Month: August 2017

A question of conscience
by Tom Sullivan

Bloody Sunday – Alabama police attack Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers, 1965. Public domain.

I am trying to weigh the merits of the “antifa” (antifascist or Anti-Fascist Action) groups confronting the alt-right assemblage of Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, etc. at the recent white power and Unite-the-Right protests. The violent clashes between antifa counterprotesters and the alt-right in Charlottesville last weekend, and the death of Heather Heyer, have put a spotlight on the antifas the groups have not received in the past. Like their opponents, the antifas are not a monolithic group, and loosely organized into local cells, sometimes overlapping with masked, black bloc anarchists. While clergy and Black Lives Matter groups prefer nonviolent protest, the antifas prefer more direct confrontation.

Peter Beinert writes at The Atlantic:

Those responses sometimes spill blood. Since antifa is heavily composed of anarchists, its activists place little faith in the state, which they consider complicit in fascism and racism. They prefer direct action: They pressure venues to deny white supremacists space to meet. They pressure employers to fire them and landlords to evict them. And when people they deem racists and fascists manage to assemble, antifa’s partisans try to break up their gatherings, including by force.

The local Indivisible chapter organized a peace vigil downtown here last Sunday in solidarity with Charlottesville. It was one of many such vigils around the country. Not a Nazi symbol in sight. Yet the local antifa group that attended seemed bent on taking over what was intended to be a peaceful rally. There was a shouting match with police the organizers had requested. Later, the group split off and marched through downtown chanting slogans. To the usual “Whose streets? Our streets!” they added “Cops and the Klan go hand in hand.” and “What do we want? DEAD NAZIS. When do we want ’em? NOW!“

One protester was later arrested for assaulting a TV reporter, although no injury was reported. The accounts of witnesses I spoke to suggest it was a local antifa member.

”The antifa protesters disrupted what was supposed to be a peaceful vigil,” organizer Valerie Hartshorn told reporters.

The New York Times this week reinforced Beinart’s assessment:

Unlike most of the counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville and elsewhere, members of antifa have shown no qualms about using their fists, sticks or canisters of pepper spray to meet an array of right-wing antagonists whom they call a fascist threat to American democracy. As explained this week by a dozen adherents of the movement, the ascendant new right in the country requires a physical response.

“People are starting to understand that neo-Nazis don’t care if you’re quiet, you’re peaceful,” said Emily Rose Nauert, a 20-year-old antifa member who became a symbol of the movement in April when a white nationalist leader punched her in the face during a melee near the University of California, Berkeley.

“You need violence in order to protect nonviolence,” Ms. Nauert added. “That’s what’s very obviously necessary right now. It’s full-on war, basically.”

In contrast with that portrait, Brandy Daniels, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia who holds a doctorate in theology from Vanderbilt, told Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s “Hardball” that antifa activists defended her and fellow faith leaders from a group of “white supremacist/nazis.”

Charlottesville resident Dahlia Lithwick interviewed Daniels and several other witnesses for Slate. They praised antifa activists for interposing themselves between peaceful protesters and the alt-right’s shock troops. Rev. Seth Wispelwey believes the antifas saved his life twice on Saturday from “men carrying weapons, shields, and Trump flags and sporting MAGA hats and Hitler salutes and waving Nazi flags and the pro-slavery ‘stars and bars.’” He tells Lithwick:

A phalanx of neo-Nazis shoved right through our human wall with 3-foot-wide wooden shields, screaming and spitting homophobic slurs and obscenities at us. It was then that antifa stepped in to thwart them. They have their tools to achieve their purposes, and they are not ones I will personally use, but let me stress that our purposes were the same: block this violent tide and do not let it take the pedestal.

The white supremacists did not blink at violently plowing right through clergy, all of us dressed in full clerical garb. White supremacy is violence. I didn’t see any racial justice protesters with weapons; as for antifa, anything they brought I would only categorize as community defense tools and nothing more. Pretty much everyone I talk to agrees—including most clergy. My strong stance is that the weapon is and was white supremacy, and the white supremacists intentionally brought weapons to instigate violence.

