Racism is alive and well, Thanks Trump and his supporters!

[Athos_131]

Paris, tweet or not, comes under "walk and chew gum " as to the need to address more than one issue at a time, as issues arise; not a racism issue, Paris and the French Government owned Cathedral at Notre Dame.

For someone who claims a lot we need to stay out of foreign affairs this is a hypocritical take.

As usual Yellow Wall can't stop deflecting and making excuses for the racist hero he masturbates so furiously to their genitals are raw.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Man arrested after allegedly making racist death threats against Omar, Tlaib and Booker

A Florida man was arrested Friday and accused of making threatening phone calls to Democratic officials in which he allegedly ranted in racist terms about Muslims, black people and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)

John Kless, 49, of the Fort Lauderdale area, was charged with making an interstate threat, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

Marlene Fernandez-Karavetsos, a spokeswoman for Fajardo Orshan, the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida, said Kless was expected to be released on a $25,000 bond on Friday afternoon. She said some weapons he owned had been seized, but declined to give specifics.

Officials said that Kless made a series of disturbing phone calls on Tuesday, beginning at 7 a.m. with a call to the office of Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California who recently announced a 2020 presidential campaign.

“The day you come after our guns,” Kless said in a voice mail, “is the day you’ll be dead,” according to the federal court complaint filed against him. He ranted about 9/11 and “illegals coming in," and used the n-word to describe people on welfare, prosecutors said.

“You’re gonna die,” Kless continued, according to the complaint. “You’ll be your death bed ... along with all the rest of you Democrats.”

About 10 minutes later, he left a message for Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), officials said. She and Omar are the first Muslim women to be elected to Congress.

Prosecutors said he ranted at length about Omar, focusing in particular on the way she had referred to the 9/11 terrorist attacks at a recent event, and using multiple racial epithets to describe both her and Tlaib. He called Tlaib “Taliban” and Omar a “towel head."

“You know what, she’s lucky she’s just getting death threats,” he said, according to the complaint. “So are you. All right? ... 'Cuz the day when the bell tolls ... and this country comes to a war, there will be no more threats.”

Prosecutors said he added that there were “millions of us who hate you ... for what you done on 9/11,” and used Muslim and racial epithets against former president Barack Obama as well.

The arrest comes amid complaints from Omar’s supporters that a fixation on her statements about 9/11 could amount to an incitement of violence.

During a speech in March about Islamophobia, Omar referred to 9/11 in a way that some felt was dismissive. She said that just because “some people did something,” it didn’t mean that all Muslims should lose their civil liberties.

But that phrasing became an opening for conservatives — such as Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.), Donald Trump Jr. and, eventually, President Trump — to attack Omar. In a comment that was widely denounced, “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade questioned whether she had dual loyalties, though he later said he didn’t mean it as a personal attack. Trump tweeted a video of the burning twin towers spliced with Omar’s remarks.

Prosecutors said Kless’s last threatening phone call on Tuesday was made to Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who is running for president. He called Booker the n-word and other racial epithets, continued to rant about Omar’s 9/11 remark and made several violent threats, according to a transcript included in the indictment.

“We need to kill all you,” he said, according to the transcript.

Kless had previously made a harassing phone call to the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in which he ranted about abortion, illegal immigration, Muslims in Congress and people taking away his guns, the court complaint said.

Kless did not respond to a request for comment left on his voice mail.

Omar has said the number of threats against her spiked after Trump tweeted the video about her, including many that directly referred to the video.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Rep. Matt Gaetz hires ex-White House aide ousted for white nationalist ties

Rep. Matt Gaetz — one of President Donald Trump’s most avid supporters in Congress — has hired a former White House speechwriter who was forced out last year amid scrutiny over his ties to white nationalists.

The Florida Republican announced Friday that former Trump administration aide, Darren Beattie, will join his Capitol Hill office.

“Very proud to have the talented Dr. Darren Beattie helping our team as a Special Advisor for Speechwriting. Welcome on board!” Gaetz tweeted Friday.

Beattie was fired from the White House in August 2018 after reports that he had delivered remarks at a 2016 conference, dubbed an “active hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, alongside a well-known white nationalist, Richard Spencer.

Organizers of the event, the H.L. Mencken Club, described it as a gathering for the “independent-minded intellectuals and academics of the Right.” But the SPLC has described its attendees as “a band of white nationalists, pseudoacademic and academic racists.”

The former Duke University instructor, who rose to prominence for his early prediction that Trump would win the presidency, later released what he said was a transcript of his speech. No video of his speech has been found.

Gaetz has been one of Trump’s most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill and on television, and is known for his bombastic rhetoric.

The attorney-turned-lawmaker has drawn scrutiny himself for inviting a Holocaust denier to one of Trump’s State of the Union addresses. Gaetz has also appeared on the conspiracy-peddling website “Infowars,” run by Alex Jones, though he later said he regretted having done so.

Gaetz’s office did not return a request for comment on the staffing decision.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Steve King says he understands how Jesus Christ felt after months of criticism in the House

U.S. Rep. Steve King said that after facing months of criticism for comments in the New York Times about white supremacy and nationalism, he better understands the persecution Jesus Christ felt.

The 4th District representative made the comments in response to a question from the Rev. Pinky Person of the Faith In Christ Fellowship, who told King during a town hall Tuesday in Cherokee that she was concerned that "Christianity is really being persecuted."

“When I have to step down to the floor of the House of Representatives, and look up at those 400-and-some accusers — you know we just passed through Easter and Christ's passion — and I have better insight into what He went through for us, partly because of that experience," King told about 30 attendees the town hall at Western Iowa Tech Community College.

King's "accusers" were fellow members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who took action condemning King after the New York Times published an article quoting him saying, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”

House Republicans also stripped King of committee assignments after the article.

The Kiron Republican has repeatedly said the New York Times misquoted him or mischaracterized his words.

King said he is proud of the "strong Christian ethic" in the 4th District. He said the United States is a Christian nation because Americans have strong morals and are willing to confess to wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness.

"It's in our culture, it's who we are," he said. "If it were any other way we wouldn't be the America we are, and probably wouldn't be an America at all."

King is a member of the Roman Catholic Church. He said he counts on his faith to get through difficulties in his role.

"In our staff, we've made sure we have solid, faithful people, in Washington and here in the district," he said. "For all that I've been through, and it seems even strange for me to say it, but I am at a certain peace, and it is been because of a lot of prayers for me."

Now, the representative faces multiple primary challenges for the 4th District seat. State Sen. Randy Feenstra, a high-profile challenger, has raised $260,442 since his campaign launched on Jan. 9, while King raised $61,666 between Jan. 1 and March 31, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

King plans to hold his next town hall Thursday at 3 p.m. at the Jefferson Community Golf Course in Jefferson.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Now playing at the Supreme Court: How to preserve white power in four easy steps

The Trump administration and Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices Tuesday held a legal seminar on how to preserve white hegemony in four easy steps.

