Chris Hedges's Blog, page 108

American Vivisection

“American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror”

A book by Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong

When I lived in Argentina 15 years ago, I would often practice my Spanish—and in all candor amuse myself—by asking cabbies, barbers and bartenders a question: “How did Argentines create their world-famous dance, the Tango?” If I asked a dozen people this question, I heard some derivation of this response no less than 11 times:

“We stole it from the blacks.”

As a black man who grew up in the Midwest, this blunt, unhesitating admission of cultural appropriation struck me as extraordinary. In my experience, if you asked a dozen random whites in the U.S. what musical genre most influenced Elvis, Willie Nelson or the Beatles, you’d best not hold your breath, as the saying goes, waiting to hear anyone pay homage to a blues tradition exported from West Africa.

The cause of these differing responses from the descendants of European settlers in Buenos Aires and, say, Boston, are the twin scourges of “American Exceptionalism and American Innocence”—the title of a startling new book by Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong. At once redolent of classic works by Howard Zinn and Frantz Fanon, as well as “Freakonomics” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt, an offbeat take on behavioral economics, Sirvent and Haiphong expertly dissect the illogic of the illiberal American mind and the violence it has wrought, both at home and abroad.

As one might expect, this is the quintessential heavy lift, yet the authors execute their task with a deft touch, producing 21 seemingly effortless essays that blend robust reportage, political science, economics, cultural criticism and storytelling, that, if not quite poetry, is entertaining, fluid and accessible. But while it is an easy and engaging read, the book is nonetheless a provocation. Consider their take on “fake news” in the introduction:

What is ironic is that fake news has indeed been the only news disseminated by the rulers of the U.S. empire. We’ve been exposed to this fake news for as long as we’ve been told that the U.S. is a force for good in the world—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t really live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect. Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of the U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake.

Click here to read long excerpts from “American Exceptionalism” at Google Books.

Challenging the white savior complex, the authors quote Ifi Amadiume, an African feminist writer, describing her encounter with a well-meaning university student:

I asked a young White woman why she was studying social anthropology. She replied that she was hoping to go to Zimbabwe, and felt that she could help women thereby advising them how to organize. The Black women in the audience gasped in astonishment. Here was someone scarcely past girlhood, who had just started university and had never fought a war in her life. She was planning to go to Africa to teach female veterans of a liberation struggle how to organize! This is the kind of arrogant, if not absurd attitude we encounter repeatedly. It makes one think: Better the distant armchair anthropologists than these ‘sisters.’

Sirvent, a professor of political and social ethics at Hope International University, and Haiphong, a columnist for the radical Black Agenda Report, make no pretense of cable news-like objectivity: They have skin in the game, and flatly say so. Their goal in writing this book is to conscientize a new generation of activists, and renew an anti-imperialist and antiwar movement that began to lose its way nearly half a century ago. It is this almost evangelical zeal, their willingness to testify and bear witness, and their irreverence for the church of American exceptionalism that rescues the book from the detached, academic tone that so often relegates books of this nature to the groaning, dusty shelves of a university library.

If their book is indeed a dissection (or perhaps vivisection is more accurate), then Sirvent and Haiphong use multiple instruments to conduct their examination, invoking everything from Captain America’s shield to the Broadway play “Hamilton,” from 9/11 to the NFL draft, immigration to the invasion of Afghanistan. But they always seem to return to Ground Zero, which is racism, generally, and anti-black racism, specifically.

American exceptionalism and innocence are inherently white supremacist ideologies. The former presumes that American national superiority should be appreciated by racially oppressed people regardless of their circumstances, and the latter assumes that past racist crimes have been rectified by the benevolence of institutions dominated by white America.

This is an exhaustive book; that represents perhaps the only viable criticism. Would the book benefit from being shorn of 40 pages? Maybe. It might have sped up an already fast read, and sharpened the narrative a bit. But the authors’ encyclopedic approach is part of its triumph as well. So overwhelmed is the reader by book’s end that one gets the feeling of having witnessed a long and brutal Guantanamo-like interrogation of the American body politic, its hands and feet manacled to an unadorned chair in a shadowy room, with Sirvent and Haiphong peppering the suspected terrorist with a series of leading and uncomfortable questions.

“American Exceptionalism” is a remarkable work of both scholarship and writing. In unfussy but searing language it identifies the cultural gene that distinguishes the white settler in the U.S. from kith and kin elsewhere in the New World. Anyone who has ever visited Argentina knows that Argentines are not without their biases—as Eva Peron, Adolf Eichmann and River versus Boca demonstrate—but perhaps because practically everyone who lives there today is white, they never felt the need to institutionalize their bigotry as a means of dividing the working class. Whatever the reason, it is tempting to reduce “American Exceptionalism’s” 360 pages to a single sentence plumbed from a book authored by Eichmann’s boss, Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”:

The great masses of the people… will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.



Jon Jeter is a former Washington Post bureau chief for southern Africa and South America, a producer for the popular documentary radio program “This American Life,” and the author of “Flat Broke in the Free Market: How Globalization Fleeced Working People,” and the co-author of “A Day Late and a Dollar Short: High Hopes and Deferred Dreams in Obama’s Post Racial America.”

 

 

French Paper: French Woman Claims Rape by Polanski in 1975

PARIS — A French woman in her early 60s claims she was violently raped at age 18 by Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski, a fugitive from the U.S. for more than four decades since pleading guilty to a sex offense with a minor, a French newspaper reported Friday.

Le Parisien said the woman, Valentine Monnier, alleges she was raped in 1975 at Polanski’s chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, when she was 18.

The paper quoted Polanski’s lawyer, Herve Temime, as saying that the 86-year-old Polanski “firmly contests” the allegation. The attorney could not be immediately reached by The Associated Press.

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Temime “deplored” in his response to the newspaper that the claim is being made public shortly before Polanski’s latest film, “J’Accuse” (An Officer and a Spy) is being released in France. Monnier told Le Parisien that it was the film that triggered her decision to go public, saying that “rape is a time bomb.”

AP does not normally disclose the identities of purported rape victims, but Monnier gave her consent to be identified by Le Parisien after contacting the paper in mid-September. The paper said she had previously written letters to the Los Angeles police, French first lady Brigitte Macron and others. One of several who responded was Marlene Schiappa, junior minister for gender equality, who noted the case was too old for judicial action.

Polanski’s latest film is the story of what is known as the Dreyfus Affair, the infamous 19th century scandal in France in which army Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, was wrongly convicted of treason. It underscored the failure of justice.

Monnier said publicity surrounding the film revived the “traumatic memory” of her encounter with Polanski, in particular what she claims was a comparison the filmmaker made in one interview of the relentless pursuit of Dreyfus to what he has been subjected to over the American case. Polanski pleaded guilty in the U.S. in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old, then fled to Europe the following year.

“Is this tenable, under the pretext of a film, the cover of history to hear ‘I accuse’ from the man who marked you like with iron when it is forbidden for you, the victim, to accuse him?” the paper quoted Monnier as saying.

Monnier, now 62, told the newspaper that the alleged episode occurred when a friend invited her to go skiing, with a stay in Polanski’s chalet.

According to her account, after a night run down the slopes, she and Polanski returned to the chalet to change. She said that he called to her to come, and when she did he was nude. She said he struck her, disrobed her, tried to make her swallow a pill and raped her.

Monnier said she feared for her life because “he can’t take the risk that this bcomes known.” But he also apologized immediately afterwards and cried, Le Parisien quoted her as saying.

Monnier said she “took refuge” with an acquaintance of Polanski — and contacted him for the first time a month ago, Le Parisien reported. The newspaper met with the man, who asked to remain anonymous, in his lawyer’s office.

“I asked Valentine if she wanted to go to the police … In shock, she didn’t know what to do,” the paper quoted the man as saying. He said he believed her story.

Another man contacted by Monnier, and by Le Parisien, former movie producer John Bentley, said he remembered her well. But he also said he not recall her saying that she had been raped, “or I would have done something.”

Polanski won the best director Oscar for “The Pianist” in 2003, and his films have been nominated for 28 Oscars. But he was expelled last year from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences over the U.S. case and lost an appeal to restore his membership this year.

Why Does the New York Times Hate the Democratic Base?

The New York Times’ Thomas Edsall has an axe to grind, and the paper loves to let him grind it. Edsall is convinced that the Democrats need to move to the center, in ways that will offend much of the party, in order to appeal to the moderate white “swing” voters he believes are the key to a Democratic victory in 2020.

“Democrats will have to tackle issues that may alienate — and even give offense to — progressives, women, Latinos and African-Americans,” Edsall preaches in his latest column (11/1/19). (Edsall repeatedly makes arguments like this, in which only cisgender, straight white men are never to be betrayed. See, for example, “What’s a Non-Racist Way to Appeal to Working-Class Whites? NYT’s Edsall Can’t Think of Any,” FAIR.org, 3/30/18, and “NYT Steers Dems Away From the Obvious Formula for Defeating Trump,” FAIR.org, 8/29/19.)

