#who uncritically supports white supremacist policies | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blog-cosmosuniverse1 · 3 years

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[The ‘Disinformation Dozen’] are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook.

[The ‘Disinformation Dozen’] are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people. ~ Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy

As reported by GreenMed Info:10

“Google now shows an astounding 84,700 search results for CCDH's defamatory phrase ‘disinformation dozen. ’Amazingly, this includes 16,000 news stories within the international press, approximately 100% of which are word-for-word amplifications of CCDH's claims/defamatory statements and reported uncritically as fact.

In addition, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and president Biden all used CCDH's report as the sole source for their own defamatory accusations, reaching a dangerous rhetorical climax on July 20th when Biden stated that these 12 individuals are literally "killing people" [by spreading misinformation].”

No Evidence to Support ‘Misinfo Superspreader’ Claim

In an August 18, 2021, Facebook report, Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, sets the record straight, and in the process, demolishes the CCDH’s claims:11

“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim …

That said, any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards — and we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.

We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others. We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed.

The remaining accounts associated with these individuals are not posting content that breaks our rules, have only posted a small amount of violating content, which we’ve removed, or are simply inactive.

In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”

It’s worth restating the key point in this quote: Combined, the top 12 individuals and organizations identified by the CCDH as being responsible for a whopping 73% of vaccine misinformation on Facebook, are in fact only responsible for 0.05% of vaccine-related content — 1,460 times lower than the CCDH’s outrageous claim. That’s no small discrepancy.

CCDH Claims Blasted as Unjustified and Biased

Bickert goes on to refer directly to the CCDH report “The Disinformation Dozen,”12 stating:

“The report13 upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users.

They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook.

Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”

CCDH Meets Definition of ‘Hateful Extremists’

Ironically, while the CCDH claims to “counter hate” online, and Ahmed sits on the Steering Committee of the U.K. Commission on Countering Extremism, CCDH itself actually meets the Commission’s definition of hateful extremists.14 In the 2019 Commission document, “Challenging Hateful Extremism,” the term is defined as:15

“Behaviours that can incite and amplify hate, or engage in persistent hatred, or equivocate about and make the moral case for violence; And that draw on hateful, hostile or supremacist beliefs directed at an out-group who are perceived as a threat to the wellbeing, survival or success of an in-group; And that cause, or are likely to cause, harm to individuals, communities or wider society.”

In addition, in the forward of the report, lead commissioner Sara Khan notes that “Hateful extremists seek to restrict individual liberties and curtail the fundamental freedoms that define our country.”

All of these definitions and clarifications of what hateful extremism is fit the CCDH to a T. Ahmed manufactured data to create a false narrative that 12 individuals pose a threat to the well-being and survival of the whole world, and then used that narrative to incite hate against us and curtail our freedom of speech.

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aridara · 8 years

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Part 2 of my reply to @literally--hitler. To recap: I’ve asked people who defend the Nazis’ right to “free speech” -

Can you name one single group (a workplace, a political party, a website, an entire culture…) where hate speech and harassment was permitted because “FREEZE PEACH”, that did NOT quickly became overrun by bigotry, with said bigotry getting more present and more aggressive?

- L--H wrote a bullshit answer, and I’m replying to it.

Part 1 is here.

...marxists who advocate for violence against huge portions of the population get a pass.

"Stalinists". L--H meant "Stalinists".

And since bigots - especially Nazi and alt-right-leaning bigots - love to label any opposition as “cultural marxism”: no, this isn’t enough to make me hate all left-wingers.

it doesnt even do much about actual neo-nazis...

Unbelievably, L--H got one thing correct.

& only occasionally focuses on anti-sjws & alt-righters who have gotten too popular instead.

Let me guess three names of such anti-sjws and/or alt-righters that got banned for being “too popular": cultureshift, takashi0, your-uncle-dave.

By the way: the alt-right is literally steeped in and/or colludes with white supremacists, anti-semites, Neo-Nazis, Islamophobies, homophobies, white nationalists, and anti-feminists.

& yet, for all the toxic aspects of tumblr & for all we joke about what a “hellsite” it is, those people are in the minority.

I seriously boggle at this part, because L--H has just spent painting multiple groups as raging bigots that go completely unstopped, and that therefore should be opposed... and then deny it to be a problem. Like, pick one - either it’s a problem, or it isn’t.

Here's the thing: Tumblr took a long time implementing a decent reporting and blocking system; in that time, guess what happened?! The bigotry steadily increased, with bigots continuing to spread lies about, threaten and attack their targets, and driving said targets to leave the website. Even though the "report" function is still mostly useless except in the most blatant cases, the block function helped a whole fucking lot in cutting the bigotry away from its targets. Hell, just by judging by how the bigots turned from "If you don't like what I'm telling you, just ignore me" to "If you block me, you're a coward" indicates that they do know that the blocking is a tool that actually helps the victims of bigotry.

