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magnetictapedatastorage · 3 years

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Americans have been saying for a year they want to get back to normal. Tragically, they're getting their wish.

With the gradual return to public places comes a specter the country was all too willing to set aside as it grappled with a pandemic capable of killing thousands of Americans a day. Mass shootings are starting to make headlines again, and though their return is most unwelcome, they've proved to be an inextricable part of life in the United States.

The latest mass killing left 10 dead at a grocery store. For the past 12 months, Americans have been vigilant in grocery stores to avoid contagion. Monday's slayings in Boulder, Colorado, reminded them that even with pandemic hope on the horizon, they should remain vigilant for a different reason.

This is a hard thing to read, but important. Full text under the cut.

CNN | 3/24/2021 | Listen Analysis: Mass shootings signal a dubious 'back to normal' in America Analysis By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN

Updated: Wed, 24 Mar 2021 00:21:23 GMT

Source: CNN

Americans have been saying for a year they want to get back to normal. Tragically, they're getting their wish.

Americans shouldn't have to fret about dying in a supermarket, or at a spa, or anywhere for that matter. Catching a bullet should be far from their minds, but with a return to American normalcy comes the reality that anyone could die for nothing, just about everywhere.

Seven mass shootings in seven days

Just as the country is conquering a new pandemic, an old, familiar epidemic makes its return. The last week has been a harbinger of what "back to normal" means for the US.

The most recent string of senseless gun violence began March 16 when a shooter killed eight people at three Atlanta spas. The next day, a drive-by in Stockton, California, injured five people who'd gathered for a vigil.

Four people were hospitalized Thursday after a shooting in Gresham, Oregon. On Saturday, a pair of shootings at clubs in Dallas and Houston left a young woman dead and 12 people injured. Shortly thereafter, a shooter opened fire at what Philadelphia police termed an illegal party, killing one man and injuring five more.

Now, Boulder makes seven in seven days. When the gunfire at King Soopers stopped, 10 lay dead, including hero officer Eric Talley, the first policeman on the scene. His wife and seven children will pay an astronomical debt for their dad's bravery.

"Flags that have barely been raised back to full mast after the tragic shooting in Atlanta that claimed eight lives and now the tragedy here, close to home, at a grocery store that could be any of our neighborhood grocery stores," Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Tuesday.

The King Soopers location where the melee unfolded is one of about 1,000 providers in Colorado working to repel the killer Covid-19.

Steven McHugh's son-in-law had queued for a dose of vaccine, like more than a million other Coloradoans. He was third in line, and his daughters chatted with their grandmother on the phone as he waited, McHugh said.

When the gunfire erupted, a bullet found its way to the woman at the front of the line. Her fate is unclear, as is much about Monday's shooting. Authorities haven't divulged a motive, but history tells us it won't make sense.

McHugh's son-in-law fled with the girls -- one in seventh grade, the other in eighth -- to an upstairs staffing area above the pharmacy and hid in a closet. Dozens more shots rang out, McHugh said, citing his son-in-law.

It was "extraordinarily terrifying," the grandfather told CNN, "and of course the little one's saying, 'The coats weren't long enough to hide our feet,' as they were standing behind the coats in the closet."

'A normal we can no longer afford'

The US government doesn't have a centralized database to track mass shootings, but anecdotal accounts indicate they were down during the pandemic as Americans were encouraged to stay home and many of their favorite gathering places were shut down.

Former President Barack Obama called for action Tuesday, expressing disbelief that only Covid-19 could quell the gun violence the country has long endured.

"A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country," he said. "We shouldn't have to choose between one type of tragedy and another. It's time for leaders everywhere to listen to the American people when they say enough is enough -- because this is a normal we can no longer afford."

For the mass shootings that did unfold amid the pandemic, their locations were frighteningly familiar: a Buffalo, Minnesota, health clinic; a bowling alley in Rockford, Illinois; a Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, mall; parties in Rochester, New York, and Washington, DC; and a brewery in Milwaukee where, authorities would learn later, the gunman had been employed.

Gun violence is not a uniquely American phenomenon, but part of the rich American tapestry are threads of evil and violence: people (almost always men) who use weapons (often firearms) to snuff out innocents. Sometimes they're mentally ill, but more often they're just angry or vicious.

Their reasoning -- when it's attainable -- fails to provide closure. Outrage invariably erupts after each massacre. One side demands stronger gun laws. They're labeled un-American. Their opponents tout the Second Amendment. They're labeled callous. A stalemate ensues until the next killing, then repeat.

Within an hour of the Boulder killings, the National Rifle Association tweeted the Second Amendment. It later retweeted it. Nothing more.

It should surprise no one that a special interest group champions the Second Amendment. The amendment is a promise to every American, but 15 years prior to its ratification, the Declaration of Independence brought other promises of rights deemed "unalienable."

The full guarantees of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" will never be achieved by Officer Talley, Tralona Bartkowiak, Suzanne Fountain, Teri Leiker, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray, Rikki Olds, Neven Stanisic, Denny Strong, Jody Waters -- or any of the thousands of victims who fell before Monday in Boulder.

'Part of the American experience'

In all likelihood, another person died by a gun while you were reading this. Despite the media's breathless focus on mass shootings, gun violence takes myriad and frequent forms.

According to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the country saw 14,414 homicides in 2019 -- about one every 36 minutes -- while another 23,941 souls fatally turned guns on themselves -- roughly once every 22 minutes.

In his statement, Obama called out other scapegoats: disaffection, misogyny, hate. The United States has monopolies on none of these, though it has special brands that can be pernicious.

Sandy Phillips, who co-founded the organization Survivors Empowered to console and guide survivors of gun violence, pointed to the victims who suffer in silence, because the killings of their loved ones are seemingly not important enough for the newspapers or the nightly news.

Doubt her? Google the details about last week's shooting in Stockton, California, one of the most racially diverse cities in the nation.

"We have mass shootings in slow motion every day in this country, in other neighborhoods that never get the press, that never get the opportunity to speak out about what's happening in their communities -- and we need to change that," Phillips, who lost her 24-year-old daughter Jessica Ghawi in 2012 to gun violence in Aurora, Colorado, told CNN.

Those neighborhoods often belong to minorities, who have had a particularly rough time of the pandemic as well. It's another crushing American axiom that society's ills tend to home in on people of color, and those victims must yell so much louder to be heard.

There will be much yelling in coming days, perhaps weeks. Obama is right when he said Americans possess the ability to "make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war. We can overcome opposition by cowardly politicians and the pressure of a gun lobby that opposes any limit on the ability of anyone to assemble an arsenal."

The margins are thin, though, and the complexity of that American tapestry will be on display. A Gallup poll from late last year showed 42% of Americans had guns in their homes, a number that's risen since 2019. Another Gallup query indicated 57% of Americans want stricter gun laws, a percentage that's on the decline.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said "absolutely nothing" will stop the country's return to pre-pandemic mass violence if lawmakers refuse to curb access to the weaponry.

"This has become part of the American experience, and let's not forget: It's completely unique to us," he told CNN. "There's not another similar country on Earth that experiences the same number, the frequency of mass shootings as we do, and it is directly attributable to the profusion and the availability of guns, particularly high-powered assault-style weapons and how easily pretty much anyone can acquire them here in this country."

#cnn gun violence

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committing-word-crimes · 4 years

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Racism - How does it happen and what can we do against it?

“I can’t breathe” - A black man is being held down aggressively and choked to death by a police officer. He is begging, calling out for his mother, telling the officer: “I can’t breathe”, over and over “I can’t breathe.”

The incident was filmed. I am sure, everyone reading this has already seen, at least parts of the video. It was a wake up call, a call to protests and riots, a call to a revolution in many countries, people mourning the death of George Floyd.

Sadly this is not a one in a lifetime thing. That act resulted from deeply ingrained racism, that is not only present in America, but almost all over the world. A stigma held up against people of colour. The question is, why is this the case?

It all starts with the human principle of saving cognitive resources. To make thinking easier, we like to put everything into groups, we like to think in boxes, it’s convenient and less complex for the mind. We see a fork, a spoon, a knife, and think: “cutlery”. We look at trees, flowers and grass and think: “plants”. It is human to group things. But we don’t only group the world around us, we even group ourselves.

So this is what happens: when people see a common trait, they group everyone who has that trait together. This means, a white person will see themself in the group of “white people” and a back person will see themself in the group of “black people”. But not only do we group ourselves, we also we deem these groups our “Social identity”, it is part of our self-concept. In our mind we have now created ingroups and outgroups. We are part of the ingroup, the people different from us, are part of the outgroup.

Creating groups in itself is not problematic yet, what starts to be problematic, is a favorization of the ingroup, which, if there is an identification with the ingroup, will come naturally.

An experiment was conducted, where college-students were asked a few questions, and were then grouped in “People who prefer Klee-Paintings” and “People who prefer Kandinsky-Paintings”. These are called “Minimal-groups”, they are purely cognitive. The ingroup members didn’t know each other, neither did they know the members of the outgroup. Still, the people preferred their own group. The students were given a task, where they had to choose how they would distribute certain amounts of money, to members of the ingroup and members of the outgroup. The students didn’t only favorize their own group, when it came to money distribution, they even chose the distribution, so that the difference between the amounts would be the biggest. For example: if they had the choice to give the ingroup 10$ and the outgroup 10$ or to give the ingroup 8$ and the outgroup 4$, they would have chosen the latter.

This happens in our daily lives as well, whether consciously or subconsciously, we prefer our ingroup, the one we identify ourselves the most with.

If a strong identification with the ingroup is given, motivational driven group comparisons start. People want the Ingroup to be superior, to raise their own self-esteem. If the comparison seems insufficient, the ingroup doesn’t live up the the standards there are a few possibilities on what an ingroup member could do:

First, they could leave their group.

Second, they could compete with the outgroup.

Third, they could change the comparison factor or change the outgroup they are comparing the ingroup with.

Or fourth, the worst scenario, they could actively hurt and put the outgroup down. During these comparisons, the individual identity of a person loses its importance and a groups prototype becomes more and more salient.

And during the comparison prejudice can be used to benefit the ingroup. Stereotypes are activated, and different types of discrimination are prevalent.

One type would be the creation of symbolic equality, which means giving a sense of equality while the outgroup is still neglected and ripped off some opportunities. Another would be reversed discrimination, by treating the outgroup a little better than the ingroup to keep a good image. And the last way would be blatant racial discrimination, just hate and neglect, basically what is happening between the police and black people in america.

A simulation study showed that police officers, no matter their gender or skin color tended to shoot at black people more often, even if they portrayed the same behavior as white people.

This implicates, that not only in- and outgroup comparisons are the problem, but maybe also personality traits.

Patriotism is a very strong trait found in America, and right winged autoriatism is predominant. Many people hold strongly onto social convention and subject to the states authorities. These people are generally more prone for prejudice against anything that is different.

Another trait would be the social-dominance-orientation, there is a wish for group hierarchy. People with this way of thinking want their group to have a fixed position in the organization of society, they look down on “lower status” or “concurrence” groups. An example statement for concurrence would be “The immigrants are stealing our jobs”, an example for Lower-class-thinking would be the grouping of all people of color as “thugs”. Now what is important to note, is that even with these traits, the prejudice itself comes from norms and social context - it is learned rather than a natural cognitive occurrence.

The question that still stands is: How can we lose these prejudices?

One way would be Individualisation. The way people look at “black” and “white” as homogenous masses makes them more prone for stereotypes and prejudice. Rather focus on individuals, humanize the masses by humanizing single members. This is why the video of George Floyd created such an uproar. By seeing his face, hearing his voice, witnessing his struggle, many people found themselves empathizing and humanizing with a victim of police brutality, rather than just mindlessly hearing a name or reading an article. When people put themselves in the shoes of someone else the social prototypes are less salient.

Another way to combat prejudice would be recategorization. Rather than looking at “black” and “white” One could start looking at “Doctors” or “Teachers” or “Electricians” or “Architects” - regrouping can help invalidating stereotypes.

The most important thing one could do is communicate. Open communication with outgroup members can lead to individualization and understanding. Finding common goals, the realization of being the same status and of no intended concurrence can lead to a creation of a new “we”, instead of “us” and “them”. People in high positions, authorities need to actively show that the groups are not too different and that the members are able to easily communicate.

A more straightforward way of fixing prejudicial thoughts, if individuals find themselves struggling with them, is the “Just say no”- principle. Some prejudicial thoughts come unprepared, instinctively. It is important to realize them and internally say “no”. On the other hand, when you find yourself surprised at something, at a broken stereotype, internally say “yes”. An experiment shows, that participants who followed these instructions for a few weeks showed less instinctive stereotyping.

In the end I want to talk about why I chose the phrase “Eat the racists” instead of something else (Stop the racists, fuck the racists, you name it). It is because I solemnly believe that people's attitude can be changed. I remember playing the game “snake” on my old nokia phone. It was about a small snake that had to eat the dots on the screen, and with every dot, it grew bigger. This is what I am picturing when I say “Eat the racists”. Eat them, and let them become part of our snake. I hope that makes sense? If it doesn’t, I’m sorry. I still hope you found this little essay informative (even though there are so many more things one could say about this topic - and trust me, it burned me to not write more, but this text is far too long already). And I want to thank you for reading all of this. I hope together we can make the world a little more inclusive.

#racism #anti racism #black and white #blacklivesmatter #blm #black lives movement #black lives matter #black lives fucking matter #i couldn't say it more clearly #psychology #social psychology #society

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sarahlwlee · 3 years

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Why do I cook?

I love cooking because it satisfies the following curiosities of mine:

The intellectual pursuit of science, history and art through a recipe and the act of cooking,

The basic need to nurture the soul and feed hungry bellies, mine and my husband’s, and;

The connection to my past and my family.

Since the pandemic began, I have been cooking food I miss from my home country, Malaysia. The desire for connection to family and friends from my past has weighed on me heavily as sheltering at home for the sake of public health safety takes its toll. At the same time, anti-Asian violence began to escalate mainly driven by racist narratives and further perpetuated by systemic racism. I don’t need to explain this part, there are plenty of resources on Google about anti-Asian violence and the history of racism if you need it.

When I heard about the news about an elderly Thai man being fatally assaulted in San Francisco, my heart sank and I started to cry. As I read the news, I said to myself, “he’s close to my father’s age and he looks like my dad if he were still alive and lived a better quality of life.” My father passed away during the pandemic in May 2020 (I wrote about this experience in my 31 Stories in 31 Days series for AAPI Heritage Month in May 2020, you can read the full recollection here). All the feelings of grief and loss came rushing back to me as I sobbed over the loss of this man’s life.

In the last few weeks, the mass shooting of Asian women in Atlanta broke my heart. The women’s ages were my mother and sister’s age as well as my good friends I grew up with. I was at a loss for words with so many thoughts in my head — struggling with my own experiences as a Chinese Malaysian woman and managing my anger over these continued acts of anti-Asian violence and racism. I cried and sobbed throughout my work days navigating feelings I pushed down so that I could be productive.

The media cycle reported heavily on this mass shooting. Spurs of dialogue on social media around not only anti-Asian violence but that the shooter had “a bad day” and his motives were not racially driven became a source of pain for many including myself. Defining what was a racially motivated hate crime and what wasn’t, it felt like being gaslighted. Not only this one time, but every time before — in this country’s history and even in my own lived experience.

I had been researching and reading about gaslighting for a while because I wanted to understand my own response to personal trauma. I came across a short TikTok video created by @risethriverepeat from a Facebook friend that highlighted a kernel of truth I had never known. The individual in the video said, “Overexplaining can be a trauma-based response to being gaslit in childhood. When I figured that out, I worked to stop doing so. If I already told the truth and was clear, there’s nothing else to say… then overexplaining leads to distortion.” A light bulb moment occurred to me and everything started to fall into place about how I became wired the way I am, especially hazy moments where I had to tell myself a different story so that I could make sense of what was happening to me. I spent a lot of time overexplaining in my lifetime. I can’t even remember when it started but there were some formative memories of having to accept something that wasn’t true.

When I was about 10 years old, I was part of a group of students who competed in a inter-school choral speaking competition (I wrote about this experience in my 31 Stories in 31 Days series for AAPI Heritage Month in May 2020, you can read the full recollection here). The short version of this story is we found the judges scoring sheets by accident. Our school should have won first place by default because we scored the highest points out of all the schools. Yet we were second. When our teachers and parents confronted the organizers, the teachers were taken away from the parents and students to talk about this. When the teachers returned to explain, they looked disappointed and said to both the parents and students that we lost and the decision was final.

The key thing here is the queen’s granddaughter was in the group that won. Basically the implication was that the results were fixed in her favor. This was a form of gaslighting at a systemic and cultural level. When I reflect back on various times where I second guessed myself, I realized many of those moments were gaslit moments where someone told me I “imagined it” or “you’re telling lies” or even worse “it didn’t happen”.

In this particular story about the choral competition, I am glad I had some resolve where my mom told me what happened. It was the only way I could process it but it also formed new behaviors in me to always rewrite narratives in my head to make myself okay with it and also overcompensate for areas where I felt no one would believe me, even when I was telling the truth. I had many more formative moments in my youth, even through adulthood, where I had to comply with believing something that wasn’t true for fear of retaliation and isolation; it was survival for me.

With this memory and the recent mass shooting, all the feelings of grief and loss from last year came rushing back once again with the pain of not being believed. Truly, what I needed to do in this moment was to process, grieve and heal so that I could re-align my internal compass with the recognition of what I believe to be true.

I read stories from other Asian women, talked to my mother, posted resources from Asians as well as Asian organizations in America, and spent time processing in spurts with others who would listen. Each of these actions helped me slowly embrace healing. The one part about healing I never enjoyed personally was remembering who and what we had lost. I felt like I didn’t have the capacity to hold it or that I didn’t have the courage to keep moving forward to not live in fear.

Keeping a memory alive of a loved one or of a moment time is how we make peace with ourselves, fill the cracks of our broken heart, and mending it back together so that our heart may beat again. So that we can be strengthened by our ancestors — our joy and love from rich cultural traditions passed from one generation to another. It’s inherent to our identity and how we continue to live authentically as we are. At least from what I have been told.

So why do I cook?

Cooking recipes that remind me of my dad, family, friends and moments in time of joy and love, helps me find peace and healing through action. It helps me bridge a lost connection; it fills my soul and mends my broken heart.

Last weekend, I made butter kaya toast. It is popular in Malaysia and one of the many local favorite childhood breakfast or treat. Kaya is a unique jam or spread made from pandan leaves, coconut milk, eggs and sugar. Combined and cooked down gently to a thick spreadable jam. Some have translated this in English as coconut jam or something decadent like coconut caramel. These translations don’t do justice for this unique spread. The forward flavor isn’t coconut, but rather the pandan essence. When combined with coconut milk, it becomes a rich unique flavor. Interesting fact, when you translate the word “kaya” from Malay to English directly, it means “rich”.

My mom and dad used to take me to these open-air coffee shops near where we lived in Sri Petaling and OUG (Overseas Union Garden) for breakfast or brunch. Since my palate at the time was a little picky, they would order this Hainanese breakfast meal for me comprised of kaya on two thin slices of toasted white bread with slivers of cold butter in between, two soft boiled eggs with soy sauce and white pepper to season, and a hot cup of Milo. Sometimes the alternate to kaya was just white sugar, which was also equally delicious but not in the same way how kaya satisfied my sweet tooth as a child.

Sometimes my dad or my mom would tell me stories about their childhood through food. Where they were when they first had it, who they shared kaya with or even where the best kaya they ever tasted came from. This often inspired my dad to buy little cylindrical plastic containers of kaya from local vendors on his way home from work. I remember his face lit up when he would tell everyone at home that he had bought kaya. When he made kaya toast for himself at home, he would always ask me if I wanted one. Whether I wanted one or not, he always made an extra one that he ate or shared.

This childhood memory became much more vivid with every bite of the kaya toast I made recently. It helped me feel closer to my dad even though I know he is no longer here on earth and that he is in Heaven. The act of eating and remembering gave me space to nourish not only my stomach, but also my soul and to feel whole again. I will continue to cook and relish memories of the past. The feelings of warmth, love and joy will always stay with me and be my source of healing whenever I need it.

I will always remember and keep working on myself.

If you would like to read more stories about my lived experiences as a Chinese Malaysian immigrant living in America, check out “31 Stories” project I did in celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander month in May 2020.

#aapi #stopasianhate #healing #grieving #reflection #cooking #joy #gaslighting #self care #self awareness #racism

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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8chan, Trump, voter suppression: how white supremacy went mainstream in the US

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/11/el-paso-shooting-white-supremacy-8chan-voter-suppression?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Post_to_Tumblr

"In many ways, the Republican party has been preparing for minority rule for years now. The anxiety that drove the shooter in El Paso, as well as every other white supremacist mass shooter in recent years, has motivated Republican politicians to steadily demonize and disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. The problem long predates Donald Trump, but he’s given taken both the mask and the leash off of it."

8chan, Trump, Voter Suppression: How White Supremacy Went Mainstream In The US

The same anxiety that drives white supremacists has motivated Republicans to disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them

By Luke Darby | Published:02:00 Sun August 11, 2019 | The Guardian | Posted August 11, 2019 7:54 PM ET |

Before he opened fire on an El Paso, Texas shopping center, killing 22 people and injuring dozens more, the accused gunman, Patrick Crusius, allegedly posted a manifesto online explicitly stating his motivation: he was trying to stop a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”. In April, another shooter attacked a synagogue in Poway, California, killing one woman and wounding three other people. In his a “manifesto” attributed to him, he claimed he was responding to the “meticulously planned genocide of the European race”.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 2018, still another shooter attacked a synagogue that he chose deliberately because the congregation helped with refugee relocation. He wrote online that they were trying to “bring invaders in that kill our people”. The man who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year, called immigration an “assault on the European people”..

All of these shooters were obsessed with the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, sometimes referred to as “white genocide”. It’s the idea that shadowy elites – usually Jewish, almost always liberal – are orchestrating the destruction of white culture through demographic change. The theory goes that white culture will be eroded mainly through migration and birthrates: more people of color are arriving in majority white counties, the ones already there are having more and more babies, and birthrates are declining for the soon-to-be-oppressed white people.

But the fans of this theory, and the idea of a demographic threat to a white (male) hierarchical structure, are no longer the preserve of extremists that lurk in the netherworlds of the internet. White supremacy, and the ideas and motivations that drive it, are flourishing in plain sight in the US.

Most notoriously, Donald Trump has become a fan of “great replacement” talking points. In the last week many of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have called the president a white supremacist. But Trump is far from being alone, and in recent years the idea has caught fire among more and more mainstream Republicans. The looming threat of their losing political influence permeates every move the party has made for decades.

Anxiety about racial decline has a long past, but this specific modern version of it comes from the French writer Renaud Camus, who was known in the 80s as a pioneering gay novelist. He coined the phrase “great replacement” in a 2011 book of the same name, articulating the conspiratorial idea that black and brown migrants are invading Europe to destroy white culture.

It’s a weird path that takes the ideas of a race-obsessed French novelist into the Trump White House, but it has been helped along by Rupert Murdoch’s pugilistic network, Fox News. One of the network’s standout hosts, Tucker Carlson, is probably the most clear-cut example: in August 2018, he dedicated a segment of his show to a story about black gangs killing white farmers in South Africa and the government then seizing their land. It’s a widely shared rumor online, popular with white nationalists because it seemed like an example of a government literally committing white genocide, but there’s no evidence that it is true. Carlson ultimately retracted the story, but not before Trump tweeted that he was directing the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to investigate.

Even when Carlson’s show isn’t clearly cribbing notes from white nationalist forums, he’s promoting their ideas in slightly more coded ways. He has railed against diversity, asking rhetorically: “How exactly is diversity our strength?” In 2018 he complained about demographic change in the US, saying: “This is more change than human beings are designed to digest,” and adding: “Our leaders are for diversity, just not where they live.” Andrew Anglin, who founded the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer, has called Carlson “literally our greatest ally”. After Carlson’s South Africa segment, Anglin said Tucker Carlson Tonight is “basically Daily Stormer: The Show.”

Experts in white supremacist thought largely agree that Trump is actively spreading the ideas that underpin this ideology. Christian Picciolini, US author of Memoirs of a Skinhead and former neo-Nazi who set up Life After Hate, a not-for-profit that aims to deradicalize extremists, said: “Donald Trump is using nearly identical language to what white supremacist movement language is, language that I used 30 years ago in lyrics and in promoting white supremacist ideology.”

Alexandra Minna Stern, professor on the history of eugenics and author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination, said: “The way I describe it is that President Trump has really set up a baseline for bigotry in political discourse in the United States that has helped create the terrain where this is more possible.”

And other frontline Republicans are following Trump’s lead. In 2017, the Iowa congressman and standard-bearer of the far right Steve King tweeted: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” In a 2018 interview with an extreme rightwing propaganda site in Austria, King proved he was fluent in white nationalist tropes, saying: “If we don’t defend western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice.”

The rise of white supremacy is being driven in part by demographic change – although racism has flourished in the US long before whites were in sight of losing their position as the majority. The US census predicts that by 2050 white people will no longer be the majority in the country. A Census Bureau report from 2015 predicted that by the time the 2020 census is conducted, more than half of American school children will be non-white, meaning that “majority minority” future will be baked in unless something drastic changes it.

White people will still be the the largest demographic, they will no longer be in a majority. According to a study by the Pew Research Center, the number of white adults who believe “a majority non-white population will weaken American culture” is 46%.

Things look even worse if you are a Republican politician. Decades of playing to white grievances plus years of relentlessly maligning the first black president have stymied their ability to win support from non-white voters. After 2012, when Mitt Romney failed to even come close to unseating then president Barack Obama, the Republican National Committee commissioned a so-called “autopsy report” that predicted doom if the party couldn’t right itself: “America is changing demographically, and unless Republicans are able to grow our appeal the way GOP governors have done, the changes tilt the playing field even more in the Democratic direction. If we want ethnic minority voters to support Republicans, we have to engage them and show our sincerity.”

That hasn’t happened. Instead of trying to peel off voters who typical side with Democrats – women, minorities, moderates – Republicans have aggressively focused on making sure people who aren’t likely to vote for them don’t vote at all. In the US voter suppression – the act of denying the vote to minority and poor communities who are likely to be Democratic supporters – is thriving. In the last decade, 33 million people have been purged from voter rolls across the country – predominantly in districts with large percentages of non-white voters. In 2013, the supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act. The state of North Carolina passed voter suppression laws so flagrant that the federal court said they targeted black voters with “almost surgical precision”.

Last year voters in Florida overwhelmingly chose to re-enfranchise 1.5 million people with felony convictions; after the vote the state legislature chose to add a requirement that none of those ex-felons can vote until they repay all court fees, effectively bringing back the poll tax which restricted voting among minority groups for decades.

Carole Anderson, academic and author of last year’s One Person, No Vote and a leading figure in the fight against voter suppression, wrote in the Guardian last week about the 33 million Americans purged from the voting rolls. “To put this in perspective, that is the equivalent of the combined populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Phoenix and Dallas, as well as the states of Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Idaho. Not surprisingly, these massive removals are concentrated in precincts that tend to have higher minority populations and vote Democratic. Similarly, other voter suppression techniques, such as poll closures, deliberate long lines on election day, voter ID laws and extreme partisan gerrymandering all weigh disproportionately on minorities and urban areas.”

Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now

Paul Weyrich

Voter suppression isn’t necessarily a new tactic. In a 1980 speech to fellow conservatives, Paul Weyrich, one of the men who helped found arch-conservative institutions such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the Moral Majority and the Heritage Foundation, said: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”

What has changed is the demographic projections. And if Republicans can’t compete in the new electoral landscape, then it is in their best interest to freeze the official electorate in place. One way to achieve this is partisan gerrymandering, redrawing voting districts so that they’re easier for Republicans to win. Incredibly, the supreme court in June ruled that federal courts were powerless to hear challenges to partisan gerrymandering – even in a case in which the party that controls the state legislature draws voting maps to explicitly elect its candidates.

In an excoriating dissenting opinion, Justice Elena Kagan and the supreme court’s liberal justices accused the court’s majority of shirking its constitutional duty. “The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs and to choose their political representatives.

“The partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people. If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government.

Of all times to abandon the court’s duty to declare the law, this was not the one.”

Even in terms of raw numbers, the Republicans are at a disadvantage. There are 12 million more registered Democrats than Republicans in the US, but Republican control of the federal government is almost absolute. In part, that’s because institutions such as the electoral college and the Senate itself are wildly undemocratic, in the sense that both are structured so that one party can claim victory without actually receiving the most votes. In 2016, Democratic senators won 6m more votes than Republican ones, yet Republicans firmly held their majority.

The Senate distributes two seats a state, meaning that states with large multiracial populations and more Democratic voters (California, Texas, New York) get exactly the same representation as those populated by older – and often Republican – white people. As Jamelle Bouie noted in the New York Times: “Today, the largest state is California, with nearly 40 million residents, and the smallest is Wyoming, with just under 600,000 people, a disparity that gives a person in Wyoming 67 times the voting power of one in California.

“As it stands now, the Senate is highly undemocratic and strikingly unrepresentative, with an affluent membership composed mostly of white men, who are about 30% of the population but hold 71 of the seats. Under current demographic trends this will get worse, as whites become a plurality of all Americans but remain a majority in most states.”

And while elected officials can at least – in theory, and with ever-greater difficulty – be voted out of office, that is not the case for the justices on the supreme court who wield extraordinary power, as the recent partisan gerrymandering case reveals. Trump has so far appointed two supreme court justices.

Law professor Ian Samuel explained, in relation to Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation – Trump’s first appointment – that it was the first time “a president who lost the popular vote had a supreme court nominee confirmed by senators who received fewer votes – nearly 22m fewer – than the senators that voted against him”.

For his second pick, Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s choice to replace the moderate Anthony Kennedy, the senators who voted against him represented 38 million more people than the ones who voted to confirm.

In many ways, the Republican party has been preparing for minority rule for years now. The anxiety that drove the shooter in El Paso, as well as every other white supremacist mass shooter in recent years, has motivated Republican politicians to steadily demonize and disenfranchise populations that don’t vote for them. The problem long predates Donald Trump, but he’s given taken both the mask and the leash off of it.

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willempiresevercollapse · 6 years

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In November 2017, German doctor Kristina Hänel was found guilty of breaking Paragraph 219a of the German Criminal Code and fined €6,000 by the Gießen District Court. Her crime? Listing abortion as a medical service on her practice’s website.

Dr. Hänel was charged under Nazi-era Paragraph 219a, which criminalizes advertising abortion services. The offense is punishable with up to two years in prison for anyone who publicly “offers, announces or recommends services for pregnancy termination.” In court, Hänel’s defense lawyer argued that her website remains informational and does not meet the definition of advertising. Nonetheless, the Gießen judge found Dr. Hänel guilty, justifying the ruling, “Lawmakers do not want to discuss abortion in public as if it were a normal thing.” Except, as Dr. Hänel and many women know, abortion is a normal thing. Over 100,000 individuals in Germany choose to terminate unwanted pregnancies each year.

Although abortion is a common procedure in Germany, it remains technically illegal under Paragraph 218, where it is listed next to murder and manslaughter. Only through a subsequent amendment is abortion permitted, granted specific requirements are met: pregnant people must obtain an abortion within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, after completing mandatory counseling with a certified counselor, and waiting four days between counseling and procedure. Abortion is not covered by health insurance except for very low-income individuals or in the case of rape or crime. Kate Cahoon, a leading member of the Bündnis für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung (Alliance for Sexual Self-Determination) argues “the fact that abortion is still regulated by the criminal code in Germany shows that we still have a long way to go in the fight for sexual and reproductive rights.” She continues: “Paragraph 219a is only part of the problem, it’s Paragraph 218 that makes abortion a crime — feminists and socialists have been fighting for its abolition for over a century.”

Anti-abortion activists have been using Paragraph 219a to systematically target and intimidate abortion providers for years. Anti-abortion fundamentalist Klaus Günter Annen of “Nie Wieder e.V” — “Never Again,” equating abortion with the Holocaust —reports up to twenty-seven doctors to the authorities annually. Dr. Hänel has faced charges twice before, including in 2008. And she is not alone: in 2006 a Bayreuth doctor was fined for advertising abortion, while another was charged after her name was listed online as a provider. This year, gynecologists Nora Szász and Natascha Nicklaus of Kassel have been charged. Most reported doctors choose to remove factual information from their websites to comply with the law. That’s why Dr. Hänel is such a rallying point for reproductive-rights activists: by refusing to back down, she has galvanized the campaign to abolish the law.

When abortion is stigmatized and made taboo, there are negative consequences for those seeking abortion and within broader societal discourse. There is no comprehensive list of abortion providers readily available online, and websites like loveline.de — a sexual-health site for teens — don’t even mention the word. Individuals must go to pregnancy counselors in person to receive information, costing time and travel. This is compounded for individuals whose first language isn’t German, or those who travel from Poland to Germany and are required to wait the obligatory four days. Hospitals don’t have to offer abortion services, and many doctors do not study abortion during their medical training. In December 2016, chief physician of Capio Elbe-Jeetzel Clinic of Dannenberg, Dr. Thomas Börner, refused to perform or allow abortions to be performed in his clinic on “religious grounds.” That means there are areas of Germany where abortions are almost impossible to procure — either due to lack of information or a lack of practicing doctors.

Yet there’s one group that is not censored when it comes to abortion: anti-abortion fundamentalists. Filled with untruths and photoshopped images, babykaust.de is the only website that features a list of German abortion providers. “I don’t want women to have to go to the websites of anti-abortion activists to find a list of doctors who do pregnancy terminations,” Dr. Hänel argued after her court case. The fact that babykaust.de is able to spread lies about abortion while medical practitioners who offer factual information about the procedure are criminally charged, shows how the law privileges anti-abortionists over the lives of women.

The attack on Dr. Hänel in the autumn of 2017 has much to do with a right wing that feels emboldened in the wake of the September elections, in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won ninety-four seats in the Bundestag, becoming Germany’s third-largest party. AfD opposes abortion, and “all attempts to downplay abortions, government support for abortions, or to declare abortions as a human right.” Prominent member Beatrix von Storch — granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk — leads the annual anti-abortion march in Berlin. (She also made headlines when she argued that border police should have the right to shoot women and children refugees trying to enter Germany.)

AfD’s anti-abortion position is part of their xenophobic and pro-natalist ideology, which sees Germany’s (white) population threatened by falling birthrates and rising foreign immigration. Section 6.2 of their political program, “Larger Families instead of Mass Immigration” warns that immigrant families with higher birthrates than German families will “hasten the ethnic-cultural changes in society.” AfD’s answer to this “problem” is straight out of the fascist playbook: “Germany’s negative demographic trend has to be counteracted… The only mid- and long-term solution is to attain a higher birth rate by the native population by stimulating family policies.”

Ad from Alternative for Germany’s 2017 election campaign. This is particularly chilling given the eugenicist origins of Paragraph 219a — part of the Nazis’ “racial hygiene” program that sought to forcibly increase the “Aryan” population and decrease that of the “destroyers of the culture,” such as Jews, foreigners, and “individuals unworthy of life.” Shortly after its introduction in 1933, the Berlin Council of Physicians argued that practice of abortion “shall be exterminated with a strong hand … proceedings will be taken against every evil-doer who dares to injure our sacred healthy race.” Meanwhile, Hitler awarded women with four or more children the Cross of Honor of the German Mother.

This invocation of “racial hygiene” is visible in Alternative for Germany’s election poster, which features a blond pregnant woman’s midsection and the caption, “New Germans? We make our own.”

Fighting Back

But while AfD has benefited by positioning itself as the anti-establishment party — in distinction to the new grand coalition of center-left Social Democrats and the conservative Christian Democratic Union — organizing against 219a helped shift the terms of the debate. A petition of support for Dr. Hänel garnered over 155,000 signatures and motivated dozens of solidarity events and actions. The Bündnis für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung’s social media campaign #WegMit219a continues to gain traction and presence in the media, and women are coming forward to talk about their abortions. Kate Cahoon explains, “A lot of people had no idea that this law existed before this campaign. I think that’s why it gained traction so quickly — people were shocked and wanted to take a stand.”

The debate has also moved into government. The federal states of Bremen, Berlin, Brandenburg, and Hamburg are attempting to remove the clause through an initiative in the upper house of parliament, while in the Bundestag the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Left Party, and even the neoliberal Free Democratic Party have all introduced legislation to remove or significantly reform 219a, sparking the first debate on the law in twenty years. And while the Social Democrats initially dropped their proposal as they moved into coalition with the Christian Democratic Union, activists have vowed to keep up pressure to remove the paragraph once and for all.

On International Women’s Day in Berlin, around 6,000 people demonstrated, many carrying banners and signs demanding the removal of the Nazi paragraph. Cahoon sees the momentum behind #WegMit219a as “a big step in the direction of breaking down the stigma and silence around abortion rights.” A victory on 219a would be an important move towards decriminalization and destigmatization. It would not only be a victory for women and doctors in Germany; it would also strike a blow against the racist pro-natalism of AfD and the fascist legacy upon which the paragraph is based.

#abortion

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opedguy · 3 years

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MOTIVE EMERGES IN BOULDER SHOOTER

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), March 22, 2021.--Boulder police were reluctant to ascribe a motive to 21-year-old Syrian-born Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, barely identifying his background in what amounts to the politically correct madness that swept into Washington with 78-year-old President Joe Biden taking office. Focused now on how long he owned the Ruger, AR-556, military-grade assault rifle, and accounting for the 10 deaths at King Scoopers supermarket in Boulder, Co., the media completely misses what’s shaping up to be another self-radicalized, jihadist attack. “We will hold the evildoer responsible to the full extent of the law for his actions,” said Democrat Gov. Jared Polis. “And we will always remember the victims of the King Scoopers shooting,” mentioning nothing about the gunman radical thoughts posted on Facebook for all to see, expressing disgust over the March 15, 2019 massacre at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Details emerging from Al Aliwi’s Facebook post gives the hidden X-Ray into the sick mind of a mass shooter, who’s motives were etched by real events, including the horrific Al Noor mosque massacre that killed 51 and inured 40. Al Alwi wasn’t shy about saying on Facebook he was “born in Syria in 1999 came to the U.S. A in 2002,” reported Daily Beast. Based on his Facebook post, Al Aliwi shared postings about Islam, prayers, religious holidays and his feelings the day after the Al-Noor mosque massacre in Christchurch. “The Muslims at the #christchurch mosque were not the victims of a single shooter,” Al Aliwi said. “They were the victims of the entire Islamophobia industry that vilified them,” exposing, behind any psychosis, the real revenge motive clearly expressed in Facebook. Al Aliwi’s Facebook post came right out of Al-Qaeda’s late Yemen chief Anwar al-Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki’s rantings inspired former Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan’s Nov. 5, 2009 shooting massacre in Fort Hood, Texas, gunning down 13 U.S. soldiers due for deployment. While there’s no mention of radical preachers like al-Awlaki, Al Aliwi’s statements mirror the motives behind the Fort Hood slaughter, that Al Aliwil avengied the “Islamaphobia” explaining the motive behind the Christchurch massacre. Whatever mental illiness federal officials find with Al Aliwi, that doesn’t for one second diminish his motive of avenging the “Islamophobiia,” a key talking point of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and every other radical Muslim cleric talking about U.S. occupation of sacred Islamic lands. For whatever reason, the FBI isn’t ready to admit Al Aliwi’s motive for massacring innocent civilians, including killing 51-year-old Boulder police officer, father-of-seven Eric Talley.

Past police records indicated that Al Aliwi was charged with assault in 2018 for punching a high school classmate in the face. Court records show that Al Aliwi said his classmate “had made fun of him and called him racial names weeks earlier.” Al Aliwi’s older brother, Ali Aliwi Alissa, 34, said his brother was mentally ill. “When he was having lunch with my sister in a restaurant, he said, ‘People are in the parking log, the are look for me,’” Ali told the Daily Beast. Ali called his brother Ahmad “very anti-social,” saying his brother told him a gunman chased him in high school. “[It was] not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness,” said Ali. “The guy used to get bullied a lot in high school, he was like an outgoing kind but after he went to high school and got bullied a lot, the started becoming anti-social,” giving the Psychology 101 explanation for Ahmad’s mass murder.

Listening to family members often throws off law enforcement’s attempts to find a real motive for the massacre. When Al Aliwi’s Facebook page talks about “Islamophobia” and the Christchurch massacre, there was more on his mind than avenging a few years of bullying in high school. Most victims of high school or military bullying don’t commit mass murder or other violent crimes. There may be lasting scars from the bullying but, Al Aliwi’s brother has his own opinion why his brother went ballistic. “[It was] not at all a political statement, it’s mental illness,” is pure speculation, not consistent with what’s known about the vast majority of jihadists around the world, that take up arms and massacre innocent civilians in the name of Allah. FBI profilers need to look carefully at Al-Aliwi’s Facebooks posts about the massacre at the 2019 Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Mass killings in the U.S. raise gun control issues, especially when terrorists or raving psychotics have little problems buying assault rifles or other automatic weapons. “This cannot be our new normal,” said Rep. Joe Neguse, who represents Colorado’s second district, one of nine impeachment managers that prosecuted former President Donald Trump. “We should be able to feel safe in our grocery stores. We should be able to feel safe in our school, in our move theaters and outer communities. We need to see a change,” Naguse, said, calling for urgent gun control legislation. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he would revive two House-passed gun control bills calling for enhanced background checks. Schumer and Naguse know that most registered gun owners do not commit mass murder or gun violence. Dealing with ballistic killers like Al Aliwi is never easy.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma. Reply Reply All Forward

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patriotforthekingdom · 3 years

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...Shall Not Be Infringed

The second amendment to the constitution is phrased in a way that shouldn’t lead to any questions about it. It reads “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Shall. Not. Be. Infringed.

Our founding fathers knew a little bit about tyranny and oppression, and that is why the very first two amendments to the constitution specifically spell out arguably our two most important freedoms…first: our right to free speech and second: our right to bear arms. As the saying goes, “we have the second amendment so we can defend our first amendment.”

So why is the left constantly trying to question and remove our right to bear arms? Or in other words, why is the left constantly trying to infringe?

Control.

It’t that simple.

If we’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that politicians on the left (and a large handful on the right) will do whatever it takes to gain even just a little bit more control over you. And they won’t stop there. Once they get that little bit of control, they will keep pushing and pushing just to see how far they can go. You are simply a pawn of their agenda and a statistic ready to be manipulated.

Under the Obama administration, mass shootings shot up 246.7% higher than previously under the Bush administration (thegatewaypundit.com). They spent those 8 years of shootings, alongside the MSM, laying the groundwork for disarming all Americans. They thought they were in for an easy transition from Obama to Clinton, and could simply finish the job over the next 8 years. Well, as we know, they faced an obstacle to that plan in Donald Trump.

After 4 years of relatively no media coverage on mass shootings, outside of Las Vegas, Biden is now in… and they are right back at it.

Last week alone was nonstop MSM coverage of a shooting in Atlanta simply because the timing was right, and it fit the narrative. Don’t get me wrong, this was a horrific act committed by someone who is absolutely insane or possessed, and I have been and will continue to be praying for the families of those who were unfairly taken far too soon. But I will also be praying for the families of the 15 people who were shot the same week in another mass shooting in Chicago that went completely unreported on. Unfortunately this shooting was chalked up to gang violence which we are programmed to think is normal, frequent and unpreventable.

However, the first shooting was seemingly a perfect fit for the MSM narrative: a white male shoots 8 women, 6 of which happen to be an ethnic minority. The MSM didn’t waste any time pushing this as anti-asian violence and somehow blaming this and any other anti-asian violence on Trump.

Check out a few of the quotes and headlines…

Apnews.com opening line: “A white gunman was charged Wednesday with killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage parlors in an attack that sent terror through the Asian American community, which has increasingly been targeted during the coronavirus pandemic.”

Nytimes.com headline: “8 Dead in Atlanta Spa Shootings, With Fears of Anti-Asian Bias”

Washingtonpost.com quote: “Six Asian women died in the attacks on Tuesday, prompting widespread concern that the killings could be the latest in a surge of hate crimes against Asian Americans.”

In addition to these and many other MSM outlets covering this story nonstop, many politicians jumped into the conversation as well, including Crooked Hillary herself who tweeted, “I’m sending prayers today to the families of the people killed and those injured in Atlanta’s horrific attacks. The surge in violence against Asian Americans over the last year is a growing crisis. We need action from our leaders and within our communities to stop the hate.” Since the shooting, 4 of her 6 tweets have been pushing the #StopAsianHate narrative.

Well, how are they going to #StopAsianHate? Control. And how are they going to take control? Disarming Americans.

The shooter himself claimed that the shooting was not racially motivated, and the FBI, after investigating, determined the same exact thing. Oddly enough, this didn’t make any of the headlines, nor did it stop the MSM from writing about this being a racially motivated shooting. “Ironically,” the senate is due to vote on Joe Biden’s unconstitutional and far left gun control bill that he is persistent on passing.

Is it making sense now?

The politicians are trying to take away your freedoms. They don’t care who or what they use to do so. This time it’s guns. They are going to be voting shortly on taking away your guns, so before they do that, they have to remind you that guns are bad and scary.

Well, Thomas Jefferson knew that the day would come when politicians would try to disarm Americans by convincing them that guns are bad and scary. He had this to say, “The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man” (buckeyefirearms.org).

Strict gun laws don’t stop bad guys from getting guns. They stop the good guys from getting guns to defend themselves and others, leaving everyone in a far more susceptible position.

What would’ve happened in Atlanta if one of those women shot were carrying a firearm? Could the first victim have defended herself and stopped hers and the other murders from even happening? Possibly.

In Joe Biden’s America, we shouldn’t have the right to defend ourselves. These women who were murdered should not have had the right to defend themselves. The shooter should have known that he was not going to be able to be stopped until he decided to stop. The shooter should have known that whoever he wanted to shoot would not be able to defend themselves.

Well, what does the Bible say about gun control? Not-so-surprisingly, nothing. However, the Bible does say that every man was assumed to have a personal sword, the gun-equivalent back in the day. Jesus himself said in Luke 22, “Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.”

So, knowing Jesus supports ownership of weapons for self-defense, what about acts of self-defense? Well, Exodus 22:2 says, “If a thief is caught in the act of breaking into a house and is struck and killed in the process, the person who killed the thief is not guilty of murder.” It continues in verse 3 to say, “But if it happens in daylight, the one who killed the thief is guilty of murder.” This tells us that it is not ok to kill someone simply because they break into your house. Pastor Tom Tell says about this passage, “In the dark, it is impossible to see and know for certain what someone is up to; whether an intruder has come to steal, inflict harm, or to kill, is unknown at the time. In the daylight, things are clearer. We can see if a thief has come just to swipe a loaf of bread through an open window, or if an intruder has come with more violent intentions.”

Ultimately, the Bible tells us that the right to bear arms is acceptable (if not suggested to do so), and the right to defend yourself is promoted. Deadly force should be the last resort for a christian (and also taught in basic gun training), but if necessary to do so in self-defense, it is permit-able.

As a christian, the right to bear arms is a freedom granted to us by the Bible. And as an American, the right to bear arms is a freedom granted to us by the Constitution.

The left is steadfast on removing this right from us, this is not a time to be silent.

We must build up an army of patriots for the kingdom.

BONUS BLOG!

I wrote “…Shall Not Be Infringed” (above) before the most recent shooting in Boulder, CO on Monday. I couldn’t post this without addressing a few quick thoughts that came to my mind…

You can see just how quickly the left is moving to infringe on your right to bear arms. They want complete and utter control.

They want you afraid!

Afraid of guns.

Afraid of terrorists.

Afraid of white males.

Afraid of Trump.

Afraid of conservatives.

Afraid of anything that they feel is a threat to their control.

And they are using the MSM propaganda to make you afraid.

The MSM was eager to blame this shooting on a white male as the yahoo news story says, “a partially clothed white male was seen being led away from the scene.” When in reality, the shooter was identified later as Ahmad al-Issa…a devout, anti-Trump, Muslim.

Joe Biden also wasted no time using this shooting as a way to blame guns by calling for an “assault weapons ban” and a “ban on high capacity magazines.” Want to know something funny? Colorado already has a high capacity magazine ban. So Joe, did it help? Did that stop the bad guy from getting a gun with a high capacity magazine?

We as a people need to open our eyes to this madness the left is pushing us into. It is leading us into complete and utter destruction.

#patriot #kingdom #christianity #politics

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nancygduarteus · 6 years

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America’s Unending Tragedy

LITTLETON, Colo.—Evan Todd, then a sophomore at Columbine High School, was in the library on the day 19 years ago when Eric Harris appeared in the doorway, wielding a shotgun. Harris fired in his direction. Debris, shrapnel, and buckshot hit Todd’s lower back; he fell to the ground and ducked behind a copy machine. Harris fired several more shots toward Todd’s head, splintering a desk and driving wood chips into Todd’s left eye.

Todd listened for several more minutes as Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates, taunting them as they screamed. Todd prayed silently: “God, let me live.”

Then Klebold pulled back a chair and found Todd hiding underneath a table.

He put a gun to Todd’s head. "Why shouldn't I kill you?" he asked.

“I've been good to you,” Todd said.

Klebold looked at Harris. “You can kill him if you want,” Klebold told his teenage co-conspirator.

No one knows why—indeed, no one knows the “why” behind such violence—but that’s when Harris and Klebold left the library. Todd got to live.

Thirteen people did not, though. Today, that’s why Todd supports allowing teachers to have guns in schools. Teachers shouldn’t be required to be armed, he says, but if they already have a concealed-weapons permit, and they’re already comfortable using a gun, why not let them have it with them in school, the place they are most of the day, and the place where these attacks happen over and over again?

Today, Todd is a stocky, bearded manager of construction projects, and describes himself as a history buff. He grew up around guns, but after Columbine, he thought hard about whether easy access to them might have been what caused the shooting. No, he decided. “We've always had guns since the beginning of the founding of our country, but what we haven't always had are children murdering children,” he told me over coffee this week. “Something has changed.” Todd believes school shootings are motivated by a fundamental lack of respect for human life.

The way Todd sees it, “liberals like to control others and conservatives like to control themselves.” He glanced around the Starbucks where we were sitting. Statistically, he said, four people there were likely have guns on them. Being near four guns might scare many liberals. Many conservatives, though, would want to be one of the four with a gun.

The gun debate is an odd one because, at some level, everyone agrees on what they want: No more Columbines. No more Parklands. Most people affected by the Columbine massacre can even agree on what definitely didn’t cause it. After the shooting, Columbine developed a reputation as a toxic school where jocks tormented “geeks” like Harris and Klebold. But it’s a stretch to say the shooters were pitiable outcasts, bullied until they snapped. In reality, they were budding little fascists who wore swastikas on their clothes and spewed racial slurs as they gunned down black classmates. Kumbaya circles wouldn’t have fixed that.

The Columbine Memorial in Littleton, Colo. (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

But, nearly 20 years later, not even people in Littleton can agree whether the best way to prevent another Columbine is more guns or fewer. Todd’s experience—a 15-year-old whose brush with death-by-gun led him to respect guns more—helps to explain why there have been so few new federal gun restrictions since Columbine.

There have been at least 10 mass school shootings in the years since, which have claimed at least 122 lives. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of young people will march on Washington to show just how much this disgusts them. They believe they will be the ones to end the most calcified cultural stalemate of our time: that Americans fundamentally do not agree on whether guns are dangerous—or essential.

Todd worries that if more guns are removed from the hands of law-abiding citizens, a tyrannical government could take over—we could see an American Stalin or Mao. “More people would be murdered without the Second Amendment,” he said.

In the nearby town of Centennial, 64-year-old Carol Schuster said that’s one thing that keeps many conservatives from supporting gun control. “They’re afraid of the government,” she told me. She knows because she used to be one.

Schuster and her husband, Bill, own a company that sells big mobile filing cabinets, the kind that doctors use to store their patient records. Like many small-business owners, they long voted Republican.

The Schusters were terrified when Columbine happened, but they didn’t think it would keep happening. Those shooters were freaks, juvenile delinquents. “Another school shooting” hadn’t yet become a thing Americans say almost every month.

Carol Schuster at her home in Centennial, Colo. on March 20 (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

Then came the Sandy Hook shooting, in which six- and seven-year-olds were mowed down as they cowered in their elementary-school bathroom. Schuster began to feel like her party wasn’t doing enough. (Just this week, Republican state legislators in Colorado rejected a ban on bump stocks, the devices used by the Las Vegas gunman that allowed his rifles to fire faster.) She attended a meeting of Colorado Ceasefire, a local gun-control group, and she was the only Republican there. “Oh,” she thought. “These Democrats really are nice people.” In 2016, Schuster voted for Hillary Clinton as a single-issue voter on guns.

Today, one portion of her office wall is devoted to photos of her family, another to pictures of dogs, and another to the front pages of newspapers covering all the mass shootings that have taken place since Columbine. “Important things,” she explained.

When she saw the Parkland shooting on TV, she decided she would go to Washington on Saturday to take part in the March for Our Lives. Her sign will read, “Former Republican for sensible gun laws.”

Schuster asked me where I was going next, and I told her I’d be interviewing Patrick Neville, a former Columbine student who survived the massacre and is now a Republican State Representative who supports concealed carry among teachers. Schuster said she had a lot of questions for him.

When I arrived at his office in the Capitol building in Denver, Neville looked red and tired. His press secretary seemed weary, too, from listening to dozens of voicemail messages, many of which wished to inform her that her boss was a “fucking asshole.” A bill Neville introduced, scheduled for a hearing just days after the Parkland shooting, called for allowing concealed-carry permit holders to bring their guns inside schools. “Get your head out of your ass!” one woman’s voice screamed on the answering machine. “Protect these children!” (Todd gets angry messages, too—including from people who tell him they wish he died at Columbine. The Schusters, meanwhile, say they get run off the road for their gun-control bumper stickers.)

Neville wasn’t inside Columbine when the shooting happened. He was just outside the building, skipping class to go smoke with friends. When he realized what was happening, he ran to a nearby house and called his mom. “I’m not going to be able to get to my next class,” he told her.

If Republicans are afraid of government overreach, then on the other side, “there’s an irrational fear of guns,” Neville said. Todd and Neville see guns as “tools” that can be safely used for fun or protection. Like Todd, Neville believes shooters target gun-free zones like schools because they know they won’t meet resistance. Not knowing which teacher might be armed is a “huge tactical advantage,” Neville argued. To protect his three young daughters, he plans to send them to a private high school, where teachers can carry guns.

This was the fourth time Neville sponsored the concealed-carry bill, and it failed like it always does, but he plans to introduce it again. Why? “Never a wrong time to do the right thing,” he said. The morning we spoke, another school shooting had taken place in Maryland.

Littleton, a Denver suburb, in many ways offers a typical middle-American landscape—dotted with drab office parks and Outback Steakhouses. Less typical are the striking, snow-streaked mountains, which loom in the background.

The light-beige Columbine High School building gets threats all the time. It’s the unholiest of holy sites: Several times a day, a security guard told me, random people stop by to take pictures or just to take a morbid look. The guard can’t allow them to do that; he can’t make the kids relive it that often.

Another security guard in the student parking lot kept a wary eye on me. But at 2:45, the glass doors swung open and perfectly normal students burst out of a perfectly normal school, laughing and asking each other about homework assignments. Among them was Kaylee Tyner, a junior who organized Columbine’s student walkout for gun control, which happened earlier this month.

Kaylee Tyner at her home in Littleton, Colo. (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

The day I met up with Tyner, she had called a handful of her classmates to her house to make signs for Saturday’s march. Her friends plan to go to the local march in Denver, but Tyner will travel all the way to Washington with her mom. On top of her political advocacy, Tyner is in four AP classes, several clubs, and works as a waitress at a retirement home.

Tyner peeled a sticky note off the window of her Nissan—she’s in a club whose members leave encouraging messages for one another—and drove the four minutes from her school to her house. She put out some snacks and brought up tempera paints from the basement. The other girls trickled in a few minutes later. They huddled around Tyner’s dining-room table and laid out orange, black, and white poster boards. They’re Columbine’s core group of activists, and it’s something they’re surprisingly secure about. Once, a boy said something like “oh, there go the feminists” as they walked by, and one of them, 16-year-old Mikaela Lawrence, said simply, “Chh—yeah!”

The girls might get their news from social-media sites like Twitter, but, they tell me, they’re careful to check it against other sites to be sure it’s not “fake news.” Rachel Hill, a cheery 16-year-old, easily rattled off the gun measures she’d like to see: universal background checks, a ban on bump stocks, higher age limits and longer waiting periods. She painted a sign that read, “I have thought. I have prayed. Nothing changed.”

Kaylee and a few friends work on signs for March for Our Lives on March 21, 2018, in Littleton, Colo.

The day after the Parkland shooting, the halls of Columbine were unusually quiet. Despite all the security, kids at Columbine periodically worry about another shooting happening there. Some of their teachers have panic attacks when the fire alarms go off, the girls said.

“We’re not gonna stop fighting until laws are passed,” said 14-year-old Annie Barrows, laying down her paint brush and hammering her fist into her hand. “There’s blood spilling on the floors of American classrooms.”

Kids who go to Columbine rarely joke about the shooting, but students from other schools sometimes make crass remarks, the girls said. “Going to Columbine, we don’t get to pick the label for our school,” Tyner said. “We’re one of the most infamous schools in America. We’re trying to show people that this affects your community for decades.”

One day in early April 1999, Daniel Mauser, a blond-haired, bespectacled Columbine sophomore, came home and asked his father, Tom Mauser, “Did you know there are loopholes in the Brady bill?”—the national law that requires background checks for gun purchasers. Tom didn’t think much of it. Daniel was on the debate team; he and his conservative classmate, Patrick Neville, would sometimes argue about politics.

Two weeks later, the day of the Columbine shooting, Tom didn’t know whether Daniel was alive or dead for nearly 24 hours. Late that night, authorities called to ask what Daniel had been wearing, or if the Mausers had any dental records. They said the Mausers would hear more in the morning. The following day at noon, the sheriff came along with some grief counselors to tell Tom that Daniel had been shot to death.

The Mausers stayed in the area, but they couldn’t bring themselves to send their surviving daughter to Columbine. Instead, she went to the nearby Arapahoe High School. It, too, had a shooting, after she graduated.

Tom, who worked for the state’s transportation department, took on a second role as a spokesperson for Colorado Ceasefire. He and his son shared a shoe size; he began wearing Daniel’s black-and-gray Vans to testify at hearings. In 2000, he successfully helped push through a measure to close the state’s gun-show loophole. He’s one of the few Columbine parents who speaks out about guns; some others support him but find it too painful to talk about, he says.

Over lunch at Panera Bread, he told me he doesn’t support arming teachers—there’s too much of a risk of crossfire, accidents, or police not knowing who the true “bad guy” is in a hectic shooting situation, he said. And what, are we going to hold first-grade teachers accountable for acting as soldiers would in combat? Many Republicans, he argued, seemingly “cannot acknowledge the danger caused by guns.” (Many Republicans, of course, argue Democrats can’t acknowledge the danger caused by restricting guns.)

One of the most helpful gun measures, he thinks, would be a state- or nation-wide red-flag law, allowing family members or law-enforcement officers to ask a judge to temporarily take away the guns of someone who seems dangerous.

At this point, a woman approached our table to thank Tom for his efforts. “You’re welcome,” he said.

The following day, Tom planned to go for a bike ride in the 70-degree weather, enjoy his retirement a little. But for the moment, he went back to talking about his dead son with yet another reporter. Because Columbine High has a stain, but so does the whole country, and it will endure until there aren’t any more stories like this left to tell. So he tells it.

Like Evan Todd, Daniel Mauser was in the library. Eric Harris insulted him, then fired his rifle and hit Daniel in the hand. Then the mild-mannered Daniel fought back—he pushed a chair at Harris. Harris responded by shooting him in the face.

I sat there speechless as Tom Mauser calmly ate a spoonful of soup. “This is America,” he said.

(Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/littleton-columbine/556358/?utm_source=feed

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gamerszone2019-blog · 5 years

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Every Country Has Video Games, Only One Has A Mass Shooter Problem

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/every-country-has-video-games-only-one-has-a-mass-shooter-problem/

Every Country Has Video Games, Only One Has A Mass Shooter Problem

In science, you form a hypothesis to explain an event and then test it against the available evidence to see if your logic is sound; if it’s not, the hypothesis fails and you discard it and form another one to attempt to explain what’s happening. The hypothesis being put forward by several politicians, including President Trump, is that video games – in concert with mental health issues – contribute to the recent rise in mass shooting incidents in the United States, specifically with regard to the shootings in Gilroy, California, Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas that collectively claimed 34 lives and left 66 more wounded in the span of less than a week. But even a quick look at the rest of the world disproves this hypothesis so quickly and obviously that it’s hard to believe it was even suggested with sincerity.

Even if you’re skeptical of the established science that draws no clear connection between games and violence, the United States does not exist in a vacuum. This means we can look at similar countries with similar cultures and gaming habits to see if this hypothesis bears out. If games were, in fact, the cause of America’s epidemic of mass shootings, then logically they would have the same effect on any country where those same games are played – which is nearly everywhere. Spoilers: they do not, and America’s frequency of mass shootings is unique in the world. This effectively rules games out as the cause.

Click here to donate to the victims of the El Paso and Dayton shootings.

Countries like Canada, The United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand are all immediately comparable to the US in that they all share a common language, and to some degree all share a large amount of popular culture. All of them have a large gaming market, and here at IGN we see significant readership from those countries. And yet, while none of them is completely free from horrific gun massacres (New Zealand being the most recent victim of a racially motivated attack) the rates of mass shootings per capita in all of those countries are dramatically lower than that of the United States.

Even a quick look at the rest of the world disproves this hypothesis quickly and obviously.

“

Statistically, it’s difficult to pin down the exact number of incidents of mass shootings in the US compared to other countries. For one thing, the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to pass a law in 1996 preventing the Centers for Disease Control from studying the effects of gun violence. But others have taken up the cause: The Gun Violence Archive is a nonprofit effort to track incidents within the US and classifies a “mass shooting” as an event in which four or more people are killed or wounded (which is a more valuable metric than the number of fatalities, which many sources use), and counts the current number at 255. This was the source of the number from the viral tweet that contrasted the number of 2019 shootings in the US with 24 other countries, most of which it lists as zero. Though it’s difficult to verify that with comparable stats for countries such as Switzerland or Italy, the mere fact that few detailed statistics have been compiled indicates a much lower rate than the US.

Searching The Guardian, a UK-based news site, for gun crime reveals only a handful of incidents this year, all of which involve single victims – and that’s for a country of 66 million. Canada (population 37 million) has had more mass shootings than the circulated number of just one incident this year when you factor in non-fatal shootings, including four people killed in British Columbia in April, a June incident in Toronto where four were injured during a Raptors victory celebration, and another just last night where five were injured at a nightclub. But even multiplied by 10 to reflect the population difference, that’s a drop in the bucket next to America’s staggering number.

The numbers on this viral tweet might not be 100% accurate for all countries, but it’s close enough to draw a sharp contrast.

Beyond English-speaking countries, we can look at others in Europe and Asia, none of which show the same pattern of mass shootings. Most notably Japan, which is widely known as one of (if not the singular) most gaming-friendly cultures in the world, has effectively zero mass shootings in a country of 128 million. Even factoring in Japan’s mass stabbing incidents (there’s been one this year, in which two were killed), the per-capita rate of these attacks is nowhere near that of the United States.

Mental health is also an element of the plague of shootings, but again, America is not alone.

“

Mental health is also an element of the plague of shootings and is a severe and worsening problem, but again, America is not alone in this area. Without evidence to suggest that Americans suffer disorders that might lead to violent acts at a significantly higher rate than their counterparts in other nations, there’s no basis to suggest that the combination of mental health and games is the cause of mass shootings.

For these reasons and others, this hypothesis simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, and is clearly an attempt at scapegoating video games for the problem when there are far more obvious culprits. Specifically, absurdly lax gun laws that make access to extremely deadly weapons (complete with high-capacity magazines) and piles of ammunition trivial even for those with a history of disturbing behavior, combined with an increase in overtly racist and divisive rhetoric coming from influential figures ranging from YouTubers to the president of the United States himself. Seeing some of that same language used by Donald Trump referenced in the disturbed manifestos authored by recent mass shooters makes it painfully clear where at least some of these criminals are drawing inspiration and confidence.

Those are the problems that need the focus of our lawmakers in the wake of tragedies like this. Trotting out the same tired argument is a cowardly attempt to avoid taking meaningful action on the real issues that might actually have an effect on the rate of mass shootings in the United States.

Dan Stapleton is IGN’s Reviews Editor. You can follow him on Twitter to hear gaming rants and lots of random Simpsons references.

Source : IGN

#Game News #Game Reviews

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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String of gun deaths reshapes Democratic primary

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/string-of-gun-deaths-reshapes-democratic-primary/

String of gun deaths reshapes Democratic primary

Mourners gather for a vigil at the scene of a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio. | John Minchillo/AP Photo

2020 Elections

The mass shootings shifted the focus to lower-tier candidates and divisive issues, and could change the contours of the race for the White House.

The back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio over the weekend shook up the Democratic presidential primary, elevating the profile of lower-tier candidates, reorienting the focus of the contest and fusing the divisive issues of immigration, racism and gun control for the first time on the campaign trail.

The tragedies have the potential to change the dynamics in the broader campaign for the White House, as President Donald Trump and his supporters reeled fromcomparisonsof their rhetoric about immigrants with that of amanifestosuspected of being from the shooter in El Paso, a border city with a mostly Latino population.

Story Continued Below

The immediate aftershocks of the shootings were felt by the three candidates whose home states were affected: Tim Ryan in Ohio, and Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro in Texas. Struggling in the polls and unable to command significant coverage, all found themselves over the weekend the subject of intense media interest as they abandoned the campaign trail, canceled events and headed home amid a crush of national and local interest.

The shootings also heightened the stakes for an upcoming gun violence forum for the Democratic candidates, all of whom blanketed television, radio and social media over the weekend to highlight their gun controlplans, to call on the Republican-led Senate to come back from summer break to pass gun safety legislation, and to attack President Trump’s rhetoric on immigration.

O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso who is polling nationally at about 3 percent, suddenly found himself in the spotlight and the focus of five national TV interviews on Sunday, telling CNN from his hometown that be believed Trump is a white nationalist.

“The things that he has said, both as a candidate and then as the president of the United States — this cannot be open for debate,” O’Rourke said, prompting the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, to reply on Twitter that “a tragedy like this is not an opportunity to reboot your failing presidential campaign.”

Ryan, a congressman from Youngstown, Ohio, made similar remarks in interviews with POLITICO and CNN.

“White nationalists believe Trump’s a white nationalist,” Ryan said, pointing out that the president held a rally in Florida’s Panhandle in May during which someone from the audience yelled “shoot them!” when the president asked how to stop the flood of illegal immigrants. Trump didn’t issue a rebuke, and instead joked that “that’s only in the Panhandle [where] you can get away with that statement.” The crowd laughed.

Just last month, in another crowd controversy, Trump did little to stop a “send her back” chant aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Somali refugee, who was the subject of criticism from Trump that a majority of Americans say areracist.

Immediately after the violence in El Paso on Saturday, activist groups like the League of United Latin American Citizens squarely placed blame on Trump for what it said was “deliberately feeding into the anti-immigrant frenzy and white supremacist violence.”

The candidates are expected to raise the issue of gun violence and immigration Monday at a San Diego conference hosted by the Latino outreach group UnidosUS. Before the conference, immigration and healthcare were going to dominate the discussion. But the shooting and the anti-Hispanic racism of the El Paso shooter made it impossible to ignore.

The campaigns’ presence at the UnidosUS conference speaks to the party’s intense focus on Latino voters, from whom Democrats need a big turnout in states like Arizona and Florida — which also has a proposed assault weapons ban that voters might consider in 2020 — in the hopes of flipping them from red to blue next year. Latinos are also set to play a large role early in the Democratic race in Nevada — which has the third-in-the-nation primary and where the candidates just campaigned over the weekend — and in California, which moved up its massive primary by three months, to March 3.

The issue of gun violence in the primary and beyond isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, in great part because mass shootings happen with such frequency in the U.S. In just the span of a week, three separate gunmen — all of them white — went on unrelated rampages that left a total of 33 people dead and dozens more wounded in Dayton, Ohio, on Sunday, El Paso on Saturday and Gilroy, Calif., on the Sunday before.

Before the killings in those three cities, the Democratic candidates had already made gun control a top issue on the campaign trail. Democratic voters rank it asone of their most important issues, and gun control groups believepolls— including a recentsurveyfrom the gun control group Giffords — that showed it was a winning issue in the 2018 elections and would be again in 2020.

“This is a sea change in American politics, the fact that every single candidate is competing to be the best on this issue,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the advocacy group Moms Demand Action. “Gun safety used to be a third rail of American politics for so long, and we’ve really retired that myth.”

Watts also pointed out that the National Rifle Association is in turmoil, giving gun control advocates another possible advantage this election season.

While praising the Democratic candidates across the board, Watts earlier this year criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont for failing to mention guns in his campaign-launch video and said on Twitter that he had “historicallysided with lobbyists” — an issue that haunted Sanders on the presidential campaign trail in 2016 andcould surface again.

Both Sanders and Ryan had voted for 2005 legislation shielding gunmakers from lawsuits. Both campaigns say their candidates have evolved on the issue, with Ryan’s specifically pointing to the 2011 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., which killed 26 people, including 20 young children.

After Sandy Hook, Watts founded her group and joined with Giffords to increase grassroots outreach and lobbying for gun control. The 2018 killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., led to a groundbreakingpolitical shiftin Florida, where a Republican-led legislature and the Republican governor enacted gun control legislation for the first time.

The group March for Our Lives was born out of the Parkland massacre, and in anannouncementwith Giffords just two days before the El Paso gunman opened fire, the two announced that they would co-host the Democratic candidates at a gun violence forum in Las Vegas on Oct. 2 — a day after the two-year anniversary of the massacre of 58 people and the wounding of 422 others by a lone gunman, the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S.

“This weekend has changed the stakes,” said Robyn Thomas, executive director of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “We can rattle off the statistics about the gun violence problem we have in this country. But when things like this happen, it really amplifies it in a way that it becomes impossible to ignore for the average American voter.”

The candidates couldn’t avoid the shocking news of the killing in El Paso on Saturday, which happened just as they convened at a union conference in Las Vegas.

Adjusting his speech with the news, Pete Buttigieg implored the nation to “confront white nationalist violence” and to enact “gun safety policies that most Americans think we ought to do.” For Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., the focus on gun violence and white supremacy comes as his campaign reels from depressed African American support after the shooting death of a black man in his home city by a white police officer.

Later Saturday in Nevada, former Vice President Joe Biden reminded a crowd at one of his events that he carried the 1994 crime bill, which included the now-expired assault weapons ban.

“The fact is, we can beat the NRA, we can beat the gun manufacturers. I did it,” Biden said. “We’ve beat them before, we can do that again, and it’s my intention to do just that.”

In an email to supporters on Sunday, Biden’s campaign linked the El Paso shooting to white supremacism and violence: “We continue to bear witness to acts of terror carried out with a common thread: hatred of ‘the other.’ We saw it in Charlottesville two years ago, at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, and now in El Paso.”

Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, the only black candidates in the primary, also accused the president of inciting hate.

While local police say the El Paso shooter had expressed anti-Hispanic rhetoric to them, there’s no suspected racial motive behind the rampage of the Dayton shooter, who reportedly shot and killed his sister along with seven others and wounded 27 before he was killed.

Gun rights advocates complained on social media that the gender and race of mass shooters were discussed only if they were white men and notblackortransgender. Conservative websites and pundits focused on how the Dayton gunman was a Democrat or how the El Paso shooter believed in universal healthcare and universal basic income, progressive ideas.

While Democrats were moving to draw distinctions on gun policies, they were also advancing the issue as a collective against Trump. After Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted to O’Rourke that “my staff and I are mourning with you for your friends and neighbors,” he responded: “Thank you, Senator Warren. Grateful for your kind words and all of the work you’re doing to end this epidemic.”

#Democratic #Foreign #Politics #primary

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hail-to-the-republic · 5 years

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dailyfeed reports new and opinions

Menu Bizarro-World Media It’s obvious that the media abides an institutional racial double standard in how mass shootings and terrorist acts are reported. This double standard has the appearance of a coordinated operation, but it needn’t be to achieve the same effect. All you’d require is a media vastly overstaffed with shitlibs who think alike. Over at Sailer’s, Anonymous[396] calls this Bizarro-World media, Watching the MSM reaction to the Christchurch Massacre is like watching the Bizarro-World reaction to Islamic Massacres. 1) As soon as it happened everyone started calling the perpetrator a terrorist, which was 100% accurate given his elaborate streaming setup. But a Muslim can hack people to death while shouting Allahu Ackbar and we really need to wait until all the facts are in, preferably until people forget about it. 2) Muslim terrorists are lone wolves who have nothing to do with Islam but any time a white(or even partly-white guy) engages in terrorist behaviour, it’s part of a worldwide movement that somehow combines Islamophobes, White Nationalists, incels and 4chan, no matter how tenuous the links are. In fact, many Islamic terrorists in the west are the exact equivalent of Breivik and apparently this guy-people who got all their ideas from a specific messed-up corner of the internet but never attended a training camp of any kind or are part of a large network of co-conspirators. 3) MSM gatekeepers are doing their best not to give viewers any information that might cast Islam in a negative light. During a Canadian round-table on the CBC, the talking heads pointed out the unmistakable reference to Alexandre Bissionette on the terrorist’s gun case, while leaving viewers to wonder what “For Rotherham” meant. I find that the reporting on these mass shootings follows a trend. If shooter was nonwhite, it’s a news blurb then quickly forgotten. If the shooter was white, it’s a few days of “diversity & inclusion” sanctimony and goodwhite virtue signaling, plus candlelight vigils, but no in-depth, exploratory reporting of motives. The media isn’t keen for normies to know too much about what motivates White vengeance shooters. (In the case of the NZ shooter, he was motivated in part to avenge the death of a Swedish girl who was cut in half by a truck driven by a moslem terrorist. Steve Sailer thinks the shooting may have been blowback from the illegal Kosovo War from 20 years ago.) The media DOES NOT WANT anyone to know that the Whites who died at the hands of moslem terrorists is what motivated the NZ shooter. That muddies the anti-White narrative more than a bit, because it calls attention to a fundamental question: If there wasn’t so much moslem terrorism, there wouldn’t be an occasional White backlash. Likewise, if there weren’t so much diversity forcibly imposed on Whites in their own nations, there might not be so much intertribal violence. Normal Whites might begin to reasonably wonder about this whole forced diversity project. Just think how many lives would be saved if White nations were left to be homogeneous. All of anon’s points are spot on. The media gives the benefit of the doubt to nonwhite perps even after all the facts prove otherwise but is quick to indict White perps even before a single fact is known. The media excuses the nonwhite collective for the violent actions of many nonwhites, but blames the White collective for the violent action of one White person. The media hides evidence that undermines the anti-White narrative, but concocts smears to bolster that narrative. We dissident renegades know the score; now we just wait for the great bloated mass of inert normies to catch on to what is already very clear to us: Mass media is the enemy of White people. Polling over may years clearly shows that a significant minority to an outright majority of moslems all over the world say in surveys that they support the actions of islamic terrorists who target infidels. In stark contrast, there is barely a tiny fraction of a percent of Whites who support the actions of lone wolf White terrorists. Islamic terrorism feeds off a vast network of social support and leaders who will excuse their violent foot soldiers. Many islamic terror operations are the result of coordinated operations involving multiple family and clan members and even state level support, occurring within a social context that tolerates violent extremists when not outright arming them up and encouraging them to attack westerners. White reactionary terrorism enjoys none of that. They are almost entirely lone wolf attacks with no support from kin or clan, and no supportive social structure or tacit state encouragement to energize them. Therefore, it’s far more accurate and truthful to blame islamic terrorism on the moslem collective than it is to blame White reactionary terrorism on the White collective. But shitlibs do the opposite, because it’s not about accuracy or truth, it’s about scapegoating Whites for the dysfunction of nonWhites. J. Ross exposes the dark intentions of bizarro-world media, They are moving very strongly to censor social media and criminalize speech. BBC Radio in the immediate aftermath talked about the need to monitor thought in almost those words. No one considers that people might be reacting to what they see around them with their own eyes — there is always this faith that folks are captured by some conjuration and mighty magic, in other words, the thoroughly trashed premise of the SPLC and the ADL which led them to attack Gibson’s Passion of the Christ and Bavarian Easter celebrations. The mainstream national and international news already censors crimes against whites, and police agencies across Western Europe spent about half a year pretending that nothing happened on New Year’s Eve in Cologne. They must be looking at places like this next. Left-wing censorship, exemplified by media whorenalists calling for speech restrictions, is another case of psychological projection. Media shitlibs accuse their foes of fooling people with agitprop that media shitlibs themselves engage in to force an unnatural conformism to their anti-White worldview. The media cries out for censorship of political dissidents because they know the power of propaganda; they’ve been doing it for decades and have largely succeeded, until now, at keeping certain topics of discussion out of mainstream discourse. But the pressure built up way too much; the safety valves are blowing all over the anti-White hate machine. Media shitlibs know normies are “captured by [the media’s] conjuration and mighty magic”, and they want to keep that power out of the hands of the people and for themselves. Thus, Globohomo’s ramped up calls for tyrannical speech restrictions and Big Brother thoughtcrime censorship. By the commutative property of psychological projection, when the media says that dissidents must be monitored, what they’re really saying is “the media must be monitored”. Share this: Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)2Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)2Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Related That's An Imam, Baby!In "Beta" Yes We Khan....Send Them BackIn "Current Events" Freelance Comment Of The Week: The Jihad-Hashtag CycleIn "Comment Winners" March 17, 2019 54 Replies « Previous Next » Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Comment Name Email Website Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. stg58animalmother on March 17, 2019 at 4:07 pm My dad was calling them the Prostitute National Press in the 60’s. They’ve been at it a while. Liked by 4 people Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:40 pm Your ol man is(was?)BASED AF bro! Liked by 2 people Reply stg58animalmother on March 17, 2019 at 11:25 pm Yes he was Like Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 11:35 pm Did u not make it to being professional Athlete? Did he go out hard? Like Looch El Sicario on March 17, 2019 at 4:23 pm I doubt normies will ever have a sense of racial solidarity as long as whites are a majority. Liked by 1 person Reply P.K. Griswold on March 17, 2019 at 5:56 pm Normies won’t have a sense of racial solidarity until they are *scared*. Becoming a minority in your own country might do that. Then again it might not. Like Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:42 pm You’ve seen these twats…..they won’t. Like Jay in DC on March 17, 2019 at 7:00 pm What he said… there is already precedent well established. Every single one that has been killed even children, the family members put up their tail feathers with the bright virtue signaling plummage. They sacrificed their own flesh & blood on the altar of die-versity to wash the original sin of RAYCISS off of them. The brainwashed are religious zealots more than willing to die for their faith. This is nothing new and has repeated many times in history under different radical banners. Mass culling is the play here. Like NeoChronopolis on March 17, 2019 at 8:37 pm The most bizarre part of all is the ritual of self-abasement parents go through when their kids are slaughtered. Explained as an actual Jonestown-level psychosis actually explains alot. It’s remarkable that these killers haven’t, by sheer coincidence, killed a kid of an Ellie Nesler-type. Only a matter of time, I guess. Like Lichthof on March 17, 2019 at 8:10 pm White babies born today in the US are a minority Like Reply snarkwolf on March 17, 2019 at 4:37 pm It is worth noting that the perp shot nine people in the first mosque, then moved on the second mosque. Why did he switch? There must have been plenty more congregants! Then, at the second mosque, he killed about 40 people. Why the early switch??? Anser: Because one of the congregants at the first mosque starting shooting back. Liked by 3 people Reply Mr Meener on March 17, 2019 at 5:01 pm who cares Liked by 1 person Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:44 pm I do. It shows that an UNcucked populous FIGHTS BACK. We can despise them all we want, but we can’t call them cucked……… Theres a lesson in that. Liked by 1 person Lichthof on March 17, 2019 at 8:12 pm Snark…did you watch the video? Like Reply LOL on March 17, 2019 at 4:38 pm I don’t want to sound alarmist here, but it’s plainly obvious to me that the *only* thing that will shut Islamic forces up is more force. Even after 9/11, No-one dared respond with force (in the states at least). Force – even in its mildest form: academic critique -was actively condemned. in the absence of any force these fucks grew bolder. For the first time in years, these fucks are shitting their bitch pants. Rightfully so. Liked by 1 person Reply Corinth Arkadin on March 17, 2019 at 5:57 pm I think that’s only a taste of what’s to come. The genie’s out of the bottle. NZ, Australia…Europe? Or perhaps some enterprising American decides that enuff, no more. Liked by 2 people Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:48 pm Explaining his rage to a(((well placed))) nigress….this is why we lose. Liked by 1 person Corinth Arkadin on March 17, 2019 at 8:46 pm It’s just a clip. Context of the stream is what I was going for Like dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:45 pm YUUUUUPPPPP Like Reply NeoChronopolis on March 17, 2019 at 8:40 pm No one dared? Tom Tancredo used the bully pulpit of a congressional seat to call for the nuking of Mecca in retribution and even Ron Paul called for the issuing of letters of marque and reprisal (an excellent idea BTW). (((Someone))) muzzled, drugged and threw the raging momma bear down a well – and we’ve been there ever since. Well, until Brievik… Like Reply Ironsides on March 17, 2019 at 4:53 pm Well, the jews, the left, and the invaders have been sowing the wind for decades now. Can’t be surprised when the seeds eventually yield a harvest. And the original suggests the nature of what will grow. Liked by 1 person Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:49 pm H3il V1KTORY!!!!!! Like Reply Captain John Charity Spring MA on March 17, 2019 at 5:03 pm Brenton Tarrant did what Breivik didn’t do. He created a live stream of his terrorism and that means the press have literally no story to report and no ability to lie about. Liked by 3 people Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:49 pm You underestimate our foe, sir. Like Reply Mr Meener on March 17, 2019 at 5:16 pm I wonder if the muslims will get billions from homeland security like the jews get Liked by 1 person Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:50 pm Count on it. Like Reply NeoChronopolis on March 17, 2019 at 8:42 pm A millions Somalis in the Twin Cities and Fargo say “DurkaDurka amawahnajihad” which means “Yes” in Skinny. Like Reply Jack Archer on March 17, 2019 at 5:23 pm Do you really believe people are so inattentive so as to fall for media misdirection? C’mon, goys, that all nonsense… Liked by 1 person Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:54 pm WELL PLAYED, JA! Bet that guy gets endless puddy. Like Reply Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 7:19 pm Talked so many orders so fast Touched him so many Times Had him jumping through his own Asshole Liked by 1 person Reply P.K. Griswold on March 17, 2019 at 6:10 pm “They are almost entirely lone wolf attacks with no support from kin or clan, and no supportive social structure or tacit state encouragement to energize them.” Total paradigm shift with Brenton Tarrant. I was personally stunned by the general indifference so many people expressed and even outright support the guy received from A LOT of people. Liked by 2 people Reply Lichthof on March 17, 2019 at 8:15 pm Yep. Shitlib media sites had to disable comments. The scum at the Guardian never opened a comment section. I read the manifesto and did not see Trump mentioned. Did I miss it? Like Reply NeoChronopolis on March 17, 2019 at 8:47 pm Totally surprised this Christmas talking to a certain Boomer of my acquaintance. He asked “Ever heard of Anders Breivik? What do you think of him.” “Meh, did what needed to be done, it seems,” says I. “Norway’s in better shape than other Scandi nations, now.” I was surprised when he said “I can’t really disagree with any of that.” His churchmouse wife was nodding silently in the background. Former hippies, a Unitarian and Catholic schoolgirl, earlier in life. We’re in a shift for sure. Gen Zyklon will bring the fire whether we’re ready for it or not… Liked by 1 person Reply Blue pill society on March 17, 2019 at 6:15 pm Attitudes are shifting regarding this. People in public are scared to speak their minds for fear of reprisal of loss of employment. The whispering voices supporting this are growing. Western civilization is starting to see through the BS. When you force a nation to accept multiculturalism it usually leads to a resurgence of nationalism. When the west rises this time we may not stop like in previous instances where we had enough. Liked by 2 people Reply Jay in DC on March 17, 2019 at 7:03 pm “When the west rises this time we may not stop like in previous instances where we had enough.” This must occur and in the ways most people are very uncomfortable with which includes women and children. In the same way that you wouldn’t look at a roach carrying an egg sac and think ‘well, they haven’t had a chance yet’. This is no different. They outbreed us geometrically and their women are the vector of that. The next generation will simply be more of the same. If this were to pop off it would have to be scorched earth until none remained. Liked by 2 people Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 7:51 pm You are welcome in my foxhole bro. Liked by 1 person NeoChronopolis on March 17, 2019 at 8:49 pm Balkans c. 1990s were the pregame. We’re in the top of the first inning of a global-scale Rourke’s Drift now. Like dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 6:38 pm “Mass media is the enemy of White people.” My stupid cunt of a daughter in law has a home tee-shirt applique machine and this WILL BE printed and worn by me out n about. OT buuuuuuutttt…… MAD PROPS to the Proprietor for scouring his bl0gs kk0mments section and recognizing his pupils greatness. Like Reply Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 7:08 pm The enemy of all people Liked by 1 person Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 7:17 pm I get your point GSG but I only care about my own kin and kitlth Like walawala on March 17, 2019 at 6:42 pm First thing Western YTs do is try to separate themselves from this act. First thing Muzzies do following an attack or when a child sax grooming trial is revealed is cry wacism. Like Reply Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 7:28 pm Nogs give a bitch crack heroin Then cut them off till do what they want No grooming needed really Drugs perfected pimping Like Reply JOSEPH ANGEL on March 17, 2019 at 7:41 pm So, when you say ‘Media’, you are trying to tell us something? It was on the tippy-tip of my tongue. It will come to me. Liked by 1 person Reply Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 7:47 pm Not all jews in media Just some of them Like Reply dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 7:54 pm GSG, you’ve seen too much and give too many a pass bro Like Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 7:56 pm Not all of the jews are in media Like dblr619 on March 17, 2019 at 7:53 pm Jooing intensifies….. Like Reply Pingback: Bizarro-World Media | Reaction Times X on March 17, 2019 at 8:15 pm “I find that the reporting on these mass shootings follows a trend. If shooter was nonwhite, it’s a news blurb then quickly forgotten. If the shooter was white, it’s a few days of “diversity & inclusion” sanctimony and goodwhite virtue signaling, plus candlelight vigils…” In either case, the “trend” also includes the inevitable demands to ban and confiscate guns from the white population, leading them disarmed and defenceless against the brown hordes… Like Reply Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 8:55 pm Yea Better take up swordfighting and buy bulletproof armour Its pretty cheap online Put rock filled cement Plates n Bullets richoche off Like Reply Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 8:58 pm Bout three inchi cement rock combined Try it at range Like Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 9:02 pm Used to shoot cement trashcan like the with ak rounds when young Made little dents in it didnt come close to Going through now a car door yea go through Metal go through But not prob three inches Not Eastwood ahead of its time when he put metal plate over his chest to detect bullets A rope and piece of metal Of world can create own bullet proof body armour by hand Make knights great again Like Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 9:06 pm Hollywood told US how to defend in a western a long time ago Ironic shit Like Gunslingergregi on March 17, 2019 at 9:24 pm The army didnt really teach me shit bout Fighting i taught myself Just like i taught myself computers Excel and shit Up to other people id of been a moron Just like them lol Like Copyright © 2018. 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theconservativebrief · 5 years

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The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter had a conspiracy theory.

The suspected killer of 11 Jewish people in a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue frequently posted snippets of his political ideology on far-right social networking sites like Gab. He posited that George Soros, the Jewish billionaire known for contributing to liberal causes, was secretly controlling the Honduran migrant caravan, a dwindling group of about 4,000 people heading on foot to the US-Mexico border to seek political refuge from instability and gang violence as part of a wider scheme to destabilize Western democracy.

“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” the suspected gunman allegedly wrote on Gab hours before the attack, referring to a Jewish nonprofit that advocates for refugees, before adding, “I can’t stand by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in.”

Hours later, 11 people were dead.

As Media Matters researcher Talia Lavin told Vox earlier this week, the narrative of “white genocide” — the destabilization and marginalization of white people in Europe — is historically inextricable from the conspiracy narrative of the Jew as “puppet master.” This figure is supposedly both secretly, insidiously in charge of the economic and political world order, and deeply committed ideologically to destabilizing ethnic and national identities.

Soros is an incredibly wealthy Jewish man who has made no secret of his liberal political affiliations. He’s become a convenient symbol for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. But he’s far from the first one — and unlikely to be the last.

The conspiracy theories against Soros, and the insidious idea of the “Jewish puppet master” more generally, are part of a much broader rhetoric of hate, one that has fomented amid populist anxieties about urbanization, industrialization, and capitalism for centuries.

It’s a pernicious trope, but far from a new one, dating back to the European Enlightenment, an umbrella term for a number of rationalist, largely secular, philosophical schools of thought that flourished in the 18th century.

Since the late 18th century — and the political changes that followed the European Enlightenment — Jews have been treated as a scapegoat for populist anger, unfairly blamed for wider cultural anxieties about capitalism, industrialization, and an increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan social landscape.

Historical hatred of Jews has taken very particular forms over the past two millennia. There was religious anti-Semitism based loosely on the idea that the Jews were (allegedly) responsible for the killing of Christ, or for refusing him as Messiah. There was also straightforward racial animosity, which led to sickeningly regular genocidal violence throughout Medieval Europe.

But the anti-Semitic narratives around George Soros, which seem to have motivated the suspected Pittsburgh shooter, are rooted in a relatively more recent anti-Semitism that has been around since the late 18th century: a toxic conflation of anti-Semitism and “populism” that portrays Jews as mysterious, mustache-twirling puppet masters of the global order.

In an excellent 2017 piece in Jacobin, Harrison Fluss and Landon Frim look at how this form of anti-Semitism came to be.

They trace the origins of this modern “populist” narrative of anti-Semitism — the idea that Jews are out to subvert a Christian, ethnically unified society — to the political and economic upheavals that defined the late 1700s. The French Revolution, in particular, dispensed with absolutist monarchy in France and plunged all of Europe into a time of political instability. One Revolution-era document they highlight lays out what it meant to be part of this new, post-monarchical France.

That 1789 document, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, laid out a radically new way of understanding what it meant to be French — or, at least, French in a newly democratic, post-monarchical society. It presented a vision of citizenship as distinct from bloodline or heritage, grounded instead in the democratic process and in “universal reason and equality.” A vision of citizenship that, Fluss and Frum write, explicitly emancipated Jews.

The ways in which Jews became citizens, Fluss and Frum argue, highlighted a fundamental difference in the way identity was understood between the ancien régime of monarchial France and the post-Revolutionary, increasingly capitalist, world order.

“Belonging” became not an issue of ethnicity or birthright but of political participation. “Citizenship,” by contrast, became a unifying foundational concept — one that allowed for a society based, in theory, on a coherence of ideas rather than a confluence of bloodlines.

The 18th-century debate over “human rights” was inextricably tied to the practical question of the place of Jews in society. If all citizens of a nation were equal by virtue of their civic participation, then Jews were “one of us.” If, however, identity were more fixed — based on natural and biological factors — then Jews could never be “one of us.” They would always be outsiders at best, impostors at worst.

This debate over “citizenship,” and what it meant to belong to a place, came at a time of immense social upheaval more broadly. The 19th century in Western Europe was a time of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and the increasing dominance of an urban, capitalist economic order. For some, this meant the possibility of prosperity — throughout Europe, the 19th century saw the dawning of a larger, richer middle class.

But for others, the new, liberal, capitalist world order did not live up to its promise. And those left behind, socially or financially, by that new order sought someone to blame. And so, as Fluss and Frim write, “the Counter-Enlightenment belonged to the Right, quite often of the romantic, völkisch [or nationalist], and anti-Semitic Right.”

Opponents of Enlightenment values more broadly bought into ideas that prioritized fixed identity — based on blood, language, or faith — over nebulous definitions of “citizenship” or “human rights” (definitions that would, in turn, legitimize Jews as full members of society). The 19th century saw a dawning of nationalist ideology across Europe, including a fascination with imagined, primordial pasts defined by national myths. The composer Richard Wagner — whose anti-Semitic legacy has long been debated — created staggering operas, based on Old Norse mythology, that doubled as paeans to an imagined German past. The Brothers Grimm started their project of collecting German folklore and fairytales — like Wagner, hoping to create a vision of a unified, purer Germanic past.

This reactionary Counter-Enlightenment treated Jews (alongside other “undesirables”) as responsible for the evil of uncontrolled capitalism: another social factor that had come to shape the industrial 19th century. In their minds, the emancipation of Jews went hand in hand, with all the flaws of the new “liberal” world order that the Enlightenment — and, after it, the French Revolution — had wrought. It was this conflation of populist, anti-capitalist sentiment and anti-Semitism that led German sociologist August Bebel to term anti-Semitism “the socialism of fools.”

For example, from a 1845 text by Alphonse Toussenel:

Protestants and Jews, thanks to emancipation after 1787 and 1791, have controlled public opinion in order to favour trafficking and rigging the market, blocked every defence of royalty and of the people, put the producer and the consumer at their mercy so that in France the Jew reigns and governs.

These attitudes weren’t just limited to verbal discourse. Anti-Semitic pamphlets and imagery throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries visually portrayed the Jew as something between a corporate fat cat and a shadowy overlord; someone “cosmopolitan,” urbane (and urban), and dangerous.

This rhetoric reveals the extent to which Jews were seen as scapegoats: responsible for somehow manipulating the current world order in order to destabilize white Christian identity. It’s the exact same story we see today in narratives around Soros: that of the scheming Jewish billionaire, without any real (i.e. blood) loyalty to the country that allows him to be a citizen, actively seeking to undermine white Christian unity.

A caricature of the Jewish soldier Alfred Dreyfus, falsely accused of espionage after a cover-up, whose case galvanized late 19th-century Paris. (Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)

Perhaps the most noxious and notorious example of this brand of anti-Semitism is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 1903 Russian hoax document. It was a “handbook” on Jewish rule “proving” that a shadowy cabal of Jews were running the government, the media, and actively plotting to suppress nationalism and religion. It’s unclear who wrote the document, or when — although parts of it are plagiarized from unrelated, earlier French and German satirical texts — but it seems clear that the document was intended to stoke anti-Semitic sentiments among ordinary Russians. But, even more disturbingly, it managed to conflate the Jewish people both with a threat to national and religious identity, and with a kind of dangerous secular capitalism.

These straw-man fictitious Jews, depicted in the document for example, announce that:

“It is indispensable for us to undermine all faith, to tear out of the mind of the “goyim” the very principle of god-head and the spirit, and to put in its place arithmetical calculations and material needs”

The Protocols were used by the Nazis as propaganda, and are still distributed and presented as fact by organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, and remain in common use among extremist right-wing groups. In 2012, for example, a representative of Greece’s ultra-right Golden Dawn party read a portion of the text aloud in the Greek parliament.

Serbian Anti-Semitic Poster Depicting Churchill and Stalin as puppets of a Jewish man. (Photo by Swim Ink 2/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

The populist anger at the heart of modern anti-Semitism may not be new. But that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. Last weekend’s attacks on the Tree of Life synagogue — the deadliest ever attack on Jews on American soil according to the Anti-Defamation League — reveal just how noxious the “Jewish puppetmaster” trope can be, and just how long it can survive.

But historical memory is as short as history itself is cyclical. The mantra of of “never again” — repeated so often after the horrors of the Holocaust — all too easily dissolves into “until next time.”

Original Source -> The centuries-old history of Jewish “puppet master” conspiracy theories

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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healthandfitnessrecipes-blog · 6 years

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America’s Unending Tragedy

https://healthandfitnessrecipes.com/?p=1017

Todd listened for several more minutes as Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered their classmates, taunting them as they screamed. Todd prayed silently: “God, let me live.”

Then Klebold pulled back a chair and found Todd hiding underneath a table.

He put a gun to Todd’s head. "Why shouldn't I kill you?" he asked.

“I've been good to you,” Todd said.

Klebold looked at Harris. “You can kill him if you want,” Klebold told his teenage co-conspirator.

No one knows why—indeed, no one knows the “why” behind such violence—but that’s when Harris and Klebold left the library. Todd got to live.

The way Todd sees it, “liberals like to control others and conservatives like to control themselves.” He glanced around the Starbucks where we were sitting. Statistically, he said, four people there were likely to have guns on them. Being near four guns might scare many liberals. Many conservatives, though, would want to be one of the four with a gun.

The Columbine Memorial in Littleton. (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

Carol Schuster outside her home in Centennial. (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

Kaylee Tyner at her home in Littleton. (Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

Kaylee and some friends work on signs for March for Our Lives at her home in Littleton, Colo.

At this point, a woman approached our table to thank Tom for his efforts. “You’re welcome,” he said.

I sat there speechless as Tom Mauser calmly ate a spoonful of soup. “This is America,” he said.

(Kirsten Leah Bitzer)

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2018/03/033_KLB_toned/lead_960.jpg Credits: Original Content Source

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ionecoffman · 6 years