With the Trump admin­is­tra­tion rolling out the pre­sum­ably-less-uncon­sti­tu­tion­al revised ver­sion of its ‘Mus­lim ban’ today, it’s prob­a­bly a good time for anoth­er peek into Steve Ban­non’s psy­che. Which unfor­tu­nate­ly means we have to take anoth­er peek into far-right hate lit­er­a­ture:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post

This Stun­ning­ly Racist French Nov­el Is How Steve Ban­non Explains The World

“The Camp of the Saints” tells a grotesque tale about a migrant inva­sion to destroy West­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

By Paul Blu­men­thal, JM Rieger
03/04/2017 05:00 pm ET | Updat­ed 10 hours ago

Stephen Ban­non, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s chief strate­gist and the dri­ving force behind the administration’s con­tro­ver­sial ban on trav­el­ers, has a favorite metaphor he uses to describe the largest refugee cri­sis in human his­to­ry.

“It’s been almost a Camp of the Saints-type inva­sion into Cen­tral and then West­ern and North­ern Europe,” he said in Octo­ber 2015.

“The whole thing in Europe is all about immi­gra­tion,” he said in Jan­u­ary 2016. “It’s a glob­al issue today — this kind of glob­al Camp of the Saints.”

“It’s not a migra­tion,” he said lat­er that Jan­u­ary. “It’s real­ly an inva­sion. I call it the Camp of the Saints.”

“When we first start­ed talk­ing about this a year ago,” he said in April 2016, “we called it the Camp of the Saints. ... I mean, this is Camp of the Saints, isn’t it?”

Ban­non has agi­tat­ed for a host of anti-immi­grant mea­sures. In his pre­vi­ous role as exec­u­tive chair­man of the right-wing news site Bre­it­bart — which he called a “plat­form for the alt-right,” the online move­ment of white nation­al­ists — he made anti-immi­grant and anti-Mus­lim news a focus.

But the top Trump aide’s repeat­ed ref­er­ences to The Camp of the Saints, an obscure 1973 nov­el by French author Jean Ras­pail, reveal even more about how he under­stands the world. The book is a cult favorite on the far right, yet it’s nev­er found a wider audi­ence. There’s a good rea­son for that: It’s breath­tak­ing­ly racist.

“[This book is] racist in the lit­er­al sense of the term. It uses race as the main char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of char­ac­ters,” said Cécile Alduy, pro­fes­sor of French at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and an expert on the con­tem­po­rary French far right. “It describes the takeover of Europe by waves of immi­grants that wash ashore like the plague.”

The book, she said, “reframes every­thing as the fight to death between races.”

Upon the novel’s release in the Unit­ed States in 1975, the influ­en­tial book review mag­a­zine Kirkus Reviews pulled no punch­es: “The pub­lish­ers are pre­sent­ing The Camp of the Saints as a major event, and it prob­a­bly is, in much the same sense that Mein Kampf was a major event.”

Lin­da Chavez, a Repub­li­can com­men­ta­tor who has worked for GOP pres­i­dents from Ronald Rea­gan to George W. Bush but opposed Trump’s elec­tion, also reviewed the book back then. Forty years lat­er, she hasn’t for­got­ten it.

“It is real­ly shock­ing­ly racist,” Chavez told The Huff­in­g­ton Post, “and to have the coun­selor to the pres­i­dent see this as one of his touch­stones, I think, says vol­umes about his atti­tude.”

The plot of The Camp of the Saints fol­lows a poor Indi­an dem­a­gogue, named “the turd-eater” because he lit­er­al­ly eats sh it, and the deformed, appar­ent­ly psy­chic child who sits on his shoul­ders. Togeth­er, they lead an “arma­da” of 800,000 impov­er­ished Indi­ans sail­ing to France. Dither­ing Euro­pean politi­cians, bureau­crats and reli­gious lead­ers, includ­ing a lib­er­al pope from Latin Amer­i­ca, debate whether to let the ships land and accept the Indi­ans or to do the right thing — in the book’s vision — by rec­og­niz­ing the threat the migrants pose and killing them all.

The non-white peo­ple of Earth, mean­while, wait silent­ly for the Indi­ans to reach shore. The land­ing will be the sig­nal for them to rise up every­where and over­throw white West­ern soci­ety.

The French gov­ern­ment even­tu­al­ly gives the order to repel the arma­da by force, but by then the mil­i­tary has lost the will to fight. Troops bat­tle among them­selves as the Indi­ans stream on shore, tram­pling to death the left-wing rad­i­cals who came to wel­come them. Poor black and brown peo­ple lit­er­al­ly over­run West­ern civ­i­liza­tion. Chi­nese peo­ple pour into Rus­sia; the queen of Eng­land is forced to mar­ry her son to a Pak­istani woman; the may­or of New York must house an African-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly at Gra­cie Man­sion. Raspail’s rogue heroes, the defend­ers of white Chris­t­ian suprema­cy, attempt to defend their civ­i­liza­tion with guns blaz­ing but are killed in the process.

Calgues, the obvi­ous Ras­pail stand-in, is one of those tak­ing up arms against the migrants and their cul­tur­al­ly “cuck­old­ed” white sup­port­ers. Just before killing a rad­i­cal hip­pie, Calgues com­pares his own actions to past hero­ic, some­times myth­i­cal defens­es of Euro­pean Chris­ten­dom. He harkens back to famous bat­tles that fit the clash-of-civ­i­liza­tions nar­ra­tive — the defense of Rhodes against the Ottoman Empire, the fall of Con­stan­tino­ple to the same — and glo­ri­fies colo­nial wars of con­quest and the for­ma­tion of the Ku Klux Klan.

Only white Euro­peans like Calgues are por­trayed as tru­ly human in The Camp of the Saints. The Indi­an arma­da brings “thou­sands of wretched crea­tures” whose very bod­ies arouse dis­gust: “Scrag­gy branch­es, brown and black … All bare, those flesh­less Gand­hi-arms.” Poor brown chil­dren are spoiled fruit “start­ing to rot, all wormy inside, or turned so you can’t see the mold.”

The ship’s inhab­i­tants are also sex­u­al deviants who turn the voy­age into a grotesque orgy. “Every­where, rivers of sperm,” Ras­pail writes. “Stream­ing over bod­ies, ooz­ing between breasts, and but­tocks, and thighs, and lips, and fin­gers.”

The white Chris­t­ian world is on the brink of destruc­tion, the nov­el sug­gests, because these black and brown peo­ple are more fer­tile and more numer­ous, while the West has lost that nec­es­sary belief in its own cul­tur­al and racial supe­ri­or­i­ty. As he talks to the hip­pie he will soon kill, Calgues explains how the youth went so wrong: “That scorn of a peo­ple for oth­er races, the knowl­edge that one’s own is best, the tri­umphant joy at feel­ing one­self to be part of humanity’s finest — none of that had ever filled these young­sters’ addled brains.”

The Camp of the Saints — which draws its title from Rev­e­la­tion 20:9 — is noth­ing less than a call to arms for the white Chris­t­ian West, to revive the spir­it of the Cru­sades and steel itself for bloody con­flict against the poor black and brown world with­out and the trai­tors with­in. The novel’s last line links past humil­i­a­tions tight­ly to its own grim para­ble about mod­ern migra­tion. “The Fall of Con­stan­tino­ple,” Raspail’s unnamed nar­ra­tor says, “is a per­son­al mis­for­tune that hap­pened to all of us only last week.”

Ras­pail wrote The Camp of the Saints in 1972 and 1973, after a stay at his aunt’s house near Cannes on the south­ern coast of France. Look­ing out across the Mediter­ranean, he had an epiphany: “And what if they came?” he thought to him­self. “This ‘they’ was not clear­ly defined at first,” he told the con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tion Le Point in 2015. “Then I imag­ined that the Third World would rush into this blessed coun­try that is France.”

Raspail’s nov­el has been pub­lished in the U.S. sev­er­al times, each time with the back­ing of the anti-immi­gra­tion move­ment.

The U.S. pub­lish­ing house Scrib­n­er was the first to trans­late the book into Eng­lish in 1975, but it failed to reach a wide audi­ence amid with­er­ing reviews by crit­ics. A rare favor­able take appeared in Nation­al Review. “Ras­pail brings his read­er to the sur­pris­ing con­clu­sion that killing a mil­lion or so starv­ing refugees from India would be a supreme act of indi­vid­ual san­i­ty and cul­tur­al health,” then-Dart­mouth pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Hart wrote in 1975. “Ras­pail is to geno­cide what [D.H. Lawrence] was to sex.” Hart added that “a great fuss” was being made over “Raspail’s sup­posed racism,” but that the “lib­er­al rote anath­e­ma on ‘racism’ is in effect a poi­so­nous assault upon West­ern self-pref­er­ence.”

The book received a sec­ond life in 1983 when Cordelia Scaife May, heiress to the Mel­lon for­tune and sis­ter to right-wing bene­fac­tor Richard Mel­lon Scaife, fund­ed its repub­li­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion. This time it gained a cult fol­low­ing among immi­gra­tion oppo­nents.

May’s mon­ey has also been instru­men­tal in fund­ing the efforts of John Tan­ton, the god­fa­ther of the anti-immi­gra­tion move­ment in the U.S. Tan­ton, who began as an envi­ron­men­tal­ist and pop­u­la­tion con­trol pro­po­nent, found­ed a host of groups focused on restrict­ing immi­gra­tion, includ­ing the Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform, the Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies, Num­ber­sUSA and U.S. Eng­lish. May’s for­tune has fueled these groups with tens of mil­lions of dol­lars in con­tri­bu­tions over the years.

Lin­da Chavez was recruit­ed in 1987 to head U.S. Eng­lish, which advo­cates for Eng­lish to be des­ig­nat­ed the country’s offi­cial lan­guage. But then a series of dis­turb­ing sto­ries paint­ed Tanton’s motives in a racial light. Among oth­er issues, Chavez said she learned that his fund­ing came from the pro-eugen­ics Pio­neer Fund and from May, who Chavez knew had helped pub­lish The Camp of the Saints. Chavez recalled see­ing Tanton’s staffers car­ry­ing the book around their offices. She quit the group.

Tan­ton, who insists his oppo­si­tion to immi­gra­tion is not con­nect­ed to race at all, told The Wash­ing­ton Post in 2006 that his mind “became focused” on the issue after read­ing The Camp of the Saints. In 1995, his small pub­lish­ing house, Social Con­tract Press, brought the book back into print for a third time in the U.S., again with fund­ing from May. His­to­ri­ans Paul Kennedy and Matt Con­nel­ly tied the book to then-cur­rent con­cerns about glob­al demo­graph­ic trends in a cov­er sto­ry for The Atlantic.

“Over the years the Amer­i­can pub­lic has absorbed a great num­ber of books, arti­cles, poems and films which exalt the immi­grant expe­ri­ence,” Tan­ton wrote in 1994. “It is easy for the feel­ings evoked by Ellis Island and the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty to obscure the fact that we are cur­rent­ly receiv­ing too many immi­grants (and receiv­ing them too fast) for the health of our envi­ron­ment and of our com­mon cul­ture. Ras­pail evokes dif­fer­ent feel­ings and that may help to pave the way for pol­i­cy changes.”

In 2001, the book was repub­lished one more time, again by Tan­ton, and again gained a cult fol­low­ing among oppo­nents of immi­gra­tion like the bor­der-patrolling Min­ute­men and even­tu­al­ly the online “alt-right.”

Bannon’s alt-right-lov­ing Bre­it­bart has run mul­ti­ple arti­cles over the past three years ref­er­enc­ing the nov­el. When Pope Fran­cis told a joint ses­sion of Con­gress that the U.S. should open its arms to refugees in Sep­tem­ber 2015, Breitbart’s Julia Hahn, now an aide to Ban­non in the White House, com­pared his admo­ni­tion to Raspail’s lib­er­al Latin Amer­i­can pon­tiff. And the novel’s the­sis that migra­tion is inva­sion in dis­guise is often reflect­ed in Bannon’s pub­lic com­ments.

The refugee cri­sis “didn’t just hap­pen by hap­pen­stance,” Ban­non said in an April 2016 radio inter­view with Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, who now works for the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. “These are not war refugees. It’s some­thing much more insid­i­ous going on.”

Ban­non has also echoed the novel’s the­o­ry that sec­u­lar lib­er­als who favor immi­gra­tion and diver­si­ty weak­en the West.

...

Now Ban­non sits at the right hand of the U.S. pres­i­dent, work­ing to beat back what Ban­non calls “this Mus­lim inva­sion.” And Trump is all in on the project. Dur­ing the cam­paign, he called for a ban on all Mus­lims enter­ing the coun­try. His Jan. 28 exec­u­tive order, since blocked in the courts, turned this cam­paign idea into exec­u­tive pol­i­cy.

Trump has con­tin­ued to defend the exec­u­tive order as a life-or-death nation­al secu­ri­ty issue. “We can­not allow a beach­head of ter­ror­ism to form inside Amer­i­ca,” he said in his first speech to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress on Tues­day.

Five days ear­li­er, Trump had called his immi­gra­tion enforce­ment efforts a “mil­i­tary oper­a­tion.”

Although Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty offi­cials walked back that state­ment, the president’s con­fla­tion of immi­gra­tion with war­fare did not go unno­ticed.

“They see this as a war,” Chavez said.

Chavez, who sup­ports some of Trump’s eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy pro­pos­als, called the direc­tion the White House is tak­ing on immi­gra­tion and race “extreme­ly dan­ger­ous.” She said Trump’s immi­gra­tion moves are “a kind of purg­ing of Amer­i­ca of any­thing but our North­ern Euro­pean roots.” Ban­non, she added, “wants to make Amer­i­ca white again.”

“The Camp of the Saints — which draws its title from Rev­e­la­tion 20:9 — is noth­ing less than a call to arms for the white Chris­t­ian West, to revive the spir­it of the Cru­sades and steel itself for bloody con­flict against the poor black and brown world with­out and the trai­tors with­in. The novel’s last line links past humil­i­a­tions tight­ly to its own grim para­ble about mod­ern migra­tion. “The Fall of Con­stan­tino­ple,” Raspail’s unnamed nar­ra­tor says, “is a per­son­al mis­for­tune that hap­pened to all of us only last week.””

Yeah, that def­i­nite­ly sounds like the kind of book we might find on Steve Ban­non’s book­shelf. Or Trump’s book­shelf, right next to the book of inspi­ra­tional speech­es.

In tan­gen­tial­ly relat­ed news, Ben Car­son gave his first offi­cial address as Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment sec­re­tary today. The top­ic of non-white immi­gra­tion to the US came up dur­ing the speech. And while he did­n’t exact­ly have a Ban­non-esque view on the top­ic, it did­n’t go very well.

Guess which Trump of Trump’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor spoke pos­i­tive­ly back in 2007 about the move by the far-right Job­bik par­ty to start its own “Hun­gar­i­an Guard” para­mil­i­tary mili­tia based on the WWII “Array Cross” Hun­gar­i­an Nazis. On TV. And if you’re tempt­ed to guess “Steve Ban­non”, that’s a good guess since he prob­a­bly would have been pro-“Hungarian Guard” at the time. But the cor­rect answer is the more obvi­ous one:

For­ward

EXCLUSIVE: Con­tro­ver­sial Trump Aide Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka Backed Vio­lent Anti-Semit­ic Mili­tia

By Lili Bay­er
April 3, 2017
BUDAPEST

As a Hun­gar­i­an polit­i­cal leader in 2007, Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, Pres­i­dent Trump’s chief counter-ter­ror­ism advis­er, pub­licly sup­port­ed a vio­lent racist and anti-Semit­ic para­mil­i­tary mili­tia that was lat­er banned as a threat to minori­ties by mul­ti­ple court rul­ings.

In a video obtained by the For­ward of an August 2007 tele­vi­sion appear­ance by Gor­ka, the future White House senior aide explic­it­ly affirms his party’s and his sup­port for the black-vest­ed Hun­gar­i­an Guard (Mag­yar Gár­da) — a group lat­er con­demned by the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights for attempt­ing to pro­mote an “essen­tial­ly racist” legal order.

Asked direct­ly on the TV inter­view pro­gram if he sup­ports the move by Job­bik, a far-right anti-Semit­ic par­ty, to estab­lish the mili­tia, Gor­ka, appear­ing as a leader of his own new­ly formed par­ty, replies imme­di­ate­ly, “That is so.” The Guard, Gor­ka explains, is a response to “a big soci­etal need.”

Hungary’s offi­cial mil­i­tary, he stressed, “is sick, and total­ly reflects the state of Hun­gar­i­an soci­ety…. This coun­try can­not defend itself.”

As he speaks dur­ing the pro­gram, a ban­ner head­line read­ing “UDK Sup­ports The Hun­gar­i­an Guard” runs across the screen. The Hun­gar­i­an acronym is a ref­er­ence to Gorka’s own, par­ty, known in Eng­lish as the New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coali­tion.

Both the inter­view­er and Gor­ka refer to the move to estab­lish the para­mil­i­tary out­fit as “the Fidesz-Job­bik ini­tia­tive,” reflect­ing Gorka’s con­tention that Fidesz, a larg­er right-wing par­ty, was qui­et­ly back­ing Job­bik in its effort.

Gorka’s affir­ma­tion of sup­port for the far-right mili­tia echoed state­ments his par­ty post­ed on its web­site that same month, back­ing the Guard’s estab­lish­ment and refer­ring to it as “the Fidesz-Job­bik ini­tia­tive,” an appar­ent attempt by Gor­ka and his par­ty to some­what dis­tance them­selves from the con­tro­ver­sial mili­tia at the same time. In one such state­ment, a par­ty fac­tion indi­cat­ed its aware­ness of the Guard lead­ers’ extrem­ism, declar­ing blunt­ly, “We sup­port the estab­lish­ment of the Hun­gar­i­an Guard despite the per­son­al­i­ties involved.” Anoth­er August state­ment spoke more gener­i­cal­ly of “a need for guards” in dis­cussing the new militia’s estab­lish­ment.

The fol­low­ing month, anoth­er par­ty state­ment attacked crit­ics of the Guard, alleg­ing that they opposed the mili­tia to please U.S. Rep. Tom Lan­tos, a Hun­gar­i­an-born Holo­caust sur­vivor who had pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to bar Guard mem­bers from enter­ing the Unit­ed States. Lan­tos, a Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­rat, cit­ed the Guard’s affin­i­ty for “the fas­cist Arrow Cross regime” that ruled Hun­gary at the end of World War II, when it par­tic­i­pat­ed in the depor­ta­tion of Hun­gar­i­an Jews into Nazi hands and killed thou­sands more.

On the TV pre­sen­ta­tion, when his inter­view­er notes the ways in which the Guard “echoes Octo­ber 1944, or some­time around then” through its uni­forms, arms train­ing and street march­es, Gor­ka strong­ly defends his party’s sup­port for the Guard, though not with­out some ambiva­lence.

“I’m not say­ing it’s a good solu­tion, but nei­ther shoot­ing train­ing nor using the Arpad flag [is] uncon­sti­tu­tion­al,” he replied. The Arpad red-and-white flag, a nation­al­ist sym­bol embla­zoned on the Guard’s uni­form, was also used by the Arrow Cross dur­ing World War II.

As for the Guard’s black vests, which the inter­view­er cit­ed as rem­i­nis­cent of the Arrow Cross’s black shirts, Gor­ka said: “When the police shows up to deal with bank rob­bers in black uni­forms, who talks about a fas­cist police in Hun­gary? Nobody! Now, it is pos­si­ble that when they put togeth­er all these things, the effect in the end will be very bad, but it’s not my prob­lem. It would be Fidesz and Jobbik’s prob­lem.”

Dur­ing the 11-minute inter­view, which aired on Hungary’s Echo TV, Gor­ka dis­missed con­cerns expressed by the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, and in par­tic­u­lar fears that the Guard pro­voked among Hun­gar­i­an Holo­caust sur­vivors. As is often the case in Hun­gary, the inter­view­er refers to Holo­caust sur­vivors oblique­ly, as “peo­ple who expe­ri­enced 1944” — when hun­dreds of thou­sands of Hun­gar­i­an Jews were deport­ed to Nazi con­cen­tra­tion camps — or as those who expe­ri­enced “the Arrow Cross regime.”

Many such peo­ple, the inter­view­er not­ed, “are say­ing now is the time to leave Hun­gary. So in effect [the estab­lish­ment of the Hun­gar­i­an Guard] is facil­i­tat­ing the flar­ing-up of anti-Semi­tism?”

“This is a tool,” Gor­ka replied. “This type of accu­sa­tion is the very use­ful tool of a cer­tain polit­i­cal class.”

The Guard was well known for its mem­bers’ anti-Semi­tism. Mem­bers often attend­ed memo­r­i­al cer­e­monies for World War II-era Hun­gar­i­an fas­cists. In a 2008 speech, István Dósa, who served in the Guard as a high-rank­ing cap­tain, referred to Jews as “Zion­ist rats” and as “locusts” while also dis­cussing “Zion­ist-Bol­she­vik geno­cide” and call­ing Hun­gar­i­an Jews “nation-destroy­ers.”

In his cur­rent posi­tion as deputy assis­tant to the pres­i­dent, Gor­ka, who immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States and became an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen in 2012, serves as Trump’s chief con­sul­tant on counter-ter­ror­ism issues, and in par­tic­u­lar on fight­ing jihadists. He has char­ac­ter­ized the Unit­ed States in this effort as a coun­try “at war” and, in a recent inter­view, reaf­firmed Trump’s call dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign for sur­veil­lance of Amer­i­can Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties. Nei­ther Gor­ka nor the White House respond­ed to emailed requests from the For­ward for a response to the infor­ma­tion the video reveals about Gorka’s sup­port for the Guard.

Crit­ics have ques­tioned Gorka’s exper­tise in the field of ter­ror­ism, which was the sub­ject of his doc­tor­al the­sis at Budapest’s Corv­i­nus Uni­ver­si­ty, where he received his doc­tor­ate. Some have cit­ed seri­ous flaws in his the­sis and not­ed his fail­ure to pub­lish any schol­ar­ship on the issue in peer-reviewed jour­nals. But his August 2007 TV inter­view also rais­es ques­tions about his under­stand­ing, at least at that point in time, of basic secu­ri­ty struc­tures and legal real­i­ties in key coun­tries that are fight­ing ter­ror­ism.

Asked dur­ing the inter­view if it was “nor­mal” for a polit­i­cal par­ty in “devel­oped democ­ra­cies” to estab­lish “in real­i­ty, a para­mil­i­tary group,” Gor­ka respond­ed: “Well it depends on which coun­try. If we look at the Swiss or Israeli exam­ple, then it’s com­plete­ly nat­ur­al…. Even in Amer­i­ca, where the largest and wealth­i­est mil­i­tary exists, there are such pro­grams where peo­ple can access weapons almost for free if they attend an orga­nized shoot­ing train­ing and always belong to an orga­ni­za­tion.”

Gor­ka dis­miss­es the interviewer’s objec­tion that the units in these coun­tries — mil­i­tary reserve units in Israel and Switzer­land, or, in the Unit­ed States, Nation­al Guard forces — “are in effect under the military’s con­trol.”

“It is clear after the dis­tur­bances in Hun­gary last year [that] a need has arisen” to which Job­bik is respond­ing, Gor­ka says.

Job­bik, which announced its estab­lish­ment of the Hun­gar­i­an Guard in June 2007, has a long record of anti-Semit­ic and anti-Roma posi­tions and state­ments. One of the Guard’s found­ing mem­bers was Gábor Vona, Jobbik’s leader. The organization’s declared aim was to defend “eth­nic Hun­gar­i­ans,” since, its founders argued, Hun­gary lacked oth­er means of “phys­i­cal, men­tal or spir­i­tu­al self-defense.”

The Guard was for­mal­ly banned in 2009, with the country’s high­est court rul­ing that its anti-Roma march­es vio­lat­ed the rights of the Hun­gar­i­an Roma com­mu­ni­ty. In 2013, two of its mem­bers were found guilty in a string of racial­ly moti­vat­ed mur­ders of Hun­gar­i­an Roma, includ­ing the killing of a 5‑year-old, com­mit­ted in 2008 and 2009.

In 2013, the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights ruled that Hungary’s unusu­al blan­ket ban on the group was legal. “The movement’s activ­i­ties and man­i­fes­ta­tions were based on the racial con­flict between Hun­gar­i­an major­i­ty and Roma minor­i­ty,” the court ruled.

Gorka’s inter­view was aired about three weeks before the Guard’s first offi­cial swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny. But at the time, many observers and Jew­ish groups were already protest­ing against the Guard and call­ing for a ban.

In an August 2007 open let­ter, World Jew­ish Con­gress Pres­i­dent Ronald S. Laud­er and Euro­pean Jew­ish Con­gress Pres­i­dent Moshe Kan­tor warned then-Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Fer­enc Gyurcsány that the “impend­ing cre­ation of an armed guard, under the false guise of ‘sport­ing and shoot­ing clubs,’ with uni­forms resem­bling those worn by fas­cists in World War II” was a dan­ger to democ­ra­cy and should be stopped.

Gorka’s par­ty, which he had launched only recent­ly, was com­pet­ing intense­ly with Job­bik and Vik­tor Orbán’s Fidesz par­ty at the time. While con­firm­ing his sup­port for the Guard, its uni­forms and its para­mil­i­tary nature, when asked whether the Guard would, indeed, resolve the prob­lems he out­lined in Hungary’s mil­i­tary and soci­ety, Gor­ka remarked: “Ah, it’s not that sure. With some kind of pre­sentable orga­ni­za­tion, or sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions, it could be pos­si­ble.”

Fol­low­ing the inter­view, the New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coali­tion post­ed a link on its own par­ty web­site, under the head­ing “UDK Sup­ports The Hun­gar­i­an Guard: Sebestyen [Sebas­t­ian] Gor­ka on EchoTV.” But near­ly two weeks lat­er, the par­ty com­plained in a post on its web­site that his com­ments had been “mis­in­ter­pret­ed.”

Dur­ing the TV exchange, Gorka’s inter­view­er allud­ed to a pop­u­lar con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in Hun­gary regard­ing Israeli secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies main­tain­ing an armed pres­ence on Hun­gar­i­an ter­ri­to­ry to back the gov­ern­ment. “As you all men­tion in the analy­sis you wrote as well, Israeli-owned secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies which also do gov­ern­ment tasks have to be liq­ui­dat­ed,” the inter­view­er told Gor­ka.

The coalition’s leader did not con­tra­dict his interviewer’s account.

The tele­vised inter­view was not the only time Gor­ka defend­ed the Guard. A month lat­er, in an inter­view with a Hun­gar­i­an online por­tal, Gor­ka said that when it comes to the Guard, “it’s not worth talk­ing about ban­ning or a nation­al secu­ri­ty risk.”

Gor­ka left Hun­gary short­ly there­after, as his efforts to build a career in pol­i­tics there failed. In 2008, after a report sur­faced in a Ger­man-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tion about his sup­port for para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tions, he wrote a let­ter deny­ing that he had ever sup­port­ed the Guard.

...

There is no evi­dence that Gor­ka him­self has ever engaged in overt­ly anti-Semit­ic acts or par­tic­i­pat­ed in any of the Guard’s activ­i­ties. But Gor­ka and some of his polit­i­cal sup­port­ers have argued that he has fought anti-Semi­tism through­out his career. The new­ly avail­able video footage sig­nals that Gor­ka not only failed to fight anti-Semi­tism, but also sup­port­ed an open­ly intol­er­ant para­mil­i­tary group and pub­licly reject­ed the Jew­ish community’s con­cerns about their own safe­ty and the safe­ty of oth­er minori­ties due to the group’s found­ing.

“The Guard was for­mal­ly banned in 2009, with the country’s high­est court rul­ing that its anti-Roma march­es vio­lat­ed the rights of the Hun­gar­i­an Roma com­mu­ni­ty. In 2013, two of its mem­bers were found guilty in a string of racial­ly moti­vat­ed mur­ders of Hun­gar­i­an Roma, includ­ing the killing of a 5‑year-old, com­mit­ted in 2008 and 2009.”

Job­bik’s “Hun­gar­i­an Guard” may not have been long-lived after all the anti-Semi­tism and mur­ders asso­ci­at­ed with it, but the under­ly­ing ideas dri­ving the “Hun­gar­i­an Guard” have clear­ly endured over the decades. And it was Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka who was try­ing to get the peo­ple dri­ven by those ideas to join Gorka’s new Hun­gar­i­an polit­i­cal par­ty, the New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coali­tion. It did­n’t work, but he tried:

...
Gorka’s par­ty, which he had launched only recent­ly, was com­pet­ing intense­ly with Job­bik and Vik­tor Orbán’s Fidesz par­ty at the time. While con­firm­ing his sup­port for the Guard, its uni­forms and its para­mil­i­tary nature, when asked whether the Guard would, indeed, resolve the prob­lems he out­lined in Hungary’s mil­i­tary and soci­ety, Gor­ka remarked: “Ah, it’s not that sure. With some kind of pre­sentable orga­ni­za­tion, or sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions, it could be pos­si­ble.”

Fol­low­ing the inter­view, the New Demo­c­ra­t­ic Coali­tion post­ed a link on its own par­ty web­site, under the head­ing “UDK Sup­ports The Hun­gar­i­an Guard: Sebestyen [Sebas­t­ian] Gor­ka on EchoTV.” But near­ly two weeks lat­er, the par­ty com­plained in a post on its web­site that his com­ments had been “mis­in­ter­pret­ed.”

Dur­ing the TV exchange, Gorka’s inter­view­er allud­ed to a pop­u­lar con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry in Hun­gary regard­ing Israeli secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies main­tain­ing an armed pres­ence on Hun­gar­i­an ter­ri­to­ry to back the gov­ern­ment. “As you all men­tion in the analy­sis you wrote as well, Israeli-owned secu­ri­ty com­pa­nies which also do gov­ern­ment tasks have to be liq­ui­dat­ed,” the inter­view­er told Gor­ka.

The coalition’s leader did not con­tra­dict his interviewer’s account.

The tele­vised inter­view was not the only time Gor­ka defend­ed the Guard. A month lat­er, in an inter­view with a Hun­gar­i­an online por­tal, Gor­ka said that when it comes to the Guard, “it’s not worth talk­ing about ban­ning or a nation­al secu­ri­ty risk.”

Gor­ka left Hun­gary short­ly there­after, as his efforts to build a career in pol­i­tics there failed. In 2008, after a report sur­faced in a Ger­man-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tion about his sup­port for para­mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tions, he wrote a let­ter deny­ing that he had ever sup­port­ed the Guard.
...

And after that unsuc­cess­ful attempt to gar­ner the Hun­gar­i­an far-right vote in 2007 Gor­ka even­tu­al­ly left to build his polit­i­cal career else­where.

And now you know the rest of the sto­ry...

Trou­ble in Par­adise? Pos­si­bly. At least that’s what Roger Stone recent­ly claimed on InfoWars. Specif­i­cal­ly, accord­ing to Stone, Jared Kush­n­er and Steve Ban­non are at war with each oth­er and Kush­n­er keeps tex­ting Morn­ing Joe’s Joe Scar­bor­ough anti-Ban­non sto­ries:

The Dai­ly Beast

Roger Stone: Kush­n­er Is Leak­ing Intel to Scar­bor­ough
The president’s friend and self-pro­claimed ‘dirty trick­ster’ alleged on InfoWars that ‘there is no ques­tion now sources are telling me’ Kush­n­er was tex­ting neg­a­tive infor­ma­tion about oth­er White House offi­cials to the MSNBC host.

Gideon Resnick
04.04.17 3:29 PM ET

Dur­ing a seg­ment on InfoWars today, Roger Stone, who was pre­vi­ous­ly an advis­er dur­ing the ear­ly months of Pres­i­dent Trump’s cam­paign, claimed to host Alex Jones that Trump’s own son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er was leak­ing infor­ma­tion to MSNBC’s Joe Scar­bor­ough.

“Jared Kush­n­er, per­haps the one pres­i­den­tial aide who can­not be fired, is now in reg­u­lar text mes­sage com­mu­ni­ca­tions with Joe Scar­bor­ough,” Stone claimed. “Many of the anti-Steve Ban­non sto­ries that you see, the themes that you see on Morn­ing Joe, are being dic­tat­ed by Kush­n­er. And while Mr. Kushner’s plate is very full with Mid­dle East­ern peace and the Chi­na vis­it, and so on, in this case I think he is dis­serv­ing the pres­i­dent.”

Stone did not respond to a sub­se­quent text and email from The Dai­ly Beast seek­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion on this claim.

“There is no ques­tion now that sources tell me that the president’s son-in-law enjoys a very live­ly text exchange with Joe Scar­bor­ough,” Stone con­tin­ued. “Joe Scar­bor­ough is no friend of the pres­i­dent, he rev­els in pass­ing fake news. He him­self has more scan­dals than you can shake a stick at.”

Scar­bor­ough has oscil­lat­ed between crit­i­ciz­ing the pres­i­dent on air and main­tain­ing a friend­ly rela­tion­ship with him, for instance recent­ly meet­ing with Trump pri­or to his address to Con­gress. Trump, in turn, has claimed over and over again that he no longer watch­es the show.

Stone said that his infor­ma­tion has not hit the news and “was break­ing on InfoWars.”

Jones respond­ed that he didn’t want to “run Jared down” because he “looks like a smart guy, good look­ing guy.” But he was adamant that, in his mind, leak­ing to Scar­bor­ough was a bad idea.

Stone would not go into detail about the claims he made.

...

““There is no ques­tion now that sources tell me that the president’s son-in-law enjoys a very live­ly text exchange with Joe Scar­bor­ough,” Stone con­tin­ued. “Joe Scar­bor­ough is no friend of the pres­i­dent, he rev­els in pass­ing fake news. He him­self has more scan­dals than you can shake a stick at.””

Could Roger Stone actu­al­ly be telling the truth for once? If so, Trump choose fam­i­ly? Or his heart? It’s quite dilem­ma. And just a day after Roger Stone makes those claims Steve Ban­non gets removed from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil prin­ci­pals com­mit­tee:

Politi­co

Ban­non oust­ed from Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion ini­tial­ly faced a bipar­ti­san wave of com­plaints over a polit­i­cal offi­cial serv­ing in a nation­al secu­ri­ty role.

By Shane Gold­mach­er, Josh Dawsey, Tara Palmeri and Bryan Ben­der

04/05/17 11:54 AM EDT

Updat­ed 04/05/17 12:26 PM EDT

White House chief strate­gist Steve Ban­non has been removed from an impor­tant seat on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil — a post­ing that had stirred con­tro­ver­sy for plac­ing one of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s top polit­i­cal hands in a key nation­al secu­ri­ty posi­tion.

The change rep­re­sents the first real diminu­tion of author­i­ty for Ban­non, who has been cast as an all-pow­er­ful whis­per­er to Trump in the administration’s first 75 days, mocked by his crit­ics as “Pres­i­dent Ban­non.”

In recent weeks, Jared Kush­n­er, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advis­er, has asked search­ing ques­tions — some­times for hours — of inside and out­side advis­ers about the White House­’s per­for­mance and com­plained about Ban­non in par­tic­u­lar, accord­ing to peo­ple who have spo­ken with Kush­n­er. Kush­n­er, a one­time New York Demo­c­rat, and Ban­non, a hard-right nation­al­ist, have clashed as Kush­n­er has told peo­ple that Bannon’s desire to decon­struct the gov­ern­ment is hurt­ing the pres­i­dent.

One per­son famil­iar with Kush­n­er’s think­ing says Kush­n­er believes Ban­non is more of a prob­lem than Reince Priebus, the chief of staff.

“Big fight is between nation­al­ists and the ‘West Wing Democ­rats,’” one senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said.

The White House tried to down­play the sig­nif­i­cance of Bannon’s removal from the NSC — it went unan­nounced by the press office — depict­ing him as sim­ply mov­ing on after suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing lim­it­ed tasks.

“It’s not like this is a major shake-up,” said anoth­er admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial.

But Bannon’s exit, revealed in a fed­er­al reg­is­ter fil­ing and con­firmed by mul­ti­ple White House offi­cials, is per­ceived to rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant long-term increase in author­i­ty for H.R. McMas­ter, Trump’s new nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, who now has greater author­i­ty over the council’s agen­da with­out one of Trump’s clos­est aides watch­ing close­ly over him.

“McMas­ter won,” one NSC offi­cial said.

One White House offi­cial said Ban­non was placed on the NSC to “babysit” Trump’s first nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, Michael Fly­nn, who resigned in mid-Feb­ru­ary after mis­lead­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence about his con­ver­sa­tions with Russ­ian ambas­sador Sergey Kislyak.

This offi­cial said Bannon’s role was also to ensure that the NSC was “de-oper­a­tional­ized” fol­low­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. “That job is done,” the offi­cial said.

“It’s not like he’s been in prin­ci­pal com­mit­tee meet­ings con­stant­ly say­ing [to McMas­ter], ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’” anoth­er of the offi­cials said. “That hasn’t hap­pened.”

Ban­non had not been a reg­u­lar attendee of NSC prin­ci­pals meet­ings. One per­son said he attend­ed one meet­ing; anoth­er said he hadn’t attend­ed any.

Some cau­tioned not to make too much of Bannon’s removal. “I get a sense that peo­ple are going, ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead,’” said Eric Edel­man, who served as under­sec­re­tary of defense for pol­i­cy in the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. “The only thing he doesn’t appear to have is a seat at the NSC prin­ci­pals com­mit­tee, and it’s not clear how impor­tant that will be.”

The imme­di­ate read­ing by sev­er­al long­time NSC offi­cials and experts was that the pol­i­cy-mak­ing body is revert­ing to a much more tra­di­tion­al struc­ture — with the nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er in the driver’s seat and meet­ings attend­ed by Cab­i­net heads, top intel­li­gence offi­cials and the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who in the Fly­nn approach was not even des­ig­nat­ed a reg­u­lar mem­ber, even as Ban­non was.

“It real­ly reflects well on H.R. McMas­ter, who has orches­trat­ed all the key moves behind the scenes in advance of announc­ing them and got­ten their approval,” David Rothkopf, author of two his­to­ries of the NSC, said in an inter­view. “That is a sign of a smart, effec­tive bureau­crat and leader. This restores the tra­di­tion­al struc­tures to the NSC. It is putting in place a pro­fes­sion­al team of nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­ers. It gives McMas­ter more author­i­ty and restores the roles of the mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence lead­er­ship.”

...

The removal of Ban­non also raised ques­tions of whether more changes are in the works, in par­tic­u­lar the fate of K.T. McFar­land, who was brought in as Flynn’s deputy and remains the No. 2 at the NSC.

“Trump loves [McFar­land], so I’m not sure McMas­ter can fire her,” an NSC offi­cial said.

One NSC source said no addi­tion­al staffing changes are planned to the agency in the near term, say­ing that NSC intel­li­gence direc­tor Ezra Cohen-Wat­nick would remain in that post. McMas­ter had tried to re-assign Cohen-Wat­nick to a dif­fer­ent posi­tion last month but was over­ruled by Trump after Ban­non and Kush­n­er inter­vened.

Cohen-Wat­nick sub­se­quent­ly became a key play­er in the con­tro­ver­sy over leaked intel­li­gence when it was revealed that he and anoth­er White House aide pro­vid­ed House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man Devin Nunes (R‑Calif.) with evi­dence report­ed­ly show­ing that com­mu­ni­ca­tions from Trump’s team were inter­cept­ed in for­eign sur­veil­lance by U.S. intel­li­gence.

In addi­tion to Ban­non, one oth­er change was made Wednes­day. Thomas Bossert, an assis­tant to the pres­i­dent for home­land secu­ri­ty and coun­tert­er­ror­ism, held co-equal sta­tus with Fly­nn when he was nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er. He is now sub­or­di­nate to McMas­ter, in anoth­er sign of the for­mer general’s empow­ered role in the Trump White House.

The changes were not wel­comed among some Trump loy­al­ists.

Flynn’s son, Michael Fly­nn Jr., tweet­ed that “Flynn/Bannon most loy­al to DJT (both out at NSC),” using the president’s ini­tials, and he com­plained that McMas­ter “wont say ‘Rad­i­cal Islam.’”

“Is WH seri­ous abt defeat­ing our ene­my?” Fly­nn Jr. wrote.

“In recent weeks, Jared Kush­n­er, Trump’s son-in-law and senior advis­er, has asked search­ing ques­tions — some­times for hours — of inside and out­side advis­ers about the White House­’s per­for­mance and com­plained about Ban­non in par­tic­u­lar, accord­ing to peo­ple who have spo­ken with Kush­n­er. Kush­n­er, a one­time New York Demo­c­rat, and Ban­non, a hard-right nation­al­ist, have clashed as Kush­n­er has told peo­ple that Bannon’s desire to decon­struct the gov­ern­ment is hurt­ing the pres­i­dent.”

Is Roger Stone cor­rect and Jared Kush­n­er just won some sort of White House turf war with Ban­non? It’s pos­si­ble, although let’s keep in mind that the removal of Ban­non appears to be part of a much larg­er shake­up of the NSC that effec­tive­ly revers­es the shake­up Trump did back in Jan­u­ary when he placed Ban­non on the NSC in the first place. And while get­ting Ban­non out of there is rea­son to breath at least a bit of a sigh of relief, keep in mind the larg­er con­text of all this: It’s hap­pen­ing right after a chem­i­cal weapons inci­dent in Syr­ia that appar­ent­ly has rad­i­cal­ly shift­ed Trump’s atti­tude towards regime change in Syr­ia, so the kinds of stuff Trump’s NSC is going to be engaged in soon could be a lot more ‘Syri­ous’. Soon. And the guy who replaced Michael Fly­nn, Lt. Gen­er­al H.R. McMas­ter, was try­ing to get var­i­ous peo­ple kicked off the NSC but was over­ruled at the behest of Steven Ban­non and Jared Kush­n­er a few weeks ago:

Politi­co

Report: Trump Over­rules McMas­ter on NSC Aide’s Ouster

Trump steps in to keep 30-year-old NSC aide

Ban­non and Kush­n­er pre­vail on the pres­i­dent to over­ride his nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er and keep a Fly­nn pro­tégé.

By Ken­neth P. Vogel and Eliana John­son
03/14/17 09:47 PM EDT

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has over­ruled a deci­sion by his nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMas­ter, to side­line a key intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who fell out of favor with some at the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, two sources told POLITICO.

On Fri­day, McMas­ter told the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Council’s senior direc­tor for intel­li­gence pro­grams, Ezra Cohen-Wat­nick, that he would be moved to anoth­er posi­tion in the orga­ni­za­tion.

The con­ver­sa­tion fol­lowed weeks of pres­sure from career offi­cials at the CIA who had expressed reser­va­tions about the 30-year-old intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and pushed for his ouster.

But Cohen-Wat­nick appealed McMaster’s deci­sion to two influ­en­tial allies with whom he had forged a rela­tion­ship while work­ing on Trump’s tran­si­tion team — White House advis­ers Steve Ban­non and Jared Kush­n­er. They brought the mat­ter to Trump on Sun­day, and the pres­i­dent agreed that Cohen-Wat­nick should remain as the NSC’s intel­li­gence direc­tor, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of the episode.

The inci­dent rais­es ques­tions about just how much auton­o­my Trump is giv­ing to McMas­ter, who was tapped last month as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er amid ques­tions about whether he’d have full staffing author­i­ty over the NSC.

It also high­lights ongo­ing ten­sions between the CIA and Trump aides who are skep­ti­cal of the agency, feed­ing into con­cerns expressed by the pres­i­dent and his allies about the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

...

“But Cohen-Wat­nick appealed McMaster’s deci­sion to two influ­en­tial allies with whom he had forged a rela­tion­ship while work­ing on Trump’s tran­si­tion team — White House advis­ers Steve Ban­non and Jared Kush­n­er. They brought the mat­ter to Trump on Sun­day, and the pres­i­dent agreed that Cohen-Wat­nick should remain as the NSC’s intel­li­gence direc­tor, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of the episode.”

Yes, just a few weeks ago Jared Kush­n­er helped inter­vene, with Steve Ban­non, to get Trump to over­rule McMas­ter and keep Ezra Cohen-Wat­nick, a pro­tege of Michael Fly­nn, on the NSC. So in that par­tic­u­lar instance Kush­n­er and Ban­non appeared to see eye to eye, although let’s keep in mind that we’ve sub­se­quent­ly learned that Cohen-Wat­nick was act­ing as the source feed­ing infor­ma­tion from the White House to House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man Devin Nunes in order to keep the ‘Oba­ma wire­tapped me!’ claim alive. So there was a dis­tinct and urgen polit­i­cal motive for Ban­non and Kush­n­er to work togeth­er on that one. But now here we are with McMas­ter keep­ing Cohen-Wat­nick on the NSC but Ban­non leav­ing. It’s a sit­u­a­tion that’s not obvi­ous how to inter­pret.

But, again, this is all hap­pen­ing right after a big change in Trump’s stance towards Syr­ia and look who just got added to the NSC on the same day Ban­non left: UN Ambas­sador Nik­ki Haley and Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Rick Per­ry, the doo­fus in charge of all the nukes. Plus, the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have also been rein­stat­ed as reg­u­lar atten­dees after they were knocked down to ‘invite only’ sta­tus dur­ing the pre­vi­ous shake­up. Which means we prob­a­bly should­n’t for­get that this big NSC over­haul is hap­pen­ing at a time when Trump is prob­a­bly prepar­ing to go to war and needs the full back­ing of his gen­er­als:

The Hill

Per­ry, Haley added to Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil prin­ci­pals com­mit­tee

By Mal­lo­ry Shel­bourne — 04/05/17 03:49 PM EDT

Unit­ed Nations Ambas­sador Nik­ki Haley and Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Rick Per­ry are slat­ed to join the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Council’s (NSC) prin­ci­pals com­mit­tee as part of its lat­est reshuf­fling.

Haley and Per­ry will now be “reg­u­lar atten­dees” of the com­mit­tee’s meet­ings, accord­ing to a mem­o­ran­dum pub­lished Wednes­day in the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter.

Haley’s addi­tion to the com­mit­tee comes the same day the U.N. envoy con­demned Tuesday’s chem­i­cal weapons attack in Syr­ia, which the U.S. has blamed on Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s regime.

The mem­o­ran­dum also solid­i­fies Per­ry’s posi­tion as an advis­er to Trump on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues, as he over­sees a vast nation­al secu­ri­ty com­plex in his role as Ener­gy sec­re­tary.

...

Nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er H.R. McMas­ter made the deci­sion to remove Ban­non, a request Pres­i­dent Trump approved. McMas­ter was tapped to lead the NSC fol­low­ing the ouster of nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Michael Fly­nn in Feb­ru­ary.

The deci­sion to add Ban­non in a Jan­u­ary reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the NSC was met with ire from Democ­rats and some nation­al secu­ri­ty experts, who argued that his involve­ment could politi­cize the NSC.

The direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have also been rein­stat­ed as reg­u­lar atten­dees, while the CIA direc­tor has been added to the com­mit­tee.

Under a 2009 pres­i­den­tial pol­i­cy direc­tive when for­mer Pres­i­dent Oba­ma took office, the direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence and the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs were list­ed as “reg­u­lar mem­bers.” But Trump’s Jan­u­ary reshuf­fling order said the direc­tor and the chair­man would attend meet­ings only “where issues per­tain­ing to their respon­si­bil­i­ties and exper­tise are to be dis­cussed.”

“The mem­o­ran­dum also solid­i­fies Per­ry’s posi­tion as an advis­er to Trump on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues, as he over­sees a vast nation­al secu­ri­ty com­plex in his role as Ener­gy sec­re­tary.”

So while it’s pos­si­ble that Roger Stone is cor­rect about some sort of Bannon/Kushner turf war, giv­en the larg­er con­text of a pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cant ramp­ing up of the US’s mil­i­tary involve­ment in Syr­ia and the addi­tion of Nik­ki Haley and Rick “I’m in charge of nukes now?” Per­ry to the NSC, it’s hard to inter­pret the big shake­up as the NSC as over­all a good sign. Although it is quite nice to see Ban­non out of there.

Here’s a ques­tion raised by the sud­den shake­up of Trump’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Ban­non’s appar­ent ouster: So what’s hap­pen­ing with the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group (SIG)? It’s a pret­ty big ques­tion con­sid­er­ing it’s a think tank described as the “Alt-NSC” that was cre­at­ed by Steven Ban­non and Jared Kush­n­er soon after Ban­non’s ele­va­tion to the NSC Prin­ci­ples Com­mit­tee and was look­ing like it might eclipse the NSC in shap­ing Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy (with a dis­tinct Alt-Right lean­ing) just a few weeks ago:

Alter­Net

Ban­non and Trump Have Qui­et­ly Installed an Alt-Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Oper­at­ing Inside the White House

The Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group is the White House pipeline to the white nation­al­ists of the Euro­pean right.

By Jef­fer­son Mor­ley
March 14, 2017

Less than a month after much-admired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMas­ter took over from Lt. Gen. Michael Fly­nn as nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, Trump’s alter-ego Steve Ban­non appears to be more in con­trol of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy than ever.

There is lit­tle sign McMas­ter will be able to restore tra­di­tion­al U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy com­mit­ments to NATO and the Euro­pean Union, and every indi­ca­tion that Bannon’s shad­owy Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group, denounced by two nation­al secu­ri­ty experts as “dan­ger­ous hypocrisy,” is dri­ving U.S. pol­i­cy.

McMas­ter, a lieu­tenant gen­er­al with a rep­u­ta­tion as an intel­lec­tu­al, was per­haps the last-gasp hope of Washington’s for­eign pol­i­cy pro­fes­sion­als against the rad­i­cal ambi­tions of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. He was seen as a man who could speak unpop­u­lar truths to Trump and block Bannon’s impro­vi­sa­tions while restor­ing a degree of con­ti­nu­ity to U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy under Oba­ma and Bush.

Los­ing Ground

No soon­er had Fly­nn been fired over undis­closed meet­ings with a Russ­ian diplo­mat, it was report­ed that McMas­ter would impose order on Flynn’s chaot­ic NSC, purg­ing ide­o­logues and remov­ing Ban­non from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil as urged by Admi­ral Mike Mullen, the for­mer chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Giv­en the grav­i­ty of the issues the NSC deals with, it is vital that that body not be politi­cized, and Ban­non’s pres­ence as a mem­ber of that body politi­cizes it instant­ly,” Mullen said.

McMas­ter urged Trump not to use the term “rad­i­cal Islam­ic ter­ror­ism,” argu­ing, along with vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er U.S. mil­i­tary leader, that the phrase only alien­ates friend­ly Mus­lims and increas­es the risk to U.S. per­son­nel sta­tioned in Islam­ic coun­tries with­out pro­vid­ing any mil­i­tary or polit­i­cal advan­tages.

McMaster’s influ­ence has been fad­ing ever since. There would be no “purge” at NSC, an unnamed senior White House offi­cial told For­eign Pol­i­cy. “Key NSC offi­cials focused on the Mid­dle East and oth­er vital areas will keep their posi­tions in the near term,” the offi­cial said.

Ban­non remains on the NSC’s Prin­ci­pals Com­mit­tee, while the chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is only a part-time par­tic­i­pant.

Trump point­ed­ly ignored McMaster’s advice and denounced “rad­i­cal Islam­ic ter­ror­ism” in his address to the Con­gress, much to the sat­is­fac­tion of deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka. A light­ly cre­den­tialed acolyte of Ban­non, Gor­ka seems to have more influ­ence with Trump than McMas­ter, a dec­o­rat­ed lieu­tenant gen­er­al.

While Col­in Kahl, for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er to Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, recent­ly expressed hope that an “axis of adults” can take con­trol of Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy, all indi­ca­tions are that the “axis of ide­o­logues,” led by Ban­non and Gor­ka, are ascen­dant.

What SIG does

The Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group is emerg­ing as Bannon’s con­duit for aid­ing the pop­ulist right in Europe. Described as a “White House think tank,” SIG is run by Chris Lid­dell, for­mer­ly chief finan­cial offi­cer at a Hol­ly­wood tal­ent agency. The group’s mis­sion is described as sup­port­ing Trump admin­is­tra­tion col­lab­o­ra­tion with “pri­vate forums.”

In prac­tice, that seems to mean Lid­dell will assist in mar­ket­ing the mes­sage of the chau­vin­ist Euro­pean right.

Last week, Gor­ka sig­naled the ascen­dant ide­ol­o­gy by endors­ing a white nation­al­ist opus by George­town Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Joshua Mitchell in the debut issue of a pol­i­cy jour­nal called Amer­i­can Affairs.

For glob­al­ists, Mitchell writes, “polit­i­cal jus­tice involved mate­r­i­al growth made pos­si­ble by glob­al man­age­ment and the iden­ti­ty debt-points that glob­al elites dis­pensed to this or that oppressed ‘iden­ti­ty’ group as a con­se­quence of past infrac­tions or of the irre­deemable fault of others—typically (the imag­i­nary cat­e­go­ry of) White Peo­ple.”

“The dark Protes­tant machi­na­tions about human free­dom and pride that drove Pres­i­dent Bush and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, respec­tive­ly, make no appear­ance in the think­ing of Trump,” Mitchell writes. “He will ask of for­eign nations, sim­ply, are they going to be allies or not; and will Amer­i­ca be able to win with or with­out them?”

In oth­er words, Euro­peans who favor eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion, eth­nic plu­ral­ism and mil­i­tary deter­rence of Rus­sia are no longer regard­ed as U.S. allies.

“Trump has made clear that he’s at best indif­fer­ent, if not open­ly hos­tile to the mod­ern Euro­pean project, and Ban­non has indi­cat­ed that anti‑E.U. pop­ulists have a friend in the White House,” writes Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive James Kirchick in the Ger­man dai­ly, FAZ.

Ban­non approved of the vis­it of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen to Trump Tow­er in Jan­u­ary. He pub­lished Dutch anti-immi­gra­tion leader Geert Wilders in Bre­it­bart News. And now he seems to be tar­get­ing Angela Merkel, the pro-immi­gra­tion Ger­man prime min­is­ter who has emerged as the de fac­to leader of Europe, if not the free world. Merkel, who faces elec­tions this fall, cer­tain­ly sees Ban­non’s media strat­e­gy as a threat.

...

While Ban­non often talks in apoc­a­lyp­tic terms about war between the Chris­t­ian West and Islam, his ini­tial moves in the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil are more polit­i­cal than mil­i­taris­tic. Through SIG, Ban­non seeks to mid­wife a more nation­al­ist and Chris­t­ian Europe, as a pre­lude to esca­lat­ing a “clash of civ­i­liza­tions” war against Islam.

...

“There is lit­tle sign McMas­ter will be able to restore tra­di­tion­al U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy com­mit­ments to NATO and the Euro­pean Union, and every indi­ca­tion that Bannon’s shad­owy Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group, denounced by two nation­al secu­ri­ty experts as “dan­ger­ous hypocrisy,” is dri­ving U.S. pol­i­cy.”

That was how things looked just a few weeks ago: H.R. McMas­ter, who was brought in to replace Michael Fly­nn, was unable to per­suade Trump to dump Ban­non off the NSC and the SIG was emerg­ing as not just a com­peti­tor to the NSC in craft­ing Trump’s for­eign pol­i­cy but even more more influ­en­tial:

...
The Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group is emerg­ing as Bannon’s con­duit for aid­ing the pop­ulist right in Europe. Described as a “White House think tank,” SIG is run by Chris Lid­dell, for­mer­ly chief finan­cial offi­cer at a Hol­ly­wood tal­ent agency. The group’s mis­sion is described as sup­port­ing Trump admin­is­tra­tion col­lab­o­ra­tion with “pri­vate forums.”

In prac­tice, that seems to mean Lid­dell will assist in mar­ket­ing the mes­sage of the chau­vin­ist Euro­pean right.

Last week, Gor­ka sig­naled the ascen­dant ide­ol­o­gy by endors­ing a white nation­al­ist opus by George­town Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Joshua Mitchell in the debut issue of a pol­i­cy jour­nal called Amer­i­can Affairs.
...

“In prac­tice, that seems to mean Lid­dell will assist in mar­ket­ing the mes­sage of the chau­vin­ist Euro­pean right.”

So what the deal with the SIG? Is it get­ting demot­ed too? Are there any more issues of “Amer­i­can Affairs” (pro­mot­ing white nation­al­ist opus­es)?

Well, it’s worth not­ing that just a day before this big NSC shake­up, the SIG was demot­ed. Sort of. Remem­ber the Office of Amer­i­can Inno­va­tion (OAI) that was recent­ly cre­at­ed for Jared Kush­n­er to over­haul and pri­va­tize the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment? Well, the White House is now say­ing the SIG nev­er exist­ed and was instead replaced by OAI:

The Hill

WH: Inter­nal Ban­non think tank nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed

By Jonathan Easley — 04/04/17 05:27 PM EDT

The White House is down­play­ing the impor­tance of an inter­nal pol­i­cy shop that was once believed to be the brain­child and pow­er cen­ter of chief strate­gist Stephen Ban­non, say­ing the Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group (SIG) nev­er even exist­ed.

That appears to con­tra­dict media reports and the claims of at least one White House staffer who pre­vi­ous­ly said that he was a mem­ber of the SIG.

The group — described in scores of media reports as an inter­nal think tank launched by Ban­non, chief of staff Reince Priebus and senior advis­er Jared Kush­n­er — would be irrel­e­vant now even if it had formed, a White House aide said.

Any need there may have been for the inter­nal pol­i­cy shop, which crit­ics have described as an attempt by Ban­non to pro­mote his own agen­da, is moot now that Pres­i­dent Trump has tapped Kush­n­er to run the Office of Amer­i­can Inno­va­tion (OAI), which is charged with gov­ern­ment mod­ern­iza­tion, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple White House offi­cials.

“I’ve nev­er known [SIG] to exist,” said a White House aide. “There was a lot of spec­u­la­tion about this ear­ly, but it was nev­er offi­cial­ly rolled out and if any­thing, the OAI is an evo­lu­tion and real­iza­tion of some of these ini­tial ideas.”

A sec­ond White House offi­cial said the SIG was “always infor­mal” and has since “mor­phed to the new group,” the OAI.

A third White House offi­cial echoed that sen­ti­ment but said it’s pos­si­ble that Ban­non could still use the SIG for his own projects.

Mem­bers of the SIG once talked open­ly about their involve­ment and the group’s ini­tia­tives.

In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, a deputy assis­tant to the pres­i­dent who is a mem­ber of the group, hit the air­waves to dis­pute reports that the SIG was an effort by Ban­non to launch his own sphere of influ­ence to rival the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, which at the time was helmed by Michael Fly­nn, Trump’s for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er.

Gor­ka said that, as a mem­ber of SIG, he was work­ing on a cyber-secu­ri­ty task force with for­mer New York City may­or Rudolph Giu­liani. There were also projects aimed at tack­ling vet­er­ans affairs issues, U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing and gov­ern­ment tech­nol­o­gy and infra­struc­ture.

“We are charged with doing long-range ini­tia­tives that are real­ly impor­tant to the pres­i­dent,” Gor­ka told CNN at the time.

“We have a Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group to do things with the pri­vate indus­try and bring in out­side experts on key issues such as gov­ern­ment IT, and that is very dif­fer­ent from what the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil is doing every day under the ster­ling lead­er­ship of Gen­er­al Fly­nn.”

Kush­n­er will now spear­head gov­ern­ment mod­ern­iza­tion efforts — and the var­i­ous oth­er projects in his ever-expand­ing port­fo­lio — as the head of OAI.

When the ini­tial reports sur­faced about the SIG, crit­ics believed that Ban­non would use the plat­form to push his own long-term for­eign pol­i­cy goals sep­a­rate from the NSC, which han­dles day-to-day nation­al secu­ri­ty devel­op­ments.

Reports about the SIG’s cre­ation came as, in a con­tro­ver­sial move after the elec­tion, Trump ele­vat­ed Ban­non to the NSC prin­ci­pals com­mit­tee, a spot typ­i­cal­ly reserved for mil­i­tary offi­cials.

At the time of the first reports about the SIG’s for­ma­tion in late Jan­u­ary, crit­ics wor­ried that it was a fur­ther exam­ple of Bannon’s out­sized influ­ence inside the White House.

...

“Any need there may have been for the inter­nal pol­i­cy shop, which crit­ics have described as an attempt by Ban­non to pro­mote his own agen­da, is moot now that Pres­i­dent Trump has tapped Kush­n­er to run the Office of Amer­i­can Inno­va­tion (OAI), which is charged with gov­ern­ment mod­ern­iza­tion, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple White House offi­cials.”

That’s the new line from the White House: The SIG is a non-enti­ty and made redun­dant by the OAI under Kush­n­er’s con­trol. So does that mean the SIG was dis­band­ed? Well...

...
A third White House offi­cial echoed that sen­ti­ment but said it’s pos­si­ble that Ban­non could still use the SIG for his own projects.
...

That sure sounds like the SIG is still up and run­ning. And now that Jared Kush­n­er is run­ning the OAI to appar­ent­ly do much of what the SIG was set up to do it seems like a good bet that SIG is going to be increas­ing­ly just Ban­non’s white nation­al­ist think tank in the White House.

So the ques­tion remains, is the SIG going to still be a deeply influ­en­tial white nation­al­ist think tank that Ban­non can use to devel­op of alter­nate for­eign pol­i­cy or is it slow­ly fad­ing away? It would be nice to get a answer on that but con­sid­er­ing the White House does­n’t appear to want to acknowl­edge that the SIG ever exist­ed we prob­a­bly should­n’t expect an straight response. Although if we see more issues put out by the SIG’s white nation­al­ist new jour­nal that will be a clue.

One of the more curi­ous aspects of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s gen­er­al embrace of Steve Ban­non’s world­view was the strange con­tra­dic­tion between an alleged white nation­al­ist iso­la­tion­ism that called for an “Amer­i­ca First” eschew­ing of for­eign entan­gle­ments cou­ple with Steve Ban­non’s appar­ent desire to see a WWI­II-style clash of civ­i­liza­tions. It’s quite a tightrope act. So with Don­ald Trump launch­ing 59 cruise mis­siles against an air base in Syr­ia fol­low­ing an alleged chem­i­cal weapons attack by the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment per­haps it’s not super sur­pris­ing that there are reports that Trump White House is actu­al­ly con­sid­er­ing not just pulling Ban­non off the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil but remov­ing him alto­geth­er. Steven Ban­non the iso­la­tion­ist might not fit in with a White House plan­ning on major mil­i­tary involve­ment in Syr­ia. But what about Ban­non the glob­al war­mon­ger who is intent on a giant clash of civ­i­liza­tions between “the West” and “Islam”? Isn’t that Ban­non exact­ly the kind of fig­ure we should expect to be play­ing a lead­ing role in just this sit­u­a­tion? It’s all quite a head scratch­er. But, yeah, White House insid­ers are appar­ent­ly say­ing Steven Ban­non, along with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, might be out soon:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Livewire

Reports: Trump Weigh­ing Major Shake­up That Could Ax Priebus, Ban­non

By Alle­gra Kirk­land
Pub­lished April 7, 2017, 3:19 PM EDT

The clash between the many rival pow­er cen­ters in Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s White House may final­ly be com­ing to a head.

Accord­ing to twin reports out Fri­day from Axios and the Wall Street Jour­nal, Trump is fed up with palace intrigue sto­ries about his top aides and is con­sid­er­ing remov­ing his Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strate­gist Steve Ban­non.

The tim­ing of poten­tial Priebus and Ban­non exits, as well as who would replace them if they depart­ed the White House, was unclear from the reports. Of course, Trump is famous­ly mer­cu­r­ial and could just as quick­ly decide to keep both men on board as dis­miss them.

Both sites report­ed that Trump’s eco­nom­ic advis­er, Gary Cohn, is under con­sid­er­a­tion to replace Priebus. Unnamed White House advis­ers also told Axios that House Major­i­ty Leader Kevin McCarthy (R‑CA) and two far less­er-known Trump allies, Black­stone Group’s Wayne Berman and Amer­i­can Con­ti­nen­tal Group’s David Urban, are oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties.

White House Deputy Press Sec­re­tary Lind­say Wal­ters adamant­ly denied the reports in a state­ment to Time’s Zeke Miller, call­ing it a “com­plete­ly false sto­ry.”

“The only thing we are shak­ing up is the way Wash­ing­ton oper­ates as we push the President’s aggres­sive agen­da for­ward,” Wal­ters said.

NEW: State­ment from WH spox @LWalters45 deny­ing shake-up reports pic.twitter.com/CnXaNhY8en— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) April 7, 2017

The first sign that Bannon’s favor may be fad­ing came Wednes­day with the sud­den announce­ment that he was being removed from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Council’s Prin­ci­pals’ Com­mit­tee. While for­eign pol­i­cy experts cau­tioned that move alone wasn’t enough to assume Bannon’s role was dimin­ished, giv­en his con­tin­ued access to the Pres­i­dent, the rumor mill that has Ban­non on the outs kicked into over­drive over the past 48 hours.

Sev­er­al reports cit­ing anony­mous White House aides sur­faced in that time peri­od describ­ing bit­ter fight­ing between Ban­non and Trump’s son-in-law and top advis­er, Jared Kush­n­er.

Oth­ers, like this Fri­day Wash­ing­ton Post sto­ry, claimed that Ban­non was the one con­sid­er­ing a depar­ture, pre­fer­ring the free-wheel­ing, knives-out strat­e­gy of cam­paign­ing to his new but­toned-up real­i­ty in the White House.

As the Post report­ed, “One friend said he hates attend­ing meet­ings, bemoans the need to fre­quent­ly wear suits, and finds the gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cy sti­fling.”

Ban­non has dis­missed sto­ries about an impend­ing depar­ture as “100 per­cent non­sense.”

...

“Accord­ing to twin reports out Fri­day from Axios and the Wall Street Jour­nal, Trump is fed up with palace intrigue sto­ries about his top aides and is con­sid­er­ing remov­ing his Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strate­gist Steve Ban­non.”

Well, we’ll pre­sum­ably find out rel­a­tive­ly soon if there’s any truth to these reports. But don’t for­get that Ban­non does­n’t actu­al­ly need to be on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to exert enor­mous influ­ence over Trump so we his appar­ent demo­tion at the NSC is the only appar­ent demo­tion we see, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that we’re look­ing at polit­i­cal the­ater. But also don’t for­get that if the Trump admin­is­tra­tion real­ly is plan­ning on engag­ing in a much deep mil­i­tary engage­ment in the Mid­dle East hav­ing Steven Ban­non open­ly whis­per­ing in his ear is just hor­ri­ble pub­lic rela­tions and risks turn­ing Amer­i­ca’s upcom­ing for­eign inter­ven­tions into “Ban­non’s war(s)”.

Of course, it’s pos­si­ble that the mis­sile strike on the Syr­i­an air base is also just the­atrics and we aren’t about to see a major new US mil­i­tary ini­tia­tive in the region. It’s pos­si­ble. But if not and the US does end up enter­ing into the Syr­i­an war with the intent on remov­ing the Assad gov­ern­ment and putting the rebels in pow­er, it’s going to be very inter­est­ing to see how Trump’s team plans on doing that with­out replace Assad with al Qae­da:

Alter­Net
The Gray­Zone Project

Is Trump Res­cu­ing Al-Qaeda’s ‘Heart­land’ in Syr­ia?
West­ern inter­ven­tion would save Syr­i­a’s belea­guered al-Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed rebels.

By Max Blu­men­thal, Ben Nor­ton / Alter­Net
April 5, 2017

After for­mal­ly call­ing off the long­stand­ing U.S. pol­i­cy of regime change in Syr­ia, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is send­ing sig­nals of shift­ing its Syr­ia pol­i­cy under mas­sive polit­i­cal pres­sure fol­low­ing a gris­ly chem­i­cal attack in the rebel-held province of Idlib.

The chem­i­cal attack alleged­ly took place on April 4. Dozens of civil­ians were report­ed­ly killed, although many details are still unknown.

“We have not yet any offi­cial or reli­able con­fir­ma­tion” of what took place or who was respon­si­ble, said the UN spe­cial envoy for Syr­ia, Staffan de Mis­tu­ra, at a press con­fer­ence after the inci­dent.

“We also do not have evi­dence at the moment,” added Fed­er­i­ca Mogheri­ni, high rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the EU for for­eign affairs and secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy.

The chem­i­cal attack occurred just as peace talks were begin­ning in Gene­va, and with the Syr­i­an army in a dom­i­nant posi­tion in the sixth year of a war fueled by out­side pow­ers.

The attacks threat­en to reverse the polit­i­cal gains made by the gov­ern­ment of Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad, lead­ing to unre­lent­ing bipar­ti­san pres­sure for Don­ald Trump to autho­rize a bomb­ing cam­paign tar­get­ing the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and its mil­i­tary.

For the al-Qae­da-allied rebels who were oust­ed from their strong­hold in east­ern Alep­po in Decem­ber 2016, and whose gains in a recent series of offen­sives have been rapid­ly reversed, West­ern mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion is the only hope.

Giv­en its dom­i­nant posi­tion, why would the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment autho­rize a chem­i­cal attack that was like­ly to trig­ger renewed calls for regime change? The answer remains elu­sive.

War on the table

Despite a dearth of inde­pen­dent­ly sourced evi­dence about the attack, Nik­ki Haley, the U.S. ambas­sador to the UN, warned that the U.S. was “com­pelled to take our own action” in Syr­ia, although it was unclear what she meant by this.

For his part, Sec­re­tary of State Rex Tiller­son said there was “no doubt in our mind” that the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment car­ried out a chem­i­cal attack in Idlib, but pro­vid­ed no evi­dence to sup­port his claim. Tiller­son warned Rus­sia it should recon­sid­er its alliance with Pres­i­dent Assad, sug­gest­ing regime change was back on the table.

The Pen­ta­gon has report­ed­ly begun draw­ing up a list of tar­gets to attack. (Update: Sev­er­al hours after this arti­cle was pub­lished, the U.S. attacked the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, launch­ing 59 Tom­a­hawk mis­siles at the Shayrat air base, in the city of Homs. ISIS seized on the oppor­tu­ni­ty and launched an offen­sive against the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment imme­di­ate­ly after the U.S. strike. The attack was like­wise applaud­ed by the Salafi jihadist mili­tia Ahrar al-Sham, Sau­di Ara­bia and Israel.)

The media has helped spread the war fever. New York Times colum­nist and Iraq war cheer­leader Thomas Fried­man reflex­ive­ly pro­posed that Syr­ia be par­ti­tioned, with U.S. troops if nec­es­sary. On CNN, cor­re­spon­dent Arwa Damon wept over the lack of U.S. resolve, sug­gest­ing that a bomb­ing cam­paign against Dam­as­cus would some­how salve the wounds of Syr­ia.

But there has been one issue major media out­lets have refused to touch, and that is the nature of the rebels who would gain from any U.S. mil­i­tary offen­sive. Who holds pow­er in Idlib, why are they there and what do they want? This is per­haps the most incon­ve­nient set of ques­tions for pro­po­nents of “human­i­tar­i­an” mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia.

The real­i­ty is that Idlib is sub­stan­tial­ly con­trolled by al-Qaeda’s Syr­i­an affil­i­ate, which has gone through a series of rebrand­ing schemes but remains the same jihadist group it always was: Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. In the province it rules, al-Nus­ra has imposed what a lead­ing schol­ar has described as a Tal­iban-like regime that has eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed reli­gious and eth­nic minori­ties, banned music and estab­lished a bru­tal theoc­ra­cy in which it pub­licly exe­cutes women accused of adul­tery.

Even ana­lysts who have repeat­ed­ly called for U.S.-led regime change in Syr­ia have described Idlib as the “heart­land of al-Nus­ra.”

The ‘Tal­iban­iza­tion of Idlib’

Joshua Lan­dis, the direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa’s Mid­dle East Stud­ies Cen­ter, is among the lead­ing U.S. schol­ars of Syr­ia, and lived in the coun­try for sev­er­al years. In a Jan­u­ary 2016 arti­cle in For­eign Affairs, Lan­dis pro­vid­ed a chill­ing sur­vey of life in Idlib:

“To judge how incom­pe­tent the rebels have been in pro­vid­ing a viable or attrac­tive alter­na­tive to Assad, one need mere­ly con­sid­er the sit­u­a­tion in the province of Idlib, where the rebels rule. Schools have been seg­re­gat­ed, women forced to wear veils, and posters of Osama bin Laden hung on the walls. Gov­ern­ment offices were loot­ed, and a more effec­tive gov­ern­ment has yet to take shape. With the Tal­iban­iza­tion of Idlib, the 100-plus Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies of the city fled. The few Druze vil­lages that remained have been forced to denounce their reli­gion and embrace Islam; some of their shrines have been blown up. No reli­gious minori­ties remain in rebel-held Syr­ia, in Idlib, or else­where. Rebels argue that Assad’s bomb­ing has ensured their fail­ure and made rad­i­cal­iza­tion unavoid­able. But such excus­es can go only so far to explain the ter­ri­ble state of rebel Syr­ia or its excess­es. We have wit­nessed the iden­ti­cal evo­lu­tion in too many oth­er Arab coun­tries to pin it sole­ly on Assad, despite his cul­pa­bil­i­ty for the dis­as­ter that has engulfed his coun­try.”

More hawk­ish experts have acknowl­edged the same. On a pan­el in Jan­u­ary at the Atlantic Coun­cil, a pro-regime change think tank that is fund­ed by West­ern gov­ern­ments and their allies, Nan­cy Okail, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Tahrir Insti­tute, acknowl­edged that Syr­ia is today the “newest and most impor­tant safe haven for [al-Qaeda’s] ide­ol­o­gy.”

“There is a new gen­er­a­tion of Syr­i­an chil­dren that is grow­ing up with al-Qaeda’s ide­ol­o­gy in some parts of rebel-held Syr­ia as the norm,” added Jen­nifer Cafarel­la, a lead intel­li­gence plan­ner at the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive think tank the Insti­tute for the Study of War, which has received fund­ing from the biggest names in the mil­i­tary indus­try, includ­ing Northrop Grum­man, Raytheon, Gen­er­al Dynam­ics, and Dyn­Corp.

Charles Lis­ter, per­haps the fore­most advo­cate of regime change and the arm­ing of Islamist rebels in Syr­ia, sound­ed a sim­i­lar note. He explained, “Peo­ple on the ground in dif­fer­ent areas of Syr­ia are increas­ing­ly will­ing not just to accept al-Qae­da oper­at­ing with­in their midst, but are actu­al­ly will­ing to overt­ly sup­port the fact that they are in their midst.”

He lat­er warned, “al-Qaeda’s rel­a­tive suc­cess in Syr­ia has seen its ide­ol­o­gy and its nar­ra­tive main­streamed, not just in parts of Syr­ia, but also in parts of the region.”

Lis­ter not­ed local pop­u­la­tions have protest­ed not just the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, but also the al-Qae­da extrem­ists ter­ror­iz­ing them. Peo­ple liv­ing under rebel rule in Idlib, Lis­ter indi­cat­ed, have been lament­ing, “This place is hell; we don’t want to live under this Islamist rule, under all this oppres­sion.” In Idlib, “they see what life would be like under this orga­ni­za­tion, and they don’t like it.”

In 2016, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al pub­lished a report doc­u­ment­ing an array of “seri­ous vio­la­tions of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law” com­mit­ted by mil­i­tant groups in Idlib and else­where, includ­ing sum­ma­ry killings, tor­ture, abduc­tions, and sec­tar­i­an attacks. The report detailed how extrem­ist Syr­i­an rebels have imposed harsh Sharia law in the areas they con­trol.

With music offi­cial­ly out­lawed in Idlib, the U.S.-funded media out­let Radio Fresh has resort­ed to nov­el mea­sures. Instead of music, sta­tion direc­tor Raed Fares has been reduced to broad­cast­ing the sound of bleat­ing goats and bird chirps. Ordered by Idlib’s author­i­ties to fire all his female employ­ees, Fares instead relied on a com­put­er pro­gram that auto-tuned their voic­es to make them sound male.

“They now sound more like robots,” he said.

‘The most loved cler­ic’

When Al Nus­ra and its ally, Ahrar Al Sham, took Idlib’s Abu al-Dhuhur Air Base in 2015, a cler­ic appeared on the scene in cam­ou­flaged bat­tle dress uni­form. Stand­ing among a group of blind­fold­ed, exhaust­ed cap­tives, all Syr­i­an army reg­u­lars, the cler­ic blessed their mass exe­cu­tion, curs­ing them as tak­fir for fight­ing on the government’s side.

“I don’t like to call them Sun­ni. They were once Sun­ni but became apo­s­ta­tized once they enlist­ed in the Alaw­ites’ regime,” he said of the 56 cap­tives. Moments lat­er, they were lined up and rid­dled with bul­lets.

The cler­ic was Abdul­lah Muhaysi­ni, a 33-year-old zealot from Sau­di Ara­bia, who was a stu­dent of Sulay­man Al-Alwan, the Wah­habi cler­ic who over­saw what his Mus­lim crit­ics have called a “ter­ror­ist fac­to­ry” in Sau­di Arabia’s Al-Qas­sim Province. Al-Alwan was also the instruc­tor of the 9/11 hijack­er Abdu­laz­iz Alo­mari.

Today, Muhaysi­ni com­mands an almost mys­ti­cal sta­tus among the Islamist armed groups ram­pag­ing across north­ern Syr­ia. Accord­ing to Bilal Abdul Kareem, an Amer­i­can-born rebel pro­pa­gan­dist cur­rent­ly in Idlib, Muhaysi­ni is “prob­a­bly the most loved cler­ic in the Syr­i­an ter­ri­to­ries today.”

After mov­ing to Syr­ia in 2014, Muhaysi­ni embed­ded him­self among the rebels’ most pow­er­ful fac­tions and worked to unite them under a sin­gle ban­ner. At first, he helped cob­ble togeth­er the coali­tion known as Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Con­quest. Draw­ing on his con­nec­tions in the Gulf, he suc­cess­ful­ly over­saw the “wage jihad with your mon­ey” fundrais­ing effort that raised some $5 mil­lion for the rebels’ push to take the north­ern Idlib gov­er­nate from the Syr­i­an army in 2015.

Through his Jihad Caller’s Net­work, Muhaysi­ni has mobi­liz­ing resources thanks to a col­lec­tion of wealthy Gulf oli­garchs. In an online inter­view, Muhaysi­ni thanked “a group of broth­ers in Islam from Riyadh (Sau­di Ara­bia), some from our broth­er Abu Ahmed from Kuwait, some from our broth­er Abu Joud from Qatar.”

A deeply unset­tling video from Muhaysini’s Jihad Caller’s Net­work shows him recruit­ing child fight­ers inside the Atmeh Refugee Camp on the Syr­i­an-Turk­ish bor­der, a squalid redoubt for some 30,000 war vic­tims, hand­ing the ado­les­cent vol­un­teers rifles before truck­ing them off to Idlib and else­where. More recent­ly, Muhaysi­ni appeared before an assem­bly of fight­ers from Tahrir al-Sham, his lat­est jihadist coali­tion, to deliv­er a moti­va­tion­al bat­tle­field ser­mon.

Tahrir al-Sham was respon­si­ble for a twin sui­cide bomb­ing that killed dozens of civil­ians at the Palace of Jus­tice in Dam­as­cus and dur­ing a birth­day cel­e­bra­tion at a restau­rant on March 15. It has waged a furi­ous cam­paign to retake lost ter­ri­to­ry around the city of Hama, wield­ing sui­cide attacks but ulti­mate­ly fail­ing to hold on against a Syr­i­an army counter-attack.

If the U.S. and its West­ern allies car­ry out their threats to attack the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, the inter­ven­tion is the last best hope for Muhaysi­ni and the al-Qae­da-aligned forces in his thrall.

Trump’s Sau­di con­nec­tion

One of the least report­ed yet most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s for­eign pol­i­cy has been its warm embrace of the ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive, theo­crat­ic Sau­di monar­chy. Imme­di­ate­ly after he entered office, Trump made a pact with Sau­di Ara­bia to esca­late aggres­sion in Yemen.

After a friend­ly White House meet­ing with Trump and Steve Ban­non, the archi­tect of Trump’s Mus­lim ban, Sau­di Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman hailed Trump as “his Excel­len­cy,” describ­ing him as a “true friend of Mus­lims who will serve the Mus­lim world in an unimag­in­able man­ner, oppo­site to the neg­a­tive por­trait of his Excel­len­cy that some have tried to pro­mote.”

Trump has also pledged to work with Sau­di Ara­bia to cre­ate so-called safe zones in Syr­ia. What exact­ly these would look like has been unclear. Hillary Clin­ton cam­paigned on the promise to cre­ate such zones, although in a 2013 speech to Gold­man Sachs, she con­ced­ed that safe zones could “kill a lot of Syr­i­ans.”

At the heart of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s for­eign pol­i­cy has been diehard oppo­si­tion to Iran, Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s mor­tal ene­my. The Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment is one of Iran’s clos­est allies.

...

“The real­i­ty is that Idlib is sub­stan­tial­ly con­trolled by al-Qaeda’s Syr­i­an affil­i­ate, which has gone through a series of rebrand­ing schemes but remains the same jihadist group it always was: Jab­hat al-Nus­ra. In the province it rules, al-Nus­ra has imposed what a lead­ing schol­ar has described as a Tal­iban-like regime that has eth­ni­cal­ly cleansed reli­gious and eth­nic minori­ties, banned music and estab­lished a bru­tal theoc­ra­cy in which it pub­licly exe­cutes women accused of adul­tery.”

That’s unfor­tu­nate­ly the real­i­ty: if the US makes Syr­i­an regime change a major mil­i­tary goal, it’s going to either have to fight the al Qae­da rebels while it fights the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment simul­ta­ne­ous­ly (and ISIS). Or it’s going to have to join team al Qae­da. That’s the sit­u­a­tion on the ground that even the advo­cates of a regime-change pol­i­cy in the US for­eign pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment acknowl­edge:

...
Charles Lis­ter, per­haps the fore­most advo­cate of regime change and the arm­ing of Islamist rebels in Syr­ia, sound­ed a sim­i­lar note. He explained, “Peo­ple on the ground in dif­fer­ent areas of Syr­ia are increas­ing­ly will­ing not just to accept al-Qae­da oper­at­ing with­in their midst, but are actu­al­ly will­ing to overt­ly sup­port the fact that they are in their midst.”

He lat­er warned, “al-Qaeda’s rel­a­tive suc­cess in Syr­ia has seen its ide­ol­o­gy and its nar­ra­tive main­streamed, not just in parts of Syr­ia, but also in parts of the region.”

Lis­ter not­ed local pop­u­la­tions have protest­ed not just the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, but also the al-Qae­da extrem­ists ter­ror­iz­ing them. Peo­ple liv­ing under rebel rule in Idlib, Lis­ter indi­cat­ed, have been lament­ing, “This place is hell; we don’t want to live under this Islamist rule, under all this oppres­sion.” In Idlib, “they see what life would be like under this orga­ni­za­tion, and they don’t like it.”
...

And let’s not for­get, Gen­er­al Petraeus, the for­mer head of the CIA, explic­it­ly encour­aged the US to use al Qae­da to defeat ISIS just back in 2015, so it’s not a wild stretch to imag­ine that’s also one of the plans being con­sid­ered for tak­ing out Assad.

So is the US going to be going to war with the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, al Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed rebels, and ISIS simul­ta­ne­ous­ly involv­ing a major US mil­i­tary mis­sion that could last years with heavy casu­al­ties or does Team Trump have the Petraeus-plan in mind where al Qae­da becomes the pri­ma­ry anti-ISIS/an­ti-Assad group force?

Those are the kinds of choic­es fac­ing the Trump White House at this point so if Ban­non real­ly is about to get kicked out of the White House it would­n’t be sur­pris­ing if he’s secret­ly some­what relieved. We’ve clear­ly entered the ‘sh#t just go real’ phase of the Trump pres­i­den­cy and that’s prob­a­bly a lot less fun than cam­paign­ing. Unless, of course, he real­ly does want to start WWIII in which case, yeah, he’s prob­a­bly pret­ty pissed if those reports of the immi­nent polit­i­cal demise of Ban­non and Preibus are true. Priebus might not mind the rumors.

With the ques­tion of “what’s next?” swirling in the air after Don­ald Trump’s mis­sile attack on a Syr­i­an air base in retal­i­a­tion for an alleged sarin gas attack by the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment, Joan Walsh has a piece that notes a num­ber of impor­tant points to keep in mind when ask­ing “what’s next?”: For starters, the nois­i­est oppo­si­tion to the mis­sile strikes isn’t com­ing from the left. It’s com­ing from Trump’s Alt-Right base, includ­ing not just the Richard Spencer neo-Nazi con­tin­gent but also key Trump backer Ann Coul­ter, who sort of strad­dles the full-blown white suprema­cist Alt-Right with the main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive far-right GOP. Giv­en the cen­tral role the Alt-Right has played in Trump’s entire polit­i­cal life up to this point it’s a remark­able ten­sion to see flare up this ear­ly on in his pres­i­den­cy. Espe­cial­ly giv­en how much deep­er the US’s involve­ment in the Syr­i­an con­flict could go if Trump ends up fol­low­ing the advice of the more tra­di­tion war hawk-wing of the DC estab­lish­ment.

Anoth­er key point Walsh notes is that at this point we still have no idea if sarin real­ly was used and who did it. Giv­en the abun­dance of evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the pre­vi­ous chem­i­cal weapons attack in 2013 was actu­al­ly done by al Nus­ra, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this was an ruse by al Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed groups can’t be dis­missed. And the fact that the alleged chem­i­cal weapons attack hap­pened in al Nus­ra’s heart­land and one of the doc­tors pro­vid­ing video evi­dence that it was a sarin gas attack has a his­to­ry of work­ing with jihadists, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this was an attempt by al Nus­ra to pull the US much deep­er into the con­flict (and on al Nus­ra’s side) can’t be dis­missed. And when you con­sid­er that it’s the Alt-Right fac­tion of Trump’s base that’s also the most open mind­ed to con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries like the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this was a false-flag attack it sug­gests the real pos­si­bil­i­ty that if Trump dives deep­er into the Syr­i­an con­flict he’s going to be doing it at a grow­ing cost of his Alt-Right sup­port­ers.

So when we’re ask­ing “what’s next?” from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, it’s kind of amaz­ing but “what’s next” might involve trad­ing the sup­port of the iso­la­tion­ist Alt Right neo-Nazis fac­tion of Trump’s base for the sup­port that being a wartime pres­i­dent might bring him:

The Nation

Too Many of Trump’s Lib­er­al Crit­ics Are Prais­ing His Strike on Syr­ia
Any­one who sup­ports these mis­sile strikes has to account for what comes next.
By Joan Wal­shTwit­ter

4/7/2017 2:19 pm

It shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing, but it is to me nonethe­less: Plen­ty of lib­er­als who’ve long crit­i­cized Don­ald Trump as unfit to be pres­i­dent are prais­ing his strike on Syr­i­an air­fields.

On CNN’s New Day Thurs­day, glob­al ana­lyst Fareed Zakaria declared, “I think Don­ald Trump became pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States” last night. To his cred­it, Zakaria has pre­vi­ous­ly called Trump a “bull­shit artist” and said, “He has got­ten the pres­i­den­cy by bull­shit­ting.” But Zakaria appar­ent­ly thinks fir­ing mis­siles make one pres­i­den­tial. On MSNBC, Nicholas Kristof, an aggres­sive Trump crit­ic, said he “did the right thing” by bomb­ing Syr­ia. Anchor Bri­an Williams, whose 11th Hour has reg­u­lar­ly been crit­i­cal of Trump, repeat­ed­ly called the mis­siles “beau­ti­ful,” to a noisy back­lash on Twit­ter.

While The New York Times post­ed sev­er­al skep­ti­cal, even crit­i­cal sto­ries, it gave us this piece of pro­pa­gan­da: an arti­cle ini­tial­ly titled “On Syr­ia attack, Trump’s heart came first,” buy­ing the president’s line that his oppo­si­tion to anti-Assad mil­i­tary action was reversed by see­ing the heartrend­ing pho­tos of chil­dren strug­gling to breathe after a chem­i­cal attack.

“Even beau­ti­ful babies were cru­el­ly mur­dered in this very bar­bar­ic attack,” Trump declared. “No child of God should ever suf­fer such hor­ror.” (No word how he felt about ugly babies.) The piece also failed to even men­tion that Trump is keep­ing refugees from the Syr­i­an war, even chil­dren, out of the Unit­ed States. Vic­tims of chem­i­cal weapons are “beau­ti­ful babies”; chil­dren try­ing to flee such vio­lence require “extreme vet­ting” and an indef­i­nite refugee ban. After a pub­lic out­cry, the Times changed the head­line.

...

Remem­ber just last week, phan­tom Sec­re­tary of State Rex Tiller­son said in Turkey: “I think the…longer-term sta­tus of Pres­i­dent Assad will be decid­ed by the Syr­i­an peo­ple.” The Krem­lin-fund­ed Rus­sia Today described that as “a U‑turn from Washington’s long-held pol­i­cy” that Assad must go. Six days lat­er, Tiller­son was telling reporters, “There is no doubt in our minds, and the infor­ma­tion we have sup­ports, that the Syr­i­an regime under the lead­er­ship of Bashar al-Assad are respon­si­ble for this attack. It is very impor­tant that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment con­sid­er care­ful­ly their sup­port for Bashar al-Assad,” because “steps are under­way” to muster inter­na­tion­al sup­port for a strike. Rus­sia Today seemed dis­ap­point­ed that the Unit­ed States believes Assad is behind the gassing of his peo­ple, argu­ing that the source is the inter­na­tion­al res­cue group White Hel­mets, which RT shock­ing­ly calls “al-Qai­da affil­i­at­ed.”

Any lib­er­al who prais­es these mis­sile strikes has to account for what comes next. Obvi­ous­ly, Trump cares lit­tle about diplo­ma­cy, leav­ing Tiller­son out of key meet­ings and slash­ing the State Department’s bud­get. On Wednes­day night, the White House released a pho­to of his team receiv­ing a brief­ing on the Syr­ia attack. At the table were Com­merce Sec­re­tary Wilbur Ross; Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Steve Mnuchin; Gold­man Sachs alum Dina Pow­ell, deputy nation­al-secu­ri­ty advis­er; along with Jared Kush­n­er; Steve Ban­non; and Bannon’s side­kick Steven Miller. Why are the Com­merce and Trea­sury sec­re­taries there? What explains why Tiller­son, who was in Palm Beach with the pres­i­dent, was not?

The nois­i­est out­rage against the Syr­i­an attack isn’t com­ing from the left, but the right—particularly the alt-right. Trump’s non­in­ter­ven­tion­ism and his friend­li­ness to Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin were big sell­ing points to white nation­al­ists. Now that he seems to be chal­leng­ing both men, his for­mer acolytes are enraged. On Twit­ter, alt-right white suprema­cist Richard Spencer called it a “total betray­al”; the white nation­al­ists at VDARE blamed it on the “boomer­cucks” in the admin­is­tra­tion. Ann Coul­ter went apoplec­tic:

Trump cam­paigned on not get­ting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our ene­mies & cre­ates more refugees. Then he saw a pic­ture on TV.

— Ann Coul­ter (@AnnCoulter) April 7, 2017

It was dis­ap­point­ing to see Hillary Clin­ton say Wednes­day after­noon that she thought air strikes on Syr­i­an air­fields were an appro­pri­ate response to the chem­i­cal-weapon attack. She was always more hawk­ish than I wished, and that shows it. But it’s wrong to insist she’d have done the “same thing” as Trump. Clinton’s sec­re­tary of state wouldn’t like­ly have told Assad we were no longer con­cerned about remov­ing him; if she did fire mis­siles at Syr­i­an air­fields, she would have done so with a clear­er notion of what comes next. Trump appears to be clue­less.

Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders, mean­while, didn’t quite oppose the Syr­i­an strike, call­ing Assad a “war crim­i­nal” and lament­ing his mur­der of civil­ians with chem­i­cal weapons. But not­ing that “it’s that it’s eas­i­er to get into a war than get out of one,” Sanders demand­ed that Trump “must explain to the Amer­i­can peo­ple exact­ly what this mil­i­tary esca­la­tion in Syr­ia is intend­ed to achieve, and how it fits into the broad­er goal of a polit­i­cal solu­tion, which is the only way Syria’s dev­as­tat­ing civ­il war ends.”

Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand sound­ed clos­er to Sanders than Clin­ton on the airstrikes, decry­ing Trump’s “uni­lat­er­al mil­i­tary action by the US in a Mid­dle East con­flict” as well as “the absence of any long-term plan or strat­e­gy to address any con­se­quences from such uni­lat­er­al action.” Like Sanders, she demand­ed that Trump seek autho­riza­tion of mil­i­tary force from Con­gress. By con­trast, her New York col­league Minor­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer called Trump’s move “the right thing to do.” Schumer may find that many con­stituents think it was the wrong thing.

There remains the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of this is the­ater. It should be said: Some observers, besides RT, say it’s unproven that the chem­i­cal weapons attack came from Assad; rebels could be behind it. There’s also the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a kabu­ki per­for­mance from Trump, Putin, and Assad. We already know the Unit­ed States warned Putin of the com­ing mis­siles, and that Putin warned Assad, whose mil­i­tary moved air­planes and oth­er mil­i­tary equip­ment away from the intend­ed tar­get. Trump, plum­met­ing in the polls, his domes­tic health-care and tax plans on the rocks, the inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian elec­tion med­dling clos­ing in on his team, real­ly need­ed a boost; maybe they gave it to him. Trump’s sud­den about-face on Syr­ia makes it hard to judge.

How­ev­er, accord­ing to Syr­i­an state media, nine civil­ians, includ­ing four chil­dren, were killed in the air strikes. That is not kabu­ki. Trump has said noth­ing about those “beau­ti­ful babies,” nor will he. Lib­er­als have to sober up and stop being besot­ted by beau­ti­ful mis­siles and pres­i­den­tial cru­el­ty. Trump is the same Trump he was Tues­day, and that should scare all of us.

“The nois­i­est out­rage against the Syr­i­an attack isn’t com­ing from the left, but the right—particularly the alt-right. Trump’s non­in­ter­ven­tion­ism and his friend­li­ness to Bashar Assad and Vladimir Putin were big sell­ing points to white nation­al­ists. Now that he seems to be chal­leng­ing both men, his for­mer acolytes are enraged. On Twit­ter, alt-right white suprema­cist Richard Spencer called it a “total betray­al”; the white nation­al­ists at VDARE blamed it on the “boomer­cucks” in the admin­is­tra­tion. Ann Coul­ter went apoplec­tic”

That’s where the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion resides at this moment, when it’s unclear if the mis­sile strike is the start of some­thing much, much big­ger. If Trump is seri­ous­ly pon­der­ing a a much deep­er US mil­i­tary engage­ment, he’s going to do it at the cost of that the sup­port from every­one from Alex Jones to Richard Spencer to Ann Coul­ter. That’s a huge chunk of Trump’s base.

At the same time, wars do tend to make pres­i­dents more pop­u­lar, and with Trump start­ing off his first term with his­tor­i­cal­ly low approval rat­ings it’s pos­si­ble the Trump clan is ready to make a big gam­ble and bet that the Alt-Right/Alex Jone­sian sup­port they lose will be more than off­set by the sup­port a war-time Trump will gain. Piss­ing off the far-right while still exe­cut­ing a war is the kind of thing a cyn­i­cal far-right admin­is­tra­tion like the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is going to be will­ing to do. Espe­cial­ly if it still works polit­i­cal­ly. We can’t rule the pos­si­bil­i­ty out.

So with all that mind, it’s also worth not­ing that the drip, drip, drip about Steven Ban­non’s appar­ent demo­tion as part of some sort of fight between a Ban­non-wing and a Jared Kush­n­er-wing just keeps com­ing. The lat­est reports are that Reince Priebus, who was also said to be on the outs along with Ban­non, is going to be giv­en a chance to stay on. And Ban­non might be allowed to stay too. But he’s got to be more of a team play­er. As one report put it, “In their view, Ban­non is too inclined to want to burn things down and blow things up. They want a more open process dri­ven by the inter­ests of the pres­i­dent, not ide­ol­o­gy.”:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Edi­tor’s Blog

Trump Inc Mak­ing Ban­non An Offer He Can’t Refuse

Josh Mar­shall
April 8, 2017,

Mike Allen like­ly has as good a sources as any­one for the White House Game of Thrones sto­ry. He says this morn­ing that Priebus will now be allowed to stay. He is “ ‘with the pro­gram’ of a more inclu­sive style, and will stay.”

It is worth not­ing here that Priebus was a job-seek­er con­vert to Ban­non­ism in the first place. Now he’ll uncon­vert to keep his job. Ban­non too might get to stay. But only at a steep price. As Allen puts it, “Either Steve becomes a team play­er and gets along with peo­ple, or he’ll be gone.” To ren­der this in the alt-Trump cre­ole, Ban­non can stay if he agrees to go cuck.

Through all this report, though, one sen­tence (this one describ­ing Kush­n­er’s and Ivan­ka Trump’s view­point) cap­tures the real sto­ry: “In their view, Ban­non is too inclined to want to burn things down and blow things up. They want a more open process dri­ven by the inter­ests of the pres­i­dent, not ide­ol­o­gy.”

Let’s not be naive. Per­son­al polit­i­cal inter­est is always in ten­sion with ide­ol­o­gy for every politi­cian. But there is some­thing qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent here. What is I think being accu­rate­ly described is an under­stand­ing of the “inter­ests of the pres­i­dent” which is entire­ly sep­a­rate not only from “ide­ol­o­gy” but what we’d like­ly con­sid­er even the broad­est sort of polit­i­cal view­point and belief. The “inter­ests of the pres­i­dent” here is being pop­u­lar, hav­ing strong poll num­bers, ‘win­ning’ as Trump him­self might put it. Ban­non is putting “ide­ol­o­gy” ahead of that.

...

It goes to the heart of the Fam­i­ly, Brand-dri­ven, Klep­to­crat­ic nature of the Trump White House. The core aim is for the Pres­i­dent to be pop­u­lar, to suc­ceed, a goal in key ways even more impor­tant to the thir­ty-some­thing Kushner/Trumps than the 70 year old Pres­i­dent. Pol­i­tics or pol­i­cy and ide­ol­o­gy, what­ev­er you want to call it, is change­able and sec­ondary, just as Trump can shift from author­i­tar­i­an iso­la­tion­ist to faux val­ues dri­ven inter­na­tion­al­ist in a day and a half. This is pre­cise­ly what you’d expect from peo­ple who were prob­a­bly apo­lit­i­cal or per­haps, if pushed, some­thing like Bloomberg Democ­rats and then became execu­tors of far-right, blood and soil, racist nation­al­ist polit­i­cal pro­gram. Words and pol­i­cy have no mean­ing. What mat­ters is pro­tect­ing and max­i­miz­ing the val­ue of the new fam­i­ly acqui­si­tion: the pres­i­den­cy.

Ban­non and his sup­port­ers now appear to mak­ing a rear­guard argu­ment that this approach is self-defeat­ing on its own terms. Here from the Times ...

But Mr. Ban­non has his own core of sup­port­ers out­side the White House. And he has argued that Mr. Kushner’s efforts to pull his father-in-law more to the cen­ter on issues like immi­gra­tion would poi­son him with the con­ser­v­a­tive base — a hope­less posi­tion to be in because Mr. Ban­non believes so few Democ­rats would ever con­sid­er sup­port­ing Mr. Trump.

This seems almost cer­tain­ly cor­rect in my view. But it is telling that Ban­non’s sup­port­ers seem oblig­ed to argue their case on Kush­n­er’s terms. Who­ev­er ‘wins’ this bat­tle it is high­ly reveal­ing of the Trump White House­’s core val­ues.

“Through all this report, though, one sen­tence (this one describ­ing Kush­n­er’s and Ivan­ka Trump’s view­point) cap­tures the real sto­ry: “In their view, Ban­non is too inclined to want to burn things down and blow things up. They want a more open process dri­ven by the inter­ests of the pres­i­dent, not ide­ol­o­gy.””

Keep in mind that all this is hap­pen­ing right when the Trump admin­is­tra­tion appears to be gear­ing up for a war that will make that Alt-Right Bre­it­bart base extra unhap­py. Also keep in mind that, in terms of the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Trump’s poli­cies so far, the poli­cies that fall under the “Ban­nonesque” cat­e­go­ry are actu­al­ly wild­ly more pop­u­lar than the poli­cies that fall under the “Paul Ryan/traditional GOP” cat­e­go­ry. Build a wall with Mex­i­co and the ‘Mus­lim ban’ might be dubi­ous poli­cies from the stand­point of effec­tive­ness and basic decen­cy and were over­all deeply polar­iz­ing, but they were still a hell of a lot more pop­u­lar than the Trump­care plan Paul Ryan came up with for Trump’s Oba­macare replace­ment.

Trump won the GOP pri­ma­ry in part because the tra­di­tion­al GOP’s poli­cies are so unpop­u­lar even among the GOP base. And cater­ing to what we can thing of as the Bannon/Breitbart Alt-Right-wing was part of Trump’s polit­i­cal secret sauce. And yet here we are with reports that Ban­non could be out as part of a shift towards the polit­i­cal cen­ter and it’s hap­pen­ing at the same time Trump appears to be prepar­ing for a war that’s going to send that Ban­non-base back to the polit­i­cal wilder­ness. Giv­en the poten­tial polit­i­cal costs with such a strat­e­gy Trump must be plan­ning on a very pop­u­lar war. And that prob­a­bly means it’s going to be a big one. And prob­a­bly more than just one because let’s not for­get about those reports of Eric Prince try­ing to secret­ly nego­ti­ate with Rus­sia terms for giv­ing Trump a green light to go to war with Iran.

And yes, Ban­non him­self may have a strange long­ing for WWIII, but much of his Breitbart/Alex Jones base does­n’t. At the same time, even if Ban­non real­ly is some­how ‘demot­ed’, that does­n’t mean Trump aban­dons the larg­er Bre­it­bart pol­i­cy agenda...he’ll just be aban­don­ing the iso­la­tion­ist part. Still, if we’re on the cusp on a much deep­er US mil­i­tary involve­ment in the Mid­dle East (which might not be lim­it­ed to Syr­ia) that could over­whelm what­ev­er sup­port con­tin­u­ing the Breitbart/Bannon domes­tic pol­i­cy agen­da will get him. So if this Ban­non demo­tion thing is real and if it rep­re­sents a pre­emp­tive move to go to war over the objec­tions of that crit­i­cal Bannon/Breitbart/Infowars wing of Trump’s coali­tion, the mod­el of Trump as a pop­u­lar wartime pres­i­dent prob­a­bly just got a major pro­mo­tion with­in the White House too. Yikes.

NBC News sent a team to home town of Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka to inves­ti­gate fur­ther what exact­ly his ties were to the Vitez Rend Order of fas­cist Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors. And while they could­n’t find any that could pro­vide sol­id proof that he was a mem­ber of the order, there was no short­age of peo­ple con­fi­dent­ly assert­ing that ‘every­one knew’ Gor­ka was a mem­ber when he was run­ning for polit­i­cal office despite Gorka’s ongo­ing denials. And here’s anoth­er fun fact they turned up and con­firmed: Gorka’s mom worked as a trans­la­tor for David Irv­ing back in the 80’s:

NBC News

Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka Made Nazi-Linked Vitezi Rend ‘Proud’ by Wear­ing Its Medal

by Alexan­der Smith and Vladimir Ban­ic
Apr 8 2017, 9:40 am ET

BUDAPEST, Hun­gary — A group with alleged his­tor­i­cal links to Nazi Ger­many has told NBC News it was “proud” when Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s deputy assis­tant wore its medal.

Con­tro­ver­sy has swirled around Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, one of Trump’s top coun­tert­er­ror­ism advis­ers, ever since he attend­ed the pres­i­den­t’s Jan. 20 Inau­gur­al Ball wear­ing the hon­orary medal of Hun­gar­i­an nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion Vitezi Rend.

NBC News trav­eled to Hun­gary to dig deep­er into Gorka’s ties with the group, speak­ing with mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion as well as with locals who knew him when he lived there.

“When he appeared on U.S. tele­vi­sion ... with the medal of the Vitez Order ... it made me real­ly proud,” Vitezi Rend spokesman Andras Hor­vath said in the Hun­gar­i­an cap­i­tal of Budapest. Vitezi Rend is also known as the Order of Vitez.

Three peo­ple, includ­ing one of Gorka’s for­mer polit­i­cal allies, said he was a well-known mem­ber of Vitezi Rend back in Hun­gary, a charge he strong­ly denies.

Gorka’s deci­sion to wear the medal — which he said was award­ed to his Hun­gar­i­an-born father — has pro­voked out­rage among Jew­ish groups.

While in Budapest, NBC News also spoke with Andras Heisler, the Hun­gar­i­an vice-pres­i­dent of the New York-based World Jew­ish Con­gress, who said that wear­ing the medal “isn’t a good mes­sage for a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety.”

Under the Direc­tion of Nazis

Vitezi Rend was found­ed in 1920 by Hun­gar­i­an ruler Mik­los Hor­thy to award medals to Hun­gar­i­an vet­er­ans of World War I. But the group’s his­to­ry became murky after the coun­try allied with Nazi Ger­many in 1938.

Heisler told NBC News that mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion were like­ly com­plic­it in the mur­der of some of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of Hun­gar­i­an Jews toward the end of World War II.

Dur­ing the war, the State Depart­ment list­ed Vitezi Rend among a group of “orga­ni­za­tions under the direc­tion of the Nazi gov­ern­ment of Ger­many.” And Hor­thy, its founder, once said that “I have always been an anti-Semi­te through­out my life,” accord­ing to “The Jews of Hun­gary,” a 1995 book by Hun­gar­i­an-Jew­ish his­to­ri­an Raphael Patai.

The Sovi­et-allied com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment out­lawed Vitezi Rend when they took con­trol of the coun­try after the war. But since then, sev­er­al pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions have emerged claim­ing to be the true suc­ces­sors of the group and its ideals.

Hor­vath, the spokesman inter­viewed by NBC News, rep­re­sents the most promi­nent mod­ern-day fac­tion. He vehe­ment­ly denied his orga­ni­za­tion of 5,000 mem­bers is anti-Semit­ic or extrem­ist, although he con­ced­ed that his group has no Jew­ish mem­bers.

Accord­ing to its fol­low­ers, Vitezi Rend is mere­ly “a polit­i­cal­ly inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion with Chris­t­ian-con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues that keeps its mil­i­tary tra­di­tions,” said Vitez John Molar-Gaz­so, the cap­tain of anoth­er mod­ern-day fac­tion of the group. “It has nev­er been rad­i­cal or a fas­cist group. Its mem­bers have always defend­ed the nation’s inter­ests and fought for the Hun­gar­i­an com­mu­ni­ties,” he said.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Gor­ka has denied he has ever been a sworn-in mem­ber of Vitezi Rend — whose name trans­lates to “valiant order.”

In sev­er­al state­ments to the media, he has explained that he wore the medal to hon­or his late father, Paul Gor­ka, who was award­ed it for his fight against com­mu­nism dur­ing Hun­gary’s peri­od of com­mu­nist rule. He has giv­en a sim­i­lar rea­son­ing for occa­sion­al­ly using the ini­tial “v.” in his name — a mark used by Vitezi Rend mem­bers to show the order has been bestowed upon them. He said it was in remem­brance of his dad.

Last month, three Vitezi Rend offi­cials told Amer­i­can-Jew­ish news­pa­per The For­ward that Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka was one of their order.

The reports about Gor­ka prompt­ed the Anne Frank Cen­ter for Mutu­al Respect, an Amer­i­can civ­il-rights group, to call for Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s res­ig­na­tion, or at least an inves­ti­ga­tion into his alleged links with the far-right.

“How many ducks in the Trump White House must walk, talk and quack Anti-Semit­i­cal­ly before our coun­try wakes up and sees the greater prob­lem?” it told NBC News in a state­ment. “Who among us wears a medal of a Nazi-sym­pa­thet­ic orga­ni­za­tion to remem­ber loved ones?”

When asked about the alle­ga­tions in NBC News’ inves­ti­ga­tion, Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka dis­missed them as “fake news” and point­ed to a state­ment he gave to online Jew­ish mag­a­zine Tablet last month.

“I have nev­er been a mem­ber of the Vitez Rend. I have nev­er tak­en an oath of loy­al­ty to the Vitez Rend,” he told the pub­li­ca­tion. “Since child­hood, I have occa­sion­al­ly worn my father’s medal and used the ‘v.’ ini­tial to hon­or his strug­gle against total­i­tar­i­an­ism.”

He told NBC News he “com­plete­ly dis­tanced myself” from any white-suprema­cist or Nazi ide­ol­o­gy. He declined to answer spe­cif­ic ques­tions about NBC News’ report­ing.

Hor­vath, the Vitezi Rend spokesman, said Paul Gor­ka was a senior Vitezi Rend lieu­tenant for the west­ern Hun­gar­i­an city of Sopron and its sur­round­ings.

“This is, in the var­i­ous ranks of the order, an advanced lev­el,” he said, his own Vitezi Rend medal on proud dis­play.

The 69-year-old was speak­ing on the banks of the Danube riv­er in Hun­gary’s sto­ried post-Sovi­et cap­i­tal, where some build­ings still bear bul­let-holes from a failed anti-Sovi­et rev­o­lu­tion in 1956.

Paul Gor­ka “was more than an aver­age Vitezi mem­ber ... I had good expe­ri­ences and con­ver­sa­tions with [him],” the spokesman said, his grey hair and trimmed mous­tache match­ing his relaxed yet mat­ter-of-fact demeanor.

Although Hor­vath was unable to con­firm that Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka was a mem­ber him­self, he said it was pos­si­ble. There are many chap­ters all over the world, he said, any of which could have con­duct­ed the inau­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny.

He explained that the first sons of Vitezi Rend mem­bers can either choose hered­i­tary mem­ber­ship or to apply in their own names.

“The mem­ber­ship can be inher­it­ed by the chil­dren and this mem­ber­ship enters into force when they par­tic­i­pate in an inau­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny,” said Molár-Gazsó, the cap­tain of the oth­er Vitezi Rend group.

The Road to Pilisc­sa­ba

Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, 47, was born in Lon­don in 1970 to Hun­gar­i­an par­ents and gained Amer­i­can cit­i­zen­ship in 2012. Before find­ing his seat in the pres­i­den­t’s inner-cir­cle, he spent years in his par­ents’ for­mer home­land in the 1990s and 2000s.

After inter­view­ing Hor­vath and Heisler in Budapest, NBC News drove 14 miles north to the small, sleepy town of Pilisc­sa­ba, where sev­er­al promi­nent locals alleged that Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka was a mem­ber of Vitezi Rend.

The future White House aide ran for may­or here in 2006, but was unable to per­suade its pop­u­la­tion of 7,500 that he was the right man for the job. He came third out of three can­di­dates but only lost by a mar­gin of 39 votes.

“Every­body knew that he was mem­ber of the Order of Vitez,” accord­ing to Csa­ba Gáspár, who came in sec­ond that day but lat­er became may­or between 2010 and 2014.

This was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by one of Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s polit­i­cal allies dur­ing that cam­paign.

”I knew that Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka was a mem­ber of Vitezi Rend, even then,” said Dr. Gabor Solti, a respect­ed Hun­gar­i­an geol­o­gist who ran for the town coun­cil on Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s tick­et in 2006. Solti, who served as may­or between 2009 and 2010, is not known to be a mem­ber of the group.

Although the three peo­ple NBC News inter­viewed in the town said emphat­i­cal­ly that Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka made no effort to hide his mem­ber­ship while he cam­paigned in the town, they did not pro­vide any evi­dence of their claims.

Pic­turesque Pilisc­sa­ba could­n’t con­trast more with Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s cur­rent envi­rons of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

A reg­u­lar line of cars run along the two-lane road that cuts the town in half, but most are just pass­ing through, stop­ping for lit­tle more than a bath­room break.

A large Catholic church next to a cake shop marks the cen­ter of the town, which is sur­round­ed by rolling green hills.

Eri­ka Las­z­lo also knew Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka dur­ing his failed may­oral bid. Back then, she was the chair­woman of a local envi­ron­men­tal­ist group called For Pilisc­sa­ba, and as part of the group’s activ­i­ties she wrote leaflets about the cam­paign.

“It was com­mon knowl­edge he was a Vitezi,” she said, pet­ting her Labrador dur­ing a long after­noon at her wood­land home. “And for many peo­ple this was a shine on the armor, if you like, because it was the old, gold­en days before the war.”

The Gorkas’ con­tro­ver­sial past does not end with the father and son.

In the 1980s, Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s moth­er, Susan Gor­ka, worked as a trans­la­tor for David Irv­ing, the dis­cred­it­ed British his­to­ri­an who caused out­rage by sug­gest­ing the Holo­caust did not hap­pen, or was at least great­ly exag­ger­at­ed.

A British judge ruled in 2000 that Irv­ing was a “Holo­caust denier … anti-Semit­ic and racist, and that he asso­ciates with right-wing extrem­ists who pro­mote neo-Nazism.” And in 2006, he was sen­tenced to three years in prison in Aus­tria on charges of deny­ing the Holo­caust.

Irv­ing wrote an email to NBC News describ­ing his warm work­ing rela­tion­ship with Susan Gor­ka.

“His moth­er was very help­ful, checked trans­la­tions in the 1980s and tapes of inter­views,” Irv­ing said. “My impres­sion of both Gorkas [Susan and Paul] was at all times good.”

NBC News attempt­ed to ask Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka about his moth­er’s involve­ment with Irv­ing but he declined to answer detailed ques­tions.

V is for Vitezi

In addi­tion to wear­ing the group’s medal, Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka has occa­sion­al­ly used the ini­tial “v.” in his name — short for Vitezi. He claimed this was mere­ly some­thing to hon­or his father, but experts inter­viewed by NBC News were in no doubt that it sig­ni­fied his mem­ber­ship.

“I called him Vitez, first­ly because he used to call him­self Vitez while being in Hun­gary,” accord­ing to Gabor Hor­vath, man­ag­ing edi­tor of Hun­gary’s Nep­sza­va news­pa­per. “And sec­ond to let the read­ers know that any­one claim­ing to belong to the order … it means that he is a right-wing con­ser­v­a­tive.”

Gabor Hor­vath knew all too well that the “v.” indi­cat­ed some­one was a Vitezi Rend mem­ber — his own grand­fa­ther belonged to the order. He too could have inher­it­ed the title had it not been for his father mar­ry­ing a Jew­ish woman and break­ing the fam­i­ly lin­eage.

“In the­o­ry I might have been Vitezi myself … not that I want­ed to,” he said, speak­ing in his news­room back in Budapest. “The orig­i­nal char­ter of the order pre­scribed a Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly life.”

Paul Gor­ka was born in Budapest in 1930. As a 15-year-old boy in 1944, he “fought with a sub­ma­chine gun through the ruins of the Hun­gar­i­an cap­i­tal,” accord­ing to Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s 2016 book “Defeat­ing Jihad: The Winnable War.”

He did­n’t spec­i­fy which side his father fought on — Sovi­et or Nazi — but a large part of Paul Gorka’s life there­after was ded­i­cat­ed to fight­ing against the for­mer.

After the war, Paul Gor­ka joined Hun­gary’s under­ground anti-Sovi­et resis­tance. He was caught, jailed and tor­tured, accord­ing to his son’s account, but then broke free dur­ing the failed rev­o­lu­tion of 1956.

It was these anti-Sovi­et acts that earned him the medal in 1979 that his son would wear to Trump’s ball.

Ardent Nation­al­ism

Mik­los Hor­thy, Hun­gary’s wartime leader and the founder of Vitezi Rend, remains a huge­ly divi­sive fig­ure even today. Some say he attempt­ed to pro­tect Hun­gar­i­an Jews from the Nazis, oth­ers point to a series of anti-Semit­ic laws he passed and claim his actions led to the deaths of tens of thou­sands.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the actions of Vitezi Rend’s orig­i­nal mem­bers are the source of some dis­agree­ment.

The spokes­men for the two mod­ern-day fac­tions said their pre­de­ces­sors were not com­plic­it in the depor­ta­tion of at least 400,000 Hun­gar­i­an Jews to Nazi death camps in 1944.

But many experts dis­agree.

“Vitezi Rend had a lot of anti-Semit­ic, racist mem­bers,” accord­ing to Heisler, the vice-pres­i­dent of the World Jew­ish Con­gress. “The orga­ni­za­tion had some mem­bers who were actors in the killing of the Jews,” as well as tak­ing Jew­ish prop­er­ty, he said.

His­to­ri­an Eva S. Balogh fled Hun­gary to the U.S. in 1956 before gain­ing her Ph.D. and teach­ing at Yale. She said that “the like­li­hood that a good num­ber of the [Vitezi] Order’s mem­bers embraced the ideas of Hitler is fair­ly strong.”

Almost “the entire Hun­gar­i­an high com­mand belonged to the [Vitezi] Order,” accord­ing to Balogh, who also runs the news web­site Hun­gar­i­an Spec­trum and has writ­ten exten­sive­ly about the Gorkas. She said that these Hun­gar­i­an elites “were avid sup­port­ers of Ger­many and eager to join Ger­many’s war efforts.”

Today’s Vitezi Rend mem­bers, accord­ing to Balogh, fol­low the same “eth­i­cal and moral code” as their pre­de­ces­sors in the 1920s — “ardent nation­al­ism, a fos­ter­ing of Hun­gar­i­an mil­i­tary tra­di­tions [and] an attrac­tion to right-wing ide­olo­gies.”

Aside from the ques­tion of whether or not Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka was a mem­ber of Vitezi Rend, his cre­den­tials as a coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert have also been called into ques­tion.

...

“In the 1980s, Sebas­t­ian Gorka’s moth­er, Susan Gor­ka, worked as a trans­la­tor for David Irv­ing, the dis­cred­it­ed British his­to­ri­an who caused out­rage by sug­gest­ing the Holo­caust did not hap­pen, or was at least great­ly exag­ger­at­ed.”

So on top of the moun­tain of evi­dence con­tra­dict­ing Gorka’s denials of his involve­ment with the far-Vitezi Rend orga­ni­za­tion that Gor­ka appar­ent­ly inher­it­ed from his father, it turns out Gorka’s mom worked with David Irv­ing:

...
A British judge ruled in 2000 that Irv­ing was a “Holo­caust denier … anti-Semit­ic and racist, and that he asso­ciates with right-wing extrem­ists who pro­mote neo-Nazism.” And in 2006, he was sen­tenced to three years in prison in Aus­tria on charges of deny­ing the Holo­caust.

Irv­ing wrote an email to NBC News describ­ing his warm work­ing rela­tion­ship with Susan Gor­ka.

“His moth­er was very help­ful, checked trans­la­tions in the 1980s and tapes of inter­views,” Irv­ing said. “My impres­sion of both Gorkas [Susan and Paul] was at all times good.”

NBC News attempt­ed to ask Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka about his moth­er’s involve­ment with Irv­ing but he declined to answer detailed ques­tions.
...

it would be inter­est­ing to learn if Susan Gor­ka was paid for her trans­la­tion work or just did it for free. Unfor­tu­nate­ly it does­n’t appear that Gor­ka him­self is going to open up about that. For­tu­nate­ly, David Irv­ing did in a recent inter­view with the Huff­in­g­ton Post: Susan Gor­ka vol­un­teered to work for Irv­ing:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post

Top Trump Advis­er Faces Calls For Res­ig­na­tion After Reports Of Ties To Nazi-Aligned Group
Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka proud­ly wears a medal from a Hun­gar­i­an group that col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazis dur­ing World War II.
By Jes­si­ca Schul­berg

03/17/2017 07:48 pm ET | Updat­ed 04/05/2017 days ago

WASHINGTON — A top coun­tert­er­ror­ism advis­er to Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump faces grow­ing calls to resign after a series of news reports alleg­ing he has ties to a far-right Hun­gar­i­an group with his­tor­i­cal links to the Nazi par­ty.

Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka was pho­tographed dur­ing the Jan­u­ary inau­gur­al ball wear­ing a medal that for­eign pol­i­cy news site LobeL­og lat­er iden­ti­fied as a sym­bol of mem­ber­ship in the Hun­gar­i­an Order of Heroes. The group, known as Vitézi Rend in Hun­gar­i­an, col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazi gov­ern­ment dur­ing World War II, accord­ing to the State Depart­ment. Mem­bers of the group are inel­i­gi­ble for Amer­i­can visas.

Gor­ka did not respond to LobeLog’s request for com­ment. He lat­er told Bre­it­bart that the medal belonged to his late father, Paul Gor­ka, who “was award­ed a dec­la­ra­tion for his resis­tance to a dic­ta­tor­ship.” The For­ward fol­lowed up with a series of reports alleg­ing that Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka spent years immers­ing him­self in far-right, anti-Semit­ic polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions in Hun­gary, and is a sworn mem­ber of the Vitézi Rend. Gor­ka ignored requests for com­ment on the arti­cle and instead issued a denial to a friend­ly reporter at Tablet after The For­ward pub­lished the alle­ga­tions.

...

Paul Gorka’s Vitézi Rend mem­ber­ship is not the only indi­ca­tion that the Gor­ka fam­i­ly fos­tered con­nec­tions to anti-Semit­ic fringe char­ac­ters.

After the failed 1956 effort to over­throw the Sovi­et gov­ern­ment in Hun­gary, Paul Gor­ka and his soon-to-be-wife Susan fled the coun­try, even­tu­al­ly set­tling in Eng­land, where Sebas­t­ian was born in 1970.

Years lat­er, Susan Gor­ka crossed paths with David Irv­ing, a British author known for his anti-Semit­ic revi­sion­ist accounts of World War II. Irv­ing gained inter­na­tion­al noto­ri­ety in the 1990s dur­ing an an unsuc­cess­ful libel suit against a his­to­ri­an who had accused him of being a Holo­caust denier. But he was already a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure decades before the law­suit. In 1977, he pub­lished a book called Hitler’s War, which assert­ed that Adolf Hitler was unaware of the Holo­caust.

Irv­ing met Susan Gor­ka in the 1970s while he was work­ing on a book about the 1956 Hun­gar­i­an rev­o­lu­tion, he told The Huff­in­g­ton Post in an inter­view. He sus­pect­ed his inter­preter was “ten­den­tious­ly” trans­lat­ing his inter­views, and lat­er con­clud­ed the inter­preter was a Hun­gar­i­an spy. He began search­ing for a new Hun­gar­i­an speak­er who could go through trans­la­tions of pre­vi­ous inter­view tran­scripts to make sure they were cor­rect. Susan Gor­ka vol­un­teered, he said.

In the result­ing book Upris­ing!, Irv­ing asserts that the Hun­gar­i­an rev­o­lu­tion against the com­mu­nist gov­ern­ment was “pri­mar­i­ly an anti-Jew­ish upris­ing” — an assess­ment dis­put­ed by main­stream his­to­ri­ans.

“The whole con­clu­sion of the book is dead wrong,” Eva Balogh, an emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of East­ern Euro­pean his­to­ry at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, said in an inter­view. Balogh, who left Hun­gary after the rev­o­lu­tion, was the first to notice Susan Gorka’s work with Irv­ing.

“I went through that rev­o­lu­tion and I remem­ber it pret­ty well, there was no sign of anti-Semi­tism as far as I could see it,” Balogh said. “This is a fig­ment of [Irving’s] imag­i­na­tion and his prej­u­dice.”

Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka did not respond to a detailed list of ques­tions about his mother’s work with Irv­ing, and his own views on Irving’s books. Accord­ing to Irv­ing, Susan Gor­ka shared his belief that the 1956 upris­ing was moti­vat­ed by antipa­thy toward Jews. “Most Hun­gar­i­an exiles do believe that,” he said. “They regard the upris­ing as start­ing as an anti-Jew­ish pro­gram.”

In the intro­duc­tion to Upris­ing! Irv­ing thanked Susan Gor­ka as one of four inter­preters who made the book pos­si­ble. He also list­ed two inter­views in Lon­don with Paul Gor­ka in 1974 and 1978 in the sec­tion on sourc­ing.

Irv­ing said he stayed in touch with Susan Gor­ka for sev­er­al years after the book was pub­lished in 1981, and met Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka “two or three times.” He said he has since lost touch with the fam­i­ly. He had nev­er heard of the Vitézi Rend, he said.

Irving’s past rela­tion­ship with the fam­i­ly, Balogh said, “shows what kind of milieus the Gorkas lived in.”

...

“Irv­ing met Susan Gor­ka in the 1970s while he was work­ing on a book about the 1956 Hun­gar­i­an rev­o­lu­tion, he told The Huff­in­g­ton Post in an inter­view. He sus­pect­ed his inter­preter was “ten­den­tious­ly” trans­lat­ing his inter­views, and lat­er con­clud­ed the inter­preter was a Hun­gar­i­an spy. He began search­ing for a new Hun­gar­i­an speak­er who could go through trans­la­tions of pre­vi­ous inter­view tran­scripts to make sure they were cor­rect. Susan Gor­ka vol­un­teered, he said.”

Yeah, that cer­tain­ly gives us hint of the kind of milieus the Gorka’s lived in. Milieus that clear­ly made a last­ing impres­sion on Sebas­t­ian. Like father, like son. And also like moth­er, like son. Very unfor­tu­nate­ly in both cas­es.

The con­sol­i­da­tion of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s nation­al secu­ri­ty team under the direc­tion of nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor H.R. McMas­ter expand­ed recent to include the reas­sign­ment of K.T. McFar­land from the post of deputy nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor to ambas­sador of Sin­ga­pore. So that’s Michael Fly­nn, Steve Ban­non, and now K.T. McFar­land who have lost their nation­al secu­ri­ty coun­cil posi­tion less than three months into the new admin­is­tra­tion. And since all three are from the dis­tinct­ly ‘loop­i­er’ fac­tion of the Team Trump and McFar­land had report­ed­ly nar­row­ly avoid­ed los­ing her posi­tion back in Feb­ru­ary but was saved by an inter­ven­tion by Trump him­self, it rais­es the ques­tion of who’s next to from Team Loopy?

For instance, how about Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka? Is he going to con­tin­ue advis­ing Trump on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues or is a new job in his near future? Well, as the fol­low­ing arti­cle indi­cates, it’s pos­si­ble Gor­ka will indeed be reas­signed. But it’s also pos­si­ble this reas­sign­ment will still involve advis­ing Trump on some key nation­al secu­ri­ty issues. And Gor­ka him­self is active­ly lob­by­ing for this new posi­tion: Gor­ka wants to become the US spe­cial enjoy to Libya and has lot’s of advice on what to do about the night­mare sit­u­a­tion in Libya that he’d like to give Trump. Specif­i­cal­ly, break Libya up into three coun­tries along the old Ottoman empire lines. That’s the kind of advice Gor­ka wants to give Trump as the spe­cial envoy to Libya:

The Guardian

Trump aide drew plan on nap­kin to par­ti­tion Libya into three

Exclu­sive: Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka told pro­pos­al would be ‘the worst solu­tion’ when he sug­gest­ed it to senior Euro­pean diplo­mat

Stephanie Kirch­gaess­ner in Rome and Julian Borg­er in Wash­ing­ton

Mon­day 10 April 2017 02.00 EDT
Last mod­i­fied on Mon­day 10 April 2017 03.23 EDT

A senior White House for­eign pol­i­cy offi­cial has pushed a plan to par­ti­tion Libya, and once drew a pic­ture of how the coun­try could be divid­ed into three areas on a nap­kin in a meet­ing with a senior Euro­pean diplo­mat, the Guardian has learned.

Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, a deputy assis­tant to Don­ald Trump under pres­sure over his past ties with Hun­gar­i­an far-right groups, sug­gest­ed the idea of par­ti­tion in the weeks lead­ing up to the US president’s inau­gu­ra­tion, accord­ing to an offi­cial with knowl­edge of the mat­ter. The Euro­pean diplo­mat respond­ed that this would be “the worst solu­tion” for Libya.

Gor­ka is vying for the job of pres­i­den­tial spe­cial envoy to Libya in a White House that has so far spent lit­tle time think­ing about the coun­try and has yet to decide whether to cre­ate such a post.

Libya has been mired in a con­flict between two com­pet­ing gov­ern­ments since the fall of Muam­mar Gaddafi in 2011 after a Nato-led inter­ven­tion. As rival jos­tle for influ­ence and posi­tion in Wash­ing­ton on the hith­er­to neglect­ed issue, sharp dif­fer­ences have emerged over how much say Rus­sia should have in Libya’s fate.

There are fears among some Euro­pean allies that the White House will reverse the Oba­ma administration’s strong sup­port for the UN-backed Libyan gov­ern­ment of nation­al accord, which is based in Tripoli and led by Fayez al-Sar­raj.

While the GNA has been seen by some as the best option for achiev­ing sta­bil­i­ty in the coun­try, it has strug­gled against a rival gov­ern­ment based in Tobruk, east­ern Libya, backed by Khal­i­fa Haf­tar, an anti-Islamist mil­i­tary strong­man. Haf­tar, who would not back par­ti­tion, has sup­port in some parts of the Egypt­ian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments.

In Jan­u­ary, he was wel­comed onboard the Admi­ral Kuznetsov, the Russ­ian flag­ship, as the air­craft car­ri­er sailed along the north African coast. Haf­tar, a 73-year-old field mar­shal and for­mer Gaddafi gen­er­al who lat­er became his bit­ter oppo­nent, presents him­self as a bul­wark against Islamism and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which makes him appeal­ing to ele­ments of the Trump for­eign pol­i­cy team.

Gor­ka advo­cates hard­line poli­cies aimed at defeat­ing “rad­i­cal Islam” and sees the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood as a ter­ror­ist group bent on infil­trat­ing the US. As a for­mer Bre­it­bart edi­tor, he is close to Steve Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, who believes the strug­gle against rad­i­cal Islam should be the cen­tral theme of US for­eign pol­i­cy. But Bannon’s star is on the wane in the White House and he lost his seat on the nation­al secu­ri­ty coun­cil last week.

Gor­ka has alarmed for­eign diplo­mats with his views on Libya’s future. The map he drew on a nap­kin dur­ing the tran­si­tion peri­od cut Libya into three sec­tions, appar­ent­ly based on the old Ottoman provinces of Cyre­naica in the east, Tripoli­ta­nia in the north-west and Fez­zan in the south-west.

For­mer Ottoman provinces of Libya

Mat­tia Toal­do, a Libya expert at the Euro­pean Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions think­tank, said: “This is like a lit­mus test of how much you know about Libya. If you the only thing you know is that it was cut into three, then it shows you are clue­less about the sit­u­a­tion in Libya.”

Gorka’s rivals for the envoy job include Pete Hoek­stra, a for­mer con­gress­man and lob­by­ist, and Phillip Escar­avage, a for­mer US intel­li­gence offi­cial who worked on Libya for more than a decade.

Escar­avage is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be the clear favourite to take on the unpaid role. He is believed to have put for­ward a peace pro­pos­al heav­i­ly depen­dent on tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in west­ern finan­cial sup­port.

At least one Euro­pean ally has pri­vate­ly expressed frus­tra­tion at the US state department’s lack of a posi­tion on Libya, voic­ing con­cerns over Russia’s grow­ing influ­ence.

While sep­a­ratists who sup­port par­ti­tion claim that a viable state could be built in east­ern Libya, most experts agree that the move would stoke anoth­er civ­il war because the bound­aries would be hot­ly dis­put­ed.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Tobruk gov­ern­ment, includ­ing Haf­tar, have sought to influ­ence the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, call­ing for the US to rad­i­cal­ly change its posi­tion and with­draw sup­port for the Sar­raj gov­ern­ment.

In a phone inter­view with the Guardian, Ari Ben-Menashe, an Israeli secu­ri­ty con­sul­tant based in Cana­da, whose com­pa­ny has a $6m (£4.9m) con­tract to lob­by on behalf of Haf­tar and Aguila Saleh Issa, the head of the Libyan house of rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Tobruk, said the White House had been “briefed” on Libya and was “will­ing to play on our terms”.

“There is not going to be a par­ti­tion,” Ben-Menashe said. “None of them [Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials] real­ly knew any­thing about what was going on. They were briefed pret­ty exten­sive­ly by us and ... they under­stand that Sar­raj will nev­er work.”

Ben-Menashe said it was under­stood by the Trump admin­is­tra­tion that a cen­tral Libyan gov­ern­ment accept­able to the west and east of the coun­try could be cre­at­ed “in three days” if Rus­sia were more involved. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion, he added, was “inter­est­ed in get­ting the help of Rus­sians and inter­est­ed in get­ting them to resolve it”.

...

“Gor­ka is vying for the job of pres­i­den­tial spe­cial envoy to Libya in a White House that has so far spent lit­tle time think­ing about the coun­try and has yet to decide whether to cre­ate such a post.”

Whether or not Gor­ka is read­ing the writ­ing of the wall after the depar­ture of Fly­nn and McFar­land or whether he real­ly does want to be the spe­cial enjoy to Libya, Gor­ka is clear­ly inter­est­ed in the posi­tion. So he can advo­cate for recre­at­ing the old Ottoman provinces:

...
Gor­ka has alarmed for­eign diplo­mats with his views on Libya’s future. The map he drew on a nap­kin dur­ing the tran­si­tion peri­od cut Libya into three sec­tions, appar­ent­ly based on the old Ottoman provinces of Cyre­naica in the east, Tripoli­ta­nia in the north-west and Fez­zan in the south-west.

For­mer Ottoman provinces of Libya

Mat­tia Toal­do, a Libya expert at the Euro­pean Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions think­tank, said: “This is like a lit­mus test of how much you know about Libya. If you the only thing you know is that it was cut into three, then it shows you are clue­less about the sit­u­a­tion in Libya.”
...

And while par­ti­tion­ing Libya might seem like an extreme solu­tion, keep in mind that the coun­try is already frag­ment­ed and has two pri­ma­ry rival gov­ern­ments: the Islamist-friend­ly GNA and the anti-Islamist (but strong­man-friend­ly) Tobruk gov­ern­ment. And inter­na­tion­al sup­port for the gov­ern­ments is split:

...
There are fears among some Euro­pean allies that the White House will reverse the Oba­ma administration’s strong sup­port for the UN-backed Libyan gov­ern­ment of nation­al accord, which is based in Tripoli and led by Fayez al-Sar­raj.

While the GNA has been seen by some as the best option for achiev­ing sta­bil­i­ty in the coun­try, it has strug­gled against a rival gov­ern­ment based in Tobruk, east­ern Libya, backed by Khal­i­fa Haf­tar, an anti-Islamist mil­i­tary strong­man. Haf­tar, who would not back par­ti­tion, has sup­port in some parts of the Egypt­ian and Russ­ian gov­ern­ments.

In Jan­u­ary, he was wel­comed onboard the Admi­ral Kuznetsov, the Russ­ian flag­ship, as the air­craft car­ri­er sailed along the north African coast. Haf­tar, a 73-year-old field mar­shal and for­mer Gaddafi gen­er­al who lat­er became his bit­ter oppo­nent, presents him­self as a bul­wark against Islamism and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, which makes him appeal­ing to ele­ments of the Trump for­eign pol­i­cy team.
...

So giv­en all that, who knows, it’s not impos­si­ble that split­ting up Libya could end up being Trump’s pol­i­cy in Libya. And maybe Gor­ka will be the one to craft it. But if that does end up being the plan, it also rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not Gor­ka is plan­ning on a major US mil­i­tary com­mit­ment to keep­ing the peace between the new rival nations he pro­pos­es cre­at­ing. Because as the arti­cle below notes, if you break up Libya along the old Ottoman empire bor­ders you’re going to end up hand­ing most of the oil to the Tobruk gov­ern­ment and many oil fields will be right next to the new bor­ders which almost cer­tain­ly means the mil­i­tary con­flict will con­tin­ue:

Politi­co
Mag­a­zine

So You Want to Par­ti­tion Libya …

A memo for Dr. Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, Ph.D.

By Geoff D. Porter

April 11, 2017

Dear Dr. Gor­ka,

So I hear you’re inter­est­ed in being Don­ald Trump’s envoy to Libya. You even sketched a plan on a nap­kin to par­ti­tion the coun­try. The plan would divide Libya into three provinces that date back to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th cen­tu­ry, and there­by solve Libya’s cur­rent cri­sis. If it were only that sim­ple.

But it’s not. Libya’s ongo­ing con­flict is com­pli­cat­ed. It has to do with the lega­cy of four decades of bru­tal dic­ta­to­r­i­al rule under Muam­mar Qad­hafi that oblit­er­at­ed any sem­blance of func­tion­al gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions and pit­ted Libyan against Libyan. It has to do with lack of rule of law and poor gov­er­nance that has allowed the demo­c­ra­t­ic process ini­ti­at­ed after the 2011 rev­o­lu­tion to be per­vert­ed and then abort­ed. And it has to do with region­al proxy pow­ers inter­ven­ing both open­ly and clan­des­tine­ly in Libya to make sure that they have an oil-rich ally on the Mediter­ranean when the dust set­tles.

The cur­rent mess in Libya is lay­ers upon lay­ers, with mul­ti­ple bod­ies in dif­fer­ent cities claim­ing to be the country’s true gov­ern­ment. And then there are the fence-sitters—not yet with this side or that but wait­ing to see where the chips fall. And all of these groups are armed. We’re not talk­ing about just small arms, but armor, artillery and air pow­er. Also, let’s not for­get the Islam­ic State, which was only recent­ly oust­ed from its strong­hold in Sirte. Many of those fight­ers who fled like­ly linked up with clan­des­tine cells through­out the coun­try. But let’s put all this aside for the moment and focus on why your plan is a clunk­er.

For starters, your plan is pred­i­cat­ed on the notion that the Ottoman divi­sion of Libya into three provinces (Tripoli­ta­nia in the west, Cyre­naica in the east, and the Fez­zan in the south) “worked.”

Well, let’s review a lit­tle his­to­ry. (Yes, I too have a Ph.D.) The Ottomans first con­quered and cre­at­ed Cyre­naica, today’s east­ern Libya, in 1517. It took them anoth­er 34 years to con­quer Tripoli­ta­nia, the region clos­er to Tunisia. The Ottomans only con­quered and cre­at­ed the Fez­zan, Libya’s vast and most­ly emp­ty desert south, 300 years lat­er. And this gloss­es over the fact that Istan­bul lost con­trol of Tripoli­ta­nia for more than a cen­tu­ry in the inter­ven­ing years. These were not hap­py, seam­less times.

But how did these Ottoman provinces func­tion? For starters, the bor­ders between the regions were pri­mar­i­ly for the pur­pos­es of tax col­lec­tion to be paid to Istan­bul, not for the full remit of gov­er­nance that we would require today. Peo­ple moved back and forth and fam­i­lies and inter­ests spanned dif­fer­ent regions. Law enforce­ment, such as it was, devolved to the local lev­el.

But all this was before oil—which wasn’t dis­cov­ered in Libya until 1957. Had oil been dis­cov­ered in Libya dur­ing the Ottoman era, would Istan­bul have divid­ed it the way it did? Wouldn’t we then be sketch­ing dif­fer­ent bor­ders on dif­fer­ent nap­kins?

But for the sake of argu­ment, let’s say we do divide Libya accord­ing to 600-year-old bor­ders (regard­less of whether this is what Libyans want or not). Oil is Libya’s lifeblood. It pays for every­thing from food to water to pub­lic-sec­tor salaries. With­out oil rev­enue there is no Libya.

The prob­lem is, bor­ders on the ground don’t always neat­ly line up with the oil reserves in it. In Libya’s case, most of the oil is in the east, in what would be Cyre­naica. The Fez­zan would have some too. There is con­sid­er­ably less in what would be Tripoli­ta­nia, the region that con­tains the cap­i­tal, Tripoli.

Recre­at­ing Ottoman divi­sions then would ulti­mate­ly cut a future Tripolitania’s rev­enue by more than two thirds. Mak­ing mat­ters worse, the oil fields that Tripoli­ta­nia would lose would be just across the bor­der in neigh­bor­ing Cyrenaica—so close that Tripoli­ta­nia would be for­giv­en were it to be tempt­ed to fight for them. And while the Fez­zan would end up with some oil, it has no access to ports and would have to pay Tripoli­ta­nia tran­sit tar­iffs to get its oil to mar­ket. Giv­en how much rev­enue it would have lost, you can bet Tripoli­ta­nia will extract a pret­ty pen­ny. Plus, the Fez­zan would end up a land­locked coun­try. The Unit­ed Nations and the World Bank have ample sta­tis­tics demon­strat­ing how frag­ile land­locked coun­tries are.

But the Libyan con­flict is already about oil and about con­trol­ling the rev­enue that oil gen­er­ates. This became abun­dant­ly clear last month when mili­tias allied with the Gov­ern­ment of Nation­al Accord in Tripoli seized four oil export ter­mi­nals that had ear­li­er been cap­tured by the mil­i­tary allied with the east­ern gov­ern­ment in Tobruk, which in turn had cap­tured from a sep­a­ratist cum gang­ster. (Are you fol­low­ing along, Dr. Gor­ka?) Even though the Tobruk gov­ern­ment had con­tin­ued to allow oil rev­enue from the ports under its con­trol to keep going to the gov­ern­ment in Tripoli after it cap­tured them in Sep­tem­ber 2016, some polit­i­cal lead­ers in Tripoli were uneasy with that “gentlemen’s agree­ment” and felt they need­ed to take the oil ter­mi­nals “back,” not only to under­mine their oppo­nents in the east, but also to guar­an­tee oil rev­enue for them­selves in the future. They man­aged to do so briefly in March, but the Tripoli gov­ern­ment was able to hold the ter­mi­nals for only a few days before the gov­ern­ment in Tobruk took them back. Now that it has tak­en them back, the Tobruk gov­ern­ment is explor­ing ways of sell­ing oil on its own.

Mean­while, the gov­ern­ment in Tripoli is try­ing to fig­ure out how to exert more con­trol over oil rev­enue, like­ly to deprive that rev­enue of going to the gov­ern­ment in Tobruk. Fur­ther south, oth­er groups are also lever­ag­ing oil, peri­od­i­cal­ly shut­ting down a pipeline lead­ing from two large south­west­ern fields to deprive the gov­ern­ment in Tripoli of rev­enue and force it to bow to their demands.

Libya’s cur­rent con­flict, though, is also about more than oil. It is about for­mer Qad­hafi regime mem­bers try­ing to reclaim what they lost in the 2011 rev­o­lu­tion. It is about Islamists—no, not rad­i­cal Islam­ic terrorists—trying to pre­serve the polit­i­cal gains they made dur­ing Libya’s brief demo­c­ra­t­ic inter­lude in the after­math of the rev­o­lu­tion that oust­ed Qad­hafi. It is about for­mer polit­i­cal dissidents—some who were impris­oned, oth­ers who were exiled, try­ing to gain some polit­i­cal pow­er for the first time in a coun­try they call their own. And into this mix add jiha­di ter­ror­ists orga­ni­za­tions like the Islam­ic State; the rem­nants of Beng­hazi con­sulate attack­ers Ansar al-Sharia; and some com­po­nents of Al Qae­da in the Islam­ic Maghreb, a region­al ter­ror­ist group with a large pres­ence in the south. None of these groups fits neat­ly into Ottoman-era bor­ders. Which new coun­try would you give to the Islamists? Which one would the for­mer Qad­hafi hench­men get? Who ends up with the bulk of the ter­ror­ists?

Despite all of this, per­haps you still think cre­at­ing three new coun­tries is a good idea. But you don’t have to look very far to find instances where this approach has been a dis­as­ter. This is espe­cial­ly the case when oil is involved. Case in point: South Sudan, which not only fought a calami­tous 20-year war for inde­pen­dence from Sudan that reignit­ed over oil less than a year after win­ning inde­pen­dence, but is now engulfed in a civ­il war of its own and fail­ing. Do we real­ly want to be flirt­ing with the prospect of more failed states in the Sahara? After all, failed states are hot­hous­es for jiha­di salafis who are already abun­dant in Libya and the Sahara. We should be work­ing to lim­it their areas of oper­a­tions, not cre­at­ing new ones for them.

Finally—and this is a big one—despite hav­ing two gov­ern­ments and being on the cusp of civ­il war, most Libyans still think of them­selves as “Libyan.” They don’t think of them­selves as Tripoli­tan­ian or Cyre­naican or Fez­zani. The solu­tion for Libya’s cri­sis is to fos­ter this sense of “Libyaness” as a way of coun­ter­ing the zero-sum men­tal­i­ty that is dri­ving the cur­rent cri­sis. The Nation­al Oil Corp. rec­og­nizes this. It has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained in the face of all sorts of con­fronta­tions that Libya’s oil is for Libyans, east and west, north and south. The chal­lenge now is to spread the “Libya for Libyans” men­tal­i­ty to oth­er gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions. Admit­ted­ly, a plan for doing this doesn’t fit on a nap­kin, but nei­ther would any plans for deal­ing with the mess cre­at­ed by divvy­ing up Libya into bor­ders from a bygone era.

...

“The prob­lem is, bor­ders on the ground don’t always neat­ly line up with the oil reserves in it. In Libya’s case, most of the oil is in the east, in what would be Cyre­naica. The Fez­zan would have some too. There is con­sid­er­ably less in what would be Tripoli­ta­nia, the region that con­tains the cap­i­tal, Tripoli.”

That cer­tain­ly sounds like a recipe for a lot more war. Espe­cial­ly war over the oil fields just over the bor­der that ‘Tripoli­ta­nia’ is going to be very unhap­py about los­ing. and then there’s the fact that one of the new nations would be land­locked:

...
Recre­at­ing Ottoman divi­sions then would ulti­mate­ly cut a future Tripolitania’s rev­enue by more than two thirds. Mak­ing mat­ters worse, the oil fields that Tripoli­ta­nia would lose would be just across the bor­der in neigh­bor­ing Cyrenaica—so close that Tripoli­ta­nia would be for­giv­en were it to be tempt­ed to fight for them. And while the Fez­zan would end up with some oil, it has no access to ports and would have to pay Tripoli­ta­nia tran­sit tar­iffs to get its oil to mar­ket. Giv­en how much rev­enue it would have lost, you can bet Tripoli­ta­nia will extract a pret­ty pen­ny. Plus, the Fez­zan would end up a land­locked coun­try. The Unit­ed Nations and the World Bank have ample sta­tis­tics demon­strat­ing how frag­ile land­locked coun­tries are.
...

So that’s all part of Gorka’s plan. It’s not actu­al­ly a plan for peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to Libya’s civ­il-war, but it is a plan. And there is a cer­tain log­ic to it in the sense that it’s a plan that would starve the Islamist-friend­ly new nation Tripoli­ta­nia of oil rev­enues that would instead go towards the anti-Isam­list Tobruk gov­ern­ment of ‘Cyre­naica’. That seems like the kind of plan the Trump team might go with...except the log­ic breaks down when you con­sid­ered that even if the Trump admin­is­tra­tion got the rest of the world to go along with the par­ti­tion plan those reduced oil rev­enues for the Islamists of Tripoli­ta­nia isn’t going to stop them from get­ting plen­ty of access to weapons and fight­ers from its var­i­ous Gulf monar­chy spon­sors if it does decide to wage a war for that lost oil.

So you have to won­der what else Gor­ka has in mind with this plan. Because don’t for­get one of Don­ald Trump’s ral­ly­ing cries through­out the 2016 cam­paign: he would have kept Iraq’s oil as a ‘spoil of war’ which would have pre­vent­ed the rise of ISIS. Well, Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka is propos­ing the cre­ation of a new oil-rich anti-Islamist strong­man-led state that’s going to have a new super pissed-off oil-poor Islamist neigh­bor with exten­sive mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties and like­ly broad sup­port mil­i­tary sup­port from the Gulf monar­chies.

So is a US mil­i­tary peace-keep­ing pres­ence in ‘Cyre­naica’ part of Gorka’s plan? And is Cyre­naica’s oil going to be the price Trump charges for this pro­tec­tion? We’ll see.

At least it does­n’t sound like KT McFar­land has any mas­ter plan of her own she’s going to push while serv­ing in Sin­ga­pore. Phew. Although it’s prob­a­bly just a mat­ter of time. She’s pret­ty cre­ative.

We prob­a­bly should have seen this com­ing: The Trump admin­is­tra­tion just reversed the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s pol­i­cy on vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­clos­ing the the White House vis­i­tors log. So if you want to see who’s com­ing and going from the White House, be pre­pared to fill out a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Trump will keep list of White House vis­i­tors secret

By John Wag­n­er
April 14, 2017 at 4:19 PM

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion announced Fri­day that it would not fol­low Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma’s pol­i­cy of vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­clos­ing the names of most vis­i­tors to the White House com­plex, cit­ing “grave nation­al secu­ri­ty risks and pri­va­cy con­cerns.”

The announce­ment, from an admin­is­tra­tion that has faced point­ed ques­tions about its com­mit­ment to trans­paren­cy, marks a sig­nif­i­cant shift from the Oba­ma White House, which released the names of near­ly 6 mil­lion vis­i­tors, includ­ing scores of lob­by­ists.

Instead, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion said it would release infor­ma­tion under far more lim­it­ed cir­cum­stances: When Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act requests are filed for those vis­it­ing offices of the White House clas­si­fied under the law as sep­a­rate agen­cies, such as the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get.

Under the new pol­i­cy, it will be up to the White House to decide whether to release the names of vis­i­tors com­ing to meet with the pres­i­dent, vice pres­i­dent and their senior staff, at least in the short term. Under a sep­a­rate statute, much of that infor­ma­tion can become pub­lic years after Trump leaves office.

Fri­day’s announce­ment was harsh­ly crit­i­cized by an array of gov­ern­ment watch­dog groups.

“The only excuse for this pol­i­cy is that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has some­thing to hide,” said David Don­nel­ly, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive of Every Voice. “This kind of secre­cy will allow big donors, lob­by­ists and spe­cial inter­ests to have unknown lev­els of influ­ence in the White House.”

“It’s the exact oppo­site of ‘drain­ing the swamp,’ ” Don­nel­ly added, refer­ring to Trump’s pledge to ush­er in a more eth­i­cal and less cor­rupt era in Wash­ing­ton.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion was sued in fed­er­al court ear­li­er this week by a coali­tion of watch­dog groups to com­pel the release of the White House vis­i­tor logs. Under Oba­ma, such records, which were pub­lished on a White House-main­tained Web page, were typ­i­cal­ly dis­closed 90 to 120 days after the vis­it.

Since Trump took office in Jan­u­ary, the page where the vis­i­tor logs had been pub­licly avail­able has gone dark, and Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said Fri­day that they will no longer main­tain it, which the White House said would save tax­pay­ers $70,000 by 2020.

After ini­tial resis­tance, Oba­ma’s pol­i­cy was craft­ed in 2009 in response to ear­li­er law­suits by Cit­i­zens for Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Ethics in Wash­ing­ton, one of the groups now part of the new law­suit against Trump.

The pol­i­cy per­mit­ted some excep­tions to dis­clo­sure, includ­ing pri­vate vis­its to the Oba­ma fam­i­ly. The Oba­ma White House also main­tained the pre­rog­a­tive not to release records of par­tic­u­lar­ly “sen­si­tive” meet­ings, such as inter­views with poten­tial Supreme Court nom­i­nees.

Oba­ma at times drew crit­i­cism for such carve-outs, as well as for oth­er ways for skirt­ing the agree­ment, includ­ing meet­ings between White House offi­cials and lob­by­ists at a cof­fee shop near the White House that did­n’t show up in the logs.

Trump aides high­light­ed such loop­holes under Oba­ma and said the new pol­i­cy is con­sis­tent with a legal dis­tinc­tion that Oba­ma offi­cials drew in a 2012 law­suit. Despite the vol­un­tary dis­clo­sure of vis­i­tor logs, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion main­tained that the logs were White House records and there­fore not required to be dis­closed under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act.

Oth­ers have argued that the records are sub­ject to dis­clo­sure under the FOIA because they are cre­at­ed by the Secret Ser­vice, which is an agency cov­ered by the law.

As a pri­vate cit­i­zen, Trump was high­ly crit­i­cal of the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s posi­tion in 2012, writ­ing on Twit­ter: “Why is @BarackObama spend­ing mil­lions to try and hide his records? He is the least trans­par­ent Pres­i­dent — ever — and he ran on trans­paren­cy.”

The exis­tence of the vis­i­tor logs burst back into the news last month when House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man Devin Nunes (R‑Calif.) went to the White House grounds to review intel­li­gence reports on which he lat­er briefed the pres­i­dent. Both Nunes and White House offi­cials ini­tial­ly declined to say whom Nunes had vis­it­ed and who had cleared him onto the grounds, infor­ma­tion that is typ­i­cal­ly con­tained in the logs, along with the length of the stay.

White House com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor Mike Dubke said Fri­day that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has tak­en sev­er­al steps to ensure the gov­ern­ment “is both eth­i­cal and acces­si­ble to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” Among those he men­tioned were new restric­tions on lob­by­ists and allow­ing jour­nal­ists to par­tic­i­pate remote­ly in White House brief­in­gs via Skype.

“Giv­en the grave nation­al secu­ri­ty risks and pri­va­cy con­cerns of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of vis­i­tors annu­al­ly, the White House Office will dis­close Secret Ser­vice logs as out­lined under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, a posi­tion the Oba­ma White House suc­cess­ful­ly defend­ed in fed­er­al court,” Dubke said in a state­ment, refer­ring to the 2102 law­suit filed by Judi­cial Watch, a con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion.

...

With the new pol­i­cy, the White House offi­cials made clear Fri­day that they believe Trump is under no legal oblig­a­tion to dis­close vis­i­tors to the com­plex. As a mat­ter of prac­tice, the White House has dis­closed the names of many of those who meet direct­ly with the pres­i­dent on the days the meet­ings take place. There has been very lit­tle dis­clo­sure of meet­ings with staff.

Some past and present gov­ern­ment offi­cials have argued that White House offi­cials should be per­mit­ted to con­duct meet­ings out­side the pub­lic eye as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy.

“I tend to feel it’s the pre­rog­a­tive of the White House to have peo­ple come vis­it, and the pub­lic doesn’t need to know who they are,” Andrew H. Card Jr., chief of staff under Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, said in an inter­view last week. “We don’t have a log on every­body who vis­its Con­gress, and they’re a coequal branch of gov­ern­ment.”

Christi­na Reynolds, who served as direc­tor of media affairs under Oba­ma, said Trump had made “the wrong call” but that it was some­what under­stand­able why he made the call he did. Despite being the first to open up the logs, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was crit­i­cized for not going far enough and endured neg­a­tive news sto­ries about some of its vis­i­tors.

“If your only guide is whether you’re going to get bad sto­ries, it’s more under­stand­able,” Reynolds said, say­ing that the Trump White House may have decid­ed to “take its lumps” Fri­day but be spared crit­i­cism based on what would lat­er be dis­closed in the logs.

...

““If your only guide is whether you’re going to get bad sto­ries, it’s more under­stand­able,” Reynolds said, say­ing that the Trump White House may have decid­ed to “take its lumps” Fri­day but be spared crit­i­cism based on what would lat­er be dis­closed in the logs.”

That’s some good advice from Christi­na Reynolds, media affairs under Oba­ma. If the Trump White House wants to avoid a bad sto­ries about who’s com­ing and going in the future, it’s going to have to take a day of bad press now and change the rules. And it’s not like we haven’t seen some awful­ly bad press emerg­ing from these logs already:

...
The exis­tence of the vis­i­tor logs burst back into the news last month when House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man Devin Nunes (R‑Calif.) went to the White House grounds to review intel­li­gence reports on which he lat­er briefed the pres­i­dent. Both Nunes and White House offi­cials ini­tial­ly declined to say whom Nunes had vis­it­ed and who had cleared him onto the grounds, infor­ma­tion that is typ­i­cal­ly con­tained in the logs, along with the length of the stay.
...

Giv­en the fact that there’s already been a bit of a block­buster sto­ry to emerge from the dis­cov­ery of Devin Nunes’s vis­it to the White House via those vis­i­tor logs it’s hard to see how the White House isn’t going to be rou­tine­ly bom­bard­ed with FOIA requests. It will be inter­est­ing to see what kinds of rea­sons they give for not releas­ing them...presumably it will be like “blah blah *nation­al secu­ri­ty!* blah blah blah”. Or some­thing along those lines.

So now that FOIA requests are going to be required for the release of those White House vis­i­tor logs it might be tempt­ing to assume that noth­ing much of inter­est will be learned from that data source. But that may not be the case. For exam­ple, remem­ber James Guck­ert aka “Jeff Gan­non”, the male pros­ti­tute-turned far-right ‘jour­nal­ist’ who was act­ing as the Bush White House­’s deflec­tion-point man in the press pool and who was found to be spend­ing an unbe­liev­able amount at the White House? Don’t for­get that the White House logs were crit­i­cal to that sto­ry and it hap­pened despite the FOIA request require­ment:

Raw Sto­ry

Secret Ser­vice records raise new ques­tions about dis­cred­it­ed con­ser­v­a­tive reporter

By John Byrne| RAW STORY Edi­tor
Arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished Apr. 24, 2005.

Updat­ed: Day dis­cov­ered with two check-ins but no check outs; Oth­er events found on some days with­out press brief­in­gs

READ THE DOCUMENTS

In what is unlike­ly to stem the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing dis­graced White House cor­re­spon­dent James Guck­ert, the Secret Ser­vice has fur­nished logs of the writer’s access to the White House after requests by two Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­mem­bers.

The doc­u­ments, obtained by Rep. Louise Slaugh­ter (D‑NY) and Rep. John Cony­ers (D‑MI) through a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request, reveal Guck­ert had remark­able access to the White House. Though he wrote under the name Jeff Gan­non, the records show that he applied with his real name.

Gannon’s ready access to Pres­i­dent Bush and his work for a news agency that fre­quent­ly pla­gia­rized con­tent from oth­er reporters and tai­lored it to serve a con­ser­v­a­tive mes­sage may raise new ques­tions about the White House’s attempts to seed favor­able news cov­er­age. Democ­rats have sought to paint Guck­ert in the con­text of oth­er efforts by the Admin­is­tra­tion to “plant” pos­i­tive spin by pay­ing for video news releas­es and colum­nists to espouse their views.

Guck­ert made more than 200 appear­ances at the White House dur­ing his two-year tenure with the fledg­ing con­ser­v­a­tive web­sites GOPUSA and Talon News, attend­ing 155 of 196 White House press brief­in­gs. He had lit­tle to no pre­vi­ous jour­nal­ism expe­ri­ence, pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a male escort, and was refused a con­gres­sion­al press pass.

Per­haps more notable than the fre­quen­cy of his atten­dance, how­ev­er, is sev­er­al dis­tinct anom­alies about his vis­its.

Guck­ert made more than two dozen excur­sions to the White House when there were no sched­uled brief­in­gs. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gag­gles aboard Air Force One—which rais­es ques­tions about what Guck­ert was doing at the White House. On oth­er days, the pres­i­dent held pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ties.

On at least four­teen occa­sions, Secret Ser­vice records show either the entry or exit time miss­ing. Gen­er­al­ly, the exist­ing entry or exit times cor­re­late with press con­fer­ences; on most of these days, the records show that Guck­ert checked in but was nev­er processed out.

In March, 2003, Guck­ert left the White House twice on days he had nev­er checked in with the Secret Ser­vice. Over the next 22 months, Guck­ert failed to check out with the Ser­vice on four­teen days. On sev­er­al of these vis­its, Guck­ert either entered or exit­ed by a dif­fer­ent entry/exit point than his usu­al one. On one of these days, no brief­ing was held; on anoth­er, he checked in twice but failed to check out.

“I’d be wor­ried if I was the White House and I knew that a reporter with a day pass nev­er left,” one White House reporter told RAW STORY. “I’d won­der, where is he hid­ing? It seems like a secu­ri­ty risk.”

Oth­ers who have cov­ered the White House say not check­ing in or out with the Secret Ser­vice is unusu­al, espe­cial­ly in the wake of Sept. 11. The Secret Ser­vice declined to com­ment.

“We respond­ed to the FOIA request and can pro­vide no fur­ther infor­ma­tion,” Ser­vice spokesman Jonathan Cher­ry said.

Guck­ert declined to com­ment, direct­ing all ques­tions to the Ser­vice.

The records fur­nished by the Ser­vice are unlike­ly to final­ly answer who approved Gannon’s “tem­po­rary” day pass­es into the pres­i­den­tial res­i­dence. The Ser­vice keeps a record of who approved pass­es only for the last six­ty days; pre­vi­ous records are kept by the White House.

Since Decem­ber 2004, all but one of Gannon’s forty-eight tem­po­rary appoint­ments were request­ed by Lois Cas­sano, a White House Press Office media assis­tant. One addi­tion­al request was made by Peter Watkins, a press assis­tant who now works as deputy press sec­re­tary to First Lady Lau­ra Bush.

Guck­ert some­times stayed for an extend­ed peri­od of time before and after press con­fer­ences, par­tic­u­lar­ly ear­ly in his tenure. This was espe­cial­ly com­mon dur­ing his first few months, when he might be in the White House for as long as six hours.

A White House reporter dis­missed this as insignif­i­cant, not­ing that some­times reporters stay between events.

“You could prob­a­bly find peo­ple who stayed there for nine hours,” the reporter said.

Occa­sion­al­ly, the for­mer Talon News reporter vis­it­ed the White House twice on the same day. This was also most com­mon in the ear­ly months.

The Secret Ser­vice fur­nished the records after a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request from Reps. John Cony­ers (D‑MI) and Louise Slaugh­ter (D‑NY).

Guck­ert drew fire from lib­er­als after ask­ing a ques­tion of Pres­i­dent Bush ear­li­er this year in which he mis­quot­ed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid (D‑NV). Inves­tiga­tive blog­gers at Dai­ly Kos and AmericaBlog.org dis­cov­ered that Guck­ert owned male escort sites, and was him­self a male pros­ti­tute.

The now-blog­ger has also been accused of lift­ing copy from press releas­es and oth­er reporters.

A Mass­a­chu­setts edi­tor and reporter have accused Guck­ert of pla­gia­rism, which RAW STORY report­ed in March. The watch­dog Media Mat­ters for Amer­i­ca has also found that many of Guckert’s sto­ries lift­ed direct­ly from White House press releas­es.

Talon News, which shut down after the fra­cas over Gan­non erupt­ed, was self-avowed­ly Repub­li­can. Bob­by Eber­le, the site’s founder, told the Wash­ing­ton Post, “We make no bones about it: It’s a par­ti­san site.”

...

“Guck­ert made more than 200 appear­ances at the White House dur­ing his two-year tenure with the fledg­ing con­ser­v­a­tive web­sites GOPUSA and Talon News, attend­ing 155 of 196 White House press brief­in­gs. He had lit­tle to no pre­vi­ous jour­nal­ism expe­ri­ence, pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a male escort, and was refused a con­gres­sion­al press pass.”

Good ‘ol “Jeff Gan­non”, the gay male pros­ti­tute found to be seem­ing­ly stay­ing overnight at the White House. It was an, uh, inter­est­ing time for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. But at least we were able to learn about it even with a FOIA request require­ment. So that’s a bit of a relief. At the same time, note this caveat:

...
The records fur­nished by the Ser­vice are unlike­ly to final­ly answer who approved Gannon’s “tem­po­rary” day pass­es into the pres­i­den­tial res­i­dence. The Ser­vice keeps a record of who approved pass­es only for the last six­ty days; pre­vi­ous records are kept by the White House.
...

So some of the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion of who is vis­it­ing the White House is kept by the Secret Ser­vice, but only for 60 days. And after that it’s kept by the White House. And as we saw in the first arti­cle excerpt, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is mak­ing the same case the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion made in court: that White House records are not required to be dis­closed under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act:

...
Oba­ma at times drew crit­i­cism for such carve-outs, as well as for oth­er ways for skirt­ing the agree­ment, includ­ing meet­ings between White House offi­cials and lob­by­ists at a cof­fee shop near the White House that did­n’t show up in the logs.

Trump aides high­light­ed such loop­holes under Oba­ma and said the new pol­i­cy is con­sis­tent with a legal dis­tinc­tion that Oba­ma offi­cials drew in a 2012 law­suit. Despite the vol­un­tary dis­clo­sure of vis­i­tor logs, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion main­tained that the logs were White House records and there­fore not required to be dis­closed under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act.

Oth­ers have argued that the records are sub­ject to dis­clo­sure under the FOIA because they are cre­at­ed by the Secret Ser­vice, which is an agency cov­ered by the law.
...

So that’s some­thing for the press and pub­lic to remem­ber when it comes to these vis­i­tor logs: FOIA ear­ly, and FOIA often.

It’s also worth not­ing that the James Gannon/Jeff Guck­er chap­ter reminds us of anoth­er les­son the press and pub­lic should prob­a­bly keep in mind: The Trump team is cre­at­ing an army of Jeff Gan­non media shills for the White House press brief­in­gs :

Media Mat­ters

Don­ald Trump Wants An Army Of Jeff Gan­non Shills In The White House Press Brief­ing Room

MATT GERTZ
Jan­u­ary 18, 2017 10:00 AM EST

The Trump administration’s report­ed pro­pos­al to move the White House press brief­ing to a large room that can accom­mo­date pro-Trump syco­phants and pro­pa­gan­dists is brazen and destruc­tive. But it’s also not entire­ly new — the Bush admin­is­tra­tion adopt­ed a sim­i­lar strat­e­gy in 2004, grant­i­ng press brief­ing access to a shill work­ing for a right-wing out­let who they could rely on for soft­ball ques­tions.

That shill’s name was Jeff Gan­non. Actu­al­ly, that shill’s name was James Guck­ert. But that’s get­ting ahead of our­selves.

Gan­non par­layed a two-day, $50 broad­cast jour­nal­ism work­shop at the right-wing Lead­er­ship Insti­tute into a job report­ing from the White House brief­ing room for Talon News. Talon News was a shell orga­ni­za­tion run by a GOP polit­i­cal oper­a­tive that used arti­cles writ­ten by right-wing activists to dri­ve traf­fic to anoth­er con­ser­v­a­tive web­site run by the oper­a­tive.

Thanks to the access the White House press office pro­vid­ed, Gan­non had a plat­form to draw plau­dits from Sean Han­ni­ty and Rush Lim­baugh, get his work pub­lished by the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute, and even attend White House Christ­mas par­ties.

The White House got some­thing in return: Gan­non became the life­line for Bush’s press sec­re­tary at the time, Scott McClel­lan.

Here’s how it would work: Oth­er jour­nal­ists would be grilling McClel­lan over the Bush administration’s activ­i­ties. McClel­lan would call on Gan­non for a ques­tion. And Gan­non would bail McClel­lan out, fre­quent­ly with a lead­ing ques­tion ladened with false assump­tions.

In August 2004, for exam­ple, after tak­ing sev­er­al ques­tions from a reporter about whether Amer­i­can forces had killed any inno­cent peo­ple in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and anoth­er seek­ing Pres­i­dent Bush’s opin­ion of the dis­graced Ahmad Cha­l­abi, McClellen turned to Gan­non. And Gan­non came through: He asked McClel­lan about a new “piece of evi­dence show­ing the direct ter­ror ties between Iraq and Al Qae­da” and fol­lowed up by ask­ing “how dam­ag­ing” a New York Times sto­ry had been “to our war on ter­ror.”

In June 2004, McClel­lan escaped from a series of tough ques­tions about Bush’s for­eign pol­i­cy record by call­ing on Gan­non, who offered up the fol­low­ing ques­tion: “Why has­n’t the admin­is­tra­tion made more of the U.N. inspec­tors’ report that says Sad­dam Hus­sein was dis­man­tling his mis­sile and WMD [weapons of mass destruc­tion] sites before and dur­ing the war? And does­n’t that, com­bined with the now-proven Al Qae­da link between Iraq — between Sad­dam Hus­sein and the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion — unequiv­o­cal­ly make the case for going to war in Iraq?”

The list goes on and on.

Gan­non even got to ask a ques­tion at Bush’s Jan­u­ary 26, 2005, White House press con­fer­ence. He used that oppor­tu­ni­ty to inquire how the pres­i­dent would be able to “work with” Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers giv­en that they had, in Gannon’s words, “divorced them­selves from real­i­ty.”

But that appear­ance was the begin­ning of the end for Gan­non. He drew tremen­dous scruti­ny from Media Mat­ters and oth­ers, and with his schtick (and the fact that “Jeff Gan­non” was a pseu­do­nym) exposed, he was forced to resign with­in two weeks.

Thir­teen years lat­er, the land­scape has shift­ed. Incom­ing White House press sec­re­tary Sean Spicer is open­ly dis­cussing mov­ing the press brief­in­gs to a larg­er space in order to accom­mo­date “talk radio, blog­gers and oth­ers.” While the White House Cor­re­spon­dents Asso­ci­a­tion cur­rent­ly deter­mines who gets the 49 seats in the brief­ing room, the White House Press Office han­dles cre­den­tial­ing and dis­trib­utes dai­ly press pass­es, giv­ing Spicer sig­nif­i­cant con­trol over the com­po­si­tion of the press room.

In prac­tice, that means that Spicer could have a sea of Jeff Gan­nons on which to rely — “reporters” from open­ly pro-Trump pro­pa­gan­da out­lets who will side with the pres­i­dent over their col­leagues in the press.

If ABC News gives him trou­ble dur­ing the brief­ing, he could turn to the reporter from Breitbart.com. When The Wash­ing­ton Post tries to pin him down, he could retreat to the rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Right Side Broad­cast­ing Net­work. If The Asso­ci­at­ed Press and CNN and NBC News are all press­ing him for answers, he could take ques­tions from Lau­ra Ingraham’s LifeZette or One Amer­i­ca News Net­work or Infowars to stall.

We could even see our first all-shill press brief­ing, with reporters from main­stream out­lets entire­ly shut out while Spicer calls on the syco­phants.

Mean­while, Trump is warn­ing that there will be reper­cus­sions for the press if they fight back against the move, sug­gest­ing that his admin­is­tra­tion will use the lim­it­ed space in the cur­rent brief­ing room as an excuse to deny access to cred­i­ble news out­lets and grant it to more sup­port­ive ones. “There’s too many peo­ple for this small room,” he said this morn­ing dur­ing an inter­view on Fox & Friends. “We have so many peo­ple that want to go, so we’ll have to just pick the peo­ple that go into the room.” He added that if that hap­pens, the press will “be beg­ging for a much larg­er room very soon. You watch.”

...

When the press is the ene­my, tak­ing brief­ing ques­tions from pro­pa­gan­dists makes per­fect sense.

“Thir­teen years lat­er, the land­scape has shift­ed. Incom­ing White House press sec­re­tary Sean Spicer is open­ly dis­cussing mov­ing the press brief­in­gs to a larg­er space in order to accom­mo­date “talk radio, blog­gers and oth­ers.” While the White House Cor­re­spon­dents Asso­ci­a­tion cur­rent­ly deter­mines who gets the 49 seats in the brief­ing room, the White House Press Office han­dles cre­den­tial­ing and dis­trib­utes dai­ly press pass­es, giv­ing Spicer sig­nif­i­cant con­trol over the com­po­si­tion of the press room.”

A whole army of White House pressti­tutes. That’s the Gan­non plan and it was the plan even before this admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial began.

So did they fol­low through with that plan? LOL:

The New York­er

Is Trump Trolling the White House Press Corps?
At dai­ly brief­in­gs, Sean Spicer calls on young jour­nal­ists from far-right sites. The main­stream media sees them as an exis­ten­tial threat.

By Andrew Marantz
March 20, 2017 Issue

In nor­mal times, White House press brief­in­gs make for bor­ing tele­vi­sion. Robert Gibbs, Jay Car­ney, and Josh Earnest, the three gener­ic-look­ing white guys who served as suc­ces­sive press sec­re­taries under Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, could walk unmo­lest­ed through the streets of most Amer­i­can cities. Only on rare occa­sions was a clip from one of their briefings—for exam­ple, a testy exchange between Car­ney and Jonathan Karl, of ABC News, debat­ing the logis­tics of Oba­macare enrollment—remarkable enough to make head­lines.

Pres­i­dent Trump seems to have no tol­er­ance for bor­ing tele­vi­sion. His press sec­re­tary, Sean Spicer, now a recur­ring char­ac­ter on “Sat­ur­day Night Live,” is often tongue-tied, enraged, or both. Spicer’s brief­in­gs, broad­cast live on C‑SPAN, are among the most high­ly rat­ed pro­grams on day­time TV, beat­ing out “Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal” and “The Bold and the Beau­ti­ful.” On major net­works, many hours are devot­ed to night­ly exege­ses of Spicer’s ser­i­al self-con­tra­dic­tions, and to Sun­day-morn­ing ser­mons about how he is imper­illing the First Amend­ment. On YouTube, accounts with names such as Trump Mafia and Based Patri­ot repost Spicer’s brief­in­gs, and oth­ers post exul­tant com­pi­la­tions of the “spici­est” moments, over­lay­ing his rebukes of reporters with images of flames and chili pep­pers.

The James S. Brady Press Brief­ing Room, in the West Wing, has sev­en rows of sev­en seats. The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Reuters, and the biggest TV net­works have reserved seats in the front row; blogs like Politi­co and Real Clear Pol­i­tics are near the mid­dle; Buz­zFeed and the BBC are in the back. The seat­ing chart is the purview of the White House Cor­re­spon­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion, an inde­pen­dent board of jour­nal­ists who, with the som­bre secre­cy of a papal con­clave, assess news orga­ni­za­tions accord­ing to fac­tors such as reg­u­lar­i­ty of cov­er­age and cen­tral­i­ty to the nation­al dis­course.

There are also cor­re­spon­dents who might be called floaters—those who have White House cre­den­tials but no assigned seat. Some floaters work for out­lets that are too new to have been includ­ed in the most recent seat­ing chart; oth­ers work for out­lets that are mar­gin­al or dis­rep­utable. When press brief­in­gs are half emp­ty, floaters can find vacant seats. In the ear­ly days of the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion, when each day’s brief­ing is over­sub­scribed, floaters pack the aisles, angling for a spot vis­i­ble from the podi­um. The par­a­dig­mat­ic exam­ple of a floater is Raghu­bir Goy­al, an ami­able, some­what absent-mind­ed man in his six­ties. Goy­al claims to rep­re­sent the India Globe, a news­pa­per that, as far as any­one can tell, is defunct. Nev­er­the­less, he has attend­ed brief­in­gs since the Carter Admin­is­tra­tion, and has asked so many ques­tions about Indo-Amer­i­can rela­tions that his name has become a verb. “To Goy­al”: to seek out a reporter who is like­ly to pro­vide a friend­ly ques­tion, or a moment of com­ic relief. All press sec­re­taries get cor­nered, and all have, on occa­sion, Goyaled their way out. But no one Goy­als like Spicer.

Until recent­ly, the more estab­lished White House cor­re­spon­dents have regard­ed floaters as a harm­less distraction—the equiv­a­lent of let­ting a bat­boy sit in the dugout. Now they are start­ing to see the floaters as an exis­ten­tial threat. “It’s becom­ing a form of court-pack­ing,” one White House cor­re­spon­dent told me. Out­lets that have become new­ly vis­i­ble under the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion include One Amer­i­ca News Net­work, which was found­ed in 2013 as a right-wing alter­na­tive to Fox News; LifeZette, a Web tabloid found­ed in 2015 by Lau­ra Ingra­ham, the radio com­men­ta­tor and Trump ally; Town­hall, a con­ser­v­a­tive blog start­ed by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion; the Dai­ly Caller, co-found­ed in 2010 by Tuck­er Carl­son, now a Fox News host; and the enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar and open­ly pro-Trump Bre­it­bart News Net­work. Most of the White House cor­re­spon­dents from these out­lets are younger than thir­ty. “At best, they don’t know what they’re doing,” a radio cor­re­spon­dent told me. “At worst, you won­der whether some­one is actu­al­ly feed­ing them soft­ball ques­tions.” He added, “You can’t just have a parade of peo­ple ask­ing, ‘When and how do you plan to make Amer­i­ca great again?’ ”

For years, the first ques­tion of each press brief­ing has usu­al­ly gone to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press, whose reporters sit in the mid­dle of the front row. In Spicer’s first brief­ing, on Jan­u­ary 21st, which last­ed five and a half min­utes, he uttered sev­er­al ver­i­fi­able falsehoods—“This was the largest audi­ence to ever wit­ness an Inau­gu­ra­tion, period”—then left with­out tak­ing any ques­tions. For the first ques­tion of his sec­ond brief­ing, he called on the New York Post, whose reporter, sit­ting in the fifth row, was clear­ly sur­prised. He asked, “When will you com­mence the build­ing of the bor­der wall?” In Spicer’s third brief­ing, his first ques­tion went to a reporter from LifeZette, who won­dered why the Admin­is­tra­tion hadn’t tak­en a hard­er line on immi­gra­tion. Many of Spicer’s ear­ly brief­in­gs were unusu­al­ly short—about half an hour, with ten min­utes of pre­pared remarks in the begin­ning. He often escapes from the podi­um with­out fac­ing many tough ques­tions from main­stream jour­nal­ists. (This month, per­haps hop­ing to fore­close pub­lic scruti­ny, or to starve “Sat­ur­day Night Live” of mate­r­i­al, Spicer did his brief­in­gs off-cam­era for a week.)

...

About once a week, the walls behind the lectern are turned inside-out, reveal­ing built-in screens from which reporters around the coun­try can ask ques­tions by video link. This is anoth­er Spicer innovation—the “Skype seats.” Recent Skype ques­tions were allot­ted to a Trump sup­port­er and news­pa­per own­er in Ken­tucky, who asked about reduc­ing coal-min­ing reg­u­la­tions, and to a talk-radio host named Lars Lar­son, who addressed the press sec­re­tary, an offi­cer in the Navy Reserve, as “Com­man­der Spicer,” before ask­ing whether the Admin­is­tra­tion would pri­va­tize fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed park­land. Dur­ing one of these ses­sions, Jared Rizzi, a White House cor­re­spon­dent for Sir­ius XM, tweet­ed, “Skypeo­phant (n.) – super-friend­ly ques­tion­er used to burn up brief­ing time through the mag­ic of ear­ly-aughts tech­nol­o­gy.” “I cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the pur­pose of bring­ing geo­graph­ic diver­si­ty into the room,” Rizzi told me. “I also appre­ci­ate ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty. I don’t appre­ci­ate diver­si­ty of jour­nal­is­tic prac­tice.”

A long­time Wash­ing­ton reporter from a main­stream net­work echoed that sen­ti­ment. “I don’t mind them bring­ing in con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es that they feel have been under­rep­re­sent­ed,” he said. “Per­son­al­ly, I don’t even mind them fuc king with the front-row guys, the Jonathan Karls of the world. Those guys are a smug lit­tle car­tel, and it’s fun to watch them squirm, at least for a lit­tle while. But at what point does it start to dele­git­imize the whole idea of what hap­pens in that room? When does it cross the line into pure trolling?”

...

“Until recent­ly, the more estab­lished White House cor­re­spon­dents have regard­ed floaters as a harm­less distraction—the equiv­a­lent of let­ting a bat­boy sit in the dugout. Now they are start­ing to see the floaters as an exis­ten­tial threat. “It’s becom­ing a form of court-pack­ing,” one White House cor­re­spon­dent told me. Out­lets that have become new­ly vis­i­ble under the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion include One Amer­i­ca News Net­work, which was found­ed in 2013 as a right-wing alter­na­tive to Fox News; LifeZette, a Web tabloid found­ed in 2015 by Lau­ra Ingra­ham, the radio com­men­ta­tor and Trump ally; Town­hall, a con­ser­v­a­tive blog start­ed by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion; the Dai­ly Caller, co-found­ed in 2010 by Tuck­er Carl­son, now a Fox News host; and the enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar and open­ly pro-Trump Bre­it­bart News Net­work. Most of the White House cor­re­spon­dents from these out­lets are younger than thir­ty. “At best, they don’t know what they’re doing,” a radio cor­re­spon­dent told me. “At worst, you won­der whether some­one is actu­al­ly feed­ing them soft­ball ques­tions.” He added, “You can’t just have a parade of peo­ple ask­ing, ‘When and how do you plan to make Amer­i­ca great again?’ ””

That sure sounds like an army of ‘Gan­nons’ is bat­tling for Team Trump. So giv­en the strange his­to­ry of ‘Jeff Gan­nons’ implau­si­bly fre­quent vis­its to the Bush White House and the pressti­tute role Gan­non was play­ing, you have to won­der just how many of the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of pressti­tutes are going to be fol­low­ing the Gan­non tem­plate: spend­ing lots and lots of time at the White House, pre­sum­ably to get tips on which ques­tion the Trump admin­is­tra­tion wants asked and wants not asked, and hop­ing no one notices. Sure, it seems like there should be eas­i­er and less con­spic­u­ous ways to coor­di­nate these kinds of activ­i­ties but the extreme pri­va­cy of White House once you’re inside the place would have its appeal too.

So that’s all some­thing to keep in mind in mind in light of this White House pol­i­cy shift: The ‘army of Gan­nons’ is already here. Of course, giv­en the fact that Trump appears to have turned Trump Tow­er and Mar-a-Lago into alter­na­tive White Hous­es, let’s also keep in mind that a focuse on whether or not Trump’s army of Gan­nons is spend­ing nights at the White House for spe­cial in-per­son coor­di­nat­ing is kind of out­dat­ed. Yes, that com­pli­cates track­ing the move­ments of the army of Gan­nons, but at least Trump him­self isn’t spend­ing much time at Trump Tow­er for some rea­son so that sim­pli­fies things a bit.

The “does he stay or does he go?” bat­tle between Steve Ban­non and Jared Kush­n­er took a rather sala­cious twist a few days ago. Or at least a poten­tial­ly sala­cious twist. Lead­ing Alt-Right per­son­al­i­ty, and big Ban­non backer, Mike Cer­novich just issued a threat: “If they get rid of Ban­non, you know what’s gonna hap­pen? The moth­er­lode. If Ban­non is removed, there are gonna be divorces, because I know about the mis­tress­es, the sug­ar babies, the drugs, the pill pop­ping, the orgies. I know every­thing”:

The Dai­ly Beast

Alt-Right Ring­leader Mike Cer­novich Threat­ens to Drop ‘Moth­er­lode’ If Steve Ban­non Is Oust­ed
The Piz­za­gate con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist claims to have a cache of dirty secrets that he’s will­ing to deploy.

Ben Collins
04.14.17 4:20 PM ET

A week after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump began to pub­licly dis­tance him­self from White House Chief Strate­gist Steve Ban­non, alt-right ring­leader Mike Cer­novich threat­ened to release a “moth­er­lode” of sto­ries that could “destroy mar­riages” if Ban­non is for­mal­ly let go from the admin­is­tra­tion.

Cer­novich made the claims that he’d release a series of “scoops” if Ban­non is offi­cial­ly pushed out of the White House on an eleven-minute, self-record­ed Periscope Thurs­day night.

“If they get rid of Ban­non, you know what’s gonna hap­pen? The moth­er­lode. If Ban­non is removed, there are gonna be divorces, because I know about the mis­tress­es, the sug­ar babies, the drugs, the pill pop­ping, the orgies. I know every­thing,” said Cer­novich.

“If they go after Ban­non, the moth­er of all sto­ries is gonna drop, and we’re just gonna destroy mar­riages, relationships—it’s gonna get per­son­al.”

The Dai­ly Beast reached out to Cer­novich, ask­ing who he meant by “they” and if he had doc­u­men­ta­tion for the claims. He was on InfoWars’ radio show and livestream most of Fri­day after­noon, and did not respond at press time.

Alt-right lead­ers have spent the week push­ing a #Keep­Ban­non hash­tag on Twit­ter, less than a week after a #FireKush­n­er hash­tag promi­nent­ly ampli­fied by Cer­novich became the No. 1 trend in the Unit­ed States on Twit­ter.

The hash­tags refer to the falling out between Ban­non and Jared Kush­n­er that played out through plant­ed quotes in web­sites like Bre­it­bart, where Ban­non pre­vi­ous­ly worked as its CEO, after Trump’s son-in-law began to take over more respon­si­bil­i­ties inside the Trump White House.

The proxy quote war led Trump to tell the New York Post on Tues­day that, “Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straight­en it out or I will.”

The president’s son, Don­ald Trump Jr., tweet­ed just last week that Cer­novich deserved a Pulitzer for his recent cov­er­age of Susan Rice’s efforts to bet­ter iden­ti­fy Trump cam­paign offi­cials in intel­li­gence reports.

“Con­grats to @Cernovich for break­ing the #Susan­Rice sto­ry,” Trump Jr. tweet­ed. “In a long gone time of unbi­ased jour­nal­ism he’d win the Pulitzer, but not today!”

Cer­novich cit­ed the Rice sto­ry and anoth­er piece about Trump Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor H.R. McMas­ter, which were both scoops lat­er picked up by Bloomberg’s Eli Lake, as proof of his sourc­ing inside the White House.

“I have more sto­ries that I haven’t released. I haven’t released every scoop that I have. I release my scoops strate­gi­cal­ly. I’m sit­ting on way more sto­ries,” he said on his Periscope.

Cer­novich and many oth­er alt-right lead­ers famous­ly split from the Trump administration’s par­ty line last week when Trump signed off on a 59-mis­sile strike on a Syr­i­an air­base. Alt-right and con­spir­a­cy web­sites like InfoWars echoed both Russ­ian pub­lic offi­cials and Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad’s claim that the attack was a “false flag.” On Thurs­day, Assad float­ed to state media that the attack was entire­ly staged.

“I will go TMZ on the glob­al­ists. I will go Gos­sip Girl on the glob­al­ists. I will go Gawk­er on the glob­al­ists. So you moth­er-effers going after Ban­non, just know I broke two of the biggest sto­ries before any­body else,” Cer­novich said on his Periscope. “If you think I don’t know the pills peo­ple are pop­ping, the mis­tress­es, the sug­ar babies—I know all of it. So you bet­ter be smart. Because the moth­er of all sto­ries will be dropped because I don’t care.”

Cer­novich has a long his­to­ry of float­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about alt-right oppo­nents and peo­ple he deems to be “glob­al­ists”. He was one of the lead­ing ped­dlers of the Piz­za­gate con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, which claimed Hillary Clin­ton and John Podes­ta were cen­tral fig­ures in a fic­ti­tious child sex ring run out of the base­ment of a piz­za shop. He also repeat­ed­ly claimed through­out the cam­paign that Clin­ton was dying of a litany of dis­eases, from syphilis to Parkinson’s.

Fox News ran an arti­cle on Fri­day com­mend­ing Cer­novich’s recent sto­ries, how­ev­er, say­ing his “two recent scoops have been any­thing but fake.”

...

““I will go TMZ on the glob­al­ists. I will go Gos­sip Girl on the glob­al­ists. I will go Gawk­er on the glob­al­ists. So you moth­er-effers going after Ban­non, just know I broke two of the biggest sto­ries before any­body else,” Cer­novich said on his Periscope. “If you think I don’t know the pills peo­ple are pop­ping, the mis­tress­es, the sug­ar babies—I know all of it. So you bet­ter be smart. Because the moth­er of all sto­ries will be dropped because I don’t care.””

That’s quite a shot across the bow. So now we know some­one is pop­ping pills with their mis­tress­es. At least if Cer­novich isn’t bluff­ing. But even if he is bluff­ing, don’t for­get, this is one of the lead­ing Piz­za­gate guy. Bluff­ing isn’t going to be an issue. But who knows, maybe he real­ly does have the goods. It’s cer­tain­ly not unbe­liev­able.

Still, it’s pret­ty amaz­ing the Cer­novich is so pub­licly black­mail­ing the White House. After all, if Ban­non’s posi­tion in the Trump Team sur­vives this peri­od it’s going to be hard to rule out the idea that Cer­novich real­ly did have the dirt he claimed and his black­mail real­ly did work. You can’t undo what Cer­novich just claimed. And even if he sud­den­ly revers­es his claims, well, how do we know that the White House did­n’t counter-black­mail him? That’s the can of worms Cer­novich just opened.

It’s also worth not­ing that a Trump admin­is­tra­tion seem­ing­ly run by a coterie of Jews who seem­ing­ly kick out the Ban­non-fac­tion, and yet still push for very Ban­non-esque poli­cies, just might be the kind of smoke and mir­rors the­atrics that Trump and Ban­non might have con­coct­ed togeth­er. For instance, imag­ine a plan where Cer­novich drops the ‘moth­er­lode’ of some real and some fake scan­dals with the intent of hav­ing it all dis­cred­it­ed as ‘Piz­za­gate guy revenge stuff’. Who knows, Although, if that’s the case, it’s a pret­ty risky move. Because as Josh Mar­shall not­ed recent­ly, this Kushner/Bannon bum fight is turn­ing into a Trumpian Alt-Right snuff nov­el guar­an­teed to push Alt-Right but­tons in a very bad way:

Talk­ing Points Memo
Edi­tor’s Blog

Inside the Emerg­ing Trumpian Alt-Right Snuff Nov­el

By Josh Mar­shall
Pub­lished April 7, 2017, 11:27 PM EDT

All signs sug­gest we’re now in the “Pres­i­dent Trump has full con­fi­dence in Michael Fly­nn” phase of Steve Ban­non’s tenure in the Trump White House. I don’t know whether this is some moron genius dialec­tic on Ban­non’s part or just Kar­ma. But can we miss that the man who gave coher­ence and verve to Trump’s cam­paign against the ‘glob­al­ists’ and unroot­ed cos­mopoli­tan elites is about to be boot­ed by the Pres­i­den­t’s Jew­ish tycoon son-in-law and a group of bankers (yes, Jew­ish bankers) from Gold­man Sachs? These are I con­fess uncom­fort­able obser­va­tions, but con­sid­er this ...

It is always impor­tant to remem­ber that Steve Ban­non came late to Trump’s cam­paign. As pro-Trump as Bre­it­bart News may have been, it was still seen — under­stand­ably — as a wild, sui­ci­dal and entire­ly unex­pect­ed devel­op­ment when Ban­non was put in charge of the cam­paign on August 17th, 2016, almost a month after the Repub­li­can con­ven­tion.

Before then, Trump had run a thor­ough­ly jin­go­is­tic and xeno­pho­bic cam­paign, with pro­tes­tor beat­ings and var­i­ous shades of cryp­to- and non-cryp­to racism. All on his own he drew around him­self that coterie of “alt-right” white nation­al­ists and neo-Nazis who will like­ly be his great­est and most lethal con­tri­bu­tion to the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scene. But it was only with Ban­non’s arrival that Trump took on the much more coher­ent and con­sis­tent lan­guage of Europe-derived right­ist nation­al­ism, anti-“globalism” and the thin­ly covert lan­guage of anti-Semi­tism.

Let’s be clear. This is no defense of Trump. It was all there all along from rage and intu­ition and impulse. But Ban­non pack­aged it togeth­er and tai­lored the suit. It was pure Ban­non, remem­ber, who was behind the speech that became this noto­ri­ous anti-Semit­ic clos­ing ad, released on Novem­ber 5th, 2016.

And yet here we are and let’s not shy away from it. All accounts sug­gest that Ban­non has fall­en from grace and will soon be fired by the Pres­i­dent. His ouster comes as the los­er in a bat­tle with a group of Jew­ish Gold­man Sachs (Cohn, Mnuchin) bankers and the tall, dap­per and yet neb­bishy Jew­ish lega­cy real estate tycoon Jared Kush­n­er. (I’m Jew­ish. I can say all of this.) It all reads like the kind of alt-right moral­i­ty play one of Ban­non’s deplorables might have writ­ten in some grand alt-right dystopic nov­el. Even the non-Jews are ver­i­ta­ble aus­lan­ders: A key new play­er is Dina Pow­ell (born Dina Habib), an Egypt­ian immi­grant (albeit a Copt) who was her­self a banker at Gold­man Sachs in addi­tion to being a Repub­li­can pol­i­cy insid­er.

...

Only in the world of Trump could such a turn of events be pos­si­ble — per­haps also inevitable. Trump him­self being a ‘pop­ulist’ was always in many ways a ridicu­lous propo­si­tion: a doyen of the wealth, enti­tle­ment and hedo­nism that is the aspi­ra­tion and milieu of New York’s upper crust, Trump con­nect­ed to his base not through lifestyle but through the expe­ri­ence of dis­re­spect, griev­ance and the desire for revenge. He ran a cam­paign which more and more lit­er­al­ly and explic­it­ly demo­nized (espe­cial­ly under Ban­non’s late guid­ance) the ‘glob­al­ist’ machi­na­tions of Gold­man Sachs. Yet, increas­ing­ly, he has built an admin­is­tra­tion run by Gold­man Sachs bankers. Of course, it’s Gold­man Sachs bankers and Jared Kush­n­er and pro­tec­tion­ist ‘eco­nom­ic nation­al­ist’ xeno­phobes and racists. It’s an inter­est­ing com­bi­na­tion. They’ve even import­ed peri­od piece East­ern Euro­pean racist nation­al­ists to be part of the fun — see, Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka. Of course, it’s them and the gen­er­al offi­cers. But they don’t seem to be part of this nar­ra­tive and dra­ma.

How all this ends is impos­si­ble to tell. We’re less than a hun­dred days into Trump’s term. We’re more at begin­nings than end­ings. From peo­ple with a front row seat to the action, I had always heard that Kush­n­er and Ban­non got on sur­pris­ing­ly well and that Kush­n­er — who seem­ing­ly had no real polit­i­cal views at all before this start­ed — was quite tak­en by Ban­non’s ‘nation­al­ism’. Per­haps the whole dra­ma is man­u­fac­tured and the fac­tions less coher­ent than we’re led to believe. The Greek-Amer­i­can Priebus is also said to be on the chop­ping block. But he bare­ly plays in the nar­ra­tive, mere ethno­graph­ic road­kill of no sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance. Along with the gen­er­als, he does­n’t fit into this con­flict between ‘nation­al­ists’ and ‘New York Democ­rats’.

The one thing we’ve always known about Don­ald Trump is that it’s all about Don­ald Trump — Don­ald Trump and in a tight inner ring almost coter­mi­nous with Trump him­self, the Trump fam­i­ly. Dif­fer­ent rules apply, or rather there are no rules except what seems to work at the moment for Don­ald Trump. Until it does­n’t. Or until it does again. Pop­ulist, real Amer­i­can, Jew, reac­tionary, cos­mopoli­tan, plu­to­crat, vicious and vio­lent or bomb­ing for the suf­fer­ing babies, it’s all mal­leable and sub­ject to revi­sion. He ran a cam­paign which more and more lit­er­al­ly and explic­it­ly demo­nized (espe­cial­ly under Ban­non’s late guid­ance) the ‘glob­al­ist’ machi­na­tions of Gold­man Sachs. Yet, increas­ing­ly, he has built an admin­is­tra­tion run by Gold­man Sachs bankers. Of course, it’s Gold­man Sachs bankers and Jared Kush­n­er and pro­tec­tion­ist ‘eco­nom­ic nation­al­ist’ xeno­phobes and racists.

“And yet here we are and let’s not shy away from it. All accounts sug­gest that Ban­non has fall­en from grace and will soon be fired by the Pres­i­dent. His ouster comes as the los­er in a bat­tle with a group of Jew­ish Gold­man Sachs (Cohn, Mnuchin) bankers and the tall, dap­per and yet neb­bishy Jew­ish lega­cy real estate tycoon Jared Kush­n­er. (I’m Jew­ish. I can say all of this.) It all reads like the kind of alt-right moral­i­ty play one of Ban­non’s deplorables might have writ­ten in some grand alt-right dystopic nov­el. Even the non-Jews are ver­i­ta­ble aus­lan­ders: A key new play­er is Dina Pow­ell (born Dina Habib), an Egypt­ian immi­grant (albeit a Copt) who was her­self a banker at Gold­man Sachs in addi­tion to being a Repub­li­can pol­i­cy insid­er.”

As we can see, if the Bannon/Kushner fight is the­atrics, is the kind of the­atrics almost designed to absolute­ly demor­al­ize and enrage the neo-Naz­i/Alt-Right fac­tion of Trump’s base (in which case that’s prob­a­bly a rather ter­ri­fy­ing plan). So who knows, maybe Cer­novich’s threat was real, in which case we should­n’t be too sur­prised if head­lines like “Ban­non out, Kush­n­er on top” in the New York Times get fol­lowed up with head­lines “Pill pop­ping Mis­tress­es in the White House” in The Nation­al Enquir­er TMZ.

Strange times for Alt-Right. Next thing you know they’re going to learn that Alex Jones is just a fake per­sona doing an act. Would­n’t that be demor­al­iz­ing...

Kudos,Dave Emory! I’ve some­times post­ed the links to your show archives, but more often I put them in com­ments to rel­e­vant posts of oth­ers. This Bre­it­bart series is out­stand­ing! Wish I’d fol­lowed up the head­line soon­er!

Here’s a rather sad fol­low up report on the con­tro­ver­sy in Cana­da over the rev­e­la­tion that the grand­fa­ther of Canada’s for­eign min­is­ter, Chrys­tia Free­land, was a Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor who edit­ed a Nazi pub­li­ca­tion dur­ing WWII and had a pro­found influ­ence on Free­land’s views regard­ing Ukraine and Rus­sia:

The ini­tial con­tro­ver­sy involv­ing Free­land was root­ed in the fact that Free­lend had pre­vi­ous­ly spo­ken of the influ­ence her grand­fa­ther had on her and her long­stand­ing desire to see Ukraine move away from Moscow’s influ­ence cou­pled with the obser­va­tion from those who had watched her career over the decades that one of the ideas Free­land had long cham­pi­oned the idea that Ukraine needs to be ripped away from the Russ­ian sphere of influ­ence. So learn­ing that the for­eign min­is­ter’s grand­fa­ther was a big influ­ence in her life long goal of see­ing Ukraine move away from Moscow’s orbit and her grand­fa­ther was also secret­ly a Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor cre­at­ed some rather awk­ward polit­i­cal ten­sions in the con­text of the ‘new Cold War’ ten­sions between Rus­sia and the West over Ukraine.

So it turns out those ten­sions man­i­fest­ed again with the recent expul­sion of four Russ­ian diplo­mats from Cana­da. Ini­tial­ly, the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment claimed these expul­sions were in sup­port of the UK in response to the alleged Krem­lin poi­son­ing of retired dou­ble agent Sergei Skri­pal using a chem­i­cal agent pre­vi­ous iden­ti­fied as a Sovi­et inven­tion.

But then Canada’s Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau final­ly revealed the motive behind the expul­sion of these four diplo­mats he gave a very dif­fer­ent rea­son: they were expelled for call­ing Free­land’s grand­fa­ther a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, accord­ing to Trudeau who called the (true) sto­ry about Free­land’s grand­fa­ther an effort “by Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists”:

The Star

Why did Cana­da expel four Russ­ian diplo­mats? Because they told the truth
The Rus­sians are being pun­ished for say­ing that Freeland’s grand­fa­ther was a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. He was.

By THOMAS WALKOM
Nation­al Affairs Colum­nist
Thu., April 5, 2018

We now know how the Rus­sians have been sub­vert­ing Cana­di­an democ­ra­cy. They have been prop­a­gat­ing truth­ful news.

That infor­ma­tion comes cour­tesy of Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau who on Wednes­day final­ly explained the motive behind his government’s deci­sion last week to expel four Russ­ian diplo­mats and refuse entry to three more.

At the time, Ottawa said it was mak­ing the move in sup­port of Britain, which blames Rus­sia for using a dead­ly nerve agent to poi­son a dou­ble agent liv­ing in Eng­land.

But in a writ­ten state­ment, For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Chrys­tia Free­land also said the Rus­sians had been using their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus “to inter­fere in our democ­ra­cy.”

How exact­ly the Rus­sians had been inter­fer­ing was not explained. Efforts to get more infor­ma­tion from Freeland’s office were unsuc­cess­ful. In an inter­view on CBC, Defence Min­is­ter Har­jit Saj­jan said that he had to stay mum for rea­sons of nation­al secu­ri­ty. Nobody else would talk.

Then, on Wednesday,Trudeau spilled the beans. The Rus­sians are being pun­ished for say­ing that Freeland’s grand­fa­ther was a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

Trudeau called this an effort “by Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists” to smear Free­land, which per­haps it was.

The only trou­ble with all of this is that the Rus­sians were telling the truth. Freeland’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther, Michael Cho­mi­ak, was a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

A Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist, he fled Stalin’s advanc­ing armies in 1939 and sought refuge in what was then Ger­man-occu­pied Poland.

There, under the aegis of the Nazis he edit­ed a Ukrain­ian-lan­guage, anti-Semit­ic news­pa­per.

I first learned of this from a front-page sto­ry in that well-known vehi­cle of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, the Globe and Mail.

The Globe got its infor­ma­tion by inter­view­ing Freeland’s uncle, a his­to­ri­an who in 1996 wrote – with some assis­tance from his niece – a schol­ar­ly arti­cle detail­ing Chomiak’s wartime activ­i­ties.

Was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hap­py to see this being made pub­lic? I expect it was. Free­land is a vocal crit­ic of Moscow’s heavy-hand­ed approach to Ukraine and is cur­rent­ly per­sona non gra­ta in Rus­sia.

The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment also finds it con­ve­nient to paint all of its crit­ics in Ukraine as unre­con­struct­ed fas­cists. And while Free­land is cer­tain­ly no fas­cist, she has pub­licly praised her grand­par­ents for their influ­ence on her and for their com­mit­ment to Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence.

Giv­en all of that, the Cho­mi­ak sto­ry was a gift to the Rus­sians. Soon after Freeland’s appoint­ment as for­eign affairs min­is­ter last year, pro-Moscow web­sites began to pick it up.

To use Trudeau’s words, Moscow was prob­a­bly try­ing to push a “pro-Rus­sia nar­ra­tive.”

But is it ille­git­i­mate for coun­tries to use ver­i­fi­able facts to make a case?

Cer­tain­ly, the West doesn’t think so when it comes to the nerve agent sto­ry. Its deci­sion to blame Moscow for the attack is based on one fact – that the poi­son used was first devel­oped in the old Sovi­et Union.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that some oth­er enti­ty might have copied it is nev­er enter­tained.

Instead, the world is pre­sent­ed with a com­pli­cat­ed expla­na­tion that goes some­thing like this: After years of ignor­ing retired dou­ble agent Sergei Skri­pal, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin final­ly decides to kill him.

In order to show who is respon­si­ble, Putin has his min­ions use a sig­na­ture Russ­ian nerve agent. But in order to hide who is respon­si­ble, he has anoth­er set of min­ions vig­or­ous­ly deny Russ­ian cul­pa­bil­i­ty.

The attack isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful, since Skri­pal is still alive.

All of this is done for no appar­ent rea­son oth­er than pure evil.

...

———-

“Why did Cana­da expel four Russ­ian diplo­mats? Because they told the truth” by THOMAS WALKOM; The Star; 04/05/2018

“At the time, Ottawa said it was mak­ing the move in sup­port of Britain, which blames Rus­sia for using a dead­ly nerve agent to poi­son a dou­ble agent liv­ing in Eng­land.”

Yep, when the Russ­ian diplo­mats were ini­tial­ly expelled it was sup­posed all in response to the Skri­pal poi­son­ing.

But then, in a writ­ten state­ment, For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Chrys­tia Free­land also said the Rus­sians had been using their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus “to inter­fere in our democ­ra­cy.” And when reporters asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on what it was they were doing to “inter­fere in our democ­ra­cy,” they could­n’t get answers. Includ­ing the Defense Min­is­ter who said he could­n’t answer for nation­al secu­ri­ty rea­sons:

...
But in a writ­ten state­ment, For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Chrys­tia Free­land also said the Rus­sians had been using their diplo­mat­ic sta­tus “to inter­fere in our democ­ra­cy.”

How exact­ly the Rus­sians had been inter­fer­ing was not explained. Efforts to get more infor­ma­tion from Freeland’s office were unsuc­cess­ful. In an inter­view on CBC, Defence Min­is­ter Har­jit Saj­jan said that he had to stay mum for rea­sons of nation­al secu­ri­ty. Nobody else would talk.
...

But then, Prime Min­is­ter Trudeau final­ly revealed what they of “inter­fer­ence” these Russ­ian diplo­mats were engage in: they were high­light­ing the sto­ry of Free­land’s grand­fa­ther and point­ing out that he was a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor:

...
Then, on Wednesday,Trudeau spilled the beans. The Rus­sians are being pun­ished for say­ing that Freeland’s grand­fa­ther was a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

Trudeau called this an effort “by Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists” to smear Free­land, which per­haps it was.
...

And this expla­na­tion was, of course, insane, because every­thing they were say­ing saw true:

...
The only trou­ble with all of this is that the Rus­sians were telling the truth. Freeland’s mater­nal grand­fa­ther, Michael Cho­mi­ak, was a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

A Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist, he fled Stalin’s advanc­ing armies in 1939 and sought refuge in what was then Ger­man-occu­pied Poland.

There, under the aegis of the Nazis he edit­ed a Ukrain­ian-lan­guage, anti-Semit­ic news­pa­per.

I first learned of this from a front-page sto­ry in that well-known vehi­cle of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, the Globe and Mail.

The Globe got its infor­ma­tion by inter­view­ing Freeland’s uncle, a his­to­ri­an who in 1996 wrote – with some assis­tance from his niece – a schol­ar­ly arti­cle detail­ing Chomiak’s wartime activ­i­ties.

Was the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hap­py to see this being made pub­lic? I expect it was. Free­land is a vocal crit­ic of Moscow’s heavy-hand­ed approach to Ukraine and is cur­rent­ly per­sona non gra­ta in Rus­sia.

The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment also finds it con­ve­nient to paint all of its crit­ics in Ukraine as unre­con­struct­ed fas­cists. And while Free­land is cer­tain­ly no fas­cist, she has pub­licly praised her grand­par­ents for their influ­ence on her and for their com­mit­ment to Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence.

Giv­en all of that, the Cho­mi­ak sto­ry was a gift to the Rus­sians. Soon after Freeland’s appoint­ment as for­eign affairs min­is­ter last year, pro-Moscow web­sites began to pick it up.

To use Trudeau’s words, Moscow was prob­a­bly try­ing to push a “pro-Rus­sia nar­ra­tive.”
...

And as the arti­cle not­ed this insane response actu­al­ly has a num­ber of par­al­lels with the offi­cial response to the orig­i­nal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the expul­sion of those diplo­mats, the poi­son­ing on Sergei Skri­pal and his daugh­ter. In both cas­es there is a clear desire to score a pub­lic rela­tions “win” vs Rus­sia , or avoid a “loss”, and desire (hys­te­ria, real­ly) appears to be dri­ving offi­cial respons­es that a sim­ply divorced from real­i­ty. In the case of the Canada’s expul­sion of those diplo­mats the real­i­ty that the sto­ry, if incon­ve­nient, was sim­ply brushed aside. As Canada’s Defense Min­is­ter put it, it was a “nation­al secu­ri­ty” issue, and that’s a great way to put it: deny­ing real­i­ty is a “nation­al secu­ri­ty” issue when it comes to all things Rus­sia these days in the West.

And in the case of the Skri­pal poi­son­ings, we are asked to accept Moscow’s guilt for what would be a high­ly provoca­tive (and large­ly point­less) attack on British soil using a chem­i­cal weapon based sole­ly on the obser­va­tion that this chem­i­cal was orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped in the Sovi­et Union decades ago. The real­i­ty that this is very weak evi­dence must be denied. Or bet­ter yet, nev­er acknowl­edged:

...
But is it ille­git­i­mate for coun­tries to use ver­i­fi­able facts to make a case?

Cer­tain­ly, the West doesn’t think so when it comes to the nerve agent sto­ry. Its deci­sion to blame Moscow for the attack is based on one fact – that the poi­son used was first devel­oped in the old Sovi­et Union.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that some oth­er enti­ty might have copied it is nev­er enter­tained.

Instead, the world is pre­sent­ed with a com­pli­cat­ed expla­na­tion that goes some­thing like this: After years of ignor­ing retired dou­ble agent Sergei Skri­pal, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin final­ly decides to kill him.

In order to show who is respon­si­ble, Putin has his min­ions use a sig­na­ture Russ­ian nerve agent. But in order to hide who is respon­si­ble, he has anoth­er set of min­ions vig­or­ous­ly deny Russ­ian cul­pa­bil­i­ty.

The attack isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful, since Skri­pal is still alive.

All of this is done for no appar­ent rea­son oth­er than pure evil.
...

“The pos­si­bil­i­ty that some oth­er enti­ty might have copied it is nev­er enter­tained.”

So along those lines, it’s worth not­ing some of the obser­va­tions in the fol­low­ing Finan­cial Times report about some recent devel­op­ments in the Skri­pal poi­son­ings. And they’re large­ly pos­i­tive devel­op­ments: both father and daugh­ter appear to be recov­er­ing. It’s a remark­able twist giv­en the ini­tial asser­tions that the novi­chok group of chem­i­cals are extreme­ly dead­ly and this was con­sid­ered a death sen­tence.

UK secu­ri­ty offi­cials attribute their unex­pect­ed recov­er­ies to the deliv­ery method. It’s believe the Skri­pals came into con­tact with the nerve agent through a gel smeared on the han­dle of the front door to Mr Skripal’s house. And since absorp­tion through the skin takes much longer this might have allowed the Skri­pals to begin metab­o­liz­ing the pois­ing, reduc­ing its tox­i­c­i­ty.

But the arti­cle con­tains are pret­ty notable sub-sec­tion about the con­cerns unnamed chem­i­cal experts have over the wide­spread asser­tion that novi­chok was some sort of exclu­sive tool of the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. There is no way to link traces of novi­chok col­lect­ed from the crime scene with a par­tic­u­lar man­u­fac­tur­ing site using sci­ence alone, accord­ing to these chemists. Some sort of intel­li­gence sources are required for that kind of pos­i­tive iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Addi­tion­al­ly, these chemists note that the novi­chok agents are rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple organophos­pho­rus com­pounds that com­pe­tent chemists could make from glob­al­ly trad­ed ingre­di­ents. Accord­ing to Phil Par­sons, an organ­ic chem­istry pro­fes­sor at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don, “the whole fam­i­ly of novi­choks are quite easy to make...You could syn­the­sise them in any good chem­istry lab, though you would have to take strin­gent safe­ty pre­cau­tions to pre­vent the staff being poi­soned.”

As the arti­cle sum­ma­rizes it, a num­ber of the chemists they spoke to said they did not want to throw doubt on the government’s claim that Rus­sia was respon­si­ble for attack on the Skri­pals. They felt the pub­lic should not regard novi­choks as ultra-sophis­ti­cat­ed chem­i­cal weapons that could not be made else­where. Which, if you think about, does actu­al­ly throw doubt on the gov­ern­men­t’s claims because those claims are pred­i­cat­ed on the assump­tion that this novi­choks could have only come from the Krem­lin:

Finan­cial Times

Yulia Skripal’s recov­ery adds fresh twist to murky tale
Secu­ri­ty offi­cials are hope­ful the Skri­pals will be able to pro­vide cru­cial evi­dence

David Bond in Lon­don
April 10, 2018, 1:08 PM

Last month, a High Court judge in Lon­don said it was “unclear” whether the for­mer Russ­ian spy Sergei Skri­pal and his daugh­ter, Yulia, would ever recov­er from being poi­soned with a mil­i­tary-grade nerve agent.

But on Tues­day, the hos­pi­tal in Sal­is­bury where the pair have been receiv­ing treat­ment since they first fell ill on a park bench more than five weeks ago con­firmed that Ms Skri­pal had been dis­charged. The hospital’s med­ical direc­tor said her father is like­ly to be released “in due course”.

Their recov­ery is the lat­est twist in a sto­ry that has plunged rela­tions between Rus­sia and the west into their biggest freeze since the end of the cold war, spark­ing tit-for-tat spy expul­sions and a wave of claims and counter claims between Moscow and Lon­don.

The Organ­i­sa­tion for the Pro­hi­bi­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons is expect­ed to deliv­er its inde­pen­dent assess­ment as soon as Wednes­day of the UK’s claim that the nerve agent used in the attack was from the novi­chok group of chem­i­cal weapons that were devel­oped by the Sovi­et Union.

The OPCW’s ver­dict will be seen as a vital moment for the UK gov­ern­ment, as it seeks to repu­di­ate claims from Moscow that Britain has no evi­dence to blame Rus­sia for the attack.

Ms Skripal’s release from hos­pi­tal nev­er­the­less pos­es dif­fi­cult ques­tions for the UK author­i­ties, includ­ing how to keep the pair secure as inves­ti­ga­tors race to iden­ti­fy the indi­vid­u­als who might have tar­get­ed them.

Secu­ri­ty offi­cials are hope­ful that despite being heav­i­ly sedat­ed for more than a month, the Skri­pals may be able to share cru­cial evi­dence that will aid in their inves­ti­ga­tion.

Offi­cials said that Ms Skripal’s sta­tus as both a wit­ness and a vic­tim meant it was the police’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to keep her safe now that she has been dis­charged from hos­pi­tal.

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police’s counter ter­ror­ism unit declined to com­ment. The Home Office also declined to com­ment on Russ­ian media reports that Ms Skri­pal had already applied for asy­lum in the UK. There have also been reports that secu­ri­ty ser­vices in the UK are explor­ing whether the pair could be reset­tled in the US.

One for­mer secu­ri­ty offi­cial said that MI6 would wait to see how Mr Skri­pal recov­ered before decid­ing their next steps.

“It’s his choice,” the for­mer offi­cial said. “They can’t reset­tle one with­out the oth­er.”

Ms Skripal’s fate may also hinge on whether she wants to return to Rus­sia. Her cousin, Vic­to­ria, has told Russ­ian media that she wants to return home, while the Russ­ian Embassy in Lon­don has request­ed to see her.

Fol­low­ing the news of Ms Skripal’s release from hos­pi­tal, the embassy post­ed a bar­rage of tweets again attack­ing the UK’s han­dling of the affair.

“We con­grat­u­late Yulia Skri­pal on her recov­ery,” the embassy tweet­ed. “Yet we need urgent proof that what is being done to her is done on her own free will.”

In a lat­er state­ment, the embassy added that any attempt to reset­tle the Skri­pals in the US or with any of the UK’s oth­er close intel­li­gence allies would be a “gross vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law”, adding that the world “will have every rea­son to see this as an abduc­tion”.

UK gov­ern­ment and secu­ri­ty offi­cials said the com­ments were anoth­er exam­ple of Russia’s attempts to dis­tract and deflect atten­tion from its role in the Sal­is­bury attack.

The Skri­pals’ return to health has sur­prised some offi­cials and chem­i­cal weapons experts who just two weeks ago had feared the worst. But it remains unclear what the long-term effects of their poi­son­ing may be.

“They may have psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems,” said Alas­tair Hay, a chem­i­cal weapons spe­cial­ist from Leeds uni­ver­si­ty. “Peo­ple exposed to nerve agents suf­fer post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and can get insom­nia. But as long as there has been no dam­age to the brain from oxy­gen star­va­tion then their cog­ni­tive func­tion should be fine.”

UK secu­ri­ty offi­cials say the way that the Skri­pals were exposed to the poi­son may explain their rel­a­tive­ly rapid return to health.

Deliv­ery via an aerosol spray or through inges­tion would have almost cer­tain­ly killed them, accord­ing to one UK secu­ri­ty offi­cial. But police believe the Skri­pals came into con­tact with the nerve agent through a gel smeared on the han­dle of the front door to Mr Skripal’s house.

Absorp­tion through the skin takes much longer and might have allowed the Skri­pals cru­cial time to metabolise the poi­son, the offi­cial said.

Out­lin­ing the treat­ment that the pair had received on Tues­day, Dr Chris­tine Blan­shard, med­ical direc­tor of Sal­is­bury Hos­pi­tal, said the pair had “respond­ed excep­tion­al­ly”.

...

Chemists raise ques­tions over novi­chok claims

Some chem­istry experts are uneasy about the way politi­cians informed the pub­lic about the novi­chok nerve agent used to poi­son Sergei Skri­pal and his daugh­ter, Yulia, in Sal­is­bury.

In par­tic­u­lar, chemists said, there is no way to link traces of novi­chok col­lect­ed from the crime scene with a par­tic­u­lar man­u­fac­tur­ing site using sci­ence alone, with­out the use of intel­li­gence sources.

The novi­chok agents are rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple organophos­pho­rus com­pounds that com­pe­tent chemists could make from glob­al­ly trad­ed ingre­di­ents, if they had a spe­cif­ic mol­e­c­u­lar tar­get in mind.

“The whole fam­i­ly of novi­choks are quite easy to make,” said Phil Par­sons, an organ­ic chem­istry pro­fes­sor at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don. “You could syn­the­sise them in any good chem­istry lab, though you would have to take strin­gent safe­ty pre­cau­tions to pre­vent the staff being poi­soned.”

Details of sev­er­al novi­chok agents have been avail­able on the inter­net for years. The UK gov­ern­ment has not offi­cial­ly said which one poi­soned the Skri­pals. Vladimir Uglev, a mem­ber of the Sovi­et team that devel­oped novi­choks, said he had no doubt it was A‑234, a view shared unof­fi­cial­ly by experts in the UK. But there has been uncer­tain­ty about the pre­cise struc­ture of A‑234.

A num­ber of chemists said they did not want to throw doubt on the government’s claim that Rus­sia was respon­si­ble for attack on the Skri­pals, but that the pub­lic should not regard novi­choks as ultra-sophis­ti­cat­ed chem­i­cal weapons that could not be made else­where. They also regard­ed the phrase “mil­i­tary grade”, applied to the nerve agent in some gov­ern­ment state­ments, as mean­ing­less in this con­text, since there exists no known less­er grade of the agent.

Pro­fes­sor Andrea Sel­la of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don added: “The Rus­sians have run a fero­cious mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign and some UK politi­cians have inad­ver­tent­ly helped them. Boris John­son has some­times seemed like a babe in the woods.”

Novi­choks (named after the Russ­ian word for “new­com­er”) were devel­oped in the for­mer Sovi­et Union dur­ing the 1970s and 1980s, in a project to make nerve agents that would be lethal in even small­er dos­es than com­pounds such as sarin or soman. They work in the same way, by block­ing an enzyme called acetyl­cholinesterase that is essen­tial for the human ner­vous sys­tem to func­tion.

Clive Cook­son, Sci­ence Edi­tor

———-

“Yulia Skripal’s recov­ery adds fresh twist to murky tale” by David Bond; Finan­cial Times; 04/10/2018

“Their recov­ery is the lat­est twist in a sto­ry that has plunged rela­tions between Rus­sia and the west into their biggest freeze since the end of the cold war, spark­ing tit-for-tat spy expul­sions and a wave of claims and counter claims between Moscow and Lon­don.”

It is indeed quite a twist to see the Skri­pals both recov­er from this attack. But that’s what’s hap­pen­ing.

And the best expla­na­tion the UK secu­ri­ty offi­cials have is that the deliv­ery method, gel on a door han­dle, reduced the effec­tive tox­i­c­i­ty of the agent by slow­ing its absorp­tion into the body com­pared to oth­er deliv­ery meth­ods:

...
UK secu­ri­ty offi­cials say the way that the Skri­pals were exposed to the poi­son may explain their rel­a­tive­ly rapid return to health.

Deliv­ery via an aerosol spray or through inges­tion would have almost cer­tain­ly killed them, accord­ing to one UK secu­ri­ty offi­cial. But police believe the Skri­pals came into con­tact with the nerve agent through a gel smeared on the han­dle of the front door to Mr Skripal’s house.

Absorp­tion through the skin takes much longer and might have allowed the Skri­pals cru­cial time to metabolise the poi­son, the offi­cial said.

Out­lin­ing the treat­ment that the pair had received on Tues­day, Dr Chris­tine Blan­shard, med­ical direc­tor of Sal­is­bury Hos­pi­tal, said the pair had “respond­ed excep­tion­al­ly”.
...

And part of why it’s going to be very inter­est­ing to see what the The Organ­i­sa­tion for the Pro­hi­bi­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons (OPCW) con­cludes in its upcom­ing assess­ment of the attack:

...
The Organ­i­sa­tion for the Pro­hi­bi­tion of Chem­i­cal Weapons is expect­ed to deliv­er its inde­pen­dent assess­ment as soon as Wednes­day of the UK’s claim that the nerve agent used in the attack was from the novi­chok group of chem­i­cal weapons that were devel­oped by the Sovi­et Union.

The OPCW’s ver­dict will be seen as a vital moment for the UK gov­ern­ment, as it seeks to repu­di­ate claims from Moscow that Britain has no evi­dence to blame Rus­sia for the attack.

Ms Skripal’s release from hos­pi­tal nev­er­the­less pos­es dif­fi­cult ques­tions for the UK author­i­ties, includ­ing how to keep the pair secure as inves­ti­ga­tors race to iden­ti­fy the indi­vid­u­als who might have tar­get­ed them.
...

But the OPCW isn’t the only group of experts weigh­ing in on this top­ic. And that brings us to the inter­est­ing sub arti­cle con­tained in the above arti­cle that cov­ers the con­cerns a num­ber of chemists have over the mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the novi­chok fam­i­ly of chem­i­cals. As these chemists point out, this fam­i­ly of chem­i­cals is some­thing com­pe­tent chemists could syn­the­sis from any­one if they had the right equip­ment and took prop­er pre­cau­tions. Plus, the ingre­di­ents for sev­er­al novi­chok agents have been avail­able on the inter­net for years. In oth­er words, the entire premise that the novi­chok must have been the Krem­lin because only the Krem­lin has novi­chok is a false premise. A false premise that has end­ed up as the key premise of the UK’s charges against Moscow:

...
Chemists raise ques­tions over novi­chok claims

Some chem­istry experts are uneasy about the way politi­cians informed the pub­lic about the novi­chok nerve agent used to poi­son Sergei Skri­pal and his daugh­ter, Yulia, in Sal­is­bury.

In par­tic­u­lar, chemists said, there is no way to link traces of novi­chok col­lect­ed from the crime scene with a par­tic­u­lar man­u­fac­tur­ing site using sci­ence alone, with­out the use of intel­li­gence sources.

The novi­chok agents are rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple organophos­pho­rus com­pounds that com­pe­tent chemists could make from glob­al­ly trad­ed ingre­di­ents, if they had a spe­cif­ic mol­e­c­u­lar tar­get in mind.

“The whole fam­i­ly of novi­choks are quite easy to make,” said Phil Par­sons, an organ­ic chem­istry pro­fes­sor at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don. “You could syn­the­sise them in any good chem­istry lab, though you would have to take strin­gent safe­ty pre­cau­tions to pre­vent the staff being poi­soned.”

Details of sev­er­al novi­chok agents have been avail­able on the inter­net for years. The UK gov­ern­ment has not offi­cial­ly said which one poi­soned the Skri­pals. Vladimir Uglev, a mem­ber of the Sovi­et team that devel­oped novi­choks, said he had no doubt it was A‑234, a view shared unof­fi­cial­ly by experts in the UK. But there has been uncer­tain­ty about the pre­cise struc­ture of A‑234.

A num­ber of chemists said they did not want to throw doubt on the government’s claim that Rus­sia was respon­si­ble for attack on the Skri­pals, but that the pub­lic should not regard novi­choks as ultra-sophis­ti­cat­ed chem­i­cal weapons that could not be made else­where. They also regard­ed the phrase “mil­i­tary grade”, applied to the nerve agent in some gov­ern­ment state­ments, as mean­ing­less in this con­text, since there exists no known less­er grade of the agent.

Pro­fes­sor Andrea Sel­la of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don added: “The Rus­sians have run a fero­cious mis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign and some UK politi­cians have inad­ver­tent­ly helped them. Boris John­son has some­times seemed like a babe in the woods.”

Novi­choks (named after the Russ­ian word for “new­com­er”) were devel­oped in the for­mer Sovi­et Union dur­ing the 1970s and 1980s, in a project to make nerve agents that would be lethal in even small­er dos­es than com­pounds such as sarin or soman. They work in the same way, by block­ing an enzyme called acetyl­cholinesterase that is essen­tial for the human ner­vous sys­tem to func­tion.

Clive Cook­son, Sci­ence Edi­tor

“A num­ber of chemists said they did not want to throw doubt on the government’s claim that Rus­sia was respon­si­ble for attack on the Skri­pals, but that the pub­lic should not regard novi­choks as ultra-sophis­ti­cat­ed chem­i­cal weapons that could not be made else­where. They also regard­ed the phrase “mil­i­tary grade”, applied to the nerve agent in some gov­ern­ment state­ments, as mean­ing­less in this con­text, since there exists no known less­er grade of the agent.”

And that dis­com­fort expressed by these chemists, dis­com­fort that they might be under­cut­ting the gov­ern­men­t’s con­clu­sions by point­ing out that novi­chok could be made else­where, is anoth­er reminder that in the new Cold War dis­tort­ing or deny­ing real­i­ty on any issue involv­ing Rus­sia in order to “win” in the pub­lic rela­tions wars real­ly is a nation­al secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy. A real­i­ty-warp­ing strat­e­gy that, if you think about it, is actu­al­ly a pret­ty big nation­al secu­ri­ty issue.

Here’s some­thing to keep in mind in light of the recent sto­ry about the US Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty (DHS) dis­band­ing entire­ly the 6‑person team that was focused on track­ing white suprema­cists: First, recall how the push to strip away gov­ern­ment resources used to track white suprema­cists start­ed ear­ly on in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion when, in Feb­ru­ary of 2017, we learned that DHS was chang­ing the “Coun­ter­ing Vio­lent Extrem­ism” (CVE) pro­gram to no longer track threats from white suprema­cists and instead focus exclu­sive­ly on Islam­ic ter­ror­ism. And now we’re learn­ing about one of the indi­vid­u­als Trump appoint­ed to DHS who was aggres­sive­ly push­ing for these kinds of moves: Katie Gor­ka, wife of Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, who was at that point a senior DHS pol­i­cy advis­er.

Recall how Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka was part of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion ear­ly on. He was a mem­ber of Steve Ban­non’s Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives Group, a new­ly formed group that served as a Ban­non-led rival to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. But Gorka’s far right ties — which includ­ed found­ed a Hun­gar­i­an polit­i­cal par­ty with two for­mer mem­bers of Job­bik — even­tu­al­ly pub­lic drew atten­tion after some­one noticed Gor­ka chose to wear the out­fit and medal of a far right fas­cist Hun­gar­i­an orga­ni­za­tion to Trump’s inau­gur­al ball.

So it should­n’t come a sur­prise that it was Gorka’s wife at DHS who was advo­cat­ing for these kinds of changes to the CVE pro­gram. Specif­i­cal­ly, we’re learn­ing from emails from Feb­ru­ary to August 2017 that Katie Gor­ka was work­ing to come up with rea­sons to cut off fund­ing for two groups that received fund­ing through the CVE pro­gram: Life After Hate — which received a $400,000 grant to help peo­ple leave white suprema­cists move­ments — and the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil, which got a $393,800 CVE grant to expand men­tal health and coun­sel­ing ser­vices in Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties. Gorka’s ire against Life After Hate was osten­si­bly due to the fact the one of the group’s lead­ers pub­licly insult­ed Trump, although giv­en that there was already a push to get the CVE pro­gram out of the work of deal­ing with white suprema­cists it seems pos­si­ble that Gor­ka was sim­ply look­ing for an excuse to cut off Life After Hate and found one.

Dis­turbing­ly, a July 2017 email writ­ten by Gor­ka after Life After Hate had its fund­ing cut­off shows Gor­ka going on to sug­gest that DHS should focus on the real threat: anti-fas­cists. That exchange hap­pened after then-DHS head John Kel­ly asked staffers to come up with exam­ples of orga­ni­za­tions “that counter-hate groups”. Gor­ka replied that she could­n’t come up with any exam­ples and it was in that email that Gor­ka sug­gest­ed they start focus­ing on anti-fas­cists.

That’s right, so after Trump’s DHS revamps the CVE pro­gram to no longer track white suprema­cists and after DHS cuts off fund­ing for Life After, it was Katie Gor­ka who sug­gest­ed that it was the anti-fas­cists who are a threat DHS needs to be track­ing and this was in an email where Gor­ka explained that she could­n’t come up with any exam­ples of groups that counter hate group:

The Huff­in­g­ton Post

Trump Home­land Secu­ri­ty Offi­cial Sug­gest­ed Antifas­cists Were ‘The Actu­al Threats’
Here’s what Katie Gor­ka has been up to at work.

By Jes­si­ca Schul­berg
04/05/2019 03:47 pm ET

Katie Gor­ka, a Trump admin­is­tra­tion polit­i­cal appointee in the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, sug­gest­ed in a July 2017 email that the agency, which had just can­celed fund­ing for a group ded­i­cat­ed to derad­i­cal­iz­ing white suprema­cists, redi­rect its efforts to focus on the real threat: anti-fas­cists.

Gor­ka, a senior pol­i­cy advis­er at the DHS, made the sug­ges­tion in response to a request from then–Secretary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty John Kel­ly, who was appar­ent­ly unhap­py about crit­i­cal media cov­er­age of the agency’s revamped Coun­ter­ing Vio­lent Extrem­ism (CVE) pro­gram. Kel­ly want­ed staffers to come up with exam­ples of orga­ni­za­tions “that counter-hate groups,” an aide wrote in an email, which Huff­Post obtained through a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request. Gor­ka couldn’t think of any spe­cif­ic groups, she wrote in response. But “it would also be impor­tant to get the data on the actu­al threats right now,” she added, “because my under­stand­ing is that the far-left groups (Antifa, or anti-fas­cist) are cur­rent­ly on the rise.”

Her claim, which is not backed by any data, is the most obvi­ous exam­ple of a trend that per­vades a tranche of DHS emails obtained by Huff­Post: Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials came into office with very spe­cif­ic — and mis­tak­en — ideas about what vio­lent extrem­ism in the U.S. looked like, then went search­ing for evi­dence to back up those ideas.

The emails, which date from Feb­ru­ary to August 2017, show Gor­ka and oth­er Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials work­ing dili­gent­ly to find rea­sons to strip gov­ern­ment fund­ing from two orga­ni­za­tions select­ed as CVE grant recip­i­ents under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion: the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil, which was plan­ning to use its $393,800 grant to expand men­tal health and coun­sel­ing ser­vices in Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties, and Life After Hate, which was going to use its $400,000 to help white suprema­cists leave the move­ment.

Gorka’s name may sound famil­iar because she is mar­ried to promi­nent vest wear­er Sebas­t­ian Gor­ka, who is def­i­nite­ly not a Nazi. “Our pil­low talk is the Islam­ic State and al-Qae­da,” he once said of their rela­tion­ship. Although less rec­og­niz­able than her hus­band, Katie Gor­ka has her own his­to­ry of anti-Mus­lim fear­mon­ger­ing. As a Bre­it­bart colum­nist, she warned of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood influ­ence in U.S. pol­i­tics and “sharia finance” in Lon­don. She took issue with the idea that Islam is a reli­gion of peace. And she claimed that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was “sup­port­ing Islamist groups abroad” and “allow­ing Islamists to dic­tate nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy.”

After Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s inau­gu­ra­tion, Kel­ly ordered a full review of the CVE pro­gram. At the time, Trump loy­al­ists were push­ing for the pro­gram to focus exclu­sive­ly — instead of just pri­mar­i­ly — on Mus­lims. In May, then–acting DHS Gen­er­al Coun­sel Joseph Maher laid out the legal stan­dards for rescind­ing grant mon­ey.

Kel­ly “has broad dis­cre­tion in mak­ing award deci­sions,” Maher explained in an email that was even­tu­al­ly sent to Gor­ka. If a group chal­lenged the DHS in court, the sec­re­tary would have to prove that he was not act­ing “arbi­trar­i­ly or capri­cious­ly,” the lawyer con­tin­ued.

So DHS aides got to work find­ing rea­sons to jus­ti­fy revok­ing the grants for MPAC and Life After Hate. “We have enough mate­r­i­al on Life After hate [sic] but are com­ing up short on MPAC,” Gor­ka wrote in an email to then–DHS offi­cial John Barsa, who tweets things like “Is Islam a Reli­gion of Peace?” “I thought the Con­gres­sion­al let­ter might be help­ful. Do you have an elec­tron­ic copy you can send me?” The emails released through FOIA do not indi­cate which con­gres­sion­al let­ter she is refer­ring to.

On June 1, Gor­ka and Barsa received a memo from a redact­ed sender with “rec­om­mend­ed lan­guage” to jus­ti­fy revok­ing fund­ing to the two groups. The memo claimed, with­out evi­dence, that “MPAC, and indi­vid­u­als affil­i­at­ed with the orga­ni­za­tion, have been pub­licly accused of san­i­tiz­ing ter­ror­ism, being affil­i­at­ed with groups that some claim have ties to ter­ror­ism, and mak­ing anti-Semit­ic state­ments.”

“While DHS takes no posi­tion on the accu­ra­cy or mer­it of the pub­lic accu­sa­tions against MPAC, the exis­tence of those accu­sa­tion does make MPAC a con­tro­ver­sial appli­cant,” the memo con­tin­ued.

The DHS declined to pro­vide Huff­Post with exam­ples of the sup­posed con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing MPAC. The group’s pres­i­dent, Salam al-Maray­ati, has tes­ti­fied before Con­gress, advised the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment on its rela­tions with the city’s Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty and served on a DHS advi­so­ry com­mit­tee.

The claims in the DHS email are “just cut and paste from the Islam­o­phobes like Robert Spencer and Daniel Pipes,” he said in an inter­view, refer­ring to far-right con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists who have accused him — and most oth­er Mus­lims — of being ter­ror­ist sym­pa­thiz­ers.

The June 1 memo went on to say that DHS would not work with Life After Hate because Chris­t­ian Pic­ci­oli­ni, one of the group’s co-founders, used pro­fan­i­ty in a tweet crit­i­cal of Trump. The memo appears to bor­row exten­sive­ly from Gorka’s research, sum­ma­rized in a May 26 email to Barsa, Maher and a redact­ed recip­i­ent.

[see screen of Katie Gor­ka email that cites Pic­col­in­i’s insults of Trump as rea­son for with­hold­ing funds from Life After Hate]

Pic­ci­oli­ni, who is no longer affil­i­at­ed with Life After Hate, declined to com­ment. He and Life After Hate are cur­rent­ly suing each oth­er, pri­mar­i­ly over a trade­mark dis­pute.

The DHS unveiled its revised list of grant recip­i­ents on June 23, 2017. The agency can­celed grants for sev­en orga­ni­za­tions, and five addi­tion­al groups pulled out of the pro­gram vol­un­tar­i­ly. The depart­ment real­lo­cat­ed much of the mon­ey ini­tial­ly intend­ed for com­mu­ni­ty-based non­prof­its to law enforce­ment agen­cies.

Orga­ni­za­tions that lost their fund­ing didn’t receive much of an expla­na­tion. For small non­prof­its such as Life After Hate, which didn’t have enough mon­ey to pay employ­ees full salaries at the time, los­ing their gov­ern­ment grants could have been a major blow to their work. But sev­en weeks after DHS can­celed Life After Hate’s grant, neo-Nazis descend­ed on Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, cast­ing a spot­light on the threat of far-right extrem­ism. By the end of 2017, Life After Hate had raised about $1 mil­lion, said its exec­u­tive direc­tor, Sam­my Rangel.

When the DHS wel­comed CVE grants recip­i­ents in late July, it mis­tak­en­ly sent invi­ta­tions for a webi­nar to groups whose fund­ing had been revoked. “God I hate this pro­gram,” an offi­cial whose name was redact­ed wrote in an email to Gor­ka and Barsa on a thread about the webi­nar sna­fu.

“Don’t despair!” Gor­ka wrote back. “You can’t believe all the good things that are hap­pen­ing right now! Just think of the Wicked Witch of the East dis­solv­ing into a pud­dle, cry­ing ‘I’m melt­ing! I’m melt­ing!’” she con­tin­ued. “Trust me, it’s melt­ing!”

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion is expect­ed to end the CVE grant pro­gram, NBC report­ed last year.

The DHS declined to respond to a detailed list of ques­tions. “The Depart­ment is com­mit­ted to both pre­vent­ing vio­lent extrem­ists and coun­ter­ing ter­ror­ism,” a DHS offi­cial who request­ed anonymi­ty wrote in an email. “Fol­low­ing Sec­re­tary Kelly’s review, some pre­vi­ous­ly announced grantees were deter­mined to be more effec­tive through part­ner­ship with local law enforce­ment and/or were capa­ble of secur­ing non-fed­er­al fund­ing and thus did not receive addi­tion­al funds at that time.”

“Regard­ing Life After Hate, the Depart­ment, includ­ing Katie Gor­ka, has a pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ship with the orga­ni­za­tion and has recent­ly met and par­tic­i­pat­ed in events with its new lead­er­ship,” the offi­cial added.

The watch­dog group Democ­ra­cy For­ward is suing the DHS for fail­ing to com­ply with a FOIA request relat­ed to Gorka’s role at the agency.

It appears that Gor­ka was unsuc­cess­ful in her 2017 bid to get gov­ern­ment fund­ing to fight anti-fas­cists. But she’s not the only one at the DHS who hyped the threat of antifa. Months lat­er, a DHS agent emailed intel­li­gence cen­ters request­ing infor­ma­tion about an antifa plot to over­throw the gov­ern­ment after appar­ent­ly falling for a satir­i­cal antifa super­sol­dier meme, accord­ing to emails obtained through a sep­a­rate FOIA request by the trans­paren­cy non­prof­it Prop­er­ty of the Peo­ple.

...

———-

“Trump Home­land Secu­ri­ty Offi­cial Sug­gest­ed Antifas­cists Were ‘The Actu­al Threats’” by Jes­si­ca Schul­berg; The Huff­in­g­ton Post; 04/05/2019

“The emails, which date from Feb­ru­ary to August 2017, show Gor­ka and oth­er Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials work­ing dili­gent­ly to find rea­sons to strip gov­ern­ment fund­ing from two orga­ni­za­tions select­ed as CVE grant recip­i­ents under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion: the Mus­lim Pub­lic Affairs Coun­cil, which was plan­ning to use its $393,800 grant to expand men­tal health and coun­sel­ing ser­vices in Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties, and Life After Hate, which was going to use its $400,000 to help white suprema­cists leave the move­ment.”

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s DHS appointees clear­ly had a mis­sion to remove as much gov­ern­ment pres­sure on white suprema­cist groups as pos­si­ble. And as part of that broad­er mis­sion, pro­grams that receive CVE grants like Life After Hate became tar­gets of this dri­ve. Along with the anti-fas­cists, who Katie Gor­ka char­ac­ter­izes as “the actu­al threats right now” in a July 2017 email:

...
Gor­ka, a senior pol­i­cy advis­er at the DHS, made the sug­ges­tion in response to a request from then–Secretary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty John Kel­ly, who was appar­ent­ly unhap­py about crit­i­cal media cov­er­age of the agency’s revamped Coun­ter­ing Vio­lent Extrem­ism (CVE) pro­gram. Kel­ly want­ed staffers to come up with exam­ples of orga­ni­za­tions “that counter-hate groups,” an aide wrote in an email, which Huff­Post obtained through a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request. Gor­ka couldn’t think of any spe­cif­ic groups, she wrote in response. But “it would also be impor­tant to get the data on the actu­al threats right now,” she added, “because my under­stand­ing is that the far-left groups (Antifa, or anti-fas­cist) are cur­rent­ly on the rise.”

Her claim, which is not backed by any data, is the most obvi­ous exam­ple of a trend that per­vades a tranche of DHS emails obtained by Huff­Post: Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials came into office with very spe­cif­ic — and mis­tak­en — ideas about what vio­lent extrem­ism in the U.S. looked like, then went search­ing for evi­dence to back up those ideas.
...

So what was the even­tu­al rea­son for can­cel­ing Life After Hate’s CVE grant? One of the group’s co-founders used pro­fan­i­ty in a tweet crit­i­cal of Trump:

...
The June 1 memo went on to say that DHS would not work with Life After Hate because Chris­t­ian Pic­ci­oli­ni, one of the group’s co-founders, used pro­fan­i­ty in a tweet crit­i­cal of Trump. The memo appears to bor­row exten­sive­ly from Gorka’s research, sum­ma­rized in a May 26 email to Barsa, Maher and a redact­ed recip­i­ent.
...

The DHS unveiled its revised list of grant recip­i­ents on June 23, 2017. The agency can­celed grants for sev­en orga­ni­za­tions, and five addi­tion­al groups pulled out of the pro­gram vol­un­tar­i­ly. The depart­ment real­lo­cat­ed much of the mon­ey ini­tial­ly intend­ed for com­mu­ni­ty-based non­prof­its to law enforce­ment agen­cies.

...

And this, of course, all hap­pened right before the neo-Nazi vio­lence at Char­lottesville so for­tu­nate­ly Life After Hate was able to fundraise sig­nif­i­cant­ly after that and more than make up with the lost grant mon­ey:

...
Orga­ni­za­tions that lost their fund­ing didn’t receive much of an expla­na­tion. For small non­prof­its such as Life After Hate, which didn’t have enough mon­ey to pay employ­ees full salaries at the time, los­ing their gov­ern­ment grants could have been a major blow to their work. But sev­en weeks after DHS can­celed Life After Hate’s grant, neo-Nazis descend­ed on Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, cast­ing a spot­light on the threat of far-right extrem­ism. By the end of 2017, Life After Hate had raised about $1 mil­lion, said its exec­u­tive direc­tor, Sam­my Rangel.
...

And note that, while DHS did­n’t end up fol­low­ing Gorka’s advice on tar­get­ing anti-fas­cists (which prob­a­bly had a lot to do with the pub­lic back­lash over Trump’s “very fine peo­ple on both sides” equiv­o­cat­ing of the anti-fas­cists with the neo-Nazis fol­low­ing Char­lottesville), there was anoth­er attempt with­in DHS in Octo­ber of 2017 to refo­cus the agency on the anti-fas­cists based on a bla­tant­ly satir­i­cal online meme about ‘antifa super­sol­diers’ over­throw­ing the gov­ern­ment:

...
It appears that Gor­ka was unsuc­cess­ful in her 2017 bid to get gov­ern­ment fund­ing to fight anti-fas­cists. But she’s not the only one at the DHS who hyped the threat of antifa. Months lat­er, a DHS agent emailed intel­li­gence cen­ters request­ing infor­ma­tion about an antifa plot to over­throw the gov­ern­ment after appar­ent­ly falling for a satir­i­cal antifa super­sol­dier meme, accord­ing to emails obtained through a sep­a­rate FOIA request by the trans­paren­cy non­prof­it Prop­er­ty of the Peo­ple.
...

So Katie Gor­ka may not have giv­en the worst rea­son for tar­get­ing anti-fas­cists in 2017. That prize goes to the agent who took those bla­tant joke memes seri­ous­ly. But the fact that Gor­ka set out to sab­o­tage the gov­ern­men­t’s pro­grams to counter vio­lent white suprema­cist groups and is clear­ly a major far right sym­pa­thiz­er her­self sug­gests that she still deserves the prize for the worst under­ly­ing rea­sons for giv­ing rea­sons to tar­get anti-fas­cists. After all, it’s entire­ly pos­si­ble the DHS agent who request­ed more infor­ma­tion about a joke meme was just being momen­tar­i­ly fool­ish. Gor­ka, on the oth­er hand, is obvi­ous­ly a ded­i­cat­ed far right ide­o­logue. And that’s a lot worse than being momen­tar­i­ly fool­ish.

Here’s a pair of arti­cles that point towards an ongo­ing trend that could be increas­ing­ly impor­tant to keep an eye on head­ing into the 2022 and 2024 elec­tion cycle. A trend that could become excep­tion­al­ly impor­tant should Don­ald Trump get a time­ly vis­it from the grim reaper some­time over the next few years, leav­ing the GOP in search of a new polit­i­cal war lord to fol­low. This would be the trend of Steve Ban­non over­tak­ing Don­ald Trump as the heart and soul of the ‘MAGA’ vision. Not just as a back­room strate­gist but as a pub­lic per­son­al­i­ty who com­mands the respect of the hard core Trumpian base. Because as the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles describe, when it comes to estab­lish­ing the MAGA stan­dard that Repub­li­can can­di­dates must meet, it’s not Don­ald Trump who is set­ting that stan­dard. It’s Ban­non, via his War­Room pod­cast, who is play­ing that role, hav­ing turned his pod coast into a kind of nation­al com­mand-cen­ter for the ongo­ing Trumpian insur­gency move­ment.

In par­tic­u­lar, we find that for­mer Geor­gia Sen­a­tor David Per­due, who just received Trump’s endorse­ment for the gov­er­nor’s race over incum­bent Repub­li­can gov­ern­ment Bri­an Kemp, isn’t MAGA-enough for Steve Ban­non. Ban­non demand­ed Per­due be far more explic­it in his con­dem­na­tion of the ‘stolen elec­tion’, decry­ing that “There’s no dif­fer­ence between Kemp and Per­due.”

As we’ll see in the sec­ond arti­cle below, Per­due then pro­ceed­ed to file a bogus law­suit against Ful­ton Coun­ty a cou­ple days lat­er on the basis of a num­ber of already debunked vot­er-fraud claims. Was this law­suit already planned? Or a response to Ban­non’s non-endorse­ment? We don’t know, but the fact of the mat­ter is Per­due filed this law­suit just days fol­low­ing Ban­non’s attack.

Keep in mind anoth­er part of the con­text here: the mul­ti­ple inves­ti­ga­tions of poten­tial ille­gal con­duct and insid­er trad­ing by the Trump Media enter­prise that’s sup­pose to form a new merged com­pa­ny with the Dig­i­tal World SPAC. The point being that Trump him­self may not have the in-house media pres­ence he desires for the fore­see­able future, espe­cial­ly if this media ven­ture ends up just being the lat­est giant grift. Steve Ban­non, on the oth­er hand, already has a ded­i­cat­ed loy­al audi­ence. A loy­al audi­ence that heav­i­ly over­laps with Trump’s most loy­al audi­ence. And that’s why this fight over whether or not David Per­due is ‘MAGA’ enough is the kind of fight we should expect to see a lot more of in the future. And the kind of future we should expect Steve Ban­non to keep win­ning:

The Wash­ing­ton Post

Opin­ion: An angry rift between Trump and Ban­non sig­nals the far-right’s future

By Greg Sar­gent
Colum­nist
Decem­ber 7, 2021 at 10:58 a.m. EST

There may be no greater trans­gres­sion in MAGA-land than refus­ing to engage in max­i­mal cor­rup­tion on Don­ald Trump’s behalf, which is why Trump has now endorsed for­mer sen­a­tor David Per­due, who is chal­leng­ing Geor­gia Gov. Bri­an Kemp.

Trump has not both­ered to con­ceal his rea­son for doing this: In back­ing Per­due, Trump derid­ed Kemp as a sell­out on “Elec­tion Integri­ty” who can’t win the “MAGA base.” In essence, Trump is urg­ing his vot­ers to reject Kemp for refus­ing to steal the elec­tion on Trump’s behalf.

Yet Trump is fac­ing dis­sent on this from, of all peo­ple, his for­mer advis­er Stephen K. Ban­non, who is rag­ing that even Trump’s choice is too much of a squish to wage the long war from the right that Ban­non is try­ing to sum­mon into being.

Which sig­nals the direc­tion that the far right in this coun­try, in the hands of the likes of Ban­non, is like­ly to take: toward full-blown insur­gency.

Speak­ing on his “War Room” pod­cast, Ban­non ripped into Per­due as a “dis­as­ter.” Ban­non seethed that Per­due is “the last per­son in the world” who should chal­lenge Kemp, insist­ing that Per­due was “dead silent” about Trump’s 2020 loss, and “did not sup­port” Trump’s effort to over­turn it.

“There’s no dif­fer­ence between Kemp and Per­due,” Ban­non fumed, in a strik­ing rebuke of Trump’s anoint­ed can­di­date.

This is a remark­able claim. Unlike Kemp, who rebuffed Trump’s cor­rupt appeals, Per­due did lend his sup­port to Trump’s designs. In the run-up to his loss in the Jan­u­ary runoff, Per­due sup­port­ed that noto­ri­ous Texas law­suit that tried to get courts to inval­i­date mil­lions of votes for Joe Biden in four states based on lies.

At the time, Per­due also took the extra­or­di­nary step of call­ing for the res­ig­na­tion of the Repub­li­can sec­re­tary of state in Geor­gia, who reject­ed Trump’s demand that he “find” the votes to sub­vert the legit­i­mate out­come.

None of this is good enough for Ban­non.

But why? Per­due is chal­leng­ing Kemp, and has Trump’s endorse­ment, pre­cise­ly because Kemp refused to over­turn the elec­tion for Trump. As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes says, the ratio­nale for Perdue’s can­di­da­cy is to replace Kemp “with a Repub­li­can who will par­tic­i­pate in Don­ald Trump’s next coup.”

But, you see, Per­due is not being explic­it enough about this. Per­due appar­ent­ly is hop­ing to repli­cate the suc­cess of Virginia’s Repub­li­can gov­er­nor-elect, Glenn Youngkin: Per­due wants to har­ness the ener­gy of the Trump base by feed­ing the for­mer president’s lies about 2020, but only in a sub­tle way, as Youngkin did, to avoid alien­at­ing the sub­urbs.

And so Per­due vague­ly claims that Kemp has “lost the con­fi­dence of many Repub­li­cans” and has “failed” them, with­out say­ing express­ly whether Kemp should have sub­vert­ed the elec­tion for Trump. (One won­ders how he’ll answer if reporters press him to say whether Kemp should indeed have done Trump’s bid­ding.)

But none of this will sat­is­fy Ban­non. The for­mer Trump adviser’s pod­cast has become a kind of com­mand cen­ter for a much more explic­it­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic far-right pol­i­tics, a kind of open­ly and unabashed­ly declared far-right insur­gency.

Bannon’s pod­cast fea­tures an end­less bar­rage of ludi­crous and lurid lies about Trump’s loss, as Daniel Dale details, and Ban­non him­self express­ly declares that his goal is to reduce pub­lic faith in the “legit­i­ma­cy” of Pres­i­dent Biden’s “regime.”

Ban­non report­ed­ly helped plot Trump’s effort to over­turn the elec­tion, and now that this failed, he hails the Jan. 6 riot­ers as “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.” He is trans­form­ing him­self into a hero over his indict­ment for refus­ing a law­ful sub­poe­na from the select com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the effort to over­throw U.S. democ­ra­cy through cor­rupt legal manip­u­la­tion and mob vio­lence.

All of which says a good deal about the future direc­tion of this sort of right-wing pol­i­tics.

Nicole Hem­mer, a schol­ar who spe­cial­izes in con­ser­v­a­tive media, notes that in attack­ing Trump’s cho­sen can­di­date, Ban­non is occu­py­ing a space dif­fer­ent from oth­er right-wing media fig­ures, such as those on Fox News whose pro­pa­gan­da remains faith­ful to Trump.

Ban­non has long seen Trump as more of a “ves­sel” for his “insur­gency,” said Hem­mer, the author of “Mes­sen­gers of the Right.”

“Ban­non sees Trump as one of many tools to achieve this broad­er vision that he has of nation­al­ist pol­i­tics, both in the Unit­ed States and abroad,” Hem­mer con­tin­ued, describ­ing his vision as “anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic,” “anti-lib­er­al,” and “author­i­tar­i­an.”

Inter­est­ing­ly, Bannon’s self-mar­tyr­dom around Jan. 6 has echoes in fig­ures such as Oliv­er North, who par­layed his own legal sen­tenc­ing relat­ed to the Iran-con­tra scan­dal into a media pres­ence orga­nized around an explic­it­ly insur­gent mes­sage.

...

Giv­en all this, it’s a no-brain­er that Ban­non sees Per­due as too much of a squish to wage the war to over­turn U.S. democ­ra­cy that Ban­non envi­sions. But Ban­non appears to have a lot of fol­low­ers, and all this sig­nals where this move­ment is real­ly head­ed.

“Ban­non has a big­ger-pic­ture view,” Hem­mer con­clud­ed, which is that the Jan. 6 insur­rec­tion “just brings us one step clos­er to his end goal of hav­ing this author­i­tar­i­an nation­al­ism put in place inde­pen­dent of the elec­toral process.”

———-

“Opin­ion: An angry rift between Trump and Ban­non sig­nals the far-right’s future” by Greg Sar­gent; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/07/2021

“But none of this will sat­is­fy Ban­non. The for­mer Trump adviser’s pod­cast has become a kind of com­mand cen­ter for a much more explic­it­ly anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic far-right pol­i­tics, a kind of open­ly and unabashed­ly declared far-right insur­gency.”

Yep, Steve Ban­non’s War­Room pod­cast has been trans­formed into a kind of nation­al insur­rec­tion com­mand cen­ter over the past year. Yes, Trump is still ‘the leader’ of this move­ment. But it’s hard to argue that Steve Ban­non isn’t effec­tive­ly the oth­er leader of this move­ment. It’s a shared lead­er­ship sit­u­a­tion whether Trump likes it or not. And while Trump clear­ly pri­or­i­tizes loy­al­ty to Trump above all, Steve Ban­non is pri­or­i­tiz­ing some­thing far more pow­er­ful and destruc­tive: a vocal embrace of the ‘stolen elec­tion’ nar­ra­tive above all else. Ban­non does­n’t just want peo­ple who will declare loy­al­ty to Trump. Steve Ban­non wants loy­al­ty to his vision of decon­struct­ing Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy above all else. That’s why David Per­due can’t get Ban­non’s endorse­ment. Per­due isn’t rad­i­cal enough for Ban­non’s agen­da:

...
Yet Trump is fac­ing dis­sent on this from, of all peo­ple, his for­mer advis­er Stephen K. Ban­non, who is rag­ing that even Trump’s choice is too much of a squish to wage the long war from the right that Ban­non is try­ing to sum­mon into being.

Which sig­nals the direc­tion that the far right in this coun­try, in the hands of the likes of Ban­non, is like­ly to take: toward full-blown insur­gency.

...

Bannon’s pod­cast fea­tures an end­less bar­rage of ludi­crous and lurid lies about Trump’s loss, as Daniel Dale details, and Ban­non him­self express­ly declares that his goal is to reduce pub­lic faith in the “legit­i­ma­cy” of Pres­i­dent Biden’s “regime.”

Ban­non report­ed­ly helped plot Trump’s effort to over­turn the elec­tion, and now that this failed, he hails the Jan. 6 riot­ers as “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.” He is trans­form­ing him­self into a hero over his indict­ment for refus­ing a law­ful sub­poe­na from the select com­mit­tee inves­ti­gat­ing the effort to over­throw U.S. democ­ra­cy through cor­rupt legal manip­u­la­tion and mob vio­lence.

All of which says a good deal about the future direc­tion of this sort of right-wing pol­i­tics.
...

So after hav­ing received Trump’s bless­ing, while still incur­ring Ban­non’s wrath, how will Per­due pro­ceed? He’s clear­ly still at risk of a anoth­er chal­lenge from the right in that sen­ate race. Well, a cou­ple days after that above report we go our answer: David Per­due was­n’t done demon­strat­ing his feal­ty to the ‘stolen elec­tion’ nar­ra­tive:

Talk­ing Points Memo

Trump-Backed Per­due Gets Behind Anoth­er Big Lie Law­suit After Launch­ing Geor­gia Gov Bid

By Sum­mer Con­cep­cion
Decem­ber 12, 2021 10:52 a.m.

Fresh off of announc­ing his cam­paign for Geor­gia gov­er­nor, for­mer Sen. David Per­due (R‑GA) on Fri­day dou­bled down on his push of the Big Lie of a “stolen” 2020 pres­i­dent elec­tion by fil­ing a law­suit over absen­tee bal­lots in Ful­ton Coun­ty, fur­ther sig­nal­ing that his bid for Geor­gia gov­er­nor cen­ters on prov­ing his loy­al­ty to for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump.

In his law­suit filed in the Supe­ri­or Court of Ful­ton Coun­ty, Per­due alleges that through unlaw­ful “acts and omis­sions,” elec­tion offi­cials in Ful­ton Coun­ty “cir­cum­vent­ed the major­i­ty vote of the peo­ple of the State of Geor­gia and there­by affect­ed the out­come of the statewide Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Nov. 3, 2020 in sev­er­al races.”

Per­due also takes aim at Ful­ton Coun­ty Board of Reg­is­tra­tion Elec­tions direc­tor Richard Bar­ron and his staffers, argu­ing that they “neg­li­gent­ly, gross­ly neg­li­gent­ly or inten­tion­al­ly engaged in and/or per­mit­ted mul­ti­ple unlaw­ful elec­tion acts.”

Perdue’s law­suit comes just days after he launched his chal­lenge against Geor­gia Gov. Bri­an Kemp ®, who has been tar­get­ed by Trump for refus­ing to play along with his elec­tion fraud false­hoods. Per­due has made clear that he is cen­ter­ing his cam­paign around Trump’s bogus claims, telling Axios last week that he wouldn’t have signed off on his state’s 2020 elec­tion results if he were gov­er­nor at the time.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Perdue’s law­suit revives some of the same bogus claims of wide­spread elec­tion fraud in the bat­tle­ground state that were dis­missed in a law­suit in Octo­ber. The case, which sought to inspect all 147,000 absen­tee bal­lots in Ful­ton Coun­ty, was thrown out after Supe­ri­or Court Judge Bri­an Amero ruled that the plain­tiffs lacked stand­ing and couldn’t pro­vide that they suf­fered a spe­cif­ic injury that would give them a right to sue.

This isn’t the first time that Per­due — who received Trump’s endorse­ment in his chal­lenge against Kemp in the GOP pri­ma­ry — has got­ten behind a law­suit chal­leng­ing the 2020 elec­tion results. Pri­or to his loss to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D‑GA) in the Jan­u­ary runoff, Per­due backed the unsuc­cess­ful Big Lie law­suit waged by Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton late last year, which aimed to chal­lenge the elec­tion results in Geor­gia, Wis­con­sin, Penn­syl­va­nia and Michi­gan.

...

———-

“Trump-Backed Per­due Gets Behind Anoth­er Big Lie Law­suit After Launch­ing Geor­gia Gov Bid” by Sum­mer Con­cep­cion; Talk­ing Points Memo; 12/12/2021

“Perdue’s law­suit comes just days after he launched his chal­lenge against Geor­gia Gov. Bri­an Kemp ®, who has been tar­get­ed by Trump for refus­ing to play along with his elec­tion fraud false­hoods. Per­due has made clear that he is cen­ter­ing his cam­paign around Trump’s bogus claims, telling Axios last week that he wouldn’t have signed off on his state’s 2020 elec­tion results if he were gov­er­nor at the time.”

Was this law­suit a kind of answer to Steve Ban­non’s crit­i­cisms? Or was David Per­due plan­ning this all along and it just hap­pened to come days after Ban­non called him a squish? Either way, it’s Steve Ban­non’s vision the GOP is fol­low­ing head­ing into the 2022 and 2024 elec­tion cycles. A vision that appears to view 2022 and 2024 as poten­tial­ly the last elec­tion cycles.

It all rais­es a grim ques­tion: will Ban­non get too rad­i­cal for Trump’s own tastes? Don’t for­get, Trump just wants to be wor­shipped. Ban­non is an actu­al ide­o­log­i­cal fas­cist. They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want the same thing and Ban­non might actu­al­ly want a lot more destruc­tion than even Trump desires. And that’s why it’s so rel­e­vant that Steve Ban­non just won the bat­tle for the soul of David Per­due. It’s a proxy bat­tle for the soul of the par­ty and the ‘greater of two evils’ keeps win­ning.

The pro­lif­er­a­tion of fas­cist sym­bol­ism across the globe is obvi­ous­ly not a new sto­ry. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to online con­tent. Nor is it a new sto­ry when it comes to the long-stand­ing fas­cist appeals embed­ded in GOP cam­paigns. But that does­n’t mean we can’t hit a new low when it comes to the fas­cist polit­i­cal descent of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics:

Ron DeSan­tis’s strug­gling 2024 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign hit anoth­er speed bump this week. Nate Hochman, a promi­nent young for­mer Nation­al Review ris­ing star in con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­tics, was fired from the cam­paign staff after he was out­ed as the cre­ator of new pro-DeSan­tis cam­paign video. The video was­n’t sup­posed to offi­cial­ly be pro­duced by the cam­paign, but was still retweet­ed by Hochman. As the New York Times revealed ear­li­er this week, the tech­nique of pro­duc­ing an ‘edgy’ video and pass­ing it off as a third par­ty video unaf­fil­i­at­ed with the cam­paign was used with the now noto­ri­ous anti-LGBTQ video filled with bizarre fas­cist homo­erot­ic imagery. And it appears a sim­i­lar approach was used for this lat­est video. A video that is filled with even more overt fas­cist imagery, cul­mi­nat­ing in a final image of DeSan­tis with sol­diers march­ing behind him and the Son­nen­rad in the back­ground.

Yep, the Son­nen­rad is now being incor­po­rat­ed into secret­ly-pro­duced cam­paign videos. But, thanks to Hochman tweet­ing it out, peo­ple were able to put the pieces togeth­er and trace the video back to Hochman, result­ing in his dis­missal by the DeSan­tis cam­paign.

Keep in mind that deny­ing the fas­cist impli­ca­tions of the Son­nen­rad has become a kind of NATO pas­time as the West­’s embrace of the Azov move­ment turned into a love affair fol­low­ing the con­flict in Ukraine. But here it is, get­ting denounced for being used in a cam­paign video pro­duced by a major cam­paign. That’s also part of the con­text here.

So we’ll see what sort of fas­cist imagery the DeSan­tis cam­paign man­ages to sneak into its cam­paign videos next. But with inter­na­tion­al fas­cism still clear­ly on the march and still win­ning hearts and minds online, one meme-laden fas­cist video at a time, it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that we haven’t seen the last ‘Nazis love me and you should too!’ video pro­duced by a US polit­i­cal cam­paign. Because this is the pol­i­tics of now:

Semafor

Ron DeSan­tis fires staffer who shared video with fas­cist imagery

David Weigel and Shel­by Tal­cott
Updat­ed Jul 25, 2023, 6:40pm CDT

The Scoop

Nate Hochman, a promi­nent young Ron DeSan­tis staffer, was part of the slew of employ­ees let go by the team this week, three sources famil­iar with the sit­u­a­tion told Semafor.

“Nate Hochman is no longer with the cam­paign,” a cam­paign offi­cial con­firmed.

Hochman, who left the Nation­al Review to join DeSan­tis’ cam­paign, faced media scruti­ny after retweet­ing mul­ti­ple pro-DeSan­tis videos from the four-month old DeSan­tis­Cams Twit­ter account.

The videos drew spe­cial atten­tion after a New York Times sto­ry over the wekeend report­ed that a strange meme-filled anti-LGBT video shared by the cam­paign was made by a DeSan­tis staffer, and passed off to a dif­fer­ent Twit­ter account. Not­ing style sim­i­lar­i­ties between the anti-LGBT video and videos shared on the DeSan­tis­Cams account, Repub­li­can strate­gist Luke Thomp­son spec­u­lat­ed that they may have been made by the same per­son.

The same day that the Times piece ran, Hochman was found to have shared a recent DeSan­tis­Cams video in which a depressed “wojack” char­ac­ter, unhap­py with Don­ald Trump’s record, got excit­ed about the Flori­da gov­er­nor. It end­ed with the seal of Flori­da trans­form­ing into an appar­ent take on the ancient Son­nen­rad, a sym­bol adopt­ed by fas­cists, as sol­diers marched in for­ma­tion. The video was delet­ed after mul­ti­ple accounts drew atten­tion to that image.

It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if there was a con­nec­tion between his exit and the videos. After this sto­ry pub­lished, Axios report­ed that Hochman him­self had made — and not just shared — the lat­est video. The DeSan­tis cam­paign did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to ques­tions about whether the videos orig­i­nat­ed from the cam­paign.

...

The View From David and Shel­by

The Hochman hire was big news on the online right — the ele­va­tion of a 25-year old ris­ing star who had sur­vived an attempt at “can­cel­la­tion.” Hochman had been pub­lished by the New York Times, dis­cussed con­ser­v­a­tive pop­ulism on the left-wing “Know Your Ene­my” pod­cast, and writ­ten for Nation­al Review on every­thing from the 2024 horse race to whether lib­er­al bias was affect­ing AI.

“If the Right hopes to regain a foot­ing in arts, schools, and intel­lec­tu­al life, it will have to become com­fort­able think­ing of itself as an insur­gent out­sider in Amer­i­can cul­ture,” Hochman wrote in a fea­ture about the com­mu­nist thinker Anto­nio Gram­sci.

Hochman’s fast rise earned him some ene­mies. Last sum­mer, The Dis­patch pub­lished audio from a Twit­ter Spaces chat where Hochman, while crit­i­ciz­ing the white nation­al­ist influ­encer Nick Fuentes, said that the future Trump din­ner guest had “got­ten a lot of kids ‘based’” with his approach to pol­i­tics.

“The fact that kids are lis­ten­ing to you, there are good things and bad things about it,” Hochman said in the chat. “But the fact that you have said super edgy things means that there’s a pret­ty strong ceil­ing to what you can accom­plish in pol­i­tics.”

Some influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives defend­ed Hochman, who is Jew­ish, from the article’s fall­out; he’d pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten that Fuentes was a “ver­i­fi­able racist” with no real polit­i­cal con­stituen­cy.

Before the cam­paign began, Hochman was mak­ing a case for DeSan­tis that many donors agreed with. At Nation­al Review, Hochman had praised Florida’s gov­er­nor as an “extreme­ly com­pe­tent” politi­cian and “shrewd polit­i­cal oper­a­tor” who could win the nom­i­na­tion but didn’t have Trump’s daz­zle fac­tor.

“While Trump may trail DeSan­tis in focus and com­pe­tence, he beats him in raw charis­ma,” Hochman wrote last year. In anoth­er col­umn, he cred­it­ed DeSan­tis with writ­ing “a play­book for con­fronting woke ide­ol­o­gy going for­ward” by stand­ing behind the state’s parental rights bill, which lim­it­ed dis­cus­sion of LGBT issues and gen­der iden­ti­ty in pub­lic schools.

But Hochman’s back­ground also shaped some of the more recent dis­cus­sion among polit­i­cal insid­ers about DeSan­tis as his pres­i­den­tial run strug­gled, and donors wor­ried that the cam­paign was “too online,” and too focused on social issues that appealed to high­ly engaged anti-woke con­ser­v­a­tives on Twit­ter.

...

———-

“Ron DeSan­tis fires staffer who shared video with fas­cist imagery” by David Weigel and Shel­by Tal­cott; Semafor; 07/25/2023

“The Hochman hire was big news on the online right — the ele­va­tion of a 25-year old ris­ing star who had sur­vived an attempt at “can­cel­la­tion.” Hochman had been pub­lished by the New York Times, dis­cussed con­ser­v­a­tive pop­ulism on the left-wing “Know Your Ene­my” pod­cast, and writ­ten for Nation­al Review on every­thing from the 2024 horse race to whether lib­er­al bias was affect­ing AI.”

This isn’t just a sto­ry about a DeSan­tis cam­paign staffer. It’s the sto­ry about a staffer who left the Nation­al Review to join the cam­paign. Nate Hochman was a ris­ing star on in US con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles. A ris­ing star who was ris­ing, in large part, due to his abil­i­ty to infuse his con­tent with far right memes with­out get­ting ‘can­celed’. So it should­n’t be at all sur­pris­ing to see that Hochman was open­ly prais­ing Nick Fuentes’s abil­i­ty to main­stream neo-Nazi con­tent. They were clear­ly both doing it:

...
“If the Right hopes to regain a foot­ing in arts, schools, and intel­lec­tu­al life, it will have to become com­fort­able think­ing of itself as an insur­gent out­sider in Amer­i­can cul­ture,” Hochman wrote in a fea­ture about the com­mu­nist thinker Anto­nio Gram­sci.

Hochman’s fast rise earned him some ene­mies. Last sum­mer, The Dis­patch pub­lished audio from a Twit­ter Spaces chat where Hochman, while crit­i­ciz­ing the white nation­al­ist influ­encer Nick Fuentes, said that the future Trump din­ner guest had “got­ten a lot of kids ‘based’” with his approach to pol­i­tics.

“The fact that kids are lis­ten­ing to you, there are good things and bad things about it,” Hochman said in the chat. “But the fact that you have said super edgy things means that there’s a pret­ty strong ceil­ing to what you can accom­plish in pol­i­tics.”
...

And that brings us to the spe­cif­ic imagery Hochman chose to include in his DeSan­tis video: an image of DeSan­tis with a Son­nen­rad as sol­diers march in for­ma­tion. It’s the kind of video that would no doubt earn Nick Fuentes’s praise in return:

...
The videos drew spe­cial atten­tion after a New York Times sto­ry over the wekeend report­ed that a strange meme-filled anti-LGBT video shared by the cam­paign was made by a DeSan­tis staffer, and passed off to a dif­fer­ent Twit­ter account. Not­ing style sim­i­lar­i­ties between the anti-LGBT video and videos shared on the DeSan­tis­Cams account, Repub­li­can strate­gist Luke Thomp­son spec­u­lat­ed that they may have been made by the same per­son.

The same day that the Times piece ran, Hochman was found to have shared a recent DeSan­tis­Cams video in which a depressed “wojack” char­ac­ter, unhap­py with Don­ald Trump’s record, got excit­ed about the Flori­da gov­er­nor. It end­ed with the seal of Flori­da trans­form­ing into an appar­ent take on the ancient Son­nen­rad, a sym­bol adopt­ed by fas­cists, as sol­diers marched in for­ma­tion. The video was delet­ed after mul­ti­ple accounts drew atten­tion to that image.

It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear if there was a con­nec­tion between his exit and the videos. After this sto­ry pub­lished, Axios report­ed that Hochman him­self had made — and not just shared — the lat­est video. The DeSan­tis cam­paign did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to ques­tions about whether the videos orig­i­nat­ed from the cam­paign.
...

And then we get to those defend­ing Hochman by point­ing out that Hochman wrote a Nation­al Review piece slam­ming Nick Fuentes and his move­ment as being polit­i­cal­ly insignif­i­cant. So the guy who was out­ed as a secret Nazi pro­pa­gan­dists for DeSan­tis was pub­licly denounc­ing Fuentes’s Nazi move­ment last year for being too small to mat­ter. It’s not actu­al­ly a defense if you think about it. More just a state­ment about observ­able real­i­ty:

...
Some influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives defend­ed Hochman, who is Jew­ish, from the article’s fall­out; he’d pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten that Fuentes was a “ver­i­fi­able racist” with no real polit­i­cal con­stituen­cy.
...

So let’s take a clos­er look at Hochman’s March 2022 Nation­al Review col­umn about Nick Fuentes. As we’re going to see, it’s only in part about Fuentes. The focus of the col­umn is actu­al­ly crit­i­ciz­ing Rep Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene (MTG) for her appear­ance at Fuentes’s mer­i­ca First con­fer­ence (AFPAC). In par­tic­u­lar, crit­i­ciz­ing MTG’s defense for attend­ing the con­fer­ence by sug­gest­ing that she was sim­ply reach­ing out to a new audi­ence. As Hochman spins it, Fuentes does­n’t rep­re­sent any­thing more than an incon­se­quen­tial group of angry young men who spend too much time online. Although there’s one oth­er group that Hochman describes as being famil­iar with the ‘Groyper’ world­view: polit­i­cal elites. Yes, as Hochman puts it at the end of the piece, “The Groyper world­view is famil­iar to two groups: polit­i­cal elites and young men with too much time on their hands.”

This is a good time to recall how Con­gress­man Paul Gosar spoke at the sec­ond annu­al AFPAC in Feb­ru­ary of 2021, weeks after Jan­u­ary 6. Gosar was lat­er exposed as hav­ing a ‘Groyper’, Wade Sear­le, work­ing on his con­gres­sion­al staff as the dig­i­tal direc­tor. Also recall how the far right Catholic “Church Mil­i­tant” media out­let has become increas­ing­ly inter­twined with Fuentes’s ‘Groyper’ move­ment in recent years. So when we see Hochman write an Nation­al Review arti­cle dis­miss­ing Fuentes as ped­dling a world­view that is only famil­iar with online trolls and polit­i­cal elites, that’s an obser­va­tion that we should prob­a­bly take seri­ous­ly. Because if there’s one thing Hochman’s secret cre­ation of ‘Son­nen­rad DeSan­tis’ video demon­strates, it’s that the polit­i­cal elites have deter­mined that fas­cist online trolls are one of the polit­i­cal con­stituen­cies a politi­cian needs to win the GOP nom­i­na­tion:

The Nation­al Review

Nick Fuentes and AFPAC Do Not Rep­re­sent a Real Con­stituen­cy

By Nate Hochman
March 1, 2022 11:11 AM

Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene sug­gest­ed she addressed the fringe con­fer­ence to court an impor­tant part of the base. This is absurd.

By now, Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene and Paul Gosar should be seri­ous­ly regret­ting their deci­sion to speak before the Amer­i­ca First Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (AFPAC), an unsa­vory alter­na­tive to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence (CPAC) held in Orlan­do over the week­end.

They’re get­ting pum­meled from all sides includ­ing Repub­li­can lead­er­ship over the move, and for good cause. AFPAC is an island of mis­fit boys. It was inau­gu­rat­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2020 as a clear­ing­house for fig­ures whose views were too extreme for CPAC, styled as a half-troll­ish, half-seri­ous plat­form for the so-called “Groyper” move­ment, a group of most­ly young men whose Inter­net-based brand of right-wing pol­i­tics assumes white iden­ti­ty as a core orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple. Greene was intro­duced as a “mys­tery speak­er” on Sat­ur­day by Nick Fuentes, the 23-year-old Groyper leader who orga­nizes and hosts AFPAC — and is a ver­i­fi­able racist.

The Groypers are a prod­uct of the dig­i­tal age. The extrem­ism of Fuentes and his fol­low­ers often comes across as glee­ful trolling, dri­ven by a desire to pro­voke out­rage. The 2019 “Groyper War,” for exam­ple, saw Fuentes acolytes stage dis­rup­tive stunts at a num­ber of cam­pus con­ser­v­a­tive events, inun­dat­ing fig­ures like Don­ald Trump, Jr., Char­lie Kirk, and Dan Cren­shaw with point­ed ques­tions about demo­graph­ic change, America’s rela­tion­ship to Israel, and “danc­ing Israelis” — a ref­er­ence to a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that 9/11 was a “false flag” oper­a­tion by Israeli agents. At least one of these fias­cos was cheered on via remote livestream by Fuentes him­self, who offered live com­men­tary on the Q&A ses­sion to around 4,000 view­ers. Their brand of far-right pol­i­tics is not the old-school racism of David Duke — though the two con­verge at times — but a new, “extreme­ly online” pseu­do-ide­ol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­cat­ed via memes and livestreams in chat rooms and social media rather than fly­ers and in-per­son meet­ings. It comes with its own vocab­u­lary and sym­bol­o­gy, defined in oppo­si­tion to the “cuck­ser­vatism” of the estab­lish­ment, which Groypers attack as effete and unwill­ing to defend white racial iden­ti­ty. The Groyper mas­cot itself, a rotund car­toon amphib­ian, evolved from the “Pepe the Frog” meme that is pop­u­lar on mes­sage boards like 4Chan. (4Chan defines Groyper as “a toad” who is “friends with Pepe.”)

But the views they do hold are nox­ious, and they are seri­ous about them. That should have been clear to any­one attend­ing AFPAC. While the event fea­tured sev­er­al black speak­ers, and at least one who is Jew­ish, the white iden­ti­tar­i­an­ism espoused by Groypers was the ethos of the con­fer­ence. Blog­ger Vince James told the crowd that the Left’s attempts to “define white­ness” as “things like free­dom, indi­vid­u­al­ism, Protes­tant work eth­ic, Eng­lish com­mon law, an empha­sis on the sci­en­tif­ic and math­e­mat­i­cal method” were “his­tor­i­cal­ly . . . cor­rect,” because “these things, in fact, were defined and derived from the found­ing stock of the Amer­i­can nation.” James also claimed that “many of those who pur­port to be our elect­ed oppo­si­tion to the destruc­tion of Amer­i­can soci­ety” are “owned by the same spe­cial inter­est groups that they claim to be against, like the Israel lob­by,” a state­ment met with boos from the crowd. Ari­zona state sen­a­tor Wendy Rogers advo­cat­ed for erect­ing “a new­ly built set of gal­lows” to “make an exam­ple of these trai­tors,” and praised “Nick and the oth­er patri­ots” at AFPAC. “Please keep doing what you’re doing,” she said. “I admire you.” In wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed remarks, Fuentes him­self said that “the U.S. gov­ern­ment has become the Great Satan that many have called it,” smirk­ing that “they say Vladimir Putin is Hitler — and they say that’s not a good thing.”

...

Greene claims that she was unaware of these views. “I do not know Nick Fuentes, I’ve nev­er heard him speak, I’ve nev­er seen a video, I don’t know what his views are so I’m not aligned with any­thing that may be con­tro­ver­sial,” she told reporters after being asked about her appear­ance at AFPAC. But just min­utes before he wel­comed her to the stage, Fuentes asked the audi­ence for “a round of applause for Rus­sia,” and was greet­ed with cheers and chants of Putin’s name. If Greene was unaware of the conference’s polit­i­cal ten­den­cies before she attend­ed, the favor­able Hitler com­par­isons and praise for Putin should have been a clue.

Greene took the stage any­way, smil­ing and shak­ing Fuentes’s hand to applause from the audi­ence, declar­ing: “I’m thrilled to be here with you tonight.”

The congresswoman’s sub­se­quent defense has includ­ed the odd sug­ges­tion that her appear­ance was an effort to con­nect with a real con­stituen­cy in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. “I went to talk to his event last night to address his very large fol­low­ing because that is a very young fol­low­ing, and it’s a gen­er­a­tion I’m extreme­ly con­cerned about,” she told reporters. That was fol­lowed by a series of tweet threads express­ing a sim­i­lar sen­ti­ment. “I won’t aban­don these young men and women, because I believe we need to do bet­ter by them,” one read. “I won’t can­cel oth­ers in the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, even if I find some of their state­ments taste­less, mis­guid­ed or even repul­sive at times.” In anoth­er thread, Greene wrote: “I want to embrace the young, bois­ter­ous and ener­getic con­ser­v­a­tives in our movement—not can­cel them like the estab­lish­ment does.”

Greene’s assump­tion that the Groypers rep­re­sent some sort of gen­uine con­stituen­cy being silenced by the elites — or that Fuentes actu­al­ly rep­re­sents the “gen­er­a­tion” that she is “extreme­ly con­cerned about” — is ridicu­lous.

Greene is not the only Repub­li­can mem­ber of Con­gress to have jus­ti­fied their pres­ence at AFPAC with this line of argu­ment. Con­gress­man Gosar of Ari­zona gave a pre-record­ed vir­tu­al address this year, and he spoke in per­son at AFPAC 2021. And when pressed on his appear­ance, he gave a sim­i­lar ratio­nale: “There is a group of young peo­ple that are becom­ing part of the elec­tion process, and becom­ing a big­ger force,” he told the Wash­ing­ton Post. “So why not take that ener­gy and lis­ten to what they’ve got to say?”

Con­sid­er that state­ment in con­text. Fuentes had upwards of 125,000 fol­low­ers when his Twit­ter account was banned in 2021. As of this writ­ing, his Telegram chan­nel has 44,797 sub­scribers. An aver­age of more than 130 mil­lion peo­ple vot­ed in the last six pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. So as a mea­sure­ment of an actu­al polit­i­cal bloc, those num­bers don’t mean much.

Of course, small minori­ties can effect major polit­i­cal change. The Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment itself began as a small cohort of dis­sat­is­fied activists, intel­lec­tu­als, and politi­cians. But move­ment con­ser­vatism tapped into a set of sen­ti­ments and views wide­ly held in the broad­er pop­u­la­tion, but lack­ing a plat­form for insti­tu­tion­al expres­sion. Groypers, by con­trast, do not rep­re­sent any silent major­i­ty of aver­age GOP vot­ers in Mid­dle Amer­i­ca. The Ohio steel­work­er doesn’t know who Pepe the Frog is and doesn’t think 9/11 was manip­u­lat­ed by the Israelis. By polling, Repub­li­can vot­ers are firm­ly pro-Israel. At no point in the past two decades has Amer­i­can sup­port for Israel dropped below 58 per­cent; as of 2021, it sat at 75 per­cent. (With Repub­li­cans, it was 85 per­cent.) Some work­ing-class Amer­i­cans may wor­ry about demo­graph­ic change, but not in the ide­o­log­i­cal­ly and explic­it­ly racist way that Fuentes et al. do. Very few view Putin favor­ably.

The Groyper world­view is famil­iar to two groups: polit­i­cal elites and young men with too much time on their hands. So just what kind of con­stituen­cy are politi­cians like Greene and Gosar address­ing? A very small and insignif­i­cant one. And that’s a good thing.

———-

“Nick Fuentes and AFPAC Do Not Rep­re­sent a Real Con­stituen­cy” By Nate Hochman; The Nation­al Review; 03/01/2022

“The Groyper world­view is famil­iar to two groups: polit­i­cal elites and young men with too much time on their hands. So just what kind of con­stituen­cy are politi­cians like Greene and Gosar address­ing? A very small and insignif­i­cant one. And that’s a good thing.”

That was then and this is now. A year and a half ago Hochman was dis­miss­ing Nick Fuentes and the Groypers as the kind of con­stituen­cy only a polit­i­cal elite might be famil­iar with. Flash for­ward and we dis­cov­er Hochman was secret­ly court­ing this exact con­stituen­cy. Until he was caught. It’s some­thing to keep in mind as we hear all sorts of assur­ances about how this all just a ran­dom sto­ry about a ran­dom secret-Nazi who man­aged to infil­trate the DeSan­tis cam­paign. A ran­dom secret Nazi who just hap­pened to be a con­ser­v­a­tive ris­ing star known for denounc­ing the GOP’s grow­ing embrace of Nazis.

We got an update on Steven Ban­non’s legal roller coast­er: a fed­er­al judge just gave Ban­non four weeks to sur­ren­der for a four month prison sen­tence to start by July 1. The sen­tence is due to Ban­non’s refusal to appear before Con­gress despite a con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­na to answer ques­tions about his role in the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion.

This is a good time to recall the many Ban­non-relat­ed con­nec­tions to Jan­u­ary 6, start­ing with the fact that the “Stop the Steal” mes­sag­ing cam­paign was large­ly orches­trat­ed by Ban­non, Roger Stone, and Michael Fly­nn. And we learned how Ban­non was part of the team occu­py­ing the “War room” at the Willard hotel in the days around Jan­u­ary 6, along with Rudy Giu­liani and John East­man. Roger Stone has sub­se­quent­ly accused Ban­non of giv­ing the orders to breach the Capi­tol.

And there’s the claims made by Ban­non, who read­i­ly admit­ted in Sep­tem­ber of 2021 that he was plot­ting to “kill the Biden pres­i­den­cy in the crib” with Don­ald Trump ahead of Jan­u­ary 6, although Trump lat­er denied Ban­non’s claims about pre-Jan 6 coor­di­na­tion. Denials by Trump that appear to be false based on the avail­able evi­dence. So it should be sur­pris­ing that we also learned that Ban­non and oth­ers sub­poe­naed by con­gress refused to appear before con­gress under instruc­tions from Trump. And as we also saw, it was clear Ban­non was play­ing to a legal strat­e­gy of delay­ing things long enough for the GOP to retake con­trol of the House in 2023 and kill the con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion. That’s a key part of the con­text of this ongo­ing legal case over the con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­na.

Also recall how, not long after Ban­non’s con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­na in Sep­tem­ber of 2021, there was the Octo­ber 2021 sto­ry about the for­ma­tion of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial Appointees orga­ni­za­tion — and its invi­ta­tion of Steve Ban­non to speak at its inau­gur­al event about the need to train an army of “shock troops” ready to fill thou­sands of fed­er­al vacan­cies in a 2024 Repub­li­can White House for the pur­pose “decon­struct­ing the admin­is­tra­tive state”, which was basi­cal­ly a ramp­ing up of the ongo­ing Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme. Which is a reminder that the Sched­ule F plot is, in part, a response to Ban­non’s fears of pros­e­cu­tion too. It’s not just Trump’s fears of pros­e­cu­tion dri­ving this.

Assum­ing Ban­non does serve this prison term, he’s going to spend the months lead­ing up to the 2024 elec­tion in a prison cell. And this is all hap­pen­ing as the Trump cam­paign’s mes­sag­ing is increas­ing­ly focused on push­ing the idea that Trump and his allies are fac­ing some sort of polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed ‘law­fare’ from the Biden admin­is­tra­tion. Along with a mes­sage that vengeance is in order after Trump returns to White House. For­mer Trump trade advis­er, Peter Navar­ro, is cur­rent­ly serv­ing a four month prison sen­tence for sim­i­lar­ly defy­ing a Jan­u­ary 6 inves­ti­ga­tion con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­na.

But this upcom­ing prison sen­tence isn’t the only Ban­non-relat­ed legal sto­ry play­ing out. Ban­non is also fac­ing charges lev­eled against him in 2022 by New York state pros­e­cu­tors over the over the ille­gal ‘We Build the Wall’ fundrais­ing scheme. This was the same fundrais­ing scheme fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors charged Ban­non over in 2020 until Don­ald Trump par­doned him in one of his final acts in office.

As we saw at the time, much hay was made of the fact that the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tion was done by a Man­hat­tan grand jury over a crime based around a wall to be built in Texas. But since it was a nation­al fundrais­ing oper­a­tion, pros­e­cu­tors around the coun­try had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to file a charge and it turns out Man­hat­tan’s fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors were the ones to do so. And as we’re going to see, when it comes to the ongo­ing state-lev­el charges for the same crime, the judge and pros­e­cu­tor in that ongo­ing fraud tri­al hap­pen to be Judge Juan Mer­chan and pros­e­cu­tor Alvin Bragg, the same judge and pros­e­cu­tor who just presided over Trump’s recent 34 count con­vic­tion. In the same Man­hat­tan cour­t­house. And while this is how the US judi­cial func­tions and not par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing to see the same judge and pros­e­cu­tor in both Ban­non’s and Trump’s cas­es, it’s not hard to imag­ine how Ban­non’s jail time and ongo­ing pros­e­cu­tion could play into Trump’s 2024 vengeance-based cam­paign mes­sag­ing. And, after that, the actu­al­ly vengeance of his sec­ond term:

The New York Times

Judge Orders Ban­non to Sur­ren­der for Prison Term by July 1

The out­spo­ken Trump ally was con­vict­ed two years ago of con­tempt of Con­gress for refus­ing to com­ply with a sub­poe­na from the House Jan. 6 com­mit­tee. He faces a four-month sen­tence.

By Alan Feuer and Aish­varya Kavi
June 6, 2024 Updat­ed 5:52 p.m. ET

A fed­er­al judge on Thurs­day told Stephen K. Ban­non, a long­time advis­er to for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump, to sur­ren­der by July 1 to start serv­ing a four-month prison term for dis­obey­ing a con­gres­sion­al sub­poe­na.

Mr. Ban­non was sen­tenced in Octo­ber 2022 on con­tempt of Con­gress charges after he refused to give tes­ti­mo­ny to the House com­mit­tee that inves­ti­gat­ed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capi­tol.

Judge Carl J. Nichols, who has over­seen the case, allowed him to remain free while he appealed. Last month, how­ev­er, Mr. Ban­non lost the first round of that chal­lenge as a three-judge pan­el of a fed­er­al appeals court in Wash­ing­ton decid­ed that his guilty ver­dict on charges of ignor­ing the House committee’s demand for his tes­ti­mo­ny was prop­er.

Because of the panel’s rul­ing, Judge Nichols said he no longer believed that Mr. Ban­non could right­ful­ly con­tin­ue to post­pone serv­ing his sen­tence.

...

Lawyers for Mr. Ban­non have promised to ask the full appeals court to recon­sid­er the panel’s deci­sion. And Judge Nichols said that Mr. Ban­non would have to start serv­ing his sen­tence in less than four weeks unless the full appeals court took the case and issued its own rul­ing to pause the sen­tence from being enforced.

Judge Nichols’s deci­sion seemed to catch Mr. Bannon’s lawyer, David Schoen, by sur­prise, and he approached the podi­um after it was issued and start­ed argu­ing with the judge.

...

Dur­ing his brief tri­al two sum­mers ago, Mr. Ban­non was sim­i­lar­ly defi­ant, con­test­ing the charges that he had snubbed the House com­mit­tee both inside and out­side the court­room. At one point, he deliv­ered a speech promis­ing to go “medieval” on the pros­e­cu­tors who had brought the indict­ment against him.

After the hear­ing on Thurs­day, he remained recal­ci­trant, declar­ing that he would chal­lenge his con­vic­tion all the way to the Supreme Court if nec­es­sary.

Speak­ing to reporters out­side the cour­t­house, Mr. Ban­non sought to por­tray the case against him as an attack on Mr. Trump and his sup­port­ers.

“This is about shut­ting down the MAGA move­ment, shut­ting down grass-roots con­ser­v­a­tives, shut­ting down Pres­i­dent Trump,” he said, adding, “There’s noth­ing that can shut me up.”

...

A cou­ple of months after he was found guilty of con­tempt of Con­gress in Wash­ing­ton, state pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan accused him of mis­us­ing mon­ey he helped raise for a group back­ing Mr. Trump’s bor­der wall. In his final hours in office in 2021, Mr. Trump par­doned Mr. Ban­non in a sep­a­rate fed­er­al case that focused on sim­i­lar accu­sa­tions.

Mr. Bannon’s fraud tri­al is sched­uled to take place lat­er this year in the same Man­hat­tan cour­t­house where Mr. Trump was recent­ly con­vict­ed on charges of fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness record to cov­er up a sex scan­dal that threat­ened his 2016 run for the pres­i­den­cy.

Anoth­er for­mer aide to Mr. Trump is already serv­ing a prison term for refus­ing to take part in the House committee’s wide-rang­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in pow­er after los­ing the 2020 elec­tion.

In March, Peter Navar­ro, who once worked as a trade advis­er to Mr. Trump, report­ed to fed­er­al prison in Mia­mi to begin serv­ing his own four-month prison stint after a jury found him guilty of con­tempt of Con­gress for ignor­ing one of the committee’s sub­poe­nas.

———-

“Judge Orders Ban­non to Sur­ren­der for Prison Term by July 1” By Alan Feuer and Aish­varya Kavi; The New York Times; 06/06/2024

“Lawyers for Mr. Ban­non have promised to ask the full appeals court to recon­sid­er the panel’s deci­sion. And Judge Nichols said that Mr. Ban­non would have to start serv­ing his sen­tence in less than four weeks unless the full appeals court took the case and issued its own rul­ing to pause the sen­tence from being enforced.”

It’s a four week count­down before Ban­non’s four month prison sen­tence. Mak­ing this the kind of MAGA prison sideshow that could take on an out­sized role in a 2024 Trump cam­paign increas­ing­ly cen­tered around the idea that the US judi­cial sys­tem is wag­ing ‘law­fare’ against Trump and his sup­port­ers:

...
Mr. Ban­non was sen­tenced in Octo­ber 2022 on con­tempt of Con­gress charges after he refused to give tes­ti­mo­ny to the House com­mit­tee that inves­ti­gat­ed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capi­tol.

...

Dur­ing his brief tri­al two sum­mers ago, Mr. Ban­non was sim­i­lar­ly defi­ant, con­test­ing the charges that he had snubbed the House com­mit­tee both inside and out­side the court­room. At one point, he deliv­ered a speech promis­ing to go “medieval” on the pros­e­cu­tors who had brought the indict­ment against him.

After the hear­ing on Thurs­day, he remained recal­ci­trant, declar­ing that he would chal­lenge his con­vic­tion all the way to the Supreme Court if nec­es­sary.

Speak­ing to reporters out­side the cour­t­house, Mr. Ban­non sought to por­tray the case against him as an attack on Mr. Trump and his sup­port­ers.

“This is about shut­ting down the MAGA move­ment, shut­ting down grass-roots con­ser­v­a­tives, shut­ting down Pres­i­dent Trump,” he said, adding, “There’s noth­ing that can shut me up.”
...

And note how this isn’t the only legal case Ban­non still has to deal with. There’s also the charges lev­eled at Ban­non by New York state pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan in 2022 over the ille­gal ‘We Build the Wall’ fundrais­ing scheme. The same fundrais­ing scheme he was fac­ing charges on from fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors until Trump par­doned him in one of his final acts in office. As we saw back in 2020 when Ban­non and his fel­low schemers were ini­tial­ly fac­ing the fed­er­al charges, their pub­lic defense includ­ed accus­ing the activists who opposed their pro­posed wall — which was to be built on a pro­tect­ed but­ter­fly refuge — were secret­ly engaged in child sex traf­fick­ing. But with Ban­non fac­ing charges in the exact same Man­hat­tan cour­t­house where Trump’s tri­al was just held, it’s obvi­ous pret­ty clear they’re going to be focus­ing on a ‘Biden admin­is­tra­tion is attack­ing its polit­i­cal oppo­nents!’ mes­sag­ing strat­e­gy. Although, who knows, we prob­a­bly should­n’t be shocked if the child traf­fick­ing alle­ga­tions get recy­cled:

...
A cou­ple of months after he was found guilty of con­tempt of Con­gress in Wash­ing­ton, state pros­e­cu­tors in Man­hat­tan accused him of mis­us­ing mon­ey he helped raise for a group back­ing Mr. Trump’s bor­der wall. In his final hours in office in 2021, Mr. Trump par­doned Mr. Ban­non in a sep­a­rate fed­er­al case that focused on sim­i­lar accu­sa­tions.

Mr. Bannon’s fraud tri­al is sched­uled to take place lat­er this year in the same Man­hat­tan cour­t­house where Mr. Trump was recent­ly con­vict­ed on charges of fal­si­fy­ing busi­ness record to cov­er up a sex scan­dal that threat­ened his 2016 run for the pres­i­den­cy.
...

And as the fol­low­ing Medi­aite piece points out, it’s not sim­ply that Ban­non’s ongo­ing fraud tri­al is sched­uled to take place in the same Man­hat­tan cour­t­house where Trump was just suc­cess­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed. It’s the same judge and pros­e­cu­tor too, which is obvi­ous­ly going to be extreme­ly con­ve­nient for the Trump/Bannon ‘par­ti­san law­fare’ mes­sag­ing cam­paign:

Medi­aite

Steve Ban­non Appear­ing Before Juan Mer­chan Ahead of Tri­al for Alleged­ly Defraud­ing Trump Vot­ers

Isaac Schorr
May 1st, 2024, 3:56 pm

Steve Ban­non, the right-wing com­men­ta­tor who worked on Don­ald Trump’s 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and served in his White House, appeared before Judge Juan Mer­chan — who is also over­see­ing Trump’s hush mon­ey tri­al –in New York City on Wednes­day.

While Ban­non con­tin­ues to prof­it off of Trump’s sup­port­ers and present him­self as their hero, he stands accused of defraud­ing them. He has been charged with com­mit­ting two counts of mon­ey laun­der­ing in the sec­ond degree, two counts of con­spir­a­cy in the fourth degree, one count of scheme to defraud in the first degree, and one count of con­spir­a­cy in the fifth degree for rais­ing mon­ey to build a wall at the south­ern bor­der in 2019, but then using the funds raised to enrich him­self and oth­ers involved in the scheme.

Trump par­doned Ban­non, who was indict­ed on fed­er­al charges over the mat­ter in August 2020, on his last day in office, but the par­don does not apply to state charges.

...

“It is a crime to turn a prof­it by lying to donors, and in New York, you will be held account­able,” said Man­hat­tan Dis­trict Attor­ney Alvin Bragg after the indict­ment against Ban­non was made pub­lic in Sep­tem­ber 2022. “As alleged, Stephen Ban­non act­ed as the archi­tect of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar scheme to defraud thou­sands of donors across the coun­try – includ­ing hun­dreds of Man­hat­tan res­i­dents.”

...

Bannon’s tri­al is set to begin in Sep­tem­ber.

———-

“Steve Ban­non Appear­ing Before Juan Mer­chan Ahead of Tri­al for Alleged­ly Defraud­ing Trump Vot­ers” by Isaac Schorr; Medi­aite; 05/01/2024

“Bannon’s tri­al is set to begin in Sep­tem­ber.”

How much cov­er­age are we going to see cov­er­age of Ban­non’s upcom­ing tri­al in Sep­tem­ber? Because it seems like a sure bet that con­ser­v­a­tive media is going to be fix­at­ed on Judge Mer­chan and Alvin Bragg over­see­ing this pros­e­cu­tion. It’s not actu­al­ly sus­pi­cious to find the same judge and pros­e­cu­tor in both Trump’s and Ban­non’s Man­hat­tan cas­es. That’s just how the US sys­tem of jus­tice func­tions and com­plete­ly nor­mal. But there’s no deny­ing that this sit­u­a­tion will play quite well with the Trump/Bannon ‘par­ti­san law­fare’ mes­sag­ing. Which, again, isn’t just the mes­sag­ing they are using for explain­ing to sup­port­ers why they are fac­ing pros­e­cu­tions. It’s the cen­tral mes­sage of Trump’s 2024 vengeance cam­paign plat­form. Which, as we can see, will be Steve Ban­non’s vengeance too.