Why is Edsall so convinced of this strategy? Well, in this column, he looks at evidence that Trump won because of his “aversion to political correctness,” and concludes that jumping on that train is how Democrats will win back the “swing electorate.”

To help him interpret his data and figure out how to save the Democratic Party, Edsall turns to a real spectrum of experts: A “Republican lobbyist,” a “Republican pollster,” a “Republican consultant,” another “Republican consultant,” a “Republican Trump critic,” and the editor of a “site that features many anti-Trump conservatives.” Oh, and two professors to help balance things out—one of whom argues that “it would be utterly foolish for Democrats to…move the Democratic Party further leftward,” the other of whom worked for Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation.

At least as problematic, though, are the questions Edsall is asking. He plies these right-wing “experts” with questions about “why immigration, identity politics and political correctness remain problematic for Democrats.”

The problem here is twofold. First, persuading the “swing electorate” is not the only—or clearly best—way for Democrats to win, as the left always points out. The Times is not unaware of this, and in this instance they present Edsall’s argument as part of a package; it’s  accompanied in part by a column by Melanye Price (11/1/19), who makes the case for focusing on turning out the youth vote, which is increasingly not white, and increasingly leans heavily Democrat. (It’s worth noting that, while Price claims Elizabeth Warren and Julián Castro “seem most capable” of appealing to young people, Bernie Sanders has a much higher percentage of under-30 supporters—and supporters of color—than the other leading candidates.)

The demographic future of this country does not bode well for a party built on white supremacy, which is why the Republican Party is so intent on vote suppression—and why a massive get-out-the-vote strategy would virtually ensure Democratic victory. (Whether that’s what the Democratic Party establishment wants is another question.) Edsall himself actually acknowledges the turn-out-the-base option, but dismisses it with a quote from his anonymous Republican pollster: “Democrats should focus on persuasion, because Trump will take care of mobilizing his opponents.” If only it were so simple; ask Hillary Clinton about that one.

But second—and not countered by an accompanying column: The “swing electorate” that cares only about immigration and identity politics is a myth. People’s political opinions vary on a range of issues, so broad-brush labels like “liberal,” “moderate” and “conservative” are only so helpful in predicting what positions they hold or which issues are most important to them. The politics of a person who could vote in one election for Barack Obama and the next for Donald Trump obviously can’t be captured with such a label.

It’s true that Trump, more than any politician in recent US history, turns out voters based on “conservative” identity politics. But he courted those same white working-class voters by bucking GOP orthodoxy with “liberal” economic positions—most notably trade  protectionism, but also disingenuously attacking Wall Street and falsely promising to defend Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, which since the New Deal has been the party of labor, has long been shifting to the right on economic policy, abandoning one of its core constituencies.

Never mind that a wealth tax, proposed by both Sanders and Warren, is wildly popular among general election voters. Never mind that Medicare for All is also very popular—although recent polls (including one cited by Edsall) indicate that support may be weakening under the massive coordinated attacks on the plan from the deep-pocketed health industry and their lackeys from both parties and the corporate media (FAIR.org, 4/29/19, 10/2/19).

Edsall wants Democratic candidates to appeal to those white working-class voters, not by offering them real economic succor, but by throwing the rest of the party under the bus. Of course that’s what all the Inexplicable Republican Best Friends consulted by Edsall advise (many of whom are explicitly anti-Trump)—because doing so would essentially turn those candidates into models of the pre-Trump Republican Party.

And by “balancing” Edsall’s column with three other columns that make no mention of economics, class, wealth, poverty or inequality, the Times seems to be happily going along with the centrist smoke and mirrors.

The White Supremacist Group Hiding in Plain Sight

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

In the hours after the slaughter in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3, a final toll emerged: 22 dead, most of them Latinos, some Mexican nationals. A portrait of the gunman accused of killing them soon took shape: a 21-year-old from a suburb of Dallas who had been radicalized as a white supremacist online and who saw immigrants as a threat to the future of white America.

While much of the country reacted with a weary sense of sorrow and outrage, word of the mass killing was processed differently by members of Patriot Front, one of the more prominent white supremacist groups in the U.S.

In secret chat forums, some Patriot Front members embraced the spirit of the anti-immigrant manifesto left behind by the accused gunman. Others floated false conspiracy theories: the CIA was behind the murders; the accused killer was actually Jewish. Still other members cautioned that the group had its own “loose cannons” to worry about. It would be a bad look if the next mass murderer was one of their own.

But there was little, if any, regret over the loss of life.

“It shouldn’t be hard to believe that the group facing the harshest oppression from our ruling elite are producing shooters,” one Patriot Front member wrote. “White men are being slowly destroyed in a way calculated to produce resentment and a sense of helplessness. Of course, some of them decide to lash out.”

Several Patriot Front members alerted others to the need to be careful, for the killings in El Paso would likely make the group a target of the FBI.

“Watch your backs out there,” one wrote.

Patriot Front was formed in the aftermath of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. While many on America’s far-right cheered the rally, its violence struck others as a public-relations debacle for the white nationalist brand that was sure to attract greater oversight by law enforcement.

Patriot Front aspired to help chart a new way forward: spread propaganda espousing its version of a nascent American fascism; quietly recruit new members worried about a nation overrun by immigrants and a world controlled by Jews; avoid talking about guns or violence online, but engage in a mix of vandalism and intimidation to foster anxiety; wear masks in public and communicate secretly.

“The organization is not about its members,” the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, once wrote to its members in the secret chats. “It is about its goals. Each person behind the mask is just another awoken member of the nation, who could be anyone who’s had enough.”

ProPublica spent several months examining the makeup and operations of Patriot Front, which records suggest numbers about 300 members.

While the group is careful not to talk about guns online, two members in the last year have been arrested with arsenals of illegally owned high-powered rifles and other weapons. While many of the group’s propaganda “actions” are legal exercises of free speech, its members have been arrested in Boston and Denver in recent months for acts of vandalism. In Boston, three members engaged in a nighttime propaganda effort last winter were arrested on suspicion of weapons possession and assaulting a police officer. What the group touts as political protests have felt to those targeted like acts of menace, as was the case in San Antonio, Texas, last year when Patriot Front members filmed themselves trashing an encampment of immigration activists.

One person whose establishment was targeted by Patriot Front in recent months spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing the group’s return.

“Ordinarily would you call the police if somebody put a big sticker on your door? No,” the person said. “However, once you find out what this is all about, and who is involved, and what they are promoting? Then, yeah, now we are in hate speech space.”

To the Southern Poverty Law Center, Patriot Front is a white hate group and a genuine criminal threat. To some of the more avowedly violent neo-Nazi groups in the U.S., Patriot Front is a laughable collection of clowns and cowards, content to chat online and put up stickers while a race war awaits.

But for law enforcement, gauging how serious a threat Patriot Front might pose is difficult. Patriot Front shares qualities both with groups engaged in real domestic terrorism and with fringe political groups.

Asked about the group, the FBI issued a statement that reflected these complexities and the limitations they place on police agencies.

“When it comes to domestic terrorism, our investigations focus solely on the criminal activity of individuals — regardless of group membership — that appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce the civilian population or influence the policy of the government by intimidation or coercion. We would encourage you to keep in mind that membership in groups which espouse domestic extremist ideology is not illegal in and of itself — no matter how offensive their views might be to the majority of society.”

Rousseau, a Boy Scout and high school journalist before he founded Patriot Front, has much the same profile as the accused gunman in El Paso, Patrick Crusius: both grew up in middle-class suburbs of Dallas — Crusius in Allen, Rousseau 35 miles away in Grapevine; both were seen as unremarkable teenagers before being inculcated in their racist ideology online; both talk of a desire to reclaim America for “true” or “pure” patriots; both regard immigrants as a poisonous and present danger.

In the days after the rampage in El Paso, Rousseau told his members in the secret chats that such acts of wholesale violence were not for him. While fascist causes like Patriot Front’s could survive the blowback from such killings, he said, real success for the group would come from spreading its ideology and increasing its numbers. Of the alleged El Paso shooter, Rousseau wrote in a chat, “He’d have made more progress toward his goals by swallowing the first round in his magazine instead.”

In the months of chats obtained by ProPublica, Rousseau is by turns amateur philosopher and historian, as well as the group’s sole spokesman and its online policeman. He warns members that they will be kicked out if they don’t stay busy — pasting up flyers and conducting banner drops, joining street actions and posting regularly in the chat forums. He has put together a security guide to help Patriot Front members stay anonymous. He waxes admiringly about certain far-right groups in Europe, and he sees them as a model for how to become more serious political players in the years ahead. He has the secret chats routinely deleted, and he tells members to avoid ever writing or saying anything that might later be of interest to a prosecutor.

