Sunday Long Read: Perfecting The Dog Whistle

If you want to know what banished White House racist rabble-rouser Steve Bannon and his Boy Wonder Milo Yiannopoulos are up to after two-shirt Steve got booted over his little confab in Charlottesville this summer, it turns out that the pair of slimeballs have plenty of help spreading their message of hate from Silicon Valley techbros.

In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that "there's no room in American society" for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.

But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was Milo Yiannopoulos, the site’s former tech editor known best for his outrageous public provocations, such as last year’s Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and September’s canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to “computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.”

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.

It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.

These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website — and, in particular, Yiannopoulos — links the Mercer family, the billionaires who fund Breitbart, to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content, and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate.

They capture what Bannon calls his “killing machine” in action, as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world, sifts through these grievances for ideas and content, and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld, collecting advertisers’ checks all along the way.

And the cache of emails — some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public — expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos, who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannon’s grand plan for Yiannopoulos, whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often, the documents reveal, this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.

"I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about," Yiannopoulos wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. "But everyone who knows me also knows I'm not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have.”

He added that during his karaoke performance, his "severe myopia" made it impossible for him to see the Hitler salutes a few feet away.

Steve Bannon, the other Breitbart employees named in the story, and the Mercer family did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Like all the new media success stories, Breitbart’s alt-right platform depends on the participation of its audience. It combusts the often secret fury of those who reject liberal norms into news, and it doesn’t burn clean.

Now Bannon is back at the controls of the machine, which he has said he is “revving up.” The Mercers have funded Yiannopoulos's post-Breitbart venture. And these documents present the clearest look at what these people may have in store for America.

And folks, these are some ugly sins being put on display.  Milo was the charismatic point man selling neo-Nazi snake oil, Klan "economic anxiety" and Bell Curve social engineering to like-minded folks in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and he is very, very good at it.  He packaged it as the "alt-right" and Bannon sold it for the Breitbart masses to help Trump.  And his help covers the whole cast of characters, including our good friend Teddy Beale and Evil Chuck Johnson, as well as Richard Spencer and Andrew "weev" Aurenheimer and their crew of actual goddamn Nazis.

But let's not forget the real goal of this packaging and marketing of rancid white supremacy to the masses. 

All this helped to put Trump in the White House.

"Make America Great Again" was and still is a racist dog whistle that is all about making white supremacy acceptable again, and Steve Bannon was chief strategist for the Trump campaign and the regime.  His protege, Stephen Miller, is still Trump's chief speechwriter, still packaging and selling white supremacy today.

Pay close attention to hedge fund billionaire tech bro Robert Mercer and his family in this article too.  It's clear they are the bankroll for Bannon and his merry band, and if there's a source of endless dark money and darker social manipulation on the net to market Trump's racism as "populism" it's Mercer. There's a brutal junction between tech and racism, and it was exploited to full effect in 2016. It will be exploited again in 2018 and 2020.

These are who America's leaders are because this is who we have always been: a country built on the exploitation of race and proud of doing so, punctuated by the long, slow fight for justice against it.

Never forget however that these assholes could not have come to power without the people that elected them, and were perfectly okay with white supremacy being the defining characteristic of the Republican party in 2017.  Call them what they are.

These guys turned racist dog whistles into Trump campaign bullhorns, and they won because of it. This is why I will resist them, every day, in this blog and in other ways, until we are rid of them.

The Villains Are Ecstatic

The white nationalist movement hasn't had it this good since the days of Jim Crow, and they are more than happy to gloat right now over their man set to be in the White House in January.

"I think that's excellent," former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke told CNN's KFile. "I think that anyone that helps complete the program and the policies that President-elect Trump has developed during the campaign is a very good thing, obviously. So it's good to see that he's sticking to the issues and the ideas that he proposed as a candidate. Now he's president-elect and he's sticking to it and he's reaffirming those issues." 

Duke, who last week lost his longshot bid for the US Senate seat from Louisiana, said he plans on expanding his radio show and is hoping to launch a 24 hour online news show with a similar approach to Comedy Central's Daily Show. He argued Bannon's position was among the most important in the White House. 

