President Trump’s “Alt-Right” is a grab bag of mostly incoherent or contradictory ideas derived from white resentments. Now, it will be played off against the Republican establishment with unpredictable results, as JP Sottile explains.
By JP Sottile
One thing to keep in mind during the Age of Trump is that reality shows are far more scripted than they appear. That simple fact should be used like a decoder card to decipher the combative stories and click-baited headlines emanating from Steve Bannon’s portentous reboot of Breitbart.
Then-White House Strategist Steve Bannon speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland.
This is particularly true of the #WAR meme gleefully spread by Breitbart’s shock-troops at the very moment Bannon triumphantly returned to the fold. Like an exiled sheriff returning to a one-horse town, Bannon boasted that his hands were back “on his weapons” after a short trip from the West Wing to Breitbart’s nearby headquarters. And how proud Breitbart’s staff must be to find themselves holstered on Bannon’s hip, ready to be deployed as his at-will instruments of destruction.
True to form, Bannon reportedly led an editorial meeting to plan an attack on a presidency he pronounced “over” during a tour de force exit interview with the Weekly Standard. That interview punctuated a week of mixed messages from a swollen Svengali who’d been transformed by the media into jacked-up version of Karl Rove. TIME even dubbed Bannon “the Great Manipulator” in a Trump-baiting cover story. It was quite a meteoric rise for a man who’d previously hitched his star to Sarah Palin.
Although Rove sanctimoniously denounced his kindred spirit, the alluring idea of Bannon as Trump’s version of Bush’s Brain 2.0 was toothsome fodder for a press corps forever on the prowl for juicy details of palace intrigue from inside Trump’s White House. Some, like deposed hit-man Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, believed Bannon slaked their thirst with his self-serving leaks. Perhaps that’s why Trump wisely avoided poisoning Bannon’s media-friendly well.
It would explain why Bannon’s parting shots at the administration were met with praise by his “former” boss. Trump thanked him on Twitter, touted his renewed role at Breitbart, and welcomed Bannon’s coming attack on the GOP establishment. Most notably, Trump ignored Bannon’s brutal autopsy of his failed administration, thus transgressing his iron law about “always hitting back” with twice the force he receives. That important detail kept the Beltway’s blatherati guessing about the damage Bannon could do to Trump’s otherwise impregnable base. But it may indicate there’s something far more triangular than diametrical at work between the supposed frenemies.
Bermuda Triangulation
It’s really easy to get lost down one of Trump’s rabbit holes. There are lots of ‘em … and they become even harder to avoid when Trump’s torrential tweetstorms open ‘em up into rhetorical sinkholes. And that’s exactly what he’s done since Bannon’s departure. He’s deluged Capitol Hill with tweeted attacks on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky; Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin; foreign affairs scion Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee; and never-Trumper Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona. It could be part of a cunning plan. Then again, Trump’s star-turn as a celebritician has been built on a pro-wrestling-style of political choreography that gins up villains so he can showcase his unique ability to slam them.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.
This need to continually spoil for a fight was on full-display when he drew a line in the sand during a long, strange pep rally in Phoenix, Arizona. In what’s shaping-up as an epic Mexican stand-off over the debt ceiling, Trump threatened to shut down the government if Congress fails to properly fund a wall that was originally supposed to be purchased with pesos.
So, with Trump poised to officially break one of his key promises (Mexico will pay) in order to keep one of his other key promises (build a wall his party’s leadership doesn’t want to fund), what is the logic of risking a shutdown that, if history is any guide, will almost certainly damage the GOP?
Perhaps damaging the GOP establishment is the whole point. Bannon certainly has them in his sights. He told The Economist that Sen. McConnell tops his growing list of targets. And, according to a report by Bloomberg, Trump developed this stand-off strategy in cahoots with Bannon the week before he resigned. White House sources said Bannon “urged the president to go through with a government shutdown if necessary to force Congress into providing money for the wall.”
Apparently, this is seen as “crucial to Trump’s credibility and even political survival.” And, in what’s becoming a Trumpster talking point, Roger Stone called for Trump to take “a scalp” from “arrogant” members of Congress to end their defiance. Said Stone to The Hill, “All he needs to do is punish one incumbent and I think you’d see a sea-change.” And Bannon told Devil’s Bargain author Joshua Green that he left the White House to “go to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America.”
At the same time, Trump is doing everything he can to signal that he’s keeping the faith … particularly after Breitbart derided his “flip-flop” on Afghanistan. Since that decision, he’s said the media isn’t just the enemy, but they actually don’t want America to be great again. He’s pardoned criminally contemptuous Sheriff Joe Arpaio and inspired exactly the response Bannon relishes from his opponents. Trump punished transgendered Americans in the military. He’s resumed controversial transfers of military hardware to local police. And it looks like he’s poised to crack-down on DACA “Dreamers.”
So, since Bannon left the White House in control of the “moderates” … Trump has made a point of hitting many of the hot buttons that activated the ire of Bannon’s critics on both sides of the aisle. Mostly, this onslaught looks like it is designed to confront the GOP, their role in passing Trump’s agenda be damned. It’s a triangular agenda to distance him from Congressional failures. And it means that Bannon is still calling Trump’s tune.
Who’s The Boss?
The simple fact is that Trump was never really Bannon’s boss in the first place. Just refer back to The Mooch’s colorful comments to find the only person Bannon is truly willing to bend over backwards (or forward, as the case may be) to serve. If Bannon is beholden to anyone it is the deep-pocketed Mercers — a pair of super-rich ideologues who’ve tipped their tin-foiled caps at the Frank Gaffney wing of a growing Islamophobia plunderbund. Just think of them as the Koch Brothers of the Alt-Right.
President Trump and Vice President Pence on July 19, 2017. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
In fact, Robert Mercer pumped $10 million into Bannon’s version of Breitbart. He and his daughter Rebekah doled out $26 million during the 2016 campaign to a variety of causes like the “Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC” and a fun little PAC run by Iran-obsessed Neocon John Bolton. The elder Mercer also reportedly dropped another $10 million on Cambridge Analytica, the ever-more scrutinized data targeting company that spread micro-targeted pro-Trump/anti-Hillary “news” during the 2016 Election.
Not coincidentally, both Bannon and deposed National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn drew salaries from the Cambridge operation. The Mercers were instrumental in bringing Flynn’s paranoid, “Iran is Lurking Behind Every Corner” worldview into the White House. And they even quietly funded Milo Yiannopoulos after he momentarily became too controversial for the controversy-addicted editors of Breitbart.
But it was Trump’s Bannon-managed rise that put the Mercers on the map. And their money helped Bannon coalesce a growing cohort of Alt-Right civilizational strugglers in a political force. This is the same fringy scrum that kept Hungarian hustler Seb Gorka from disappearing forever into the dark abyss of a tediously long White Nationalist subreddit. And it’s the same Alt-Right universe where you’ll find a “deep state of alert” over National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster’s purge of Michael Flynn’s anti-Islam groupies. Many of them actually believe recently dispatched NSC aide Rich Higgins was axed by McMaster because Higgins was getting dangerously close to uncovering a plot between the Deep State’s “cultural Marxists” and their far-flung network Islamist allies.
According to a much-discussed memo titled “POTUS & Political Warfare,” Higgins infamously warned that a cadre of Deep State actors called “Globalists” is actively trying to destroy Trump. Even worse, these nefarious “Maoist” tacticians are said to be risking the nation’s future because powerful “Islamists will co-opt the movement in its entirety” and calamity will fall over the land like a pitch-black burqa.
As Higgins wrote, “Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed.”
And the linchpin of that Globalist-Islamist plan to destroy America? Look no further than the ongoing Deep State coup against the one man who dares to stand between the United States and the Globalist abyss — Donald J. Trump. Russia-gate and the Globalist-controlled media are two prongs of this attack. But devotees of this grand narrative see Globalist insiders like Jared Kushner, Gary Cohn, McMaster and Obama’s puppets in the Intelligence community as the primary anti-American phalanx battling Trump as he struggles to make America great again.
Along the way, Trumpist websites like Breitbart, American Greatness, Infowars, Conservative HQ and American Thinker routinely wield the “Globalist” moniker like a cudgel against Trump’s enemies. They find these Globalist enemies hiding under all of Washington’s mossy rocks and lurking around every international corner. George Soros is often targeted because they believe he uses Craigslist ads to pay protesters and he secretly funds the Antifa, Black Lives Matter and just about every group that opposes Trump and America’s heritage. Soros the indefatigable boogeyman is even blamed for orchestrating the Charlottesville mess in an effort to discredit the Alt-Right.
And at one strange point, McMaster was simultaneously called a puppet of the Rothschilds via Soros and an anti-Israel agent. But since Bannon bailed, it’s Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn who’ve become their primary targets.
Castigating Kushner
The tension between Bannon and Kushner is well documented. In fact, Breitbart’s Editor-in-Chief even reassured someone he thought was Bannon that he was willing to do the “dirty work” of smearing Jared and Ivanka. No stranger to a sneaky smear, Bannon reportedly relished calling Kushner a “cuck” behind his back. The term “cuck” is the Alt-Right’s favorite epithet for those deemed effeminate and weak and traitorous. But the epithet du jour has to be “Globalist.”
White House adviser Jared Kushner, who is also President Trump’s son-in-law.
As if on cue, Breitbart heralded the return of Gorka under the headline: “EXCLUSIVE–‘Like the Last Scene of Star Wars’: Sebastian Gorka Compares Battle Against Globalist Cabal to Rebel Alliance Fighting Evil.” It’s actually kind of ironic since “Seb Gorka” sounds exactly like the name Jar-Jar Binks would take if he turned to the Dark Side to become a Sith Lord. Breitbart has also ripped Kushner as “starstruck” with “Goldman Sachs Globalists” and they’ve repeatedly attacked Gary Cohn as a “Globalist” who’s hijacked Trump’s White House. They’ve taken to framing Cohn in-between two globes, which they did once again when Cohn recently criticized his boss’s response to Charlottesville and called-out Neo-Nazis.