Step 1: Devise a discriminatory policy.

In this case, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, after consulting with Stephen Bannon, who was then President Trump’s nationalist “alt-right” adviser, resolved to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census for the first time in 70 years. This would have the well-documented effect of reducing responses to the census by Latinos (from citizens and noncitizens alike), resulting in the undercounting of that population for purposes of congressional apportionment and $900 billion in federal funding.

Step 2: Create a pretext.

In this case, Ross lied to Congress, saying the Justice Department wanted the citizenship question added to help enforce the Voting Rights Act — a claim three lower courts dismissed as pretextual. In fact, emails showed that Ross (with White House encouragement) was the one who pushed for the citizenship question and quietly dragooned the Justice Department into asking for the question to be added.

Step 3: Muddy the waters.

In this case, Solicitor General Noel Francisco and conservative justices raised doubts about the statistical capabilities of the Census Bureau, claiming it couldn’t accurately “quantify” the damage that would be done by adding a citizenship question because the alternative way to get such information was an “untested statistical model.” Why “untested”? Because the administration denied its experts’ requests to run tests before leaping to a decision.

Step 4: Blame the victim.

Francisco, the top Trump administration lawyer, saved this nastiness for the final minute of the 80-minute argument. If the court disallows the citizenship question, he said, “you are effectively empowering any group in the country to knock off any question on the census if they simply get together and boycott it,” he said, raising the possibility of a boycott by gender-nonbinary people.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the only Hispanic on the high court, interrupted angrily. “Are you suggesting that Hispanics are boycotting the census? Are you suggesting . . . that they don’t have a legitimate fear?”

“Not in the slightest, Your Honor,” replied Francisco, who had done exactly that.

For decades, the decennial census sent to each household hasn’t included a citizenship question (it’s instead asked on surveys), and for good reason. Latino residents — legal or illegal — tend to resist such questions out of an (unfounded) fear the government might use the information against them or their relatives. Census Bureau research has projected a drop of at least 5.1 percent from noncitizen households if the question is added, part of an estimated undercount of 6.5 million people. This contradicts the Constitution’s requirement for an “actual enumeration of the people” — not just citizens.

A lower-court judge ruled that the administration committed a “veritable smorgasbord” of violations in adding the question. But the conservative justices seemed willing to overlook Ross’s lie and the administration’s dubious justifications.

Francisco began with a deception, saying the citizenship question “has been asked as part of the census in one form or another for nearly 200 years.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Francisco the same question three times before he acknowledged that the citizenship question had been abandoned in 1960, in part, because it would depress the count of noncitizens.

“Well, sure, Your Honor,” Francisco granted, then quickly explained why “we don’t think this is really subject to judicial review.”

So the administration is free to disregard millions of Latinos in the census — and the courts have no say.

This seemed to be fine with Republican-appointed justices. Justice Samuel Alito said he was satisfied that the accuracy would be 98 percent if the citizenship question were asked (never mind those 6 million or so left out).

Trump’s two appointees developed a newfound fondness for foreign law: Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that the United Nations recommends a citizenship question, and Justice Neil Gorsuch said “virtually every English-speaking country” asks one.

More disturbing were their counterfactual theories claiming some other, unknown variable might cause Latinos not to answer the census. (No such notions appeared in the case record, and census experts had already controlled for other variables.)

Alito challenged “the legitimacy of concluding that there is going to be a 5.1 percent lower response rate because of this one factor,” adding, “maybe there is something more there.”

“There could be multiple reasons,” Gorsuch concurred.

Justice Stephen Breyer derisively suggested the real cause might be the presence of pet dogs or cats.

The justifications all sounded a bit “contrived,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it, like so much “post-hoc rationalization” of a decision made for another reason.

When you consider that the indisputable effect of adding the citizenship question will be to suppress Latinos’ census participation — and by extension to suppress their political clout — it is difficult not to be cynical about what that reason is.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Phoenix teen threatens to blow up mosque, brings pounds of potassium nitrate to school

A 15-year-old boy was taken into police custody after allegedly threatening to blow up a mosque and bringing "several pounds" of potassium nitrate to his Phoenix school, officials said Tuesday.

A classmate of the Pinnacle High School student told his parents Monday that the suspect had said he "wanted to 'blow up a Muslim church,'" police said. The parents of the witness called Phoenix police, who said the boy told them "he did not observe any weapons or devices that would allow the suspect to act upon his statement."

But the next day, the classmate noticed the suspect had brought "a plastic bag containing several pounds of a white powdery substance" to school, police said.

The boy reported what he saw to school officials, and when officers arrived at the scene, they discovered the suspect had "several pounds of potassium nitrate," according to police.

Phoenix police Sgt. Tommy Thompson said potassium nitrate isn't dangerous on its own but can be mixed with other substances to create a potential explosive.

The teen, who has not been identified, was taken into custody to be interviewed, police said. Pinnacle High School was not locked down because he hadn't threatened the school.

A statement from Paradise Valley Unified School District, which Pinnacle is a part of, said the school and the district are cooperating with the police investigation.

The statement said students and staff were never in danger, and it was safe for them to attend school Wednesday.

"It’s always advisable that parents check their teen’s phones and/or tablets to see what they are texting, posting on social media, and passing on to others," the district's statement said. "Teens should be reminded that making alleged threats, even when they intend it as a joke, can have severe consequences and is considered a felony."

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump defends Charlottesville comments by praising a Confederate general

President Trump on Friday defended his comments after the 2017 “Unite the Right” protests in which an avowed neo-Nazi killed a woman and injured dozens of others in Charlottesville, arguing that his focus was on the protesters defending the monument of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Trump, pressed on whether he stood by his comments that there were “very fine people on both sides,” told reporters, “If you look at what I said, you will see that that question was answered perfectly. And I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee, a great general.”

Former vice president Joe Biden resurrected Trump’s response to the deadly rally by self-professed white supremacists in a video to launch his presidential campaign on Thursday. In it, Biden said Trump’s remarks “shocked the conscience of this nation.”

“With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it,” Biden says in the video. “And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.”

Trump, who spoke to reporters en route to a speech to the National Rifle Association in Indiana, said, “People were there protesting the taking down of the monument of Robert E. Lee. Everybody knows that.”

Trump and others have tried to distinguish between the self-proclaimed white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and the other supporters of Confederate monuments, who were all marching in Charlottesville that weekend.

But the events that weekend were organized by a self-proclaimed white nationalist, Richard Spencer, and those in attendance wore swastikas and chanted anti-Semitic slogans.