“It should be known,” he wrote to members recently, “that political dissidents are subject to unjust scrutiny.”

Pete Simi, a professor at Chapman University in California and an expert on white supremacists in the U.S., said Rousseau’s stewardship of Patriot Front is deeply familiar.

“It is very common for the leadership of these groups to disqualify violence, while doing things that are encouraging violence,” Simi said. “It is part of their strategy to avoid liability, while simultaneously promoting hate. When they say they are not violent, this is a lie. They are promoting violence by their goals.”

“Thomas’ Biggest Fear Is Someone Doing Something Crazy”

To gain an understanding of Patriot Front — its origins and ambitions, both the careful talk and the criminal behavior of its members — ProPublica examined hundreds of online postings, interviewed a person who infiltrated the group, obtained police records, reviewed its leader’s public statements online and in a variety of far-right podcasts, collected video material recorded both by the group and members of the public, and traveled to the homes of its founder and two of the members who had recently been arrested.

The person who infiltrated Patriot Front in recent years — posting in the group’s chats and accompanying it in its propaganda actions — sketched out a portrait of its members, which appear to be exclusively male:

They come from seven or eight regional “networks,” and the vast majority of them are recruited online; the typical member is around 25 years old and can be from blue-collar backgrounds or be working as “white-collar tech geeks”; many of them are gamers; few have wives or girlfriends; they can look like “the nerdy boys that sit next to you in high school,” but they clearly sympathize with “right-wing terrorism.”

The person who infiltrated Patriot Front said he applied for membership on the group’s website — the one with the mission statement written by Rousseau. American democracy was dead. The government had been taken over by Jews and other “elites.” Land claimed by descendants of the country’s original white settlers had been surrendered to immigrants of color. The dream was of a white ethnostate, in which all that was good and true and pioneering about the America of long ago could be restored.

The person who gained entrance to the group said Rousseau was one of three Patriot Front members who interviewed him on the telephone when he applied. He was asked to explain his political evolution, to say which political figures he hated and admired most, to state the circumstances in which the use of violence would be OK and to articulate the greatest threat to America. He was told Mussolini’s “The Doctrine of Fascism” would be required reading.

The chats reviewed by ProPublica show Rousseau spends lots of time online pressing members to take part in targeting streets, parks and colleges with the group’s propaganda. He and others delight in seeing their actions reflected in the SPLC’s nationwide map recording acts of hate and in the media. Last spring, the group tried to stage protests in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s offices in multiple cities, including New York.

“One minute of action is better than 10,000 books on ideology,” Rousseau told his members.

Rousseau, still a teen when he founded Patriot Front, makes clear in the secret chats reviewed by ProPublica that he is in charge, though he’s happy to go without a formal title.

“The title commander gives me bad flashbacks,” he wrote in a chat once. “If I absolutely had to have a title, it would probably be general director. But my name works just fine for now.”

The chats show some members regard Rousseau as a disciplined and effective spokesman for the group, and they appear to heed his repeated scoldings about preserving their anonymity.

“The enemy cannot attack you if they do not know who you are,” Rousseau wrote.

Using the pseudonym Samuel, a member from New York expanded on the idea in response.

“I would say the biggest accomplishment of masking up is obfuscating our total numbers,” he wrote. “We can make them feel as if there are thousands of us when it’s only a few hundred, and we could be anyone and no one. Next time they are at the CVS and see a white kid with a neat haircut, it could be us. Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all.”

Rousseau, when he isn’t criticizing members who violate the ban on talking about guns or violence, can often be found policing the group’s ideological thinking. Nazism, however popular among members, can’t now be the goal, Rousseau said.

“This is not Germany, this is not the 1930s,” he chastised. “Get a grip on the fact that we’re activists, not re-enactors trying to scratch some self-indulgent itch for a political fantasy.”

Rousseau conducts his online leadership from the home he shares with his divorced father in Grapevine, a largely white, solidly middle-class city between Dallas and Fort Worth. ProPublica went to see Rousseau there this summer, and we found the shades drawn in every window and a rusting boat filled with fallen leaves on the property.

Rousseau came to the door, but he closed it quickly and would not talk. The following day, the red sports car in the driveway had been reparked, making it hard to see the lone license plate on its rear end.

Interviews with people in and around Grapevine — those who went to school with Rousseau, those who participated in the Boy Scouts with him, a man who dated his mother — produced a unanimous sense of surprise that he’d started an organization committed to an all-white America.

He’d mixed easily with the diverse array of students at his high school, and while he was against gay marriage, he was regarded more as a nice, conservative boy than a threat. He wore his hair long, in braids or a bun, and was obsessed with working out and the state of his physique.

At the student newspaper, he wasn’t regarded as an impressive writer, but he won a national award for editorial cartooning. Classmates saw him as a lazy student and a bit of a loner, but he had a knack for argument and a stubborn streak about never being wrong. The school had its share of racial incidents, but he was never involved and wasn’t seen as condoning them.

When Donald Trump was elected president, some senior boys at the school made a show of chanting, “Build a wall.” Rousseau, for his part, was certainly an ardent Trump supporter — he wore a Make America Great Again hat and carried a Trump lunchbox. But his enthusiasm wasn’t seen as menacing.

“He seemed Republican, but he didn’t seem crazy, said one fellow student.

To someone who was with him in Boy Scouts, Rousseau seemed serious about the organization, and he was elected patrol leader. At the same time, Rousseau could be difficult with adults, developing what the person called an “authoritarian defiance.”

“I’m saddened,” the person said of Rousseau’s embrace of white supremacy.

Simi, the professor at Chapman University, said enough research exists on modern-day white supremacists to develop a profile: young men, isolated and angry in some way despite their relatively privileged upbringing in middle class or affluent circumstances, and vulnerable to invitations to join up with others with similar grievances.

In years past, Simi said, groups like Patriot Front used to recruit potential new members by waiting outside schools for the last children to leave, the loners wandering off long after the final bell. Now such groups don’t have to work so hard to find targets. They have the internet, Simi said.

“It is a central aspect of these groups to take the frustration and anger and combine it with the special feeling and insights of being part of a group,” he said.

Rousseau, then just 18, was in Charlottesville in 2017, marching in the “Unite the Right” rally as a member of Vanguard America. The Anti-Defamation League calls Vanguard America a neo-Nazi group formed in 2016 that, like Patriot Front after it, was chiefly engaged in spreading propaganda. James Fields, the white supremacist convicted of murdering a young protester at the Charlottesville event, was photographed there carrying a Vanguard America shield, though he was not a member of the group.

Vanguard America splintered after the debacle in Virginia. Some wanted to abandon efforts to disguise their Nazi leanings and simply be brazen in their public look and violent aims. Rousseau took a different tack, and he started Patriot Front as an ostensibly more strategic, savvy, careful alternative. It would embrace more homegrown symbols — the flag, the bald eagle and patriotic language. Such shifts might attract a wider membership.

“I did go to Charlottesville. Some bad activism there,” Rousseau wrote in one of the secret chats. “I’ve done my part to learn from my mistakes.”

While Rousseau publicly and in the chats reviewed by ProPublica disavows violence, some Patriot Front members have shown support for a white supremacist group that embraces it: the Rise Above Movement. Eight RAM members have been arrested on charges related to violence in Charlottesville and in California.

“Gotta love RAM,” a Tennessee member said in the chats. “I hope they see us as 100 percent allies.”

In the chat logs, a Patriot Front member from Texas provides a list of addresses for 11 people in prison or under house arrest, referring to them as “POWs.” The list includes four members of RAM, numerous men arrested for violence in Charlottesville including Fields, and an imprisoned white supremacist in California. The Texan urged Patriot Front members to write to the prisoners and provided links to send some prisoners money directly. He also listed a donation link for a fund tied to Augustus Sol Invictus, a lawyer known for defending white supremacists.

Later in the chats, a member from New York shared a link to a white supremacist online fundraiser, saying proceeds would be given to a legal fund for RAM. He then chimed in that nearly $2,000 had been donated. “When they crack down we double down and become stronger,” he said. “Hail Victory!”

Observers of white hate groups credit Rousseau as a talented in-fighter, and they portray his breakaway from Vanguard America as a shrewd coup.

According to the person who infiltrated Patriot Front, Rousseau worries greatly about his members making the worst strategic mistake: carrying out an act of terrible violence. It would end his group, he has said.

“Thomas’ biggest fear is someone doing something crazy,” said the person who infiltrated Patriot Front.

