Hans Kristian Graebener no longer has to hide in the shadows

He must be so relieved to have been doxxed — now he can be his true self in public. He can go speak at conferences for his people, appear on television in documentaries, proudly march in parades.

Graebener is the creator of Stonetoss, the webcomic that tries to find the “cute” in “nazi”, while failing to notice that those two words share no letters in common. He does all these short “comics” with the same frequent punchlines: trans people end up killing themselves, gay people end up bathing in feces, Jews are behind everything and are scheming to sacrifice Xian babies. When they aren’t obvious, they’re so loaded with impenetrable bizarre references to neo-Nazi shit they’re incomprehensible, but racists and haters and Nazis love them anyway. You can even buy an adorable little plush toy of the main character. He’s also been peddling NFTs, still, endlessly trying to grift his way to riches and glory, and now he can do it in his own charmingly German name.

Graebener is an IT guy working (so far!) in Spring, Texas. He’s single, girls! He’s been known to desperately advertise his availability, but doesn’t seem to have landed a long-term relationship. I can’t imagine what a pleasant person he must be in person.

No, really, I can’t imagine it.

I can imagine that he’s the kind of guy who has a porn addiction. Too bad he lives in Texas, now that PornHub has blocked the whole state.

He’ll be OK, though. I’m sure he’ll have the support of Elon Musk, a guy who loves to promote racism.

Garrison also talks to Dr. Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who points out that because this racism is seemingly backed by scientific fact, people often lack the language to call out its problematic nature.

“There’s a kind of fusion between old-school gutter racism that everyone can recognize and this new-school Silicon Valley, data-driven analysis. And I think that this is very confusing to people,” said Gusev. “They don’t know what to do with it. They say, ‘Hey, there’s this thing that I recognize as ugly, and then there’s somebody posting a hundred charts that seem to support it.’”

Musk can do the hundred charts, while Graebener brings the ugly.

The face has gotten smoother, but it’s the same rot underneath

The Dixiecrat governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, said this in 1962, back when I was an innocent 5 year old who thought all people were good and kind.

There is no case in history where the Caucasian race has survived social integration. We will not drink from the cup of genocide.

I first learned about this yesterday, in this video about segregation in sports. It would be so nice to roll back in time to my blissful ignorance as a child.

I had no idea we white people were so frail. Of course, he was laboring under the fallacious belief that miscegenation was evil and that the one-drop rule was valid. There’s a curious racist game they play, where the children of a white person and a black person are 100% black, rather than 50% white, and under those counterfactual rules, white people will rapidly go extinct if mixed race marriages are permitted. It’s a weird mindset that calls having children “genocide”.

But this was in 1962! Surely we have grown past this nonsense here in the 21st century. No, we haven’t. This belief is the major guiding principle of the Republican party. Nowadays they tend to avoid the blatant stuff; instead, they whisper about the “great replacement theory”, which is built on the same fundamental ignorance about biology and meiosis and inherited traits, and is therefore fallacious and doesn’t deserve the dignity of being called a “theory”.

Or they draft some brain-washed Christian hick to use her fundie baby voice to whitewash their hatred of immigrants with Jesus and patriotism. It’s all the same thing. America hasn’t changed its core since the civil rights movement made a valiant effort to call these people to account — this is still a deeply racist country.

The infection has been festering for decades, and is ready to erupt again under the banner of Donald Trump. In the name of decency and basic human dignity, we have to sweep every vestige of the Republican party out of power.

Somehow, though, I doubt that Sydney Sweeney has any socialist sympathies

I have no idea who Sydney Sweeney is. She is apparently a hot new Hollywood star who has been working hard, appearing in a bunch of movies I haven’t seen, and good for her — but I think all celebrities get more attention and money than they actually deserve.

In an informative twist, though, I learned from this article that there are tiers of celebrity, and that Sweeney is near the bottom because she isn’t a nepo baby. Despite having a $3 million house and being pursued by paparazzi, she’s on a treadmill where she must work non-stop (at being fabulous and fashionable, which is of course much nicer than having to grind non-stop at factory) or her whole world will come crashing down.

