What America’s ‘alt-right’ movement wants and what makes it different

Here is something that should scare every “non-White” person in America. It is the rise of White Supremacist organizations. They have been in America since 1866 when the KKK was founded. The success of such groups is proven when they are discussed in detail by a Canadian newspaper.

Over the last few months, the so-called “alt-right” has become one of the most prominent factions of the conservative media. The movement’s leading outlet is Breitbart News, whose chairman, Stephen Bannon, has just become the CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

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By Daniel Dale, Fri., Aug. 26, 2016 – Washington Bureau, Toronto Star

WASHINGTON—A certain set of values is enjoying a resurgence under a new, tech-savvy label.

The new face of white supremacism is a green cartoon frog.

His fans call him Pepe. On Twitter, you can find him dressed in a Nazi uniform, denying the Holocaust, disparaging Mexicans and Muslims and blacks, mocking feminists, and wearing a Donald Trump campaign hat.

The memes are made by supporters of the “alt-right,” a web-savvy racist movement with a fondness for bigoted harassment. It’s having the best month of its young existence.

Last week, Trump handed the leadership of his campaign to Stephen Bannon, head of Breitbart News, a website Bannon has described as “the platform for the alt-right.” On Thursday, Hillary Clinton claimed in a major speech that the alt-right had “effectively taken over the Republican Party,” which sent Google searches for the term skyrocketing.

“Millions of people are Googling #AltRight and thinking through our ideas for the first time,” Richard Spencer, the “white nationalist” credited with popularizing the term, wrote on Twitter. “If that’s ‘losing,’ I’ll take it!”

They have a whole hodgepodge of ideas. Some of them — immigration should be halted or sharply curtailed; political correctness has run amok; feminism, multiculturalism and “globalism” are destructive — are within the bounds of mainstream conversation. At its core, though, the alt-right movement is about this: a belief that “white identity” and “white culture” are under threat and need to be aggressively defended.

“What the #AltRight means is that whites no longer are going to cower and will defend our own race,” wrote one supporter, who tweets under the handle Identitarian. “The #AltRight’s message isn’t one of hate, but one of love: Whites learning to love and support our own race.”

That means different things to different people. The umbrella movement encompasses everyone from veteran neo-Nazis to men’s rights activists to “intellectuals” who want to create a white “ethno-state” to a troll army of anonymous students who claim they are puncturing political correctness by heaping racist abuse upon black Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones or anti-Semitic abuse upon Jews.

Jones felt compelled to briefly quit Twitter after she was subjected to a vicious online mob incited by Milo Yiannopoulos, a Breitbart editor sympathetic to the alt-right. Jewish journalists Julia Ioffe, Ben Shapiro, and Jonathan Weisman have been deluged with Holocaust memes and threats of violence.

“They think it’s all in good fun, too. They are anti-Semitic, they know what they’re doing is anti-Semitic, but they think it’s funny,” said Marilyn Mayo, a research fellow at the Center on Extremism of the Anti-Defamation League.

Mayo described the alt-right, whose size is unknown, as “a subgrouping under the white supremacist movement.” But she said it is different from previous groups in its youthfulness, its social media fluency and how it is trying to influence conservative discourse rather than withdrawing from conventional politics.

“Even though the alt-right rejects mainstream conservatism, they still want to be a part of the conversation. That’s why they’re calling themselves the alternative-right,” Mayo said.

The movement is also different, extremism expert Brian Levin said, in its embrace of people of diverse political views. Anxieties about globalization and the changing complexion of America are spread across a far broader swath of the population than a “mere Hitlerian group” could ever hope to reach, he said.

“It’s almost a siren call: give me your libertarians, your hardened bigots, your ultraconservative disenfranchised, and we will embrace you,” said Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Some prominent figures on the mainstream right have angrily attempted an expulsion. Conservative pundit Erick Erickson has called the alt-right the “Alt-Reich,” likening it to Nazism. Stuart Stevens, chief strategist to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, says the movement is nothing more than old-fashioned “hate.”

“There is no ‘alt-right.’ It’s just rebranded racism. It’s like calling slaves ‘agrarian interns.’ No,” Stevens wrote on Twitter.

Much of the alt-right rejects the suggestion that it is racist. But its own definitions meet the criteria. In a Thursday statement, American Renaissance, a publication founded by alt-right “white nationalist” Jared Taylor, said, “There is very broad overlap between the races, but they differ in average levels of intelligence and in other traits.”