“We Are Regular People”

Jakub Zak was in bed in the Chicago suburb of Vernon Hills when police, accompanied by his father, shook him awake. The police had been told that Zak, 19, was a member of Patriot Front, and that he might have a stash of illegal guns.

“He appeared nervous and tried to cover a few items on his bed as he put on his blue jeans,” police records say.

The police, though, had a clear view of what couldn’t be hidden: a gun safe meant for rifles, as well as magazines of ammunition on the bedroom floor.

Zak asked his father to make the police leave. His father would not.

“I advised Jakub that we would like for him to be cooperative, and explained to him cooperation goes a long way,” one detective wrote in a formal report, dated April 2018. “I explained to him the decision is for him to make, and he should think what is best for him.”

Zak spoke with his father and then offered the code for the safe. If there were guns in the house, the police wrote, Zak’s father wanted them out.

The police found a loaded 9 mm pistol and then, in a second safe, four more guns, including three high-powered semiautomatic rifles. The police records show Zak’s only concern was whether he could get his case for carrying the guns back after their confiscation.

It is unclear when or how Zak joined Patriot Front. The initial tip sent to law enforcement identified him as a member, one who often posted in the secret chats under the pseudonym “Hussar.” Postings under that name — portions of which were first published by Unicorn Riot, the activist group — suggest Zak was a frequent participant in the group’s propaganda efforts in the streets.

Online, Zak posted a mix of Patriot Front slogans and images — “America: Revolution is tradition”; “Deport them all.” But there was also much more explicitly violent material: a young black man lying prone on the street and about to be stomped; a Glock pistol.

Zak, who had no prior criminal record, ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor gun possession charge and was sentenced to probation. Whether local police referred his case, and his affiliation with Patriot Front, to any other law enforcement agency is unclear.

But the basic facts of Zak’s case amount to one of the hard-to-identify, hard-to-quantify, hard-to-assess threats in the U.S. today: an enthusiastically racist young man exposed to a steady diet of like-minded white supremacists, who doesn’t find it terribly hard to get his hands on dangerous weapons. Crusius, the accused El Paso killer, had no prior record; he lived with his grandparents; his mother is reported to have anonymously called law enforcement, worried once her son had bought a gun, even if it was legal; the parents of a classmate of Crusius’ told a local news organization in Dallas that their son had been encouraged by Crusius to join him in a white supremacist group.

In a brief interview at their home in Vernon Hills, Zak’s parents would not let him be interviewed.

“There is nothing to talk about,” his mother said, claiming he was not a member of any white hate group. “He is going through rough times, and he is in a better place now. I don’t want to start anything. He is getting his life together and planning [for] the future.”

“We are regular people,” his father added.

Concerns about how effectively federal authorities have been in thwarting the threat of white supremacists extends back years, covering both Democratic and Republican administrations. In recent months, though, there has been a series of arrests suggesting that federal and local authorities are being more aggressive.

In a recent report, the Department of Homeland Security took care to restate the balance law enforcement has to strike.

“The Department must take care, while addressing the scourge of violence, to avoid stigmatizing populations, infringing on constitutional rights, or attempting to police what Americans should think,” the report said.

Last February, a Patriot Front member, Joffre Cross, was arrested on gun charges in Houston. At a probable cause hearing, authorities said they got on to Cross through phone records belonging to a white supremacist in Texas who was convicted on assault charges this year.

Cross, 33, fits what experts see as another familiar profile for potentially violent white supremacists: a former Army soldier whose association with white supremacists dates back to his active-duty days. Disaffected former soldiers are a prime recruiting target for white hate groups, prized for their gun and bomb training and their possible access to weapons. Cross, while on active duty, was convicted on drug charges and imprisoned for five years. As part of the investigation, the authorities developed information that he was eager to secure weapons for white supremacist groups.

Cross, who has pleaded not guilty, was charged with felony weapons possession after police found guns and body armor in his home.

“If you don’t know me,” Cross once posted on Instagram, “consider this your trigger warning.” Cross and his attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Cross is a regular participant on the Russian social media platform VK, whose terms of service about extremist content are not strictly enforced. His posts are rife with Nazi videos, Holocaust denial material and white supremacists beating protesters.

One post reads: “Help more bees; plant more trees; save the seas; shoot refugees.”

In the Patriot Front chats, Cross continued to post even after his arrest.

“We have to build a foundation that can weather any storm, anything they throw at us,” he wrote last April. “We just have to keep pushing.”

“In the Aggregate They Are Disturbing”

It was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend 2019 when 20 or so masked members of Patriot Front made their way onto a corner of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. They set off flares and smoke devices, delivered a short speech using a megaphone and fled. The police report said it lasted all of three minutes.

Blakely Lord, a high school English teacher, managed to capture the incident on video. In brief, she called the episode “profoundly disturbing.”

“I chose to film because you feel helpless,” Lord said. “I’m a dumpy middle-aged English teacher. I’m not going to get out my sword and face them down.”

She added, “I do think it’s a narrative people need to be thinking about: these little incidents may seem unimportant, but in the aggregate they are disturbing.”

Such disturbances — masked flash mobs, defacing property, distributing propaganda — are the day-to-day work of Patriot Front. Screaming outside an anarchist book fair in Texas. Plastering stickers across multiple store fronts on a busy block in Denver. Parading with flares at night in a public park in Boston. Posting an “America First” sticker at a gay pride center in Vermont. All in the last year.

Members give one another tips about where to place posters and stickers legally, and they urge one another to wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. But in practice, Patriot Front members frequently target storefronts or places of worship, which is vandalism. Additionally, many colleges and universities, another favorite target for postering, prohibit flyers from nonstudent groups. White supremacists see campuses as a strategic location for flyering: a place to recruit potential members while attracting press coverage to amplify their propaganda.

In Columbus, Georgia, three months ago, two Patriot Front members posted flyers on and around a local synagogue, Temple Israel. “Reclaim America,” read one. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of victory,” read another. And the address of Patriot Front’s website was printed at the bottom of the flyers. The temple’s leadership became aware of Patriot Front’s history and said it was clear the synagogue and its members were targeted because of their faith.

“To me, the sinister aspect is this particular group disguises themselves as patriots, Tiffany Broda, the temple’s president, told the Ledger-Enquirer last July. “Yet they are a hate group, a nationally recognized hate group. And though we don’t want to give them publicity, we think that it’s important to bring this out of the shadows.”

“Jews have been a part of Columbus almost since the founding of our city, which is almost 200 years ago,” Rabbi Beth Schwartz added. “We will remain vigilant as a congregation, vigilant as a Jewish community. We don’t hide our heads in fear.”

Patriot Front members make clear in their chats that such actions — almost always recorded by one of the masked members — have multiple aims: to frighten, to provide material for their own propaganda efforts on social media, and to recruit. The drive to recruit might help explain why college campuses are Patriot Front’s most common targets.

Late last month, Patriot Front launched what it claimed were coordinated actions to distribute flyers and stickers and posters at more than 100 campuses across the country. The group posted on Twitter what it said was evidence of success at 90 schools.

Michael Loadenthal, a visiting professor of sociology at Miami University in Ohio, said Patriot Front had recently been targeting the school.

“Fascists having a public presence is organizing; this is recruitment,” Loadenthal said, adding that the simple idea that “white supremacists are individually radicalized people in their basement at home is wrong.”

“They are a network,” he said. “No particular node is dangerous until they are.”

Simi, the professor in California, said Patriot Front had hit the campus of Chapman University three times in a single month recently. The school, he said, had set up a permanent conference dealing with the nation’s southern border, and Patriot Front had singled out posted materials related to the conference to be defaced or covered up.

“People on the campus get intimidated,” Simi said.

He said the school had to add security cameras and police protection.

“This is part of their strategy,” Simi said of Patriot Front. “These are things they want to happen.”

Thalia Beaty and Lucas Waldron contributed to this report.

Pentagon Issues Threat to Syrian Government

Pentagon officials asserted Thursday U.S. military authority over Syrian oil fields because U.S. forces are acting under the goal of “protecting Americans from terrorist activity” and would be within their rights to shoot a representative of the Syrian government who attempted to retake control over that country’s national resource.

The comments came from Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman and Navy Rear Admiral William D. Byrne Jr. during a press briefing in which the two men were asked repeatedly about the legal basis the U.S. is claiming to control Syrian oil fields.

The briefing came less than two weeks after Defense Secretary Mark Esper said, “That’s our mission, to secure the oil fields” in the Deir ez-Zor area of eastern Syria. President Donald Trump’s comments before and after that remark — “We’re going to be protecting [the oil], and we’ll be deciding what we’re going to do with it in the future,” and “The oil… can help us, because we should be able to take some”— were seized on by critics who claimed Trump was suggesting violating international law by plundering another country’s resources and openly saying the U.S. was pursuing war for oil.

