The blame was fixed the instant protests against injustice began

You can’t possibly be surprised to learn that the violence accompanying the recent protests was generated by happy white fanatics who wanted to use it to disrupt the country.

In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday.

A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s death while in police custody.

The Boogaloo Bois hate the police, too, but the reason is rather different: it’s not because the American police are forces for oppression and injustice, but because they threaten the Boogaloo Bois’ desire to rule the countryside with heavily armed right wing militias; they want chaos because that would allow these wannabe bandits and warlords to run amuck. They want to be the ones with the guns and tanks.

The Star Tribune has been following these guys for a while now, since they seem to be active here in Minnesota. A previous article profiled several of these goons.

Solomon, who manages the maintenance division for a local property management company, called himself “an armed redneck” who joined the Boogaloo movement after dabbling in right-wing conservatism, libertarianism and militia activity. The police bulletin that named Solomon noted that he had a “III%-er” militia sticker on his truck.

In an interview, Solomon said his allegiance rested with the Boogaloo movement and that he had neglected to remove the armed militia sticker. Like many Boogaloos, Solomon also said he now recants his past support for President Donald Trump. Now, Solomon views himself as an “anarcho-capitalist.”

The good news: support for Trump is declining among these fanatics. The bad news: they’re libertarians and ancaps.

The good news: they say they are against racism and white nationalism. The bad news: they still think shooting up a police station and letting the black community take the blame is just fine.

We’ve been suffering with these violent clowns for centuries, thanks to our institutionalized policies of injustice. Don’t be fooled by people who claim to be for equality, yet eagerly enjoy the privileges of structural racism and take advantage of a convenient pool of scapegoats. Watch Cody explain the whole grand problem.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: It was a tuck

We watched the notorious movie last night, including the infamous closing scene with Rudy Giuliani.

Sorry to disappoint you, but yeah, he was just tucking in his shirt.

It was still stupid and inappropriate, just not as scandalous as everyone was imagining. Giuliani was smarming it up with a pretty reporter, smirking and flattering her. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, except for the condescension and DEAR GOD GIULIANI SHOULD NEVER SMILE. He looks like a creepy skull.

He is then invited into her bedroom for a drink. And he took her up on it! Extremely unprofessional and sleazy! I’ve done many interviews in hotel rooms, and if at the end I was invited to go into the bedroom for a drink (never happened, my interviewers were professional too), I would have said, “No thank you, I’ve got to go” or, if we wanted to continue the conversation, I’d have suggested that we meet in the bar in a few minutes.

Then there was a scene where the two of them were fumbling around removing each other’s microphones. Unprofessional again; yes, you thread the wire from the lavalier mic under your shirt to the transmitter, but it’s not a big production. A reporter would find this part of her daily routine, while a guy like Giuliani has done this a thousand times. He wouldn’t need assistance, and neither would she. I’ve done it a hundred times, usually standing up on a stage, sometimes right in front of everyone. It doesn’t involve taking off my pants.

It does, however, sometimes involve unbuttoning a shirt, and then tucking it back in. That’s what I saw Giuliani doing. It wasn’t a big deal at all.

Also, remember, there was a cameraperson recording it all. What Sacha Baron Cohen caught on film was a creepy politician being condescending and unprofessional, nothing more. It was disappointing, actually, and was simply some unflattering editing of an already unpleasant character who thinks he’s attractive and endearing, when he just gets more repulsive the harder he tries.

The attention that bit is given also detracts from the rest of the movie. The truly horrifying parts where when he got his audience of good ol’ salt-of-the-earth Americans to go along with his prompts: an audience of rednecks grinning like feral hyenas as he gets them to sing along to a bad tune he was making about gassing their political opponents to death; the casual and easily elicited antisemitism; the QAnon fans babbling their conspiracy theories; the weird debutante ball where the Southern gentlemen were locked in rigid politeness as Borat’s daughter does a fertility dance celebrating her menses, and the most they do is hiss, “call her an Uber”.

As is usual in a Sacha Baron Cohen movie, the real freaks we should pay attention to are ourselves, not the clown with a funny accent capering on the stage. Borat couldn’t make Giuliani more of a spectacle than he routinely does to himself on Fox News every day, so I thought that bit fell rather flat.

Also, it was an out-loud, unapologetic feminist movie. Let’s not forget that in all the noise about the final setup.

Jordan Peterson is back?

I’d noticed something peculiar in the last week — a surge of traffic and comments to some old videos I made criticizing Jordan Peterson, and they tended to be the usual smug BS from fanatics who are appalled that anyone (that is, lib cucks) would dare to reject the wisdom of Daddy.

Just today I found out that Peterson is back at work making his videos, dang it. He’s threatening to finish a book about the Old Testament, so get ready for more religious dogma and revitalized fans. The sanctimonious stupidity is back!

Online drama can really be entertaining!

Remember that weird, convoluted Omegaverse fanfic lawsuit, where a romance fiction writer, Addison Cain, went into a berserk frenzy of DMCA takedowns and lawsuits and histrionic online accusations? It’s back. She’s accusing Lindsay Ellis of being part of a Fan Fiction Deep State Conspiracy trying to bring Addison Cain down.

Or maybe it’s just me, overly sensitized to stories of bullying twits playing games with the legal system to lash out at people they don’t like. Hey! donate to our legal fund!

I blocked these guys long ago, why are they clogging up my mailbox now?

I’m suddenly finding myself getting swarmed by evangelicals from KKMS/AM980, the Christian talk radio station. I’d blocked them, but I guess they changed something to get past my filters. So what am I getting?

We’d like to add to your family’s movie library!

I could win a 6 pack of Kendrick Brothers movies! Nope, not interested.

Do you trust God in everything?

No.

Share this gift with your pastor!

It’s a pastor appreciation event sponsored by Crescent Tide Cremation Services. No pastor, not interested in cremation services yet.

Have you ever questioned how God is at work in the darkness?

I question everything anyone says about gods, so maybe. Except this is an ad for a book, so not that one.

Here’s my favorite!

Thank you for your loyalty! Here’s your 20% off code!

I am so loyal that I just refreshed my filters to delete all their messages, now and henceforth, until they tweak things again. Which they will.

I bet you can all name a lot of “launderers”

That’s a concept from Talia Levin’s new book, Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy, which she expounds on in this interview.

Most people don’t start out waving swastikas. They are being led to this place by “launderers,” people who seem reasonable and who introduce racist ideas subtly, and give people permission to engage in hate that is more socially acceptable. The launderers can be YouTubers and right-wing influencers. They may start out saying there are too many women in Star Wars movies, or that lady Ghostbusters have ruined their childhood. It soon becomes easier and easier for them to say that feminism is harmful garbage that has caused them to be unhappy. From there it’s not a long journey. The slope is greased by people with high production values and a lot of money behind them.

They are not weird toothless masturbators living in their mothers’ basements. Every member of the organized racist movement that I surveilled, spoke to, and catfished was a person — a human being with complexity and dimensionality who has made amoral choices. Their humanity is an integral part of the portrait but it does not absolve them. They make the choice to disseminate evil. It makes them more worthy of condemnation. They have chosen to spread hate and fear. They have chosen to follow an ideology that makes them feel like heroes for hurting people who are already hurt.

Think about it. It’s easy to name a lot of these launderers. They range from talentless goofballs like PewDiePie to nasty lying culture warriors like Ben Shapiro to millionaire establishment spokespeople like Tucker Carlson to corrupt gangsters like Donald Trump. I bet you all can rattle off a long list yourself. All of them deny their racism and white nationalism with varying degrees of believability, and none of them ever face any consequences.

Ask the women — it’s a power move

Yet again, high profile men are flashing their genitals at unwilling onlookers, and yet again, other men are trying to ask us to show sympathy, and understand that men have normal, human sexual needs. I know that! But maybe we should be listening to the women on this matter.

I’m sure most of you know that famous lawyer and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin exposed himself during a Zoom call. A business-related Zoom call to do some kind of election simulation. With multiple people on it, including women. And he was rubbing one out right there.

I don’t care that he says he thought he had muted himself and wasn’t visible to anyone else. To be really honest, I don’t even believe him. Regardless, though, one should not be jacking off during a business meeting, particularly where video connections are involved. There’s just no excuse. You shouldn’t wank your junk under a conference room table during a meeting; you shouldn’t rub one out during a video call either. It’s unprofessional, gross and like I said before, abusive.

Now it seems he’s lost positions at the New Yorker and CNN at the very least, and I’m glad. If you can’t wait until after the Zoom call to do your business, you have no business doing public business and making a mint off of it. Crawl back to your hole.

But the really shocking thing was how many other guys—mostly other white guys because who sticks together better than white men?—defending him. Saying how those of us complaining are shaming men for having needs and shaming the act of masturbation.

Yeah, we’ve got needs, I’ve got needs, masturbation is perfectly normal and healthy. But this behavior is not an expression of healthy sexual desire. Louis CK was getting off on domination games — he was forcing women to witness him, and that was the thrill, the power and intimidation. Ask the women and they know — the joy for the perp is making women to submit. Power!

I get a taste of that too. I get a fair bit of hate mail, written by guys who loudly despise me, and one of the most common things they do is send me gay porn. I don’t get as many dick pics as many women do, but the point is that I know they are not sending me these photos as an expression of healthy sexual desire. They send them as a threat, as an expression of their power. It’s not an expression of the psychology of courtship of sexuality.

Women have been telling you that for years. They aren’t turned on by flashers. You can’t defend flashers with the claim that they’re just fulfilling sexual needs.

Is there something about playing Dracula that makes one a total badass?

I knew that Christopher Lee was a tough and scary dude, but Bela Lugosi? That old guy with the accent who was in Plan 9 From Outer Space? I did not expect this, but man, I’ve got to admire him now.

He fought in WWI, he was a Communist leader and union organizer, he was antifa.

By World War II, Hungarian dictator Miklos Horthy allied with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In opposition, Lugosi helped form the Hungarian-American Council for Democracy, calling for “Nazism to be wiped out everywhere.”

As a member of American-Hungarian Relief Inc., Lugosi was a keynote speaker at an Aug. 28, 1944, rally in Los Angeles. He demanded Washington rescue Hungarian Jewish refugees, pressure Horthy’s Nazi-puppet regime and easing immigration restrictions.

Dr. Rafael Medoff and J. David Spurlock wrote, “He may have portrayed savage villains on the silver screen, but in real life Béla Lugosi raised his voice in protest against the savage persecution of the Jews in his native Hungary.” (Jewish Ledger, Jan. 3, 2011)

Damn. Respect.