Month: July 2022

Thank Ben Smith for his contribution to our demise

Ben Smith, OG blogger, founder of Buzzfeed and former NY Times columnist, has a new start up. And he kicked it off with a “conversation” about “polarization” with various members of the media. It was a train wreck, largely because he inexplicably made Tucker Carlson his star guest. Micah Zifry wrote it up.

“This is why you are considered correctly a propagandist and not a journalist.” No, that wasn’t Ben Smith, the co-founder of Semafor, a new global news site, admonishing Tucker Carlson, the lead anchor for Fox News, during a “pre-launch” event held in Washington, DC this morning to explore the future of news. It was Carlson, who is a much more practiced cable pugilist than Smith, putting him down midway through their conversation. Sadly, and exactly as many of us expected, Carlson used the platform offered him by Semafor and its co-sponsor, the Knight Foundation, to do what he does every night: twist facts and arguments to make his brand of American white nationalism seem like common sense against the deplorable efforts of the liberal media and the Democratic party.

For just over 20 minutes Carlson got to parade a series of self-aggrandizing statements with barely any contradiction or successful interjection from Smith. To wit, he told the audience such chestnuts as “the fact that there’s only one TV channel in the entire country, a country of 350 million people that allows actual free speech,” “the center of the Democratic electoral strategy going forward” is to replace “legacy Americans” with more “obedient” foreigners; and my personal favorite, “I’m trying my very hardest to tell the truth.”

Carlson, like the man he admires so much, Donald Trump, is an expert at projection and displacement. “I’m not a racist,” he likes to claim, as he goes out of his way to charge the Democratic party with demonizing white people. Today with Smith, here’s how that came out. Smith asked if Carlson worried that America was getting too divided, adding politely, “I think and maybe this is maybe I’m wrong, but that your audience enjoys it when you kind of pour gasoline on those fires, not when you try to put them out and I wonder, like, the nature of cable news ratings. It’s so funny. I wonder if the nature of cable of the sort of ratings driven business of cable cable news in general of yours in particular, I mean, this seriously, you know, basically makes it impossible to do anything else.” In other words, maybe Tucker you’re not really a believer in the stuff you put out, but you need to do it for ratings. C’mon, you can tell me.

Carlson, who is an expert at posturing as a real journalist, was having nothing of it. First he claimed to not know his own ratings or how to read a ratings report. Then, he insisted he wasn’t pouring gasoline on the fire by pointing out that the Biden Administration is “draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve” to sell some of it to China. Ha! And then, as Smith followed up asking if there was anything he favored to reduce polarization, Carlson insisted he was in favor of “de-racializing” the discourse. And he went straight from that to claiming that “The conversation on the Democratic Party is like, it’s white people, white men versus everybody else.”

Last week, I wrote a post here criticizing Semafor and Knight for deciding to give Carlson a platform at this event. Saturday, Smith — who I’ve known since the early 2000s, DMed me to complain that I hadn’t touched base with him first, and to argue that “me grilling him is more useful than yet another gathering of liberal media types congratulating ourselves on our purity.” I disagreed, saying that the advance framing of the event, positively positioning Carlson as just a top “media figure” rather than someone doing active damage to democracy, was the problem. I did say I’d watch and was prepared to change my mind if somehow the event turned out differently.

Alas, it’s obvious that the one who got grilled this morning was Smith, not Carlson. None of Ben’s questions landed. Carlson spoke over him constantly, laughed at him, and essentially dominated the conversation.

Of course he did. He’s a professional troll. Why Smith and the Knight Foundation decided he would offer any real insights is beyond me — until you remember that Carlson is a source for Smith. Gotta beat that sweet.

They blame everything but the real cause

A writer at the Federalist has a great idea about how to stop mass shootings:

It’s time to end this cycle. If politicians are serious that they’re sick of “living with this carnage,” the Highland Park shooter should be tried and convicted on the basis of his confession and executed immediately. Perhaps instead of inspiring another coward to pick up a gun, it will inspire them to think again.