Hoffman, in his comments Thursday, gave a different message—that “the revenue from this is not going to the U.S. This is going to the SDF,” referring to the Kurdish-led and U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces, who are battling ISIS. Byrne claimed that the U.S. has been waging the oil field control mission alongside SDF and that the goal was to prevent ISIS from obtaining the oil revenue.

But, as one reporter pointed out, ISIS fighters “have no armor. They have no aircraft.”

“Do they have the capability to actually seize the oil fields?” the reporter asked. “And isn’t this really about Russia and Syria seizing those oil fields?”

Hoffman replied that the goal was “to prevent a resurgence” of ISIS which would be facilitated if the terrorist group had access to the oil revenue.

When the Pentagon officials were pressed on whether “U.S. troops have the… authorization to shoot if a representative of the Syrian government comes to the.. oil fields and says, ‘I am here to take property of these oil fields,'” Byrne said, “our commanders always retain the right and the obligation of self-defense when faced with a hostile act or demonstrated hostile intent.”

The officials were reminded by a reporter that “the government of Syria is still, based on international law… [the] recognized legitimate government.” Hoffman said, “Everyone in the region knows where American forces are. We’re very clear with anyone in the region in working to deconflict where our forces are. If anyone—we work to ensure that… no one approaches or has—shows hostile intent to our forces, and if they do, our commanders maintain the right of self-defense.”

Hoffman later said that the oil field mission couldnt be separated from the fight to defeat ISIS. Operations in “Syria are done under the commander-in-chief’s authorities to—with regards to protecting Americans from terrorist activity.”

Pressed again by a reporter about the “legal basis for… the United States military to take and control the natural resources inside the boundaries of another country,” Hoffman responded, “the legal basis for this comes under the commander-in-chief’s authority for us to be conducting counter-terrorism efforts against D-ISIS. And I —I get your point when you’re trying to decouple the ISIS issue from the Syria issue, but it is not a decoupled issue.”

Later Hoffman was asked by a reporter if “President Trump [has] legal authority to take over these oil fields or is the United States stealing the oil?”

Hoffman repeated his stance that the operations were a part of the effort to defeat terrorists and stopping “ISIS from obtaining the oil fields is an effort to prevent them from obtaining revenue so that they can fund their terrorist operations globally.”

The Pentagon official also appeared to push back against the notion that the mission to control the oil fields is new. “Just to be clear, we’ve been in this area with the same mission of preventing ISIS from getting those oil fields for the last four years. This is not a new mission. Everybody seems to be—believe that that has changed. That is not —that is not the case.”

U.S. forces may also stay with that effort for years to come, Hoffman suggested.

“We’re committed to [the defeat of ISIS], and we’re committed to staying in the region,” he said. “We’re committed to, in this particular case, having troops in Syria in a way that helps us continue the D-ISIS mission as long as we believe it’s necessary.”

Bannon Says Stone Was Trump Campaign Link to WikiLeaks

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s campaign viewed Roger Stone as an “access point” to WikiLeaks and tried to use him to get advanced word about hacked emails damaging to Hillary Clinton that the anti-secrecy group released during the 2016 presidential race, a former top presidential adviser testified Friday.

In reluctant testimony, former campaign CEO Steve Bannon told a federal court that Stone, on trial for lying to Congress and witness tampering, had boasted about his ties to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, alerting them to pending new batches of damaging emails.

“The campaign had no official access to WikiLeaks or to Julian Assange,” Bannon told the court. “But Roger would be considered if we needed an access point.”

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It was the first time that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign acknowledged in court that they had actively sought material from WikiLeaks, which released material that U.S. intelligence agencies determined had been hacked by the Russian government in order to damage Clinton.

The White House had no immediate comment.

Stone, a colorful political operative and Trump ally, is charged with witness tampering and lying to Congress about his attempts to contacts WikiLeaks about the damaging material during the 2016 presidential campaign.

While Stone repeatedly “implied that he had a connection with WikiLeaks,” he never stated it directly, Bannon said.

The campaign took Stone’s boasts seriously enough to follow up, asking why expected information about Clinton wasn’t revealed when Assange held a press conference in October 2016.

Bannon, who testified in response to a subpoena, did not say anything about Trump and said Stone had not been sent by anyone on the campaign to talk to Assange.

Earlier this week, a former FBI agent testified about a flurry of phone calls between Stone and then-candidate Trump — including three calls on July 14, 2016 — the day that a massive hack of the Democratic National Committee’s servers was reported. But the agent said she did not know what was discussed on those calls.

As he left the courthouse, Bannon griped about being subpoenaed by prosecutors and Congress in addition to being interviewed several times by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team as it investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“I was forced and compelled to come here today,” he said as he climbed into a waiting SUV outside the courthouse.

Bannon’s testimony came after comedian and radio talk show Randy Creidco told jurors that Stone pressured him into backing up lies he told Congress, threatening to take away his dog at one point. Credico said Stone pressed him to “go along” with a false account of the operative’s contacts with WikiLeaks during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

“He wanted me to go along with this narrative,” Credico said in his second day of testimony.

Stone called a Credico a “rat” and a “stoolie” in a threatening April 2018 email. Credico also testified that Stone used repeated references from the movie “The Godfather Part II” to intimidate him into either backing up Stone’s testimony to Congress or refusing to testify.

“My lawyers are dying to rip you to shreds. I’m going to take that dog away from you,” he said in the email, which Credico read aloud in court. And while Credico testified he considered the threat “hyperbole,” he also said that Stone “plays hardball” and “I did not want to rile the guy.”

The radio host told the court he’s had his dog Bianca, a small breed known as a coton de tulear, since 2006. “I have no wife, no kids, I’ve been around the dog for 12 years,” he said.

Credico has occasionally provoked laughter in court and warnings from the judge.

Thursday’s testimony detailed the acrimonious collapse of the relationship between the liberal Credico and Stone, a longtime conservative operative who revered Richard Nixon so much that he has the disgraced former president’s face tattooed on his back.

Credico and Stone met in 2002 through the campaign of a third-party candidate for New York governor. Despite their political differences, Stone was a regular guest on Credico’s radio show.

“He’s good on radio,” Credico said of Stone. “He’s a good guest to have on.”

Stone, a longtime Trump confidant and conservative operative who has a tattoo of former president Richard Nixon’s face on his back, is accused of telling Congress that Credico was the source of his inside information about WikiLeaks. But Credico said he and Stone never discussed WikiLeaks before late August 2016, making it impossible that he was the “trusted intermediary” that Stone had been referring to for months.

Credico did manage to contact Assange through mutual acquaintance Margaret Kunstler, and hosted Assange on his radio show on Aug. 25, 2016. He says Stone, who had already claimed in interviews to have a back-channel link to Assange, immediately started asking Credico to put him in touch with Assange.

Prosecutors have said Stone lied about his efforts to learn more about the WikiLeaks releases because the truth about his efforts would “look bad” for Trump.

In an often-testy cross examination, defense attorney Robert Buschel tried to paint Stone as the victim of a con job by Credico, saying that the radio host repeatedly lied to Stone to exaggerate his connection and influence with Assange.

They went through the pair’s text exchanges before Credico’s September 2016 trip to London. Credico wrote to Stone that a meeting with Assange, who was sheltering from prosecution in the Ecuadoran embassy, was “on the agenda.” In reality, there was no meeting planned and the closest Credico got to Assange was delivering a letter from his radio station’s administration to the embassy offering Assange a show on their channel.

Credico said Stone was pestering him with requests and that he led Stone to believe he was working on making contact with Assange “just to satisfy him and get him off my back.”

Stone’s trial is scheduled to resume on Tuesday.

Private Equity is Bleeding American Society Dry

What follows is a conversation between journalist Kim Kelly and Marc Steiner of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

MARC STEINER: Welcome to The Real News, folks. This is Marc Steiner. Good to have you with us.

I have a guess many of you have been reading about what happened to Deadspin, the sports site where writers gave the middle finger to the owners who tried to stop them from being political. They didn’t want them write political stuff, just sports stuff straight. Well, they did that. And let’s think about these private equity firms for a minute. They are vampires sucking the lifeblood out of our country, businesses, and the workers. The analogy is really apt. Private equity capitalists symbolize, let’s say–I found this out in an article I just read; we’re about to talk to the author–the 16th century Countess Bathory who bathed in the blood of young girls, or the vampire stories from every country on the planet.

Our guest they put these analogies together in a bold context when she wrote about the destruction of the sports website Deadspin. And she looked beyond that; looked at the role of these venture vampire capitalists and what they do in our world, what they play in our world, what they’re doing to our world. So I want to welcome Kim Kelly back to The Real News, who wrote the article This Is a Horror Story: How Private Equity Vampires Are Killing Everything, for The Nation magazine. And Kim, welcome. Good to have you with us.

