Showing posts with label Press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Press. Show all posts

Daily Stormer style guide

SUBHEAD: Twelve most insane rules from the Daily Stormer,  the biggest Neo-Nazi website on the internet.

By Kali Holloway on 15 December 2017 for Alternet.org-
(https://www.alternet.org/media/12-most-insane-rules-biggest-neo-nazi-website-internet)


Image above: The group National Socialist Movement (NSM) is notable for its violent anti-Jewish rhetoric, its racist views and its policy allowing members of other racist groups to join NSM while remaining members of other groups. From (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/national-socialist-movement).

[IB Publisher's note: As of today the site can be reached at (https://dailystormer.red/). Apparently Andrew Anglin's site has problems staying avaliable.]

The Daily Stormer is an online hub for racists, white nationalists, anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, and other assorted angry white men. It’s run by Andrew Anglin, who’s been in hiding for months avoiding an SPLC lawsuit charging stochastic terrorism against a Jewish woman in Montana. (Even underground, Anglin has managed to pull in a healthy sum in donations from supporters.)

Among the confirmed readers of Anglin’s site are Dylann Roof, who in 2015 murdered nine black parishioners in a South Carolina church, and James Harris Jackson, who murdered a black man in New York City using a sword last March.

HuffPost writer Ashley Feinberg recently got a bit more insight behind the curtain of Anglin’s operation via the site’s 17-page style guide for contributing writers. The document lays out a few standard rules and protocols, from good HTML practices to proper grammar dictates, as well as a few rules that apply only to racist bloggers.

The guide is packed with writerly advice on how to promote Anglin’s goals, which begin with expanding readership and end with an all-out race war. The key, per Anglin, is to maintain the site’s veneer of “non-ironic Nazism masquerading as ironic Nazism.”

Here are 12 of the most insane pieces of advice from the biggest neo-Nazi website on the internet.

1. Always blame the Jews.
Anglin writes that the Daily Stormer is “designed to spread the message of nationalism and anti-Semitism to the masses.” To that end, he notes that authors’ “prime directive” is singular: “Always Blame the Jews for Everything.”
"As Hitler says, people will become confused and disheartened if they feel there are multiple enemies. As such, all enemies should be combined into one enemy, which is the Jews. This is pretty much objectively true anyway, but we want to leave out any and all nuance. So no blaming Enlightenment thought, pathological altruism, technology/urbanization, etc. just blame Jews for everything."
Anglin goes on to assert that Jews should be blamed “for the behavior of other nonwhites” as well as white women. “Women should be attacked, but there should always be mention that if it wasn't for the Jews, they would be acting normally.”

2. Go easy on the swear words, heavy on the racial slurs.
Contributors are discouraged from “an overuse of profanity” which “can come across as goofy.” But Anglin recommends liberal use of racial epithets, and even offers a helpful list of specific “allowed and advisable” slurs.
• Negro/Negroid
• Monkey
• Ape
• Spic
• Wetback
 •Beaner
• Beanperson
• Kike
• Yid
• Sheeny
• Christ-killer
• Haji
• Sandperson
• Paki (can be used for non-Pakistani Moslems, especially Arabs, because that's funny)
• Muzzie
• Chink
• Gook
• Zipperhead etc.
Anglin adds that while the n-word is also cool, it shouldn’t be used constantly .
”Let spontaneity be your guide, he seems to suggest. Keep people guessing about what new and disgusting way you’ll express your racist self!"
3. Demean women, gays, black folks and, of course, the Jews every chance you get.
Anglin shares that “faggots can be called all the words for faggot,” though scatological references are frowned upon.

He gives a specific list of words recommended for describing women, and the word “woman” doesn’t appear on it once. Instead, it features “slut,” “whore,” “bitch,” “harlot,” “trollop,” “slag,” and “skag.”

This is yet another moment when Anglin slips in a reminder to writers to shoehorn in more anti-Semitism amidst the misogyny. Anglin requests,:
“Whenever writing about women, make sure to follow the prime directive and blame Jew feminism for their behavior.”
4. But also, be sure to keep things fun and funny so people want to join the...clan!
The most insidious aspect of Anglin’s style guide is its repeated insistence on a stealth recruitment strategy that relies on humor and lightheartedness to get young white readers excited about white nationalism.

He repeatedly admonishes writers to cool it with the super angry racist diatribes that might scare newbies off.

Instead, he suggests, authors should infuse their racism with lots of jokes, like the hipster racism of Vice circa 2003. (Ironically, in this same document, Anglin trashes Vice co-founder and hipster-racism aficionado Gavin McInnes as a “bottomless bucket of lulz.”)
“While racial slurs are allowed/recommended, not every reference to non-white should not be a slur and their use should be based on the tone of the article. Generally, when using racial slurs, it should come across as half-joking—like a racist joke that everyone laughs at because it's true. This follows the generally light tone of the site.”
Here’s the key, though:
“It should not come across as genuine raging vitriol. That is a turnoff to the overwhelming majority of people.”
Anglin reaffirms that the goal is to lure new readers, and potential new adherents to the alt-right’s racist agenda, above all. And the way to do that is by dressing the message up in internet memes and provocative jokes, and then to drive the (racist) point home over and over again.
“[T]hough we do mean to keep readers who are already in the know informed and entertained, it should always be considered that the target audience is people who are just becoming aware of this type of thinking.”
“The goal is to continually repeat the same points, over and over and over and over again. The reader is at first drawn in by curiosity or the naughty humor, and is slowly awakened to reality by repeatedly reading the same points.
You know how you can end up knowing the words to a song you hate if you hear it enough on the radio? Repetition works. And Anglin’s betting that his writers can beat the audience over the head with their message until it’s gotten inside their heads.

5. Again, avoid overt hatred, despite the fact that it’s precisely what you’re peddling.
Anglin restates in another section of the document:
“Most people are not comfortable with material that comes across as vitriolic, raging, non-ironic hatred,” 
The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. There should also be a conscious awareness of mocking stereotypes of hateful racists. I usually think of this as self deprecating humor—I am a racist making fun of stereotype of racists, because I don't take myself super-seriously.”
He adds:
 “There should be a conscious agenda to dehumanize the enemy, to the point where people are ready to laugh at their deaths. So it isn't clear that we are doing this—as that would be a turnoff to most normal people—we rely on lulz.”
And puts a very fine, super ugly point on it:
This is obviously a ploy and I actually do want to gas kikes. But that's neither here nor there.”
6. Quote liberally from mainstream media sources to borrow their validity and authority.
Anglin urges writers to recycle “large parts” from articles in mainstream news outlets as a way to siphon legitimacy toward his own site. The idea is to do a good enough job of combining verifiable facts with nonsense racist propaganda that the two start to blend together.
“Being able to see the mainstream source quoted allows us to co-opt the perceived authority of the mainstream media,” Anglin writes, “and not look like one of those sites we are all probably familiar with where you are never certain if what they are saying has been confirmed.”
7. Note the media outlets covertly helping us do our dirty work.
While suggesting that writers find concise versions of real news stories to incorporate into their posts, Anglin notes that two news outlets seems to share a similar worldview. Anglin writes:
“RT and Breitbart have the benefit of being closer to our own spin on many issues, meaning….they are more likely to include points of interest.”
8. Take inspiration from—who else?—Adolf Hitler!
A quote from Anglin, without commentary:
“The basic propaganda doctrine of the site is based on Hitler's doctrine of war propaganda outlined in Mein Kampf, Volume I, Chapter VI. If you have not read this, please do so immediately.”
9. By all means, stir up the anger and rage of violent racist readers, but do it in a way that ensures we can feign innocence in court.
As he notes in a section titled “Violence,” Anglin is well aware that “It's illegal to promote violence on the internet.”