Eyeroll here for the minister’s using “community defense tools” as a euphemism for fists, sticks, and pepper spray.

Living as I do in the home state of Rev. William Barber, Moral Mondays, and the Greensboro lunch counter, violent confrontation feels like the wrong approach both tactically and politically. Yet no one should confuse those using violence to combat Nazis with Nazis. To do that would be to condemn the Allied effort to liberate Europe in WWII. But neither is this “full-on war,” as Nauert believes.

What makes Nazis, Klansmen, and white nationalists worse than antifas is being Nazis, Klansmen, and white nationalists. But what makes them all punks is both groups arriving itching for a fight. This makes antifas look no different from the Sharks rumbling with the Jets over turf. That is the story the “both sides do it” press will run with. The alt-right just brings superior firepower.

Antifa’s self-righteous aggression and anti-establishment militancy reinforce the veneer of patriotism for those claiming persecution while espousing race hatred, and furnishes them both cover they don’t deserve and the battles they crave for growing their movement. Peaceful counterprotest throws the light of truth on the bad guys without muddying the waters. Violent confrontation won’t stop alt-right bigots, only justify them. Violent confrontation gives them just what they want.

Certainly, the frustration is real that “white liberals are not up to the challenge of beating back right-wing extremists.” But it wasn’t white liberals primarily who beat back white, right-wing extremists in the 1960s anyway, but a multicultural coalition of dedicated faith leaders and social justice activists who rejected the notion that you needed violence in order to protect nonviolence. It was the spectacle of Bloody Sunday police violence against nonviolent protesters in Selma that shocked the nation’s conscience and turned the tide in the battle for civil rights.

But to give antifas the benefit of the doubt, after government-sanctioned torture, repeated police shootings of unarmed black men, and a morally bankrupt president’s white nationalist rallies, the question now is whether this nation has any conscience left to shock.

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Friday Night Soother

by digby

Steve Bannon was fired.

That is all.

Just kidding:

Three baby Rock Hyraxes have made their public debuts at Chester Zoo. The pocket-sized pups, which are yet to be named or sexed, arrived to mother Dassie and dad Nungu on July 21 weighing just over half a pound (250g) each – no heavier than a bar of soap!

Genuinely Sickening, On So Many Levels 

by tristero

If this is true, the karma the men (because it has be men, or mostly men) who did this will take aeons to purify. And it is a reminder it is the Republican party – not just Trump – that is callous to the point of monstrousness:

When he was 11 years old, LJ Stroud of St. Augustine, Florida, had a tooth emerge in a place where no tooth belongs: the roof of his mouth. 

LJ was born with severe cleft lip and palate, which explained the strange eruption, as well as the constant ear infections that no antibiotic could remedy. 

With her son in terrible pain, Meredith Stroud arranged for surgeries to fix his problems. 

But just days before the procedures were to take place, the surgeons’ office called to cancel them. 

Like nearly half of all children in Florida, LJ is on Medicaid, which has several types of insurance plans. The state had switched LJ to a new plan, and his surgeons didn’t take it… 

“He was in pain every day,” Stroud said. “I just felt so helpless. It’s such a horrible feeling where you can’t help your kid…” 

 …parents and Florida pediatricians raise questions about the true reasons why Florida’s Republican administration switched the children’s health plans. They question whether it was to financially reward insurance companies that had donated millions of dollars to the Republican Party of Florida. 

“This was a way for the politicians to repay the entities that had contributed to their political campaigns and their political success, and it’s the children who suffered,” said Dr. Louis St. Petery, former executive vice president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

 I’m truly at a loss for words. This is an explosive accusation. But CNN has pretty good fact checkers so I’m going with the story being accurate.

And now excuse me, I’m going to be sick.

80% of Republicans back Trump on Charlottesville


by digby

Despite the fact that a neo-Nazi plowed into a crowed of people injuring many and killing one “counter-protester” by the name of Heather Heyer, and a group of torch bearing Nazis marched through the streets shouting “Jews will not replace us”, 80% of Republicans think that “both sides” were to blame for the events in Charlottesville.