Such people now have a toehold in public life. Though Clinton may have been exaggerating when she claimed the alt-right now runs Trump’s party, he has given white racists a legitimacy they have not enjoyed in decades.

“The bottom line is: this movement, which has hardened bigots within it, has now become part of the mainstream political process,” Levin said. “The Klan, or even people who wore swastikas, just couldn’t get through the door. These guys have their foot in the door.”

Two Political Parties – One Ruling Class

From THE SPARK, August 8, 2016. It is an opinion letter distributed from Studio City, California (Studio City is a district of Los Angeles). THE SPARK web site: “We want an end to capitalism. We want revolution made by the working class. We want socialism, we want communism.”

The following column was handed to me as I entered the Red Line subway in North Hollywood, California. There is no reference to socialism or communism in this article. It is a blast at the Ruling Class. The two lines BOLDED by me are the critical and the two most important sentences in my opinion.

Donald Trump is everything the Democrats say he is: anti-worker, misogynist, and racist. He’s vile in the way he maligns whole groups of people; repellant in his pretense to “defend the people who cannot defend themselves”; offensive in his contempt for women; and a ruthless businessman whose history is littered with people he exploited, harmed and cheated.

He claims that he is the only one who can fix the system because “nobody knows it better” than he does. Yes, he knows it – and has used it his whole life, just as the whole capitalist class has used it, to accumulate wealth at the expense of the vast majority of the population, all of us who must work for our living.

This multi-billionaire has spent the last year roaming the country, playing on and reinforcing racist attitudes in the population. He blamed immigrants for the unemployment in this country – in a ploy to hide the truth, that joblessness is created by bosses like Trump who push to squeeze more work out of fewer workers. He blames society’s victims for crime, rather than the system he knows so well and has benefitted from so much, which has impoverished large layers of the population, driving young people who cannot find work into crime. He blames the people in other countries for the wars that ravage the earth, rather than the American capitalist class, of which he is a prize member, a class that exploits people in sweatshops around the world and steals the wealth of other countries.

Trump is a real enemy of working people.

But if anyone believes that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are our friends, they are living in a dream world.

The Democrats may have a “kinder” language than Trump – but that language is a lie. And behind the lie is a party that turned law and order into a recipe for jailing two generations of young people for whom this system would not provide jobs. Bill Clinton’s administration, supported by both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, pushed through two “anti-crime” laws in the 1990s, which contributed to the shocking 800% increase in the number of people locked away since 1980 – the vast majority for “crimes” that harmed no one, destroyed nothing and took nothing.

The Democrats may pretend to be shocked at Trump’s bellicose language, but the Democrats eagerly joined Republicans to take us into wars that still ravage a large part of the Middle East, wars that have provoked the growth and bitterness of many who flock to ISIS.

At the Democratic Convention Bernie Sanders did what he has always done: talk radical, then fall in line. After calling Clinton the candidate of Wall Street – which she is – he called on his supporters to work for her election! Just like when he spoke against the wars in Iraq and Syria, but then voted the money needed to carry them out.

People worry that if Trump gets in office there may be an increase in overt acts of violence targeting immigrants or black people – and there may well be. But not because of Trump himself, but because behind Trump is a ruling class that has long tried to divide the working class, pitting one part against the other. And the Democrats have played that game as often as the Republicans: divide in order to rule.

This overheated election campaign presents us with the spectacle of two parties competing with each other, both of which are defenders of big business, of the banks, of big property owners and financial speculators.

The only ones not represented in this electoral farce, the ones who will have no voice are working people – that is, the big majority of the population. Voting for either of these two parties simply means we give a stamp of approval to our class enemies.

The big issue this election year, like so many years before, is that the working class does not have a party of its own. We need our own party, a working class party that will be built by all parts of our class: Black, White, Latino and immigrant.

Trump: ‘I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged’

Donald Trump is correct. The elections are rigged. It’s not the popular vote that wins the election. It’s the electors who choose the president. With the exception of Nebraska and Maine each state awards all the electors to the winner of the state. It is a decision made by each state. In other words even if Trump won 45% of the popular vote in California and Clinton won 55%, all 55 electors would be awarded to Clinton. Does Trump understand the system? That system is written into the constitution.

Donald Trump reminds me of Captain Queeg. You remember! “The Caine Mutiny” is a 1951 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Herman Wouk. Humphrey Bogart starred.

Caine Mutiny – Capt. Queeg Loses It

The news item

Columbus, Ohio (CNN) Donald Trump on Monday took his complaints about the “rigged” political system one step further.

“I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged. I have to be honest,” Trump told voters in Ohio, a crucial swing state.

Trump’s comments Monday came as he decried Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for endorsing Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, even as some Sanders supporters have continued to resist unifying behind the nominee. Trump has sought to siphon off Sanders supporters and draw them to his campaign.

Trump added that he has heard “more and more” that the November election will be rigged — suggesting to his supporters that the outcome of the election is out of the hands of voters.

Trump during the primary repeatedly slammed the “rigged system” he claimed was working against his campaign to capture the Republican nomination for president. He then pivoted to using that language to decry the nomination process on the left, accusing the Democratic Party of colluding with the Clinton campaign to keep Sanders from winning that party’s nomination.

Trump’s comments during the primary bolstered the impression that Trump, a political outsider, was leading the charge against a corrupt political system.

But his latest comments could hurt Trump’s general election campaign as his supporters might decide not to turn out to vote if the election is already “rigged” against their candidate.

Trump continued with the “rigged” theme during a Monday night interview on Fox News. Appearing on “Hannity,” the Republican nominee suggested the potential for foul play in November. Trump pointed to the 2012 presidential election as a cause for concern.

“I’ve been hearing about it for a long time,” Trump said. “And I know last time, there were — you had precincts where there was practically nobody voting for the Republican. And I think that’s wrong. I think that was unfair, frankly” for 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

“I’m telling you, November 8, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged,” Trump added. “And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us.”

A War Hero Condemns Donald Trump

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. listens during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 28, 2012, to discuss a Congressional resolution condemning the government of Syria for crimes against humanity and supporting the right of the people of Syria to be safe and to defend themselves. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

John McCain on the Khan family controversy:

“While our Party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement. I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates. I’d like to say to Mr. and Mrs. Khan: thank you for immigrating to America. We’re a better country because of you. And you are certainly right; your son was the best of America, and the memory of his sacrifice will make us a better nation — and he will never be forgotten.”

“My sons serve today, and I’m proud of them. My youngest served in the war that claimed Captain Khan’s life as well as in Afghanistan. I want them to be proud of me. I want to do the right thing by them and their comrades,”

“Humayun Khan did exactly that — and he did it for all the right reasons. This accomplished young man was not driven to service as a United States Army officer because he was compelled to by any material need. He was inspired as a young man by his reading of Thomas Jefferson — and he wanted to give back to the country that had taken him and his parents in as immigrants when he was only two years old.”

“Captain Khan’s death in Iraq, on June 8th, 2004, was a shining example of the valor and bravery inculcated into our military. When a suicide bomber accelerated his vehicle toward a facility with hundreds of American soldiers, Captain Khan ordered his subordinates away from the danger.”

“Then he ran toward it.”

Temperament

The never ending question is: Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be president of the United States?

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist in 2008, “This issue of temperament is central to the whole debate.” He cited a line from Clinton’s speech: “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons.”

Merriam-Webster defines temperament as “the usual attitude, mood, or behavior of a person or animal.”

American Heritage Dictionary

The manner of thinking, behaving, or reacting characteristic of a specific person: a nervous temperament. See Synonyms at disposition.
The distinguishing mental and physical characteristics of a human according to medieval physiology, resulting from dominance of one of the four humors.

2. Excessive irritability or sensitiveness: an actor with too much temperament.

The synonym “disposition” I believe is a better word to describe Donald Trump’s temperament. That definition by American Heritage is One’s usual mood; temperament: a sweet disposition.

Trump’s shoot from the hip style does not give anyone the impression that he has thought about the things he says.

A good example of Trump’s words is his concern about Muslims coming to the United States to preform terrorist acts. The truth is that only the couple in San Bernardino were not natural born citizens. All the rest were born in this country.

What would he do to control the possible terrorist acts of American Muslims or others? I want one of the people interviewing him to ask that question.

Donald Trump says one thing about a subject and sometimes in the same day says something totally contradictory.

Does this man have the temperament / disposition for the job of president? Not in my book.

Donald Trump: What sacrifices have you made?

Khizr Khan, whose son Army Capt. Humayun Khan died in Baghdad in 2004, delivered one of the most powerful speeches of the Democratic National Convention. With his wife Ghazala at his side, Khan repeatedly blasted Trump’s immigration proposals — specifically those aimed at barring Muslims — and said the billionaire businessman has “sacrificed nothing and no one.”

Trump to Khizr Khan: ‘I’ve made a lot of sacrifices.’

Donald Trump, in an ABC interview, said in response, “I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”

Other than the 9-11 hijackers the only immigrant terrorists were the couple in San Bernardino California. All the others were born in the United States. So how would Mr. Trump monitor their behavior? Trump is going down the path of the Nazi concentration camps and America’s Japanese internment camps. Is that the path a majority of Americans want?

If that is the choice of the United States, I will not be a party to that action!

Some Good News

The news is all about what bad things have happened during the day or all the way to yesterday. It’s time to write about some good things that have happened.

-Surge of new jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 287,000 new jobs were created last month (June). New jobs have been created every month starting March of 2010. The unemployment rate I 4.9%. All those new jobs were not high paying but that is a record worth advertising.

-The S&P 500 has almost reached it record set May 20, 2015 when the index reached 2134.72. Friday it was almost there again closing at 2129.90.

-JCPenney is adding 350 jobs in LA and Orange counties in California. That is a company that many expected to go out of business this year.

-When Sharay Santora and her two children first arrived in downtown Dallas on Thursday to join the Black Lives Matter protest, she said the interaction between marchers and officers was peaceful, loving. Officers lined the streets as a massive crowd marched past.

“They gave us high-fives, hugs, were taking selfies,” Santora, 37, told The Washington Post. “It was such an instance of love and understanding, that ‘I’m here for you.’ You could feel it. There was no animosity in the air. That was the feeling throughout.”

Santora said marchers noted “these people who came out to protect us, we’re going to be out there for them.”

She plans to take her children to memorials for the fallen officers, for the same reason she has taken her children to Black Lives Matter demonstrations: “You’re either part of the solution, or you’re part of the problem. Even if you don’t know what to do, you can do something, even if it’s showing love.”

Maybe, just may be, the tragedy in Dallas can bring all of us to our senses.

Some Guns Need to be Banned

When will the Federal government stop massacres? Why should the public be victim to crimes that can be reduced? When only about 15% of the population owns firearms why must the rest of us hope and pray that no one in our family is a victim when they go to a shopping mall or other public location?

We have an amendment to the constitution that provides for everyone to own a gun for their own protection and for use in a militia. That right does not say that crazy, mad, and the mentally imbalanced have a right to fire arms.

Semi-automatic weapons and assault weapons used in war appear to be the guns used to for massacres in most instances. So why aren’t these weapons banned? The AR-15 assault rifle was among the weapons banned by the federal government up until 2004, when the ban expired. It has not been renewed. The gun lobby and the NRA have done an outstanding job of preventing sensible regulations. It is obvious that our congress is subject to the will of those businesses and gun hobbyist groups that want to stop all regulation.

Both automatic and semi-automatic weapons should be banned.

The following list is not a complete listing. The lives lost and the lives permanently maimed should be sufficient motivation for new enforcements.

Place	Date	Number Killed	Number Injured	Weapon Used
Orlando Fl., nightclub	June 12, 2016	49	17	similar to an AR-15
Virginia Tech	April 16, 2007	32	53	22-caliber Walther P22 semi-automatic handgun and a 9 mm semi-automatic Glock 19 handgun.
Newtown, Conn, elementary school	Dec. 4, 2012	27	1	AR-15 assault rifle
San Bernardino, Calif., community center	Dec 4, 2015	14	21	Smith & Wesson M&P assault rifle
Binghamton, New York, outside the American Civic Association	April 3, 2009	13	4	2 hand guns
Washington Navy Yard	Sept. 3, 2013	12	3	AR-15 assault rifle
Aurora, Colo. Movie theater	July 29, 2012	12	58	AR-15 assault rifle
Charleston S.C. church	April 19, 2015	9	1	45-caliber semi-automatic Glock handgun
Stockton, Calif., elementary school playground	Jan. 17, 1989	5	30	AK-47 and a semiautomatic handgun
Ft. Hood, Texas	April 2, 2014	3	16	5.7-millimeter pistol

Donald Trump’s new favorite slogan was invented for Nazi sympathizers

Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Is Donald Trump the next Hitler? I am not willing to take a chance of electing him just to find out. Donald Trump is frightening.

By Eric Rauchway, The Washington Post, June 14 at 6:26 PM

Donald Trump greeted Twitter on Flag Day with two words in all caps: “AMERICA FIRST!”

He has made this slogan a theme for his campaign, and he has begun using it to contrast himself with President Obama, whose criticism of Trump’s rhetoric on Tuesday was answered with a Trump statement promising, “When I am president, it will always be America first.”

He wasn’t quite promising “America über alles,” but it comes close. “America First” was the motto of Nazi-friendly Americans in the 1930s, and Trump has more than just a catchphrase in common with them.

Trump defines the “America” he wants to put “first” by saying who does not properly belong in it. That definition does not include certain people of foreign descent born in the United States, who are to him still foreigners and whom he labels accordingly (in the past few weeks, Trump has referred to native-born Americans as “Mexican” or “Afghan”). It does not include Muslim residents, whom he would “certainly” and “absolutely” force to register their presence with the U.S. government (asked how this proposed policy differs from Nazi laws regarding Jews, Trump replied, “You tell me“).

Trump wants his exclusionary America to cower behind walls. He would erect metaphorical barriers against immigrants (excluding Muslims from entry to the United States until they can be “properly and perfectly” screened) and trade. And of course, he would build a literal wall along the Mexican border. None of which is to say Trump’s isolated America would decline to fight wars: Trump would increase bombing of the Middle East and fight “fast and … furious for a short period of time” against the terrorist enemy.

This is what Trump’s “America First” means: a white America (committed, to be sure, to “take care of our African American people”), living behind higher walls and screens, lashing out to prove its strength and then retreating again — not a government suspiciously tolerant of foreign threats.

And this is also largely what “America First” has historically meant.

During the early 1930s, as the Nazis consolidated control over Germany, the U.S. media baron William Randolph Hearst began touting the slogan “America First” against President Franklin Roosevelt, whom he saw as dangerously likely to “allow the international bankers and the other big influences that have gambled with your prosperity to gamble with your politics.” Hearst regarded Roosevelt’s New Deal as “un-American to the core” and “more communistic than the communists” — unlike Nazism, which he believed had won a great victory for “liberty-loving people” everywhere in defeating communism.

With the beginning of World War II in Europe and the Germans’ swift conquest of the continent, Roosevelt began to commit his administration more firmly to the aid of the those fighting Nazism. He incurred the ire of various anti-intervention constituencies, ranging from committed religious or principled pacifists to American communists, who supported the Nazi-Soviet pact and therefore the notion that the United States should stay out of the European war.

[Donald Trump is America’s Silvio Berlusconi]

But the most prominent of his opponents were the founders of the America First Committee, formed in September 1940. The committee opposed fighting Nazism and proposed a well-armed America confined largely to the Western hemisphere. It soon afterward adopted the noted aviator and enthusiast of fascism, Charles Lindbergh, as their favored speaker. Lindbergh accepted a medal from Herman Goering “in the name of the Fuehrer” during a visit to Germany in 1938, and “proudly wore the decoration.” He thought democracy was finished in Europe, that the western powers could not effectively resist the Nazi war machine and that the United States had better make terms with Adolf Hitler.

Lindbergh wasn’t against wars per se; he could support fighting if it came to “a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion.” His definition of the white race apparently had little room for Jewish people, about whom he thought Hitler had a point: “We are all disturbed about the effect of the Jewish influence in our press, radio, and motion pictures,” Lindbergh believed, though he allowed the country could benefit from “a few Jews of the right type” — just as Trump would presumably allow Muslims who could pass a perfect and proper screen.

The famed automaker and celebrity anti-Semite Henry Ford also joined America First. Like many others, they fought against the “groups” who, Lindbergh said, were pushing the country into war: “the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.”

As with the Trump campaign, not all America First Committee supporters in 1940 were so egregious as their most visible spokesmen. But also as with the Trump campaign, neither did the moderate anti-Roosevelt anti-interventionists quite repudiate their fascist-friendly leaders.

The subsidiary labels may have shifted, but the general idea of “America First” remains the same: The United States should arm itself against foreign threats and stay within carefully defined borders, using the might of the state only to defend a very specific, rather white idea of “America” that excludes certain racial and religious minorities. Then, as now, the phrase offered strength through cowardice. Defeating this defeatism was essential to victory over dictatorships in the 20th century, and it is essential to preserving the institutions of democracy today.