Seriously? Uhm, most mass shooters are executed by police on the spot. The entire discussion after Uvalde is about how they didn’t kill him as quickly as they were trained to do! I’m pretty sure most shooters know that. In fact, it’s part of the plan in most cases — suicide by cop. Once in a while they are captured, as the Highland Park shooter was, but it certainly isn’t an expectation on their part and they are not motivated by the fact that they’ll get off easy.

These people will say anything, anything, to avoid admitting that the guns are the problem. They’re blaming pot smoking, uppity women, Prozac, video games, you name it. But I think this is the most fatuous of all. Mass shootings are not happening because the shooters are getting off easy and a quick kangaroo trial with a hasty execution wouldn’t change a thing. Except, of course, making the US even more like Saddam’s Iraq than it already is. Which, I suppose, is a feature not a bug with these people.

Trump tweeted his enemies list for others to act upon

You’ve probably heard that the IRS audited James Comey and Andrew McCabe as part of an allegedly “random” research program.

The odds of being selected for that audit in any given year are tiny — out of nearly 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, for example, the I.R.S. targeted about 5,000, or roughly one out of 30,600.

One of the few who received a bureaucratic letter with the news that his 2017 return would be under intensive scrutiny was James B. Comey, who had been fired as F.B.I. director that year by President Donald J. Trump. Furious over what he saw as Mr. Comey’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump had continued to rail against him even after his dismissal, accusing him of treason, calling for his prosecution and publicly complaining about the money Mr. Comey received for a book after his dismissal.

Mr. Comey was informed of the audit in 2019. Two years later, the I.R.S., still under the leadership of a Trump appointee after President Biden took office, picked about 8,000 returns for the same type of audit Mr. Comey had undergone from the 154 million individual returns filed in 2019, or about one in 19,250.

Among those who were chosen to have their 2019 returns scrutinized was the man who had been Mr. Comey’s deputy at the bureau: Andrew G. McCabe, who served several months as acting F.B.I. director after Mr. Comey’s firing.

Mr. McCabe was later dismissed by the Trump Justice Department after its watchdog accused him of misleading internal F.B.I. investigators. Like Mr. Comey, he had come to be perceived as an enemy by Mr. Trump, who assailed him, accused him of treason and raised questions about his finances long after pushing for his dismissal and prosecution, a pattern that continued even after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and began trying to overturn the results.

Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe — whose spouses were also audited because both couples filed joint returns — provided the letters initiating their audits to The New York Times. Mr. Comey provided The Times with a privacy release allowing the I.R.S. to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request about his case. Neither man knew that the other had been audited until they were told by a reporter for The Times.

The minuscule chances of the two highest-ranking F.B.I. officials — who made some of the most politically consequential law enforcement decisions in a generation — being randomly subjected to a detailed scrub of their tax returns a few years after leaving their posts presents extraordinary questions.

Was it sheer coincidence that two close associates would randomly come under the scrutiny of the same audit program within two years of each other? Did something in their returns increase the chances of their being selected? Could the audits have been connected to criminal investigations pursued by the Trump Justice Department against both men, neither of whom was ever charged?

Or did someone in the federal government or at the I.R.S. — an agency that at times, like under the Nixon administration, was used for political purposes but says it has imposed a range of internal controls intended to thwart anyone from improperly using its powers — corrupt the process?

Come on.

Trump denies knowing everything about it, of course. But he “went on to point to reports from the Justice Department’s inspector general that were critical of Mr. Comey and Mr. McCabe.” But he didn’t have to order the Code red. Every Trumper in the government knew what he wanted because he tweeted out his enemies list and on a daily basis. And it’s not as if Trump was unwilling to use the federal government to punish his enemies…

The irony here is that the Republicans went absolutely apeshit over the IRS supposedly targeting right wing organizations and held hearing after hearing, vilifying the IRS Commissioner. It turned out that it wasn’t true — that the IRS looked closely at all sorts of political organizations to determine their proper status. It didn’t stop them, of course. To this day they say the IRS had a bias against the Tea Party.

Projection. As always.

