I read through the Christchurch gunman’s manifesto. It is, in so many words, 75 pages of “Great Replacement” ideology.
Most of the first half or so is rambling and looks written quickly. It includes a faux Q&A with himself, explaining his background, motivations, aims. Along the way there are a few jokes, a number of allusions to racist internet memes and even quotes.
The first half has a casual, rushed quality. The second half almost reads like it’s written by a different person. The writing is tighter and more portentous. It reads kind of like a “Great Replacement” version of Mao’s Little Red Book. It’s made up of single page sections, with text usually a paragraph or two long, aphoristic, each with an explanatory headline repeated at the end for effect. Perhaps relatedly he says that the People’s Republic of China is his ideal among modern nation states and the closest to his political and social values. Read More
A chilling example of what I explained in the post below. Fox analyst and former Trump middle east advisor Whalid Phares calls what the gunman in New Zealand did “very understandable … on a political level, obviously it’s horrific and it should be condemned completely on the action level.” In other words, reasonable goals but he went about it the wrong way. Watch.
Some seemingly off the beaten path efforts have a powerful impact. Check out this story on Unicorn Riot, a media collective that began as a project to highly social justice-related stories but has become a powerful repository of leaked transcripts from the various platforms where white supremacists and neo-nazis chat, plan and plot.
This was Beto O’Rourke’s big day. But I think it went pretty badly for him, though perhaps not in ways that will be immediately obvious.
This may sound odd since he got some good press, got the ritual insult from the President and landed a number of endorsements right out of the gate. But it’s the endorsements themselves that suggest a problem. Right out of the gate O’Rourke won the endorsement Kathleen Rice, the Long Island Rep most recently notable for leading the Moultonite faction which tried to deny Nancy Pelosi the Speakership by threatening the vote against the caucus’s choice on the House floor. Read More
The Southern Poverty Law Center has fired its founder, Morris Dees. Dees cofounded the SPLC in 1971.
12 Republicans broke with the President in this border emergency vote. But what jumps out to me is that Cory Gardner, almost certainly the most vulnerable Republican in 2020, voted for Trump. Thom Tillis of North Carolina did too, though he’s in a much better position for reelection than Gardner. He even penned an oped opposing the President on this before flipping. Read More
Striking to me that Beto appears to be quickly coalescing as the ‘moderate’/’centrist’ Dem presidential candidate for 2020.
From a Vermonter TPM Reader …
I’ve never had much good to say about Bernie as presidential candidate, despite ——- resolute support of him against Hillary. Part of that, though not all of it, arose from the observation (I think of it as a fact) that Bernie was a lazy, selfish candidate. His soi-disant “policy proposals” were little more than bumper-sticker slogans (“Break Up the Banks!”), and the ones he did flesh out a bit (e.g., “College for Everyone”) were, shall we say, lacking in actual understanding of how things actually work.
Lawyer for Mar-a-Lago massage parlor mogul says client is a victim of anti-Trump politics. What also seems revealing is that Yang’s lawyer has already held a fundraiser for Roger Stone’s legal defense fund. So she seems to part of the team.