But as someone holding out hope that the U.S. will break out into a wide-scale race war, he’s dedicated to surreptitiously urging violent attacks by his racist followers en masse. Anglin advises writers for his site:
If you're writing about some enemy Jew/feminist/etc., link their social media accounts, Twitter especially. We've gotten press attention before when I didn't even call for someone to be trolled but just linked them and people went and did it.” 
He also suggests that “it's totally important to normalize the acceptance of violence as an eventuality/inevitability.” So murderous racists like Dylann Roof and Anders Breivik are hailed as heroes using language so over-the-top it borders on comical. Anglin cynically notes:
“This is great because people think you must be joking, but there is a part of their brain that doesn't think that…[E]ven when a person can say to themselves ‘this is ridiculous,’ they are still affected by it on an emotional level. Whether they like it or not.”
10. Use popular culture as a vehicle for the white nationalist message.
People like what they know, and so Anglin aims to replicate recognizable and widely known media to engage readers in a way they understand. Early on in the style guide,

 Anglin admits that the Daily Stormer “is in many ways modeled off of successful liberal blogs such as Gawker.” (Anglin has reportedly previously cited Vice and Infowars.) He recommends writers fill their posts with “pop culture gifs of the style that Buzzfeed uses.”

But beyond just mirroring cultural digital ephemera, Anglin suggests that writers subvert—or rather, “hijack”—popular memes to give them a racist twist.
“Cultural references and attachment of entertainment culture to Nazi concepts have the psychological purpose of removing it from the void of weirdness that it would naturally exist in, due to the way it has been dealt with by the culture thus far, and making it a part of the reader's world. Through this method we are also able to use the existing culture to transmit our own ideas and agenda.”
The site got lots of attention when it dubbed Taylor Swift an "Aryan Goddess" and suggested the singer is “a secret Nazi.” (For the record, Swift tried to sue a blogger who essentially demanded she disavow the alt-right, at least until the ACLU intervened on the blogger’s behalf. Conversely, Swift has never threatened to sue an actual white nationalist for claiming she supports their cause.)
Anglin also notes he turned 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” into an anti-immigrant song, because racists are lazy, garbage culture vultures who steal black people’s stuff while complaining about the browning of America.

11. There’s no such thing as bad press.
Remember how stoked the alt-right was when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave a speech about how awful they were? That’s because you can’t shame a movement bereft of morals and principles from jump. Also, because the alt-right’s unofficial motto is “there’s no such thing as bad press.”

“We should always be on the lookout for any opportunity to grab media attention,” Anglin affirms. “It's all good. No matter what.”

12. Even the payment system is a 'jokey' homage to Hitler.
Feinberg found that neo-Nazi hacker Andrew Auernheimer, who also serves as systems administrator for the Daily Stormer, recently shared this information with a group of prospective contributors:
"[O]kay basically, it works like this, you can write articles, if we dont like them you can put them on your own blog or whatever, if we accept them for publication we will pay you $14.88."
The numerals "1488" is a popular number among white supremacists and other garden-variety racists. Fourteen is a reference to the "14 words,” a racist slogan favored by white nationalists and the like
"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
The two eights—the eighth letter of the alphabet—stands for HH, as in "Heil Hitler". (During the 2016 presidential election, a PBS docu-special happened to catch an enthusiastic Trump supporter’s gigantic “88” hand tattoo.)

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When Truth becomes a threat

SUBHEAD: If you tell the truth in America it may be Fake News and a might be a traitor.

By Paul Craig Roberts on 16 March 2017 for PaulCraigRoberts.org -
(http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/03/16/nuisance-threat-high-cost-truth-paul-craig-roberts/)


Image above: The Clinton and Trump camps are two sides of the same coin of American Empire. From (http://www.iagreetosee.com/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/).

[IB Editor's note: There is some truth in this article we thought should be published, but it is not a one sided story. Those from the "Left" and the "Right" who have been in charge of the American Empire have fostered a false view of the world and reality. Lies and propaganda are always employed tools of Empire. The Clinton and Trump camps were to sides of the counterfeit coin of the realm.]

I am convinced that the US, and probably the entire Western world, that is, the American Empire, has entered an era in which respect for truth does not exist in public and private institutions. We have been watching this develop for some time.