The whole of American society, at this moment, is a layer of various anxieties and resentments without any sincerely shared values pinning it all in place. Some of those resentments are more deserved than others; the millennial generation stands to inherit a whopping $68 trillion from the Boomer generation. What is being coined The Great Wealth Transfer is already beginning. Sweeney’s peers, who are mostly the children of very rich people, are going to become even richer by doing nothing. Millions of millennials are going to become very rich by doing nothing. Among the many benefits of this will be that they can post only when they want to. They will be able to take jobs they care about instead of ones they need.

But Sweeney isn’t one of those people. She comes from a family that could not afford to financially support her at all when she finished school. She will not have the luxury of relaxing as her inheritance pours in. Everyone deserves to be able to take six months off to have a baby. Everyone. The fact that Sydney Sweeney cannot is a reminder that the reason American workers do not have paid family leave is also the reason each generation has more nepotism babies than the last. We do not tax rich people enough and they do not pay their fair share; the fact of that, over decades, has intruded upon and warped every aspect of American life. Sweeney has to work, like everyone else, and has to do so for whatever she can get, and she has to do it knowing that what reaches her was the absolute minimum figure that people who are paid much more than her had determined that she would be willing to take. She’s not alone.

I wouldn’t feel sorry for Sweeney, but she does demonstrate that wealth inequality permeates every level of American society, and that always the ones on top are the people loaded with inherited wealth that they never had to work for. Tax the rich! Tax them a lot!

Moms For Liberty gets high profile interview, falls flat on face

I’d rather see less of bigots on TV, but if they have to brought on stage, it should be to expose them. Like this:

Two of the founders of the group, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, sat for an interview with reporter Scott Pelley and had a difficult time answering pretty simple and direct questions.

“We love teachers. My children have had the best teachers. I’ve had the greatest teachers that have influenced and impact me. But there are rogue teachers in America’s classrooms right now,” Descovich told Pelley. Justice added, “Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology.”

Pelley asked, “What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?” Whether something short-circuited inside Descovich’s brain is hard to say, but after taking a breath and swallowing, she slowly answered, “Let’s just say … children in America cannot read.” Huh?

Pelley repeatedly pointed out that the two were being “evasive,” and when Justice attempted to pivot to a handful of books with sexual content that may be inappropriate for certain age groups, his report was quick to point out that “Most people wouldn’t want them in a lower school. But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of truth and concludes: These examples are not rare mistakes, but a plot to sexualize children.”

The pair of buffoons also claimed that Moms for Liberty was not anti-gay, which is transparently absurd. Pelley showed them tweets where they are accusing teachers of being “groomers,” which prompted them to quickly shuffle their papers and change topics.

You know, we might be in trouble someday if these right-wingers ever acquired any intelligent spokespersons. I guess intelligent people don’t fall for their lies, though.

By the way, they mad.

Those DEI wokesters are canceling again

Look at this lovely building on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus.

That’s Nicholson Hall, named after a university professor and administrator in the 1930s & 40s. There is a campaign in the works to rename the building, and also several other buildings on campus, for some unfathomable reason.

1. Nicholson repeatedly controlled and often suppressed the open exchange of ideas on campus that as Dean of Student Affairs he was obligated to protect.
2. Nicholson created a secret political surveillance system at the university and covertly shared information about students and faculty.
3. Nicholson brought disrepute to the University by using his stature as a highly visible University administrator to advance partisan political ends outside the University.
4. Nicholson, while serving as a dean, sought to influence the selection of Regents for his own political ends, a gross conflict of interest and duty as a neutral University administrator.
We call for the removal of Edward Nicholson’s name because we support the University of Minnesota’s commitment to honor those whose behavior is consistent with the University’s mission and guiding principles, maintain the integrity of the University and enhance its reputation, upholding thereby the high principles of our state and university. We likewise support the University of Minnesota’s commitment to revoke any naming inconsistent with these values. As scholars of Jewish Studies as well as other fields, we share a deep commitment to recognizing and analyzing the immense cost to religious and racial minorities at the hands of those in power in societies that have oppressed them. Some of our scholarship and teaching focuses on leftist and progressive movements, ideas and activism that are a powerful strand in modern Jewish history and were openly and unrelentingly attacked by Edward Nicholson. We are all too aware of what happened to Jews, minorities, and political dissenters throughout the world when state and institutional power was used against them and their allies. We are also attuned to the social and political conditions under which civic life flourishes and has been most successful in assuring the rights of religious and racial minorities.
The University of Minnesota has committed itself to educate for and foster a democratic and pluralist civil society committed to the very openness that Edward Nicholson worked assiduously to undermine.