When it comes to determining how and with whom we can be intimate, the most influential people in America are a man credibly accused of multiple sexual misconducts, a woman who actually was a Handmaid in a fanatical religious cult, and an emotionally immature misfit who was obsessed with Long Dong Silver porn videos (one shudders to imagine his current kinks). And they all have the unmitigated gall to describe themselves as upright, moral defenders of Christianity.

Anyone who tried to pitch such a ridiculous cast of clowns as the featured characters in a novel or tv series would never find an agent. Yet here we are.

Tom already wrote about Boris Johnson’s resignation below, if you’re looking for the background. Apparently, it was just one too many scandals for the Tories. Imagine that. It’s tempting to see some hopeful parallels between Johnson and Trump in all this but they are misplaced. They live on the same side of the political compass but they are different animals. I liked this piece by JV Last on that subject:

I never fully bought the idea that Boris Johnson was the UK’s version of Trump. For one thing, he’s smart. For another thing, he was semi-competent at the the basics of governing.¹And for a third thing, Johnson never seemed like he was intent on blowing up NATO because he was a Russian cat’s paw.

Certainly, the similarities to Trump were too obvious to ignore. Both old men with extravagantly engineered hair. Both populist avengers who played to the working man while privately reviling the rubes. Both interested in using raw executive power in ways rarely contemplated. Both tabloid darlings. Both guys so corrupt that their scandals had scandals.

And another similarity was Johnson’s unwillingness to yield power even as his government collapsed around him.

Today Johnson will finally resign—or perhaps “resign,” since he seems to want to stay in power until his party has a replacement. For all I know he has a secret plan to stoke the pot, prevent a consensus replacement, let his own troubles die down, and then reconsider.

Saying “sure, I’ll quit . . . later” isn’t a binding contract.

But for all of their similarities, there are three very large differences between Boris and Donald that are worth talking about because they highlight how particularly dangerous Trump was/is to American democracy.

Despite his corruption and populism and intransigence . . .

(1) Boris Johnson did not summon an armed mob to Downing Street and then instruct them to march to Parliament and “fight” for their country in an attempt to change the minds of Conservative MPs.

(2) Johnson did not go around the country demanding that other British politicians commit crimes on his behalf, as Trump did when he requested that Georgia election officials “find” enough votes for him to win the state.

(3) However popular Johnson was with the Conservative party’s base, at the end of the day it was the Conservative party elites who deposed him.

This all seems significant. Especially #3.

I remember talking with a close friend about Donald Trump in late 2016. My friend told me that he couldn’t believe that he was going to vote for Trump, but that he had to, because Trump would arrive in Washington with thousands of Republicans and these people would constrain and change him.

I suggested that it seemed equally possible that the reverse would happen: That the good and noble Republicans would be transformed by Trump into something quite dangerous.

Seems fair to say that I was correct.

Yet however compromised the Conservative party was by Boris Johnson, at least members of his government were eventually able to resign en masse. At least there was a movement from within the party elites robust enough to push him out of power. At least the Conservative party retained enough independence from the man to finally act in defense of itself.

I don’t follow British politics that closely. Maybe there was a London staffer somewhere who told the Times on background, “By jove, what is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time, my good fellow!”

But whatever the rationalizations along the way, the Conservatives finally found a line they would not cross. Or, perhaps more accurately, a straw which broke the camel’s back.

In America the Republican party still has not found such a line even after Donald Trump attempted a coup to overthrow the presidential election.

Whatever you think of Britain’s Conservative party, at least they remain a more-or-less normal political institution. They are not so compromised that they represent an ongoing threat to democratic self-governance.

The same cannot be said for the Republican party in America.

I don’t think the Republican Party is even a party anymore. It’s more like a criminal gang that some people in the country are paying to protect them from what they think is a greater danger. The British Conservatives are … not. They decided they’d had enough and resigned en masse. Imagine if Trump’s cabinet and top GOP officials in his administration had done the same thing.

I’ve been calling Ron DeSantis Trump 2.0. I was wrong.

This piece by Max Boot made me reappraise DeSantis. I hadn’t see this before, for some reason:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is having a moment. Pundits are suggesting that the Jan. 6 hearings, by exposing former president Donald Trump’s complicity in a coup attempt, will redound to DeSantis’s benefit in 2024. Already, a poll in New Hampshire shows DeSantis topping Trump. The question, from the standpoint of those of us who have a sentimental attachment to American democracy, is which man is a bigger threat to the republic? I found myself grappling with that issue as I read a long and enlightening profile of DeSantis by Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker.

Filkins notes that, “while Trump, with his lazy, Barnumesque persona, projects a fundamental lack of seriousness, DeSantis has an intense work ethic, a formidable intelligence, and a granular understanding of policy. Articulate and fast on his feet, he has been described as Trump with a brain.” But do we really want a president who will work harder and more intelligently to implement a Trumpian agenda? Is it really better to have a president who is relentlessly focused on right-wing bugaboos such as critical race theory, transgender athletes, undocumented immigrants and “woke corporations” rather than one who is easily distracted into braggadocio about his golf game or his flooring?

Actually, the more I read about DeSantis, the more he reminds me not of Trump but of another disgraced Republican president. One of DeSantis’s Yale baseball teammates told Filkins he is really “smart” but deficient in interpersonal skills: “He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I’m speaking for others — he was the biggest d—k we knew.” A former House colleague said of DeSantis: “He’s a little reclusive, a bit of an odd duck … but he’s just incredibly disciplined.”

Smart and disciplined but reclusive and unpleasant: Who does that remind you of? That’s right: Richard M. Nixon. And I don’t mean the Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency, implemented affirmative action, went to China and took other surprisingly liberal steps. DeSantis has never shown any similar willingness to challenge his base. I’m thinking of the Nixon who smeared his opponents (he accused Adlai Stevenson of having a “Ph.D. from Dean Acheson’s cowardly college of Communist containment”) and warred with the press (“You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” he said in 1962, “because gentlemen, this is my last press conference”). I’m thinking of the Nixon who employed the government against his “enemies list,” catered to White bigotry (the Southern strategy) and exacerbated social divisions in an attempt to mobilize the Silent Majority against liberal elites.

DeSantis seems hellbent on carrying on the disreputable legacy of Tricky Dick, and with even less respect for democratic norms than Nixon displayed. Indeed, he wages culture war with a ruthlessness that recalls Nixon during the bombing of Cambodia.

DeSantis signed legislation severely curtailing mask and vaccine mandates for businesses and local governments, thereby running roughshod over private property rights even while denouncing Democrats as socialists. The University of Florida — controlled by DeSantis appointees — has forbidden professors from testifying against DeSantis plans to restrict mask-wearing and voting rights. A pediatrician was removed from a state board overseeing children’s health insurance after criticizing DeSantis’s outrageous reluctance to provide covid vaccines for children under five.

DeSantis refuses to say whether President Biden was legitimately elected and criticizes the Jan. 6 committee hearings. He created a special task force to police voter fraud even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud. In the name of election security, he also pushed through a bill restricting voting rights that was largely struck down by a federal judge as unconstitutional. A DeSantis-backed “anti-riot” bill, passed in response to Black Lives Matter rallies, was blocked by another federal judge for infringing on the First Amendment.

DeSantis signed a “don’t say gay” law restricting discussion of gender and sexuality issues in public schools — and then took away tax breaks from Disney for criticizing the legislation. In a similarly vindictive vein, he vetoed state funding for a Tampa Bay Rays training facility after the baseball team had the temerity to call for gun-safety legislation to stop mass shootings.

DeSantis signed legislation to limit what schools, colleges and workplaces can teach about race and identity, while promulgating teacher training wrongly claiming that the Founders didn’t really want separation of church and state. He also signed legislation that would give the state greater control over what is taught in universities under the guise of promoting viewpoint “diversity.” He is even threatening to investigate parents who take their kids to drag shows.

