Charles Pierce is dismayed and despairing. But at least we know who to blame: the guilty parties have been proudly engaged in driving the country into the gutter for decades.
Every Republican who ever played footsie with the militias out west owns this bloodshed.
Every Republican who ever spoke to, or was honored by, the Council of Conservative Citizens and/or the League of the South owns this bloodshed.
Every Republican administration that ever went out of its way to hire Pat Buchanan, and every TV executive who ever cut him a check, and every Republican who voted for him in 1992, and everyone who ever has pretended his views differed substantially from the ones in the streets this weekend, owns this bloodshed.
Every Republican president—actually, there’s only one—who began a campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to talk about states rights, and who sent his attorney general into court to fight for tax exemptions for segregated academies, owns this bloodshed.
Every Republican politician who followed the late Lee Atwater into the woods in search of poisoned treasure owns this bloodshed.
Every conservative journalist who saw this happening and who encouraged it, or ignored it, or pretended that it wasn’t happening, owns this bloodshed.
The modern conservative movement—born of the Goldwater campaign, nurtured by millions of dollars from corporations and rightwing sugar daddies, sold day after day on millions of radios and on its own TV network—shoved the Republican Party right where it was dying to go anyway. These were institutions whose job it was to isolate this encroaching dementia from afflicting our politics in general.
Last November, we saw the culmination of four decades of the Republican Party trying to have it both ways, profiting from the darkest forces in American culture while maintaining a respectable cosmetic distance. On Saturday, we saw the culmination of the election that produced. At least, I’m praying this is the culmination. But I’m not sure about anything anymore.
All true. But what disturbs me most is this: our enemies are idiots.
We feared the tyrannical despot with vast armies at his disposal; the cunning wormtongue who undermines strong leadership. Who knew it would be a swarm of lice with the brains of 8 year olds, nattering inanely for the “lulz”, going “kek, kek” with a cartoon frog as their symbol?
I read the Daily Stormer article titled Heather Heyer: Woman Killed in Road Rage Incident was a Fat, Childless 32-Year-Old Slut
*. Worse, I read the comments. My estimation of the intelligence of that crowd plummeted astonishingly, given that I had no high impression of them in the first place. I may have overestimated them in my comparison with 8 year olds — the pettiness, the viciousness, the amazing arrogance of these people patting themselves on the back for their “cleverness” and “wit” in going to great lengths to smear this woman they didn’t know, and who found villainy in the most innocent bits of information they could find (they dug up a photo of her with a black man — rage flared instantly) were appalling.
Stupidity, ignorance, and bigotry are the forces that are tearing apart the Republic.
*Not linking to it, obviously. One: Andrew Anglin doesn’t need the attention. Two: the Daily Stormer is currently featuring a front page splat from Anonymous, claiming they’ve taken it down (strangely, Anonymous says they haven’t). And three: GoDaddy, not the most progressive of hosting services, has finally had enough and announced that they are terminating their contract, and it’s going to be gone in 24 hours.
Pierce missed the fractally wrong adherents to the High and Holy Church of Both Sides as well as the freeze peach fetishists.
Every republican that has not denounced Trump’s “both sides do it” speech along with a refusal to call the nazis and KKK domestic terrorists are equally complicit and should be labeled as nazi sympathizers at any and all opportunity. Those that continue to accept funding from these nazi groups directly or through other channels are complicit and should be called nazi sympathizers. Those who refuse funding for DOJ investigations of these domestic terrorist groups remain responsible for any and all repercussions that arise from not keeping a close eye on them. Using the standard set of dog whistles to try and hide their bigoted little souls should not be tolerated and should be exposed whenever and wherever it occurs. This coddling up to the domestic terrorists needs to and must stop now.
The White Power rangers in Charlottesville got two white cops and a white woman of childbearing years killed. That’s one heck of a RAHOWA they got goin’ there.
I saw the Daily Stormer article…was ashamed that I actually went to look.
A part of me still wants to believe that it’s the Onion…
It is just as well you didn’t read the “Heather Heyer: Woman Killed in Road Rage Incident was a Fat, Childless 32-Year-Old Slut” diatribe. They seem to honestly believe by being 32-years old and not having had children yet she was a race traitor and deserved to die. PZ estimation of their intelligence plummeted in reading this. My estimation of their basic humanity plummeted. They believe people dying horribly is funny and good.
(Cross-posted from It isn’t just the South here at poopyhead’s.)
A powerful column by Carol Anderson (Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University), America is hooked on the drug of white supremacy. We’re paying for that today. The entire thing is worth reading. Some excerpts:
[…]
I read the Daily Stormer story. Holy shit… I didn’t bother with the comments. It’s so bad it reads like a parody of a NAZI site. Why on Earth did Godaddy not pull this earlier?