"You have an individual, Mr. Bannon, who's basically creating the ideological aspects of where we're going," added Duke. "And ideology ultimately is the most important aspect of any government."

Issues don't matter, facts don't matter, we're all ideologues now.

Peter Brimelow, who runs the white nationalist site VDARE, praised Bannon's hiring, saying it gives Trump a connection to the alt-right movement online. 

"I think it's amazing," Brimelow said of Trump's decision to tap Bannon. "Can you imagine Mitt Romney doing this? It's almost like Trump cares about ideas! Especially amazing because I would bet Trump doesn't read online. Few plutocrats do, they have efficient secretaries." 

Brimelow added his site would continue to focus solely on their hardline position on immigration, saying he expects American whites to vote their interests similar to other minority groups. 

"To the extent that the 'alt-right' articulates that interest, it will continue to grow," Brimelow said. 

Brad Griffin, a blogger who runs the white nationalist website Occidental Dissent using the pseudonym "Hunter Wallace," said he thought Bannon's hiring showed Trump would be held to his campaign promises. 

"It makes sense to me," he said. "Reince [Priebus] can certainly get more done on Capitol Hill. He will be an instrument of Trump's will, not the other way around. Bannon is better suited as chief strategist and looking at the big picture. I think he will hold Trump to the promises he has already made during the campaign. We endorse many of those promises like building the wall, deportations, ending refugee resettlement, preserving the Second Amendment, etc. There's a lot of stuff in there on which almost everyone on the right agrees." 

Griffin added, "We're most excited though about the foreign policy implications of Bannon in the White House. We want to see our counterparts in Europe — starting in Austria and France — win their upcoming elections. We're hearing reports that Breitbart is expanding its operations in continental Europe and that is where our focus will be in 2017."

This was always the plan with the Trump/Bannon axis: a government based on being the new international beacon white supremacy.  They can't wait to get started dismantling the civil rights era.

As I've said before, it was always about punishing the Obama coalition and the people who voted for him, and leaving them politically powerless.  It's revenge, plain and simple, to make sure that America never dares to nominate someone like him again, or like Hillary Clinton.

You know, not a white guy.

But don't take my word for it,

Bannon has goals. One of those goals is maximization of personal power, which is why he spent the last decade and a half glomming onto powerful right-wing personalities (Bachmann, Morris, Palin), kissing their asses, and then moving on up the chain. With Breitbart and Trump, he picked two winners in a row – and that means he’s now at the pinnacle of American power. 

So, what will he do with that power? He’ll target enemies. Bannon is one of the most vicious people in politics, which is why I’ve been joking for months that should Trump win, I’d be expecting my IRS audit any moment. That wasn’t completely a joke. He likes to destroy people.

Granted, Ben Shapiro is a complete asshole who still doesn't think Bannon is a racist anti-Semite, but he does recognize a vindictive bastard when he sees one.  He's coming for his enemies, and he'll have the full power of the White House behind him.

And everyone who didn't openly support Donald Trump is an enemy to Steve Bannon.  Never forget that.

But please tell me again how Clinton was going to be worse because emails.

Trump Cards, Con't

So we're now on the third Trump campaign head in three months, Corey Lewandowski has been demoted to CNN, now Paul "Crimea River" Manafort has been kicked upstairs to Liar Emeritus status, and the new guy?  Well, the new guy is something else, alright.

The campaign’s new chief executive, Stephen Bannon, joins from Breitbart News—where he helped mainstream the ideas of white nationalists and resuscitate the reputations of anti-immigrant fear-mongers.

White nationalists today invest a lot of energy worrying about growing Hispanic and Muslim populations in the U.S. Turns out, Breitbart News spends a lot of time worrying about those things, too. And in Bannon, they see a media-friendly, ethno-nationalist fellow traveler.

“Latterly, Breitbart emerged as a nationalist site and done great stuff on immigration in particular,” VDARE.com editor Peter Brimelow told The Daily Beast.