Oh. Anti-semitic authoritarian who tried to manipulate the university to support conservative/racist political goals? I guess that is a pretty good reason to stop honoring him with a building name. Especially considering that building now houses the Center for Jewish Studies.

Other buildings those woke rascals are going after include Coffman Hall. I know that one well, that’s the huge student union building, centrally located and a fairly common meeting place when I visit the Twin Cities campus. What did he do?

President Coffman requested the University Senate to track data about students in the mid-1930s. He wanted specifically to track “Negro and Jewish out-of-state students.” These students required on-campus housing, and Coffman opposed integrating taxpayer-funded dorms. New York Jews were a subset of who was tracked because Coffman believed they were the source of radicalism on campus.

Is that all? Wait, there’s more.

• Coffman in 1931 wrote: “The races have never lived together, nor have they ever sought to live together.”

• His administration repeatedly excluded black students from student housing. The report says Coffman was “extremely cautious about allowing even a single instance to establish ‘precedent’ for integrated housing.”

• He considered creating an “International House” for non-white U students to live, but ultimately decided it was too expensive.

• Under Coffman, the U’s nursing school would not allow black students to care for white patients.

• After Jack Trice, a black Iowa State football player, died from injuries sustained during a 1923 game against Minnesota, Coffman batted down accusations that U players had assaulted Trice. Coffman again defended the football team in 1934 after writers said Minnesota players had targeted Ozzie Simmons, another black athlete.

• Coffman authorized surveillance efforts on student activists, including those who protested racial discrimination or were believed to be Jewish or associated with communism.

I am now feeling a bit queasy about all the times I walked through that building, not having the slightest idea who Coffman was.

They were all “men of their time” I guess, all powerful conservative white men who sought to exclude students who were not similarly white. Screw ’em. Strip those names from the buildings and name them after people who actually supported diverse Americans and the university’s egalitarian educational goals.

And if twenty years from now, we realize that those new people were horribly flawed and hurt people, strip off their names again. There’s nothing sacred or permanent about naming stuff.

Chris Rufo figured out how to erase part of his history

If nothing else, this is an accomplishment. I know Chris Rufo as a shill for the Discovery Institute — that anti-science, anti-evolution think-tank running on the fumes of rich conservatives’ money, pumping out nonsense about Intelligent Design creationism and fronted by pompous, but ignorant, pseudo-philosophers. If I had that in my background, I’d be deeply ashamed and would want to bury it as deeply as possible. I’d change my name, move to a new city, deny knowing all my old friends, etc. I’d dread someone uncovering my embarrassing past, forcing me to change my name and move again. I’d desperately desire a magic eraser to blot out that past shame.

Chris Rufo has done it! Here’s a prominent article about Chris Rufo that doesn’t even mention the Discovery Institute or creationism! How did he do it?

It is incredibly easy. All you have to do is associate with something even more repulsively stupid than creationism, and Rufo has managed to slather himself with filth so grossly disgusting that there’s no point in even mentioning his relatively minor dabblings in ignorance. He’s buddying up with a site called Aporia.

The rightwing activist Christopher Rufo has links to a self-styled “sociobiology magazine” that is focused on the supposed relationships between race, intelligence and criminality, and which experts have characterized as an outlet for scientific racism.

Now he’s all tangled up with Bo Winegard.

Winegard, a psychologist, was by his own account fired by Ohio’s Marietta College in March 2020 after a seminar he gave to a research group at the University of Alabama attracted protests and coverage in student media.

In that speech an audience member reportedly said that Winegard told his listeners that “people in colder climates, because of differences in brain size, have more propensity for cooperation”.