& of course thats how it works. most people arent neo-nazis or “kill all men” types. or do you think they are?

That's not what I've said. I've said that bigots, if left unchecked, tend to drive away everyone else. This isn't rocket science.

I’ve cutted out the rest of L--H’s paragraph, since it was, in my own words, "someone having sex with a strawman of their own creation”. I hope at least it was consensual.

inb4 “muh third reich”. shut up & read some actual history on the subject. the nazis didnt come to power by civil debate. they came to power because violence had been normalized as a part of politics at that point in german history.

Question: how, pray, did the bigotry of Nazis became normalized?

Answer: Because Nazis were allowed a platform DESPITE their violence; the Nazis then used said platform to normalize their violence against minorities such as Jews and the disabled, and allow it to enter the institutions.

Here, have a couple of articles on the matter.

now, just to put what this assclown is asking for in perspective, lets take a look at some of the things that have been called “hate speech” recently, since hes already pulled the “muh slippery slope dont real” argument:

criticizing of the actions of a protest movement (womens march, blm, antifa)-

This tidbit was accompained by pictures of a couple of tweets from “Jon Jafari”, where said Jon literally referred to multiple pacific mass protests of an U.S. President as an "insurrection". Not "protest", "insurrection".

Note that L--H seems to believe that declaring the women’s march - which was absolutely pacific (mostly because the police has more problems justifying violence against a group mostly composed by white women, than justifying violence against a group mostly composed by black people) - to be an “insurrection” is absolutely A-OK. That confirms it: bigots don’t take offense to oppressed people protesting their oppression in the wrong way. They take offense to oppressed people protesting their oppression in any way, including “Could you please not do that?”.

Not to mention that it doesn't matter that, regardless of the fact that Trumaraparaparapompappah was democratically elected*, he still is a masssively racist and bigoted individual with zero self-control towards any attack to his ego. (*: Despite the fact that he lost the popolar vote by the biggest amount in history.)

criticizing a large, powerful political movement (feminism)-

This was accompained by a slice of an article that called out Sargon of Akkad for his relation with the Alt-Right. Feminism isn’t mentioned anywhere in said slice.

The "alt-right" is steeped in neo-Nazism. Hell, its founder Richard Spencer believes that White people need to take back America via "peaceful ethnic cleansing*" and once published uncritically an essay named "Is Black Genocide Right?"**, among other things. (*: There has never been a “peaceful” ethnic cleansing in history.) (**: According to said essay, the genocide of black people does have positive points.)

As for Sargon of Akkad, despite having some genuinely progressive and/or liberal positions, also pulled shit like claiming that racism and sexism do not exist in the West despite any evidence of the contrary, or supporting the harassment campaign GamerGate.

numerous political speeches on college campuses, including by a speaker who has specifically denounced white nationalism

This specifically refers to Milo Yiannopolous, who is a fucking transphobe who tried to appease to neo-Nazis multiple times. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, but claims to not be a duck, it's still a fucking duck.

a man wearing a medal his father was awarded for resisting soviet occupation of hungary

So, I've actually checked this one, and apparently people assumed that Gorka was a Nazi sympathizer on the basis of the following:

The medal is the Order of Vitéz, or Order of the Valiant. During the WW2 period, there had been a schism in the Order, with some members opposing the Nazis and others collaboring with them.

Gorka is a far-right-leaning Islamophobe.

He explicitly stated that he and the Trump staff will keep using the "fake news" accusation - regardless of whether those news are actually false or not - until the media stops attacking Trump.

offensive jokes, or more accurately, jokes that someone took offense to, since taking offense is a choice-

This coming from someone who takes offense at "down with cis". Nah, dipshit, if the audience doesn't laugh, it's because you made a shitty joke.

But anyway, this tidbit in particular is about Disney deciding to sever ties with PewDiePie after he made a video where he paid two unsuspecting guys to make a "Death to All Jews" "joke". Because apparently, private companies have no right to decide "Nah, we don't want to do this anymore" even if they have no legal obligation to actually "do this". </sarcasm> Newsflash: "right to free speech" is not "right to force a private person/company to give you their platform".

having a livestream with the wrong sort of person

I honestly have no idea what L--H is talking about, mostly because they do a fucking shitty job at gathering sources. But given the levels of honesty so far, I guess it was something along the lines of "X had a livestream with Y who is an asshole; people pointed Y's assholery to X; X doesn't care".

actually enforcing the current united states immigration laws

I'm counting this as a double lie. First lie: Trump didn't enforce the current US laws, he made new laws on top of the old ones (which, I remind you, are already one of the strictest immigration laws in the entire world). Second lie: L--H is assuming that those laws were reasonable. They weren’t - those laws were massively bullshit* and have been rightfully declared uncostitutional.

