One nice thing about being a target of hate


I sometimes find myself in very good company.

Jessica Valenti, Lindy West, and…me? Gosh, thanks. I’m flattered.

Also, while it’s not really personal, the Daily Stormer wants to murder people like me. They’ve provided a helpful list for Trump’s right-wing death squads to kill, including:

  1. Lying journalists (where “lying” is defined as opposing Right-Wing Death Squads, I guess)
  2. Political opponents
  3. Human rights activists
  4. Legal immigrants
  5. Liberal university professors (that’s me!)
  6. Filthy sluts (basically, any woman who has sex)
  7. Artists and musicians

Strangely, this list isn’t tagged as “satire”. Instead, it’s got this odd note at the end.

Editor’s note: This is in no way a call for violence or murder. This is a policy position paper in the form of a listicle. The Daily Stormer is opposed to violence, and simply supports the practical implementation of innovative policies which will lead to a great America.

Oh. They’re opposed to violence, it’s just that as a matter of policy they want me executed by roving squads of extra-judicial politically-motivated assassins. Got it. That makes it all better.

But hey, it’s gratifying be classed as an enemy of the oppressive state along with artists and human rights activists and women and all those other decent people. I’ll take it. I wouldn’t want to be a member of a class that had the approval of the Daily Stormer, after all.

Comments

  1. says

    Anglin’s rant sounds a bit like Theodore Shoebat’s endlessly growing list of people who should be killed in his version of a Christian theocracy. I keep expecting Shoebat to call for his own execution for some transgression.

  2. blf says

    Let’s see now:

    ○ Not a journalist, lying or otherwise, although I certainly oppose all death squads.
    ● Since I oppose nazis, a Political opponent — Groovy!
    ● Donations, etc., to AI would certainly make me a “Human rights activist” — Groovy!
    ● Definitely a “Legal immigrant”, most recently to France. Groovy!
    ○ Liberal, and went to university, but not a professor.
    ○ The lair can be a bit filthy at times, with penguin feathers, cheese crumbs, and and occasional dismembered pea or flamethrower-grilled horse remains. Sadly, no secret pizza-and-(kinky-)sex tunnels either.
    ● Not really an artist, or a musician, but some of the musicians, songs, and artwork I like makes me worthy of their death squads. Perhaps with extra haste. If they can find the correct France.

    Groovy, great, like wow! Another set of policy / ideological motived nutters to giggle at. Hopefully only giggle, that is…

  3. cartomancer says

    Damn, I’m not on the list. Well, not definitively anyway. Just fall short on several counts. I never quite made it to being a university lecturer, but do teach 16-18 year olds and have liberal values, I’m not sure I’d count as an artist, but I have got a penchant for painting and writing poetry, and I do oppose their political ideals (albeit not in their country). I have had sex before – disappointing though it was – but there weren’t any women involved so it probably doesn’t count. Can you qualify for assassination if you almost meet several of their criteria? Is there an appeals process?

  4. cartomancer says

    Also, my classicist senses are tingling at this mention of Corbulo. Presumably they mean Gnaeus Corbulo – the Roman general who served under Caligula and committed suicide at Nero’s invitation. I wasn’t aware he had been adopted as a figurehead by internet hate groups. I’m trying to rack my brains as to why…

  5. Holms says

    “The smell was becoming intolerable.” What was it again? Formaldehyde and ‘science’ smells by the North Star stand…?

  6. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    PZ 3.14159
    (pi for you)
    as support for the battle headed your way.
    Seriously, no tongue-in-cheek, I really am trying to express empathy and support for you being put on a hate list.
    That even with all the fine-print disclaimers at the bottom of the page, can easily be used as a task-list for less stable people that read that rag.
    Seriously my atheist prayers [oxymoron, I know] are for you and your list-companions.
    I’m writing like this cuz there is little more I can do, given my distance from Minnesota.

  7. Johnny Vector says

    Oh, that editor’s note. I think they misspelled “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

    So of course we should take them seriously when they say that.

  8. ikanreed says

    I don’t know how you can be so cavalier about this. These people are dangerous and activated. I feel like we’re all looking down the barrel of a shotgun.