GoDaddy is more progressive than it used to be, and is now considered a model of gender inclusion among tech companies. Anyway, good for them.
These are exactly the people the Republican party has tried to mobilise over the last fifty years – racists and religious fanatics. Why? Because nobody would vote for them if they only ran on their actual platform – the Vile Maxim of the masters of mankind as Adam Smith put it – enrich the wealthy, fuck everyone else. That the economic instability their actual platform has caused helps to foster extremist sentiment is just a nice bonus as far as they are concerned.
I might have to rethink my ideas about GoDaddy after this… I guess I must be very cynical because this surprised me, that they would stand up and take action.
In the meantime, yeah, it’s all out in the open now. Basically, Republicans need to step up to the plate and own this. Will they? I’m afraid I quite cynically think they will not. I do hope I’m wrong.
No they are not idiots. They control the Federal Government and most state and local governments. Whatever they are they are not idiots.
The supposed takeover of Daily Stormer by Anonymous is a hoax. The racist idiots are trying to cover for the fact that they’ve been dropped by Go Daddy and haven’t been able to get any other hosting service to take them. This way, they can send email to all their members claiming that the failure of the site to reappear is because of those “evil lefties” at Anonymous rather than through their own incompetence and hateful ideology. Like all these “alt-right” snowflakes, they won’t take the blame for anything they do, no matter what.
There’s nothing strange about it, Message showing apparent hack appears on neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website (the title is a bit misleading; Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
That is, the nazis are attempting to blame Anonymous for the site (very probably) going dark real soon. (This obviously assumes the Anonymous blog & GoDaddy are being truthful, and the nazis are not — if you think otherwise, there’s this old bridge in Brooklyn for sale…)
Alliances with Nato and Europe now hang by a thread as global white nationalist movements, backed by Trump’s benefactor Vladimir Putin, have worked to undermine democracy in Britain, France and Germany.
I would rephrase this as “Alliances with NATO and Europe now hang by a thread as NATO and Europe see the USA becoming an unreliable ally led by an erratic clown who occasionally breaks things or hits someone in the face with a bladder.
I suspect that many NATO leaders, rather than viewing the USA as the leader of the alliance are now beginning to view the USA as a serious liability.
There must be some major allies that Trump has failed to alienate. But who?
blf @13
Right. Anglin (who owns the Daily Stormer) got the notice from GoDaddy that the site was being cut off in 24 hours. It’s not a coincidence that “Anonymous” has also given him 24 hours before the site goes down “permanently”.
Easter Island?
Oops, sorry, no, that’s Chile, who, as soon as it is shown to him on a globe — and then someone explains to him what a globe is (and that the world isn’t flat, despite all the maps) — will find some reason to insult. Besides probably thinking they are Mexicans.
Actually, some quick searching suggests hair furor has insulted Chile with his attacks on TPP, which Chile apparently supports. And Chile is apparently making considerable investments in solar energy (at least), which is also bound to annoy teh trum-prat.
Trump is repudiated to have done a better job of condemning the violence in Charlottesville and racism in general. Quoth he: “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to all that we hold dear as a nation.”
It might be noted that the formula hasn’t changed that much from his Sunday statement. “Those who cause violence” could be anybody. There are plenty of white supremacist who consider Black Lives Matter racist and violent, and a member of the “other hate groups” category. That he “includes” white supremacists by name doesn’t mean he is excluding the myriad civil rights organizations participating in Charlottesville’s counter-demonstrations.
Trump is “repudiated” but that should be “reputed” of course.
GoDaddy would probably have gone right on tolerating Stormfront’s presence (I don’t know how long it’s been on there, but quite a while) if there hadn’t been a small firestorm of protest, started by Amy Siskind on Twitter as far as I know, though she likely wasn’t the only person to think of it.
Hosting companies have a difficult balancing act. If they pulled every web site with objectionable (but legal) material on it, they would (a) lose a ton of paying customers, (b) spend a lot time and money monitoring content, and (c) risk pissing off a whole new other set of people crying censorship, which given the nature of their business, could be a serious problem.
In the end, companies like Go Daddy will only pull sites like Daily Stormer once the adverse publicity risks harming their business and hence, profits. In that, they are no worse than most other US based companies that host content.
The comments on Infowars were vile too, and that was before Alex Jones reached the inevitable conclusion that the entire event in Charlottesville was a “false flag.” Apparently, the organizer of the march used to be an Obama supporter, until he “took the red pill” in 2013. That’s more than enough evidence for idiots looking for any excuse to pin the blame for everything that happened last weekend on George Soros, apparently.
But… but… haven’t you heard? The Charlottesville killing was a false-flag incident, staged by Muuuuuuuuuuuuslims!
robro:
You shouldn’t have to twist someone’s arm to say it, but if that someone is Trump….
Sifting through Google news yesterday, I saw several stories relating that particular Republicans labeled it terrorism, didn’t condone the violence, rejected racism, held various flavors of neo-Nazism/white supremacy/etc. responsible, and so forth.
I guess that kind of reporting is to be expected when you look at it a certain way, if only because there are so many Republicans in office. But it’s painting the wrong picture. There’s often little or no recognition that these words from these people are all empty. It’s been a core feature of Republicanism for decades, and unless that changes (if ever), nobody should be pretending that their attempts to separate themselves from such criminals and thugs are anything but feeble attempts to not look like ravenous monstrosities to (some of) their donors/voters. It cannot be sincere, until they decide to change their whole outlook and seriously commit to being a party with some sense of basic decency — not just say a few words, open investigations of this or that incident, or whatever trivial fucking things they must think is supposed to be enough. It would to take a lot of work to become that kind of party, and they have no intention whatsoever of doing it.
robro @17, yes, the statement clearly points the finger at unidentifiable individuals. How hard would it have been to say, “Nazis are bad”? Is that controversial?
Shitler specifically chose NOT to condemn the alt right assholes who DIDN’T get caught.
@jkrideau #14:
When I considered this question I though the best approach would be to start with the most authoritarian and… well, let’s just say that it didn’t take long.
I see I said Stormfront when I should have said Daily Stormer above. But you know what I meant.
In case anyone’s interested, my post from January – “The Hugenberg lesson.”
Today, as I watched the reporting on the horrifying events of the past several days and the evidence of Trump’s profound unfitness, I saw ads (probably Koch-funded) for tax cuts.* I also read how many in the WH want to shift to focusing on tax cuts in September, while they continue to scheme to destroy or repeal the ACA. They’re still making this bargain.
* They managed to be both dishonest and nonsensical. Despite lying, the Kochs can’t create a coherent appeal for their tax agenda.
Anglin’s currently on the run from the SPLC
But…but…but…Jerry Coyne has a friend that took a picture that proves it was the “leftists” that came “loaded for bear”!!
And so, while both sides do it, the “leftist SJW’s” are way worse!!!!
Jerry never publishes my comments on what a good German he would have made. It’s a compliment, right?
Good god.
He’s Jewish.
And yet he doesn’t seem to have any issues with the fact that he’s thrown his lot in with actual anti-Semites as long as it pisses of liberals.
While we’re talking about him, has anyone tried asking Coyne if, given his newfound love affair with Freeze Peach, he’s going to get rid of The Rules ad let people say anything they want to on his blog?
oliversarmy @29
What in the ever-loving fuck?! Coyne really believes that the anti-fascist protestors were in the wrong? Nazis were marching through the streets with torches, clubs, shields, and in some cases assault rifles and combat fatigues, and a fascist killed one counter-protestor and injured 19 others. If Coyne looks at liberal protestors fighting back and says that they’re just as bad, or even worse, then he’s completely fucked in the head. At this point, Coyne’s anti-SJW bullshit has morphed into drooling self-destructive Nazi enablement. I still have to ask though… Why?! Why is Coyne so committed to the idea that progressives are a bigger threat than fucking Nazis?
I may be mistaken, but I’m under the impression that GoDaddy didn’t host the content but merely registered the domain name.
It take an extremely egregious act to get your phone number removed from the white pages.
But I may be mistaken.
The right to free speech does not come with the right to a venue, or the right to speak without consequences.
That’s actually my impression as well, and the most recent articles I’ve read imply that is the case. (Assuming it is the case, then where is the content hosted?)
Apparently teh nazis moved the domain registration to Google’s service, who — about three hours later — announced they are also kicking teh nazis out. In addition, the previous masking of Andrew Anglin’s contact details has been removed. (I have no idea if this will be of any help to the SPLC, who is attempting to track Anglin down to serve him papers in a lawsuit.)
(Based on this Reuters report, Tech companies in the crosshairs on white supremacy and free speech.)
A lot of NATO members have been pretty sketchy about the whole deal for quite a long time – plenty didn’t participate in Iraq or Afghanistan, and many who did sent only token numbers. It’s also hard not to see the moves towards developing a common EU foreign policy and defence force as steps towards de-emphasising NATO in favour of something that works better for Europe.
Trump’s an idiot.
Incidentally, he just retweeted someone calling him a fascist.