KIM KELLY: Thanks, Marc. Thanks for being interested in my weird bloody little tale.

MARC STEINER: It was very strange article, but a really good article. I love the analogy. So let’s take a step back for just a second. So you took these, we’ll probably jumped into who these private equity people are and what they’ve done, what happened to Deadspin directly. You create this analogy, this historical analogy with both a mythology and reality of vampires in our world, wherever culture they came from, to what private equity people are doing to our world today. So talk about how that came to you. How did that come into your head? And as you told me before, you said three in the morning, which is probably a very apt time to write it.

KIM KELLY: Even better. I’m not going to lie to you. I wrote this on Halloween, which sounds a little too on the nose, right?

MARC STEINER: I love it. That’s great.

KIM KELLY: I mean, the piece came about because some editors of The Nation hit me up and said, “We saw what’s happening with Deadspin. Do you want to write a piece for us about this?” Because I’m a labor reporter and that’s sort of what we do. This is very much in my realm, given that I came out of the digital media organizing world. I used to work at Vice, I was an organizer there–yada, yada, yada. So they asked me if I wanted to do this and I was thinking about it. I was like, “Well, what’s a way that I could write about this in a way that was new; that was interesting; that wasn’t the same piece that was being written because it was a huge story, because it was such a huge event?”

But I started thinking about these “capitalist vampires.” I was like, “Hang on… vampires.” Because we see, even just on Twitter, the way people speak about private equity and the general capitalist class; they’re vampires, they’re bloodsuckers, they’re leeches. This is the language that makes sense when you think about the way that capitalism is structured; the way that these people, these robber barons at the top, are dealing with the working class. But I kept going back to the vampires. And it was Halloween, so maybe I was feeling a little spookier than usual. And I just started thinking about how this is a horror story.

Like what’s happening here: these craven aristocratic jerks are literally sucking the life blood away from workers who don’t have any much more of a defense than a metaphorical pitchfork. And they’ve been allowed to do it for centuries, since time immemorial, since way back in the 16th century when Countess Bathory was out there in her dungeon. And we just see the same story over and over again. It’s almost become its own legend, the private equity vampire. So that’s what I was thinking about when I approached this piece, and I just rode that metaphor out to the very end.

MARC STEINER: Yeah, you’re certainly did. As I said, I love this piece. But let’s just talk a bit about… You were commissioned to write a piece about Deadspin, which we’ve been talking about here, at Real News for the last couple of weeks in what’s happened to the workers at Deadspin. And so that’s where this began, right? And I was shocked. I did not know the whole backstory of Deadspin and the other online magazines and news journals that are owned by the same companies. Talk a bit about that story and how this is private equity, owning all of these kinds of new sites and what they’re, what they’re doing to suck the lifeblood out of our work as journalists and Americans who want to read this stuff.

KIM KELLY: Right. I mean we’re seeing it play out across various industries, but right now it’s just really blatant and concerning in media. Specifically in digital media where you have these private equity firms and soulless billionaires who swoop in and they buy a website or package of websites, and then they decide to either scrap it and sell it for parts or try to remake it in their own image. And what happened with Deadspin was other workers resisted. They weren’t willing to be led to the slaughter. They fought back. And we’re at a point where the free press is under attack from the highest office in the land. Just in general, journalism is in a crisis. And now we’re seeing the economic side of this crisis where it’s difficult for digital media publishers to make money, and so they’re looking for other ways to acquire that capital.

And this is where private equity comes in. They come in: they’ve got all this money, they’re going to sweep you off your feet, they’re going to get you out of bankruptcy, they’re going to fix everything. And then, they acquire these independent, thriving websites and then they just suck the blood out of them and toss them aside. And what happened with Deadspin, the reason people are so captivated, is because they disrupted that narrative. That’s the horror story. The vampire comes in and sucks away your blood and that leaves you lifeless. In this case, the villagers fought back and that’s why people are responding so viscerally to it.

MARC STEINER: So talk about the company that actually bought these sites. It was more than just Deadspin. I didn’t realize the sites, that some of them… I read they own this long list of sites of all kinds. So tell me a bit about that company and what exactly they did.

KIM KELLY: It’s a whole constellation, right? This company is now known as G/O Media, which is run by the CEO Jim Spanfeller who is a Forbes guy who came in and bought up. It’s like Jezebel, Kotaku, The Route, Splinter, was Deadspin, Life Hacker. This whole constellation of former Gawker media sites except Gawker… You know, R.I.P. And they were all swept under this deal after this Peter Thiel-funded Hulk Hogan chaotic situation where the company was sued out of existence. Jim Spanfeller came in and this was… man, it’s been a crazy one, right? Because it was Gawker media, and then Univision bought this damaged company and then Univision couldn’t figure out what to do with these websites and they weren’t making the kind of money they wanted to see.

And so Jim Spanfeller swept in. He bought all these websites and it seems like from reading some really incredible reporting that now former Deadspin writers and Splinter writers within the organization wrote about what that process was then like, it seems like they just came in and screwed everything up. It seems like this man, he came in and installed a bunch of his cronies from Forbes, who I mean, that’s Forbes is doing its thing, or no disrespect to Forbes, but oops. And the Deadspin and Splinter and the Gawker media verse, they’re intrinsically… They’re diametrically opposed. So they came in and they essentially wanted to quash worker descent and quash all of this sort of fiery irreverent vibe that everybody working there had. Because it was a beautiful collection of weirdos.

And they ended up killing off Splinter, which was a really… It was a fantastic sports–or not sports. That was the next one. It was a fantastic political commentary site and they just killed it off. And then they came for Deadspin. And I think the people that Deadspin sort of saw the writing on the wall and they knew something was up; something bad was going to happen. And then it all happened so quickly and so chaotically and so definitively that now Deadspin–I mean, to reference another horror trope–Deadspin is just a zombie. And everyone else, everyone who used to work there, is gone.

MARC STEINER: So you mentioned a lot of other equity firms that took over many things in our country, from grocery store chains to retail, and just putting everyone out of work. Tens of tens of thousands of people we put out of work because of the equity firms buying and pushing people out, which is why I thought it was the analogy to vampires was very apt.So you can talk a bit about that? But also just what happens in our country when private equity takes over all these companies, shuts them down because there are not the kind of profits they want to make. Thousands of people thrown out of work. This is the 21st century version of the gilded age, what’s happening to people out in America and around this world. So what do you do? And talk a bit about some of the examples that you gave. But also, what we do to drive a stick through the heart of these equity firms and stop them from destroying what we have?

KIM KELLY: Yeah, you’re entirely right. We’re basically in a new gilded age and these are the robber barons. And back then, the only thing that really happened to rein them in was increased government regulation and antitrust laws. And now we’re at a point where regulation is a dirty word because of the current administration who seem to just love making it as terrible as possible for working people to survive. So we’re in a place where we have these private equity firms, they’re buying up digital media properties, but they’re also buying up hospitals. They’re buying up nursing home chains. They’re buying up places where you get payday loans, they’re buying up… They even bought the Playboy mansion.

There’s every possible area of American economic industry, they’re there. They’re lying in wait. They might be in the shadows, they might be waiting, they might not have struck yet, but they’re going to. And the only way, like I said, at the end of the piece, my original ending was a little strong, I think, for my editor who asked me to tone it down. Because my first ending was more along the lines of, well, we need to bring back the guillotine. And my editor was like, “Well let’s maybe think about a different way to say that because we can’t advocate for mass murder.” You’re the editor. That’s the only way you can really rein in these sort of vicious corporate raiders is to regulate the hell out of them.

MARC STEINER: So what would be the guillotine?

KIM KELLY: I mean, remember the French revolution?

MARC STEINER: I don’t know, other than really chopping off their heads. What would be the guillotine in your mind? What would it be? I mean, in other words, if you look at what happened to Deadspin and all the other companies you talked about, hospitals being shut down to be made into condos or whatever they want to make them into, in poor black and Latino communities, all the stuff you wrote about in this article… So there has to be a way to stop them. There has to be a way to say no, this is not the kind of world we’re going to have. So what is that guillotine? What is that stake in the heart of the vampire on the coffin? For you, what is that?

KIM KELLY: That’s a really difficult question, right? Like, how do I solve capitalism?

MARC STEINER: Yes. How do you solve capitalism? Let me ask that right now. How do you solve capitalism?

KIM KELLY: I mean that is always the question, right? Here is this horrible thing that’s happening. We don’t know how to stop it. What can we do to put the brakes on the speeding train? And I don’t have the answer either. I think in terms of private equity, I’m not as studied in the economic, scary weird numbers realm as they are. I don’t know how to deal with rich people. But I think Deadspin… What happened to Deadspin is a really good example of the kind of thing that we can be doing. The only way we can actually fight back is if we’re relying on collective worker power.

