Reddit’s r_The_Donald has been very closely tied to the propaganda alt-right machine, as referenced in different articles on the Fake News & Propaganda page
While the first direct evidence of the Trump Campaign’s collusion with the Russian hackers was revealead (GOP Operative worked for Mike Flynn to obtain Hillary’s missing 33,000 emails by contacting at least 2 Russian hacker groups), and simultaneously Trump was calling for 32 million people to lose healthcare by repealing the ACA, concurrent with Trump defunding the agency tasked (Election Assistance Commission) with protecting our election systems, Trump attacked Mika from “Morning Joe” with lying Tweets about her “Bleeding from her face”, and then r_The_Donald created a video of Trump beating up CNN to shore up more support generated by Trump fans appreciating his lack of good taste with Mika.
“Before it made it to President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, a now-infamous video of the leader beating a man with the CNN logo transplanted over his face wound its way through Reddit — and appeared to have been created by a redditor with a history of openly racist posts.
The GIF appears to have first been posted to Reddit’s /r/the_donald board just a few days ago by user HanAssholeSolo, where it quickly accrued nearly 9,000 upvotes as of Sunday afternoon.” MIC
Why do the Neocons of the Bush Era matter? The ideology set forth in 2001 has resulted in Middle East war and transfers of power that have no end in sight. It is also a reminder to pay attention to the ideologies that our elected officials openly subscribe to. They have real effects. These people have been openly critical of the Trump administration and are fearful of his foreign policy, issuing strong statements. Ezra Cohen-Watnick is a Neocon, forced in by Michael Flynn, and forced upon his replacement McMaster, by Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.
The George W. Bush administration had prominent members of a “Neocon” think tank called the Project For The New American Century (PNAC). The only prominent Government leader whose signature was missing from its mission statement was the President’s. It was very closely related to the Heritage Foundation, Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), and American Enterprise Institute (AEI). While its website was taken down long ago, this site has a summary and links: HistoryCommons.org
William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and regular on ABC’s “This Week”, and Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institute, Policy Planning Staff of the State Department from 1984 to 1988, and principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, are now at the Foreign Policy Initiative, not to be confused with John Hopkins University Foreign Policy Institute.
The Bradley Foundation grant largely funded the CPSG, which largely funded PNAC and AEI, which shared Richard Perle, former Bush Sr. assistant secretary of defense, as a prominent member. Dick Cheney, Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, Gary Schmitt, Max Singer, Casper Weinberger, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser, and Dov Zakheim. [CNN, 2/20/1998; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]
Its Statement of Principles, issued June 3, 1997 is following in summary per HistoryCommons.org:
“The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank formed in the spring of 1997, issues its statement of principles. PNAC’s stated aims are: to “shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests” to achieve “a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad” to “increase defense spending significantly” to challenge “regimes hostile to US interests and values” to “accept America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.” [Project for the New American Century, 6/3/1997] The Statement of Principles is significant, because it is signed by a group who will become “a roll call of today’s Bush inner circle.” [Guardian, 2/26/2003] ABC’s Ted Koppel will later say PNAC’s ideas have “been called a secret blueprint for US global domination.” [ABC News, 3/5/2003]” Context for Statement of Principles, HistoryCommons.org
“Ezra (Cohen-Watnick) interned at his think tank…Frank Gaffney was in the Reagan Administration and promoted the Star Wars Program, has worked for and closely associated with the Neocon Project For The New American Century, all of whose founders had prominent roles in the George W. Bush administration and were the architects of the 9/11 Middle East Imperialist spread of Democracy with Zionist ideology.” …More about Frank Gaffney in theWashington Report’s Neocon Superhawk Frank Gaffney Earns His Wings In Port Flap, September 1, 2009
A documentary about the 9/11 investigation called “Loose Change” involved the timing of events (including statements and documents created by PNAC) and inciting incident for experiment with their strategies. Youtube The series of events and this film appealed to conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones, who later surfaced as a voice of the Alt-Right with his Infowars.com. It also encouraged distrust of the government and intelligence agencies, which played a part in the Alt-Right’s rejection of the Neocon imperialist, rule over the naturally inferior, anti-Big Government, anti-Globalist, anti-MSM (Mainstream Media) stance of the Trump era and the distrust of the Clintons and subsequent judicial findings, promoted by the Alt-Right. While the Neocons shielded the masses from the truth, the internet age and social media has encouraged this intellectual populism, whereby the common person feels they can know the truth because of unprecedented access and communication between truth-seekers.
“According to Counterpunch’s Kurt Nimmo, the plan for overthrowing Iraq later adopted by the Bush administration, and currently advocated by the CPSG, will be echoed in the PNAC’s September 2000 document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (see September 2000). [CounterPunch, 11/19/2002]”
The Neocons were inspired by LEO STRAUSS, not William Strauss of Steve Bannon’s “Fourth Turning” fascination.
Leo Strauss’ views were summed up by Danny Postel in “Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neo-cons, and Iraq” in this way:
“He (Strauss) argues that the wise must conceal their views for two reasons – to spare the people’s feelings and to protect the elite from possible reprisals. The people will not be happy to learn that there is only one natural right –the right of the superior to rule over the inferior, the master over the slave, the husband over the wife, and the wise few over the vulgar many.”
“According to Shadia Drury, a scholar who has studied the link between Strauss and the Neo-Conservatives for years, what the Neo-Conservatives find most compelling about Straussianism is the great belief in “efficacy and useful lies in politics.”[48] Strauss based this idea on Plato’s notion of the noble lie, which meant that the rulers of a state must tell the people that they are chosen by God to rule the people in order to keep a stable society. Strauss was also inspired by philosophers and political thinkers such as Hobbes, Nietzsche, and Machiavelli, but the most important inspiration was the old philosophers from the Greek antiquity. Leo Strauss thought that the enlightenment had done little for the common man, and that the fate of the common man was to be led by educated leaders. Society’s problem was not the lack of democracy, but the lack of virtue. If people knew the reality behind how the rulers became rulers, they would create chaos and upheaval.” 48:Danny Postel “Noble lies and Perpetual War: Leo Strauss, the Neo-Cons, and Iraq”, Oct 18 2003. Jan 18 2005 <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5010.htm>
American Oversight HATCH ACT: Nonpartisan ethics watchdog group American Oversight today asked the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to investigate whether White House adviser Sebastian Gorka violated the Hatch Act by posting political tweets from President Trump’s recent campaign rally in Ohio. July 28, 2017
American Oversight Failure to Disclose Membership in a Nazi group on Security Clearance Forms “On March 16, the Forward reported that Mr. Gorka may be a member of Vitézi Rend, citing interviews with current members of the group. If substantiated, this affiliation would raise a number of serious questions warranting congressional investigation – including whether Mr. Gorka may have violated federal law if he failed to disclose his membership in the group when he was being vetted for a security clearance.” March 16, 2017
What Is Vitézi Rend, The Ally Of The Nazis That Sebastian Gorka ‘Joined’ Fast Forward March 16, 2017 By Lily Bayer and Larry Cohler-Esses “The group’s mission emphasized not only loyalty to Hungary and nationalist ideas, but also an ideology of racial superiority. One of the original aims of the Vitézi Rend was to “ensure such might to the Hungarian race, which with tremendous power strikes every subversive state and anti-national movement,” [Admiral Miklos] Horthy said in a speech to new members in 1921. The Quisling group to which Gorka, 46, purportedly belongs is a reconstitution of the original group on the State Department list, which was banned in Hungary until the fall of Communism in 1989.”
“Former Breitbart writer/ Seb Gorka’s wife Katherine Gorka is leaving her position aspress secretary for Customs and Border Protection, just about two months to the day after her appointment – administration sources” @ahauslohner Abigail Hauslohner 9:59 AM · Aug 20, 2019
Trump and Bannon ‘Personally Intervened’ to Save Seb Gorka The Daily Beast May 5, 2017 “Gorka and Bannon are close. They worked together at Breitbart News—the far-right Trump-boosting outlet that Bannon once ran as a “dictator,” according to former employees—where Gorka served as national security editor even as he was also a paid consultant for the Trump campaign.”
Sebastian Gorka accidentally included a Jezebel writer in a White House emailApril 6, 2017 Death And Taxes: The Jezebel writer stated: “He’s clearly sensitive… about any indication that he’s not honest about his résumé. But Gorka’s refusal to provide comment on basic matters of public interest like what he was doing in the army only raises doubts. I had the same experience previously, when I asked about his describing himself as an expert witness in the Boston bombing case, despite not having testified, and when I contacted the White House to ask about his being detained for carrying ammunition through an airport in 2004. The first time, neither Gorka nor the White House ever responded to my inquiries; the second, Gorka accidentally included me in a reply-all email, instructing White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer not to comment.”
“The Strategic Initiatives Group is run by assistant to the president Christopher Liddell, and includes deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka, who has worked closely with Bannon while writing for Breitbart, the website he used to run. Gorka is a controversial character himself, author of a book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War, that argues the enemy is not, as the Obama administration saw it, “violent extremism,” but instead “the global jihadi movement, a modern totalitarian ideology rooted in the doctrines and martial history of Islam,” according to promotional material for the book. Gorka also faced a criminal charge for trying to take a gun through airport security, according to The Wall Street Journal. The White House could not be immediately reached for comment on the status of the case.
Sebastian Gorka Likely to Be Out of White House Role, Officials Say NY Times“Mr. Gorka, a former editor at Breitbart News, a right-wing website, is a friend of Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime Breitbart chairman who is now Mr. Trump’s chief strategist. Mr. Gorka memorably declared that “the alpha males are back” as an assertion of the distance between the Obama administration and the current one. He has been accused of having links to far-right groups in Europe, and critics of his hard-line views on Islam have accused him of Islamophobia. Mr. Gorka, a vocal defender of the administration’s efforts to temporarily ban travel from some predominantly Muslim countries, has said violence is a fundamental part of Islam and emanates from the language of the Quran. He rejects scholars’ assessment that Islamic militancy is an outgrowth of poverty, poor governance and war.”
White House Weighs Kicking Out Sebastian Gorka The president admires Sebastian Gorka for his fiery TV performances, but his ties to far-right organizations are making him more liability than asset, administration sources say. The Daily BeastApril 28, 2017
“We are at war with global jihadism,” he said. “The fact is, we know that ISIS has declared in English, in its publications, in its videos, ‘We will use the refugee streams and mass migrations to insert our jihadis into your cultures,’” he said, explaining the weekend executive order as a necessary evil to protect Americans from ISIS infiltration. ” The Daily Beast January 31, 2017
“Two senior administration officials said Trump and Bannon had shot down an attempt to eject Gorka from his government job, even after dozens of congress members called for his firing after video surfaced of Gorka endorsing radical nationalist group Jobbik’s violent, anti-Semitic Hungarian Guard militia.
There was pressure on the administration to do something about Gorka, a dubiously qualified counterterrorism official, after he had worn a pin associated with World War II-era Nazi collaborators to inaugural festivities.
Gorka’s views on Islam have also been widely characterized as extreme. He refused to admit it is a religion in several recent interviews, suggesting an affinity with the fringe, far-right belief Islam is not a religion at all but a totalitarian ideology.” MIC.com
“The U.K.’s defense ministry is pushing back on claims made by White House adviser Sebastian Gorka regarding his military record with the Territorial Army, the country’s reserves, as a language specialist. Gorka, who is Hungarian born, has claimed in the past that his reserve unit was charged to prevent terror attacks, and that he worked in Northern Ireland—both of which were questioned by the U.K.’s defense ministry, according to BuzzFeed News. The website also reported that these doubts about Gorka’s military record contributed to his security clearance to work in the Hungarian Parliament being denied. The ministry concluded that it would be highly unlikely.” The Daily Beast May 2, 2017
Meet Mike Cernovich, the meme mastermind of the alt-right, Trolls For Trump, New Yorker October 31, 2016: He lives in Orange County, CA, in a cul-de-sac and is “a regular dude”…”His parents are devout Christians. His mother didn’t finish high school; his father bounced between factory jobs, eventually working at a junk yard…Cernovich trained as a lawyer. In 2003, he was accused of raping a woman he knew; the charge was later dropped, but a judge ordered him to do community service for misdemeanor battery. (His record has since been expunged.) On his first blog, which he started in 2004, he offered a libertarian critique of prosecutorial overreach, emphasizing free speech and false rape allegations. He launched his current blog, Danger and Play, in 2011, after his first wife filed for divorce…’My first marriage was ruined by feminist indoctrination’.” Danger and Play has had blog posts titled:
“Misogyny Gets You Laid” and “When Should You Compliment a Woman?” (Answer: “During or after sex.”)
“How to Cheat on Your Girlfriend.”
“On September 11th, Clinton fainted after attending a memorial service at Ground Zero. Cernovich wrote a post called “Complete Timeline of Hillary’s Health #HillarysHealth…cott Greer, a deputy editor of the Daily Caller, tweeted, “Cernovich memed #SickHillary into reality. Never doubt the power of memes’..”After his divorce, he reinvented himself as an alpha male. His self-published 2015 book, “Gorilla Mindset,” is a manual for men who want to “unleash the animal” within them. The book is filed under Gender Studies in the Amazon Kindle store. Until recently, it was the top seller in that category, ahead of “We Should All Be Feminists,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie…
On his blog, Cernovich developed a theory of white-male identity politics: men were oppressed by feminism, and political correctness prevented the discussion of obvious truths, such as the criminal proclivities of certain ethnic groups. His opponents were beta males, losers, or “cucks”—alt-right slang for “cuckolds.” “To beat a person, you lower his or her social status,” he wrote on Danger and Play. “Logic is pointless.”
Although he disdained electoral politics (“No thinking man buys into this two-party political system”), he was in an ideal position to foresee Trump’s rise. In July, 2015, he tweeted, ‘I said if a Republican acted like me and ran for office, it’d be a movement. Donald Trump has proven me right. People are tired of pussies.’..Cernovich told me, ‘I believe in strong borders, including keeping out Islamic terrorists. If people think that’s inherently racist, fine—but I’m an American nationalist, not a white nationalist.’”
“Mike Cernovich, migrated to the alt lite after refusing to openly espouse the alt right’s explicitly white supremacist beliefs.” ADL
“Mike Cernovich is a Southern California-based blogger, YouTube personality, author, filmmaker, conspiracy theorist and radio host who has a predominantly right-wing following on social media. He is an unapologetic misogynist, and has claimed that date rape does not exist, writing on his website, ““Thinking, ‘I might have been date raped,’ means you weren’t raped.” To mark International Women’s Day, he tweeted: “Teach women to stop lying about rape.” Cernovich describes himself as an “American nationalist,” and has written, “IQ tests for immigrants would solve most of our problems. If I could only do ONE act, that would be it.” While he is not part of the alt right, that was not always the case, as he explained in this tweet: “I went from libertarian to alt right after realizing tolerance only went one way and diversity is a code for white genocide.” More recently, he rejected the term “alt right” because of its associations with white supremacists. Cernovich is known for his promotion of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which propagated outrageous claims about child trafficking and culminated in Edgar Welch firing an AR-15 as he entered D.C.’s Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. He has also allegedly commissioned a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon to use as part of his campaign against U.S. National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster. He is a contributor to Alex Jones’ Infowars.” ADL
Nancy McLean: “This is about the billionaire radical right…they understood themselves to be a radical libertarian right. The Libertarian right believes that government should only have 3 functions and those are [1]Ensuring theRule of Law to Protect the Rights of Property, in particular, [2]Guaranteeing Social Order, and [3]Providing for the National Defense. So according to this Right, we should not be able to have anything like Social Security, Medicare [anti-poor], like a government that has a right to stop discrimination [anti-civil rights], like a government that cleans up our air and water [anti-environmental regulation]; anything that involves tax revenues going from these unwilling, wealthy and corporate taxpayers going to other people, whether it’s citizens drug benefits or clean air and water, none of that is legitimate in their view.
And what’s so chilling about this history that I uncovered is that they’re using the ideas of this particular Nobel Prize-winning economist who worked in Virginia for most of his life, to actually Change the Political Process essentially by MISINFORMATION ITSELFto get to that great libertarian Utopia that would be so DYSTOPIAN FOR THE REST OF US.So things like VOTER SUPPRESSION, drawing district lines in a way that make the remaining voters’ votes irrelevant, and all of those things. So it really is a stealth plan. It’s different than traditional conservative. Jane Mayer, the journalist who exposed the dark money trail that the Koch brothers have built, mine is more focused on the ideas and strategies and the end game, but she describes that as “New Koch”: a kind of a re-branding effort trying to make themselves popular, by doing these things, by giving these moneys. I would say be very, very wary of this. They have been working with groups like the LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH, which essentially revived SECESSIONIST IDEAS. There’s a long history of the Libertarian Right sliding into the Alt-Right because they are So Committed To These Ideas. You know what used to be called Social Darwinism that blamed people for their situations, so these people are not the friends of African Americans…”
Roland Martin: “And Nancy, let’s be clear. This started with Brown v. Board of Education”
Nancy McLean: “Yeah, that was what was so new in my work was finding this Southern story, that the origins of these ideas came from Virginia, while Virginia was leading the wider South, in massive resistance to Brown v. Board of Education. This particular thinker, James McGill Buchanan, set to work, and he came up with a new set of ideas that basically provided a kind of scholarly imprimatur to a lot of long-standing conservative ideas on the Southern conservative Right, like the ideas that the politicians just buy the votes of people with things like the rights of workers to organize, social security and medicare, they call all of that “Vote Buying”. And they played on a lot of racist tropes over the years to build an audience for this idea, but basically it’s coming after everyone, including the programs that white people depend on and value. So it is really a radical cause.
Alt Right: A Primer about the New White Supremacy Anti Defamation League“White supremacist Richard Spencer, who runs the National Policy Institute, a tiny white supremacist think tank, coined the term “Alternative Right” as the name for an online publication that debuted in 2010. The online publication changed hands in 2013 when Spencer shut it down. It was soon re-launched by Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki, who were former writers for Alternative Right. Spencer went on to found another online journal, Radix. Both Alternative Right and Radix act as forums for racists, anti-Semites and others who identify with the Alt Right.”
The “Alt-Right” is a loosely defined movement in the US and Europe based in anger…at Muslims, Women, African-Americans, Jews, LGBTQ2+, the Liberal Elites, the Deep State, Immigrants, Refugees and Racial Integration, Big Government, Neocon/Neoliberal Globalism, threats to freedom and personal liberties (guns, unlimited hate speech and calls for violence), Taxes, the UN, World Bank, Mainstream Media (MSM), the Intelligence Community and Dark Military, and more. It has many common sentiments with the Mercer/Bannon camp and lesser so with the Koch brothers.
The Alt-Right has become a politically influential group of Meme Warriors, ready to take on presidential campaigns at a moment’s notice through Reddit chat rooms for strategy, particularly4 chan, 8 chan and The_Donald. Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus VR who sold it to Facebook, bought Facebook ads after the RNC in July 2016 and pushed the anti-Clinton memes which Bannon/Mercer‘s Cambridge Analytica refined using big data algorithms in Brad Parscale’s “Project Alamo”, and no doubt included the influence of Rebekah Mercer and Roger Stone in content. This social media “meme war” of disinformation and hate mongering happened simultaneously with Wikileaks email dumps against the DNC and Clinton. The dumps are speculated to have been coordinated bythe Trump Campaign Digital Manager Jared Kushner, and there is evidence that Steve Bannon’s Breitbart news coordinated with Russian bots to spread stories. Bannon spent 20 hours with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. More on Hacking & Cyber Warfare here. They act as the civilian social media arm of the Russian hackers and propagandist’s efforts to sway public thought and votes in the 2016 election and highly active promoting LePen over Macron and Brexit. “Several alt-techies I interviewed said they were fans of A Troublesome Inheritance, a national bestseller published in 2014 by former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade that makes a case for the existence of differences in average IQ and behavior between races.” Mother Jones
Alt-Right moves into the White House
Trump has stated many times that he judges people based on genes. His nanny was a Nazi. Steve Bannon‘s wife alleged in divorce proceedings that he didn’t want his kids going to school with a bunch of Jews. He was Chief Strategist and with the ethics waiver is officially overseeing Breitbart from the White House, where he is joined by his former Breitbart mid-20s writer, Julia Hahn.
Stephen Miller is a close Trump policy adviser and gained notoriety for defending the Duke University LaCrosse team when they raped two African-American strippers in a violent act of racism. He became Jeff Sessions‘ over-paid speech writer and moved up the political ladder. Miller, Hahn and Bannon are all from the Westside of Los Angeles. Miller was considered as White House Communications Director following Sean Spicer’s resignation and Anthony Scaramucci’s 250-hour term.
Cooperating Witness Michael Flynn, former DIA and National Security Advisor, was a prominent anti-Clinton voice influencing the Alt-Right hatred throughout the Campaign and Transition (Pizzagate, “Lock Her up”, etc.). He brought Ezra Cohen-Watnick into the National Security Council where he has remained. Michael Flynn’s extremist protege from the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency National Security AdvisorSebastian “Seb” Gorka is Anti-Muslim self-proclaimed counterterrorism expert, and sits on the Strategic Initiatives Group with Bannon, Kushner, and Christopher Liddell.
First Amendment Freedoms: The Alt-Right, although there is current pushback on using that label from its fellow idealogues, has been using Freedom of Speech to turn the tables on those who wish to stop giving hate speech a public platform at Universities and in general. It speaks to the Paradox of Intolerance; to have a tolerant societyThe acquisition of Tribune by Sinclair in May 2017 created the opportunity for the Alt-Right propaganda created by this team of writers and military/security strategists to reach 72% of homes. The “must run” segments are mixed into legitimate news, confusing an unwitting audience. While this group has been attacking Mainstream Media and legitimizing their own fringe voices in the process, they have been weakening the reputation of legitimate journalism, which has had a strict code of ethics and validating sources not unlike the legal system, until now.
On August 12, with a preview the night before, Charlottesville, VA, Richard Spencer led the “Unite the Right” protest of the removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee, Confederate hero. It developed into tragedy attributed to the coordinated efforts of what should be a fringe group with limited presence. Because of the power of social media and the internet which allows everyone a voice if they want it, the Alt-Right has developed all of the hallmarks of a terrorist organization. Like ISIS, which uses religion as its tool for legitimacy, the Alt-Right uses the First Amendment against Americans.
“days before the rally, the short-term lodging service Airbnb started suspending the accounts of rally attendees who had rented houses in the area. It was a blow for the organizers, who had “taken over all of the large AirBnBs in a particular area,” according to a user on the message board for the Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi website, who had “set up ‘Nazi Uber’ and the ‘Hate Van’ to help in moving our people around as needed.” Over the last two years, a crop of start-ups has begun offering social media platforms and financial services catering to right-wing Internet users. After being banned from Twitter during the 2016 presidential campaign, many members of the “alt-right” movement of white nationalists joined Gab, which describes itself as “an ad-free social network for creators who believe in free speech, individual liberty, and the free flow of information online.” On Tuesday, one of the site’s most popular posts was an image that said, “I ❤ BEING WHITE.”
Hatreon — pronounced HATE-ree-on — currently features fundraiserssupporting Richard Spencer, one of America’s most prominent white nationalists (who has 34 “patrons” pledging to donate $362 to him a month), and Andrew Anglin, who, as founder and editor of the Daily Stormer, is one of America’s most prominent neo-Nazis (with 50 donors pledging $869.17 a month)…[Creator of Hatreon] Cody Wilson, of Austin, Texas, who is best known for his efforts to produce guns through 3-D printing, described himself as an “Internet anarchist” who wants to disrupt the establishment’s status quo. He was intrigued by far-right users on social media, who sometimes post racist, sexist and anti-Semitic comments and images but also playful memes of their de facto mascot, “Pepe,” a cartoon frog. “Frog Twitter and the so-called ‘alt-right’ — there’s a lot of life there,” Wilson said. “I’m kind of happy to help it mutate.”
Another crowdfunding start-up, WeSearchr, has raised more than $150,000 for Anglin’s legal defense in a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the anti-extremism nonprofit, after Anglin organized a “troll storm” against a Jewish woman on the Daily Stormer.
WeSearchr often sponsors fundraisers for medical bills and legal defense funds for far-right figures who have gotten in fights with left-wing activists who call themselves “anti-fascists.” [AntiFa] It also offers “bounties” — money donated by users to meet a certain objective — seeking the identities of anti-fascists involved in violent encounters.
WeSearchr’s owner,Chuck C. Johnson, a right-wing journalist and provocateur who has been banned from Twitter, told The Times in an email that it was “good business to allow free speech” and that he believes not discriminating against users’ political views might give him better protection from lawsuits. Johnson, whose operation is based in California, added that his attorney advised him that, under state law, it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of politics. “All are welcome to fundraise on my properties,” Johnson wrote.
One of WeSearchr’s other founders, Pax Dickinson, recently split from the company to start his own crowdfunding site, Counter.Fund, with an “explicit dedication against Marxist political correctnessand the globalist progressive Left,” according to its website.
Dickinson was the chief technology officer of Business Insider until he was forced to resign in 2013 after sexist and racist tweets of his were uncovered by the news site Gawker. Dickinson since has channeled his entrepreneurial energies into creating financial infrastructure to sustain the far-right.
As for [Richard] Spencer, one of the alt-right’s other most prominent figures, he still has a Twitter account, but he has been banned from the audio hosting site SoundCloud. He said three banks have terminated the accounts of his white nationalist nonprofit, the National Policy Institute, but the group still does business with online payment-processing services such as PayPal.” LA Times August 12, 2017
The Alt-Right is said to have started in the US with Matt Drudge’s “The Drudge Report” radio show, which popularized victim mentality among mostly white men, some of whom were un- or under-employed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Drudge went on the Internet and Breitbart News gained power after Andrew’s death and his replacement with Stephen K. aka Steve Bannon at the helm. Breitbart’s reach has grown exponentially since Trump’s candidacy and as of August 2017, his news segments from the White House will be mandatory on 72% of public broadcast TV under the Sinclair-Tribune merger. More on the First Amendment Freedoms page.
TEA PARTY ROOTS: CITIZENS UNITED, THE KOCH BROTHERS AND MERCERS
The Tea Party movement was heavily funded by the Koch Brothers and Robert and Rebekah Mercer. It took pride in its refusal to compromise and fostered anti-big-government simplicity and economic nationalism. It absorbed the Christian Right vote with “family values”/anti-abortion & LGBTQ stances and the GOP is what it is today. Steve Bannon made a lot of money from the TV Show “Seinfeld” and became a propaganda filmmaker with Koch–Mercer money as it was produced by Citizens United and David Bossie. “Generation Zero”, 2010, is about the apocalyptic aftermath of the financial crisis leading to a cataclysmic war, allowing us to return to the idealized life of the 50s after the horrors of WW2. Bannon, while having made anti-semitic statements in his divorce proceedings, considers himself an Economic Nationalist. White Nationalists are the racial supremacists, according to various alt-right internet and media voices. See Generation Zero here.
ROMANCING THE PAST: PUTIN, THE CHRISTIAN- AND ALT-RIGHT
The self-pity of the victimized white man stirred anti-feminism. Bannon and others openly long for the accepted patriarchy of the past when gender roles were clearly defined and oppressive to women. There is a romance of past greatness, pre-feminist, pre-globalist, pre-mixing of religions and races. Racism and sexism have flourished in this climate. Competition for jobs, physical space and resources, women and the insecurity of dealing with them in a Women’s Lib world, all contribute. Fears of losing a previously great American/European culture, and the social and economic costs of and benefits to immigrants, whether South of the US border or Muslim have fueled hatred against immigrants. Europe has felt a crush of refugees and we have seen the photos of crowded train stations. Rumors of violence, especially against women, have been magnified. All of these things have been magnified by the Alt-Right in their perception and intention to stir up hatred and anger. Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, and Russia’s Internet Research Agency have used these to steal our government through the politicians and policies they’ve bought.
As the Chief Propagandist / Strategist for Trump and Breitbart News, Steve Bannon has garnered incredible power for a “fringe” fear- and war-mongerer, as he appointed himself to the National Security Council and formed the Strategic Initiatives Group after being removed from the Principals Committee. Most of the Republicans in office have been politically funded by the people behind Bannon’s propaganda films (Mercers, CitizensUnited, Kochs), whose goal is the destruction of the administrative state (as so many Government jobs go unfilled today) and deregulation/removing protections, while the selfish and discompassionate philosophy of Ayn Rand is enacted in our public policy (Libertarian, far-right Republican).
Traditional Patriarchal, Christian and Caucasian-dominated sentiments are also being pushed in Europe. Reportedly and by action, Putin wants a return to 19th. Century absolute power/Oligarchy “greatness” and has appealed to the Christian Right pointing out their anti-feminist, anti-gay and other similar stances in the Eastern Orthodox church-influenced culture of Russia and Eastern Europe. French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is openly backed by Putin and the Alt-Right openly declared a Meme War on her behalf as they did for Trump and Brexit. Turkey’s Erdogan and the Catholic Philippines’ Duterte have their hard right influences. All have received compliments or congratulations from Trump. Breitbart News wants to spread the hard alt-right hatred all over Europe. Erdogan in Turkey was supported by Putin and Michael Flynn Sr. and Jr. (Flynn Intel Group) were paid to lobby for Erdogan (cause for firing and investigation); likewise Paul Manafort was paid to lobby for Putin-backed Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych (resignation & initial investigation inquiries). Poland’s recent resignation of the pro-American government and installation of a far-right fascist one may be due to Russian taping in the top restaurants. Someone did, and it seems like an FSB op.
Voices of the Alt-Right
Steve Bannon, “The Movement” founder, Former Editor of Breitbart News, Former Chief Strategist, propaganda filmmaker, Leninist, Right Wing Catholic Militia
Andy Nowicki aka the Nameless One “is the assistant editor of the white supremacist Alternative Right blog, which was founded by alt right leader Richard Spencer. The Alternative Right weighs in on the alt right hot topics, from “white sharia” and racial disparities in IQs, to the distinctions in thought between the “normie” world versus the alt right.” While Nowicki claims he is not a white nationalist, he shares many of those views.” ADL
Augustus Invictus “(born Austin Mitchell Gillespie) is a far-right activist, attorney, and speaker from Orlando, Florida. He is a member of the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, the “military wing” of the Proud Boys. He is also the Sergeant at Arms for the Florida American Guard, a white supremacist group led by Brien James, one of the founders of the Vinlanders Social Club (VSC), a hardcore, frequently violent racist skinhead gang. At the alt right’s June 25 rally in DC, Invictus claimed that while he is not part of the alt right, he stands with the alt right on the issue of free speech. Infighting on the right, he says, just takes energy away from fighting the “real enemy,” which includes the federal government, the lobbyists, and people like George Soros and the Clintons.” ADL
Brad Griffin aka Hunter Wallace “is the Alabama-based white supremacist behind the Occidental Dissent blog, which celebrates Southern nationalism and the alt right. Griffin has been active in the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South, both traditional white supremacist groups. He is a regular contributor to Altright.com, the online publication run by Richard Spencer and Daniel Friberg. He has also proposed creating an “alt south,” an alt-right version of Southern nationalism that would try to attract a broader range of people who reject mainstream conservatism and embrace some of the tactics of the alt right.” ADL
Christopher Cantwell “runs Radical Agenda, a racist, “pro-European,” internet radio show/blog that touts its pay-to-view content as “common sense extremism.” Cantwell has a history of promoting anti-police and anarchist rhetoric, but has recently moved toward the extreme right, and spoke at the neo-Nazi gathering in Pikeville, Kentucky. He has interviewed and appeared alongside white supremacists Mike Enoch and Matthew Heimbach, and has written that he abandoned libertarianism for the alt right after seeing that the latter “has better memes.” At the June 25 Free Speech Rally in DC, Cantwell urged the crowd to fight “Jewish influence.” ADL
Colin Liddell “is the editor-in-chief of Alternative Right, the website started by Richard Spencer in 2010. Liddell previously contributed to the white supremacist journal American Renaissance. He writes about the notion of racial equality fabricated by the “liberal-leftist media” and the “Jewish propaganda machine.” In his 2012 essay “Is Black Genocide Right?” he writes, “Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery, colonialism, and apartheid or how we can equalize academic scores and incomes, we should instead be asking questions like, “Does human civilization actually need the Black race?” ADL
Daniel Friberg “is a Swedish businessman, white supremacist, and European editor, and the co-founder (with Richard Spencer) of Altright.com. He is the CEO and co-founder of Arktos Media, which features books by white nationalists, and was one of the founding members of the Motpol think tank, which organized a well-attended alt right conference in Stockholm in February 2017. In his youth, Friberg was active in the Swedish Resistance, a neo-Nazi group.” ADL
Daniel J. Kleve “runs an online group called “Racial Theocracy,” which promotes the idea that “religious fulfillment comes from the proper expression of racial, social and spiritual consequences.” The group wants “to spread overlooked Right Wing literature.” It also promotes National Socialism as world’s “only hope of a future.” Kleve has set up a pool fund to help pay for travel expenses for people who wanted to attend an alt right rally.” ADL
Dillon Irizarry “a military veteran, has been leading the white supremacist group Vanguard America since early 2016. In a speech at the neo-Nazi gathering in Pikeville, Kentucky, a heavily-armed Irizarry claimed that Vanguard America, which is part of the umbrella Nationalist Front organization, has approximately 200 members in 20 different states. The group, which opposes multiculturalism and believes America is a nation for white people,posted white supremacist fliers at universities across the country during the 2016-17 school year. Vanguard America has participated in a number of rallies with alt right figures. In a June 2017 rally in Austin, Texas, Vanguard America appeared alongside members of The Right Stuff and The Daily Stormer.” ADL
Greg Johnson “is a white supremacist and editor-in-chief of Counter-Currents Publishing and its online compendium, the North American New Right. He has also written for the Occidental Observer, an anti-Semitic online publication. Johnson calls himself a “white nationalist” who hopes to create “racially and ethnically homogeneous homelands for whites.” He holds forums in New York and in the Northwest for alt-right activists and is a leader on the alt right. He and Richard Spencer recently had a falling out over the leadership of the alt right and accusations that Johnson was trying to discredit Altright.com editor Daniel Friberg.” ADL
Jared Taylor “(also known as Samuel Jared Taylor) is the founder of The New Century Foundation, a white supremacist think tank known primarily for its racist online journal, American Renaissance. The annual American Renaissance conference features extreme right speakers from the U.S. and Europe. Taylor presents himself as a “race realist” who believes that racial differences are real and that it is natural and healthy for groups to segregate along racial lines. American Renaissance generally avoids the cruder bigotry and stereotyping characteristic of many other racist publications, and Taylor himself does not appear to be anti-Semitic. Taylor is sometimes referred to as the “father of the alt right” due to his influence on the alt right movement. He also was one of the main speakers, with Richard Spencer, at a September 2016 news conference to “explain” the alt right movement.” ADL
Jason Kessler “of Charlottesville, Virginia, is an alt right activist and white supremacist who claims that a “white genocide” is underway in the United States. Kessler is the president of Unity and Security for America and is a contributor to the racist website VDare.com. He also wrote for The Daily Caller until he was revealed to be a white nationalist. At a May 2017 pro-Confederate rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Kessler reportedly praised racist groups and a Holocaust denier, and was eventually arrested for disorderly conduct. At June’s Free Speech Rally in D.C., he told the crowd that America would be better off if the South had won the Civil War, and advanced conspiracy theories about Jews controlling Hollywood and the media and promoting “filthy propaganda.” Kessler is one of the organizers of the August 12 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.” ADL
Jason Reza Jorjani “co-founded Altright.com with Richard Spencer, and is on the site’s board of directors. A lecturer in humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, he is also the editor-in-chief of Arktos Media, known for publishing nationalist philosophers and “New European” materials. Jorjani calls Arktos “the leading press of the alt right.” ADL
Johnny Ramondetta (aka Johnny Monoxide) “is a white supremacist and an electrician from Berkeley, California, who is responsible for the podcasts “Paranormies Present” and “The Current Year Tonight,” both of which are promoted on The Right Stuff Radio, a popular alt right site. Ramondetta has produced live-streams for a number of alt right events, including the April 2017 “Battle of Berkeley.” ADL
Lana Lokteff “is a white supremacist who runs internet media company Red Ice TV with her husband, Henrik Palmgren. Based in “Sweden and North America,” Red Ice features online TV and radio shows, including Lokteff’s own “Radio 3Fourteen,” that celebrate “European identity and culture.” Lokteff has interviewed numerous white supremacists on the show. She also co-hosts “Red Ice Live,” and “Weekend Warrior,” on Red Ice. In May 2017, Lotkeff appeared in a video segment with Jared Taylor of American Renaissance to discuss “the women of the alt right.” ADL
Matt Forney “currently based in Budapest, Hungary and Lviv, Ukraine, is a white nationalist, anti-Semite, and misogynist who works for Red Ice Radio. Forney, who is active in the alt right, publishes bigoted and hateful rants against Islam, Jews, and women, often on AltRight.com. Forney’s online videos include Holocaust denial tirade “Eric Hunt-The Shoah: The Biggest Hoax of the 20th Century?” Among his virulently misogynistic writings, “How to Beat Your Girlfriend or Wife and Get Away with It,” and “The Myth of Female Intelligence,” Forney’s bigotry extends to people of color, Muslims, and interracial marriage. “Blacks,” Forney says, “do nothing but murder cops, rob and rape people, and bring death and destruction wherever they go.” ADL
Matthew Heimbach “is one of the co-founders of the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP). TWP claims to be the “political arm” of an earlier white supremacist endeavor, the Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN), which was created to attract young people, particularly college students, to the white supremacist movement. In 2016 and 2017, TWP has participated in white supremacist events all over the country, including the neo-Nazi rally in Pikeville, Kentucky. Heimbach is intensely anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier. Alongside National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep, Heimbach co-chairs the Nationalist Front, an umbrella organization of approximately 20 white supremacist organizations, including racist skinhead crews, Klan groups, and neo-Nazi groups. Heimbach started out promoting conservative causes in college but moved further and further to the right, eventually embracing National Socialism. He showed up at Auburn University in Alabama in April 2017 to “protect” Richard Spencer, who spoke there. Heimbach is scheduled to speak August 12 at the white supremacist United the Right event, where he’ll be joined by other alt right figures.” ADL
Matthew Parrott “is the co-founder, with his son-in-law, Matthew Heimbach, of the Traditionalist Worker Party, the “political arm” of the Traditionalist Youth Network. The group promotes white supremacy and a racist interpretation of Christianity, and models itself after the European Identitaire movement, which advocates preserving white European culture and identity in Western countries. Parrott, a frequent contributor to AlternativeRight.com, outlined his belief system in a 2013 essay in the white supremacist online journal Counter-Currents. Though he says that he doesn’t wholeheartedly support the philosophies of Hitler, the Klan, or Southern segregation, he sees them as “ideological progenitors and fallen forefathers.” ADL
Mike Peinovich (aka Mike Enoch) “of New Jersey, is the founder of The Right Stuff (TRS), a racist and anti-Semitic website and well-known voice of the alt right. Peinovich, who frequently appears at events alongside Richard Spencer, hosts a TRS podcast called “The Daily Shoah” which promotes anti-Semitic commentary. Peinovich spoke at the May 13 gathering in Charlottesville in defense of southern monuments, and attended the April 29 neo-Nazi rally in Pikeville, Kentucky. Peinovich blames immigration and diversity policies for the “displacement and genocide of the white race.” He also fixates on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the Federal Reserve, banks, media, and foreign policy. At June’s Free Speech Rally, he said, “It’s Jews, we know that it’s Jews. Why do we go to war in the Middle East against our country’s interests, against the interests of our race? It’s because of Jewish control.” ADL
Nathan Damigo “an Iraq war veteran and student at California State University, Stanislaus, founded Identity Evropa in early 2016. The white supremacist student group is concerned with preserving “white American culture” and promoting white European identity. It is also known for distributing racist fliers at dozens of campuses across the country. At the June 25, 2017, Free Speech Rallyin D.C., Damigo said that America was founded by white people for white people and was not founded to be a multiracial or multicultural society. In April, 2017, Damigo told a reporter he sees the alt right as “the next natural step to take this decentralized internet-based movement into the real world. We’re trying to create a fraternity and brotherhood for people who have awakened and who see the world in a different light. We want to get the normies’ attention.” ADL
Pax Dickinson “was the Chief Technology officer for Business Insider until he was fired after posting a number of offensive tweets attacking the LGBT community, women, Jews, and African-Americans. He has since founded CounterFund, a “crowd-funding platform built by and for the wider alt right counterculture.” Richard Spencer is an enthusiastic supporter, and has said, “the fund might become the most important counter assault against the SJW [social justice warrior] insanity of the past decade.” Dickinson is listed as one of the speakers at the white supremacist Unite the Right rally scheduled for August 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia.” ADL
Tara McCarthy “is a British alt right media personality who hosts the “Reality Calls” podcast, which boasts the tagline, “Let’s Make Western Civilization Great Again.” The goal of the show is to “help make ethno-nationalist views more socially acceptable, and to educate people on the dangers of globalism and replacement migration from the third world.” She has interviewed numerous white supremacists on the show, but denies being a white supremacist herself. She also co-hosts a podcast (with Brittany Pettibone) called “Virtue of the West,” which features interviews with people associated with both the alt right and the alt lite. McCarthy considers herself part of the alt right.” ADL
The Alt-Lite
“You can’t discuss the alt right without mentioning the “alt lite,” a loosely connected movement of right-wing activists who reject the overtly white supremacist ideology of the alt right, but whose hateful impact is more significant than their “lite” name suggests. The alt lite embraces misogyny and xenophobia, and abhors “political correctness” and the left.” ADL
Brittany Pettibone “writes science fiction and co-hosts the “Virtue of the West” podcast with Tara McCarthy. The podcast encourages listeners to “reconnect with the traditional values that once made Western Civilization great, including but not limited to the glorification of the nuclear family, motherhood, masculinity, femininity, etiquette, traditional gender roles and love of one’s own culture, race and country.” Pettibone, unlike McCarthy, does not explicitly identify as part of the alt right, but she walks the very thin line that separates that group from the alt lite. Whatever her personal beliefs, Pettibone uses her podcast to amplify the views of the alt right by interviewing members of the movement. In July 2017, Pettibone traveled to Sicily to join “Defend Europe’s” efforts to keep NGO boats of African refugees from reaching the continent. “Defend Europe” is run by the far-right group “Generation Identity,” which claims to be protecting Europe against “Islamic invasion.” ADL
Colton Merwin“is a 19-year-old self-identified filmmaker/photographer and activist from Baltimore, Maryland. He emerged on the alt right scene when he organized the June 25 Free Speech Rally in DC, an effort that attracted notable alt right personalities including Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo (of Identity Evropa). Merwin is also affiliated with the Maryland Proud Boys. Despite his organizing and activism on the group’s behalf, Merwin claims he is not part of the alt right.” ADL
Corey Stewart “a failed 2017 Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate, was the state’s Trump campaign co-chair until he was fired for attending an anti-RNC rally in October 2016. Stewart champions the preservation of Confederate monuments in the South, and has defended the “heritage” of the Confederate flag. He referred to his Republican primary opponent a “cuckservative.” Stewart was a featured speaker at the alt lite Rally Against Political Violence on June 25 in Washington, D.C. ” ADL
Gavin McInnes VICE Magazine & The Proud Boys Founder, formerly Rebel Media contributor “McInnes, who left VICE in 2008, is a co-founder of the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights (FOAK), the “tactical defensive arm of the Proud Boys, ” a right-wing activist group founded by McInnes and dedicated to “Reinstating a Spirit of Western chauvinism.” McInnes was accused of anti-Semitism in March 2017, when he posted a video on Rebel Media called “Ten Things I Hate about Jews,” which was later retitled “Ten Things I Hate About Israel.” Even after this incident, McInnis has been criticized by the alt right for refusing to promote the conspiracy theory that Jews control the world. McInnis eschews the white supremacist label and describes himself as a “Western chauvinist” who hails “Judeo-Christian values” as superior to all others.” ADL
BBC News – ‘Proud Boys’ back in Canada military after crashing indigenous ceremony.
Jack Posobiec “a conspiracy theorist and author, organized June’s Rally Against Political Violence, after learning that Richard Spencer would be speaking at the Free Speech Rally. He also helmed the DeploraBall, a 2017 inaugural event that attracted many from the alt right and alt lite spheres. He has enthusiastically promoted a range of lies, including the Pizzagate hoax, and attempted to discredit anti-Trump activists by planting an inflammatory “Rape Melania” sign at a protest event. He frequently tweets anti-Muslim sentiments, and has harassed former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin with anti-Muslim slurs online and in person, tweeting, “I screamed ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ at Huma Abedin.” He also posted to Facebook: “Citizen Journalist Jack Posobiec Asks Huma Abedin “Is the Muslim Brotherhood Paying Your Legal Fees?” Posobiec was among the protesters who stormed the stage during New York Public Theater’s controversial run of “Julius Caesar,” shouting, “You are all Goebbels! You are all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels… you are inciting terrorists,” and, “The blood of Steve Scalise is on your hands!” Posobiec has clashed verbally with white supremacist Richard Spencer, who called Posobiec’s Rally Against Political Violence “pathetic.” Posobiec was until recently the Washington correspondent for right-wing Rebel Media.” ADL
Kyle Prescott “is an advocate and recruiter (mainly on social media) for the Proud Boys, a right-wing activist group founded by Gavin McInnes and dedicated to “Reinstating a Spirit of Western chauvinism.” The Proud Boys claim to be “anti-racist, pro-First Amendment, pro-Second Amendment.” They “venerate the housewife and glorify the entrepreneur.” Prescott believes that the left (which he describes as “race-baiters and social justice warriors”) is responsible for most political violence. Prescott attended June’s Rally Against Political Violence.” ADL
Lucian Wintrich “is a conservative activist and White House correspondent for the The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing blog sometimes associated with the alt right, and known for promoting conspiracy theories and propaganda. During the 2016 campaign, Wintrich organized a “Twinks4Trump” photo series featuring provocative pictures of men wearing “Make America Great Again” caps. The photos were featured at the Wake Up! LGBT party at the 2016 Republican National Convention, which Wintrich helped organize. Wintrich called the event “a huge success…with incredible speakers,” including Islamaphobes like Pamela Geller and far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who told party-goers, “First, we should acknowledge that Islam is the problem…if you allow Islam to be planted on your soil, don’t be afraid that you will harvest sharia law, because Islam and sharia law [are] exactly the same.” In the past, Wintrich identified with the alt right, but told Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker, “For a while, alt-right was the perfect catchall for anti-establishment conservatism. A lot of us are still frustrated that Richard Spencer ruined the term for the rest of us.” Wintrich spoke at June’s Rally Against Political Violence.” ADL
Andrew Torba, “Gab” Social Network: “The market is owned and controlled and operated by the oligarchy of Twitter and Facebook and Google,” said Gab’s founder, Andrew Torba. “The reality is hate speech is free speech,” Torba added, citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent. With predominantly left-leaning companies, many of them in San Francisco, setting the boundaries on what speech isn’t acceptable on for-profit platforms, “that’s a huge opportunity to sit here and defend the Internet that I grew up on,” he said.” LA Times
“We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy,” said Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s executive chairman and one of its guiding editorial spirits. He adds, “We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class. We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.” Washington Post January 27, 2016.
Paul Ryan is a traditional Koch libertarian conservative. The Alt-Right movement has anarchistic attitude, sassy humor and much more blatant hate speech than a traditional Republican. That’s why they call them “Cuckservatives”, a derivation of the middle English word “Cuckhold”. The attitude continued into the White House, as much infighting was observed in the first 6 months as struggles between ideologies resulted in a rapidly shifting power structure.
Many of the Alt-Right voices in 2017 were teenagers during 9/11 and frustrated young adults during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. The middle-aged Alex Jones of Infowars.com is a conspiracy theorist and has promoted 9/11 conspiracies among many others. He, like many others, breeds distrust of our Intelligence and Institutions and fuels the anger towards them.
“Readers of The Right Stufflong knew that founder “Mike Enoch” had two main interests: technology and white supremacy.Posts on the neo-Nazi site have included discussion of “a new blogging platform built on node.js,” In January, Enoch was outed as Mike Peinovich, a Manhattan-based software engineer. Nonetheless, “alt-techies,” as Spencer and others call them, do appear to play a role in a movement that first incubated in the backwaters of the internet and eventually spread online with the rise of Trump. Some heroes of the far right are associated with tech: They include former Breitbart News “tech editor” Milo Yiannopoulos; the infamous neo-Nazi hacker Andrew Auernheimer (a.k.a. Weev); and the video gaming vlogger Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, whose “Pewdiepie” YouTube channel featuring Nazi-themed jokes has 54 million subscribers. (Last month Kjellberg apologized for the jokes and said he is not a Nazi.) The DeploraBall, a gathering of far-right activists and conspiracy theorists during Trump’s inauguration, was co-organized by software investor Jeff Giesea and attended by tech billionaire and Trump backerPeter Thiel. San Francisco-based tech entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin is known for launching the pro-authoritarian “neoreactionary” movement and reportedly has been in contact with Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon. (Yarvin denies this.) Giesea and Yarvin, both of whom I interviewed, reject the “alt-right” label for its associations with white nationalism, yet they share the movement’s disdain for the race and gender politics of the left. ” Mother Jones
Alt-Right Publications
Andrew Anglin, founder of Daily Stormer, Southern Poverty Law Center is fighting back
r_4Chan on /Pol/(politically incorrect) Meme Warriors and Strategists. Declared War on Macron and then the hacked and leaked emails were outsmarted by French intelligence during the media blackout period of their elections. These are the Pepe puppets. They have morphed into another forum as well, having been discovered by “normies”. Originally a gamer forum, notorious for being abusive to women. Includes many members of the tech community, and the industry has come under criticism for its prejudicial behavior against women.
8chan“8chan, also known as InfiniteChan and ∞chan, is an anonymous image board that allows users to create and moderate their own custom boards. The site gained a large influx of new users following the controversial banning of all GamerGate related threads on 4chan in September 2014.” KnowYourMeme
r_The_Donald includes members of the Trump Campaign. Meme Warriors and Strategists
“hostility toward women and people of color thrives on 4chan and on Reddit, the social sharing site whose political and gaming forums /r/the_donald and /r/kotakuinaction are popular with the alt-right. In 2014, 4chan and Reddit users launched an elaborate campaign of rape and death threats against female video game developers that became known as Gamergate. They found champions in Yiannopoulos, who argued that the true victims were the men whose gaming culture was being destroyed by “feminist bullies” and the “achingly politically correct” tech press, and in Mike Cernovich, a blogger who has trumpeted the neuroticism and other alleged weaknesses of women as well as what he claims to be the criminal proclivities of certain ethnic groups. When former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao last year banned five “harassing subreddits,” including one called ShitNiggersSay, the move unleashed weeks of bigoted trolling (a.k.a. “shitposting”) and digital vandalism on the site—and a migration to a Reddit copycat site, Voat. (More recently, similar migrations took place after Reddit banned /r/altright and discussion of the fake-news scandal #PizzaGate)…Chuck Johnson, who runs the pro-Trump site Got News from his home in Fresno, California, and claims to have received funding offers from wealthy tech investors, points to an obvious outlet for closeted alt-techies: “A lot of these people see a sort of ostracism takes place [after they question the value of diversity], and they either rebel against it internally or they go online and they have a different identity and they shitpost on Reddit.” Mother Jones
“Just as most soldiers believe bullets will hit only others, not themselves, most citizens like to think that their own minds and thought processes are invulnerable. ‘Other people can be manipulated, but not me,’ they declare.” — Margaret Singer, Ph.D.
Fake news and propaganda threaten our democracy and limit meaningful conversation. The 9 Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate It’s International Talk Like a Chekist Day—here’s a quick primer on kombinatsiya, konspiratsiya and more By John R. Schindler March 28, 2017
“Provokatsiya–Provocation is complicated, but at its most basic involves secret acts to confuse and dismay your enemy. The recent antics of Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee—positing conflicting and unsubstantiated allegations of malfeasance by our spy agencies—are a classic provocation designed to divert attention from the White House as its Russia crisis mounts. Provokatsiya gets more complicated and nefarious from there, with the ultimate aim of turning the tables on your enemy and defeating him detail—before he realizes what’s happened.
Konspiratsiya (yes, conspiracy), the Russian term for what we call espionage tradecraft. This is the clandestine nuts and bolts of recruiting and running agents, placing targets under surveillance, running covert action and whatnot.
Kompromat(compromising material), which is used to coercively recruit people to spy for Russia—and to keep already recruited agents in line.
Dezinformatsiya(disinformation) is another Russian term once known only to espionage mavens but which, thanks to the events of 2016, now falls off the tongue of average citizens. Deza, as it’s called for short, is the original “fake news,” an alluring amalgam of fact and fantasy—much of it unverifiable—designed to confuse readers and shift political discussions. It was part of the KGB’s Cold War arsenal, when Chekists faked documents and disseminated lies through trusted Western journalists, in order to embarrass the West, especially NATO and the United States. Some of these vintage disinformation fables are still with us, despite being debunked decades ago.
Aktivniyye Meropriyatiya(Active Measures), which is a vital Chekist concept lacking a precise Western equivalent. It roughly aligns with our notion of political warfare, albeit with a highly clandestine side. The bureaucratically bland-sounding KGB definition of Active Measures covers a broad brush of nefarious spy-games.
Psychops meets Big Data:The Internet Research Agency, St. Petersburg, led by Putin’s “chef” Yevgeny Prighozin employedbots and thousands of human trolls to attack our democracy. Using the Mercermoney and known Russian Intelligence front-funded Cambridge Data Analytics, board member Steve Bannon (Mercer-backed Breitbart News) and former Trump Campaign manager from March-August 2016 and foreign political strategist, Paul Manafort, together with Brad Parscale’s Project Alamo and Facebook employees onsite and Rebekah Mercer’s input from afar, tested each social media meme in sometimes 100,000+ variations to target and manipulate each voter on an individual basis, concentrating on vulnerable districts, using a minimum of 5,000 data points. Israeli military intelligence psyops were also employed by Psy-Group, and Cambridge Analytica’s parent company SCL Elections also has had a working relationship with ex-Mossad Black Cube. Russians hacked all 50 states and obtained voter roll information to complement their efforts. Polling data was passed from Manafort to the Russians via intermediaries. Everyone was affected by this attack, one way or another. Fake Russian accounts created Trump rallies, and misogynist “Bernie Bros” are thought to have been Russian trolls in part. Even Jill Steinhad dinner with Putin and Flynn in December 2015 in Moscow. Bernie Sanders‘s ties go back to the early 80s.
Unfortunately, our President gets his news from fake sources, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been a promoter, our Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has long been at the helm with Breitbart News, and Trump’s friend and loyalist, Robert Ailes, has gone down with Bill O’Reilly, Alex Jones, Milo, and others.
RISS/Russian Institute For Strategic Studies, released two strategic documents in June 2016 and October 2016. “Neither of the Russian institute documents mentioned the release of hacked Democratic Party emails to interfere with the U.S. election, according to four of the officials. The officials said the hacking was a covert intelligence operation run separately out of the Kremlin.” Reuters The June and October 2016 papers were written under Leonid Reshetnikov, who retired in January 2017, and was replaced by Mikhail Fradkov. “Fradkov headed Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency for nine years. Before that he served for three years as Russian prime minister.” RISSMikhail Fradkov is now “Almaz-Antey” Chairman of the Board of Directors RISSOn Jan. 31, the websites of Putin’s office [bit.ly/2os9wMr] and the institute [bit.ly/2oLn9Kd] posted a picture and transcript of Reshetnikov and his successor Fradkov meeting with Putin in the Kremlin. Reuters
“Russia Today and Sputnik published anti-Clinton stories while pro-Kremlin bloggers prepared a Twitter campaign calling into question the fairness of an anticipated Clinton victory, according to a report by U.S. intelligence agencies on Russian interference in the election made public in January. [bit.ly/2kMiKSA]
Russia Today’s most popular Clinton video – “How 100% of the 2015 Clintons’ ‘charity’ went to … themselves” – accumulated 9 millions views on social media, according to the January report. [bit.ly/2os8wIt]
The report said Russia Today and Sputnik “consistently cast president elect-Trump as the target of unfair coverage from traditional media outlets.”
The report said the agencies did not assess whether Moscow’s effort had swung the outcome of the race in Trump’s favor, because American intelligence agencies do not “analyze U.S. political processes or U.S. public opinion.” [bit.ly/2kMiKSA]” Reuters