Frankly, their use of “globes” is troubling. It is strangely reminiscent of anti-Semitic paranoia about Jewish plots to control the world. But Breitbart is also decidedly anti-Muslim, often garishly pro-Israel and its Jewish staffers swear by their mission, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency detailed in a survey of Breitbart’s mixed messages. This deep state of confusion between anti-Semitic and pro-Israel messaging was even exploited by embattled Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his son Yair … who eagerly weaponized the Charlottesville melee for domestic political purposes in spite of the anti-Semitic chants of the White Nationalist marchers. It’s that willingness to let the ends justify the means that makes the Alt-Right’s “anti-Globalist” meme so complicated and, potentially, an ideological trap.
Grand Designers
What is the The Alt-Right, anyway?
Candlelight vigil at the White House for the victims of the Charlottesville, VA protest. August 13, 2017. (Flickr Ted Eytan)
Wikipedia pegs the Alt-Right as “a loosely defined group of people with far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of white nationalism.” The Associated Press’ primer goes with “a political grouping or tendency mixing racism, white nationalism, anti-Semitism and populism.” And there is a fascinating debate raging on the Right over the Alt-Right’s conservative bona fides and the supposed “Libertarian to Alt-Right pipeline” feeding White Nationalism.
However, one thing stood out from the “Unite The Right” melee that catapulted the Alt-Right and its White Nationalist subset into the center of American politics. Vice News captured the seminal moment when a cohort of White, similarly-dressed and evocatively-coiffed young men marched with burning tiki torches while repeatedly chanting “The Jews Will Not Replace Us.”
This, of course, belied Trump’s recalcitrant claim about the presence of “good people” who were only interested in protesting the removal of a Confederate statue. However, Gary Cohn certainly took note of the chant. Trump’s embattled economic adviser has since remarked that he “will not allow neo-Nazis ranting ‘Jews will not replace us’ to cause this Jew to leave his job.” But what does “The Jews will not replace us” really mean? “Replace” them how?
The ideological forge of White Nationalism is found in the not-too-distant past … particularly in a mélange of Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen, Christian Identity/Aryan Resisters and Skinhead Punks that coalesced at the beginning of the 1990s. This nexus point was captured on film in a 1991 documentary titled “Blood In The Face.” The title comes from the Christian Identity belief that Adam was said to have blushed in the Bible and this proves that he was actually an Aryan. Their elaborate idea asserts that Adam could not possibly be Jewish because Jews are supposedly incapable of blushing … unlike God’s “true” Chosen People.
At the same time, this idea of “true” Chosenness also means by definition that Jews are imposters who conspired to “replace” Aryans in the Judeo-Christian narrative. They usurped the title through deception. And now these “imposters” are directing a global conspiracy to destroy White America and European culture in the final affront God’s people.
This conspiratorial narrative often includes the belief that Jews and the Jewish-controlled media orchestrated the civil rights movement and illegal immigration, thus foisting both Blacks and Latinos onto the backs of working-class White Americans. This false flag-like concoction helped the “Zionist Occupation Government” take control of the United States as part of their grand design to dissolve America into a Jewish-dominated One World Government. That dissolution would ultimately mark the extinction of White, Euro-American culture as they know it … or think that they know it. In other words, Jews would “replace” Whites as the preeminent race in America and the world.
Although these ideas have been around for a long time, they’ve recently reemerged from the shadowy tentacles of the internet and, more notably, out of the still warm graves of the racially charged, Southern Strategy-style campaigns the GOP has run in the wake of Jim Crow’s demise. It was this pattern of racial dog whistling that Trump turned into a bullhorn during the last campaign. And the evidence of its effectiveness is mounting.
A post-Charlottesville poll by Public Policy Polling gives us a good handle on what percentage of Trump’s base sympathizes with this Alt-Right/White Nationalist narrative. According to the poll, 45 percent of Trump voters say Whites face “the most discrimination in America.” They’re followed by Native Americans (17 percent), African Americans (16 percent), and Latinos (5 percent). Additionally, when “asked what religious group they think faces the most discrimination in America, 54% of Trump voters says it’s Christians followed by 22% for Muslims and 12% for Jews.”
This is a far more substantial number than the 9 percent of Americans who said it is “acceptable to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views” or the 10 percent who said they supported the “so-called alt-right movement,” according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll. Still that works out to roughly 22 million Americans who find some form of White Nationalism acceptable.
And that’s why it’s worth asking if there isn’t something more pernicious behind Breitbart’s cartoon globes demarcating “Globalist Gary” and the drumbeat of negative headlines about nefarious Globalists and their Deep State minions. Is “Globalist” actually just another code-word? Were the young men who marched in Charlottesville actually angry about being “replaced” as the pre-eminent “species” by a conspiracy of “Globalists” who are, in fact, really “the Jews”?
It’s a powerful narrative that merges victimhood and grievance with an Alt-Right media-reinforced confirmation bias that sees anything and everything as further evidence of a deep, ongoing deception. Trump himself mastered this tactic when he rematerialized as a born-again Right-Winger by pushing Birtherism. That racially coded connivance fed right into his run for the White House which, according to a fascinating read by Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine, was born out of a series of memos scrawled out by a small group of Roger Stone-led advisers who jotted-down hot-button keywords they culled from listening to Right-Wing talk radio.
Those keywords became the Trump’s de facto campaign platform. Why else would Trump talk about “Common Core” or reverse himself on one position after another? He was merely echoing back the catchphrases popular on Right-Wing radio and, perhaps, on Alt-Right favs like InfoWars. No doubt, one of those keywords was “Globalist.” It’s still the Alt-Right’s favorite way to identify the “cosmopolitan” cabal White House aide Stephen Miller famously called out in a presser on immigration. These are the self-same “Globalists” many of Trump’s supporters expected him to replace with good old-fashioned American greatness.
Trump The Marytr
Yet, in what could be an epic bit of intellectual jiu-jitsu, Trump’s transgression on Afghanistan and his failure to “Make America Great Again” are poised to become reinforcing examples of Globalist control over a once-sovereign nation.
The run-down PIX Theatre sign reads “Vote Trump” on Main Street in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. July 15, 2016. (Photo by Tony Webster Flickr)
It’s a narrative of betrayal and economic irredentism the Alt-Right and White Nationalists inherited from the racist convergence of the early 1990s. Trump harnessed it during a campaign that blamed America’s decline on external forces like China and NATO … and on unwanted “criminal” interlopers like Mexicans and Muslims. Trump has even appointed a bloated, talk radio gabber who decries “race traitors” to the FDA. Really, is it any surprise that Richard Spencer and David Duke embrace Trump?
Nor is it surprising that Bannon’s been able to jump off his “platform for the Alt-Right” with the help of the Mercers’ money and Trump’s self-satisfied trolling. Now he has to re-channel the sense of transgression that got him and Trump into the White House toward a new effort to both explain away their failure and to justify continuing their fight.
That’s because Bannon knows “traditional” Republicans don’t want his trade war with China or Trump’s border wall or huge spending on infrastructure. Republicans thought they could use Trump as a pliable rubber-stamp for the usual GOP suspects of deregulation, increased defense spending and entitlement-gutting tax cuts for the top brackets. But after the Trumpcare debacle, there’s little appetite for horse-trading with a President who hoards the credit and avoids the blame. And Trump and Bannon must both realize there’s little chance of squeezing their populist-nationalist agenda through Washington’s clogged-up sausage machine. No doubt Bannon’s known it for a while.
More to the point, Bannon — like the Senators he and Trump are now targeting — must realize the legal danger Trump faces now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has eschewed the convoluted mess of the DNC data breach in favor of Trump’s troubled financial dealings with Russian money laundering … particularly at the ground zero site of Trump Soho, in the offices of Bayrock Group and with Trump’s Moscow-linked connection to long-time henchman Felix Sater.
Trump’s hardened base will stick with Trump come Hell or high crimes and misdemeanors. Trump knows it. Bannon knows it. The key now is to build a narrative framework that makes Trump a martyr to the cause, thus allowing him and the agenda he embodies to survive the coming storm. Mainstreaming the Globalist conspiracy is a crucial part of that framework. Everyone has heard of the process of globalization. Fewer know about the elite cabal of Globalists who seek America’s destruction by affecting a Deep State coup that forestalls America’s return to greatness.
Frankly, the Deep State and corporate-fueled deindustrialization have long been the sole bailiwick of the Progressive Left. But Trump exposed a fissure on the Right that opened up these issues inside the GOP. Bannon needs to preserve and expand that rift … if only to reverse Breitbart’s flagging fortunes. It’s even possible Bannon used his much-discussed interview with The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner to send a faint signal to disaffected Democrats and to Sandernistas — 10 percent of whom crossed-over to vote for Trump. But he sent his strongest message to the Alt-Right and the recalcitrant GOP Establishment. He said loudly and clearly that he and Trump are not beholden to the party as they head into the 2018 election. Trump’s Presidency may be over. But Trumpism, a.k.a. Bannonism, is alive and well. And they plan on using it against the GOP.
Trump reiterated that point by demanding his aides present him with tariffs so he can deliver the one thing that tops Bannon’s wish list — a trade war with China. That’s another attack on Republican orthodoxy and, therefore, another opportunity for Bannon and Trump to triangulate against the Globalists and their minions in the GOP establishment. It also goads the as-yet unrequited neoliberal backlash festering in the Democratic Party. And it means that Bannon’s much-ballyhooed exit was not the end of something. It was, as Seb Gorka vengefully proclaimed, just the beginning.
JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, radio co-host, documentary filmmaker and former broadcast news producer in Washington, D.C. He blogs at Newsvandal.com or you can follow him on Twitter, http://twitter/newsvandal.
What the hell are you Israel haters doing on Consortium News when article after article tells shit as it is and you find a need to up the reality by extrapolating Israel’s nefariousness to every other problem in the world. This is, yeah, I’ll say it, anti-Semetic and it’s freaking me out. You all need to check yourselves. This is how the Holocaust got started, how all those civilized Germans got twisted into thinking that the Jews need to go. Now you good Americans are thinking the same kind of crazy like those good Germans did.
Now that you’ve defined it essentially as white supremacy, please stop using the term “alt right”.
It’s not alt anything. It’s white supremacy.
“Alt-right”? Did this JP Scottile escape from alternet? The righties aren’t the only group that believe an alternative reality. The “Russia done it” the “Obama’s a liberal” the “dems are the left” are fantasies believed by the cult that crying over Hillary’s loss. Trump is a pile no doubt. But most wouldn’t even know it, if it weren’t for the daily ” Trump’s an awful monster” shocking news headlines. Put out by the propagandist outlets that supported Hillary.
JP Sottile,
If you think that ‘globalist’ & “Globalist control over a once-sovereign nation” do not exsist, I suggest you do your research. You could start at the U.N. Look around, try to spot something called ‘Agenda 21’, or the updated version, Agenda 20/30.
The blatant bias in your ‘journalism’ is very unprofessional. Just report the news please. No opinion necessary!
WatcherOntheWall – totally agree with you.
Has anyone actually interviewed or even talked to any of the “cohort of White, similarly-dressed and evocatively-coiffed young men marched with burning tiki torches while repeatedly chanting [anti-Jewish slogans] …” ? In other words do these people seriously exist? Unless you can identify them and know what they are chanting about how can you tell they are any kind of threat and not run of the mill nut-jobs? serious? Personally I am very skeptical that people chant openly anti-Semitic chants. In places like Ukraine they may exist, but in USA? Seriously find one.
Dan Good – I think you are bang-on correct. I would be very surprised if a handful of these guys exist. My personal belief is that this whole thing was staged. I’m not saying there weren’t innocent people there who were actually just there to protest the statue being taken down, but I think some of the others are suspect. I would not be at all surprised if they were not sent there precisely to incite and stage an event. I am very skeptical about what happened.
It puzzles me how people are able to locate this site, yet claim they’re quite unable to make a youtube search for “Jews Will Not Replace Us”.
h**ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrhL3ei568
It’s just strange that people don’t like Nazis in America. When they see Nazis in the Ukraine strutting around in swastikas and SS regalia, they give them $5 billion of CIA money.
If you see a group of 3 KKK people, it’s a safe bet that one of them is from the FBI and the other two are Soros stooges.
Even if the alt-right gets a few things correct, although in hyperbolic fashion, it doesn’t discount the fact that a Zionist Power Configuration does indeed have a tremendous amount of influence in Washington. As a lefty-progressive, I can acknowledge that cold hard fact and it doesn’t of course mean I’m in bed with the alt-right.
Of course the alt-right gets major issues completely wrong and distorts others.
Drew – who is the “Alt-Right”? Are they the white supremacists/KKK/Nazis? You know, the people who number about 1,000, at most? Are these 1,000 people a threat to the country, or are they being used to push the narrative that all people on the right are now Alt-Right? Do you not give ordinary people on the right any more credit than that? Do you think they can’t see these people (who may include paid agitators) for what they are?
To me, Drew, I cannot even imagine being a lefty-progressive. Oh, I used to think this way, when I was young. Maybe that’s why, if you look at the crowds, most of the lefty-progressives are all young. One fellow I listened to the other day was explaining that most young people today were raised where no one got a medal (as everyone did). They got used to running to adults when someone said anything they didn’t like instead of trying to resolve it themselves. They’ve always been “listened” to. IOW, I think they’ve been used to living in la-la land. It’s to the point now where university professors and administrators are actually afraid to confront these people. How ridiculous is that!
I think your real education is ahead of you. It’s coming.
There are all kinds of older lefty progressives. Many of them are pro union, pro labor activists; anti -war activists; environmentalists; folks fighting for progressive taxation; fighting for national single-payer healthcare; activists working to end the massive inequality that plagues the country; astute observers critical of Zio and militarist power; citizens relentlessly protesting Wall St power.
There were scores of 50 and over people braving the elements and camping out at Occupy Wall Street and instrumental in the pro union Wisconsin uprising. Millions of older folks protested the impending Iraq war.
Perhaps you’re in need of a more enlightened and holistic approach to national and global analyses. You seem to fall for the caricature of the progressive-left that certain rightie and establishment outlets like to propagate. Antifa is by no means the entire left, not even close. And antifa’s left activism, at this time, doesn’t appear to focus on class issues, but rather focuses more on identity politics. Identity politics is good as far as it goes but reaches a dead-end mighty quick.
Some older left-progressive luminaries: James Petras, John Pilger, Chomsky, M. Parenti, Chris Hedges, R. Nader and some others I’m forgetting at the moment.
Sure, some university students have been coddled to a certain extent. But those progressive left students who fight for labor and union rights, fight for 15, fight for national single payer health insurance, fight to end Washington imperialism, and care deeply about environmental protection could be the saving grace to this country. Their battles are only beginning.
Drew Hunkins – I hate having to type answers because these subjects are huge and it’s impossible to cover everything, and I think after a while I just get tired of arguing and then say something stupid myself. Sorry, Drew, from what you list, I would most likely fall into that category as well.
“Many of them are pro union, pro labor activists; anti-war activists; environmentalists; folks fighting for progressive taxation; fighting for national single-payer healthcare; activists working to end the massive inequality that plagues the country; astute observers critical of Zio and militarist power; citizens relentlessly protesting Wall St power.”
That pretty much describes me. I am not a globalist, and I seriously think we need to start talking about whether growth, growth and more growth is not doing us more harm than good. I guess I get frustrated because I see the Left at the moment aiding and abetting the globalists simply because they are fighting someone (Trump) who is at least trying to fight the globalists.
I am referring to the younger people who have not taken the time to weigh all sides and come to their own conclusions, the people who are just happy to go along with whatever Facebook or Twitter are telling them to think at the moment, and who seem to equate Trump with racism, and racism alone. Agh! I just want to shake them and ask them if they know what they’re up against, that their future might look a lot like feudalism if they don’t wake up.
I was happy to see a professor on Tucker Carlson tonight saying that he got together 15 other professors (as they are trying to reach the new classes coming into the fall school season) and they put out a letter telling students to stop listening to others and come up with their own conclusions – seek the truth – their own truth. I hope more professors join in.
Thanks, Drew, for correcting me. Slap me down whenever I screw up. I don’t mind.
Peace backwards. We’re all in this battle together.
In solidarity.
“Trumpist websites like Breitbart, American Greatness, Infowars, Conservative HQ and American Thinker”
Judging from the white resentment on display (especially on the Charlottesville threads), more than a few regulars here seem to spend as much or more time at these sites as they do at consortiumnews.com.
BobS – you’re going to learn about as much at Breitbart as you would at Mediaite (left wing). I don’t know about the others, but I might have read a few linked articles to American Thinker.
There are lots of people like me who don’t read or listen to Infowars or another garbage site, CNN. I do watch Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox because I think he gives the other side of the argument, which the MSM never gives.
Those on the “Right” are not all getting their news from the sites you mention. Not even close. And we don’t all own gun racks and pick-up trucks. A lot of us are actually intelligent.
Claiming that white people are the ones who suffer most under racism and Christians are the religious group that faces most discrimination is, as a large part of Trump supporters do, is, of course, rather absurd.
But I think that there are reasons that go beyond old-fashioned white racism, sexism and prejudice towards religious minorities that explain such strange views (though the latter exists, as well, but it probably cannot explain why these views are so widespread).
An important factor seems to be the widespread application of a “privilege” framework that largely ignores economic inequality and focused almost exclusively on groups based on “race”, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. I think it is to some degree understandable when “white hetero cis men” from the lower middle class and working class resist against being classified as “privileged” (and close categories like “white hetero cis women” or “white homosexual cis men” are still fairly privileged according to that model). A consequence of the ubiquity of this model and many people who are hardly very powerful resenting against being pushed into the role of the privileged oppressor can probably lead to such a reaction that the “privilege” framework is accepted, but that the claims about who is the oppressed are turned around.
I think that the problem is not so much that the privilege framework is completely wrong. In today’s United States, it is still an advantage to be white in some situations, and therefore white people have a certain privilege compared to people of color of the same socioeconomic class (there are even some situations in which race trumps socioeconomic class). I think the problem is primarily one of focus and emphasis. Economic inequality is very important, and in the United States, income inequality (e.g. measured by the Gini index or almost any other useful measure) is greater than in Western Europe and Japan or more generally, most of the rest of the developed world. The alternative is not necessarily just the view of the 1% versus the 99% although some important observations can be made on that basis. But also the richest 10% still have a large amount of power, this is more or less the “professional class” at the core of the policies of the Democratic party Thomas Frank writes about in “Listen, liberal”. The cut-off-point can be at different levels, but in any case, while certainly racism and sexism certainly should not be ignored, the very large degree of economic inequality is the elephant in the room.
There are different explanations for this predominance of a “privilege” framework that de-emphasizes and often ignores economic questions. But I think it is certainly not by accident that such a model that suits the powerful elite very well has gained so much support among progressives. Perhaps, if no kind of privilege and discrimination was discussed, at all, it would suit the oligarchy even more, but that is perhaps not very realistic because ideas of justice and supporting marginalized groups are just too strong. Therefore, the best strategy for the oligarchy is to promote a model in which the population is divided up in a way that most fights about who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed will be among members of the middle class and working class. The move of those who see themselves as the left away from common economic interests of larger parts of the population towards a privilege model that pits people who mostly do not have that much power and influence against each other may partly have happened accidentally for ideological reasons (or because people who influence debates more, even on the left, mostly tend to be among the better-off), but donations of rich people for certain progressive causes (and educational institutions that focus them) rather than others probably also played an important role.
The reaction of a significant part of the population that consists in accepting this “privilege” framework that largely excludes economic questions, but to claim that white people and Christians are the ones that are oppressed can hardly be defended, in my view. But I think that it is important to criticize the one-sided “privilege” framework that is an important reason for this counter-reaction (apart from simple old-fashioned racism and bigotry that, of course, also play a role). The solution should not be to ignore questions of race, gender and ethnicity, but to emphasize economic questions more. If the role of the upper class and the upper middle class in the system of inequality is talked about more – and also the working class (not just the “white working class”, some, but by far not all members of the working class are white) -, it is more likely that people are more willing to accept that to a certain extent racial discrimination against African Americans still exists, even though there are indicators that it has diminished over time. In certain situations heterosexual people, men, or white people have a certain amount of privilege, but on the whole, a member of the working class or the lower middle class is not really that privileged, and it is rather absurd when rich people express their superiority towards poorer and less educated people because they are allegedly so “privileged” in the sense of being more racist, sexist and homophobic – such an attitude can provoke claims that whites are the ones who are being oppressed (again a reaction that suits the oligarchy very well – instead of blaming rich, well-educated people for pushing them into the role of the oppressor, minority groups are blamed).
I think that the campaign of Bernie Sanders showed a potential way out of these problems. Judged by European standards, his political positions hardly belong to the far left, he is rather a center-left social democrat. But what he did was putting economic questions again at the center of politics. He certainly did not deny racial and sexist discrimination (that was a false straw man the right wing of the Democrats and many media close to them attempted to use against him) and certainly was not any less anti-racist and anti-sexist than neoliberal Democrats (especially considering that much of identity politics and privilege checking by neoliberal Democrats is purely symbolic does not actually lead to doing any actions for improving the situation of minorities who are discriminated against), but an increased focus on economic matters was certainly important, especially for Sanders’ appeal among independents.
The goal can hardly be to abolish economic inequality altogether, but I think there should be a broad consensus that the level of income equality has become too high and that there should be counter-measures. The answer to those who claim that white people and Christians are the most oppressed groups should, of course, include that this claim is wrong, but it should also be said that such privilege models based on demographic characteristics like race and gender are not enough, and that it should be recognized that economic questions play a central role.
My understanding is that abolishing economic inequality to a great degree is required if we are to have lasting peace. Our long conditioning within capitalist propaganda and practice makes this unlikely. I am told that six individuals now have wealth equal to half of the human population. This inequality is behind much of the suffering, and the machine of doom that is stalking our species.
In the end, hubris is suicidal.
This article reeks of resentment.
The strangest thing about Breitbart is that the views it expresses seem to be completely at odds with those of its principal financial backer, Robert Mercer. Mercer’s Wikipedia page: “Mercer was an activist in the [Brexit] campaign … Mercer donated the services of Cambridge Analytica … [which] was able to advise Leave.EU through its ability to harvest data from people’s Facebook profiles in order to target them with individualized persuasive messages to vote for Brexit”. Mr Mercer certainly doesn’t believe in non-intervention! It’s just a matter of where to intervene! And he doesn’t seem to support national sovereignty inasmuch as he is seeking to deny the sovereign nation-states of Europe the right to come together in the European Union if they choose. That would also explain Breitbart’s support for Vladimir Putin, who was originally intended to be a battering ram to break up the EU and bring Europe back under US domination. Mr Mercer has also set up a “super PAC” called “Make America Number One”, which is a very different thing from “America First”. The name suggests that the underlying concept is not that the US should look after its own national interests but that it should dominate the world. When you boil it down, Mr Mercer supports US global hegemony, which is a very far cry from Breitbart’s professed agenda.
@John:
Posting on the federal government invented and nurtured for years more than kind of undermines your case.
Also know which party called people vermin?
Have I merely been fed propaganda by the msm when my attention is turned primarily to the threats posed by climate change and nuclear war, intentional or accidental, and then I wonder why these are not mentioned in JP’s article or the comments? Globalists, Nationalist and other “smart” people will disappear I fear.
The odds are that we humans are all going to disappear in the near future. Cosmic law requires that intelligent, and hence increasingly powerful species must learn to love all living beings, or they will destroy themselves. This is probably the cause of what astronomers call the Great Silence. Why have our efforts to detect signals from other intelligent species in our galaxy failed? Probably because they did not learn to make this love their primary concern, and so shortly after developing the ability to send electronic signals, they destroyed themselves by misuse of their advanced technology.
When an intelligent species is heading into it’s self-created Gotterdammerung, things get really confused and messy. Don’t expect the collapse and failure of the human species to be an orderly, analyzable affair. To focus on the intricate details of our demise is to miss the broad outline of why all this chaos is happening, and lose any remote possibility of averting the mass extinction of humankind.
Of course people hope to find solutions through their detailed analyses, but this really operates as a delusional avoidance of the real, ultimately simple causes of our collective suicide.
mike k-
There is a lot of truth in what you say. I think at this point we can only hope for some kind of sudden advancement in human consciousness that causes our governments to abandon war as an option. Peace must come from within us all, and it must come soon or we are doomed as a species.
Skip, the sudden advancement in human consciousness you speak of is much to be desired. The problem is that although there have been methods – often referred to as spiritual paths – offered to us throughout our long history, they all require considerable time and inner work to achieve their highly desirable results. As a result not so many are called to take them up, and few who do so hang in until they deliver their blessings.
During the sixties some of us, including myself, experimented with accelerating the slow process of spiritual growth by ingesting a variety of entheogens (Huston Smith), including participants in the Esalen experiments inspired by Sri Aurobindo). Unfortunately the results we got were unpredictable, and our efforts were interrupted by criminalization of these activities.
To my knowledge, there is no reliable way to speed up the needed higher consciousness beyond those paths already known. I studied with a Sufi teacher and his group who employed methods known as the “rapid path” but it took several years for me to get the desired results. I have been part of starting a couple of groups dedicated to spiritual growth. but the desired high speed method remains elusive. I have envisioned a method which might deliver the desired changes in a reasonable time, but it is difficult to find people willing to dedicate themselves to the minimum practice required. My pessimism about humankind’s survival relates to my belief that we are screwed if we don’t evolve, and it looks like with our time running out now, we are not going to make it.
mike k-
I suppose when you get right down to it, I share your pessimism. I think technology has been our undoing. We’ve abstracted murder by using bullets, bombs, and drones. If people had to strangle their enemy, or stick a knife in them, and watch the light go out of their eyes, maybe they would learn non-violence a bit sooner. People would wake up like Chief Joseph did and say “I will fight no more forever.” Vietnam was the last televised war. The propagandists have taken control of the media, and now we get generals with power point presentations, and shills like Brian Williams talking about “beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments”. God help us all.
This page of comments seems to summarize some of the currents and cross currents of today, although I am sure there are many more, in varying combinations and recombinations, and intersecting at different points. Above them all is the MSM, promoting the ideological straightjacket of neoliberalism and war.
It seems to me that we need some very serious discussions in this country, that we are not going to get via our media or political system. Mike, your comments on the spiritual path allow me to perhaps speak the crux of the matter which would speak of the symptoms we are observing as those of the ‘end times’ in all religions, as the domination of all that is the inversion of spirituality, i.e. the reduction of all to the profane point of view (not the profane world, which doesn’t exist); to materialism; to the reduction of Quality to quantity; and to the ‘self’ which has forgotten its source, which is to say at one time the truth of human nature, and of the Divine. Ruled essentially by these ‘subhuman forces’, what good can come, what harmonious collective, even if only imperfectly so, and in striving?
The ‘end times’ are signified by the opposites of Unity, or chaos, the process of division, fragmentation, polarization and conflict with the resulting loss of truth, and acceptability of lies. There is no ‘right’, for the same chaotic forces animate all sides. And religion is lost, substituted by veritable parodies of the same (see Christian nationalism, or the Christian right, as an example). To put things ‘right’ again, we would need to remember our higher values: for quantity, Quality is the Absurd. And live by them in our political life, to which the economic should be subordinate.
The right, or those who claim themselves to be traditionalist, are not so if they put nation and economy above the ‘spiritual path’. And the ‘left’, with borderless space, has no center. We must make both within ourselves first, and then much else finds its proper order and domain. It is slow, hard work, requiring great commitment and self-discipline (as Mike has said), but its rewards are infinitely greater.
My appreciation to everybody who has contributed to this interesting thread of comments. We need more discussions of this kind, ones do not eschew, cover, or disregard truth, but that seek it.
All sides of the American political scene are riven with contradictions and fragmatism and this includes the “left” some of which has become the right just as some of the right has become the left and really those distinctions don’t even apply anymore. Part of the reason for this is that reliable political analysis is totally absent from the mainstream media which has dramatically become almost 100% propaganda for factions within the Deep State. The rightness been attempting to give voice for the “great unwashed” who feel alienated and betrayed by the central government and have, in a sense become the only effective enemies of the Deep State’s relentless drive for globalism which is one and the same withe the old left’s term “imperialism.”
For a long time I’ve urged a united front against the imperial project but both sides are adamantly opposed to this notion particularly those leftists opposed to the permanent war/globalist agenda militantly favored by both political parties and even more rabidly by the mainstream media. For the most part those of us who truly oppose the Deep States imperial agenda have to look to the right since even people like Sanders seems to favor imperialism. The alt-right understands Somewhat dimly is the great political struggle of our time is between the power of nation states against the global neural-network of trans national corporations, international bureaucracies, and,above all the Finance oligarchs around the globe that run our monetary system. Analysis I’ve seen on the right seems more articulate and more to the point than most commentary on the left.
I feel your analogy is right, but allow me to ask you, where is the center? To me it appears that the center, or the middle if you prefer, is lost in a sea of frustration, and these citizens are absent from any real knowledge of current events, so they continue to move along without any hope, or good aspirations of a better tomorrow. So while the extremes move in an erratic fashion, the middle stays frozen in place silently hoping for a livable future. Which brings me to ask, how do you change this, and isn’t it this that’s always the case of our societies political arrangement?
FDR represents the “dirigist” (mixed economy, nonprofit public utility & for-profit private enterprise sectors, or socialist & capitalist sectors are BOTH necessary) center. It is actually the only system that works, as represented by our progress from the 30s to the 70s. Too far public or too far private leads to problems, and things begin to break down. Since Reagan, we’ve had too many things removed from the “Public Sector” side of the Ledger, and moved to the “Private Sector” side, showing loss of National coherence and devolution into uncoordinated, corrupt, local fiefdoms.
The Alt Right consists a a few guys around Richard Spencer. The majority of the Trumpians now call themselves the new right to distance themselves from white nationalism. They enjoy the support of countless classical liberals who are fed up with Globalism and the idiotic and devisive identity politics of the Alt Left epitomised by the increasingly violent antifa, and the Post modernist neoMarxism gripping university campuses who despise the constitution as an extremist right wing document.
Basically, in the media, anyone Who didn’t vote for Hillary is an extremist. Basically they have conjured up 50 million right wingers who simply don’t exist.
People are largely centrist.
Get your terms straight.
The most intelligent commentary on the subject is being done by styshexenhammer666 on YouTube. I suggest you listen in. The establishment just doesn’t get it.
Anon – great comments.
People are not largely centrist.
On a whole host of issues people definitely lean left progressive: drastically reduce the military budget, raise the minimum wage, pass national healthcare, stop selling arms to human rights violators, raise taxes on the uber rich, break up too big to fail investment banks, seriously reign in Wall Street.
Whether you want to admit it or not, these are left progressive positions, despite what many questionable sources might have you believe.
Most conservatives share these views. You have to remember that the conservative movement was cool Ted by the NeoCons in the 80s but if you go back and read what the old conservatives were saying, they pretty much are against the same thing.
Most people are, I think, clustered around the centre, centre left or right. This is where the discussion should take place. The extremists on both sides belong in the wilderness.
Anon – you have a nice way of bringing things down to simplicity. I think most people intuitively understand that there must be balance in all things. Stray too far one way and eventually you feel a need to get back to the center again. I think what you describe is accurate.
I’ll just have to finish the article later. I got weary of its derisive tone towards Globalists when there is no longer any excuse for such obtuseness. David Rockefeller bragged about what they were up to, and Carroll Quigley wrote about what they were up to, and this goes back what, 50, 60 years ago? And this is just the American branch of CecilRhodes RoundTable Group and Synarchie Internationale which goes back what, 100, 150 YEARS ago….puulllease! Some rich and powerful people exist who dream of global Empire, and Imperialists have very little tolerance for nationalist and localist competition…it’s almost an axiom of human nature. Their ideal of governance is a feudalistic organization of hand-picked local boards of directors answerable to the imperial oligarchs only, the people have no say in anything. Don’t believe it? It’s getting a trial run in Michigan. They are called emergency managers sent in by the governor. They over-ride city councils. They’re busy working out the kinks for smooth-operating neo-feudal system of governance. Insofar as taking on the Republican Party Establishment; this plays into Tarpley’s strategy of destroying the treasonous Republican Party in-place, only then taking hammer ‘n’ tongs to the Democratic Party to smash its Wall Street component, freeing its MainStreet component. No doubt this writer is blind to the political battlefield in front of him.
I make no bones about the fact that I align with EIR and Tarpley. I’m convinced they accurately define the World and what is REALLY going on. EIR reported on how Bannon wants to sabotage the New Silk Road…and so I and the EIR folks part company with Bannon, because he is looking at the World through obsolete 19th century MacKinder (spelling) goggles as a geopolitical Great Game of conquest and dominion, completely ignoring Xi’s genuine “win-win” policies of the New Silk Road. Bannon is sliding into British Empire territory, now more accurately referred to as Western Empire territory of City-of-London/Wall Street, which is the very agenda of Rockefellers, Rothchilds, Inter-Alpha Group banking cartel, “those Davos people”, the Bilderbergers, CFRers, Trilateralists, Mt Peleren people. The ONLY play available to checkmate “those Davos people” is for USA to JOIN China and Russia in New Silk Road development/reconstruction policies, as these three countries are the last best hope for reestablishing a family of National Republics of the people, under a genuine U.N. umbrella. EIR has gone thumbs-down on Bannon, and I follow their lead confidently. If Trump listens to him instead of EIRs advice (however indirectly it reaches his ears), then they’ll probably go thumbs-down on Trump too (but they do still urge people to contact Trump and tell him to fight against the “Maidan II” coup launched against him by the corrupted Anglo-American intel community), and I’ll follow their lead confidently. But the Trump-Bannon axis is performing a useful “wrecking ball” service, destroying the R-Party in-place, as Tarpley insists must happen, so thumbs-up to this.
To add to my earlier response above to Sottile’s piece.
He writes:
“Along the way, Trumpist websites like Breitbart, American Greatness, Infowars, Conservative HQ and American Thinker routinely wield the “Globalist” moniker like a cudgel against Trump’s enemies. They find these Globalist enemies hiding under all of Washington’s mossy rocks and lurking around every international corner. George Soros is often targeted because they believe he uses Craigslist ads to pay protesters and he secretly funds the Antifa, Black Lives Matter and just about every group that opposes Trump and America’s heritage. Soros the indefatigable boogeyman is even blamed for orchestrating the Charlottesville mess in an effort to discredit the Alt-Right.”
I am no Trumpist, far from it, yet I find credible reports that ads were posted on craigslist (whether by Soros or any other group, I have no idea!), a few days before the event at Charlottesville, looking for actors to be paid $25 an hour to participate in a demonstration:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-16/why-was-crowd-hire-company-recruiting-25-hour-political-activists-charlotte-last-wee
This group ‘Crowd hire’, whose CEO is a certain Adam Swart, reportedly funded the ad. Zerohedge speculates that the actors would have been used to infiltrate the leftist protesters, which is certainly possible and plausible IMHO. But one can equally assume that such actors would have been hired to infilitrate both the leftist and right-wing demonstrators, instigating both groups toward violence.
It’s manipulative on Sottile’s part (and an error in judgment on the part of Robert Parry, whom I otherwise very much respect, to have allowed Sottile’s piece in Consortium News) to claim that only Trumpists or right-wing extremists could suspect behind-the-scenes foul play in what unfolded at Charlottesville. Whether branches of the government itself played any role is unproven, as of yet. But one must not forget that the government has, in the past, demonstrably infiltrated both left-wing and right-wing fringe groups and abetted them to violence, as documented her by Newsbud’s Kurt Nimmo:
https://www.newsbud.com/2017/08/28/charlottesville-and-the-fbis-connection-to-white-supremacists/comment-page-1/#comment-26129
All you have to do is look at Melania Trump today and her husband. Do you people here, really believe that this couple gives one iota crumb about you? I am disappointed in Robert Perry, because, somehow he still believes that DJT is okay. I am done. It is like an a boyfriend or girlfriend , that no matter you know , you have to break . I will always love and respect Robert parry’s reporting, but I part ways when Robert defends the pussy grabber, the apprentice showman, the Mexican hater, . I agree with the editor, not let thw mainstream media do the narrative, But I part ways when someone defends Nazis. I do know because I lived it.
Did you approve of Hillary’s Nazis in Ukraine?
Come to think of it, did you cast your vote for that woman?
The answer is no, past tense , and no. Did I approve of djt ? And by the way , Hillary inherited all that shit from the Bush administration. Are we , or are not super administrators? Nuland, I forget her her first name, was it Valerie, or Victoria anyway she and her husband were holdovers from Bush 2. I did not cast my vote for Trump. Now are you satisfied?
tina – Victoria Nuland has been around since the Bill Clinton administration. Check her out on Wiki. She then worked for Dick Cheney for a while before moving on to U.S. Ambassador to NATO. In 2013, she was given the position (by the Obama government) of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. She set up loan guarantees for Ukraine and was instrumental in bringing about the coup in Ukraine. Yes, she collaborated with the Nazis in Ukraine to pull it off. Imagine!
You can cry now, its OK!
who are Hillary’s Nazis in the Ukraine? Zachary, I have no idea how old or young you are, but your lack of history kind of gives you away. . You stupid person, my mother who is still alive, has a national socialist birth certificate , even though she was born in KOenigsberg, 1938 , a free state of east Prussia, by the Nazis they lost everything. So , Zachary, shut your little mouth, because I know what is loss , and lost by the Nazis in Germany.
And those real Nazis, they were either shipped to Argentina or recruited to work for the CIA by Allen Dulles. You might recall an airport in DC under that name.
Tina,
who are Hillary’s Nazis in the Ukraine? Just see here some of the guys at the forefront of the anti-Russian struggle promoted by Hillary and her Zionist paymasters:
youtu.be/Mf0vbGj9cO4
youtu.be/kbt5p2b_Xqw
youtu.be/G45K40miz8E
But the anti-Russian struggle has not always Nazis at the forefront. In Syria Hillary and her paymasters prefer to use Al Qaeda terrorists instead of Nazis as their shock troops against the Russian-led forces in Syria.
So a bald white guy with a tattoo and a gun rack in his pickup truck is the real existential threat to humanity that we should all be concerned about.
Not an unaccountable CIA running heroin and weapons to overthrow countries, a corrupt press, nuclear brinksmanship or an oligarchy that has destroyed any semblance of democracy.
turk151
August 30, 2017 at 12:22 am
So a bald white guy with a tattoo and a gun rack in his pickup truck is the real existential threat to humanity that we should all be concerned about.
Extend the same argument to ISIS and Al Qaeda and you get the picture. Unless you’re subjective and situational flip flopper.
Not really, ISIS and Al Qaeda are very real threats to many secular people in the Middle East.
Unless the auto industry, the Banks, the British Royals, or some other real global power, once again, decide to finance and support the rise of the Nazi party, they are a paper tiger. The Nazis were a consequence of the British Empire economic domination of Germany; such global factors are not in play. A group of German radicals, with no financing, no capital and no connections to real power, did not one day wake up and have the money to reestablish a pummelled post WW1 Germany.
Being a dumb, street thug, does not make one a global threat to humanity.
However much Rachel Maddow hyperventilates.
tina – Obama continued building the U.S./Mexico wall, but that was okay because it was Obama? Obama deported more illegals than any other president, but that was okay because it was Obama? Trump tries to do it and he’s a Nazi? Trump doesn’t hate Mexicans. He just doesn’t like them coming over the border illegally.
Gaddafi is murdered (sodomized with a knife) by Hillary Clinton and Obama (“We came, we saw, he died”), but that was okay? Trump uses locker talk and that’s somehow more offensive than taking someone’s life?
I think you’re more worried about those dangerous “Nazis”. Where are they? Be careful listening to this author for I fear he has an agenda. This is not a fair and balanced article.
Trump is no Nazi. You can forget about that right now. Neither are his supporters. They’re people who have lost their jobs, who want jobs brought back to the U.S., who want less immigration so that THEY can have a job, who want fair trade deals, who don’t want any more wars, who want decent health care, who want to raise their families and have a little bit left over to go see a movie. That’s who his supporters are, and I don’t think you can call them “deplorable” for wanting that.
The mainstream media has an agenda too. They are on the side of the multinational corporations who own the politicians. Together these elite lie and scare people into thinking Trump is some evil monster. Don’t buy into it.
Trump supporters include well educated, high net worth people who want to stick it to the globalists, Zionists and Deep State (the “Shadow Government”). A vote for Trump was a “f*ck you” to the establishment.
ScottB – that’s right.
If you honestly want to make a stand against the neocons and corporate oligarchs, then please don’t pick a notorious con man and confirmed narcissistic asshole like Donald Trump as your chosen savior. If these issues really are essential to the future of our nation (and I believe they are), it’s hard for me to imagine a WORSE champion for them then Trump. Sure, if you want to automatically alienate 60% of voters forever, go for it. If not, I’d urge you put your personal opinions aside and acknowledge the obvious: Trump will NEVER be able to unite the disparate factions who support these essential goals.
Drogon – they’re all narcissist assholes. Yes, even Saint Obama, although he played his part well.
Trump might not be the perfect champion, but he is as close as you’re going to get. He has awakened the other half of the country who no one pays attention to. Yes, the forgotten ones.
He is uncovering the rot. You can see it poking its head up all over the place. These people who are surfacing are the ones who want the status quo to continue. They’re not embarrassed by Trump’s words or behavior. They’re just horrified that he’s outing them! They’re angry that Trump is making them expose themselves.
“Trump will NEVER be able to unite the disparate factions who support these essential goals.”
No, because they don’t want to be united. That’s the last thing on their minds. United? Yeah, right. Even when Trump tries to unite people, be fair to all sides, like when he came out and said that “both sides” were at fault in Charlottesville, the Left panned him. How dare he say that they were somehow responsible too! Well, duh, of course you were.
No, there is no uniting these disparate factions, most especially on the Left. Everybody is just painted by them as a “KKK supporter” or a “racist” and no further discussion is needed in their minds. Prior Presidents have not tried to unite them, only placate them, hush them up.
Trump is not hushing them up. He’s letting the truth come out…well, it’s just coming out all on its own because he’s not trying to bury it. The reaction the Left gave to him when he said both sides were responsible for what happened in Charlottesville was very telling. The “pure as snow” didn’t get their way for the first time. They finally ran into a teacher who said they were “both” responsible. Wow, that’s a new one.
Winners and losers have been engineered for a long time now. The winners are now going to lose some and, because people don’t like to give up what they’ve gained, there is going to be trouble.
You don’t like pussy grabbers, but you don’t have a problem with serial rapist Bill Clinton or Hilary Clinton’s thuggish intimidation of his victims.
It’s difficult to get a handle on just what the “alt-right” is about. Obviously there is no consistency and much pandering for what it’s worth.
Nevertheless, it must be remembered that most of these labels are given by the msm which has also designated anything that doesn’t adhere to Democratic orthodoxy as the “alt-left”. I am adverse to labeling myself but no doubt mainstream media would put me there along with most commentators on this website. Dissenting analysis seems to be a threat to their livelihood.
BobH – I don’t think there is an “Alt-Right”. Other than a hodgepodge of people in Charlottesville, who were not really organized, I don’t see them anywhere. Those people got a permit to speak in order to protest a statue being taken down, wanted to exercise their free speech, and they never even got a chance to speak. Before they could get started, the politicians called the event off. The police were told to stand down. It’s almost as if the powers that be wanted a fight to break out.
Check out this site. This guy says he’s never been so angry.
https://www.unz.com/article/anarcho-tyranny-the-corruption-of-charlottesville-va/
“Those people got a permit to speak in order to protest a statue being taken down, wanted to exercise their free speech”
B.E.,…I, for one, am not in favor of this kind of free speech. These people were carrying confederate flags and protesting the removal of statues that are symbols of oppression. In Germany today Nazi symbols of oppression are banned and statues of the Nazi era are relegated to museums as are statues of Stalin in Russia. Much of their anger has been misdirected from real issues to inflammatory symbols by those who have a powerful interest in the status quo. On the other hand, I believe the Antifa marchers, with masks and baseball mats should also be banned, as it is obvious that they are out to incite violence and destroy property. The only beneficiary from these kinds of clashes can be the Deep State and its allies in congress. Anyway,B.E. I think we should focus on the common cause that brings us together here in a civil discussion. I have always valued your input.
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-happened-when-germany-banned-nazi-symbols-at-a-neo-nazi-march-in-berlin-2017-8
BobH – I am not at all convinced that these guys running the KKK/white supremacist angle are legit. I was listening to one interview where a fellow said that he noticed the confusion in the “Unite the Right” protesters in Charlottesville. Some were ordinary people out to protest the removal of a statue. Don’t forget, this is what they came for. All of a sudden he notices people in this crowd with perfectly brand new Nazi flags, creases still in them as if they just came out of a box. Others are shouting either “Jews will not replace us” or “You will not replace us” (take your pick). Another guy has on a Hitler shirt. Others are carrying Confederate flags. Some aren’t wearing or carrying anything out of the ordinary.
His point was that the organizers of the Unite the Right should have said right at the outset: “Anyone spouting KKK/white supremacist/Hitler crap need to leave right now. We are here to protest the removal of a statue and exercise our free speech, nothing more.” They should have distanced themselves from these people. But of course, as with any hodgepodge of people who come together, you are going to get these wackos. And sometimes they are put there by design! You cannot dismiss this angle at all. We read enough about false flags and the like on this site to know that this stuff does indeed occur.
If I was wanting to discredit the so-called “Right”, people who have a legitimate grievance to air, this is exactly what I’d do. I’d ensure there are those types of people in the crowd (yeah, they just arrive, and all of a sudden they’re putting on KKK shirts). Next time the “Right” want to get together again, request another permit, they will be reminded, “Well, remember Charlottesville? No, I don’t think we can give you a permit.” Makes the “Right” look very bad, paints everybody who is on the Right as a neo-Nazi. Shuts down free speech a little more each time, which is what they want.
And in the future, if someone from the right wants to stage another protest, who is going to want to say, “Yeah, I’m in”? They will remember Charlottesville and decline to partake. Especially after the chaos and violence that the Left handed out. Who wants to get bottles and rocks thrown at them?
And the next time a permit is handed out to the Right, how quickly do you think word is going to get around to the no-mind university students on the Left? In a New York minute. They will outnumber the Right protesters (because they’re using Facebook and Twitter) by 10 or 20 to 1. More violence will take place. If you are young and on the left, and you have the sheer numbers on your side, you are going to come out to shout the Right down, paint them all as KKK/white supremacists, remind the Right that “Black Lives Matter”, as if they didn’t already know that.
I’m saying there are plants on both sides, purposely put there in order to stop future protests, control the narrative. It worked well on this occasion.
“In Germany today Nazi symbols of oppression are banned and statues of the Nazi era are relegated to museums as are statues of Stalin in Russia.”
And so is any discussion re Nazi Germany shut down. If you have any questions about the accepted history of what happened, you face a heavy prison sentence. Just for even asking questions! This is absolutely, totally wrong and I would fight to make sure that this never happened. You cannot shut down curiosity/investigation, and why would you even want to?
Isn’t this what is happening now? People are beginning to question the history of the United States, question the accepted narrative? Was Lincoln a hero? Did he really want to free the slaves, or did he really want to send them back? Should we overlook the bad for the good in Lincoln, or vice versa? This discussion must be had, but before that you need the facts, all of them.
What is the truth? If discussion is shut down, history just zipped up into a coroner’s bag because some people with vested interests say so, then it’s never really shut down, is it? People are told they could go to jail for asking any questions, but do you think this settles it in their minds? No, they just put it in the back of their minds. At the first opportunity, they will rise up.
The truth always comes out, no matter how many try to suppress it. It is when you try to suppress things that the really fun begins.
Something very bad is happening here. Something stinks to high Heaven. Maybe they’ll censor or shut down the Internet before we all find out (which is where they’re going).
There are winners and losers on all sides of history. Some is the truth, some is not. If you are at all a good citizen, you will want the truth to come out. We shall see.
I will be waiting to hear your response to the above.
“But of course, as with any hodgepodge of people who come together, you are going to get these wackos. And sometimes they are put there by design!” Yes, B.E., I often wondered about this(on both right and left protests). It could easily serve some political interests when inflammatory/destructive elements are allowed to co-mingle in demonstrations. This also happened in the largely peaceful Occupy demonstrations. Somehow I believe this could be controlled locally if the demonstrator leadership was required to coordinate with local law enforcement, so that demonstrations could be more disciplined(or self disciplined)…but there also needs to be consequences for those that break the law.
“And so is any discussion re Nazi Germany shut down. If you have any questions about the accepted history of what happened, you face a heavy prison sentence”…on this point I have to maintain that there is enough evidence on Nazi atrocities to deem the current German prohibition as both wise and valid. Germany suffered along with all the nations that were victims of Nazi aggression and the Jewish holocaust is undeniable. This, however, in no way excuses the atrocities of zionists in Palestine. But it should be remembered that zionists are thrilled to hear anti-zionists deny the holocaust so they can conflate anti-zionism with anti-semitism. I would hope that no one here at CN falls into that trap. Anyway, B.E, thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain myself on these very sticky issues. Sometimes things get left out that significantly change the dialogue and I believe it’s important for all of us to make distinctions that add clarity to our positions.
Actually BobH, there is still alot about the Nazis that needs extensive inquiry. One example is the Kim Philby, who was a British Spy that aligned with the Saudis to stir up anti-semitism to do the bidding of the oil companies. The Dulles, Sullivan Cromwell and the influx of the Nazi’s into the CIA. Rockefellers role in S. America hiding the Nazis and their treasonous war profits in fueling the German army. The exact nature of King Edwards, VIII, role in supporting the Nazis and the extent that it carried over to the rest of the British Family. Ford, IBM, Investment Banks, Harriman, Bush, Coca Cola. The official narrative is not closed to protect the Jews, it is closed to protect the British/Western oligarch’s interests in the Nazi.
Turk151…Ahhh yes, with Nazis there are many conspiracy issues. I was trying not to go off on a tangent but I’ll throw up a link for those that are unfamiliar with your reference.https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/08/18628134.php
What happens is these people are bussed in and given their swastikas and badges and $50 and sandwiches and told what to shout. This time by Soros.
In the Ukraine, the money came direct from the US embassy, after all the Nazi paramilitaries had their training at NATO bases in Poland and Lithuania.
In Europe, anyone who suggests anything even slightly deviating from accepted wisdom about WW2 faces a lengthy prison sentence.
In the UK recently, a British politician called Livingstone referred in passing in a radio interview to the fact that Zionist organisations cooperated with Hitler so that Jews could leave Germany. This is a fact of history, written about by many Jewish historians. But Zionist groups tried to smear him as anti semitic and he got hounded out of the Labour Party by a kangaroo court. This was done mainly to try and smear Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party.
BobH – Gary Cohn came out against the so-called Alt-Right. This is one man’s response to Cohn:
“I can understand the angst; anyone adhering to Nazi-style beliefs, if you’re Jewish (and Cohn is), has to push all the wrong buttons. But the fact of the matter is that when you go to work for the government you are expected to, and in fact take an oath to, uphold the Constitution.
This is not Germany, where even speaking of Nazi-like acts is in some cases a criminal act. Germany does not have a First Amendment; the United States does.
To support the position that mere speech, no matter how repugnant, leads to the approval of physical violence is exactly how we will wind up with a second Civil War in this country. […]
I will remind Mr. Cohn that the phrase “Never again” is not limited to Jews. It is in fact intended to express the position that under no circumstance does one’s race, religion, creed or political belief system give license to another’s initiation of force intended to suppress, enslave or kill said person or persons.
And how does one demonstrate their religion, creed or political beliefs?
Through speech.
Mr. Cohn, you have no business operating within our Government. Your mere presence in same today is an affront to everything this nation was founded upon and stands for. You are not in service to the American public, you are defiling the office you hold and that of the President by your mere continued presence, a position you hold only at his pleasure.
The dishonorable Mr. Cohn must resign right here, right now, and if he will not then President Trump must fire him forthwith.”
Does he have a point, Bob?
BobH – you might find this video interesting, beginning at 6:30 minutes. It’s Tucker Carlson interviewing Laura Ingram (I believe) re Antifa. Apparently Nancy Pelosi has finally come out saying something has to be done. Anybody supporting Trump is now labelled a threat to Antifa, and the woman in the interview says that someone is going to be killed.
The segment just prior to this one is about an older fellow who was attacked (they show it) by Antifa. Some black reporter jumped on top of this older man because he actually feared that the older fellow was going to be killed. Nice of him to do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UeDllVao90
This is what Trump supporters have been putting up with for a very long time now. Dangerous.
The alt-right are the perennial whites used by Zionist, to beat the bush in order to scare the Goys into the protective arms of their Jewish saviors.
Like the anti semitic bullshit that was being peddled after Trump won. Hundreds of threats to Jewish organisations were traced back to an Israeli Jewish youth. They were made from Israel.
In France there was a big outcry over vandalism at Jewish cemeteries. The person who was doing it was caught – he was a young male Jew who had some kind of problems like attention seeking.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Anything from MSM is suspect at best, usually there only to promote a meme. But when roaming different sites (MoveOn,Brietbart, for example) you get a sense that those there are enjoying the company of like minds, as there is little dissension in comments. Where you can get an idea of what may be reality (whatever that is) is at news organizations that deal with news and not agendas. The trick is to weed out the infiltrators (trolls). Most that I frequent have different authors from across the spectrum. This at least allows exposure to different ideas and goals, whether you agree with them or not. It allows for minds to be educated on what the real issues are that face us, not the shock and awe on at 6. As with this article, even though the author makes points that may be obscure to some, he does so along with an agenda, which many here saw through. However, some of the facts he presents remain true. The trick is to think for yourself. Denying facts so that the narrative fits ones opinions is self defeating and does not encourage understanding. I think just about the most mind boggling thing I can remember that showed the utter stupidity and gullibility of people was the (I think) Oklahoma law that was passed making Sharia law illegal. As if Sharia law could ever be legal in so far as the constitution would be concerned. But there was a big to-do about it.
I’m surprised Mr. Sottile didn’t know that hating Jews while loving Israel isn’t “confusion” at all, but rather a result of Protestant Fundamentalism. They ‘know’ the Jews killed Jesus – because their Bible tells them so!
“Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.”
How could it possibly be any clearer. They also ‘know’ that Jesus wasn’t a Jew. This next title was at the very top of the result list from a search at duckduckgo.
“Jesus was not a Jew, which explains a lot! – Stormfront
Now the link was dead, for Stormfront has been basically exiled from the internet. But since I wanted to delve into that one a little bit more, I transferred the search to Google, and at that point got quite a shock. Google has erased even the cached materials! So researching this bunch of White Nazis is no longer possible with any tools available to me.
Google is assuming God-like powers. If it wants something gone from the internet, it’s now going to be gone. Hardly anybody cares about Nazis getting trampled, but their being removed from modern history is another thing altogether.
**********
I’ve tried to show why the White Nazis hate Jews, but thanks to Google didn’t quite succeed. Their ‘love’ of Israel is based on a desire to force God to signal Gabriel to blow the big horn and send the white christian Jesus back to start Armageddon. (Israel must be around and raising hell for that to get going properly.) THAT’S when Israel will get what is coming to it. This ‘love’ is a really temporary sort of thing for the white nazis.
Zachary Smith – people don’t hate Jews. They just don’t want their government owned by them, or their media, their central bank, etc. No one group should ever have that much control.
That’s not hate. That’s just good common sense. The people are supposed to own their government, not some outside interest group. No other country would ever allow this.
I don’t think Steve Bannon represents what Trump thinks on everything. Trump has already said as much. He said, “I haven’t even known Steve Bannon that long. I certainly do not agree with everything he says.”
Interesting how all of a sudden Trump supporters are being labelled “Alt-Right”. How ridiculous is that! Because one group protests the taking down of a statue and things get out of control (probably some paid agitators on both sides), somehow they represent ALL Trump supporters? Come on.
I have no idea why Steve Bannon would love Israel, but hate Iran. I would bet money that the average Trump supporter would not feel this way. Maybe he’s read too much about the Barbary Coast? Maybe worried about another Ottoman Empire? Who knows.
Just another white goy … even for an Armageddon you still need jews. Fuck cristianity.
JP Sottile – it would take me a week to answer your post. The Alt-Left is organized. They’ve got George Soros money and a well-oiled machine directing them. Do you actually think they are doing this all on their own? He’s hiring people off Craigslist, and yet I suspect Soros is only part of the gears that are working. These people are paid protesters who get an orientation, are told where to go and what to do. Heaven help us if the other side get organized, but if Black Lives Matter and Antifa keep it up, they will.
McConnell, Ryan and most of the rest of the Republicans are stonewalling Trump and siding WITH their corporate donors. Simple as that. It’s what we talk about all day here – the U.S. is owned by corporate interests and the politicians DO NOT represent the wishes of the people.
The Mexican wall? Clinton started the wall, Bush and Obama continued it. Trump wants to continue the wall and he’s a NAZI? Get real.
“The barriers were built from 1994 as part of three larger “Operations” to taper transportation of illegal drugs manufactured in Latin America and immigration: Operation Gatekeeper in California, Operation Hold-the-Line in Texas, and Operation Safeguard in Arizona. As of January 2009, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that it had more than 580 miles (930 km) of barriers in place.”
One guy described it well: your country starts to get wealthier and wealthier. A generation or two later, everyone starts getting rights (affirmative action, women’s right, gay rights, etc.). All of this attracts immigrants who want to join in on the fun, and yet their ancestors did not build the country. If the immigration numbers are too large, then the people who built the country start to feel threatened, especially if the new immigrants are perceived to be treated in a special manner. They worry that they will lose their culture, and if they actually start to see this happening, then they start acting up.
No different than Israelis would react if large numbers of non-Jews started flooding into their country, demanding rights, changing the culture (say the Arabs). In that case, the Israelis might want to build a wall or something. Oh, whoops, they have. Same in Japan, China, Hungary, pretty much everywhere else in the world except the West, who is expected to just take it. These countries all protect their cultures, but not the West.
The guy goes on to explain that human nature has evolved for tribalism for the last 100,000 years. This is what builds trust and social capital. If you don’t have this, if you begin to lose your culture, then you get a decline in a country’s cohesiveness, perhaps in morals. When there is no longer any tribe, trust is lost. Your country starts to fall apart.
He said the Alt-Left’s desire is diversity and inclusiveness, looking out for the “sacred victim”. Very internationalist in their thinking: no borders, no countries, no dominant culture. They would welcome the whole world in if they could, and call whoever complains a “racist” or a “bigot”, which is what they’re doing at the present. Anyone disagreeing is called a “deplorable”.
To them, “Patriotism is Racism” and “Assimilation is Cultural Genocide”.
If their thinking becomes like a religion (which is what is happening), then these people become fundamentalist in their behavior, and everything that contradicts their religion must fall. You end up with a society that is very illiberal. Resistance! Our way or the highway! It’s what you’re seeing with the protester violence at the Trump rallies, Antifa breaking windows in cities, university students stifling free speech and smashing up the place.
I don’t see older people in these crowds. Antifa is mainly white kids from the ages of 18 to 25 who think they’re tough wearing masks, kids who have absolutely no life experience and no idea of how the world works, but are probably taking lots of Humanities courses. Welcome to the real world, kids.
As many have said, these groups would no doubt be infiltrated by a few people who want to get things stirred up. This is done all the time. The people saying “Jews will not replace us” could have been infiltrators (trying to make the group look bad) or people talking about what we talk about here all the time:
AIPAC owns Congress. Major media is owned by the Jews, along with academia, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, 3 of the 9 seats on the U.S. Supreme Court (it was almost 4, but Obama couldn’t ram him through), Hollywood, telecommunications, and the list goes on. These people are angry that Israel gets $3 billion/year of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and yet most Americans don’t know these facts. If they did, you’d hear a lot more anger. This is not conspiracy. These are facts.
This is a war between globalists (neocons and multinational corporations who use the semi-intellectual Alt-Left to get what they want – people who believe in open borders, no countries, no allegiance to anyone) and nationalists (people who believe in country, hearth, home, traditions, culture, cohesiveness, allegiance).
I could go on and on, but I won’t.
Amen, Brother.
Self pitying shallow miseducated American breast fed on cristo-zionist BS from infancy.
The Fascist Left is well funded by Soros and his ilk.
The rioting after Trump’s election win was planned and organised and openly incited and encouraged by Clinton, Sanders, and morons of the Maxine Waters variety, with the loathsome mainstream media cheerleading wildly.
They want completely open borders and uncontrolled third world immigration.
More cheap maids and gardeners for the Hollywood limousine liberals, more welfare dependent cannon fodder for the Democrats, with all the SJWs having endless opportunities for virtue signalling.
mark – yep.
Actually there is a war between all those who really believe the stories factions put out to arouse suspicion, distrust and paranoia…which generates division. To totally believe what you are told as to aspirations of a group, fostered by people with support from the very people that you despise only pushes their agenda forward. Example: Trump supporters hate Soros and everything he does.Yet, when shown that Trump and Soros are not only business partners, but personal friends, there is a disconnect. It is widely known that Clinton had deep Zionist pockets and was ridiculed rightly so…But Trump who was backed by the same money man as Bibi has, Adelson, no comment. Yet people believe Trump is fighting the good fight. Their weapons are fear and paranoia…and they use them well. America is more divided now than I can ever remember, even during the 60s civil rights marches and Viet Nam war. Americans would do well to really stop and think before they act. That alone would be a major step forward.
Please don’t go on further. It take a real mental contortionist to believe that the Oligarchs of global capitalism are Marxists. To believe that the hundreds of torch burners including well known KKK Cyclops and other monsters were all agents provocateurs in clever disguise requires moral blindness. To disparage the people who protected elderly parishioners from those same people requires terminal moral rot. The NewNazis in Charlottesville marched under torches like the NewNazi Bandera Brigands in Kiev. They even unfurled the flags of the Ukrop Ethno state, so it was fitting that they were smashed by the moral equivalent of the antifascist Pro-democracy fighters of the Donbass People’s Republics – Antifa. By the way I am a proud supporter of Antifa who is quite a few decades past adolescent, and I don’t need sawbucks from Soros to ring a Right Wing Ding’s bell. In that case virtuous violence is its own reward.
Yep
I don’t think it’s correct to deal with the ZOG-theory as a tin foil hat movement. It would be better for the estblishment to answer to some issues. Let me give an example:
Did Walt & Mearsheimer state basically the truth in their well-known paper: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy? The truth in the sense that there exists a powerful kind of an “Israel-lobby” in the United States that successfully pushed the United States in a disastrous war against Iraq. I think the establishment has something to explain here. Just ignoring this issue will not be helpful to make this issue go away.
Bonus challenge: Here is a list of Hillary Clinton’s top donors 2016:
opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?cycle=2016&id=N00000019&type=f
Find the top donor to her campaign who is not a zionist jew. The establoshment should explain and argue why the situation is like it is. I don’t think silence or distraction will work to make these issues of the ZOG-theory go away.
Agreed
I can recall saying the exact same thing about George “codpiece commander” Bush, and that turned out not to be the case. But the Trump Base may be more steadfast, for the members are getting some amazing BS pumped into their heads by the likes of Brietbart.com.
I’d never been to the site, so after a search to locate it I looked it over. It was extremely slick, amazingly shallow, and a perfect demonstration of how to peddle nonsense to rubes. Out of all the headlines on the current page there was exactly one I’d consider worth linking to.
“Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church Closes Doors to Displaced Harvey Victims”
Everything else was garbage, especially the story claiming that Hurricane Harvey was just another storm, and in no way connected to Global Warming.
Bannon is a clever guy, and has no demonstrable scruples whatever. I remember a story from way back about Fox News viewers.
“STUDY: Watching Only Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News At All”
After visiting Breitbart.com I’d say the headline would be an even better fit for it than for Fox. A head full of garbage is in worse shape than an empty one, for all the latter needs is information. In the first case the accumulated BS has to be discarded before reality can enter it.
JP Sottile’ piece rightly exposes the financial backing of the Iranophobic and Islamophobic Mercers to Bannon, Flynn and Breitbart; also, that Trump is not the martyr some on the ‘Alt-Right’ claims he is. With respect to Russia however, it seems that his efforts toward a rapprochement were sincere.
But Sottile loses his credibility when he ridicules the real threat of an Israel-first / Zionist lobby in the West and the United States with such cheap shots as “anti-Semitic paranoia about Jewish plots to control the world.” This threat is very real and has already cost the lives of millions in the Middle East, far greater than the supposed threat of the Alt-Right. It’s also cost the taxpayers billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel, half the budget of all US’ aid to foreign countries. I find it utterly disgusting that Sottile resorts to such dishonest, reductionist slanders as “conspiratorial narrative” because it implies that conspiracies don’t really happen in the world. They happen all the time in fact, in the most natural way, an inherent feature of homo sociologicus, an inevitable, ordinary occurrence; unless Sottile lives in an alternative, utopian reality, in which all men are just, ethical and truthful and only work together toward just, ethical and noble objectives. Conspiracies are not a narrative, Mr. Sottile, they are woven into the fabric of social, economic and political interactions. The question is deciding which ones are real, which ones are imaginary (e.g. lizards from outer space infiltrating our elites). The Zionist conspiracy, however one wishes to define it, is very real, as exemplified lately by attempts in the West to make the BDS movement illegal. Much of US foreign policy is further proof of its existence.
Lol……Israel’s hidden choke hold on the outcome in the theater of conflict is being exposed by the unexpected events in Syria…..It has always been Israel’s agenda in the middle east to take out any threat……. but…… doesn’t mind inflecting pain and suffering on whomever objects to their *nationalist* agenda…….The states of America have a job to recognize and neutralize the threat from within…….
QS – very well said. Thank you. I am so tired of people downplaying “conspiracies” as if they don’t really happen. I realize they’re not under every rock, but they ARE definitely there sometimes. I agree that there is a well-covered-up Zionist conspiracy that we are just beginning to catch a glimpse of. As they start to lose control, they are starting to fight back. That’s when we see them.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the USS Liberty, when Israel deliberately murdered 34 US sailors and tried to murder another 200. They were allowed to get away with this by their 30 shekel whore Johnson. After that they realised they could do whatever they liked and killed 100 times as many Americans on 9/11.
QS
August 29, 2017 at 8:14 pm
Nicely said ….. Bravo!!
QS-
Well said. Sottile is trying to conflate the racism of the alt-right with the very real struggle between national sovereignty and the multi-national corporate effort to supplant it with globalist free-trade agreements. The globalists seek to make the entire world into a land of lords and serfs. Neo-feudalism is the order of the day, and national sovereignty is their enemy. The conspiracy is very real indeed.
“Neo-feudalism is the order of the day,”…that sums it up nicely,Skip!
Oligarchy and wage slavery are the inverse of feudalism, an era that can surprise one considerably. We have re-written feudalism in the ‘light’ of notions of eighteenth century ‘progress’, without noticing that ‘meritocracy’ has lead us to reward greed and dispense with higher principles.
In the Middle Ages, today’s ‘left’ might appreciate that the sick were cared for by monasteries and that Granada had public healthcare available equally for Christians, Muslims and Jews -in the 9th century. The laboring class also had 80 days off a year and 80 holidays -festivals -also work-free. The Church declared any interest rate over 1% usury. The ‘right’ might like oaths of loyalty to their Lord, and on up the chain to king and God. The code of chivalry reflects this, as per the Song of Roland:
To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valour and faith
To protect the weak and defenceless
To give succour to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honour and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honour of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honour of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe
We don’t need to return to the Middle Ages, but at least be aware that we have, in many ways, ‘thrown out the baby with the bathwater’.
The higher and lower, left and right, were unified in this symbol of the king’s ‘mystical body’ (or corporate polity of which s/he was ‘head of state’). Each descending level reflected the one above it, connecting heaven and earth, and each level also represented the balance or synthesis of the king’s right and left sides (mercy/strength), or Justice, where the earthly kingdom mirrored the Divine.
But this outline belongs to medieval feudalism: by the Renaissance, knights of local feudal lords had been replaced by mercenaries of the nation state. By the sixteenth and seventeenth, they had become the armies of empire.
I agree with your comment completely. I too found it disturbing that the author treated the ‘Israeli’ problem with so much flippancy. This caused me to be wary of his article at first. I was, however, glad that he mentioned the Mercers and their Islamophobic blather. It IS all theater… as how many people in the world, not to mention those with a modicum of power, do not realize at this point the Islamophobic propaganda we are fed is from the creators of the movement itself…the Zionist, neocon run Deep State. There is no real Islamic movement, as Trump, Bannon and their ilk would have us believe. How people don’t see that Breibarts love of the state of Israel and Zionism, whose goals are in line with the so-called ‘Deep State’ and it’s world agenda, and their opposition to the deep state is contradictory is beyond me. Would they have us believe that all is as portrayed by them, when people are waking up to the fact that we are the terrorists. Trump orders no more help for moderate terrorists, but does not stop rescues and matériel support for ISIS (which still continues) from us and Israel…because it’s not happening. Right…but Trump, Bannon, et al, hates ISIS, Israels tool . I would love for them to explain to me why we should condemn a country that has never attacked us, instead siding with a country who attacked and slaughtered Americans on an unarmed ship and continues to lie about it today.
Agreed
QS said: … The Zionist conspiracy, however one wishes to define it, is very real.
And, it is an actual neocon/Zionist plan, written down on paper, as General Wesley Clark describes in this short video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXS3vW47mOE
The plan was also written down by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in the Zionists document Project For A New American Century. So …. it is more than just a conspiracy. It is an actual plan !
.
The federal government is where the problem grows and festers….It’s too damn easy to infiltrate and control….. The federal government is where the cockroaches and rats enter and contaminate the great idea of the united STATES…..The states of America need to shed their addiction of dependence on a federal head ……federal control……The federal government IS the problem….the problem of the entire world…….now you know the door where the rats and cockroaches freely enter…….
My guess is that for every voter the MSM is able to turn against Trump, the globalist economy, which is blind to race and gender, will create two more “economic nationalists” (Trump voters) to replace the one. While the MSM needs to spend tremendous amounts of time,capital and reputation to accomplish their goal, Trump need not lift a finger as the corrosive economy will do all the work for him. This is why Trump’s supporters appeared to materialize out of nowhere and took the establishment by surprise. While the people do appreciate the third bathroom option in their public spaces, and that the offensive Confederate statues are coming down, they seem to notice the boarded up factories and loss of economic opportunities more. The alt-right might be clinging to a multitude of spurious ideas and theories, but my guess is that these don’t drive the movement, but merely give them cohesion. The MSM seems to believe that if they can disabuse enough Trump voters from their mistaken views, by effectively out messaging and propagandizing the alt-right, that the country will revert to the Utopian idyll it once was under Obama. This makes sense as it requires less effort to foist comforting platitudes and promises on the economically disadvantaged than to actually fix the broken economic system created them. My guess is that Trump (and those like him) will vanish as economic prosperity returns to the United States, but if it does not, then Trump and his “deplorables” will be around for quite a long time.
Even if all of this is true, and I suspect there are exaggerations though I’m not in a position to refute what is written, and despite the manifold obvious failings of the Trump regime, which mostly relate to its knuckling under to the corrupt deep state power structure, armageddon would have been more likely had the deep state candidate herself triumphed.