"Alt-right" Still Parading Ignorance, Stupidity, Malice, Etc.

[Rum]

Tommy Robinson has his Facebook profile closed for violating FB's community standards.

When ideas and opinions cross the line and amount to hate speech that may create an environment of intimidation and exclusion for certain groups in society – in some cases with potentially dangerous offline implications – we take action.

Tommy Robinson’s Facebook page has repeatedly broken these standards, posting material that uses dehumanizing language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims. He has also behaved in ways that violate our policies around organized hate.

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/02/re ... -robinson/

Good - the fucker deserves no less.

[L'Emmerdeur]

A pile of stank, aka a listing of the dedicated creeps who've accumulated on the livestreaming site Streamlabs after losing their easy access to funds donated by supporters. They've been booted off systems like Patreon and Paypal, and their alt-money startups haven't worked out. I expect the sums mentioned in the story are generally disappointing to them, but they're not in it for the money, surely. They do it for the hate.

'White Nationalists Have Been Quietly Collecting Donations Through A Livestreaming Site'

It’s no secret that white nationalists and other far-right figures are in dire financial straits, having been banned from payment processors like Stripe and Paypal. Last year Lana Lokteff and Henrik Palmgren, the hosts of the hate group Red Ice TV, complained that they were “under attack” after PayPal banned them from using their services. White nationalist Faith Goldy, who was also banned from PayPal, said it “effectively knocked me down at the knees.”

White nationalists and other racist figures, including Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet, Lauren Southern, Brittany Pettibone, Milo Yiannopoulos, James Allsup, and Carl Benjamin have also been booted from major fundraising websites such as Patreon and GoFundMe. For a time they could turn to white nationalist-run alternatives such as Hatreon, GoyFundMe and Freestartr — but one by one they collapsed.

Now prominent extremists are turning elsewhere in order to fund their propaganda. One resource that has become increasingly popular has been Streamlabs, a website that is geared toward assisting livestreamers on Twitch and YouTube. Roughly a dozen white nationalist figures or groups currently have accounts at Streamlabs, which they can use to solicit and collect donations to keep their shows running. Several have raked in hundreds of dollars through Streamlabs.

[Brian Peacock]

Guy gets control of neo-Nazi group and then provides evidence to judges on conspiracy to commit violence charges

How ‘race whisperer’ seized control of a US neo-Nazi group.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Yeah, that's a strange story.

This one's not quite as strange, but still ...

'Laura Loomer Has Lost Her CPAC Press Credentials'

Conservative activist and Trump supporter Laura Loomer says that she has been banned from CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Loomer posted video on her Instagram account of herself being asked to hand over her media credentials at the conference. ...

Loomer said she was completely baffled by the ban; the activist described herself as “one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters” and pointed out that she had just chatted with Donald Trump Jr and had dinner on Friday night with Tea Party activist Katrina Pierson. Loomer asked a security guard why she was being asked to leave, but he replied simply, “I’ve already explained that, Ma’am.”

...

CPAC later clarified that Loomer had not been banned from the conference; the conference said they had removed Loomer’s press credentials but said that she was welcome to buy a ticket and attend the event.

...

Right Wing Watch describes Loomer as an “unhinged conspiracy theorist” and an “anti-Muslim activist.” The group complained that Loomer has been trying to “smear” Minnestoa representative Ilhan Omar with allegations that Omar once married her own brother. Right Wing Watch also complained about Loomer’s behavior at CPAC, writing,

“Loomer was seen outside CPAC yesterday with a slew of other far-right political actors with whom she is working to smear Rep. Ilhan Omar with allegations that Omar married her brother because Omar is a Muslim woman who wears a headscarf. Today, Loomer went into the conference area displaying a credentialed media badge and has used her access to badger a reporter from CNN. She has also targeted reporters at HuffPost and The Daily Beast, at whom she flung accusatory questions.”

...

Loomer was asked to turn in her CPAC press credentials shortly before President Trump was due to speak at the conservative conference. After her ban, many Loomer supporters took to social media to express their shock and outrage about CPAC pulling Loomer’s credentials. Many people complained that CPAC had become too “liberal,” pointing out that a screen inside the conference was “blaring” CNN and that mainstream journalists had been allowed to cover the event while Loomer was not.

[JimC]

Definitely at the far end of the bell curve...

[L'Emmerdeur]

In the 'Republicans' thread, it's been noted that some Republican politicians have pushed the cretinous anti-vaccination line, and that support for the anti-vax position is growing among US Republicans. It's a few steps from mainstream Republicanism to the white supremacist/nationalist alt right, but apparently some in the alt right see anti-vax as a possible pathway to recruitment.

'Anti-Vaxxers Are Cozying Up to the Far Right Online'

Most anti-vaxxers are not white supremacists, far from it. But the overlap can send some well-meaning parents down the rabbit hole. Far-right groups frequently engage in “entryism,” a tactic that involves seeding a sympathetic mainstream group with extremist ideology, then slowly radicalizing its members. The tactic works well in groups like the anti-vax community.