*: Some examples of said bullshit: If you were already in the system and asking for a visa or a green card, but didn't get it yet, you're fucked. If you got a visa/green card, but no US citizenship yet, you're fucked. If you had a double citizenship where at least one country is one of the banned ones, you're still fucked. It doesn't matter if you never ever saw that banned country.

supporting the current president of the united states

Here's the thing: Trump is racist, sexist, and overly bigoted. That was evident well before the election, and was made abundantly clear during the electoral race. Which means that anyone who willingly voted for Trump belongs to one of these categories:

Knew about Trump's bigotry, and thought it was a point in his favor. These voters were bigots.

Knew about Trump's bigotry, and thought it was a point against him, but still voted for him because of the other stuff he promised. These voters were willing to ignore blatant bigotry in order to get a President that they liked.

Knew about Trump's bigotry, but thought that he only did so because “he only does that to convince people to vote for him”. These voters were willing to vote for someone who thought being a blatant bigot was justified. Also, these voters had no idea whatsoever what Trump's "real" policies were. If you couldn't trust Trump when he said bigoted things because "he only said that so that people will vote him", then you couldn't trust Trump when he said "reasonable" things, because he might've done that solely so that people would've voted him.

Didn’t know about Trump’s bigotry, despite it being absolutely evident and documented. These voters were massively ignorant.

sharing pictures of a cartoon frog

This ones refers to Pepe le Frog. Specifically, it refers to when Wendy’s reblogged a Pepe meme without realizing it was connected to the Alt-Right. It almost certainly wasn’t done because Wendy’s is neo-Nazi, but sure as heck their staff didn’t bother to learn about the meme.

Fun fact: that the Pepe le Frog meme is now absolutely connected to alt-right movements is not up to debate.

drinking milk

How niceexpected of L--H to not give any context to whatever the fuck they're saying. Unfortunately for L--H, I am not nice to bigots, therefore I’ve decided to give said context:

Some white supremacists think white ethnic identity has a geographic, historical correlation with the body's tolerance for milk — specifically, the production of the lactase enzyme that allows humans to break down lactose. On 4chan, the internet's hate speech hit factory, one anonymous poster laid this thesis out using the following graphic from a study in Nature, showing hotspots of where certain populations have higher milk tolerances. The discussion thread also contained references to seemingly benign academic studies of "Lactose tolerance in a Slavic population," conversations about whether modern industry has tainted the purity of milk, and several milk-based poems about white pride.

There are numerous threads where white supremacy claims milk-drinking as a new staple of ethnic purity. Source: 4chan

When the brigade of trolls at the LaBeouf installation were accused on camera of racism by Paperboy Prince, a famous Washington Wizards fan and entertainer who has since become a top target of 4chan derision, they claimed it was actually a stance against the "vegan agenda." Judging from the eugenicist rhetoric across online hate speech communities like 4chan and 8chan, it appears that the "vegan agenda" is a potential proxy term for conspiracy theories about a globalist Jewish agenda. But given the sheer mass of alt-right accounts spewing out calls of "Down with the vegan agenda," it could refer to any number of right-wing targets. The whole milk-chugging, anti-vegan narrative is complicated by a number of factors, not least of which being that Adolf Hitler was possibly vegetarian for a short time, or that there are many places in Africa where milk is a dietary staple. Then again, white racial purity is a fragile pseudo-science, so trying to find a sound explanation is a tall order anyway.

...& if you think no journal out there will publish an article about how a famous person is sending secret white supremacist messages by drinking milk because that famous person said something they disagreed with, or because it was a slow news day, you clearly havent been paying attention. not being interested in a crappy looking remake made you a sexist last year.

Not liking a remake solely because there are now women in the main roles does make you a misogynist. Deal with it.

making a video sarcastically depicting yourself as a nazi to mock the fact that people keep calling you a nazi

No, people called out PewDiePie because he thought that making Holocaust jokes was funny. By the way: do you think the Holocaust to be funny?

...and then we have this gem:

[A snippet of an image that states "Apologies can camouflage messages that may still be received and celebrated by hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center says."]

that just says it all. apologies are hate. war is peace. freedom is slavery. ignorance is strength.

