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May 21, 2022
Dave Wasserman: I've seen enough: Summer Lee wins the #PA12 Dem primary, defeating Steve Irwin
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1527677794607587335
May 20, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/elizabeth-warren-interview-student-loan-forgiveness/629917/
https://archive.ph/ZfChp
For the past two years, Americans who hold student-loan debt have had a reprieve. At the outset of the pandemic, lawmakers agreed that a pause on debt payments was in order; this stopgap measure has been extended six times. The current restart date is slated for the end of August, though experts already suspect that politicians will want to wait until after the midterm elections.
Eventually, though, policymakers will have to figure out what to do about the $1.6 trillion in student debt. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has been one of the most prominent voices calling for outright cancellation. Alongside Senator Chuck Schumer, Warren has called for the president to erase up to $50,000 in student-loan debt per borrower, arguing that doing so would help close the racial wealth gap. (Studies have shown that Black borrowers are more likely to take on student debt, more likely to accrue more student debt, and more likely to default on those loans whether they finish a college program or not.) Debt cancellation, however, has no shortage of critics. There are those who argue that it would be a giveaway to the wealthy, a slap in the face to those who have paid off their loans, or a castigation of those who did not attend college in the first place.
Adam Harris: In the past month, several criticisms of the broader student-loan-debt-cancellation conversation have been raised. First, some argue that students assume this debt in the same way that people take on mortgages, and that student debt should be treated in the same way as other investments. Why should student debt be treated differently than some of those other debts?
Elizabeth Warren: Education debt is unlike any other form of debt that Americans incur. It’s mostly taken on by people who are not even in their 20s. It’s to get an education—and the thing that most parents and teachers and aunties and neighbors have been pounding into these kids’ heads for years is that an education is a ticket into America’s middle class. These are not people who ran off to the mall and charged up expensive sneakers and stereo systems. These are people who tried to do everything they were told was the right way to build a secure future. Also, look at it from the point of view of people in their 40s and 50s, who went back to school to try to get a diploma or maybe an additional credential like a master’s degree, so they’d have a chance to compete better at work, or to get a job after they’d been laid off. Treating people who take on debt to try to get an education the same as people who take on debt for any consumer good is missing the whole point of how education is not only a benefit, personally, to the person who gets it but also a benefit for our whole country.
snip
No, Student Loans Aren't Like a Mortgage
Senator Elizabeth Warren on why she believes that student debt should be cancelled, and how to prevent a debt situation like this from happening againOn Tuesday, I spoke with Warren about such criticism, why she believes student debt should be cancelled, and how to prevent a debt situation like this from happening again. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/elizabeth-warren-interview-student-loan-forgiveness/629917/
https://archive.ph/ZfChp
For the past two years, Americans who hold student-loan debt have had a reprieve. At the outset of the pandemic, lawmakers agreed that a pause on debt payments was in order; this stopgap measure has been extended six times. The current restart date is slated for the end of August, though experts already suspect that politicians will want to wait until after the midterm elections.
Eventually, though, policymakers will have to figure out what to do about the $1.6 trillion in student debt. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has been one of the most prominent voices calling for outright cancellation. Alongside Senator Chuck Schumer, Warren has called for the president to erase up to $50,000 in student-loan debt per borrower, arguing that doing so would help close the racial wealth gap. (Studies have shown that Black borrowers are more likely to take on student debt, more likely to accrue more student debt, and more likely to default on those loans whether they finish a college program or not.) Debt cancellation, however, has no shortage of critics. There are those who argue that it would be a giveaway to the wealthy, a slap in the face to those who have paid off their loans, or a castigation of those who did not attend college in the first place.
Adam Harris: In the past month, several criticisms of the broader student-loan-debt-cancellation conversation have been raised. First, some argue that students assume this debt in the same way that people take on mortgages, and that student debt should be treated in the same way as other investments. Why should student debt be treated differently than some of those other debts?
Elizabeth Warren: Education debt is unlike any other form of debt that Americans incur. It’s mostly taken on by people who are not even in their 20s. It’s to get an education—and the thing that most parents and teachers and aunties and neighbors have been pounding into these kids’ heads for years is that an education is a ticket into America’s middle class. These are not people who ran off to the mall and charged up expensive sneakers and stereo systems. These are people who tried to do everything they were told was the right way to build a secure future. Also, look at it from the point of view of people in their 40s and 50s, who went back to school to try to get a diploma or maybe an additional credential like a master’s degree, so they’d have a chance to compete better at work, or to get a job after they’d been laid off. Treating people who take on debt to try to get an education the same as people who take on debt for any consumer good is missing the whole point of how education is not only a benefit, personally, to the person who gets it but also a benefit for our whole country.
snip
May 20, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/05/penelope-mortimer-daddys-gone-a-hunting-abortion/629766/
https://archive.ph/L0NOq
The protagonist of Penelope Mortimer’s 1958 novel, Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting, is a 37-year-old housewife named Ruth, who is sliding into a madness of midlife suffocation and despair. Alone in her kitchen early in the novel, Ruth drinks gin and tentatively confesses to an imagined listener the source of all her angst. When she married Rex, her trivial bully of a husband, at 18, she was three months pregnant with their daughter, Angela. “She doesn’t know, of course,” Ruth explains, to no one. “I didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want Angela. We had to get married. There was nothing else to do.”
The burden of consequence on Ruth is a dead weight. She has no perceptible life force, no desires, less shape than crumpled tissue paper. Her fuzziness is countered in the novel by Mortimer’s caustic narration, which laces Ruth’s ennui with a ferocious current of social critique. Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting, now being reissued in the U.S., was published several years before Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. But the novel, seemingly set in the late ’50s, appears to anticipate what Friedan proposed as “the problem that has no name”—the profound unhappiness of a generation of educated women trapped in the domestic sphere with no way out. In one chapter, Mortimer likens the women of “the Common,” Ruth’s suburban community, to icebergs, outwardly “bright and shining” but uniquely scratched up under the surface. “Some are happy,” she writes, “some poisoned with boredom; some drink too much and some, below the demarcation line, are slightly crazy; some love their husbands and some are dying from lack of love; a few have talent, as useless to them as a dying limb.” Together, “their energy could start a revolution, power half of Southern England, drive an atomic plant.” Deprived of an outlet, however, it tends to short-circuit.
Ruth’s despair is clearly rooted in her accidental pregnancy as a teenager, her necessary marriage to a man she despises, and her obligation to care for an unwanted child when she was still essentially a child herself. The novel’s animating force is a simple, repetitive plot point: Her daughter, the now 18-year-old Angela, announces to Ruth that she’s pregnant. Ruth becomes angry; she also finds, once again, that she’s being forced by circumstance into acting against her will. “It wasn’t that she had taken a step; she had been pushed, stumbling forward and finding responsibility thrust into her arms, finding herself committed without knowing how it had happened,” Mortimer writes. Angela is intent on having her pregnancy terminated, which was unlawful in the U.K. until 1968. To save her daughter from repeating history, Ruth has to balance conflicting impulses—her desire to protect Angela from the risk of an illegal procedure versus her desire to secure for her a future less miserable than her own.
Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting is largely based on Mortimer’s own experiences. Like Ruth, she was married at 19 and had her first child in short order; like Ruth, she helped her eldest daughter get an illegal abortion when she became pregnant while studying at a university. In a later, semi-autobiographical novel, The Pumpkin Eater, which explores marital infidelity and disaffection, Mortimer presented scenes of middle-class life with a remarkably acidic touch, stripping away any vestiges of illusion or pretense. With Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting, she steps lightly into a sparse and immensely tricky genre, the literature of parental regret. Ruth’s resentment of Angela and Rex is an “unmentionable thing,” a secret “battened down so long that [it] had become almost unrecognizable as the truth.” And yet Angela has always felt it; her life has been defined by “being rejected, abandoned, betrayed by someone who ought to love her.” (Names shiver with symbolism throughout Mortimer’s story: Ruth, in British English, means “repentance,” “remorse,” “regret.” Rex is the cruel king of his sturdy, commuter-belt castle; during the week, he disappears Londonward to his job as a dentist, performing countless “careful excavations into rotting bone.” Angela, meaning “messenger,” is the character whose circumstances force Ruth into action.)
snip
British author Penelope Mortimer with her husband, writer and barrister John Mortimer, circa 1964.
The Calamity of Unwanted Motherhood
Penelope Mortimer’s 64-year-old novel is a powerful argument for letting women choose when and whether they become a parent.https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/05/penelope-mortimer-daddys-gone-a-hunting-abortion/629766/
https://archive.ph/L0NOq
The protagonist of Penelope Mortimer’s 1958 novel, Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting, is a 37-year-old housewife named Ruth, who is sliding into a madness of midlife suffocation and despair. Alone in her kitchen early in the novel, Ruth drinks gin and tentatively confesses to an imagined listener the source of all her angst. When she married Rex, her trivial bully of a husband, at 18, she was three months pregnant with their daughter, Angela. “She doesn’t know, of course,” Ruth explains, to no one. “I didn’t want to get married. I didn’t want Angela. We had to get married. There was nothing else to do.”
The burden of consequence on Ruth is a dead weight. She has no perceptible life force, no desires, less shape than crumpled tissue paper. Her fuzziness is countered in the novel by Mortimer’s caustic narration, which laces Ruth’s ennui with a ferocious current of social critique. Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting, now being reissued in the U.S., was published several years before Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. But the novel, seemingly set in the late ’50s, appears to anticipate what Friedan proposed as “the problem that has no name”—the profound unhappiness of a generation of educated women trapped in the domestic sphere with no way out. In one chapter, Mortimer likens the women of “the Common,” Ruth’s suburban community, to icebergs, outwardly “bright and shining” but uniquely scratched up under the surface. “Some are happy,” she writes, “some poisoned with boredom; some drink too much and some, below the demarcation line, are slightly crazy; some love their husbands and some are dying from lack of love; a few have talent, as useless to them as a dying limb.” Together, “their energy could start a revolution, power half of Southern England, drive an atomic plant.” Deprived of an outlet, however, it tends to short-circuit.
Ruth’s despair is clearly rooted in her accidental pregnancy as a teenager, her necessary marriage to a man she despises, and her obligation to care for an unwanted child when she was still essentially a child herself. The novel’s animating force is a simple, repetitive plot point: Her daughter, the now 18-year-old Angela, announces to Ruth that she’s pregnant. Ruth becomes angry; she also finds, once again, that she’s being forced by circumstance into acting against her will. “It wasn’t that she had taken a step; she had been pushed, stumbling forward and finding responsibility thrust into her arms, finding herself committed without knowing how it had happened,” Mortimer writes. Angela is intent on having her pregnancy terminated, which was unlawful in the U.K. until 1968. To save her daughter from repeating history, Ruth has to balance conflicting impulses—her desire to protect Angela from the risk of an illegal procedure versus her desire to secure for her a future less miserable than her own.
Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting is largely based on Mortimer’s own experiences. Like Ruth, she was married at 19 and had her first child in short order; like Ruth, she helped her eldest daughter get an illegal abortion when she became pregnant while studying at a university. In a later, semi-autobiographical novel, The Pumpkin Eater, which explores marital infidelity and disaffection, Mortimer presented scenes of middle-class life with a remarkably acidic touch, stripping away any vestiges of illusion or pretense. With Daddy’s Gone a-Hunting, she steps lightly into a sparse and immensely tricky genre, the literature of parental regret. Ruth’s resentment of Angela and Rex is an “unmentionable thing,” a secret “battened down so long that [it] had become almost unrecognizable as the truth.” And yet Angela has always felt it; her life has been defined by “being rejected, abandoned, betrayed by someone who ought to love her.” (Names shiver with symbolism throughout Mortimer’s story: Ruth, in British English, means “repentance,” “remorse,” “regret.” Rex is the cruel king of his sturdy, commuter-belt castle; during the week, he disappears Londonward to his job as a dentist, performing countless “careful excavations into rotting bone.” Angela, meaning “messenger,” is the character whose circumstances force Ruth into action.)
snip
British author Penelope Mortimer with her husband, writer and barrister John Mortimer, circa 1964.
May 20, 2022
Hungarian President Viktor Orban and Fox News host Tucker Carlson have sealed their bromance with accolades during the special Conservative Political Action Conference being held in Budapest.
Carlson, who was supposed to be a keynote speaker at the event, but instead sent a 38-second video message, said Hungary was a wonderful country because of Orban’s authoritarian leadership.
“I can’t believe that you’re in Budapest and I am not,” he said. “What a wonderful country. And you know why you can tell it’s a wonderful country? Because the people who turned our country into a much less good place are hysterical when you point it out.”
Orban returned the love, saying that having your own media is the best way to “point out the insanity of the progressive left.” He went on to give Carlson’s show as an example. “My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there,” he said. “His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”
Read it at The Guardian
Viktor Orban: I Wish Tucker Carlson Was on the Air 24/7
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hungarys-viktor-orban-says-tucker-carlson-show-should-run-247-and-its-great-to-own-him-at-cpacHungarian President Viktor Orban and Fox News host Tucker Carlson have sealed their bromance with accolades during the special Conservative Political Action Conference being held in Budapest.
Carlson, who was supposed to be a keynote speaker at the event, but instead sent a 38-second video message, said Hungary was a wonderful country because of Orban’s authoritarian leadership.
“I can’t believe that you’re in Budapest and I am not,” he said. “What a wonderful country. And you know why you can tell it’s a wonderful country? Because the people who turned our country into a much less good place are hysterical when you point it out.”
Orban returned the love, saying that having your own media is the best way to “point out the insanity of the progressive left.” He went on to give Carlson’s show as an example. “My friend Tucker Carlson is the only one who puts himself out there,” he said. “His show is the most popular. What does it mean? It means programs like his should be broadcasted day and night. Or as you say 24/7.”
Read it at The Guardian
May 20, 2022
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dc-attorney-general-karl-racine-lets-the-donald-trump-swamp-win-again
The District of Columbia’s attorney general promised accountability for nonprofits that took advantage of the Trump administration’s era of grift. Yet after D.C.’s top prosecutor let the Trump family off easy last month for misusing donor funds, The Daily Beast has discovered yet another recent example of a gentle settlement for executives—with Trumpworld connections—accused of personally enriching themselves with charitable funds.
Last year, Attorney General Karl Racine sued the corporation that nearly ruined the United States’ presence at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai. The event presented a lucrative opportunity to represent the nation at the modern World’s Fair, and the State Department initially handed it over to Pavilion USA 2020, a nonprofit started by two political players in Washington.
But Racine’s office says it eventually discovered these two men misused their nonprofit to pay themselves handsomely—and dupe well-meaning investors into pouring money into a failed project. His office made a public announcement, excoriating “their mismanagement and greed” and promising to seek the $360,000 “founders improperly paid themselves.”
Prosecutors went after the nonprofit, as well as Fred Bush, a political operative with a checkered past whose son served in Trump’s State Department. They also targeted Alan M. Dunn, an international trade lawyer who leaned on his credentials as a former assistant secretary at the Commerce Department. But on April 13, the AG’s office signed off on a deal that let both men off the hook “without any admission of liability or wrongdoing”—while also letting their insurance company cover the $220,000 settlement.
snip
D.C. Attorney General Lets the Trump Swamp Win Again
Two men ran a nonprofit into the ground. The District of Columbia AG promised accountability. Now the case is over, insurance is paying the bill, and the men admit no fault.https://www.thedailybeast.com/dc-attorney-general-karl-racine-lets-the-donald-trump-swamp-win-again
The District of Columbia’s attorney general promised accountability for nonprofits that took advantage of the Trump administration’s era of grift. Yet after D.C.’s top prosecutor let the Trump family off easy last month for misusing donor funds, The Daily Beast has discovered yet another recent example of a gentle settlement for executives—with Trumpworld connections—accused of personally enriching themselves with charitable funds.
Last year, Attorney General Karl Racine sued the corporation that nearly ruined the United States’ presence at the 2020 World Expo in Dubai. The event presented a lucrative opportunity to represent the nation at the modern World’s Fair, and the State Department initially handed it over to Pavilion USA 2020, a nonprofit started by two political players in Washington.
But Racine’s office says it eventually discovered these two men misused their nonprofit to pay themselves handsomely—and dupe well-meaning investors into pouring money into a failed project. His office made a public announcement, excoriating “their mismanagement and greed” and promising to seek the $360,000 “founders improperly paid themselves.”
Prosecutors went after the nonprofit, as well as Fred Bush, a political operative with a checkered past whose son served in Trump’s State Department. They also targeted Alan M. Dunn, an international trade lawyer who leaned on his credentials as a former assistant secretary at the Commerce Department. But on April 13, the AG’s office signed off on a deal that let both men off the hook “without any admission of liability or wrongdoing”—while also letting their insurance company cover the $220,000 settlement.
snip
May 20, 2022
https://www.thelocal.se/20220519/explained-how-might-russia-react-to-sweden-and-finland-joining-nato/
https://web.archive.org/web/20220520015807/https://www.thelocal.se/20220519/explained-how-might-russia-react-to-sweden-and-finland-joining-nato/
Sweden’s rush towards membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), arguably starts with the draft treaty Russia published on December 17th, which sought to bar Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance by demanding that the US “undertake to prevent” its “further eastward expansion”. Five months later, this gambit has backfired completely: Russia has ended up creating the very situation it sought to prevent.
So what will Russia do?
The Swedish government’s report assessing Nato membership concluded last week that Russia “would react negatively to a Swedish Nato membership”. “Nato does not seek confrontation with Russia, nor does it constitute a threat to Russia,” the report claims. “In recent years, however, Russia has chosen to increasingly view Nato as a geopolitical competitor and opposes the addition of new members. For Russia’s part, Swedish membership would be described as Nato advancing its position.”
How has Russia reacted so far?
In the months running up to Sweden’s and Finland’s Nato decision, Russian officials warned repeatedly that the two country’s joining Nato would have negative consequences. Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev in mid-April warned of nuclear escalation. “If this is done, no non-nuclear status of the Baltic will be possible,” he said. “The balance must be restored.”
The result for Sweden and Finland, he continued, would be nuclear-armed Russian ships just “arm’s length” from their homes. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned on Monday that the two countries’ decision to join the Nato was a “grave mistake with far-reaching consequences” and that “the general level of military tensions will increase”.
snip
Explained: How might Russia react to Sweden and Finland joining Nato?
One of the big unknowns of Sweden's Nato process is how Russia will respond. We run through the options.https://www.thelocal.se/20220519/explained-how-might-russia-react-to-sweden-and-finland-joining-nato/
https://web.archive.org/web/20220520015807/https://www.thelocal.se/20220519/explained-how-might-russia-react-to-sweden-and-finland-joining-nato/
Sweden’s rush towards membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), arguably starts with the draft treaty Russia published on December 17th, which sought to bar Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance by demanding that the US “undertake to prevent” its “further eastward expansion”. Five months later, this gambit has backfired completely: Russia has ended up creating the very situation it sought to prevent.
So what will Russia do?
The Swedish government’s report assessing Nato membership concluded last week that Russia “would react negatively to a Swedish Nato membership”. “Nato does not seek confrontation with Russia, nor does it constitute a threat to Russia,” the report claims. “In recent years, however, Russia has chosen to increasingly view Nato as a geopolitical competitor and opposes the addition of new members. For Russia’s part, Swedish membership would be described as Nato advancing its position.”
How has Russia reacted so far?
In the months running up to Sweden’s and Finland’s Nato decision, Russian officials warned repeatedly that the two country’s joining Nato would have negative consequences. Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev in mid-April warned of nuclear escalation. “If this is done, no non-nuclear status of the Baltic will be possible,” he said. “The balance must be restored.”
The result for Sweden and Finland, he continued, would be nuclear-armed Russian ships just “arm’s length” from their homes. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned on Monday that the two countries’ decision to join the Nato was a “grave mistake with far-reaching consequences” and that “the general level of military tensions will increase”.
snip
May 20, 2022
ETA
THIS IS SATIRE
Just in: Picture of Rethug Loudermilk's Capitol touring 'constituent family with young children'
ETA
THIS IS SATIRE
May 20, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/world/europe/hungary-russia-oil.html
https://archive.ph/6f6qk
BUDAPEST — Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has fiercely resisted a proposed European embargo of Russian oil, saying it would devastate his country’s economy. Other potential casualties of such a ban would be things close to his heart: his populist campaign promises, and a financial gravy train for culture warriors in Europe and in the United States.
Both have been fueled by Hungary’s profits from Russian crude. Gorged with cash thanks to cheap supplies of Russian oil and gas, the Hungarian energy conglomerate MOL — one of the Central European nation’s biggest and most profitable companies — last month announced it would pay dividends of $652 million to its shareholders.
More than $65 million of that will go to a privately managed education foundation that last year hosted the Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a festival of right-wing pundits in Hungary. It has also provided stipends and fellowships to conservative Americans and Europeans looking for a safe haven from what they bemoan as the spread of “cancel culture” back home.
Some of them featured this week at the first Hungarian edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a gathering of the right wing of American politics. The event, at which Mr. Orban gave the keynote speech, opened in Budapest on Thursday under the slogan “God, Homeland, Family.”
snip
In Hungary, Cheap Russian Oil Fuels Right-Wing Culture Wars
Prime Minister Viktor Orban has resisted a proposed E.U. embargo of Russian oil, saying it would devastate his country’s economy, but it would also cut off a source of funds for his political allies.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/world/europe/hungary-russia-oil.html
https://archive.ph/6f6qk
BUDAPEST — Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has fiercely resisted a proposed European embargo of Russian oil, saying it would devastate his country’s economy. Other potential casualties of such a ban would be things close to his heart: his populist campaign promises, and a financial gravy train for culture warriors in Europe and in the United States.
Both have been fueled by Hungary’s profits from Russian crude. Gorged with cash thanks to cheap supplies of Russian oil and gas, the Hungarian energy conglomerate MOL — one of the Central European nation’s biggest and most profitable companies — last month announced it would pay dividends of $652 million to its shareholders.
More than $65 million of that will go to a privately managed education foundation that last year hosted the Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a festival of right-wing pundits in Hungary. It has also provided stipends and fellowships to conservative Americans and Europeans looking for a safe haven from what they bemoan as the spread of “cancel culture” back home.
Some of them featured this week at the first Hungarian edition of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a gathering of the right wing of American politics. The event, at which Mr. Orban gave the keynote speech, opened in Budapest on Thursday under the slogan “God, Homeland, Family.”
snip
May 20, 2022
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/
Most coverage of the neo-fascist accelerationist terrorist movement in the United States has, so far, treated the Atomwaffen Division as an umbrella organization and more recent groups such as The Base as its spinoffs. In the June 2021 issue of this publication, Alex Newhouse argued that, rather than an umbrella organization or the top of a hierarchical network, the Atomwaffen Division should be viewed instead as one node in a distributed transnational neo-fascist accelerationist network. The backbone of this network is a group of organizations that grew out of Iron March, a neo-fascist web forum that was active from 2011 to 2017.
Iron March, an online forum that was operational between 2011 and 2017, was the incubator and eventually the primary organizational platform for a transnational neo-fascist accelerationist terrorist network that includes National Action in the United Kingdom, Atomwaffen Division in the United States, and Antipodean Resistance in Australia. During the period when Iron March was active, a few existing neo-fascist groups, including the Nordic Resistance Movement in the Nordic countries and CasaPound in Italy, began to collaborate with other groups under the Iron March banner. At present, this network lacks an organization-level name: Affiliation is demonstrated through solidarity pledges and the use of common symbols, most importantly the black-and-white skull mask and badges based on the shield-shaped division insignia of the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the Nazi SS. The author refers to this terrorist network here as the “skull mask network” to distinguish it from the broader social and ideological network that grew up around Iron March.
The skull mask network’s ideology is a political-religious hybrid based in large part on the work of the philosopher Julius Evola. Evola mixed fascism with “Traditionalism,” a syncretic 20th century religious movement that combines Hermetic occultism with the Hindu doctrine of cyclical time and a belief in a now-lost primordial European paganism. Adherents of this blend of doctrines, which can be termed “Traditionalist fascism” believe that a caste-based, racially pure “organic” society will be restored after what they believe to be an ongoing age of corruption, the Kali Yuga, is swept away in an apocalyptic war, and that it is their role to hasten the end of the Kali Yuga by generating chaos and violence.
snip
Neo-Nazi US Marines in Iraq
Dark MAGA Origins: The Iron March Forum and the Evolution of the "Skull Mask" Neo-Fascist Network
https://ctc.westpoint.edu/the-iron-march-forum-and-the-evolution-of-the-skull-mask-neo-fascist-network/
Abstract: The backbone of the “skull mask” transnational neo-fascist accelerationist network—whose nodes include terror groups such as Atomwaffen, the Base, and Feuerkrieg Division—is a group of organizations that grew out of Iron March, a neo-fascist web forum that was active from 2011 to 2017. The history of the Iron March network shows that violent extremist movements can develop from online communities even in the absence of a territorial base and without regular in-person contact between members. Iron March provided a closed social space where young neo-fascists who did not fit in well in established neo-fascist organizations could create a transnational collective identity. Eventually, Iron March users sought each other out in person and created local groups that remained networked together by virtue of their common origin in the community created on the web forum. The network’s transition from activism to terrorism was facilitated by the introduction of violent ritualistic initiation practices derived from the writings of the Order of Nine Angles, which helped to habituate members to violence as well as to create a sense of shared membership in a militant elite.
Most coverage of the neo-fascist accelerationist terrorist movement in the United States has, so far, treated the Atomwaffen Division as an umbrella organization and more recent groups such as The Base as its spinoffs. In the June 2021 issue of this publication, Alex Newhouse argued that, rather than an umbrella organization or the top of a hierarchical network, the Atomwaffen Division should be viewed instead as one node in a distributed transnational neo-fascist accelerationist network. The backbone of this network is a group of organizations that grew out of Iron March, a neo-fascist web forum that was active from 2011 to 2017.
Iron March, an online forum that was operational between 2011 and 2017, was the incubator and eventually the primary organizational platform for a transnational neo-fascist accelerationist terrorist network that includes National Action in the United Kingdom, Atomwaffen Division in the United States, and Antipodean Resistance in Australia. During the period when Iron March was active, a few existing neo-fascist groups, including the Nordic Resistance Movement in the Nordic countries and CasaPound in Italy, began to collaborate with other groups under the Iron March banner. At present, this network lacks an organization-level name: Affiliation is demonstrated through solidarity pledges and the use of common symbols, most importantly the black-and-white skull mask and badges based on the shield-shaped division insignia of the Waffen-SS, the military arm of the Nazi SS. The author refers to this terrorist network here as the “skull mask network” to distinguish it from the broader social and ideological network that grew up around Iron March.
The skull mask network’s ideology is a political-religious hybrid based in large part on the work of the philosopher Julius Evola. Evola mixed fascism with “Traditionalism,” a syncretic 20th century religious movement that combines Hermetic occultism with the Hindu doctrine of cyclical time and a belief in a now-lost primordial European paganism. Adherents of this blend of doctrines, which can be termed “Traditionalist fascism” believe that a caste-based, racially pure “organic” society will be restored after what they believe to be an ongoing age of corruption, the Kali Yuga, is swept away in an apocalyptic war, and that it is their role to hasten the end of the Kali Yuga by generating chaos and violence.
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Neo-Nazi US Marines in Iraq
May 19, 2022
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/buffalo-shooting-republican-great-replacement/629903/
https://archive.ph/DBQRh
Three years ago, when a white-supremacist fanatic killed dozens of people in El Paso, Texas, the reaction from the right was unreserved condemnation. When another white-supremacist fanatic killed 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, last week, the reaction from some figures on the right was to acknowledge that the guy had a point about this whole “replacement” thing.
Large sections of the manifesto attributed to the Buffalo shooter were plagiarized from the writings of the perpetrator of another racist massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand. Both share the premise that violence against nonwhite people is justified to prevent “white genocide” or the “replacement” of white Americans by nonwhite immigrants. As the alleged Buffalo shooter put it, he carried out the attack because “all black people are replacers just by existing in White countries.” I would offer to explain how Black people got to the United States, but who knows if “critical race theory” remains legal where you’re reading this.
In recent years, Fox News has consciously amplified the same line of argument, with popular hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham echoing its logic. Carlson, for example, has said that “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” while Ingraham has maintained that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever increasing number of chain migrants.” Having promoted the conspiracy theory for years, Carlson told his audience recently that “we’re still not sure what it is,” before reaffirming its veracity.
https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1520453605626683392
This noxious ideology is now too popular on the right to isolate without risking bitter intraconservative conflict, and so, as the New York writer Jonathan Chait notes, right-wing media figures have taken to defending and rationalizing the claims that motivated the shooter, while condemning the violence itself.
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Conservatives Are Defending a Sanitized Version of 'The Great Replacement'
Their reaction to the Buffalo shooting shows that the racist theory has now entered the Republican mainstream.https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/buffalo-shooting-republican-great-replacement/629903/
https://archive.ph/DBQRh
Three years ago, when a white-supremacist fanatic killed dozens of people in El Paso, Texas, the reaction from the right was unreserved condemnation. When another white-supremacist fanatic killed 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, last week, the reaction from some figures on the right was to acknowledge that the guy had a point about this whole “replacement” thing.
Large sections of the manifesto attributed to the Buffalo shooter were plagiarized from the writings of the perpetrator of another racist massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand. Both share the premise that violence against nonwhite people is justified to prevent “white genocide” or the “replacement” of white Americans by nonwhite immigrants. As the alleged Buffalo shooter put it, he carried out the attack because “all black people are replacers just by existing in White countries.” I would offer to explain how Black people got to the United States, but who knows if “critical race theory” remains legal where you’re reading this.
In recent years, Fox News has consciously amplified the same line of argument, with popular hosts such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham echoing its logic. Carlson, for example, has said that “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” while Ingraham has maintained that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever increasing number of chain migrants.” Having promoted the conspiracy theory for years, Carlson told his audience recently that “we’re still not sure what it is,” before reaffirming its veracity.
https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1520453605626683392
This noxious ideology is now too popular on the right to isolate without risking bitter intraconservative conflict, and so, as the New York writer Jonathan Chait notes, right-wing media figures have taken to defending and rationalizing the claims that motivated the shooter, while condemning the violence itself.
snip
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