VDare is a white supremacist site. It’s named after Virginia Dare, the first white child born to British colonists in North America. Brimelow said he and Bannon met briefly last month and exchanged pleasantries about each other’s work.

“It’s irritating because VDARE.com is not used to competition,” Brimelow added. “I presume that is due to Bannon, so his appointment is great news.”

Brimelow isn’t the only prominent white nationalist to praise the Bannon hire. Richard Spencer, who heads the white supremacist think tank National Policy Institute, said he was also pleased. Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart has given favorable coverage to the white supremacist Alt Right movement. And Spencer loves it.

If your plan is the lead a resurgent white supremacist movement, you couldn't ask for a better point man than Steve Bannon, which brings me to the point I've made several times around here: when Trump loses in November, his followers aren't going to quietly vanish.

Bannon's specialty is virulent white supremacist dog whistle politics, after all Breitbart has been attacking President Obama and his family, Black Lives Matter, and any Democratic black or Latino politician they can find for years now, from Cory Booker to Joaquin Castro to Shirley Sherrod (remember her?)

And hey, let's not forget the problem we have now with Trump's White Power campaign goes directly down the line drawn by Andrew Breitbart and the media monster he created before his death in March 2012.

For tomorrow, the fresh hell of the news cycle begins anew, and Breitbart's pervasive taint will be all over it and the many, many news cycles to come after. The dead racist guy gets the last laugh in this America. His replacement will invariably be worse.

His replacement was Steve Bannon.  We can go straight from that point to here over the last 55 months.

So if avowed white supremacists are happy to see Steve Bannon in charge of Trump's campaign, that's something that we should all be worried about, along with the merger of Breitbart and Trump. Things are going to get a lot uglier, if that's even possible. As Charles Blow points out, it's a funny strategy to take for a guy so obviously trying to pander to black voters as he tried to do Tuesday in Wisconsin.

The speech was tone deaf, facile and nonsensical, much like the man who delivered it. 

Then within hours of making that speech, Trump shook up his campaign in part by naming Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the campaign’s chief executive. 

This is the same Breitbart that the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to in an April “Hatewatch” report: 

“Over the past year however, the outlet has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas — all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’” 

The report continued: 

“The Alt-Right is a loose set of far-right ideologies at the core of which is a belief that “white identity” is under attack through policies prioritizing multiculturalism, political correctness and social justice and must be preserved, usually through white-identified online communities and physical ethno-states.” 

How are you reaching out to the black community when you step on your own message with such an insulting hire? 

All of black America is looking askance at Donald Trump. He has no credibility with black people, other than the handful of black staffers and surrogates who routinely embarrass themselves in their blind obsequiousness.

I mean on one hand I can see why Trump did this, you can't get worse with black voters than "fewer than one percent" so he doesn't have many other people to reach, and if you haven't been driven off your support of Trump by now, you're probably really jazzed by Bannon's hire.

On the other hand, I'm a human being with a soul and morals, so this is all awful nonsense to me that needs to be crushed brutally at the polls in November when Democrats run up the scoreboard.

We'll see.  It's going to be a long 80-some days.

Last Call For Misinformation Nation

Breitbart's clowns are screwing up everything they can find, as usual, and this time their stated mission of lying to America about the Obama administration is no different.

According to a November 8 Breitbart.com article by Warner Todd Huston, "few are talking about" the fact nominee Lynch "was part of Bill Clinton's Whitewater probe defense team in 1992." Huston pointed to a March 1992 New York Times article that "reported that Lynch was one of the Clintons' Whitewater defense attorneys as well as a 'campaign aide.'" And in a November 9 article Huston's colleague, Breitbart.com Senior Editor-at Large Joel Pollak wrote, "The connection to Whitewater ought to provide additional fodder for Republicans during Lynch's confirmation hearings".

Only one problem.  It's the wrong Loretta Lynch.

The Loretta Lynch referred to in the New York Times article is a California based attorney who has worked on several prominent political campaigns, not Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch. Obama's nominee is shown on the right, while the Loretta Lynch Breitbart refers to is on the left:

These idiots can't even get the correct race of the actual person right, which is everything you ever need to know about Breitbart.com.  Of course that doesn't matter to the right, they'll find some other way to block Lynch.