When you look at what happened with Toys”R”Us, when they were bought up and then driven into bankruptcy by more of these vampires and they were deprived of the severance pay that they were owed, they came together and they fought back. They sued the bejesus out of them and they finally got their money. It’s like what we saw with the black jewel miners. That wasn’t a private equity situation, but it was still a situation where this big horrible company with a whole lot of money was withholding those funds from the workers who actually earned it and created that capital. And they were like, well, we’re not going to let you get away with that. We were going to do something about it. We can’t allow these vampires to continue to stalk the world unopposed, right?

Even going back to this old analogy–and it’s not quite the vampire analogy, it’s a little bit more Frankensteiny. But what happens when there’s a monster in your midst? You gather your friends, you gather some pitchforks and you do what you can to get them out of your hair, right? It is a big question, but I think really all we can do is realize that you can still kill a vampire, right? There are wooden stakes, then there are silver bullets and there’s garlic. And to translate that into real world terms, there are unionizing your workplace and talking to your coworkers and refusing to take this BS lying down. It’s been a great example of that. Just being like, “You know what? No, we’re not going to let you walk all over us. We’re going to walk all over you first.”

MARC STEINER: Yeah. And as you were saying, the stake in the heart is workers organizing themselves and being strong, and regulating these industries so they can not do what they do and not allow them to do it in the first place. Make it against the law, not allow them to do it. And for me, it’s really refreshing, Kim, to have somebody of your generation and all these young people coming up and really writing about labor and doing the fight, which is really important. So I’m glad you’re out there writing about vampires and equity capitalists. And we look forward to talking to you a great deal more.

KIM KELLY: Thank you so much for having me.

MARC STEINER: Thanks for your writing. And I’m Marc Steiner here with The Real News network. Let us know what you think. We’ll have Kim Kelly and more folks like Kim Kelly on this network so we can really make some changes. Take care.

Trump Launches Outreach Effort to Black Americans for 2020

ATLANTA — During the 2016 campaign, candidate Donald Trump stood in front of largely white crowds and asked black voters to consider, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Four years later, the president has a new message for black voters: Look what I’ve delivered.

Trump and his campaign launched a new “Black Voices for Trump” outreach initiative in Atlanta on Friday dedicated to “recruiting and activating Black Americans in support of President Trump,” according to the campaign. Much of that effort will focus on highlighting ways that African Americans have benefited from the Trump economy, according to advisers.

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The Racist Right Has Been Searching For Trump All Along



by Paul Street

“The support we’re getting from the African American community has been overwhelming,” Trump told the crowd, which included supporters wearing red “BLACK LIVES MAGA” hats.

He predicted victory in 2020, and said, “We’re going to do it with a groundswell of support from hardworking African American patriots.”

That prediction is met with skepticism from critics, however, given Trump’s consistently dismal approval rating with black voters, who overwhelmingly disapprove of the job he’s doing.

Trump has spent much of the last four years engaged in racially charged attacks, going after minority members of Congress, claiming “no human being” would want to live in rat “infested,” majority-minority Baltimore and claiming that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the deadly Charlottesville protest against white supremacists.

Shortly after landing in Georgia on Friday, Trump retweeted a call from one black supporter for submissions for a “#MAGACHALLENGE” competition featuring Trump-friendly rap songs. Trump said he would be announcing the winners and inviting them to the White House to meet with him and perform.

“I think black Americans are not the audience for these outreach efforts,” said Theodore Johnson, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who is an expert in race and politics. While Trump might be able to maintain the low level of black support he received in 2016, or perhaps expand it by one or two points, he sees little evidence the president can change many minds.

“I think this is not going to move the needle at all,” Johnson said.

Before launching the new effort, Trump met with supporters at a fundraiser that was expected to raise about $3.5 million for a joint committee benefiting the Republican National Committee, the Trump campaign and the campaign of Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga. Nearby, a small group of protesters chanted, “Lock him up!”

Scores of protesters also gathered outside the convention center where Trump was speaking, chanting, “Impeach and remove.”

Carl Dix, of the group Refuse Fascism, said he thought the launch was aimed at trying to send a message to Trump’s white supporters that he’s “not a racist. ‘I’ve got black friends.'”

In 2016, 6% of black voters supported Trump, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of people who participated in its polls and were confirmed to have voted. There is no indication his support is growing. Polling shows that African Americans continue to be overwhelmingly negative in their assessments of the president’s performance, with his approval hovering around 1 in 10 over the course of his presidency, according to Gallup.

Yet Trump’s campaign dismissed the numbers, insisting the campaign has seen favorable movement and arguing the president can increase his margins with black voters by bringing new people into the fold.

“The polls have never been favorable for Trump, and the only poll that matters is on Election Day,” said senior campaign adviser Katrina Pierson.

The campaign has launched similar coalitions for women, Latinos and veterans.

Darrell Scott, a black Ohio pastor and a longtime supporter of the president who is co-chair of the new coalition and spoke at Friday’s event, said that in 2015 and 2016, supporters trying to sell Trump to black voters could only point forward to share things they anticipated from Trump.

“Now that it’s 2020, we’re able to point backwards and to some very definitive accomplishments that the president has done,” Scott said. “He delivered on promises he didn’t even make.”

The campaign and White House point to a list of achievements, including passage of bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation, which Trump signed into law last year, along with his ongoing support for opportunity zones in urban areas and new investments in historically black colleges.

“I don’t know anyone who’s done that kind of work outside of the president on attacking those big issues or trying to stop drugs from coming into the neighborhood and, at the same time, giving people second chances,” said Ja’Ron Smith, deputy assistant to the president and one of the White House’s few minority high-ranked officials.

Advisers also point to a series of economic gains, including the fact that black unemployment hit a record low last year, with fewer blacks living in poverty. But Trump and his campaign also have a tendency to exaggerate the gains, giving Trump credit for trends that were years in the making, seizing on momentary upticks, cherry-picking favorable statistics and ignoring more troubling ones, such as black home ownership and net worth.

Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass, D-Calif., said Thursday that contrary to Trump’s claims, in the three years of his presidency, African Americans have lost a lot.

“He has never had support from African Americans, but what we know about the president is that he will lie and say that he has,” said Bass, who noted that Trump rarely appears before black audiences.

“He has to identify a handful of African Americans and take them with him wherever he goes,” she said.

If he were any other Republican incumbent who inherited declining unemployment numbers and was able to sustain them, Trump would have a legitimate case to make to black voters, said Republican strategist Shermichael Singleton. But “because of some of his racial pronouncements … I think a significant percentage of African Americans are completely turned off.”

A September AP-NORC poll found that only roughly 3 in 10 Americans say the things Trump has done as president have been good for African Americans. And just 4% of African Americans said they think Trump’s actions have had a positive impact on African Americans in general, while 81% said they think they’ve been bad.

Yet even if he can’t win over black voters, some suspect that’s not the point. As long as the campaign can keep on-the-fence voters from casting their ballots for the eventual Democratic nominee, the campaign will be helping Trump inch closer to a second victory.

Some analysts have pointed to a precipitous drop in black turnout in 2016 as one of the reasons Trump beat his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who was far less popular — especially among black men —than former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 60% of non-Hispanic blacks voted in 2016, versus about 67% in 2012. And that drop was seen in cities with significant African American populations in critical swing states that helped Trump eke out a victory.

“I do think the main objective is to discourage turnout,” said Johnson. “I absolutely think this is about creating doubt in black voters’ minds about the Democratic nominee” so people feel like “there’s almost no one worth voting for.”

And he said that fears were growing it might work.

“There is a pretty tangible fear among black Americans that Trump is going to win again because black turnout won’t be enough to mute the white turnout,” he said. “There’s a sense that in 2020 he’s going to win again.”

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Haines reported from Philadelphia and Colvin from Washington. Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.

Ralph Nader: The World Is Waiting for America to Rise Up

Around the world people are marching, rallying, and demonstrating in huge numbers. Some of these countries are ruled by dictators or plutocratic regimes, others are considered democracies. Despite the peril of protest, people are seeking justice, freedom, and decent livelihoods.

Many boast about the United States being the oldest democracy in the world. While there are some street protests in the US, they are sadly too few and far between. Rallies calling attention to climate disruption have received less public support and media attention than they deserve. Likewise, the Parkland rally in Washington, D.C., against gun violence could have received more follow up publicity. And we all remember the massive women’s march the day after Trump was inaugurated in Washington, D.C. The subsequent women’s marches have attracted smaller crowds and therefore less media coverage.