  9. erichoug says

    “Damn, I’m not on the list.”
    Don’t worry, these sort of assholes have a much shorter list.

    1) Anyone not rabidly in favor of anything we say.
    2) Anyone not immediately supportive of anything we do.
    2) Anyone we dislike, or who annoys us.

    So, basically if you are not wearing a red hat right now and talking about making America white great you are probably in the cross-hairs.

  10. says

    There is no group of people more deserving of swift and rapid extermination.

    Adding “this is not a call for violence,” to calls for “swift and rapid extermination” does not work. Nope. Doesn’t work.

  11. ikanreed says

    #16 That’s not a life anyone should have to live.

    Though I guess I recently had to deal with a situation where someone was using rationalwiki as a platform to accuse you of being a pedophile apologist with the kind of “evidence” that people on the internet seem to be accustomed to, so I can believe that you’ve been a target.

  12. davidc1 says

    I don’t think there would be anyone left to hate ,then what will they do for fun.
    I followed the trail back to Der ,,i mean Daily Sturmer ,and who did i find facing one another ?
    saint ron and fartface ,why hasn’t the site been taken down ?.
    PS i make plastic models ,and some kits don’t have swastikas decals ,so i turned to Google for an answer .
    One of the model making sites i found was a white Supremacy modeling site ,there were swastikas and confederate flags all over the home page ,plus a post by a red neck asking the same question.
    Strange world we have made.

  13. says

    Off topic, but reading Toxic’s Twitter feed led to one Richard Dawkins’ feed, so I figured I’d see what he’s up to these days as the circles I wander in tend to ignore him now.

    It seems that his anti-Brexit and anti-Donald stances may be turning off many of those who applauded him through his anti-feminist days. Who could have seen that coming, Prof. Dawkins?

  14. Rich Woods says

    @cartomancer #4:

    I’m trying to rack my brains as to why…

    I think they really like people who obey orders.

    Of course they could have thought the same of Petronius the Arbiter, but he probably seemed a bit too effete and wimpy for those good, upstanding sons of the Aryan race.

  15. says

    Really regretting reading that link now…I’m not joking or trivializing mental illness when I say that I need to see my doctor about getting my anxiety meds adjusted solely due to this election and the post-election fall-out. I can only hope that the “alt-right’s” increasingly horrifying behavior will alarm more moderate voters enough to help swing the political spectrum back to the left.

  16. ikanreed says

    #18

    So an important rule of authoritarians is this: there’s always someone different from you. They eliminate their opponents, only to find that they disagree with each other on something, and one of the two becomes the new outgroup.

    After Hitler grabbed power, they immediately went after Social Democrats, but it wasn’t long after that that non-Nazi members of the conservative party were starting to become enemies.

    Lenin went after the Capitalists and the Czarists, but it only took 20 years for being the wrong kind of communist(i.e. trotskyist) made you a target.

    The endgame of that kind of fascism is a North Korea, a neo-feudal society with unquestioned divine right of rule.

  17. says

    I think we should appreciate that Dawkins has found himself in a tar pit that at least he’d rather extricate himself from. He’s not wallowing in it like some I could name.

  18. madscientist says

    Wow .. is that another incarnation of Mabus or is there simply an endless supply of stupid in the world?

  19. says

    Also, my classicist senses are tingling at this mention of Corbulo. Presumably they mean Gnaeus Corbulo – the Roman general who served under Caligula and committed suicide at Nero’s invitation. I wasn’t aware he had been adopted as a figurehead by internet hate groups. I’m trying to rack my brains as to why…

    I suppose it could be a reference to this, which is part of Halo, which is evidently a game.* In the game, it is in fact a reference to the Roman general:

    The academy was named after the Roman general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo with a statue of his likeness depicted in the Academy’s courtyard.[2]…

    Additionally students honor Corbulo by exclaiming “Axios,”[2] meaning “I am worthy” in Greek. These were Corbulo’s last words as he intentionally fell upon his own sword by order of Emperor Nero, who had ordered Corbulo to kill himself to prove his loyalty to the Roman Empire.