The same day that President Obama nominated Loretta Lynch to be the next attorney general, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) signaled that it won't be an easy process.

"President Obama’s Attorney General nominee deserves fair and full consideration of the United States Senate, which is precisely why she should not be confirmed in the lame duck session of Congress by senators who just lost their seats and are no longer accountable to the voters," the senators said in a Saturday statement.

So yes, I expect the lame duck session will be about as productive as the rest of this dismal GOP-ruined Congress.  The threat is simple: if President Obama dares take executive action on immigration, Lynch is done.

Maybe if Obama was nicer to the GOP and resigned from office, he'd get Lynch through. 

Just a thought.

GamerGate Goes Gaga

The issue of women in video gaming doesn't get addressed nearly as much as it should, despite 48% of gamers being women and 36% are women over 18.  Women who point out that the industry is terribly unkind to the image of women as a whole are not treated well, and in fact recently such treatment has erupted into a full-blown rift in the gaming industry press.

Some good background on this story comes from The Escapist, but it boils down to this:  gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian, who has made a series of YouTube videos pointing out the ridiculously sexist tropes in gaming over the last two years, released her latest video late last month in the center of a controversy over game designer Zoe Quinn, who was accused of sleeping with a game reviewer in order to secure a favorable review for her game.  The reaction from a bunch of snot-nosed frat boy Dudebros with computer skills was precisely what you'd expect:  Sarkeesian was harassed and her life threatened to the point where she no longer felt safe in her own home.  Adi Robertson at The Verge:

This is an unusual low in the Anita Sarkeesian saga, but death threats in general are more or less par for the course for many women (and men) online. They can easily cross the line from bluster to menace — UK journalist Laurie Penny, for instance, contacted police in 2013 after being sent a very specific bomb threat. In this case, the vitriol might have been compounded by the support her latest video received from popular developers and media figures. Joss Whedon and William Gibson, among others, mentioned it, and Tim Schafer of Double Fine — known for Psychonauts and the Kickstarter-funded Broken Age — spent several hours fielding responses after urging everyone in game development to watch it "from start to finish."

It's also coming on the heels of another woman-focused gaming community tempest regardingDepression Quest developer Zoe Quinn, who internet denizens have accused of starting an affair with a games journalist (who never reviewed her game and, as far as I can tell, mentioned her in precisely one piece, which was written before they're supposed to have started dating) in order to secure favorable press for her non-traditional text game. The "corruption" allegations Quinn's critics put forward have started a discussion about how to handle friendships and crowdfunding support within a relatively small community of writers and developers. Our sister site Polygon updated its guidelines and now asks reporters to state if they have given crowdfunded support to developers through the Patreon service, and Kotaku banned such contributions outright. Intriguingly, the harassment and threats sent as part of this anti-corruption campaign seem to have focused mostly on Quinn herself, not the male journalist whose integrity would actually have been compromised by said corruption.

I would have sided with Quinn and Sarkeesian beforehand, because they both have been treated like inhuman trash despite the fact that they have dared to point out the industry caters to and is built on the fantasies of horny dudebros, despite basically half of people who buy and play games being women, but then the jackasses over at Bretbart decided this was something they had to weigh in on.

So this is where the state of the industry is:  somehow, demanding that women aren't treated like walking bags of endless sex and delicious candy makes you a "politically correct lying bully".  If the dudebro signal on this has gone up to the point where Team Dead Guy has gotten on board, it's bad.  Extremely bad.

And the people who said "Hey, we should have never let it get this bad to begin with" are being victimized the most.  This is wrong, dead wrong, and what voice I have I'm using to say it's wrong.

Getting the industry to change starts with admitting that.

Last Call

David Corn tells the story of the man who taped Mitt Romney's fundraising speech with the infamous "47%" comments, a man who has chosen to reveal himself as a Florida bartender named Scott Prouty.