Fun fact: there is no trace of that quote from the original source (supposedly, the SPLC). Which means that is quite likely that quote was completely made up, and L--H believed it to be a real thing that the SPLC said. Congratulations.

I’ve cutted out the last paragraph, which can be summed up with "Insults, insults, insults, and a drawn picture of a vomiting girl for some reason".

#debunking a lot of bullshit #antifeminism #racism #tw neo-nazism

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racingtoaredlight · 5 years

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Opening Bell: May 3, 2019

Last week, one of President Donald Trump’s two controversial nominees to join the Federal Reserve Board, dropped out. Herman Cain, who has a business background but virtually no experience in monetary policy, withdrew as a candidate for this reason and for the same reason his 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination failed: his questionable conduct towards women. At first, the withdrawal of Cain seemed like it could be a boon for Trump’s other nominee, Stephen Moore. Moore does have some experience with economic policy though, again not at the macro-level of the Federal Reserve, but his positions on trade, labor, and women in the workforce were considered problematic. The problem is that Moore’s past writings continued to catch up to him and these, along with demonstrable lack of understanding of how national monetary policy works, only amplified this. By the middle of the week, Republican Senators began to pan Moore’s nomination, openly doubting whether he had sufficient votes to gain confirmation. A rule of thumb when it comes to nominations is that if members of the party of the president that nominated you, openly question your confirmability, you are probably in deep trouble. Despite this, Moore insisted yesterday morning that he was still fully-committed to his nomination, that he had talked to the White House about his candidacy, and that they were still fully-onboard as well. Less than two hours later, Donald Trump tweeted that Moore had withdrawn his nomination. It is not clear whether or not this tweet was predicated on a conversation that Moore had had with Trump, or anyone in the White House, but Trump has in the past announced the withdrawal of nominations by tweet without he, or anyone else, first discussing the status of things with the nominee. Cain and Moore represented Trump’s first attempt at making personal selections for the Federal Reserve after two candidates, who the president was apparently lukewarm about anyway, were withdrawn after senators made it clear they would not be confirmed. The question now remains whether Trump will defer back to his staff and nominate two more conventional candidates.

In a single decisive—some would say long overdue—move, Facebook banned Facebook and Instagram accounts belonging to Alex Jones, Infowars, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, and Paul Nehlen, as well as Nation of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan. Most, if not all of these individuals and Infowars had already been banned from Twitter, YouTube, and Apple, so Facebook’s statement that it had “always” sought to prevent such content from being posted, rings extremely hollow. While most people will agree that the above-named represent some of the most disgusting, vile content creators on social media, the notion of restricting speech based on the values of others, is inherently problematic (quick aside: not this does not represent a violation of the free speech clause of the First Amendment, for the simple reason that no state actor is involved, and anyone who deputizes the First Amendment as part of an argument against the actions of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Apple should, in this case, be treated with scorn and derision). From a practical perspective, shutting out individuals or organizations from social media accounts rarely quiets them permanently; dissidents who violated 4chan’s famously lax standards, split off and formed 8chan, and white supremacists who are kicked off Twitter simply shift over to Gab. However, the failure to address such accounts, and the people behind them based on a lassez faire attitude, does not seem reasonable either.

As often happens with this administration, a major issue of constitutional checks-and-balances occurred again yesterday, but largely went by unnoticed by the public at large. In a 53-45 vote, seven of the chamber’s Republicans joined all of the Democrats in voting to override with a simple majority the president’s war powers as they specifically apply to the Saudi Arabian air campaign against Yemeni factions in that nation’s now-four year long civil war. While the U.S. military is not directly involved in the Saudi-led air strikes, it is providing targeting and logistical support, including air-to-air refueling of Saudi air force jets. The original Senate measure, which was sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), was also passed by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, but was vetoed by Trump, the second veto of his presidency. While the override did secure a simple majority, overriding a veto requires two-thirds of both chambers of Congress; or 67 senators in the case of the upper chamber. Because this bar was not met, U.S. support of Saudi Arabia will continue and the War Powers Act of 1974—which was passed specifically to counter the power of the executive branch to escalate U.S. war-making capacity in the aftermath of Vietnam—has again failed to actually restrict the powers of the president.

During the rise of the alt-right—a rebranded form of the white nationalist movement—in the early 2010s, the vast majority of the voices were male. One of the few female voices which moved to the front of this increasingly large crowd was Katie McHugh of the Daily Caller and later Breitbart. McHugh excelled at outrageous tweets which stoked the greatest passions of the alt-right through criticisms of the intelligence, social traits, and economic achievements of Native Americans, black Americans, and Muslims, both in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was in fact a tweet in June 2017 about how terrorism could only be stopped if the UK expelled all Muslims from the island nation that finally caused Breitbart to fire McHugh. McHugh bounced around a few other far right and alt-right positions before more-or-less disappearing from the public eye. Reporter Rosie Gray reveals in this profile of McHugh that she had in fact been a source for Gray on a number of stories after McHugh left the public forum and now, in this piece, that McHugh appears to greatly regret her role in the alt-right, in taking on racist, white nationalist views. Gray notes, however, that McHugh, while remorseful, does not appear to fully accept the breadth of her responsibility. This may be at least in part, Gray opines, because McHugh was thrust into the alt-right spotlight directly out of college and has no experience in the world outside of the alt-right bubble. McHugh here serves as a lens for Gray to look at the spectrum of the far-right, from previously respected contributors to outlets like National Review, all the way to the pro-pagan, anti-Christian, machismo infused white supremacists of the Wolves of Vinland. This is an excellent story both in its focus on one individual who has struggled to move away from her alt-right past to the white male insecurity that fuels so much of the movement itself.

Sarah Lawrence College is one of the preeminent liberal arts colleges in the United States and also among the most expensive, both for tuition and cost—the school is only 15 miles north of Manhattan. The school is known for attracting high-achieving, deeply diverse students from around the United States and the world, and for its incredibly challenging curriculum. In the fall of 2010, sophomore Talia Ray lived in Slonim Woods 9, a dormitory in the middle of campus, where she befriended several of her classmates. Ray in particular spoke at length about her father, Larry Ray, who possessed all sorts of intriguing personality traits. Shortly after Ray was released from prison, he began to stay with Talia in her dorm, where he quickly turned into a father-figure for several other students in the dorm, both male and female. Larry Ray began to exert a pronounced influence over the group which coalesced around Talia and her father, and Ray engaged in counseling sessions on an individual basis with several of Talia’s friends. Gradually, Larry’s presence was accepted uncritically. Once semester breaks came around, Larry, Talia, and some students in this group decamped to a small apartment on 93rd Street in Manhattan, where Larry exercised increased control over the group and his behavior became more bizarre, though Talia’s friends, instead of being repulsed, seemed entranced by Larry Ray. The build-up in this story is incredible and takes increasingly odd turns. If it ended with a 50-year old parent fostering inappropriate relationships with and among the group of Sarah Lawrence students, that would be bad enough, but the story of Larry Ray involves manipulation, extortion, guilt-inducement, bizarre conspiracy theories involving former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and the end of at least one marriage.

One of the more profound outcomes of adding a small camera to the front of a smart phone or other device, is that it allowed the holder to take a self-portrait, or a ‘selfie.’ As the desire of the owner to take wider frame pictures showing themselves in exotic, luxurious, or extreme environments—the tops of mountains, the ledge of skyscrapers, etc.—grew alongside social media apps like Instagram, ‘selfie-sticks’ allowed for portraits in more dangerous locations. Between 2011 and 2017, at least 259 people have died while attempting to take a selfie. Outside Magazine examines these episodes—including near misses—from a practical and a psychological perspective and finds, quite surprisingly, that the actions of the selfie-takers are not intentionally negligent or based on any sort of arrogant disregard for safety. Instead, a common attribute seems to be an overload of the senses which causes the brain to become blind to threats. This could have been an episodic retelling of horrible deaths which only allow the reader to render forth their own judgment ad nauseum, but instead is a thoughtful analysis of mental processes and social considerations which go into the creation of a risky selfie.

In the United States, virtually every major space launch complex is near an ocean coastline: Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the SpaceX launch facility in South Texas, Wallops Island in Virginia, and of course Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. When an orbital vehicle or space probe is launched, any booster stages or other parts meant to detach from the craft before it reaches orbit, generally fall into the ocean. During the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, some of the booster stages remained in orbit for years before eventually crashing back to Earth in the ocean, while the crew capsules also splashed down in the ocean, only to be recovered by NASA. During the Space Shuttle program, the vehicle’s large, external boosters would parachute back to the Atlantic where they were recovered by barges hundreds of miles downstream. Russia, however, while it possesses an enormous coastline, much of it lies north of the Arctic Circle and there are few suitable places, for geopolitical as well as logistical reasons, for any launch facilities on the Baltic, Black Sea, or Sea of Japan. As a result, Russia’s space program has most of its launch complexes located in the vast flat grasslands and desolate prairies of central Russia and the areas bordering on Siberia. Because of this, booster stages of Russia’s space launch vehicles do not fall into an ocean, sinking thousands of feet down, but instead crash into the vast and remote forests of the Russian hinterland. Rockets are built with vast amounts of highly-refined, and incredibly valuable metals. And since the 1980s, Russian citizens living downrange from one of their country’s busiest launch facilities, have pushed into the forests, looking for the booster stages for launches that took place when Boris Yelstin, indeed when Mikhail Gorbachev, inhabited the Kremlin. These launch stages are salvaged by Russian scavengers who cut up the metal and give them all sorts of new, practical uses, including fencing, and fishing boats. This is not a long story, but it is a pretty cool one. Scroll through for all of the pictures.

In the early 1930s, the city government of New York embarked on a massive project: to photograph every single city block in order to establish a fairer basis for property taxation. This created a visual catalogue of the city as it existed at that time. In the early 1980s, the city decided to embark once again on the same project, again for the same reason. And, just as in the 1930s, it created a visual catalogue for what the city looked like as it emerged from bankruptcy in the 1970s, and became a playground for the elite of Wall Street and a den of vice as the crack epidemic enveloped the city and porn theaters still inhabited Times Square. This New York Times feature compares certain photographed locations in the 1980s with how they appear today. I am a sucker for features like this.

Finally, as the 2020 Democratic field has expanded beyond 20 candidates, one of the most talked-about metrics to be used as a basis for evaluating and differentiating them, is that of electability. The problem with this is that “electability” is inherently subjective, and, as a metric, has no statistical basis. Or, as Kyle Kondik of the Center for Politics points out here, assessing “electability” is “like nailing Jello to a wall.”

Welcome to the weekend.

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96thdayofrage · 5 years

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The following are thoughts on some of the chief claims put forward by a recent “Media Matters” article, nearly all of which seem to neatly recapitulate the criticisms that could be found in the alleged N’COBRA memo, “ADOS Exposed.”

1.) American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) is an organization that is campaigning for reparations.

False. Or, at the very least, imprecise and breathtakingly reductive. ADOS is not an “organization.” It is a bourgeoning political movement made up of a specific group of American citizens who’ve begun self-identifying around what is easily the most consequential factor of their personhood; namely, that their lineage is rooted in the American institution of chattel slavery, a practice which not only sought to deny those enslaved individuals any personhood in the first place, but which—because of the trans-generational nature of its economic injustices—has effectively ensured that same negation of humanity be extended and conferred upon their descendants. They’re not just “campaigning for reparations,” either. That is, without a doubt, the most superficial, simplistic and journalistically-lazy read of the political project. It is exactly the sort of thing that someone who was told to write about ADOS—but who has no interest in actually researching the movement—would write. What ADOS is doing is what oppressed groups have always done in movement politics, which is emphasize the singularity of their struggle and advocate as a collective for redress specific to those harms and damages. If, at this juncture, ADOS is “campaigning” for anything, it is to have the group’s particular experience of enduring centuries of persecution through private racism and anti-black federal policy recognized as that which is theirs and theirs alone. They are “campaigning” for why—in the context of justice for black America—only they deserve reparations specific to that history and lived experience.

2.) There is evidence that ADOS is advancing a right-wing agenda, and while it calls itself progressive, it pushes pro-Trump, anti-immigrant views.

There is evidence that ADOS is advancing a black agenda; that is, an agenda specifically drawn up with the aim of avoiding precisely those pitfalls involved in doing partisan-oriented politics that lump together disparate and—in the case of ADOS—often competing interests which have traditionally tended to appropriate the black struggle for its moral value and leave off the need to provide that group with tangible results in exchange for their ballot punch. The ADOS agenda is a response to the failures of that model of (non)co-operative advocacy and a clarion call to instead foreground a particular set of issues that are most relevant to the community and its uplift. And insofar as one of the most salient aspects of ADOS life is the steadily depressed rates of participation in the labor market since the advent of liberal immigration policy, it stands to reason that the group would support legislation that helps reverse that trend. The fact that ADOS gets attributed to it the same base prejudices and needless bigotry that actually does characterize a particular anti-immigrant attitude on the Right—when in fact the movement has consistently presented a far more nuanced and rational argument supported by evidence that shows a correlation between the prospects for working-class blacks and immigration (and has staked out its position exclusively on those grounds)—reveals nothing so much as the startling inability in our immigration discourse to accommodate dissent, and an observably illiberal state of affairs in the Left wherein adopting anything less than an explicitly pro-immigration stance is reflexively perceived as being xenophobic. The most that could be said about ADOS “pushing” certain views on immigration is that it pushes back on a status quo that—while consistently ensuring that ADOS has been excluded from enjoying the kinds of opportunities that immigrants typically come here to access—now demands they support policies that make it even easier for those groups to come here and further compromise the potential for material gain in the black community. There is, moreover, another, even more pernicious aspect of contemporary immigration policy to which ADOS is right to object; namely, the false impression of progress within black America that is created when foreign-born blacks—who routinely have come from a class position that Sandy Darity recently described as “exceed[ing] not only the average black American, but [that of] the average white American”—arrive in the United States. Leaving aside the issue of those immigrants’ typically contemptuous attitudes toward native blacks in America, the way in which their presence distorts and masks the alarmingly persistent and deliberate underdevelopment of the native black community is an obviously grave matter for a group whose ability to make an argument for their justice claim by pointing to the data on black life in America is, in effect, undercut by a growing number of upper-class, prosperous black immigrants in their midst. That reparations for American chattel slavery is, for this non-native group, largely a politically irrelevant matter, lends further credence to ADOS’s principle critique of contemporary immigration dogma: that it is an issue which, presently, is too fraught with contradictions for the group, and which must be resolved in a way that’s beneficial to them before they can advocate on behalf of other populations to come here.

3.) ADOS attacks other supporters of reparations, apparently for the benefit of Republican politicians.

ADOS is understandably vexed and offended by “other supporters of reparations” who demand that the group uncritically support politicians who themselves do not support reparations.1 Or whom (insofar as certain politicians do endorse reparations) nonetheless evince a thoroughly misguided understanding of what the word needs to mean in order to effect meaningful justice for American Descendants of Slavery. Reparations for ADOS is not a soundbite; and being a committed pro-reparations advocate means more than writing two rap lyrics about it over the course of seven years.2 For ADOS, it is the central, organizing principle in their eleventh-hour effort to be made whole and participate in a recognizably normal manner in the political, economic, and civic processes of the country that was built off the theft of their labor. It is their Hail Mary pass. And the fact that it has come down to a Hail Mary pass for black America in the year 2019 is such a fucking monumental failure of justice that it’s no wonder they respond with outrage when they’re chided with some faux-sage political counsel that recommends restraint, prudence, and a willingness to postpone their demand to receive redress. ADOS—like nothing before it—provides the group with such a truly empowering and necessary thing: not only a political, but existential anchoring through which they can pursue justice with the same singleness of aim and purpose with which injustice has, for centuries now, been done to them. So pardon the group for not running hangdog back to the Democratic Party where—if history is any indication—their being forsaken for a slew of other causes all while being told to surrender their vote without complaint for their own good is a fait accompli. That’s the alternative to ADOS not doing self-interested politics in 2019. And so is it really any wonder that the specter of four more years of Trump fails to sufficiently persuade them to fold on what they (rightly) understand is the group’s only recourse to gain some footing in the contemporary U.S.? Maybe that conviction and determination is better understood less as a matter of them carrying water for the conservatives, and more as the dawning consciousness of the Democrats being essentially a placebo party for ADOS, a trap-nest that for the past half a century has observably chosen to commit to paying—not reparations to ADOS—but only the most patronizing lip service to their suffering.

4.) ADOS has been promoted on Twitter by right-wing bigot Ann Coulter.

With respect to ADOS, Ann Coulter has literally only ever commented on what she feels would be a superior arrangement of the movement’s initials. To imply that she has been actively tweeting support for ADOS is just one of any number of examples of sloppy, misleading and just downright abysmal political journalism in the article.

5.) There is evidence that white supremacists have jumped on board with ADOS and that 4chan posters may be using the movement to sow division.

The ‘evidence’ posted was from a user with a Canadian flag icon, and whoever the person is doesn’t even know what the initials of the movement stand for. Go home, Media Matters. There is evidence you’re drunk.

1. The exchange that is cited exclusively in the “Media Matters” article took place between Yvette Carnell and Talib Kweli on the 3rd of March 2019, a time when Bernie Sanders had been unequivocally opposed to the idea of reparations for slavery.↩

2. For whatever reason, Talib Kweli has become the focal point for commentary on ADOS’s apparent hostility toward “other supporters of reparations.” In his Medium piece “Why #ADOS is Trash. Receipts Attached,” the rapper submits as irrefutable evidence of his advocacy for the cause of reparations two (2) lyrics that he wrote between the years 1997 and 2004, one of which he bafflingly misquotes: “They call it reparations (he means I call it reparations), they call it extortion.” Leaving aside the question of how a person whose whole life is words ends up misquoting himself on an issue he is apparently deadly serious about (it’s almost as if he has someone else writing his Medium articles!), if one is left scratching their head at how this qualifies as substantive reparative justice advocacy, I promise you that you are not alone. Kweli does, for the record, also cite having once “worked closely” with a grassroots organization, though whatever ‘working closely’ actually entailed is left entirely unspecified. ↩

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jwillia1961 · 5 years

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45 Faculty at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut today penned and signed this Open Letter to support their under sieged students:

A Response to “Important Message for Our Community”

As faculty at Trinity College from an array of programs and departments, we write to express our concern about the email sent on Friday, April 12th to the Trinity Community by Dean of Students Joe DiChristina, Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Anita Davis, and Dean of Faculty Tim Cresswell. We believe that the deans’ email neglected to address the reality of many marginalized students’ lives at Trinity College.

The deans’ email used veiled language to speak to the larger debates we are having on campus concerning whether the Churchill Club should be recognized as a student club by the Student Government Association (SGA). The Churchill Club is under the umbrella of the Churchill Institute for the Study and Extension of Western Civilization (CI) which maintains that its “primary mission [is] to encourage, in every way possible, serious teaching, learning and scholarship about Western Civilization, and to promote a vigorous discussion of its preservation and future trajectory.” The Institute’s website states: “In a world where Western Civilization is under attack, politically and militarily, but even more ominously, intellectually, the Churchill Institute is dedicated to the preservation, dissemination and extension of the Western moral and philosophical Tradition.” The website explicitly promotes the superiority of “Western” ideas and civilization, a position that often accompanies the demeaning and devaluing of other ways of knowing. Students have expressed concern that the Institute, named after a known racist, imperialist, and white supremacist, and the bellicose claim that Western Civilization is “under attack,” reinforces the daily marginalization of many students on campus. The CI advertises itself as a response to perceived intolerance of “intellectual diversity” at Trinity College. However, what it really fosters is the silencing of diverse intellectual and cultural traditions that challenge the assumption that the European tradition is (and should be) the aspiration of all human societies. These are legitimate concerns that students should be allowed to express and debate in public forums, and discuss in student-run newspapers, without the intervention of the administration or the fear of retaliation.

The Churchill Institute claims that its members’ political views are being policed by students, faculty, and administrators. However, an uncritical celebration of Western civilization perpetuates its own intellectual, cultural, and racial exclusions — ones laden with a long history of power asymmetries and violence. Students are right in feeling offended when the deans conflate political disagreements with the very real marginalization faced by Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, international, and first-generation college students, among other groups who are regularly targeted at Trinity — especially when, after a short perusal of departmental course offerings, it is evident that “Western” intellectual, political, and cultural traditions are in no way marginalized on this campus.

We are concerned that the administration’s recent email reflects a double standard because it reports on recent singular incidents directed at CI-affiliated students without addressing ongoing and repeated racial harassment and the regular threatening of marginalized students on campus. These latter incidents are often not publicized to the wider community, thus making these violent episodes seem less widespread than they actually are. We are also concerned that such a one-sided response to student complaints of harassment incline regularly marginalized students to not report violent incidents to the administration. Some of these students have openly expressed to faculty that in some cases they no longer report harassing incidents to the administration because they do not believe their reports will be taken seriously. This most recent email from the deans only serves as confirmation of their fears, in that it glosses over the larger campus culture of systemic oppression (i.e., white supremacy, misogyny, cis-/hetero-sexism, class-based violence, ableism, religious identity-based violence, etc.). The framing of the administrative response in their email also suggests that administrators feel that they are “unable to do anything” about these problems, which illuminates why students feel frustrated with the administration.

On this last point: the deans’ email correctly states that “No message from the administration is going to change the culture. Emails alone do not solve problems.” Even so, we feel that there are concrete steps the administration could take to address the problems and change the culture. These include: (1) the institution of a racial harassment policy, along with more systematic and regular reporting about violent and threatening incidents by the administration to the campus community, with follow-ups about how these are resolved (this could be enacted while still protecting student confidentiality); (2) identifying whether there are locations on campus where these kinds of incidents disproportionately occur; (3) taking a strong public stance condemning white supremacy without equivocating about harm experienced on “both sides” of the issue; (4) application of the Connecticut Hate Crime law when harassment is especially egregious; and (5) sponsoring periodic teach-ins and panels of speakers to talk about the pervasiveness of white supremacy and how it can be dismantled on college campuses and in society more broadly.

Without acknowledging the pervasive, hurtful campus climate in which many students of color, queer students, international students, first-generation college students, and other students who are harassed based on their identities feel marginalized and threatened on a daily basis, any discussion of “harms” experienced on this campus rings hollow.

Signed,

Concerned Faculty at Trinity College, including the following (and many others who are reticent to sign based on their own marginalized identities and/or insecure employment statuses):

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