In short, DeSantis is engaged in one of the most alarming assaults on free speech and academic freedom since the dark days of McCarthyism in the 1950s, when Nixon rose to power. His actions may not be as blatant as inciting a mob to attack Congress, but his record reveals a troubling pattern of authoritarianism and vindictiveness that would be extremely dangerous in the Oval Office.

Just because DeSantis is smarter than Trump doesn’t mean that he is any less dangerous. In fact, he might be an even bigger threat for that very reason.

He’s right. It’s Nixon…

The Miami Herald put it this way:

“Back in 1971, Nixon’s list had 20 names on it. Over the next few years, it grew to 576 names. We all know how that ended. Now we have DeSantis’ frightening misuse of power. It must stop here, and that starts with lawmakers stiffening their backbones. Today, it’s Disney. Tomorrow, who knows?”

It. Is. Finished.

Zach Basu of Axios tweets:

Breaking: While you were sleeping, the number of U.K. government resignations topped 50 and Boris Johnson finally agreed to resign as Conservative leader.

“Them’s the breaks,” said Johnson in announcing his resignation.

“Them’s the breaks,” as Winston Churchill would never have said in a million years. pic.twitter.com/LDkQbGiwnh

— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) July 7, 2022

Washington Post:

His dramatic downfall comes after several ministers from his own Conservative Party resigned their posts and publicly urged him to step down, citing concerns over his judgment, authority and leadership. A series of scandals over coronavirus lockdown parties, the refurbishment of his official apartment and the appointment of an ally accused of sexual misconduct and other issues contributed to Johnson’s fall from grace.

Johnson initially refused to concede power, digging in for days as lawmakers accused him of plunging Britain into a near constitutional crisis. But on Thursday he told the British public he was “sad” to be “giving up the best job in the world,” and promised to support the new leader, remarking in his characteristically upbeat manner that the future of the United Kingdom remained “golden.”

INCREDIBLE SCENES

“THE BENNY HILL THEME TUNE” IS BEING BLASTED OUT ON SKY NEWS. pic.twitter.com/N06wBwcoZl

— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) July 7, 2022

What’s remarkable (and well-remarked in social media) is seeing conservatives in England actually throwing up their hands and saying, “Enough!” and resigning. Trumpublicans here double, triple, or quadruple down.

After rumors that he’d have to be dragged out kicking and screaming, Johnson agreed to leave. On this side of the pond, Donald Trump organized a deadly insurrection first. He is still lying, grifting and hoping to avoid jail. His co-conspirators are too.

As the UK media dumps all over Boris Johnson, worth noting he'd never have become PM had the media not covered for him, enabled him, & bathed him in praise. Easy now for everyone to forget the fawning coverage he got but some of us have longer memories & knew he'd be a disaster.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 7, 2022

We knew Trump would be a bigger disaster. I did not believe Americans would be fools enough to elect him. Until they did.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

On the right all politics is personal

Slate’s Heather Schwedel shares some mother-child anecdotes collected in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe. The Dobbs ruling has created new common ground in some families and perhaps political realignment. One 23-year-old from Arkansas reports his mother is done voting for Republicans.

“She has two daughters, both of my sisters, so I think she’s upset about just what it means for other women,” says Chad who did not give a last name:

Caylie Smith, a 29-year-old in Los Angeles, always knew her mother, 57, supported abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and gun control. But her parents have also always voted for Republicans despite those things, mostly because they thought Republicans were better on the economy. Not anymore, Smith told me.

“This is the thing that got her to change her mind,” she said. “Once this happened, I saw the change in her. She was like, ‘OK, enough is enough­. This has gone way too far.’ ”

Republican strategists know that political issues can be abstractions for many conservatives until they become personal. That is, when they affect me, my family, my friends, my job, my money, etc. In this case, my daughters. Seeing Roe overturned may have been an abstraction until now. Not anymore.

A few anecdotes do not a trend make. But recent polls do show a shift in attitude away from Republicans.

Simon Rosenberg of NDN, a Washington think tank, sees that in polling since Dobbs. Even after YouGov discovered and corrected for a programming error in its poll, voter attitudes about the congressional generic ballot seem to be favoring Democrats.