The fellow on the other end of the phone call pronounced his name with hesitation. For nearly a fortnight, he and I had been building a long-distance rapport via private tweets, emails, and phone conversations as we discussed how best to make public the secret video he had shot of Mitt Romney talking at a private, $50,000-per-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida. Now I was almost ready to break the story at Mother Jones. I had verified the video, confirming when and where it had been shot, and my colleagues and I had selected eight clips—including Romney's now-infamous remarks about the 47 percent of Americans he characterized as "victims" unwilling to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives"—to embed in two articles. We had blurred these clips, at the source's request, to make it difficult to tell where Romney had uttered these revealing comments, while clearly showing that it was Romney speaking. The goal was to afford the source a modicum of protection.

The source was justifiably worried about repercussions. Once the video was posted, he might lose his job. He might face criminal prosecution or a civil lawsuit. Months earlier, he had anonymously posted a snippet from the video, in which Romney nonchalantly described the work-camp-like living conditions at a Chinese factory he had visited. The source, offended by these comments, had hoped that the short clip would catch fire in the political-media world. But it hadn't, partly because its context and origins were unknown. The source's desire to remain in the shadows had hindered his ability to bring the story to the public.

And Prouty was right (and remains right) on his healthy fear of the Right Wing Noise Machine.  It's guaranteed now that they will try very hard to destroy him, his loved ones, and his entire life.   It takes real courage to stand up to the evil and speak out into the night.

Then James Carter IV, a freelance researcher (and, though I didn't know it then, the grandson of Jimmy Carter) who had been sending me public documents regarding Romney's prior business investments, had, at my request, tracked the anonymous poster down. I subsequently persuaded him to send me the full video of the fundraiser and to allow me to release portions of it, under the strict condition that I'd do whatever was possible to keep his identity hidden. He did not want to become the story. He hoped the public would focus only on Romney's words. And through all this, he had not told me who he was, though he disclosed that he had worked at the fundraiser and insisted that he was no political partisan and had filmed Romney more out of curiosity than as part of a plan to trap the GOP candidate.

I respected his desire for privacy. He was about to commit a courageous and unprecedented act of whistle-blowing. But as we neared publication, I said I had to know his name. Do you really need it? he asked. Yes, I replied, explaining I could not publish the stories without knowing his identity. I vowed I would keep it a secret.

And to David Corn's real credit, he did.   Scott Prouty told his story this evening on MSNBC's The Ed Show, with an hour;long interview with Ed Schultz.   I wish the man luck, because he's going to need it.  The Breitbart crew will go straight for him now, because that's what happens to people who stand up and do the right thing around America.

Godspeed, sir.

Last Call

Now, I've talked about Jeb Bush's mad education privatizing schemes involving replacing schools with "internet learning centers" run by the for-profit education corporations, but that hasn't stopped him from dropping hints about 2016:

Jeb Bush wouldn’t say Wednesday night whether or not he’s likely to run for president in 2016, but at Saint Leo University he did suggest a surprising role model for the sort of president he’d strive to be: Lyndon Johnson.

No, the conservative former Florida governor didn’t hail Johnson’s Great Society initiatives. Instead, he hailed Johnson’s forceful, hands-on leadership that among other things produced a 25 percent across-the-board income tax cut.

“He went and he cajoled, he begged, he threatened, he loved, he hugged, he did what leaders do, which is they personally get engaged to make something happen,’’ said Bush, who recently read Robert Caro’s latest Johnson biography.

Bush’s homage to Johnson before several hundred people at the Pasco County campus was one of his only shots at President Barack Obama, who has earned a reputation for avoiding hands-on negotiating with congressional leaders.

“I saw an unnamed person in the White House about a month ago say, 'You know, Lincoln would have had a hard time in the climate we’re in today, with the Republicans being so intractable,’ ” Bush said. “Really? You’re comparing what we have today to a civil war? Really?”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/14/3234145/former-gov-jeb-bush-talks-immigration.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

Here's the funny part about ol Jebbie here, who doesn't believe there's a civil war in the GOP right now.:  the wingers don't want any part of the guy. 



Good luck, dude.  You're gonna need it.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/14/3234145/former-gov-jeb-bush-talks-immigration.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy