The rise of fascism scores another victory.

A federal jury in Las Vegas refused Tuesday to convict four defendants who were retried on accusations that they threatened and assaulted federal agents by wielding assault weapons in a 2014 confrontation to stop a cattle roundup near the Nevada ranch of states’ rights figure Cliven Bundy.

In a stunning setback to federal prosecutors planning to try the Bundy family patriarch and two adult sons later this year, the jury acquitted Ricky Lovelien and Steven Stewart of all 10 charges, and delivered not-guilty findings on most charges against Scott Drexler and Eric Parker.

So there you have it. If you’re right-wing enough and white enough and male enough you can hold federal … Read the rest

Originally a comment by iknklast on Trump whipped the crowd into fevered chants.

I will agree with Trump on one thing: he did not cause the divisions in the country. It was already existing divisions that he exploited to get elected. It was already existing divisions that led to so many Democrats not voting because they didn’t get the candidate they wanted.

It was divisions in the country that erected Confederate statues to clutter the landscape. It was divisions in the country that insisted on flying the Confederate flag, no I’m not a racist I just value my heritage, blah blah blah. It was divisions in the country that led to the bombing of abortion clinics and the killing … Read the rest

Pence pretends to go high, actually goes low.

Asked on the unapologetically pro-Trump show “Fox & Friends” whether Pence agrees that Confederate monuments should be removed from the Capitol, Pence told host Ainsley Earhardt that he stands with the president in wanting to preserve those monuments that glorify traitors of the United States.

EARHARDT: Some are calling for the Confederate monuments at the Capitol to be taken down. Do you agree?
PENCE: Well, first off, I agree with the president that seeing people destroy public property in the name of any cause is just simply unacceptable. […] I hold the view that it’s important that we remember our past and build on the progress we’ve made. […] What we

… Read the rest

Guest post by Tasneem Khalil, originally on Facebook.

My atheism is no secret – that I am an out-and-open murtad for many, many years. For various reasons, I prefer not to talk much about religion in public any more. I, however, remain deeply interested about theology (especially Islamic theology) and politics of religion (and its relationship with civil religions – my B thesis, for example, was on state-sponsored homophobia in the Islamic world). Given my current area of work (Bangla jihadis), I also have to read up on elements of Islamic theology very often – for example, for a recent story, I had to skim through three books on Islamic history, just to get a better handle on… Read the rest

So far Tillerson seems to be a dreadful Secretary of State.

He said some words on Friday about how we all condemn hate speech yadda yadda – of course without mentioning his foul-mouthed hate-spewing boss.

In a speech announcing a new effort to expand diversity at the State Department, Tillerson did not explicitly mention either Charlottesville or President Trump’s reactions to the presence of white supremacists and neo-Nazis there, but he said the events of the past week were on everyone’s mind.

“We do honor, protect and defend freedom of speech, First Amendment rights,” he said. “It’s what sets us apart from every other government regime in the world, in allowing people a right to expression. These are good things.”

… Read the rest

Family life alt-right style.

The same year Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique rocked American households by defining the dissatisfactions of housewives, Helen Andelin was on the other side of the country writing her own book, and coming to the exact opposite conclusion. Fascinating Womanhood would become the anti-feminist manifesto that galvanized a decades-long “family values” movement for conservative women.

Her marriage had gone kind of snoozy, you see; her husband just wasn’t that into it any more; as a Mormon with eight children she wasn’t about to take that lying down. She prayed, but God didn’t answer.

Andelin began scouring marriage manuals from the 1920s and came across one pamphlet in particular, “The Secrets of Fascinating Womanhood,” which counseled that

… Read the rest

David Futrelle points out that organized misogyny (aka men’s rights activism) is a gateway drug to white supremacy. Of course it is. Noisy vituperative hatred of women is congenial to noisy vituperative hatred of Other races and Other despised groups in general.

There are good reasons why men’s-rights activism has served for so many as a gateway drug to the alt-right: Both movements appeal to men with fantasies of violent, sometimes apocalyptic redemption — and, like Cantwell, a tendency to express these fantasies in bombastic prose. And both movements are based on a bizarro-world ideology in which those with the most power in contemporary society are the true victims of oppression.

In other words, if you can convince yourself

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Annette Gordon-Reed in the NYRB:

…the national tragedy that unfolded in Charlottesville last week struck at every aspect of my being—a black person, a friend, an American, and a scholar who has devoted many years to studying Jefferson, slavery at Monticello, and, by extension, Charlottesville. I knew instantly why the men holding tiki torches felt the need to make their case for white supremacy by walking toward the statue of Jefferson that stands in front of the Rotunda he designed for the university he dreamed about and then founded. I also knew instantly that there was a reason the much less remarked upon “counterprotesters” surrounded Jefferson’s statue to keep the tiki torchers from reaching it, staking a defiant claim,

… Read the rest

The Washington Post editorial board says don’t forget about voter suppression.

[E]ven if all 1,500 Confederate symbols across the country were removed overnight by some sudden supernatural force, the pernicious crusade to roll back voting rights would continue apace, with voters of color suffering its effects disproportionately. Pushing back hard against those who would purge voter rolls, demand forms of voter ID that many Americans don’t possess, and limit times and venues for voting — this should be a paramount cause for the Trump era.

In statehouse after statehouse where Republicans hold majorities, the playbook is well established, and the tactics are becoming increasingly aggressive.

Mr. Trump’s voter fraud commission is at the vanguard of this crusade, and the

… Read the rest

The Times reports a very different Saturday of protests from the one last week.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators, emboldened and unnerved by the eruption of fatal violence in Virginia last weekend, surged into the nation’s streets and parks on Saturday to denounce racism, white supremacy and Nazism.

Demonstrations were boisterous but broadly peaceful, even as tensions and worries coursed through protests from Boston Common, the nation’s oldest public park, to Hot Springs, Ark., and to the bridges that cross the Willamette River in Portland, Ore. Other rallies played out in Houston, Memphis and New Orleans, among other cities.

There were 40,000 just in Boston.

Boston, where officials had pledged to enforce a policy of zero tolerance for violence, faced

… Read the rest