despite the fact that more serious crimes were committed by a growing population of Neo-Nazis/White Supremacists.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/katharine-gorka-life-after-hate_us_59921356e4b09096429943b6′
POLITICS
08/15/2017 08:34 am ET Updated Aug 15, 2017
Controversial Trump Aide Katharine Gorka Helped End Funding For Group That Fights White Supremacy
Life After Hate works to de-radicalize neo-Nazis. The Trump administration decided it wasn’t a priority.
By Jessica Schulberg
WASHINGTON ― Weeks before a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, led to three deaths and 19 injuries, the Trump administration revoked a grant to Life After Hate, a group that works to de-radicalize neo-Nazis.
The Department of Homeland Security had awarded the group $400,000 as part of its Countering Violent Extremism program in January, just days before former President Barack Obama left office. It was the only group selected for a grant that focused exclusively on fighting white supremacy. But the grant money was not immediately disbursed.
Trump aides, including Katharine Gorka, a controversial national security analyst known for her anti-Muslim rhetoric, were already working toward eliminating Life After Hate’s grant and to direct all funding toward fighting what the president has described as “radical Islamic terrorism.”
In December, Gorka, then a member of Trump’s transition team, met with George Selim, the DHS official who headed the Countering Violent Extremism program until he resigned last month, and his then-deputy, David Gersten.
Gorka told Selim and Gersten she didn’t agree with the Obama administration’s approach to countering violent extremism ― particularly the way the administration had described the threat of extremism, according to Nate Snyder, an Obama administration DHS counterterrorism official who was an adviser on Countering Violent Extremism efforts and was given a readout of the meeting. The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized the previous administration for avoiding terms like “radical Islam” out of concern that it could alienate Muslims in the U.S. and abroad.
“That was sort of foreshadowing what was going to come,” Snyder said of the December meeting.
Gorka and Selim did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“Katharine Gorka has been integral in helping the Department broaden efforts to focus on all forms of extremism. Her work includes efforts to address everything from global jihadists threats to domestic terrorists,” Anna Franko, a DHS spokeswoman, wrote in an email.
Gorka and her husband, Sebastian Gorka, also a Trump White House official, have collaborated on numerous writings about the threat of radical Islam. Though they have a large following within far-right circles ― they both have bylines at Breitbart News ― mainstream national security experts are either unfamiliar with or critical of their work.
The day after Trump won the election, Sebastian Gorka said, “I predict with absolute certitude, the jettisoning of concepts such as CVE.”
Once Trump entered the White House in January, the office of then-DHS Secretary John Kelly ordered a full review of the Countering Violent Extremism program. Kelly’s office wanted to re-vet the groups receiving a portion of the $10 million Congress had appropriated for the program — even though DHS had already publicly announced the grant recipients.
While that review was underway, DHS and the FBI warned in an internal intelligence bulletin of the threat posed by white supremacy. White supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement,” the two agencies wrote in a May 10 document obtained by Foreign Policy. Members of the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year,” they concluded.
Staffers in the Countering Violent Extremism program have long pushed for it to address threats from domestic terrorists, including white supremacists.
But when DHS published a new list of award recipients on June 23, there was no mention of Life After Hate.
DHS also revoked funding from the Muslim Public Affairs Council, an American Muslim advocacy organization that was told in January it would receive a $393,800 grant to create community resource centers throughout the country.
After publishing its new list of grantees, DHS told Muslim Public Affairs Council that it was now prioritizing organizations that worked with law enforcement. The money that was initially set aside for community-based groups like Muslim Public Affairs Council and Life After Hate will now go to several law enforcement agencies.
“Is this really just a front for targeting the Muslim community?” asked Omar Noureldin, Muslim Public Affairs Council’s vice president. Noureldin is now looking into whether the Trump administration’s use of the Countering Violent Extremism program’s funds violates congressional appropriation intent.
Less than two months after DHS announced it was pulling funding from Life After Hate, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old Ohioan, traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, to join white supremacists armed with long guns, waving Nazi and Confederate flags and protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a local park.
Fields is now accused of ramming a Dodge Challenger into a crowd of pedestrians on Saturday, and has since been charged with second-degree murder for the death of 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer. Dozens of others were injured, and two Virginia state troopers died in a helicopter crash while monitoring the violent demonstration.
Life After Hate was founded by former white supremacists who have renounced the racist ideology and who now help others transition out of hate groups and re-assimilate into society. Christian Piccolini, a former neo-Nazi and a co-founder of the group, told NPR on Sunday he was not surprised by the devastation in Charlottesville.
The white supremacy movement “has been growing, but it’s also been shape-shifting,” Piccolini said. “It’s gone from what we would have considered very open neo-Nazis and skinheads and KKK marching, to now people that look like our neighbors, our doctors, our teachers, our mechanics.”
“And it’s certainly starting to embolden them, because a lot of the rhetoric that’s coming out of the White House today is so similar to what we preached ... but in a slightly more palatable way,” he added.
Is this really just a front for targeting the Muslim community?Omar Noureldin, Muslim Public Affairs Council
As the violence in Charlottesville unfolded on Saturday, Trump condemned “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides,” adding that the problem existed during the Obama administration. The president ignored several calls to specifically denounce white supremacists and neo-Nazis who said they were working to fulfill Trump’s campaign promises.
It wasn’t until Monday, two days after the violent rally, that Trump specifically denounced“the [Ku Klux Klan], neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups.”
Trump’s hesitancy to disavow white supremacists echoes his practice of repeatedly dodging questions about David Duke, a former KKK grand wizard who supported Trump, during the 2016 presidential campaign. Facing public pressure, Trump eventually distanced himself from the infamous white supremacist.
Now in the White House, Trump has surrounded himself with an array of people tied to white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant groups.
Katharine Gorka, now an adviser in the Department of Homeland Security’s policy office, has pushed conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the government and media. Sebastian Gorka is a deputy assistant to the president and has described Islam as an inherently violent religion. He argued days before the Charlottesville attack that white supremacy is not “the problem” facing the country.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s speechwriter and policy adviser, has blamed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on poor immigration enforcement, and accused black students of racial “paranoia.” National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton wrote under a pseudonym that Islam is “incompatible with the modern West,” and that diversity is “a source of weakness, tension, and disunion.”
And Trump himself campaigned for president on the platform of banning Muslims from traveling to the U.S. and building a wall to keep Mexicans out ― proposals that won him enthusiastic support from white supremacists.
DHS did not directly respond to a questions about why it cut funding for de-radicalizing neo-Nazis, and whether it views white supremacy as an extremist threat.
Sixteen of the 26 groups that received DHS funding “have applicability to all forms of violent extremism and as such will address the threat of domestic terrorism,” Franko, the DHS spokeswoman, wrote.
America does not do a good job of tracking incidents of hate and bias. We need your help to create a database of such incidents across the country, so we all know what’s going on. Tell us your story.
This story has been updated with an additional statement from DHS spokeswoman Anna Franko.
Oh look, a Nazi is running for Congress. As the Republican nominee. Shocker: Arthur Jones, a former leader of the American Nazi Party is the GOP nominee for Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District.
So did the GOP actually nominate this guy? Well, not exactly. That district swings so heavily Democratic that there’s almost no chance a Republican could be election. Thus, no other GOPers bothered to run. So when Jones got the required number of signatures and filed on the last possible day, the GOP was stuck with him.
Pretty sneaky, right? Well, not quite. If this had been the first time Jones pulled this stunt that would indeed be pretty sneaky. But this isn’t the first time Jones did this. Or the second time. Or third time. Or fourth time. Or fifth time. Sixth time’s a charm!
And the last time Jones tried this stunt he also managed to become the nominee and the GOP avoided this nightmare only by petitioning the state election board to disqualify him over paperwork errors. And that was in 2016. So this wasn’t remotely sneaky. It was entirely predictable.
So why didn’t the Illinois GOP find someone, anyone, to run in this sure-lose race so they could avoid Jones doing exactly what he’s tried to do five times previously and almost pulled off in the last race? Well, that’s unclear, because when the National Republican Congressional Committee was asked this question they had no response. It’s also unclear why the GOP hasn’t scrambled to find a write-in candidate despite having had 45 days do to so:
““Yes, I deny the Holocaust,” Jones said when Camerota confronted him about his views. “It’s an extortion racket. ... It is nothing but an international extortion racket by the Jews to bleed, blackmail, extort and terrorize their enemies.””
That, right there, is why the GOP is so non-plussed about having this guy as the party’s standard bearer for Illinois’s third Congressional District. He’s just way to open about his views.
And while the GOP is officially decrying Jones, it’s pretty hard to ignore the party’s completely lack of action to prevent this when it was entirely predictable that Jones would do exactly what he did and when it was so easy to prevent this:
“Was the burden not on the party to field another candidate to make sure Jones would not be the nominee?” I asked Hunt in an email. He did not respond. A spokesman for the Illinois Republican Party did not respond to a similar inquiry about coverage of Jones and whether the party should have fielded another candidate.”
And even after Jones got the nomination as the sole candidate, there was nothing stopping the GOP from fielding a write-in:
So the GOP has the opportunity to stop Jones first by actually fielding a candidate. But they didn’t. And then they could have at least tried to save face by fielding a write-in candidate. But that hasn’t happened either. Why no action? It’s quite a mystery. And not a new one.
Here’s an update on what Steve Bannon has been up to that’s also sort of the flip side of the recent story about how Marion Marechal-Le Pen recently spoke at the CPAC conference in the US and was largely enthusiastically embraced by the American conservative audience: Bannon appears to be doing some sort of European tour at the moment. He met with leaders of the AfD and was the headliner at the annual conference the National Front in France . He also hinted at meeting Viktor Orban in Hungary. And Italy, which just had its elections dominated by the ‘populist’ Five Star movement, is now described as his de facto headquarters.
But he isn’t just meeting with Europe’s far-right. He’s also continuing his long-standing drive to create a larger far-right media presence in Europe. His plan is to invest in a network of far-right ‘populist’ media outlets and develop an ‘populist foot soldiers in the language and tools of social media.’ In other words, even more people skilled in right-wing trolling techniques. You know, the stuff typically blamed exclusively on ‘Russian bots’ these days. And he actually openly endorses the use of bots.
He also says he’s weighing whether to buy a name-brand outlet, like Newsweek or United Press International, or to start a new one.
Plus, he’s really getting into cryptocurrencies. Of course.
Oh, and there’s one more goal he has in mind: WWIII. Or, as he puts it, he feels it’s important to get populist nationalist governments in place was to prepare for a coming great-powers clash with an axis of ancient Turkish, Persian and Chinese civilizations. “Elites can’t fight that fight,” he said. “Because people have to buy into it.” So, yes, he’s literally planning on prepping Europe’s right-wing for a giant global war. That’s also part of the ‘populism’ he has in mind.
So, as we can see, the mainstreaming of far-right ideas under the guise of ‘populism’ is proceeding along at a steady pace? Where does it end? Well, it apparently is going to end with WWIII. At least, that’s Bannon’s plan in his own words:
“On Saturday, he is set to headline the annual conference of France’s far-right National Front in the northern city of Lille, where he will be introduced by its leader, Marine Le Pen. People with knowledge of Mr. Bannon’s itinerary suggested that he might meet later in the weekend with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, but Mr. Bannon declined to say whether or not he would, only saying that he admired Mr. Orban as a “hero” and “the most significant guy on the scene right now.””
Headlining at the National Front conference. That’s pretty much what we should expect from Bannon at this point. Along with the rest of his European far-right networking:
And this is all part of his grand vision for ‘global populist future’. Which is apparently a world united in fixating on our differences. United in a mutual desire to continue view ‘others’ as inherently suspicious and threatening. And united in fomenting far-right revolutions that subjugate one society after another under the slogan of protecting society from the threats posed by other ‘different’ far-right societies (with the wealthy and powerful pulling the strings the whole time...he doesn’t mention that part). That’s the ‘grand vision’, even if he doesn’t quite put it that way:
And, being a media guy, it makes sense that he views as critical to achieving this goal the training of an army of ‘populist foot soldiers in the language and tools of social media.’ In other words, more right-wing trolls. A whole army of them. And that army of trolls will be wielding an even larger army of bots:
But it’s not just trolls with bot armies he has in mind. He’s also looking to buy a major publication:
And, of course, there’s the obligatory shout out to cryptocurrencies:
And this is all being done with the long-term goal of prepping the European populace for WWIII:
“Elites can’t fight that fight...Because people have to buy into it.”
A coming great-powers clash with an axis of ancient Turkish, Persian and Chinese civilizations: That’s the end goal of the ‘populism’ Steven Bannon and the forces behind him (e.g. right-wing billionaires like the Mercers) have in mind.
So how did his speech at the National Front conference go? Well, he implored the audience to view labels of racism or xenophobia as a “badge of honor”. In other words, it went about as well as one might expect for a speech by Steve Bannon at a National Front conference:
“Let them call you racists...Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.”
A badge of honor. It’s sort of the European fascist version of celebrating ‘snowflake tears’. And as Bannon sees it, the far-right really is ‘the good guys’ and “history is on our side”:
So it’s worth noting that when someone like Bannon says ‘history is on our side’, he’s implicitly implying that virtually all of the social advances of the last century or so seen in the West are against ‘the tide of history’ and will eventually be wiped away and replaced with what came before: authoritarianism, systematic racism and misogyny, anti-democratic paradigms, and a general unchecked rule by the few an the powerful. Oh, and lots and lots of nationalist propaganda to keep the clueless rabble divided and conquered. That’s the side of history that Steve Bannon is championing and that’s what his planned WWIII is going to be all about: wiping away all of those social advances in the West under the guise of fighting a ‘clash of civilizations.’
Because for Steve Bannon, ‘populism’ is really about the freedom for people like Steve Bannon to keep humanity dividing and conquering itself forever. For the benefit of people Machiavelli puppet-masters like Steve Bannon. And pretty much only those people.
Here’s an update on Steve Bannon’s plans for the Nazification of Europe: Bannon is reportedly planning on creating an organization, to be called “The Movement”, that will act as a one-stop shop for far right political tools and advice: polling data, advice on message, think-tank research, and whatever else that might help the far right win elections in Europe. Bannon likens it to the kind of investment George Soros has made for left-leaning politics, which an emphasis on providing resources to the various far right parties springing up all over Europe that may not have significant funding or political structures on their own.
In addition to having very high hopes for the project, Bannon also has near-term hopes: He wants this organization up and running for the May 2019 Europe-wide elections with the goal of creating a far right “supergroup” that controls a third of the EU parliament:
“The non-profit will be a central source of polling, advice on messaging, data targeting, and think-tank research for a ragtag band of right-wingers who are surging all over Europe, in many cases without professional political structures or significant budgets.”
A unified far right that coordinates itself through Bannon’s new non-profit. That’s the vision. A vision that includes having the far right grab at least a third of the EU parliament seats after the upcoming May 2019 election. It’s starting off with about 10 full-time staff, but if the far right does as well as Bannon hopes next year the staff its going to grow substantially:
“The Movement plans to research and write detailed policy proposals that can be used by like-minded parties; commission pan-European or targeted polling; and share expertise in election war room methodology such as message discipline, data-led voter targeting and field operations. Depending on electoral law in individual countries, the foundation may be able to take part in some campaigns directly while bolstering other populist groups indirectly.”
Keep in mind that, if Bannon is correct is most of Europe’s far right parties have yet to truly exploit modern political campaigning tactics, that does actually suggest that there’s a lot of room for these parties to grow.
And it was Bannon’s experiences with the Front National (National Front) in France that made Bannon realize that the European, let alone global, far right just isn’t pooling its resources and ideas adequately. Which, again, does suggest these movements could end up doing far better at the polls if they actually start working together more:
“Bannon said the Front National recognized that he was “the guy that goes round and understands us as a collective.””
And the fact that Bannon appears to view himself as the guy who recognizes the far right is really a trans-national collective points towards one of the under-recognized ironies of the current ‘anti-globalist’ fervor sweeping the planet: the ‘anti-globalist’ far right has global ambitions and a vision for a largely uniform planet. Every nation on the planet is to be run by more or less the same underlying authoritarian right-wing ideology. The particular traditions and cultural fetishes might vary, but the underlying ideology will be the same as it’s traditionally been throughout recorded history: some sort of strong-man rule that claims legitimacy via the promotion of national myth, propaganda, and brute force. And once the far right is in power everyone, the new globalism will be a global collective of far right nations ready to work together to squash any meaningful popular left-wing movements that might actually empower average people in every nation on the planet. Given the fact that we all live on a single planet means some sort of ‘globalism’ is inevitable. Steve Bannon’s version of globalism just happens to include an ‘anti-globalist’ patina.
If this kind of vision makes Bannon sounds like a Bond villain, well, he’s probably not going to disagree because comparisons to an evil genius appear to excite him: