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by JackRiddler » Sun Oct 20, 2019 12:05 pm
“Personas were adopted by the test group throughout identifying as: Jewish, to push an anti-Zionist narrative, African American, to support hate speech by the group, Incel (Involuntary Celibate), to glorify mass shooting violence, rape culture and misogyny, Progressive Satirists, to mask neo-Nazi dog whistles, neo Confederates, to mask racism with patriotism,”
by American Dream » Sun Oct 20, 2019 3:05 pm
by MacCruiskeen » Sun Oct 20, 2019 3:15 pm
JackRiddler » Sun Oct 20, 2019 11:05 am wrote:“Personas were adopted by the test group throughout identifying as: Jewish, to push an anti-Zionist narrative, African American, to support hate speech by the group, Incel (Involuntary Celibate), to glorify mass shooting violence, rape culture and misogyny, Progressive Satirists, to mask neo-Nazi dog whistles, neo Confederates, to mask racism with patriotism,”
They missed a big one: What about anarchist, to push a pro-imperialist State Department line? I see that one everywhere.
by American Dream » Sun Oct 20, 2019 10:58 pm
15 December 2016
Schadenfreude with Bite
Richard Seymour
Despite innumerable cases of devastating harassment of individuals by newspapers over the years, the internet is now commonly blamed for liberating previously repressed aggression. ‘Below-the-line’ comment has become a by-word for viciousness, seen not as a by-product of the media content on which it feeds, but as the dark side of online democratisation. New media are also taken to share the blame for the breakdown of the governing consensus in Europe and the US. The success of Donald Trump and his ‘post-truth politics’ is seen as, among other things, an effect of the collapse of editorial standards as old ideological monopolies break up and people seek information and opinion from sources that pander to their prejudices. In this climate, the argument goes, political discourse is shaped by appeals to sentiment, not facts. Trolling can then be seen as just one more way in which reasoned debate is sabotaged. If anything unites trolls, cyber-sexists and conspiracy theorists, it is that they are out to derail the conversation, either for laughs, to shut women up, or to impose their own obsessions. It is not that trolls are necessarily right-wing; often they aren’t, though the right is increasingly trollish. Trump himself often gave the impression that he was trying to see what he could get away with saying for the lulz, whether it was claiming that tax avoidance just made him smart, or stating that his plan to profit from foreclosures was ‘the kind of thinking our country needs’, or denouncing the mothers of dead soldiers. As one of his high-profile alt-right supporters told the Guardian, ‘We’re the troll army! We’re here to win! We’re savage!’
*
There is reason to think that the far right is the political tendency that stands to gain most from the demolition of the truth. Phillips describes the symbiotic relationship between Fox News and internet trolls: Fox stokes the moral panic while at the same time supplying the cultural agar on which the trolls thrive. The radical right has always been acutely sensitive to the conative part of communication, the aspect that makes people act. Trolling, as a form of communication whose primary goal is manipulation, the power of the troll over the trolled, is ideally suited to such a strategy.
In this respect, Twitter’s decision in July to ban one of its most notorious users for racially abusive tweets could turn out to have been a first step, symbolically significant if ineffectual, in stemming the tide. The user was the young alt-right columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, a regular guest on news programmes on account of his carefully marketed controversialising. He was banned for spearheading a campaign of racist abuse aimed at the actor Leslie Jones, who starred as the only black member of the all-woman team in the remake of Ghostbusters. Twitter’s former CEO, Dick Costolo, admitted that the company’s failure to combat bullying on its platform was part of the reason for the decline in the number of its users and, consequently, in its share value: ‘We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years.’
Yiannopoulos is a typical product and exemplar of the alt-right: self-consciously both a troll and an ideologue. His reaction to being banned was to bristle, with ill-concealed delight, at the ‘emotional children of the left’ and their inability to cope with remarks they find disagreeable. ‘All I did,’ he told Business Insider, ‘was crack a few jokes.’ He has continued this patter since Trump’s victory, inviting Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News to ‘hear the humour’ in his suggestion that women be allowed onto ‘the men’s internet’ only if they agree to new rules. This cultivated ambiguity, the hedging of a serious political agenda with statements ostensibly made just for the lulz, is where trolling fits into the psychic and political economy of the alt-right. Breitbart, Yiannopoulos’s regular outlet, is effectively an outpost of the Trump administration: Stephen Bannon, the chair of Breitbart News, was signed up to the campaign the day after the former Fox executive Roger Ailes became a Trump adviser, and will be the new president’s ‘chief strategist’.
Breitbart’s two best-known scoops are a sting against the liberal civil society organisation, Acorn, in 2009 and the framing of Shirley Sherrod, an African-American employee of the Department of Agriculture, in 2010. In both cases, Breitbart manipulated footage – in the first, of secret recordings made by undercover reporters of interactions with Acorn’s employees; in the second, of a speech Sherrod gave to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – so as to create the impression that black people were the enemies of white society. Acorn lost its funding and filed for liquidation a year later; Sherrod was fired and castigated by government officials and NAACP alike, until it became clear that they had been tricked. The White House then apologised and the secretary of agriculture offered her a new job. The conservative activists responsible for the Acorn story claimed the organisation inhabited a ‘revolutionary, socialistic, atheistic world, where all means are justifiable’, thereby licensing their own behaviour in turn. Andrew Breitbart claimed that Sherrod’s ‘racist’ speech showed the NAACP had no right to judge Tea Partiers as racist, and indeed was ‘a perfect rationalisation for why the Tea Party needs to exist’.
This capacity – this desire – to play both troll and witch-hunter is part of the affective basis for Trumpism. And Trump is the grandest troll of all: a huge, pachydermic stirrer, as cheerfully and swaggeringly amoral as Berlusconi. Like most trolls, he understands his target, constantly zeroing in on liberals’ bad conscience. During the presidential debates with Hillary Clinton, he defended his deportation policy by pointing out – as no other Republican candidate would – that Obama had deported more people than any other president, more than 2.5 million people. Saying things that are not usually said openly is part of the transgressive thrill of Trumpism. This is what the critique of ‘post-truth politics’ misses. Even when he lies egregiously, Trump’s fans think he is demonstrating an important truth in exposing media fakery. The alt-right, meanwhile, sees in Trumpism the basis for a new insurgent white nationalism, one that will victimise the exploitable – anyone who is not a conservative, white, affluent male – with detached delight. They are preparing for power, but their expression says: ‘Why so serious?’
by American Dream » Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:12 pm
by American Dream » Sun Oct 27, 2019 8:24 am
How Social Media Companies Enable the Far Right
By Mathew Foresta
The far-right is as active as ever on social media and host companies have been gallingly slow to respond. This negligence reveals their complicity.
“I would say probably YouTube has been the least responsive in terms of getting rid of the stuff,” said journalist David Neiwert, author of “Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.” He singled out the comments sections as particularly troublesome.
Other experts pointed out certain users of the video sharing site as being especially problematic.
“Why in the world is Red Ice TV still on YouTube,“ said Air Force veteran Daryle Lamont Jenkins, Executive Director of the anti-racist group One People’s Project.
The Sweden based Red Ice is operated by the married team of Henrik Palmgren and Lana Lokteff. The racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and fascistic operation currently boasts over 334 thousand subscribers on the site. It evolved from its beginning as a peddler of conspiracy nonsense to the major platform for bigotry it is today. So major in fact that that Congressman Steve King retweeted Lokteff in September 2018.
Lokteff, Palmgren, and Red Ice itself all have active Twitter accounts. This despite the fact that Twitter’s policy prohibiting hateful conduct would clearly apply to them.
Lokteff’s tweets are full on white supremacist. In one she tweeted a picture of a baby wearing a onesie with the 14 words on the front. For those not in the know this is a white supremacist motto coined by David Lane. He was a member of the terrorist group The Order which committed a number of robberies and murdered talk show host Alan Berg in the 1980’s. Many of Lokteff’s tweets dog whistle at Holocaust denial, promote anti-immigrant and homophobic song lyrics, and perpetuate the false white genocide conspiracy theory.
Likewise the Twitter account for Red Ice itself pushes the white genocide conspiracy. Palmgren’s account is no better. In addition to putting up Holocaust denial dog whistles he liberally uses vile, homophobic slurs and refers to black people as “apes.” In one post he writes in reference to a picture of a license plate “’Goy 88’ Thank you Ohio.” This is a quip that would be well understood by those versed in far-right lingo. The 88 refers to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H. 88 is then HH, code for “heil Hitler.” “Goy” is “the Hebrew and Yiddish term used for non-Jews. Alt-right and far-right adherents often ironically use the word “goy” to refer to themselves and other non-Jews.“
Like Twitter YouTube has a policy against “content promoting violence or hatred,” against many things including “immigration status,” “race,” “sexual orientation,” and “religion.” Red Ice’s content flies in the face of this policy.
Several of their videos feature an interview with anti-Semitic academic Kevin MacDonald, including one decrying “the Democratic party and their strategy of using immigration and demographic replacement-as a political weapon.” In a video where Lokteff says “Red Ice has been instrumental in promoting alt-right thought,” she assails a journalist (who I will not name here to prevent them from being subjected to harassment) that wrote an article critical of her. Making sure to point out that they’re Jewish, images of their Twitter account float past as she speaks. In my opinion a clear, if underhanded, signal for Red Ice’s followers to go forth and harass. Later in the video we see “Le Happy Merchant,” an anti-Semitic, stereotypical meme caricature of a Jewish man, in the background.
“No one can replace you unless you let them,” Lokteff says in another video. This “replacement” theory is widely held on the far-right and is closely linked with that of “white genocide” which the video also nods at. It inspired mass shooters in Pittsburg, El Paso, Christchurch, and Poway. One can hear the echoes of the “Jews will not replace us,” chants at Charlottesville in Lokteff’s rhetoric.
In one Red Ice video Palmgren hypes the infamous “Unite The Right” rally that brought horror and mayhem to the Virginia town. At this event white supremacists, armed to the teeth with everything from melee weapons to firearms, rioted, nearly beat black man DeAndre Harris to death, and killed Heather Heyer while wounding many more in a terrorist attack.
This social media activity has not been going on in the shadows. A September 2018 article by The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer shown a light on Red Ice’s hateful activities.
A few days before Sommer’s piece came out journalist Talia Lavin wrote a viral Twitter thread exposing hateful YouTube content including Red Ice. She tagged in YouTube’s account, so it’s hard to imagine this went unnoticed, since the thread got thousands of likes and retweets.
Emails to Red Ice requesting comment for this story were not returned.
James Allsup wearing a “Fash the Nation” shirt on his now deleted Instagram account. “Fash The Nation” is a fascist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist podcast.
Another far-right figure who until very recently amassed a huge social media following is James Allsup. His recently deleted YouTube channel, which he admits was the crown jewel of his internet presence, had over 450 thousand subscribers. His average video appeared to get tens of thousands of hits, but some have gotten millions.
His channel promoted a range of far-right positions. Much like Red Ice in one video he spoke approvingly of a New York Times Ross Douthat column where he says that it is “all too true” that there is “a fantasy of replacement.”
Allsup has myriad far-right associations. He has appeared on Red Ice (where he lauded the “you will not replace us” chant used at Charlottesville), gave a speech to the racist American Renaissance Conference, and has been involved with fascist group American Identity Movement (formerly known as Identity Evropa). He claims that while he has not officially left, he is not currently active in the group.
Allsup first appeared on many people’s radars after the events in Charlottesville. While he told me he was there in the capacity of a journalist, the evidence shows he was an enthusiastic supporter of the event’s far-right goals and activities. In a video of the day’s happenings he can be seen marching with the racist demonstrators, Confederate and Pepe The Frog flags surrounding him. It later shows them pushing through counter-demonstrators.
In one exchange a comrade of Allsup’s discusses taking black Charlottesville politician Wes Bellamy’s house in a lawsuit. Allsup responds by snickering about turning it into “the fash house, fash mansion.”
“Fash” here refers to fascist. Later in the video he can be seen going up to Richard Spencer’s car and thanking him. All the while he marches seemingly fine with the Nazi flags in his midst.
In a video from a few years ago Allsup can be seen wearing a Trump shirt and a red “Make America Great Again” hat. He says that his support for Trump has waned because he believes he is to permissive about legal immigration. In my estimation the idea that Trump has been permissive about immigration is bizarre. Much to my outrage he has clearly been no friend to immigrants either documented or undocumented.
Allsup told me he wasn’t sure if he would vote for Trump, although he did say “there is still value to be extracted from his Presidency, hopefully.” He even expressed some enthusiasm for the more fringe democratic candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Tim Ryan.
“They nominate Tulsi I might be tempted,” he said.
Allsup’s support for Trump is not surprising. Trump’s appeal to white nationalists has been known for years.
by MacCruiskeen » Sun Oct 27, 2019 10:16 am
by Harvey » Sun Oct 27, 2019 1:10 pm
by American Dream » Thu Oct 31, 2019 9:54 am
Capital Offenses
Brendan O’Connor, October 30
Mods!
Contra Antisocial, gatekeepers won’t save us
Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation by Andrew Marantz. Viking, 400 pages.
AT THE CLIMAX of Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, having been taken on a journey by New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz through several circles of digital hell, meeting a cavalcade of increasingly horrible entrepreneurs and propagandists along the way, the prose style suddenly shifts, and the reader is introduced to a pseudonymous woman, Samantha. The book’s penultimate chapter follows Samantha’s descent into organized white supremacy, from her initial disgust at learning that her then-boyfriend identified as a fascist, to her subsequent curiosity about what this could mean, to her forays into the online world of the so-called alt-right. Eventually, she becomes an organizer and recruiter for the clean-cut “identitarians” of Identity Evropa, recently rebranded as the American Identity Movement.
Unlike in most of the book, Marantz is absent as a first-person narrator throughout this extended passage, which includes a party held following a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—not the August 12, 2017, rally at which Heather Heyer was killed, but another one held a few months earlier. Samantha finds herself flirting with Richard Spencer, noting the adulation with which the young men around them speak of his work. “Do you get off on the fact that these kids treat you like a god?” she asks him. Later, some of these budding fascists get riled up and start greeting each other and Spencer with Nazi salutes, yelling “Sieg!” and “Heil!” back and forth in a terrifying call-and-response. “Richard, from across the room, looked straight at Samantha and raised one eyebrow,” Marantz writes. “He didn’t have to do more than that. His meaning was unambiguous: So? You’re too good to do it, too?” And then she does. “Her arm went up. She did it. God help her, she did it.”
by American Dream » Thu Oct 31, 2019 1:55 pm
by American Dream » Tue Nov 05, 2019 11:28 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFUz2M5-QzA
The Twittering Machine VII: We Are All Scripturient
If life is defined by what we attend to, then an attention economy converts life into raw material for extraction. The economic model for this extraction is addiction. Addictions work, almost behind our backs, through a thousand small decisions. What began as diversion comes to have veto power over all other hopes, loves, passions. So we find ourselves writing more than ever before in human history, at work, during our toilet breaks, in commutes, at dinners and dates, before bed and as soon as we wake up. We are scripturient, possessed by a violent desire to write. We must reclaim that passion from the social industry. We must, like the Luddites, free ourselves from the machine.
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