Winegard has continued to write in this vein on Aporia up to the present. In a 3 January article on the site titled “Yes, we should talk about race differences”, he wrote: “Thus, we must be honest about race. And that means we begin by noting that in the United States (and elsewhere in the world), different races have different average levels of intelligence as measured by IQ tests (and other measures of cognitive ability).”

As proof of this claim, Winegard cites researchers including the late Richard Lynn – a white nationalist, according to the SPLC – and the late Arthur Jensen, whom the SPLC calls “arguably the father of modern academic racism”.

Also, Noah Carl!

Another Aporia editor, Noah Carl, has also been the subject of previous academic controversy.

Carl is a sociologist who in 2018 was stripped of a postdoctoral fellowship at Cambridge University after the college that appointed him discovered that alongside his more legitimate work in sociology, he had simultaneously been publishing scientific-racist articles in outlets notorious for peddling scientific racism.

One of the outlets Carl published in, Mankind Quarterly, was founded “to make scientific racism respectable again”, according to the writer Angela Saini. It was for decades funded by the white nationalist Pioneer Fund, and the journal has been described as a “cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment”.

Now mix in Emil Kirkegaard.

Another venue, OpenPsych, is a platform established by Emil OW Kirkegaard, a self-described eugenicist who explicitly advocates “race science”, and who serves as a senior fellow at the Ulster Institute for Social Research (UISR), an organization once headed by Richard Lynn – the same researcher whose data led to Winegard’s retraction.

These are the writers and pseudo-scientists Rufo recommends to others.

Beirich, the extremism expert, said: “All of these ideas have been debunked over and over again. The danger here is that eugenics and scientific racism have been historically used to justify terrible acts including genocide.”

Other recent articles on Aporia include Winegard’s “The case for race realism”, which reasserts that “underlying race differences in measured cognitive ability and violent crime … make large outcome disparities inevitable”; an article by Gregory Conner, a retired professor of finance, which argues for innate racial differences in intelligence; and two articles arguing high IQ among Jews has a basis in their genetics.

Aporia also publishes a podcast, which featured Rufo as a guest on 4 August, during which he took the opportunity to discuss his newly published book.

Aporia is contemptible racist garbage, and Rufo is promoting it. Rufo is a nobody, a hack with no serious background in science (or anything intellectual at all, for that matter) so sure, creationism, racism, they’re both popular ideas among uneducated ideologues, so he’ll push them — he hasn’t get the education to understand how terrible they are.

On Rufo’s recommending the site to his readers, Bird said: “There’s nothing legitimate on biology or evolution or genetics that’s really been published by anyone at Aporia,” adding: “Pointing people towards that is pointing them toward unambiguous white supremacist propaganda and nonsense.

“There’s nothing of value there. There’s nothing that resembles real mainstream science. There’s nothing that resembles real discussions happening in the field. It can’t be anything other than racist propaganda.”

Beirich said of Rufo’s links that “it’s not surprising to find that a person who is playing footsie with eugenicists is also happy to attack diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education or a Black president of Harvard”.

By linking to Aporia and appearing on its podcast, she said: “Rufo is helping to bring back this despicable material and mainstreaming it.”

Keep in mind that Rufo has been elevated to high advisory positions in the Florida government, and is making decisions about the universities in that state. Nothing in his background has prepared him to make competent decisions on much of any of the institutions he now has his thumb on.

Oh, he does have one qualification that doesn’t bother me at all but might alienate him from his fans. He has a Masters Degree…in Liberal Arts. Work on erasing that from your CV, guy.

Let soldiers celebrate what they are fighting for

Behold! The superior white master race!

I’ve had conversations with my son, a Major in the army, where he has lamented the difficulty of recruiting any more. It’s tough working with under-strength units, I guess. I’ll have to ask him what he thinks of Paul Gosar’s explanation, next time we talk.

Far-right congressman Paul Gosar is losing sleep over how few white people are enlisting in the army these days.

“The number of white recruits has plummeted,” Gosar wrote in an unhinged fundraising email sent out Thursday, with the subject line, “dismantling woke marxist ideologies.” “[It’s] a casualty of this cultural skirmish that has left our Army beleaguered and besieged by ‘woke’ ideologies.”

“This is not merely a crisis of numbers,” Gosar added. “It is a crisis of spirit.”

Gosar was responding to a recent investigation by Military.com that found that the number of white armymilitary recruits has been on a downward trajectory for the last half decade.

“Spirit”? “Woke ideologies”? That’s not the impression I get. I got to listen in to a big convo the leadership had with enlisted soldiers and their families (I’m family, I count). What I heard was enthusiastic officers discussing a deployment with enthusiastic troops, answering questions about how families were going to be taken care of while they were overseas. They discussed security issues and timetables. Is that what “woke” is?

Far-right commentators quickly pounced on those findings, and claimed they were “proof” that the armed forces had become overrun by “Marxists” who are forcing “wokeness” on its ranks—and, as a result, alienating prospective white recruits.

In recent years, supposed “wokeness” in the military has been a growing point of obsession among right-wing commentators, lawmakers, and culture warriors. That’s been driven, in part, by the Pentagon adopting LGBTQ-inclusive policies over the last decade. In 2011, the Pentagon rescinded the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, meaning gay and lesbian service members could serve openly. In 2021, a ban on transgender people serving openly was officially lifted. Growing LGBTQ acceptance in the military has inspired far-right memes painting American soldiers in rainbow flags, suggesting that they are “soft” compared to their global counterparts (images of Russia’s military, particularly when they first invaded Ukraine in early 2022, are often used side-by-side as comparison).

I would have been impressed if that meeting had been a Marxist dialectic. It wasn’t. It was pretty much nothing but pragmatic answers about an assigned mission. Everyone was professional and disciplined about it, except me and my wife sitting quietly at home worrying about our little boy going off to a distant country with a side-arm and armor.

The disrespect I see is coming entirely from the far-right who want to compound enlistment problems by rejecting women and gay enlistees who are all contributing to the effectiveness of the military. If you’re concerned about racial differences in enlistment rates, don’t be a Republican who is enacting policies that increase the division between the poor and wealthy, and that selectively holds back black Americans. Fewer people sign up when the economy is good and when they have other opportunities at home, you know, because being in the military is a dangerous option.

A soldier with a rainbow badge on their backpack is still a soldier, you know. I would hope they wouldn’t be fighting for whatever Paul Gosar represents.

Cops kill

It must be a grisly Friday, because look at the story that just popped up in my newsfeed.

The gruesome discovery of 215 bodies buried in unmarked graves behind a jail outside of Jackson, Mississippi, has left a community in disbelief.

The families are angry their loved ones were buried in so-called pauper’s graves marked by just a metal rod and a number and families were never notified of their deaths. The startling revelation came months after the mother of 37-year-old Dexter Wade filed a missing persons report last March. It wasn’t until August when Bettersten Wade learned her son had been hit by a police car and killed, then buried in that same cemetery.

This takes ACAB to a whole new level. The Jackson, Mississippi police committed vehicular homicide, and then buried the body in a field behind the jail and didn’t bother to tell anyone? They’ve dug up the body since, and he had a wallet with full identification in his pocket, but no one was notified? And there are 215 bodies hidden in that field?

No, that last bit is wrong.

We know, based on the records from the coroner’s office, that, since 2016, in the last eight years, we can identify 215 individuals that were buried behind that jail, and their families have not been notified.

Furthermore, Mr. Wade was number 672. That means there are 671 other people buried behind that jail marked with only a number.

Hey. Hey! Remember? Remember when some of us were talking about disbanding police departments, and all the conservatives and centrists were talking down at us all for being so unrealistic, and others were flying “thin blue line” flags and getting indignant and insisting that civilization would crumble without the cops to protect us, and nothing happened?

Remember?

Fuck those people.

Then they came for the sociology departments, but I was not a sociologist…

Respect. Sociology has been targeted for destruction by the raving mad conservatives of Florida. I guess it’s so dangerous that they fear it.

Last fall, with little explanation, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. proposed removing sociology from the menu of courses university students can take to meet graduation requirements. On Wednesday, he spoke more clearly, suggesting that sociology studies could veer into “identity politics or theories,” in violation of a new state law.

“Students should be focused on learning the truth about our country instead of being radicalized by woke ideology in our college classrooms,” Diaz said in comments to the State Board of Education.

Now sociology is woke and might steer students towards considering the broader implications of, for instance, racism and misogyny on, you know, society. Don’t worry, though, they’re going to provide an alternative.

The sociology option will be replaced with an introductory course about American history prior to 1877.

Let me guess: instead of teaching about the complexities of sociology, they’re going praise the Founding Fathers and how wonderful America is.

It requires that core courses “whenever applicable, provide instruction on the historical background and philosophical foundation of Western civilization and this nation’s historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments, and the Federalist Papers.”

Yep. You know, that isn’t even close to the content you’d find in a sociology course. Can you guess what the problem with sociology is?

“I think the statute is clear that, within the general education core code, courses may not distort significant historical events or include curriculum that teaches identity politics or theories,” Diaz said. “And I think when you go into the sociology course, you’re talking about theories, and that’s an option that students have to explore those theories in a nongeneral education course.”

It teaches theories. The people behind these prohibitions really don’t understand the meaning of “theory” in science! I teach theory in all of my classes — it’s how you learn and progress, by teaching the ideas behind a subject and discussing the evidence that led to those theories. To exclude a subject because it incorporates theory is absurd, and to suggest that it is inappropriate for a specific, more advanced course and should only be taught in a broader, more general course is exactly the opposite of what should be done. I think the idea is to put know-nothing ideologues in charge of interpreting the subject.

It’s all part of policies intended to neuter any political implications of…knowing stuff. Learning is dangerous. Especially if it’s DEI, that might expose the biases of the status quo, and might lead to educated adults working to change the flaws in the “perfect” country established by omniscient 18th century landowners.

In their rules, the State Board and the Board of Governors focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, often referred to as “DEI.” They define them as “any program, campus activity or policy” that classifies people by race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation and “promotes differential or preferential treatment” based on those classifications.

They define political and social activism as actions that would “affect or prevent change in government policy based on social issues.” And social issues are defined as issues that would “polarize or divide society along political, ideological, religious or moral beliefs.”

Sorry, guys. I want my students to be engaged with the important issues in society, such as correcting the howling ignorance of conservatives. More activist students, please.

Elon Musk is such a tough guy

Xitter is currently facing an advertiser boycott, all because Musk has been promoting, and contributing to, a culture of racism, misogyny, and hate. It was his anti-Semitic remarks that finally kicked me in the pants and convinced me I had to leave the platform. He’s mad about it now. He’s blaming the advertisers.

This is what happens when the richest person on Earth overdoses on redpills. A clammy, twitchy, agitated Elon Musk took the stage at The New York Times’ DealBook summit today and told former Twitter advertisers to “Go f*ck yourself.”

“Don’t advertise,” Musk told the brands who left because of Musk’s bizarre and offensive tweets. He jutted his chin and spoke in a clipped, more prominent-than-usual Afrikaans accent. His eyes glinted and snapped with aggression.

“You don’t want them to advertise?” asked the host, incredulously.

“No,” said Musk, turning his head and jutting his chin again.

“What do you mean?” asked the host.

Musk stuttered, then blurted, “If somebody tries to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go f*ck yourself.”

The nonplussed host stammered, “But–”

Musk interrupted and said in a tight, robotic voice accompanied by stiff gesticulations, “GO. F*CK. YOURSELF. Is that clear?” he said, whipping his head back toward the host.

“I hope it is,” he added. He waved to the audience and said, “Hi, Bob,” referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger. “I’m sure you’re in the audience.”

This is madness. The man runs a social media company that makes money by selling advertising — it would be wonderful if someone came up with an alternative scheme, but Musk isn’t doing that. Instead, he’s telling all the people who would buy his product to go fuck themselves, all while acting like an angry five-year-old bully. Look for yourselves: does this seem to be a stable, mature, responsible grown-up?

He’s even saying that if his company goes belly-up and fails, then “Earth” will blame the advertisers and not the incompetent CEO/owner.

Yeah, you go on telling yourself that. I’m saying that it’s all the fault of the guy who decided single-handedly to shape the culture to be tolerant of racists.