    So the reference, be it to the original or the game academy, could be understood to celebrate suicidal warrior loyalty to the empire. (Seems like people with this mindset in Japan were responsible for pushing the country into war with the US, which resulted in the attack on Pearl Harbor 75 years ago today. It didn’t end well for them. But I digress…) Or it could just be a general reference to the imperial military academy in the game, where elite soldiers are trained or something. The whole set of cultural references is pretty disturbing.

    * To anyone shocked or offended by my lack of knowledge in this area, I don’t know what to tell you. The last video game I enjoyed was Pong.

  20. robro says

    Gillel @ #14

    “We want those people to be violently killed. This is not a call for violence.” Why does that fool anybody?

    I don’t think it does. They don’t fool themselves. They don’t fool the cadre of fools who might take it as a call to action. It certainly doesn’t fool us. It smacks of misguided legalism to deny responsibility for someone else’s act in court. It might fool a jury because a jury has to make a decision based on legal technicalities they don’t understand after being intentionally bewildered by two or more professional obfuscators.

  21. says

    I think we should appreciate that Dawkins has found himself in a tar pit that at least he’d rather extricate himself from. He’s not wallowing in it like some I could name.

    Yes, that is relatively better. On the other hand, he’s tweeted:

    “Democrats who failed to vote? Tempted to say it serves you right. Alas you aren’t the only ones who’ll pay the price. For decades to come.”

    “Was Brexit your pathetic protest vote? Tempted to say you deserve what’s coming to you. Alas you aren’t the only one who’ll pay the price.”

    At least so far, he doesn’t seem to want to take responsibility for his own role in feeding and cultivating the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic movements that contributed to these outcomes.

  22. unclefrogy says

    it has only been a few weeks since the election and already we have seen an increase in actions inspired by hate motivated fake news and propaganda. It seems that the election has sent a message that such actions are now OK.
    It does not take much to bring out well armed hate filled people in ordinary times so what will be the result when there are actual attacks of a violent nature against people on such enemies lists. It matters not a bit if the pres.elect actually believes the crap he was saying and implying or just using it to get elected by energizing the electorate. The poor frightened fool armed to the teeth who has been told that his fears are justified and these are his real enemies and the enemies of all he holds dear is impossible to control .
    I am afraid that someone may take action I just have to wonder when and where. The next time it might not be shooting up a pizza joint.
    uncle frogy

  23. says

    Lying journalists (where “lying” is defined as opposing Right-Wing Death Squads, I guess) – if blogging in rural nDakota counts, check.

    Political opponents – check.

    Human rights activists – check.

    Legal immigrants – I’m half Lakota. I expect that makes me bad somehow, so sorta check.

    Liberal university professors (that’s me!) – finally, a no!

    Filthy sluts (basically, any woman who has sex) – check.

    Artists and musicians – check.

    Yep, in front of the shotgun.

  24. mostlymarvelous says

    robro

    It smacks of misguided legalism to deny responsibility for someone else’s act in court.

    Nah. It’s a rote form of words designed to deflect any FBI investigation by getting past the requirements for threats of violence to be both imminent _and_ directed at named or otherwise specific person/s to be actionable according to their criteria.

    By threatening so many people – but vaguely, and not proposing any specific time or place or method of action – in a world where extermination is just a word, they can be pretty sure they won’t even go on an FBI list.

  25. davidc1 says

    A week before the Britex vote a labour mp was shot and stabbed to death,by all accounts Jo Cox was a decent hard working mp.Her murderer shouted England first before killing her ,he was a racist with mental heath problems ,books about hitler were found in his flat and he had visited online far right sites

  26. komarov says

    I wouldn’t want to be a member of a class that had the approval of the Daily Stormer, after all.

    Would that be the class of people they haven’t gotten around to denouncing yet? I understand the world population is quite large and it takes time to write all those death lists policy position papers.

  27. cartomancer says

    SC, #25

    I can see how that might be an interpretation of Corbulo favourable to military fetishists of such a stripe. I also toyed with the notion that it was in honour of his famous strictness in enforcing military discipline (he was alleged to have had legionaries who put their swords aside when building roads and ditches executed).

    The tradtional Roman interpretation of him is rather different though – he has gone down in history as one of the innocent victims of Nero’s excesses who bore his unfair treatment with laudable equanimity. Most of what we know of Corbulo comes from Tacitus, who was very cynical and pessimistic about the early Principate. Tacitus paints him as a successful general who was denied military honours by successive emperors (the Augustan military reforms cut back heavily on military honours for anyone but the Emperor, in order to prevent successful generals becoming a focus for loyalty and a threat to the regime). When he finally got his due under Nero, Nero praised him to the skies and then had him killed to prevent him becoming a threat (though the precise details of Nero’s suspicions are not known). The story became one of many tales that frustrated Roman aristocrats versed in the philosophy of Stoicism told themselves to help them cope with life under a dynastic autocracy – we may be unfairly victimised, denied advancement and forced to live in insufferable circumstances, but in such conditions the true measure of our worth is in how we cope. Corbulo’s loyalty was a sign of his commitment to traditional, honourable, old-fashioned soldiering in the face of a system that screwed over people like him, not a sign of zealous, unthinking obedience to the regime.

  28. lee101 says

    I can think of lots of ways to die that, per my view at least, would be worse than at the hands of a right-wing wacko with a gun. In a nursing home with dementia, for instance; at the end of decades of intractable pain; or even after years of compromised morality, having to live with myself after failing to take a stand for what I believe in dangerous times like these. I don’t intend to “go gentle into that goodnight”. I am quite sure that healing won’t come without some local bloodshed. There are many otherwise decent people (family members among them) who have fallen for the lies of the right wing, who still stand some chance of having second thoughts when they see the where those lies lead. I’ve lived a long time in this world. I’ve long believed that I would be at least theoretically willing to die for something worth dying for; that just living on and on year after year isn’t the greatest good.

    Or maybe I just want to say “bring it on, a**hole” to someone with a gun. We’ll see…

    So for what it’s worth, sign me up. How do I get on the list?

  29. taraskan says

    Let them come. These fascists may claim to be opposed to violence but I’ve never made any such claim. Welcome to the alt-left, motherfuckers. Send that on all your faceytweets.

  30. Silver Fox says

    The Daily Stormer is opposed to violence, and simply supports the practical implementation of innovative policies which will lead to a great America.

    Now, ladies and gentlemen, with that disclaimer aside, we invite you all to a nice buffet at Wannsee where we shall introduce some creative plans for making America truly great and pure again.

  31. raven says

    There is nothing new about any of this.
    Fundie xians and right wingnuts have always had lists of people to hate and kill.
    And they are all about the same.

    The usual. Routine.
    Nonwhites, women, nonxians, Democrats, the educated (scientists, MD’s.) , etc.. It’s most of the population.

    They occasionally do go out and kill some of their targets.
    This can BTW, be considered stochastic terrorism. This creepy Nazi doesn’t really want to kill anyone. He wants one of his clueless followers to do it and get the prison time.
    The best martyrs are always…someone else.

  32. raven says

    These creepy wannabe terrorists and murderers have always existed in the USA.
    The Trump victory has just brought them out of the darkness and enabled them.

    Same thing happened during the Bush administration.
    The xian terrorists went on a binge and firebombed dozens of family planning clinics and mosques. These terrorist attacks were happening seemed like once a month. They were so common they barely made the local news and seldom made the national news.

    We can expect more xian and right wingnut terrorism. It’s already been ramping up and Trump isn’t even in office yet.

  33. says

    cartomancer:

    The story became one of many tales that frustrated Roman aristocrats versed in the philosophy of Stoicism told themselves to help them cope with life under a dynastic autocracy – we may be unfairly victimised, denied advancement and forced to live in insufferable circumstances, but in such conditions the true measure of our worth is in how we cope. Corbulo’s loyalty was a sign of his commitment to traditional, honourable, old-fashioned soldiering in the face of a system that screwed over people like him, not a sign of zealous, unthinking obedience to the regime.