It is not as if our country doesn’t have a historic tradition of sustained demonstrations. Mass protests have carried the labor movement, the farmer movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement to breakthroughs. These mass protests alone were not the sole drivers of political action—books, articles, editorials, pamphlets, posters, and litigation were essential. But visible displays of aggregated people power had a profound effect on those politicians’ actions. When politicians put their fingers to the wind, the repeated rumble from the masses is what fills the sails of change.

It is not as if mass injustices are absent in the “land of the free, home of the brave.” Sadly, the informed populace is just not showing up in an organized, big crowd fashion—the way they did to challenge the nuclear arms race and nuclear power in the nineteen seventies and eighties. In the era of the iPhone and Internet, activists have greater access to organizing tools than ever—no postage stamps or costly long-distance telephone calls are needed.

Consider these candidates for mass demonstrations proximate to where the decision makers are located. Millions of young people are being gouged by student loan creditors and for-profit colleges. Whether it is the U.S. Department of Education’s high interest rates or the exploitation by for-profit universities, the abuses are outrageous, cruel, and in the latter case, often criminal.

Total outstanding student loans amount to over $1.5 trillion. These burdened young Americans know how to contact each other for free; they also can raise money instantly using new crowdfunding technology. They know how to use the visual arts and the verbal arts. Congress can reverse the predatory practices in higher education. Where is the advocacy from millions of student loan debtors? They could have a huge impact if they surrounded the Capitol or held smaller rallies around Congressional offices back home, especially in the coming election year.

Millions of workers are making, inflation adjusted, less than workers made in 1968. The federal minimum wage, frozen at $7.25, is the culprit. The House of Representatives finally bestirred itself to pass a $15 minimum wage stretched over a number of years. But when the Walmart-indentured members of the Senate look out their windows, it would be nice to see masses of workers surrounding their Senate offices, prior to some insistent personal lobbying?

There are no labor mass rallies in front of Trump’s anti-labor White House either, even though, the headquarters of the AFL-CIO are just yards away on 16th Street NW. The face-off of AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka v. Donald Trump is overdue.

Millions of minorities are suffering voter suppression. Civil rights leaders are angry. They anticipate Republicans at the state and federal level to again erect all kinds of insidious roadblocks that disproportionately affect people of color the most. Abuses in the Florida and Georgia races were rampant in 2018. Presidential races in swing states are also plagued by voter suppression tactics. All signs point to a more intrusive stripping of eligible voters in the 2020 election.

Where are the marches before the offices of the state secretary of state and culpable legislators and Governors headquarters?

A quarter of our country’s families are poor. A Poor People’s Campaign, led by the Reverend William Barber and local pastors, has been protesting in the streets in North Carolina and other states. Their protests deserve far greater attendance. The media has given them too little coverage. But if there were massive demonstrations in major cities and before state legislatures and the Congress, with coordinated demands and large photographs of key politicians fronting for the rich and powerful, will get mass media coverage.

Tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance or are severely underinsured. Thousands of lives are lost annually as a result. This is a problem in America but not other developed nations that have systems in place that prioritize their citizens’ health. Getting sick or injured without medical care is far too frequent in the U.S. Those who suffer from this deprivation can be motivated to take to the streets. The health care industry’s soaring profits and their mega-rich bosses should move additional Americans to rally for Medicare-for-All!

These rallies can be led by physicians and nurses, tired of the paperwork, the bureaucracy, and the health insurance companies denying access to health care for their patients and arbitrarily rejecting doctor-recommended treatments.

In the nineteen forties, President Harry Truman proposed to Congress universal health insurance. Americans still do not have Medicare-for-All and are paying the highest prices, premiums, and out of pocket bills in the world—not to mention the human suffering caused by an inadequate healthcare system.

What a great street story for television, radio, and print newspapers! Think of the tragic human interest stories, straight from the heart by mothers and fathers with children having limited or no access to health care.

Other marches can come from the homeless and the desperate tenants spending over half their income on rent in the many communities where there is a shortage of affordable housing.

All these mass turnouts can pass contribution buckets or tout websites and raise money from the crowds for the next round of even larger protests. At each event, a list of demands can be presented to decision-makers. At each event, protestors can go to the offices where the decision-makers are or insist that these lawmakers speak to the assembled protestors.

There are many innovations to make these action rallies more impactful, more motivating, and more mass-media-centric. There also have to be some enlightened billionaires, worried about their country and their descendants, who want to provide the modest amount of money necessary for event organizers and focused political action. Show up America!

Bolton Has ‘Relevant’ Information in Impeachment Probe

WASHINGTON — The Latest on President Donald Trump and the House impeachment inquiry (all times local):

3:15 p.m.

Former national security adviser John Bolton has information about “many relevant meetings and conversations” related to Ukraine that House impeachment investigators have not yet heard testimony about.

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That’s according to a letter that Bolton’s attorney, Charles Cooper, sent Friday to the House that suggests Bolton would appear in the probe only if a court orders him to do so.

In the letter, Cooper says there’s a tall barrier to forcing Bolton and his former deputy, Charles Kupperman, to testify because any testimony that they would give would implicate sensitive matters of national security and foreign affairs. Kupperman has sued to request a judge’s guidance on whether he can be forced to appear.

The letter says both Bolton and Kupperman are prepared to appear if a federal judge resolved the dispute in Congress’s favor.

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2:10 p.m.

Two national security officials who testified before House impeachment investigators say there was no evidence to suggest Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Both Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill, whose transcripts were released Friday, said there was no basis for the suggestion.

Hill was the senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council. She described the idea as “fiction” that Ukrainians were looking “to mess with our Democratic systems.”

She said that other national security officials had tried to explain to President Donald Trump that it wasn’t plausible.

She called it a debunked theory and said officials were disheartened to see the president suggest it to Ukraine’s new president when they spoke.

Vindman, an Army officer also assigned to the NSC, said he was unaware of any “authoritative basis” for the theory.

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1:45 p.m.

A national security official told House impeachment investigators the transcript of the July 25 call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader at the center of the probe was edited to remove a reference to the energy company with ties to Joe Biden’s son.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman said it seemed that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had been prepped for the call with Trump. He said that Zelenskiy specifically referenced looking into the situation with Burisma, the company linked to Hunter Biden.

But Vindman said the rough transcript was edited to read: “the company.”

Vindman also said the editing process for the rough transcript of the call went through a different, more secure system. And he had a difficult time logging into the system and had to get a hard copy and make edits on paper.

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1:40 p.m.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has appointed one of President Donald Trump’s strongest defenders to the House intelligence committee days before the panel begins public impeachment hearings against him.

McCarthy announced Friday that Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan is joining the committee and another member, Arkansas Rep. Rick Crawford, is “temporarily stepping aside.” Crawford will rejoin the panel after impeachment, McCarthy said.

Jordan is the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee and has been the top GOP spokesman as the intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees have led closed-door depositions with impeachment witnesses. Only the House intelligence panel is holding the public hearings, a move that shut Jordan out of the process.

McCarthy said Jordan “has been on the front lines in the fight for fairness and truth.”

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1:20 p.m.

A national security official called in to testify before House committees on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump says a diplomat specifically mentioned that the Ukrainians would have to investigate the Bidens.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman says in testimony that there was “no ambiguity.”

He says the conversation happened during a White House meeting with Ambassador Gordon Sondland, Ukrainian officials and others.

Transcript of Vindman’s testimony was released Friday.

Vindman is an Army officer assigned to the National Security Council.

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12:35 p.m.

House Democrats have released two new transcripts as they wrap up closed-door depositions in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump.

Impeachment investigators released the testimony of Fiona Hill, a former White House Russia adviser, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer assigned to the National Security Council. Both testified about their concerns as Trump pushed Ukraine for investigations of Democrats.

Vindman listened in to the July 25 call where Trump personally appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the investigations of political rival Joe Biden and his family and also Ukraine’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

A whistleblower’s complaint about that call triggered the impeachment probe.

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10 a.m.

President Donald Trump says he’s considering releasing the transcript of an April call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He says that, if House investigators want to see a summary of the April 21 call, he has “no problem” giving it to them.

That call came three months before the July 25 call that sparked the impeachment inquiry into his efforts to push Zelenskiy to investigate his political rivals.

Trump on Friday also dismissed the significance of the impeachment inquiry testimony that has been released so far as he left the White House for a trip to Georgia.

He says, “No one seems to have any first-hand knowledge” and claims that, “Every one of those people canceled themselves out.”

He’s also criticizing Democrats in the House for planning public hearings, even though the White House pushed for them to happen.

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1:05 a.m.

There were three words President Donald Trump wanted to hear from the Ukraine president: Investigations, Biden, Clinton.

That’s according to the transcript, released Thursday, of an impeachment inquiry interview with career State Department official George Kent.

Kent told investigators that that was his understanding of what Trump wanted Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to say in order to unlock U.S. military aid, as relayed to the official by others, including those in direct contact with the president.