On Gab, an Extremist-Friendly Site, Pittsburgh Shooting Suspect Aired His Hatred in Full →

Serious questions: what’s acceptable speech? Inciting violence isn’t, of course (it’s not even legal). But what counts? And when (and how) do we hold social networks accountable for allowing extremist groups to radicalize people?

Kevin Roose, in the New York Times:

Early Saturday, moments before the police say he barged into a Pittsburgh synagogue and opened fire, Robert Bowers’s anti-Semitic rage finally boiled over as he posted one last message online.

But he did not turn to Facebook or Twitter. Instead, the man accused of killing 11 people went to Gab, a two-year-old social network that bills itself as a “free speech” alternative to those platforms, and that has become a haven for white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other extremists. There, he posted a signoff to his followers:

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Technically, there was nothing special about Gab at the start — its interface was buggy and unattractive, and it lacked the features of more established social networks. But the platform’s intentionally slim rule book attracted a crowd of extremists, including white nationalists and neo-Nazis, who had been banned from other social platforms. Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart writer whose harassment campaigns got him kicked off Twitter, signed up for an account. So did Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi publication Daily Stormer, and Richard Spencer, the well-known white nationalist.

Within months, Gab had become a last refuge for internet scoundrels — a place where those with views considered too toxic for the mainstream could congregate and converse freely. The site’s guidelines prohibit threats of violence, but not hateful speech.

Gab’s reputation for accommodating extremism may have been what drew Mr. Bowers to the site. In January, he signed up for an account, and began sharing anti-Jewish images, conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world, and criticism of President Trump — whom, he implied, was too accommodating of Jewish influence. He appeared to have other social media accounts, but Gab was where he aired his hatred in full. His bio on the site read, “Jews are the children of Satan,” and a photo on his profile included the number 1488, a reference to Nazism that is popular among white supremacists.

After Mr. Bowers was named as a suspect in the mass shooting, Gab released a statement saying it “unequivocally disavows and condemns all acts of terrorism and violence.” The company spent much of Saturday replying to its critics on Twitter, and deflecting blame by pointing out that Mr. Bowers also had accounts on other social networks. The company boasted that its website was getting a million views per hour in the aftermath of the Pittsburgh shooting.

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…Gab’s most popular posts espouse far-right ideology.

“Gab became their safe haven because it was actively recruiting the worst of the worst,” said Joan Donovan, a media manipulation researcher with the nonprofit organization Data and Society. “Gab’s users have complained of a global Jewish conspiracy to control the internet, where Gab is the only place online where they can network with one another.”

"I warned of right-wing violence in 2009. Republicans objected. I was right." →

Shortly after Trump was sworn in, the White House (which, remember, included two neo-Nazi affiliates—Stephen Miller, Seb Gorka—and at least one other white supremacist—Steve Bannon) tried to stop a Department of Homeland Security community-partnership program aimed at deradicalizing white supremacists. They also tried to scuttle the small unit in the FBI that was tracking potential white supremacist threats. The Republican Party has not only ignored the largest threat of terrorism that our country faces (rather, always has faced), but actively worked against efforts to stop white supremacists from recruiting (and the Democrats have caved because they didn’t want to be seen as “too partisan”). So now we have Trump and company, who are clearly (if not openly) in the tank for white supremacy.

Because it continues to not only ignore the threat, but there’s now a president who’s actively covering for it by fabricating blame elsewhere, the Republican Party has definitively embraced being the party of White Terror, whether it wants to accept that or not.

Daryl Johnson, in the Washington Post a year ago:

Eight years ago, I warned of a singular threat — the resurgence of right-wing extremist activity and associated violence in the United States as a result of the 2008 presidential election, the financial crisis and the stock market crash. My intelligence report, meant only for law enforcement, was leaked by conservative media.

A political backlash ensued because of an objection to the label “right-wing extremism.” The report also rightly pointed out that returning military veterans may be targeted for recruitment by extremists. Republican lawmakers demanded then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano rescind my report. The American Legion formally requested an apology to veterans. Some in Congress called for me to be fired. Amid the turmoil, my warning went unheeded by Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security caved to the political pressure: Work related to violent right-wing extremism was halted. Law enforcement training also stopped. My unit was disbanded. And, one-by-one, my team of analysts left for other employment. By 2010, there were no intelligence analysts at DHS working domestic terrorism threats.

Since 2008, though, the body count from numerous acts of violent right-wing terrorism continued to rise steadily with very little media interest, political discussion or concern from our national leaders. As this threat grew, government resources were scaled back, law enforcement counterterrorism training was defunded and policies to counter violent extremism narrowed to focus solely on Muslim extremism…

In this country, there's little white supremacy without anti-Semitism →

Nicole Hemmer, an historian of American politics and media, in a thread on Twitter:

Continued:

It wasn’t that no one *ever* spoke of it, but given its prominence — chants of “Jews will not replace us,” Nazi flags, the targeting of the synagogue — it seemed to get relatively little attention. /2

The rabbis and scholars I spoke to mused that there were a variety of reasons for this: our limited way of thinking about white supremacy, the sense that anti-Semitism is an odd relic of the past, the awareness that black Americans face much more serious systemic racism. /3

They noted that the alt-right has reconstructed a white supremacy of the past (not that overt anti-Semitism ever fully disappeared, but it had increasingly faded from public view). /4

Many people didn’t understand this historical development. Uncertain where anti-Semitism fit, a lot of the people telling the story of the events in Charlottesville largely dropped it from their analysis and reporting, or made it more parenthetical than central. /5

What we have been steadily reminded of in the year since #Charlottesville is that anti-Semitism is central to the alt-right’s white supremacist ideology and organizing. /6

Misunderstanding or misrepresenting the nature of violent racism today leaves everyone less prepared and less safe. We need to catch up fast, to become students of the history of anti-Semitism, white power, and racist organizing. /7

There are too many books to mention, but if you need a place to start: Read @kathleen_belew on the history of white power. Read @ProfCAnderson on the history of white rage. Read @jonathanweisman for a primer on anti-Semitism. /8

There is a lot to learn, and I hope #twitterstorians will help out with other book and article recommendations. A #Pittsburgh syllabus, I suppose, those these days we might as well merge them all into an alt-right syllabus. A violent white racism syllabus. /9

Pay attention to how networks and ideas work, how they spread and metastasize, how they slip into the mainstream. Note that the alt-right makes use of transnational networks (even while speaking the language of nationalism). /10

Understand that modern white supremacy, like many historical white supremacies, is anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-woman, and more. Elliot Rodger, Dylann Roof, and the shooter in Pittsburgh drank from the same ideological well — a well we have to drain. 11/11

We're ignoring that "home-grown terrorists" are male and white →

White House trying to end protection for people with "Pre-existing conditions" →

Robert Pear, in the New York Times:

A provision of the 2010 health law, added at the behest of Mr. Wyden, allows waivers for innovations in state health policy. The federal law stipulates that state programs must provide coverage that is “at least as comprehensive” as that available under the Affordable Care Act, and must cover “at least a comparable number” of people.

Under the new policy, states will be able to count people with short-term insurance as having coverage even though it does not provide all the benefits required by the Affordable Care Act. Such plans often omit coverage for maternity care, prescription drugs and treatment for mental illness and drug abuse. They often exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions, as well.

Is Fraud Part of the Trump Organization's Business Model? →

Trump’s remained rich despite his many failed ventures (most of which were secretly bailed out by his billionaire father before he passed away) because of money laundering (including for the Russian mafia and oligarchs since the 80s), fraud, and refusing to pay people for work done for him.

This stuff matters. It’s an extreme indictment of the corruption in our justice system: the richer you are, the less likely you are to be prosecuted, even though your crimes affect way more of society. And it establishes the pattern that Trump’s still following in office: laziness, unprofessionalism, serial lying, and criminal fraud. He doesn’t care to govern; he just wants prestige, influence (and the ability to buy both when he wants).

This month, two incredible investigative stories have given us an opportunity to lift the hood of the Trump Organization, look inside, and begin to understand what the business of this unusual company actually is. It is not a happy picture. The Times published a remarkable report, on October 2nd, that showed that much of the profit the Trump Organization made came not from successful real-estate investment but from defrauding state and federal governments through tax fraud. This week, ProPublica and WNYC co-published a stunning story and a “Trump, Inc.” podcast that can be seen as the international companion to the Times piece. They show that many of the Trump Organization’s international deals also bore the hallmarks of financial fraud, including money laundering, deceptive borrowing, outright lying to investors, and other potential crimes.

Millennials Need to Start Voting Before the Gerontocracy Kills Us All →

Research shows that voting is habit-forming, so the problem is getting out and voting in the first place. Our country doesn’t make it easy (states are closing more polling places then opening new ones; we don’t have a voting holiday; etc.), and neither political party has done a good job of living up to its ideals. But it’s still one direct way we have of exerting bottom-up influence on the system, and we need to use it, for the sake of our democracy, and, given the specific problems involved (climate change in particular), the world.

As “once in a lifetime” storms crash over our coasts five times a year — and the White House’s own climate research suggests that human civilization is on pace to perish before Barron Trump — our government is subsidizing carbon emissions like there’s no tomorrow. Meanwhile, America’s infrastructure is already “below standard,” and set to further deteriorate, absent hundreds of billions of dollars in new investment. Many of our public schools can’t afford to stock their classrooms with basic supplies, pay their teachers a living wage, or keep their doors open five days a week. Child-care costs are skyrocketing, the birth rate is plunging, and the baby-boomers, retiring. And, amid it all, our congressional representatives recently decided that the best thing they could possibly do with $1.5 trillion of borrowed money was to give large tax breaks to people like themselves.

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Some portion of this disparity is probably inevitable — there is no democracy in the world where the young outvote the old. Still, millennials in the U.S. are more underrepresented than their peers in most other developed countries…

But if America’s suppressive voting laws, and the Democrats’ political failings, are the biggest obstacles to smashing the gerontocracy, they aren’t the only ones. There is also the fact that many of my fellow millennials have very wrong opinions about how politics works.

Specifically, PRRI finds that 39 percent of Americans under 30 say that they do not vote, or engage in any other form of political participation, because doing so “wouldn’t make a difference”; 49 percent say that they do not “know enough about the issues” to get involved in politics; and 9 percent believe that voting is less important than “being active on social media,” which is the “most effective way to create change”…

…please consider the following evidence that your vote would make a difference — perhaps, even the difference — in averting our democracy’s collapse into senescence…

Trump Probably Engaged in Felony Tax Evasion →

We must demand that the rich and powerful be held to the same laws as everyone else.

From the transcript of an interview with Bill Black, on The Real News:

BILL BLACK: There is every evidence that the claim is, and I know this will shock people, a lie. First, he’s not self made. Second, it’s entirely due to the money he got from Dad. Indeed, if he had taken the money he got from Dad and simply put it in a Vanguard account, he really would have well over $10 billion today. Instead he’s a terrible real estate developer. So he lost money and defaulted on all kinds of loans, which also, by the way, he said made him smart, that all the great ones in real estate stiff the creditors; you know, including the banks and the workers who don’t get paid for doing these things. So it’s lie upon lie upon lie.

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The Trumps did the same thing. What they did is massively overcharge Dad’s companies for their services. Now, they weren’t providing real services, either. It was a scam upon a scam upon a scam. But it dramatically reduced Trump’s Dad’s profits. And then, remember, he is someone who makes his money from the public, through all these rental assisted housing for poor people. And he used the fact that he was now paying these much, much, much higher costs to his kids, where they were literally raising the cost by 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent, as his excuse for rent increase on these rent controlled dwellings.

So they were- again I emphasize it isn’t genius that explains these kinds of frauds. It’s audacity. And the Trump family simply exemplifies this combination of incompetence, moral degeneracy, but with just extraordinary audacity.