It would seem that the Republican party believes that Nazis should be left alone to do whatever they want unopposed. I don’t see how you can look at that result and think otherwise.

Such good people they are, every last one of them.

I think that Democrats had better start grappling with the fact that Republicans will follow him anywhere and back him no matter what he says or does.  It is now a cult, not a political party.

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The 2nd Amendment cannot be allowed to usurp the 1st


by digby

Yes, finally, good on them:

The violent events that transpired at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend has pushed the American Civil Liberties Union to take a tougher stance on the hate groups it defends in court.

The civil rights group will now screen its clients more closely and won’t represent groups who protest while carrying firearms, the executive director told The Wall Street Journal Thursday.

The ACLU’s Virginia branch defended the neo-Nazis’ right to assemble when the group gathered last weekend to protest the removal of the confederate statue of Robert E. Lee. The organization is known for its defense of the free speech rights of hate groups, claiming that creating exceptions to the First Amendment for hate groups make the less stringent for everyone.

“The events of Charlottesville require any judge, any police chief and any legal group to look at the facts of any white-supremacy protests with a much finer comb,” Executive Director Anthony Romero told the Journal. “If a protest group insists, ‘No, we want to be able to carry loaded firearms,’ well, we don’t have to represent them. They can find someone else.”

The group’s Virginia branch defended the white supremacists against Charlottesville’s efforts to deny them a permit. City officials wanted the protest moved a mile away from the park to better accommodate the crowd. The ACLU argued in federal court that the city’s decision was based on opposition to the group’s views, not safety concerns.

Many lashed out against the civil rights group when violence broke out at the rally. A self-proclaimed white supremacist allegedly drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Hayer and injuring 19 others.

Several members of the group that assembled last Saturday were carrying firearms, but no one was hurt by them. Romero said the ACLU thinks just having guns at a protest can suppress freedom of speech through intimidation.

I have long believed that the open carrying of firearms at political events was an assault on free speech. This one’s from 2013:

 
Fine defenders of the Second Amendment

by digby

I’ve been writing about the gun rights zealots who use their second amendment rights as a license to intimidate those who disagree with them by appearing armed at gun control rallies for a long time. That’s not all they’re doing: 

Shannon Watts knew she was heading into a rough neighborhood when she became an activist in the battle over gun control. A former corporate executive and mother of five children, Watts launched a gun-control group, now called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, not long after the Newtown shootings. As the new push to restrict guns grabbed attention over the ensuing year, Watts and other activists experienced the blowback up close, in sometimes frightening detail.

At protest rallies, they have been met by men carrying rifles. (It’s legal: many states permit the open carry of “long guns.”) Watts has had her home address in Indianapolis posted online along with the suggestion that “people show up and show why it’s important to have a gun.” She has gotten letters at home saying that the sender knows where her kids go to school and where her husband works. On the lighter side, an ironist has been sending her free issues of Guns & Ammo.

She has a harder time finding irony in images floating around online featuring her head bloodied by a huge knife stuck into her skull.

On the Facebook page of Starbucks—a battleground, thanks to Moms Demand Action’s successful effort to get Starbucks to discourage open carry of weapons in its shops—McBeefington posted a map of Martin’s neighborhood with the message: “I saw there was a recent incident where an NYPD officer got shot by someone—in the middle of Bloomberg’s gun-free utopia—and quite near your home, to boot.” (The image, in fact, depicted Martin’s old neighborhood.) On the same page, he posted another message noting that Martin’s son was about to turn four: “I went to Starbucks and had an early celebration for his upcoming birthday,” he wrote, with an accompanying photo of a birthday cake set beside an NRA membership card. (He’d apparently deduced the child’s age from years-old postings by Martin elsewhere online.) Also on Facebook, someone else sent Martin a direct message with a gory picture of a badly wounded foot. “BTW, this is what happens when careless people tread on coiled, venomous snakes,” the message read.

It’s logical that people who feel the need to carry guns in public might be prone to violence, especially those who ostentatiously carry them at political events with the obvious intention of intimidating those who disagree with them. These are not your benign game hunters or fellows who have a gun in the house for protection. They are armed fanatics.  This social media harassment is a slightly less intimidating approach, but considering the statistics on abuse, it’s predictable that it features such violent misogyny. There’s just something about guns that brings out the assholes.

Like Watts, Martin is relatively unperturbed by the harassment. But she does worry others could be dissuaded from getting involved in gun control activism by the online nastiness or by the open-carry protesters, like the large group that gathered recently outside a strip-mall restaurant near Dallas where a few Moms Demand Action members were meeting for a strategy session. “I’m not worried about any of this stuff. But what about the mom in Texas who’s scared shitless?” said Martin. “If I were younger and less vocal and more easily intimidated…who are they stopping from sharing their thoughts?”

Let’s just say that when I see someone openly carrying a gun I avoid him like the plague. I keep quiet in his presence and I get out of there as soon as possible. I’ve always done this, even when I lived in Alaska where there are a lot of guns. They are deadly weapons and people who feel the need to prove their macho bonafides in public by carrying guns already prove they have a psychology of bullying and intimidation that makes them dangerous. Certainly, if I go to a political event and someone is armed I will leave. It’s possible that tempers will flare, as often happens around politics, and there will be unintended violence or, more likely, the intimidation will work and it will be a waste of time because half the people will keep their opinions to themselves. (Nice little first amendment you have there …) 

The vast majority of Second Amendment activists are upright citizens just doing what we’re all doing. But unlike most activists, it only takes one armed gun fanatic to lose his temper at a political event for something very bad to happen. It is, by its very nature, undemocratic to come armed to a rally. And they know it. That’s why they do it. They could, after all, just carry a sign and make speeches like everyone else. 

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Two more chairs to go

by digby

All of the men surrounding VP Pence are now gone. pic.twitter.com/KVousMN08C— Yashar Ali (@yashar) August 18, 2017

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Bannon vs Trump’s “Democrats, Globalists and Generals”

by digby

Steve Bannon is reportedly going back to Breitbart. That is a mistake and I’m surprised he’s doing it. He has an agenda and part of it is to sow dissension on the left over “identity politics” vs economic populism and hostility toward the “deep state”, which is a real fault line, if less of a chasm than some people want to believe. He could possibly make progress on that if he started a new project and re-branded himself as an isolationist, economic populist but Breitbart’s “alt-right” identity is toxic to everyone on the left. From what I’m seeing so far, Breitbart is planning to “go to war” against the administration saying that it’s full of “Democrats, globalists and Generals.” (You can be sure that they will also continue to be a hub for the “alt-right’s” connection to the Nazis and Neo-confederates too.)

From the commentary I heard this morning, much of the punditocrisy apparently agrees with Bannon that all that confederate statue stuff has no salience among Trump voters since they inexplicably continue to contend that those nice salt-o-the-earth All American boys and girls reject white supremacy and just want some good union work in a factory somewhere and are looking to Donald Trump to finally deliver now that he got rid of that awful racist.

The pundits are deluded.

Greg Sargent explained why this is utter nonsense:

[Heather Heyer’s mother Susan ]Bro’s emotional response to Trump is a reminder that his reversion to his current reprehensible posture didn’t have to happen. While his flat condemnation of white supremacy did not undo the damage caused by his initial statement on Saturday blaming “many sides,” it largely said the right thing. Republicans were pleased and relieved by it. The mother of the young woman who died had thanked him for it.

But then Trump just had to make a large show of returning to his original position, dividing blame between white supremacists, Nazis and Klansmen on one side, and those protesting their racism, hatred and belief in the inferiority of African Americans and Jews on the other. We know Trump did this at least in part because he did not want to be seen surrendering to pressure to single out racism and white supremacy for full blame. He was in a rage because he “felt he had already given too much ground to his opponents.” He didn’t want to deliver the statement condemning white supremacy because he was “loath to appear to be admitting a mistake.” It is utter madness that these sentiments played such an important role in shaping the presidential response at such a fraught moment of national tension and introspection.

Meanwhile, Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, is strutting around extolling the political brilliance of Trump’s Charlottesville response. Bannon did a media tour yesterday boasting that Trump’s escalating defense of Confederate statues is a political winner for him. Now Bannon adds to this in a brash email to The Post:

“This past election, the Democrats used every personal attack, including charges of racism, against President Trump. He then won a landslide victory on a straightforward platform of economic nationalism.”

The idea that Trump won a landslide is an absurd lie, and the idea that Trump has any kind of agenda of “economic nationalism” to speak of is laughable. There are no trade or infrastructure plans (something progressives would actually like to see) in sight. The only real policies Trump has embraced that fit under what Bannon describes as “economic nationalism” are stepped-up deportations, slashing legal immigration and the thinly disguised Muslim ban. Indeed, it’s telling that Bannon defends Trump’s Charlottesville response by pointing to the alleged power of his alleged “economic nationalism” — it validates suspicions that this was always intended largely as a fig leaf for xenophobia and racism.

Bro’s appearance today throws all of this into even sharper relief. We expect presidents to recognize that their role carries with it obligations and duties to try to calm the antagonisms that are being unleashed at moments like this. That’s particularly true right now, with experts warning that Trump’s handling of Charlottesville’s aftermath could cause an escalation in white supremacist activity — meaning it could end up encouraging more violence and death. But Trump’s response at this critical moment is rooted largely in megalomania and a desire not to be seen capitulating, and his chief strategist is barely disguising his view that racial strife and turmoil are good for Trump politically.

Trump will always be driven by his own infantile need for attention. But he’s demonstrated over and over again that he is also a simple-minded bigot with a violent imagination and has been for years. These two characteristics in the office of president of the United States present a clear and present danger no matter who is advising him.

Bannon, on the other hand, is a wily operator whose essential philosophy is that we are on the cusp of a completely new system born of chaos and he wants to be the instrument that brings that about. He’s essentially a secular armageddonist. Reports as of right now are that he’s already been in contact with the Mercers and has secured their financial support. We don’t know what he’ll do with it but it would probably be a good idea not to take anything he says at face value. When he starts talking about economic populism and trade wars with China, watch your back. There’s probably an “alt-right” neo-Nazi wearing khakis and nice white polo shirt standing there with a gun at your head.

Oh, and by the way — Trump’s not going to change. He can call up his bud Steve any time he wants. He was a pussy-grabbing, torture-loving, Mexican hating, Central Park Five black-lives-don’t-matter, bomb the shit out of ’em and take the oil guy long before he ever met Steve Bannon. And as the conservative commentator Charlie Sykes said on MSNBC this morning, anyone thinking that Bannon or anyone else can part Trump from his base underestimates the cult of personality that’s built up around the man. Those rural white voters love him. And they will take his word over anyone else’s including Steve Bannon.

The best we can hope for is that he doesn’t start a nuclear war. Anyone saying that this departure means he’s going to make that pivot once and for all is making a fool of herself. We may be entering a new phase, but Trump is Trump. Things will never be “normal” until he and his sycophants are out of power. (That means the enabling wimps of the Republican Party too, in case you were wondering.)

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Trump’s propaganda Rasputin

Unshared history
by Tom Sullivan

Amidst the analysis of the violence in Charlottesville and the debate over removing Confederate monuments, Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie reviews their place in whites’ sanitizing Confederate treason in defense of slavery as noble and heroic, transforming the slaveholder’s revolt into the War of Northern Aggression:

Their origin is in the myth-making of the Jim Crow South as symbols of white supremacy over a “redeemed” South and building blocks in a narrative of national innocence meant to unify a divided white polity. In the myth, a figure like Robert E. Lee is transformed from the disgraced general of a brutal effort to expand an empire of bondage to the glorious figure represented in monuments like the one in Charlottesville, a valiant leader in a fight for independence. A man worthy of honor.

Etcetera, etcetera. So goes the carefully rewritten history memorialized in town squares across the South. The sitting president built his campaign, Bouie writes, on telling supporters they too were the victims of aggression by “immigrants, Muslims, and black protesters” who forced them through the oppression of political correctness “to apologize for America’s presumed greatness.” Now the liberal blackguards want to remove the monuments to white superiority erected to paper over America’s original sin and the rebellion that tore it asunder.

But the heart of that dispute, Bouie writes, is a question: Who is America for?

A few days before the chaos in Charlottesville, the editorial board of the Daily Progress—the city’s daily newspaper—gave its view of the turmoil around the statue of Robert E. Lee. In an unsigned piece, it blamed the upheaval on local leaders who questioned the memorial and called for its removal, labeling one such figure—the only black representative on city council—an “agitator” who is “largely responsible for the conflagration that continues to escalate.” Other voices made similar points, slamming “identity politics” for the actions of white nationalists.

But this is wrong. It presumes that these monuments were never controversial and that the narratives they represent were never contested. They were. They always have been. And the reason we have this fight is because for more than a century, too many white Americans were content with narratives built on exclusion and erasure. The question now is whether they’re still content, whether they still believe this is a white country, or whether they’re ready to share this country, and its story, with others.

Confining Who is America for? to race would be wrong as well. Preachers in churches both mega and not find in their Bibles verses they can shape to justify whatever prejudices or vices to which they are bred and/or prone. It was ever so. So too can would-be rulers of other men uncover in America’s founding documents proof enough to justify enormous concentrations of wealth (theirs) and impoverishment for those too unworthy, unproductive, or generically “impure” to merit inclusion in America’s political governance and economic bounty.

Who is the economy for? Or, as those who protest police violence chant, “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?” The questions will remain salient until our history — and our experience — as Americans is a shared and not an exclusive one.

Sharing is a behavior that never was much in favor in America.

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As California goes, so goes the nation (hopefully)

by digby

Amanda Marcotte took a look at the various actions being undertaken in the nation’s most populous states to block Trump’s odious agenda:

After Donald Trump’s shocking meltdown on Tuesday afternoon, it’s even clearer that progressives need effective strategies to blunt the effect of having a conspiracy-theory-driven, racist authoritarian in the Oval Office, backed by a congressional majority that is still too afraid to offer meaningful checks on his worst behavior. The good news is that some of the nation’s biggest cities and states remain controlled by Democrats. Activists and politicians in those states are looking for meaningful ways to throw wrenches in the Trump agenda.

At the top of that list is California, which not only has the largest population of any state but is controlled by progressive Democrats (relatively speaking) who seem ready and eager to fight Trump, especially on the issues of climate change and immigration. (New York is the next biggest state controlled by Democrats, but intra-party warfare has crippled the ability of progressives to get much done.)

California fired a significant shot across the bow at Trump on Monday, when state Attorney General Xavier Becerra declared that the state would sue the Trump administration over threats to withdraw law enforcement grants if the local and state police refuse to cooperate with federal efforts to deport immigrants. The lawsuit will be joined with an earlier one filed by the city of San Francisco.

“It’s a low blow to our men and women who wear the badge, for the federal government to threaten their crime-fighting resources in order to force them to do the work of the federal government when it comes to immigration enforcement,” Becerra said during a press conference announcing the suit. California received $28 million in law enforcement grants from the federal government this year, money it could lose if the police prioritize actual crime-fighting over federal demands that they focus their resources on deporting people.

“The government’s plan for deporting millions of people in this country is to coerce local law enforcement to be their force-multipliers,” explained Jennie Pasquarella, director of immigrants’ rights for the ACLU of California.

Pasquarella noted that most deportations currently occur because of an encounter with local law enforcement. By resisting pressure to step up efforts to persecute undocumented immigrants, she said, California can make it safe for people to “access basic services that are vital to our state and communities without fear of deportation, like schools and hospitals and libraries and health clinics.”

Some Democrats in the state are trying to take this idea even further, backing SB 54, titled the California Values Act. According to The Los Angeles Times, the bill would prohibit “state and local law enforcement agencies, including school police and security departments, from using resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect or arrest people for immigration enforcement purposes.”

Read on.

The biggest, bluest state in the nation has a lot of firepower at its disposal. I’m proud to see that it’s taking a lead in doing whatever it can to stop Trump. Whether it will succeed is unknown, but I do look forward to seeing Jeff Sessions have to publicly denounce states’ rights in order to defend his authoritarian policies.