    That’s extremely interesting. Last year – seems an eternity ago now – I wrote this about the complex meaning of suicide in increasingly tyrannical conditions. (Feel free to criticize my knowledge – it’s a period in which I have great interest but no expertise.) Here’s my review of the Romm book referred to there. At the time, I was thinking about the moral capitulation of congress to corporate interests and capitalist class power. I didn’t foresee the rise of an actual individual as sociopathic as, and linked to, powerful capitalists – a human “experiment…to show what absolute vice could accomplish when paired with absolute power.” Of course, the US presidency isn’t “absolute power,” but the capitulation of the Republican Party and Republican senators and representatives has been breathtaking and terrifying. And nothing has been threatened so far other than their political careers and future earnings (and possibly the exposure of personal or political secrets…). Seeing Ryan, Chaffetz, and others openly debase and hollow out the legislature as they’re doing is an unbelievable and revolting spectacle.

  34. cartomancer says

    SC, #48

    I would hesitate to compare Trump too closely to a Nero or a Caligula, or modern America to first-century Rome. On the one side of the equation it is now impossible to ascertain precisely how bad Nero or Caligula were, given the personalised, sensationalistic nature of most Roman history-writing (especially Suetonius) and the related tendency for Roman political discourse to blacken the names of assassinated emperors (not to mention later Christian antipathy as a filter in Nero’s case). On the other side, as you say, a US president has nowhere near the personal power that the early Roman emperors had. The structures of society, culture and politics are also very different. In particular, as far as this thread goes, Nero and Caligula had actual Praetorian Guard units on hand to murder their rivals with impunity. Trump does not, however much jumped-up internet Nazis might imagine themselves in that role. It should not remain without comment that Caligula eventually fell foul of a conspiracy led by those Praetorians and was murdered at their hands.

    But the way that elites under the Principate responded to and rationalised their changed fortunes can certainly cast some light on how the elites in Trump’s America might respond to theirs. I am keen to stress “elites”, of course, since they are the class whose political fortunes changed so radically – the vast majority of Romans had very little political influence at all, even under the Republic (their votes in the Centuriate Assembly were worth a fraction of those of the wealthy, by design), and if anything tended to adore the Emperors as providers of largesse where they had been suspicious of the senatorial elite under the Republic. The senatorial classes were a different matter – they had been used to running the show, and their ambitions and class expectations for centuries had revolved around continuing to do so.

    Some, like Corbulo and Tacitus’s father-in-law Agricola, continued to distinguish themselves in military careers and just put up with the lack of public recognition compared to their illustrious Republican forebears. For them the suspicions of emperors were an occupational hazard, but given the many occupational hazards of military campaigning in the ancient world I doubt it was too much of an additional burden. Corbulo fell foul of it, but Agricola didn’t. Others turned to sycophancy and the volatile life of the courtier. Some, like Caecina Paetus, took a principled stance and resisted unto death. Some, like Tacitus himself or Suetonius, turned to writing histories of safely long-dead figures (laudatory biographies of enemies of the current Emperor could get you killed). And then we have Pliny the Younger, who probably did the best out of the Principate of all his contemporaries. He concentrated on local politics and legal work in his home in North Italy at first, and rarely visited Rome (which helped to keep him safe). He also had the good fortune to come to prominence under the relatively sane Trajan, having weathered Domitian’s darker days through keeping his head down and presenting a harmless image of studied insincerity. Eventually he became a provincial governor in Asia Minor, where he was responsible for solving numerous issues including corruption and the intransigence of the Christian population. All the while his letters praise many of the families who resisted bad Emperors – he was close friends with the descendents of Paetus and his famous wife Arria – and serve to win him literary fame.

    It will be interesting to see which of these strategies the political classes in the US decide on in years to come.

  35. rietpluim says

    Though comparisons with ancient Rome are disputable, the history of Caligula lead me to think that, because of the extreme right’s fondness of violence, it also is very well possible that Trump himself may become victim of an assassination. By a disappointed supporter or something.

  36. mostlymarvelous says

    ” I would hesitate to compare Trump too closely to a Nero or a Caligula ”

    I’m coming around to the view that Trump is what you get when you cross a Liberace with a Duterte – and a Berlusconi eagerly assumes the role of godfather.