James Alex Fields Jr., who killed Heather Heyer and injured 35 other people when he plowed his car into a group of counterprotesters at the rally by self-proclaimed white supremacists, pleaded guilty to hate crimes in federal court earlier this month.

Fields, 21, of Ohio admitted guilt to 29 of 30 counts in a federal indictment as part of a deal with prosecutors, who agreed they would not seek the death penalty in the case. Fields is set to be sentenced July 3.

Some Trump supporters have become Charlottesville truthers, arguing that Trump’s comments were taken out of context. They maintain, as Trump does, that he was not calling self-proclaimed neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people,” and in fact, he said they should be condemned.

Post writer Aaron Blake more thoroughly examined the fallacies of this argument, noting that it’s hard to make the case that there were “very fine people” marching alongside people chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump tries to re-write his own history on Charlottesville and ‘both sides’

Joe Biden’s presidential launch has again cast a spotlight on President Trump’s comments about the 2017 tragedy in Charlottesville. And in doing so, it has unearthed a surprising amount of revisionist history from Trump’s supporters.

And now from Trump himself, too.

In his announcement video, Biden prominently featured scenes from the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally that resulted in an avowed neo-Nazi killing a woman and injuring dozens of other by driving into a crowd of counterprotesters. Trump would soon condemn what happened “on many sides” and later argue there were “very fine people on both sides” of the scenes that weekend.

That led to an instant backlash, including by some in the White House, who felt Trump was downplaying the racism on display on that tragic day.

But some Trump supporters — and now Trump himself — have argued that he was taken out of context. They say he wasn’t referring to neo-Nazis, white supremacists and white nationalists when he referred to “very fine people” on both sides, but rather some other people who shared their cause of saving a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

“If you look at what I said, you will see that that question was answered perfectly,” Trump said Friday. “I was talking about people that went because they felt very strongly about the monument to Robert E. Lee — a great general, whether you like it or not."

The argument makes little sense when you consider the facts on the ground, and it ignores Trump’s regular use of dog whistles.

Let’s recap what happened.

After the death of Heather Heyer, Trump on Aug. 12 condemned “in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence — on many sides.” He then repeated “on many sides,” apparently emphasizing that the counterprotesters (which included many who were peaceful and some who weren’t) needed to be condemned, as well.

After an outcry, Trump on Aug. 13 offered a more forceful denunciation of the white supremacists, neo-Nazis and white nationalists who had rallied in Charlottesville. But then, on Aug. 15, he again returned to the “both sides” commentary, saying there was both “blame” and “very fine people” on each side that day.

Contained in that third set of comments is a quote that Trump supporters, including Trump surrogate Steve Cortes and Breitbart News, have argued is exculpatory, They note that Trump, at one point, explicitly excluded neo-Nazis and white nationalists from his “very fine people” formulation.

Here’s a brief transcript:

REPORTER: You said there was hatred and violence on both sides —

TRUMP: Well, I do think there’s blame, yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it. And you don’t have any doubt about it either. And, and if you reported it accurately, you would say it.

[CROSSTALK]

TRUMP: Excuse me. You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group, excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park, from Robert E. Lee to another name.

George Washington was a slave-owner. Was George Washington a slave-owner? So will George Washington now lose his status — are we going to take down — excuse me. Are we going to take down statues of George Washington? How 'bout Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? Ok, good. Are we going to take down the statue because he was a major slave-owner? Now we’re going to take down his statue. So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history, you’re changing culture. And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis or the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, ok? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

As you can see, Trump does say those groups should be “condemned totally.” This is the basis for what some call the “Charlottesville hoax.”

But it leads to the question: Which “very fine people” was he talking about? The “Unite the Right” rally was partly organized by a well-known white nationalist, Richard Spencer, and included both neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups. Former Ku Klux Klan head David Duke was a scheduled speaker. The cause they were protesting — the removal of Lee’s statue — is one supported by many nonwhite supremacists and nonwhite nationalists, but this rally was clearly not one for your average supporter of Confederate monuments.

And indeed, if you look at what Trump says next, it seems that he totally misconstrues who was actually protesting in Charlottesville. Here’s the next part:

REPORTER: You said the press has treated white nationalists unfairly?

TRUMP: No. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before, if you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest. Because I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country. A horrible moment. But there are two sides.

There was indeed another protest the night before the deadly rally, but it could hardly be described as “very quiet” or “fine people.” Here’s how The Post described the scene:

At their Friday night rally at the University of Virginia, the white nationalists brandished torches and chanted anti-Semitic and Nazi slogans, including “blood and soil” (an English rendering of the Nazi “blut und boden”) and “Jews will not replace us” — all crafted to cast Jews as foreign interlopers who need to be expunged. The attendees proudly displayed giant swastikas and wore shirts emblazoned with quotes from Adolf Hitler. One banner read, “Jews are Satan’s children.”

Vice News has footage of these Friday-night protesters chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil”:

For the Trump defense to make any sense, there would have had to be some other group of people who didn’t subscribe to these awful ideals but for some reason decided to march in common cause with neo-Nazis, white supremacists and white nationalists. It’s theoretically possible there might have been some such people there, but you would think they’d quickly become pretty uncomfortable marching next to people chanting “Jews will not replace us” — and people who appeared prepared for violence, even donning helmets.

And even if such people were somehow there, the overwhelming thrust of the rally was clearly not so innocuous. It was organized by well-known figures in those movements, and the turnout seemed to follow accordingly.

Trump does this a lot. He will say something suggestive — in this case, suggestive that the violence in Charlottesville wasn’t really such a clear-cut result of resurgent racism — and then he will later say something else to give himself plausible deniability. But the plausibility here is basically nil. Trump seemed to find something redeeming in a group of protesters that was clearly full of racists. And even though a person in this group actually killed someone, he decided the blame needed to be shared with another group that wasn’t nearly so monolithic or hateful — and didn’t kill anyone.

Oh, and even if you think the media has oversold these comments in some way, Biden’s summary was careful. Here’s how he portrayed it:

Charlottesville is also home to a defining moment for this nation in the last few years. It was there on August of 2017 we saw Klansmen and white supremacists and neo-Nazis come out in the open, their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging and bearing the fangs of racism. Chanting the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the ‘30s. And they were met by a courageous group of Americans, and a violent clash ensued and a brave young woman lost her life.

And that’s when we heard the words from the president of the United States that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were some very fine people on both sides. Very fine people on both sides?

With those words, the president of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment, I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had ever seen in my lifetime.

Biden correctly described who was marching that day, and then he correctly characterized Trump’s comments. The idea that he’s launching his campaign on the “Charlottesville hoax” or the “Charlottesville lie” is a rather amazing contention.[/size][/b]

#Resist

[psiberzerker]

"Trump and others have tried to distinguish between the self-proclaimed white supremacists and neo-Nazis, and the other supporters of Confederate monuments, who were all marching in Charlottesville that weekend."

If you march with Nazis, and Seperatists, you might as well be a Nazi, and Seperatist. 

You can't wave this flag:


With this flag:


And this one:


It's not a symbol of hate, to be flown with symbols of hate.  If you're going to be a White Nationalist, you have to chose between being American, a Nazi, or Confederate, and who you chose to associate with.

No good people can bring themselves to march with the enemies of this country.  Period, that's not Patriotism, that's choosing the wrong side.

[Athos_131]

Shooting at California synagogue leaves 1 dead, 3 injured in what mayor calls a ‘hate crime’ that ‘will not stand’

A gunman opened fire at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, Calif., on Saturday morning, leaving one dead and three injured, according to authorities.

In a news conference Saturday afternoon, Poway Mayor Steve Vaus and San Diego County Sheriff William D. Gore confirmed four people were taken by first responders to Palomar Medical Center with gunshot injuries at around 12 p.m., Pacific time.

One of the victims, an adult female, “succumbed to their wounds,” Vaus said. Three others remain in the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries — one female child and two adult males. All three were in stable condition.

“I can only tell you that we have a fatality,” Vaus told MSNBC, “and I can also tell you that it was a hate crime, and that will not stand.”

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department responded to reports of an active shooter at the synagogue just before 11:30 a.m.; at the time, two prayer services were on going. The Poway Sheriff’s Station confirmed the shooting via Twitter, after deputies were called to the scene by “reports of a man with a gun.” Police say a male suspect has been detained for questioning after turning himself in shortly after the shooting. Officials say the suspect used an assault rifle.

Among the injured was Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, whose hand was wounded. Minoo Anvari, a member of the congregation, told CNN that “he did not leave his congregation until he was finished speaking to them -- calming their fears and pledging resilience.”

Anvari’s whose husband was inside when the gunfire began, said, “Everybody was crying and screaming.”

Saturday marked the six month anniversary of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

The Chabad hosts a weekly Kiddush luncheon that followed the Shabbat morning services. On Saturday, the synagogue was also holding a Passover celebration, according to 10News, which was scheduled to end at 7 p.m. with a final holiday meal.

Trump expressed his “deepest sympathies” for the victims of the shooting, which he said “looks like a hate crime," prior to departing for a rally in Wisconsin.

“My deep condolences to all of those affected,” the president added.

Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) wrote on Twitter, condemning the act of violence: “Tragic news that a gunman has attacked Chabad of Poway synagogue, on this, the last day of Passover, a day that is supposed to be a celebration of faith and freedom. I am thinking of, and praying for, those hurt and affected.”

#Resist

[_priapism]

Who was the #1 pick, who Trump didn’t congratulate?

[Athos_131]

She was at the synagogue to mourn her mother. She was killed while protecting the rabbi

When a gunman opened fire in a synagogue in California, killing one and injuring three others, Lori Kaye jumped between the shooter and the rabbi.

Kaye, 60, was shot at the synagogue and died at a nearby hospital.

In addition to Kaye, at least three others were wounded in the shooting Saturday at Congregation Chabad in Poway, north of San Diego. By late Sunday morning, all three injured victims had been discharged from a hospital.

Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, 57, had been shot in the hand when Kaye stepped between him and the gunman. The rabbi suffered what looked like defensive wounds to both his index fingers, a doctor at the Palomar Medical Center said.

Roneet Lev, a member of the congregation and Kaye's friend of 25 years, was not at the synagogue but told CNN she rushed to the hospital when she heard about the shooting. As Goldstein was being wheeled into surgery, he told her how her friend saved his life, she said.

Kaye had attended services Saturday to say a Kaddish prayer for her mother, who died in November, Lev said.

Kaye's husband is a physician and rushed to the scene to perform CPR after he heard about the shooting. When he realized his wife was a victim, he fainted, Lev said.

"She didn't die a senseless death," Lev said. "She died advertising the problem we have with anti-Semitism and to bring good to this world. ... If God put an angel on this planet, it would have been Lori."

Kaye, a native of San Diego, leaves behind her husband and a 22-year-old daughter, Lev said.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump’s rhetoric stokes hate. He never thinks of the consequences.

Hatred, resentment, white supremacy and victimhood are deadly political tools. President Trump wields them with no thought to the consequences — and people die.

The latest is Lori Gilbert Kaye, 60, fatally shot Saturday at the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego. The suspected shooter, a 19-year-old gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle, wounded three others. The assailant, who reportedly yelled anti-Semitic slurs during the attack, left behind an Internet screed full of the same kind of paranoid vitriol about Jews that was used to motivate the Holocaust.

The alleged killer’s “open letter” voiced hearty approval of the massacre of 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in October. He was apparently an equal-opportunity hater, however, because in the letter he confesses to an arson attack at a nearby mosque and claims to have been inspired by the anti-Muslim rampage in New Zealand last month that left 50 dead.

I should note that both the Pittsburgh and Poway shooters expressed criticism of Trump because they thought him too supportive of Israel. But Trump’s Middle East policy does not get him off the hook. At this point, no one can deny the obvious: The president, primarily through his unconstrained rhetoric, has fostered an atmosphere in which hate-filled white supremacists feel motivated, vindicated and emboldened to act.

In my lifetime, at least, we have never before had a president who deliberately exacerbates racial and religious tensions for political gain. We have had a few who winked at racists to get elected, a few who blew dog whistles about such issues as school desegregation and “inner-city crime.” But I can’t think of one of Trump’s predecessors who might have been capable of looking at a crowd of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members on one side, a diverse crowd of counterprotesters on the other, and saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Of course, that does not mean that all of Trump’s supporters are racist. Nor does it mean that Trump somehow generates racism out of thin air. What he does is allow it to surface into the light, where its putrid flowers can bloom.

No one who has any familiarity with U.S. history could be under the illusion that racism and anti-Semitism are things of the past. But yes, much has changed over the years and decades. The country has become more diverse — there will be no white, non-Hispanic majority by 2045 — and its promise of equality has been expanded to groups that were previously excluded. Ours is a better, fairer nation now, though we still have far to go.

But social change is unsettling, especially when it comes along with economic change. Americans once were certain that their children’s lives would be wealthier and more fulfilled than their own; now, they’re not sure. White men used to run everything in this country; now they merely run almost everything.

The job of a leader is to try to calm anxieties and bring people together. Trump, however, deliberately makes everything worse.

He launched his campaign in 2015 by demonizing Latino immigrants as rapists and drug dealers. He encouraged his supporters not simply to question existing immigration policy or seek to change it, but to hate the immigrants themselves — to see them as “animals” and “bad hombres.” He modeled that hatred with his cruel policy of deliberately separating thousands of children from their asylum-seeking parents. It is not possible to treat people that way if you acknowledge and respect their humanity. Trump has given every indication that he does not.

One of the vile notions found in the cesspools of the Internet is that there is an organized attempt underway to “replace” white Americans with Latinos, and that this plot is somehow inspired or abetted by Jews. This ridiculous fantasy was on the mind of the suspected Pittsburgh shooter, and perhaps the Poway shooter as well.

Trump could use his Twitter feed or his political rallies to lower the temperature. He could acknowledge that the asylum seekers are just men and women trying to do what’s best for their families. He could denounce all the conspiracy theories about “globalists,” a term anti-Semites use to refer to Jews. He could engage with African Americans on issues such as police shootings and voter suppression.

But he does not.

Trump’s theory of politics is based on division, not unity. He constantly stokes anger, never apologizes, always seeks another crack where he can drive another wedge. Hate crimes, meanwhile, have reached a new high. That is no coincidence.

#Resist

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How groups tied to white nationalists are targeting Chicago and Kim Foxx

When several members of groups with ties to white nationalists showed up at a rally criticizing Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, it represented the latest attempt by the groups to raise their profile in Chicago.

What happened at the rally outside the Daley Center earlier this month, experts say, is part of an intensifying movement by the groups to recruit new members in recent years. While the organizations still do not have a large following in the Chicago area, their actions — which include flyering city streets and college campuses — are part of a disturbing trend that can’t be ignored, Foxx and other public officials say.

Members of three groups — the Proud Boys, the American Guard and the American Identity Movement — attended the April 1 rally organized by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, according to witnesses and photos the men posed for that were posted on social media.

The Proud Boys has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center — a designation the right-wing group denies. The Anti-Defamation League calls the group “overtly Islamophobic and misogynistic,” noting that some members are “anti-Semitic and racist.”

The American Identity Movement, known as AIM, is considered by some experts to be a rebranded version of Identity Evropa, which the SPLC dubs a white nationalist group and the ADL considers white supremacist. Current leaders of AIM deny that and have distanced themselves from Identity Evropa.

The SPLC has also designated the American Guard as a hate group, while the ADL calls the group “hard-core white supremacists.”

While the police union denied any knowledge the groups would be at the rally, Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, said the event offered group members a chance to be seen at a more “mainstream” event.

The rally came after Foxx’s office’s controversial decision to drop charges against actor Jussie Smollett for allegedly faking a hate crime.

“It represents a significant recruiting opportunity,” said Levin, who two decades ago helped write the hate crime manual used by Cook County prosecutors. “They can ensconce themselves into rallies that are already highly charged and actually get coverage as opposed to doing it themselves.”

White nationalist leader
Some of the men at the rally have been implicated in violence while others involved in recruiting efforts in the city have pushed nationalist tropes.

One man who attended the rally — identified as Brien James — is “a longtime Indiana white supremacist” who previously helped found “a hardcore racist skinhead gang” whose members have been responsible for at least nine murders, the ADL said.

James now leads the American Guard, which the ADL says has “connections to anti-immigrant extremism, hatred, and violence.” James, who joined the Ku Klux Klan in his teens, has bragged about being tried for attempted murder, multiple batteries and hate crimes, the SPLC said.

In a video posted to Facebook, James said he was marching alongside members of the Chicago chapter of Proud Boys. A former member of that group, Jason Kessler, was an organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. In addition, four Proud Boys members have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a fight with anti-fascist protesters in New York.

Nevertheless, the FBI has not designated the Proud Boys as an extremist group. The group’s founder has sued SPLC for defamation, and the group’s website says members are men who are “western chauvinists.”

In a YouTube video, James admits he “spent over 20 years in the white nationalist movement, most of the time in some sort of leadership position or another. I founded and ran some of the most extreme white nationalist gangs in America.” But James — who previously described himself as an “Indiana state representative for the Proud Boys” — says his views have changed, and he is now a “civic nationalist” who supports President Trump and wants to put American constitutional principles first. A spokesperson for the Indiana Proud Boys says James is not currently affiliated with the group.

James did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Northerly Island fight
Another man seen at the rally in Proud Boys clothing, Thomas Christensen, is facing aggravated battery charges in connection with a 2017 stabbing that wounded two people at a Dropkick Murphys concert at Northerly Island. Christensen has pleaded not guilty.

Tom Rainey, a self-described anti-fascist activist, said he confronted Christensen at the rally. Rainey claims Christensen swatted him with a picket sign, but Rainey wasn’t hurt.

Christensen declined to comment saying via Facebook, “I do not wish to be featured in your story. Please respect my wishes and leave me alone.”

Identity Evropa rebranded
The anti-Foxx protest also served as the latest venue for the American Identity Movement’s propaganda efforts. Posters advertising the group were put up near downtown landmarks that day, and pictures of them were tweeted by AIM.

The group previously hung posters from city-owned traffic control boxes and light poles during last month’s South Side Irish Parade. Posters for the organization and Identity Evropa have also popped up in the West Loop and at college campuses across the city.

Members of Identity Evropa, including founder Nathan Damigo, also took part in the Charlottesville rally, according to SPLC, and along with other participants, have been targeted in state and federal lawsuits by victims of a car attack that left a counter-protester dead and 28 others injured.

Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th) said he was outraged by the flyers posted along the South Side Irish Parade route and said he would push police to investigate. No charges have been announced.

An Indiana paramedic and Navy veteran, identified as Peter Diezel, has been involved in flyering efforts in the past — including at the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois last fall, according to witnesses and pictures posted to a Twitter account associated with Identity Evropa. Diezel’s personal Twitter account featured tweets denying there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and others defending Adolf Hitler. In another tweet, however, he claimed to hate neo-Nazis.

Some of those tweets have been removed from Twitter, but they were archived by Panic! in the Discord, a group whose members have researched leaked chat logs from a server associated with Identity Evropa and which seeks to out members of nationalist groups. The chat logs were originally released by Unicorn Riot, an alternative media collective covering social and environmental issues.

Last August, Diezel was seen handing out information about Identity Evropa at a farmer’s market in Logan Square, said an anti-fascist activist who lives in Chicago who asked not to be identified. In an interview, the activist told the Sun-Times that he saw Diezel posting flyers that said, “IT’S OKAY TO BE WHITE.”

The same day, the activist said a friend snapped a photo of Diezel that was later used for posters activists hung around Logan Square “to warn the community.” Diezel later posed for pictures taken in front of the anti-fascist posters bearing his face — and those photos were tweeted by another Twitter account, @chidentitarian.

Diezel did not respond to multiple phone calls and messages, and the ambulance company he works for declined to forward messages or make him available for an interview.

The @chidentitarian also tweeted pictures of the posters found along the route of the South Side Irish Parade. Earlier this month, the account tweeted a poll asking where AIM members should flyer next, listing Logan Square, Englewood and Austin, among other options.

The account, in response to questions from the Sun-Times, sent a message saying its members came out to the FOP rally because they “were outraged to learn that Jussie Smollett would face no consequences for smearing American nationalists as vicious hate criminals.”

A spokesman for AIM said in an email the group “does not permit the advocacy of extremism, hatred, supremacy or violence.”

Foxx ‘afraid,’ FOP denies ties to the groups
Foxx said it was disheartening that groups were at the rally and even taking part in discussions about criminal justice.

“The injection of white nationalists in this conversation, for me, I will tell you personally, I was afraid,” she said.

FOP President Kevin Graham said the groups attended the rally on their own and said he did not know whom they represented.

“I had never heard of ‘Proud Boys’ before, and I have no idea who they are,” Graham wrote in an email.

Studies have found that groups linked to white nationalism and racist extremism have become increasingly emboldened in recent years, although how active they are in the Chicago area is subject to debate.

Data compiled by the ADL pointed to a rise in public events and propaganda efforts by groups that espouse nationalist beliefs. Identity Evropa was responsible for the bulk of the propaganda efforts on college campuses last year, as well as over 300 incidents elsewhere, the ADL said.

Despite these groups having a limited footprint locally, they can have outsized influence, the ADL’s Jessica Gall said.

“This is by and large a small group of people, but I don’t think we can disregard the impact their ideas can have,” she said. “With social media … these ideologies have been perpetuated.”

Levin said he tallied 22 hate killings in the United States in 2018 that were “ideologically motivated.”

Locally, Levin said there were 77 hate crimes reported in Chicago in 2018, marking a 26 percent increase from the previous year and a single-year high for the past decade, citing data collected from police. Levin believes authorities aren’t doing enough to track and monitor groups aligned with white nationalism.

FBI, CPD: We track violence, not speech
Despite the figures, federal and local officials said they can’t investigate individuals based on their membership in a certain group or any exercise of free speech.

“Our focus is not on membership in particular groups, but on individuals who commit violence and other criminal acts,” FBI Special Agent Siobhan Johnson said.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said his department doesn’t monitor white supremacist or nationalist groups “unless there is an allegation of criminal wrongdoing.”

#Resist

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Did House Speaker's office attempt to frame activist? DA asks for special prosecutor to investigate

#Resist

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After the Barr hearing, President Trump singles out Sen. Kamala Harris

President Trump regularly criticizes his critics. He has called Joe Biden “sleepy” and Sen. Bernie Sanders “crazy.” But he seems to save some of his most personal attacks for women and, specifically, women of color, such as Sen. Kamala D. Harris.

Harris (D-Calif.), who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, attracted attention Wednesday during Attorney General William P. Barr’s testimony. The Washington Post’s Jacqueline Alemany wrote that Harris, a former California attorney general, offered up “sharp, concise and repeated” questions that generated some news. She got Barr to acknowledge, for example, that he had not reviewed the underlying evidence in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation before deciding not to charge Trump with obstruction of justice.

More than 2 million people watched a clip of Harris’s questioning on Twitter, and her team used it in a fundraising push Wednesday night.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that Trump soon weighed in on the senator’s performance. In an appearance on Fox Business Network, he told host Trish Regan that Harris had been “probably very nasty” to Barr.

Trump then expanded his comment to include the other Democratic presidential contenders on the panel, Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.). “You have three of them running against me, and they were up there ranting and raving like lunatics, frankly,” Trump said. “How is that fair?”

But Harris was the only person he attacked by name.

It’s not the first time he has referred to the candidate, who is polling at 4 percent among Democrats in the most recent Post-ABC survey, as “nasty.” While speaking to Fox News’s Sean Hannity last week, Trump said Harris has “a little bit of a nasty wit, but that might be it.”

By calling Harris “nasty,” Trump seems to be drawing on troubling and pernicious stereotypes that paint black women as “angry.”

“Black women are not supposed to push back, and when they do, they’re deemed to be domineering, aggressive, threatening, loud,” Trina Jones, who has studied racial stereotyping and how it plays into the lives of African American women, told the BBC.

And as I wrote previously, Trump has a long history of directing his harshest attacks toward black women, a group that has been critical of him since the earliest days of his administration. He has targeted Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), White House correspondent April Ryan, media maven Oprah Winfrey, former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill, former national security adviser Susan E. Rice and former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile.

He called Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) “wacky” and dishonest, and he tweeted that Omarosa Manigault Newman, once the highest-ranking black woman in his administration, was a “crazed, crying lowlife” and a “dog.”

Harris is the only black woman running for president, and her supporters say she faces unique challenges that make it harder to get media attention and raise funds. With his “nasty” descriptor, Trump is mining some of the same stereotypes that make it hard for black women to succeed in politics. It’s a classic Trump tactic.

#Resist

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Trump Fan Who Made Racist Death Threats to Obama and Maxine Waters Receives 46-Month Sentence

First, the Syracuse man repeatedly called a senator’s office in Washington and said he planned to kill former President Barack Obama, using a racial slur in his threat, the authorities said.

A year later, the same man, Stephen J. Taubert, called the California office of Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat, and vowed to kill her and her staff members. Once again, he spouted violent rhetoric over the phone, using racist epithets.

On Tuesday, Mr. Taubert, 61, was sentenced to 46 months in prison for the phone calls.

His sentence was handed down in the Federal District Court in Syracuse. It came six weeks after a jury found Mr. Taubert guilty of threatening to kill a former United States president, transmitting a threat in interstate commerce and making a threat to influence, impede or retaliate against a federal official.

The jury also found that Mr. Taubert chose to make threats against Mr. Obama and Ms. Waters, two black Democratic Party leaders, because of their race, a distinction that allowed prosecutors to seek an enhanced sentence.

“Racist threats to kill present and former public officials are not protected free speech, but serious crimes,” Grant C. Jaquith, the United States attorney for the Northern District of New York, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Mr. Taubert’s lawyer, Courtenay K. McKeon, declined to comment. But in court on Tuesday, she and Mr. Taubert both said that he was mentally ill and deserved a more lenient sentence, according to The Syracuse Post-Standard.

Mr. Taubert blamed social media and his conservative politics in part for his behavior, the newspaper’s website reported. Mr. Taubert, who said in court that he once served in the United States Air Force, worked as a janitor at a variety of offices, including some government employers, until 2011, when he had a stroke and had to stop working, according to court papers.

“Probably the worst thing for me is social media,” Mr. Taubert said during the sentencing hearing, the Post-Standard reported. “I should stay off of it. When I hear all these people knocking the president, it upsets me.”

Mr. Taubert threatened Ms. Waters and her staff members last July, when the congresswoman was in a high-profile verbal feud with the Trump administration.

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The previous month, White House officials had been heckled at restaurants by protesters opposed to the administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that separated children from their families.

At a rally, Ms. Waters, a frequent critic of the White House, commended the protesters and encouraged her supporters to take similar actions. She specifically told them to “show up” wherever they had to, “create a crowd” and “push back.”

Some conservatives took issue with her comments, arguing that “push back” had a physical connotation that was tantamount to inciting assault.

Two days after Ms. Waters’s remarks, President Trump joined in the criticism, writing on Twitter that the California congresswoman had called for “harm” to his supporters. Then he warned her to “be careful what you wish for.”

Roughly a month after Mr. Trump’s tweet, Mr. Taubert called Ms. Waters’s office in Los Angeles. Using pejorative slurs for women and African-Americans, he said that he planned to attend all of Ms. Waters’s public events and vowed to kill her and her staff, prosecutors said.

When asked about that call by police officers, Mr. Taubert repeated his racial slur against her, according to court papers. He also called Ms. Waters “low I.Q.”, a comment that mirrored the language of Mr. Trump’s tweet.

The call to Ms. Waters’s office came 13 months after Mr. Taubert made multiple calls to the Washington office of Al Franken, then a Democratic senator from Minnesota. In two of those calls, Mr. Taubert said he was planning to go to Washington the next day to “hang” Mr. Obama at his home.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Taubert had a history of threatening phone calls dating back to 2013, when he said he was going to burn down the N.A.A.C.P.’s building in Baltimore.

In letters of support filed with the court and provided to The New York Times, Mr. Taubert’s family and friends said he had apologized several times for the calls. They portrayed him as a man who exercised poor judgment but who had no intention of following through on his threats.

But Judge Glenn T. Suddaby cited Mr. Taubert’s history of menacing phone calls as he handed down the sentence.

“They claim he’d never hurt anybody,” Mr. Suddaby said in court, The Post-Standard reported. “Mr. Taubert, you’ve repeatedly hurt people with your words.”

Mr. Taubert was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, and will face three years of supervised release after completing his prison term.

A representative for Mr. Obama declined to comment. Representatives for Ms. Waters did not immediately respond to requests for comment, though in March, after Mr. Taubert was found guilty, Ms. Waters said in a statement that she was pleased by the conviction.

#Resist

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Trump Attacks Facebook on Behalf of Racists and Grifters

President Donald Trump despises “fake news.” The Washington Post, The New York Times—these are “enemies of the people.” He has urged the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Election Commission to force Saturday Night Live off the air to punish the comedy show for making jokes about him.

What he likes are independent and honest voices who say things such as: Vaccines cause autism. President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a “carefully crafted fake.” Democratic Party insiders organized the murder of a staffer to cover up their nefarious plan to blame Russia for the hack of their emails. Sharia police are enforcing sharia law in Minneapolis. The Sandy Hook massacre never happened; the dead children were paid actors. (These are all false claims.)

After Facebook on Friday banned far-right figures and organizations from their platform, including the site Infowars, the president threatened to “monitor” social-media sites in retaliation. Through much of the late evening of May 3 and early morning of May 4, the president used his Twitter feed to champion the people who earn a large living spreading false reports. He hailed them as conservative thinkers whose free-speech rights have been abridged by social-media platforms.

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One thing at least will follow from the president’s Twitter campaign: It will become even more difficult than before for the shamefaced remains of what used to be mainstream conservatism to separate themselves from these grifters, racists, and liars. According to the president, they are now martyrs, saying things that deserve to be heard. There have been times in the past few years—especially during the hoax to shift blame from the Russians for hacking the Democratic National Committee—that Fox News and Infowars blurred into each other. Those days will now return.

Yet even as the president engrafts conspiracists and racists onto mainstream conservatism, it’s worth wondering: Why is he starting this fight? What does he hope to accomplish? In the past, when presidents publicly criticized major corporations by name, they got results.

In April 1962, President John F. Kennedy criticized, at a White House press conference, “a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility.” Kennedy was angry about steel-price increases that he regarded as inflationary. He spoke even more harshly in private, calling the executives “bastards” and “sons of bitches.” Within 48 hours, the price increases had been rescinded.

In June 2010, a ruptured deepwater rig spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. President Obama described the spill as the “worst environmental disaster the United States has ever faced.” He vowed that the owner of the rig, BP, would pay for whatever damage had been done; $20 billion was ultimately collected from the oil company.

But what happens if Facebook … just ignores the president? Facebook—long the premier channel for distributing hoaxes, scams, and Russian propaganda—seems to have made a business decision to clean up its act. Or at least begin to clean up its act. Perhaps presidential pressure will change Facebook’s mind. Or perhaps Facebook will calculate: Trump’s agitation will be forgotten by tomorrow. He’ll move on to the next thing. He’s just venting. He never follows up.

One observer of social media speculates that Trump hopes to deter Facebook from enforcing its rules against him and his 2020 campaign. In that case, wouldn’t Trump fight on the strongest ground, not the weakest? Identifying “my team” with some of the worst characters on the internet seems a prelude not to a hard fight, but to an embarrassing retreat.

Instead of preparing for a trial of strength against a corporation that a president should easily win, he has joined his personal brand to a gaggle of shady characters in an outburst likely to be forgotten in a day or two. Or, at least, forgotten by him.

But other and more determined actors are “monitoring”—and monitoring more attentively and persistently than the president himself. Trump’s Twitter rampage coincided with a North Korean missile test. For months, Trump has been touting the suspension of North Korean missile testing as proof that his concessions to that dictatorship delivered results. By resuming the testing, the North Koreans were administering a calculated humiliation to Trump, gambling that they can extract more from a president who talks tough in international relations, but acts weak. Now Facebook has set him a test of strength at home.

Trump has staked the prestige of the presidency on a gang of bad actors with shady histories who use social media to profit from deceit and the inflaming of racial and religious hatred. They are his supporters, after all, and he does not have so many to lose. But now Trump needs a win. North Korea is watching, and so are even more serious world actors.

The Washington Post reported that foreign governments have learned to shrug off Trump’s bluster and tough-guy talk. “He has shown us that what’s black at 9 a.m. can be gray at 3 p.m. and white at 7 p.m.,” said a Mexican diplomat of the president’s revolving pronouncements.

Past presidents spoke. Trump just … talks. Trump’s racist, conspiracist con-artist friends may be about to learn that sad difference firsthand too.

#Resist

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Yes, white supremacists are emboldened. But that’s not the whole story in America today.

Recently, a man allegedly burned down three black churches in Louisiana. Another wrote a white-nationalist screed and then allegedly shot up a synagogue, killing one and injuring three. On two occasions, a noose was found hanging in a Maryland middle school. A band of white nationalists marched into a D.C. bookstore to harass an author they didn’t like. Hate crimes small and large seem to be on the rise everywhere.

But here’s something else that has been happening: Some 400,000 people have visited a memorial to the victims of racial-terror lynchings since it opened in Montgomery, Ala., about one year ago. People in 300 counties where lynchings took place have started conversations about erecting markers or monuments in their hometowns. Maryland’s General Assembly last month created the nation’s first truth and reconciliation commission on lynching.

The vision of the memorial — that “it would be born in Montgomery but live all over the country,” as founder Bryan Stevenson said — is becoming real.

It’s a big, complicated country. The hopeful doesn’t negate the baleful. But the hopeful is a part of our story.

Stevenson, a lawyer, has been representing people convicted, in some cases wrongly, of capital crimes in Alabama for three decades through the Equal Justice Initiative.

He believes that the opposite of poverty is not wealth but justice; that all human beings are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done; and that racial healing cannot take place until the country faces the truth about its history.

To that end, the Equal Justice Initiative created and last year inaugurated in Montgomery the Legacy Museum, which traces the United States’ history of racial oppression from slavery through Jim Crow to mass incarceration, and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

The memorial offers a haunting, distressing passage through 800 hanging steel columns, each representing a county where lynchings took place, and each engraved with the names of the victims. Originally, the idea was to have a monument at every lynching site, but EJI documented more than 4,400 that took place between 1877 and 1950, so that was impractical.

A duplicate of each of the 800 pillars lies on the grass outside, waiting for its county to claim it and place it in a suitably public location. None has been claimed yet, but Stevenson told me he’s fine with that.

“We don’t want to just see a monument go up,” he said. “We want there to be multiple discussions. The monument placement isn’t meaningful unless it’s surrounded by increased consciousness.”

Even now, Stevenson said, “people have so little awareness of what happened on their courthouse square, or in the park behind their church.” He encourages communities to start with a marker that can tell a story: Here a black man asked for an increase in his wages, and so was taken away by a crowd and burned to death.

And no one was punished for the crime. “That’s what made this so terrifying,” Stevenson said. “The banker could do this, and then make you come into his bank the next day and pretend that you didn’t know he had just tortured someone to death.”

That is why Stevenson supported Maryland’s initiative — sponsored by Del. Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s), passed unanimously and signed by Gov. Larry Hogan (R) — to create a commission. It will hold hearings around the state for three years, seek testimony from relatives of victims and others, and publish documents.

“You have to tell the truth before you get to reconciliation,” Stevenson said, though he cautioned, “We can’t leave it to any small body to do the heavy lifting.”’

Peña-Melnyk agreed, saying she hopes the commission will help everyone confront an ugly history — at least 40 lynchings took place in Maryland. She says it’s especially important now, given the “divisiveness and racism” of President Trump.

Stevenson said he believes the increase in hate crimes reflects not a growth in racism, which has never gone away, but a more tolerant attitude toward it.

“I don’t think we’ve ever been in a good place,” he said. “But now we’ve made it a little less shameful to give voice to expressions of hatred. . . . This is what happens when you waver, when you equivocate, when you look the other way.”

The justice initiative recently opened a third site in Montgomery memorializing 24 victims of lynchings that took place during the 1950s. A fourth will open at the end of the year to document 1,600 lynchings that took place from 1865 through 1876.

Meanwhile, four new hotels are going up near EJI’s facilities, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.

Is there something off-putting about a tourism economy rising atop this ugly history?

No, says Stevenson. What is off-putting is that for decades tourists have been coming to Alabama to fish or hunt or go to football games, to visit plantations and “ogle and ooh and aah over the slave owners’ homes,” and have not given a thought to who built those homes and under what conditions.

Maybe that is beginning to change. That would be a little bit of progress in a scary time.

#Resist

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Trump knows he needs social media Nazi-friendly in order to win in 2020

If you want to know what the gravestone of American democracy might say, consider this recent Vice headline:

Why Won’t Twitter Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS? Because It Would Mean Banning Some Republican Politicians Too.

Possibly in response to this embarrassing admission and the obvious failure to successfully delouse one of the platforms most responsible for the spread of Measles and Donald Trump, Facebook actually banned a few of the worst and most bigoted misinformers on the planet this week.

This upset the big baby birther. He vowed — with the full weight of the executive branch — to watch the situation.

This may just seem like random ranting and distraction. But this intimidation is actually key to Trump’s 2020 campaign, as Judd Legum points out in this important thread.

Because of Judd’s work for his Popular.info newsletter, many of the Trump campaign’s recent ads have been taken down. Trump is already spending $500,000 a week on Facebook, which GOTMFV show guest Laura Olin called “the new Fox News.”

Judd explained, “He needs to be a VICTIM of Facebook censorship so that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for Facebook to enforce their own rules.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this Stephanie Mencimer piece: “The Left Can’t Meme”: How Right-Wing Groups Are Training the Next Generation of Social Media Warriors.

It let me to this piece about “Memetic Warfare” by Jeff Giesea, which was extremely important to the Trump 2020 campaign’s social media strategy. It advised beating ISIS with trolling, using denigration ridicule along with direct harassment. He was created for help creating Trump’s troll army and his tactics were either mirrored or embraced by the large-scale Russian-back effort to to the same thing.

Giesea is now furious at Trump campaign for not taking Facebook’s attempt to take control of its platform more seriously. He’s been ahead of the curve again in recognizing that so-called “de-platforming” is the biggest risk to the right and Trump. He believes Trump should be using executive power even more to intimidate or possibly even take action against platforms that put up guardrails that limit the right.

Giesea even has a plan that would handcuff large social media platforms that you should expect Trump fans and then Trump to embrace.

We know Trump that this week essentially invited Putin to replicate the “help” Russia offered to him in 2016. A large chunk of that help involved not just promoting Trump but aggravating racial animus over social media.

The boundaries between casual racism and neo-Nazism are being intentionally blurred on social media and when Trump again defends his Charlottesville comments. The goal is to stake out maximalist demands that would prevent these platforms from enforcing any content restrictions.

By defending the most extremes Trump isn’t making any stand for free speech, which we know he’d crush the moment he can get away with it. He’s trying to make sure the extremism and lies he needs to run on 2020 cannot be checked.

#Resist