Rosenberg tweeted:

With this significant change in the Economist/YouGov data, the average of the 9 polls taken since Roe ended is:

45.4% Dem – 43.7% GOP, +1.7 Dem

It’s now closer to a 4-5 pt swing towards the Dems.

Rosenberg offers more at his blog:

The Generic Turns Positive for Democrats – There have now been 10 polls reporting out the Congressional Generic (via 538) since Roe ended, and they have averaged 45.4 D/43.7 R (+1.7 Dem).  Taking out Rasmussen it’s +2.5 Dem.  It has been -2 to -2.5 Dem for many months.  This data suggests the race has moved 3-5 points to the Democrats in recent weeks.  Five of the nine polls show meaningful movement towards the Democrats since their last poll, and several show large Dem leads now in the generic: 

                             Last Poll   New Poll  Dem Shift
NPR/Marist         44-47          48-41         +10
Monmouth           43-50          46-48          +5 
Big Village           44-42          47-42          +3 
Yahoo/YouGov     43-39         45-38          +3 
Politico/Morn C   42-42         45-42          +3

In new comprehensive polls of battleground states Future Majority found the Congressional Generic shifting from 43-45 (-2) in March to 44-42 (+2) now, a 4 point shift.  With Democrats now consistently leading in the generic ballot it is a new election, a competitive not a wave election and all talk of a Republican wave should end.  

How about the Senate? More good polling:

A review of recent Senate polling strongly suggests if the election were held today Democrats would retain the Senate and perhaps even pick up a few seats. The NYTimes has a good Senate overview today, and that new polling from Future Majority finds a far better Senate landscape for Democrats: 

AZ – Kelly leads Masters, 48-39, Lamon 47-41.  He trailed a generic Republican 43-45 in March. 
GA – Warnock leads Walker 48-44.  He trailed 48-49 in March.
NH – Hassan leads Bolduc 49-40.  They didn’t poll NH in March.  
NV – Cortez Masto leads Laxalt 46-43.  She trailed Laxalt 43-45 in March.  

Republicans are showing significant weakness now in their seats.  Fetterman has meaningful leads in several recent polls, and now has to be considered a favorite in that race.  Ron Johnson trailed 3 of his 4 opponents in a new Marquette University poll, a poll that suggests that Johnson – even before Roe and his admitted involvement in Trump’s effort to overturn the election – is in serious trouble.  There have been polls showing Democratic leads in NC and OH though those races are considered by many a bit tougher.  Bottom line – Dems are in our book now favorites to keep the Senate, and have a shot at picking up 1-2 seats.  If we get two seats and keep the House filibuster carve ours for codifying Roe and election reform become real possibilities next year.

Any good news is welcome, even if tentative and premature.

Nate Silver still sees Republicans favored in the House, but the Senate is, for now, a toss-up.

“Even though Republicans only need to gain a net of one seat in the Senate, our model thinks the chance of that is only about 50 percent. In other words, it's a toss-up.” @NateSilver538 has the latest 2022 election analysis: https://t.co/DZrZB3dU0j pic.twitter.com/0hn9pqgHYy

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) July 3, 2022

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

Will he be helpful?

Contrary to earlier reports, Cipollone will do a videotaped interview this week. It’s a little chickenshit (he should agree to testify in public) but it’s probably smart to get him to talk behind closed doors under oath before they let him loose. Who knows what he’ll say.

But assuming that he will tell the truth, it could be very important testimony about what Trump was doing during the post election period and January 6th. I’m sure he will claim executive privilege

Former President Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone will testify Friday in a closed-door, videotaped interview with the Jan. 6 committee.

Cipollone — a crucial witness to what unfolded inside the West Wing on Jan. 6 — was subpoenaed by the committee following former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s blockbuster testimony late last month.

Hutchinson revealed during the committee’s last hearing that Cipollone repeatedly tried to prevent Trump from encouraging his supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

She testified that Cipollone had warned in the days leading up to the attack that the former president and his aides could be charged with “every crime imaginable” if Trump joined protesters at the Capitol.

While the attack was happening, Hutchinson testified that Cipollone demanded to see the president while rioters were chanting for former Vice President Mike Pence to be hanged, but then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told him Trump “doesn’t want to do anything” and “thinks Mike deserves it.”

Cipollone was said to be fighting Trump all the time, just as Don McGhan was said to be fighting Trump all along. And maybe they helped. But if they really are men of integrity they should be happy to come forward and tell what they know. McGahn fought it every step of the way until it was finally determined that he had to appear — long after it would do any good. Maybe Cipollone will do better. But I’ll frankly be surprised if they get anything meaningful out of him.

They’re being “groomed” on Tik Tok

I’ve been ragging on right wing religion a lot lately but now that we have seen the fruits of their labor in the overturning of Roe v Wade and the subsequent extremism in red states around the country, I think we need to pay closer attention.

This piece in Vice takes a look at one corner of the social media universe that’s making an impact on the younger generation:

Patrick Bateman, the lead character in American Psycho, walks toward you as a rapid montage of images depicting Medieval-era religious wars between Christians and Muslims flashes in the distance. Madonna’s 2005 chart-topping single “Hung Up” is playing. You see the words “Fight for Glory; Western Man.” 

This isn’t a fever dream. It’s a TikTok video with 11,000 views and part of a growing online subculture that’s propping up surging Christian nationalist and Christo-fascist ideology in the United States and beyond. 

Christian nationalists believe that their country’s policies and laws should reflect evangelical Christian values, and culture war issues like LGBTQ rights, “critical race theory,” or immigration, are regarded as signs of moral decay that imperil their nation’s future. 

Christo-fascists take that one step further, and believe that they’re fighting primordial battles between West and East, good and evil, right and left, Christians and infidels. These two labels, however, sometimes overlap. 

On TikTok, ideologues from both ends of the spectrum are weaving together a shared visual language using 4chan memes, Scripture, Orthodox and Catholic iconography, imagery of holy wars, and clips from movies or TV featuring toxic male characters. Many of the videos, on their face, are innocuous enough, but they exist in close proximity to disturbing, violent, or explicitly white nationalist content. 

It’s no accident that this community is expanding on TikTok, of all places, according to Thomas Lecaque, an associate professor of history at Grand View University in Iowa who focuses on apocalyptic religion and political violence. “You build your audience with a young demographic, and then you spread your ideas that way. This is how you build the next generation of fascists,” he said. 

Fascist? You bet. Tik Tok is where the kids are. And they know it.

This online community seems to be growing at a time when Christian nationalist ideology is attaining mainstream acceptance, particularly in the U.S., where a conservative majority on the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to a torrent of regressive opinions, including dismantling the national right to abortion. After that decision, one Christian nationalist podcaster, who has nearly 45,000 followers on Telegram, declared the current moment the “era of Christian Nationalism.” “People are thirsty for it, they are hungry for this,” he said. “We are the Christian Taliban, and we will not stop until the Handmaid’s Tale is a reality—even worse than that, to be honest,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, misogynist and reductive portrayals of women are rife within the #ChristPilled community on TikTok. Views about abortion, feminism, or “traditional family values” are often expressed through the “Trad Wife Wojak,” a female version of the sad internet character “Wojak” with blond hair and a modest floral dress. She’s meant to represent women who embrace submission to their spouses and take on ultra-traditional roles in their households. 

One TikTok video from December, under hashtags like #Christian and #GenZ, shows Infowars’ Alex Jones dancing with a light-up fidget spinner. A quote appears, “If you ban abortion, women will die in backstreet abortions.” “Good,” the video goes on to say.

Other videos contain imagery of the Crusades, a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims between 1096 and 1291, which began to secure control of “holy sites,” like Jerusalem. Crusader imagery has often been employed by white nationalists to signify or even justify violence against Muslims in Europe around the Syrian refugee crisis. In their bios, some accounts feature the Christian motto “Deus Vult,” which translates to “God Wills” and was chanted by the Crusaders.

You can read the whole thing here. It’s something else.