The hack gap: how and why conservative nonsense dominates American politics →

Virtually all mainstream “conservative” arguments in the news these days are hypocritical smoke, but are given constant airtime, even by the centrist/liberal media which you might think shouldn’t bother (and/or would be better served ignoring the constant bad-faith whining).

Matthew Yglesias identifies a few major political/economic effects and causes among the moderate-to-far right political/media operatives that led not only to this, but was a significant cause of the increasing radicalism of the Republican Party, leading to Trump:

The hack gap has two core pillars. One is the constellation of conservative media outlets — led by Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch properties like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but also including Sinclair Broadcasting in local television, much of AM talk radio, and new media offerings such as Breitbart and the Daily Caller — that simply abjure anything resembling journalism in favor of propaganda. 

The other is that the self-consciousness journalists at legacy outlets have about accusations of liberal bias leads them to bend over backward to allow the leading conservative gripes of the day to dominate the news agenda. Television producers who would never dream of assigning segments where talking heads debate whether it’s bad that the richest country on earth also has millions of children growing up in dire poverty think nothing of chasing random conservative shiny objects, from “Fast & Furious” (remember that one?) to Benghazi to the migrant caravan.

And more than Citizens United or even gerrymandering, it’s a huge constant thumb on the scale in favor of the political right in America.

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…there is simply no institution on the left that has anywhere near the institutional clout — to say nothing of the value system — of conservative broadcast media.

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 Research from Emory University political scientists Gregory Martin and Josh McCrain found that when Sinclair buys a local station, its local news program begin to cover more national and less local politics, the coverage becomes more conservative, and viewership actually falls — suggesting that the rightward tilt isn’t enacted as a strategy to win more viewers but as part of a persuasion effort. A separate study by Martin and Stanford economist Ali Yurukoglu estimates that watching Fox News translates into a significantly greater willingness to vote for Republican candidates.

Specifically, by exploiting semi-random variation in Fox viewership driven by changes in the assignment of channel numbers, they find that if Fox News hadn’t existed, the Republican presidential candidate’s share of the two-party vote would have been 3.59 points lower in 2004 and 6.34 points lower in 2008. Without Fox, in other words, the GOP’s only popular vote win since the 1980s would have been reversed and the 2008 election would have been an extinction-level landslide. And that’s only measuring the direct impact of the Fox cable network. If you consider the supplemental effect of Sinclair’s local news broadcast, the AM radio shows of Fox personalities like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and the broader constellation of right-wing punditry, the effect would surely be larger.

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Democratic Party politicians’ statements about troops and other matters touching on patriotism are hyper-policed by easily triggered conservative snowflakes, whose mass panics easily come to dominate the national political agenda. And it is frustrating for liberals to watch this happen when Republican Party politicians are able to skate by with little scrutiny. 

But here’s the critical thing: Even though plenty of liberals are happy to be mad about the double standard, nobody important in progressive political commentary is actually mad about Trump’s troop visiting schedule. We’re mad that Trump is destroying financial and environmental regulation while trying to screw poor people out of health care and nutrition assistance, all while imprisoning children seeking asylum and undermining the international order. That’s important stuff, while Trump’s golfing — like Clinton’s emails — fundamentally isn’t. 

And yet elections are swung, almost by definition, not by the majority of people who correctly see the scope of the differences and pick a side but by the minority of people for whom the important divisions in US partisan politics aren’t decisive. Consequently, the issues that matter most electorally are the ones that matter least to partisans. Things like email protocol compliance that neither liberals nor conservatives care about even slightly can be a powerful electoral tool because the decisive voters are the ones who don’t care about the epic ideological clash of left and right. 

But journalists take their cues about what’s important from partisan media outlets and partisan social media. 

Thus, the frenzies of partisan attention around “deplorables” and “lock her up” served to focus on controversies that, while not objectively significant. are perhaps particularly resonant to people who don’t have firm ideological convictions. 

Meanwhile, similar policy-neutral issues like Trump’s insecure cellphone, his preposterous claim to be too busy to visit the troops, or even his apparent track record of tax fraud don’t get progressives worked into a lather in the same way. 

This is a natural tactical advantage that, moreover, serves a particular strategic advantage given the Republican Party’s devotion to plutocratic principles on taxation and health insurance that have only a very meager constituency among the mass public.

Trump is a fascist

“Fascist” is overused, and there are a lot of definitions, because the self-identified fascist regimes from last century began so differently, and adopted different characteristics. I’ve never been that satisfied with any definition until reading Umberto Eco’s 1995 article in the New York Review of Books. He lists quite a few general traits of what he calls “Ur-Fascism”, and Trump’s speech—at his rallies, on Twitter, on tv—perfectly aligns with this list. Trump is a fascist. The U.S. isn’t automatically fascist because he’s president, of course, and Trump may not care whether he succeeds at creating a totalitarian ethnostate dependent on him. But we need to stand up to his xenophobia and racism, his dark simplifying of reality and conspiracy-mongering, his narcissistic authoritarianism, and the many ways he’s trying to change the system to benefit him and his cronies. This is our democracy, if we can keep it.

I highly recommend reading the piece, and reflecting on Eco’s list: Ur-Fascism.

Source: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/2...

The soft anti-Semitism of Trump's White House

When Trump and others in his administration use the term “globalist,” or talk about unverified, implausible conspiracies on the part of George Soros, a Jew, the Jewish community recognizes this as classic coded anti-Semitism. Whether the White House knows it or not (or even cares), they’re using language that anti-Semites (white supremacists largely included) use to try to hide their anti-Semitism.

The president has a responsibility to watch what he says. That’s not “political correctness”; that’s making sure he’s not emboldening or further radicalizing extremists. By using this kind of language, then crying foul when they’re called out for it, the White House is, at the very least, giving cover to anti-Semitism. But that’s not the half of the potentially anti-Semitic behavior out of this administration following the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue, as Jeet Heer points out on Twitter:

Continued:

2. First we had the ineffable Kellyanne Conway saying that the synagogue massacre was an example of "anti-religiosity" spurred by late-night comedians: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/151935/kellyanne-conway-links-synagogue-massacre-anti-religiosity-late-night-comedians

3. Then Mike Pence invited a Christian "rabbi" to deliver a prayer -- one that didn't name the dead in the Tree of Life synagogue but rather Republican candidates: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/151946/mike-pence-got-rabbi-really-christian-pray-synagogue-dead

4. Jeff Sessions made a comment similar to Kellyanne Conway, that this was an assault on all religions. Again with the effect of removing the synagogue massacre from the category of an anti-Semitic crime to a more generic offense.

5. All of this adds up to a pattern, one seen earlier when Trump White House released statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day that didn't mention Jews.

6. So: let's be clear: the Saturday massacre was the most lethal anti-Semitic massacre ever on American soil. The alleged gunman from all evidence had deeply imbibed anti-Jewish hatred. His goal was a specific one of killing Jews, not generic anti-religiosity.

7. The particular idea that spurred on the killer (Jews as mastermind bringing in non-whites to destroy whites) is not generic anti-religiosity but an anti-Semitic trope with deep roots, a variant of Nazi myth of udeo–Bolshevism.

8. The Pittsburgh massacre can only be understood through the specificity of Jewish history and a very particular type of anti-Semitism. In their public statements, the Trump administration is intent on denying that specificity.

9. A good analogy is how foes of "Black Lives Matter" responded with "All Lives Matter." An adoption of a spurious universalism that is designed to shut down particular voices speaking of particular problems. https://twitter.com/oblivious_dude/status/1057104449292955648

10. So what's going on here? Why this pattern of de-emphasizing the Jewish particulars? The worst case answer is anti-Semitism, either deliberate or unconscious. But there are other possible answers.

11. The most benign possible answer is that this is the common way that Gentiles of all stripes handle anti-Semitic crimes: try to make them more "relatable" and "universal" -- i.e. early version of Diary of Anne Frank which erased some Jewish references.

12. A more specific answer is timing and politics. We're a week out from the mid-terms. Talking about anti-Semitism doesn't help the GOP and could (given stoking of Soros conspiracy theories) hurt them. There voters are evangelicals. Make it about anti-religiosity.

13. I think it's really important for reasons to go beyond partisan politics to resist the erasure the Trump administration is engaged in. That resistance has to also oppose the tendency towards a facile ecumenicalism from some non-Trump people.

14. The proper understanding of the Tree of Life massacre is that it a Jewish event: fuelled by the particular anti-Semitism that scapegoats Jews for social unrest. We should oppose all forms of bigotry but can't fight anti-Semitism unless we name it as such.

A response to Ari Fleischer's bad-faith "rule of law" argument concerning the refugee caravan, and its current and historical use by fascists

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