At their surface level, anti-vax claims tap into populist grievances with bipartisan support; in the U.S., where health care can be prohibitively expensive, vaccines are sometimes seen as an extension of well-moneyed pharmaceutical companies. But the world of conservative-leaning conspiracy sites take the claims further. Red Ice, Infowars, and their ilk build on the mistrust of pharmaceutical companies to claim vaccines are part of a world-domination scheme by a shadowy global elite. As these claims typically go, the conspiracy theory gets anti-Semitic, with white supremacists interpreting “elite” to mean Jewish people.

As anti-vax spreads into the internet’s fringes, it mingles with other far-right conspiracy theories.

Natural News, a right-wing conspiracy site with 2.9 million likes on Facebook, is one of the primary sources of anti-vaxxer content, according to The Atlantic. A recent anti-abortion article on Natural News accuses “the political Left in America” of advocating for child murder, and warns that government “vaccine enforcer” teams are about to start vaccinating children at gunpoint. In a 10,000-member Facebook group for those who believe certain people (usually blonde or red-headed) are a superior race unrelated to the rest of humanity, members offered a series of arguments against vaccination, including the claim that vaccinations constitute race-mixing.

But entryist techniques aren’t entirely to blame for the anti-vax movement’s right-wing streak. A pair of recent studies suggests anti-vaxxers tend to hold worldviews compatible with right-wing populism.

A March study by Australian researchers used a theory that tests for five character traits, including a person’s respect for “purity,” and their deference to authority. Anti-vax parents tested high for belief in purity (defined by researchers as “an abhorrence for impurity of body”) and low on respect for authority.

Conservatives typically score high on respect for purity and authority, while liberals score lower. But populist movements, including Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, borrow some of the left’s anti-authority language, casting themselves as anti-elite. On Facebook, anti-vaxxers might rage against the authority of pharmaceutical companies or school vaccination policies, but Trump is a less common target. (Trump has promoted anti-vax conspiracies, too, falsely claiming in 2014 that vaccines cause autism.)

[JimC]

I think that another important connection is being anti-science, which lends itself to all sorts of conspiracy-based movements, including anti-vaxers, climate change denialists and religious nutters in general. They paint "science" as being part of a globalist elite, tainted with leftist thought and always a tool of government control...

Just let me pop on my lab coat, and jump into my black helicopter...

[Hermit]

In the 'Republicans' thread, it's been noted that some Republican politicians have pushed the cretinous anti-vaccination line, and that support for the anti-vax position is growing among US Republicans. It's a few steps from mainstream Republicanism to the white supremacist/nationalist alt right, but apparently some in the alt right see anti-vax as a possible pathway to recruitment.

'Anti-Vaxxers Are Cozying Up to the Far Right Online'

Most anti-vaxxers...

Anti-vaxxers? Sheesh, how negative can you get? They stand for something, I'll have you know. So, let's stick a label with a positive spin on them, shall we? What about 'pro-plague'?

[L'Emmerdeur]

[Animavore]

No Place for ‘Soy Boys’ at ‘Tribute to Men’ Outside CPAC

Some attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference took a break Friday to sing the praises of men. All of them.

While they represented disparate factions of the right, the participants in the “Tribute to Men” agreed on one thing: America is facing a plague of “soy boys,” conservative slang for a feminized, liberal man arising from the idea that eating soy products affects a man’s hormones, making him more like her.

“I don’t want to have sex with a soy boy,” declared Kaya Jones, a former member of the Pussycat Dolls who has refashioned herself as a pro-Trump pundit.

Organizer DeAnna Lorraine, upset that the Boy Scouts now accept girls, dubbed them “the soy scouts.”

Manliness, masculinity, and male essence were on the minds of the several dozen people at the Tribute to Men, held in downtown Washington’s Hotel Harrington. In a CPAC week marked by the relative tameness of the official speakers, the Tribute to Men, a separate event timed to coincide with it, stood out for its fringiness.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/no-place- ... R5lB-bjfWg

Sad, pathetic, desperate.

[Brian Peacock]

The rise and rise of popularist rhetoric

Major study analysing speeches of leaders from 40 countries over two decades shows surge in populism

A two-decade surge in populist rhetoric that has upended the global political landscape can be revealed for the first time after the Guardian commissioned a study of speeches by almost 140 world leaders.

The research, which is based on analysis of public addresses by prime ministers, presidents and chancellors in 40 countries, suggests the number of populist leaders has more than doubled since the early 2000s.

It also reveals how politicians across the globe have gradually adopted more populist arguments, framing politics as a Manichean battle between the will of ordinary people and corrupt, self-serving elites.

The project was overseen by Team Populism, a global network of political scientists who have pioneered the use of “textual analysis” in populism studies. Their research is compiled in the Global Populism Database, the most comprehensive and reliable tracker of populist discourse in the world....

[JimC]

I intend to form the Unpopular Party! Our main slogan will be:

"You can trust us to do the right thing, even though most of you stupid cunts will disagree"

[Svartalf]

Were I ozzie, you'd have my vote.

[JimC]

You shall be our Minister for Foreign Affairs!

[Svartalf]

Can a foreigner be chosen for such a job? I thought more about a consular or ambassadorial appointment.