Think, for example, back to August 3, 2002, a recent time in terms of our present predicament, but a time prior to political consciousness of anyone younger today than 33 years old.

In the summer of 2002, the world was being prepared by propaganda for a US invasion of Iraq. On August 3 of that year, the prestigous British publication, The Economist, summed up the consensus of ruling opinion in two sentences: “The honest choices now are to give up and give in, or to remove Mr. Hussein before he gets his [nuclear] bomb. Painful as it is, our vote is for war.”

As Lewis Lapham, myself and others asked at the time, what bomb? The only evidence of a bomb was fabricated and known to be fabricated. The UN weapons inspectors concluded that the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction were a creation of US propaganda.

President George W. Bush eventually acknowledged that Iraq had no such weapons. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the lies he was deceived by the Bush regime into telling the UN about Saddam Hussein’s WMD are a stain on his career.

Despite the 2003 US invasion known to have been based entirely on lies, US troops were not pulled out of Iraq until 2011, and whether or not they were pulled out, they are back in Iraq now.

None of these facts has had any impact on the good opinion that Washington and the media have of themselves.

Unchastened, Washington and its presstitutes lied about Libya and destroyed that prosperous country. They lied about “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own people,” and would have destroyed Syria also had it not been for the Russians.

Blocked by Russia, Obama, Hillary, and Victoria Nuland turned on Russia, first overthrowing the democratically elected government in Ukraine, and when Crimeans voted practically unanimously to reunite with Russia, the Obama regime and its media whores falsely alleged “Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

This false charge, repeated endlessly still today by the Western presstitutes, became the justification for economic sanctions against Russia that Washington imposed on its European vassals, entirely at their expense, which shows what craven cowards European governments are. If Washington orders “jump,” the UK Prime Minister, the German Chancellor, the French President ask, “How High?”

One of the reasons Donald Trump was elected president was his commitment to normalizing relations with Russia and reconsidering the continuation of NATO a quarter century after its purpose ceased to exist with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trump’s commitment constituted a direct threat to the power and profit of the US military/security complex, whose $1,000 billion annual budget requires a major threat that only Russia can provide.

Consequently, Russia and its president have been demonized. American propaganda, bald-faced lies, spread fear of Russia and Putin throughout the American Empire.

The Empire’s response to those who confront the propaganda with the facts is to denounce those with the facts as “Russian agents” or “Putin’s dupes.”

The hatred of Russia that has been inculcated by the neocons and presstitute media has resulted in Republican Senator John McCain, representing Arizona (to the disgrace of Arizonians), calling on the Senate floor Republican Senator Rand Paul, representing Kentucky, a person who “is now working for Vladimir Putin” for objecting to tiny Montenegro being made a NATO member. See (http://news.antiwar.com/2017/03/15/sen-john-mccain-rand-paul-is-working-for-vladimir-putin/)

When this website was included on a list of 200 Russian agent/dupe websites by a secret, undisclosed group called PropOrNot, I wondered whose money was behind this entity as well hidden as an offshore money laundering operation. I made a joke of it, which amused the Russians.

As no one knows what PropOrNot.com is, the site has no credibility.

 So the forces for war moved up several levels to Harvard University Library. On that website someone posted what is essentially the PropOrNot list. Harvard does not say that the list is vetted or explain why anyone should believe it.

The list is attributed to a Melissa Zindars, an assistant professor of communication and media at some unnamed institution. It is a list, she says, that she uses in her class to teach students how to avoid “fake and false news.” In other words, the list reflects her own ignorance and biases.

As one reader observed, Melissa tells on her own indoctrination by the presstitute, CIA-serving US media:
 “I read/watch/listen very widely, from mainstream, corporate owned sources (The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes) as well as The Atlantic, National Public Radio, and various local and alternative sources with different political perspectives (Truth-Out).”
So here we have the Western world informed by Harvard University Library of who is safe to read on the basis of an unknown young woman’s biases. Those safe to read are the lying presstitute media who serve the cause of war and the police state.

When you witness this level of total corruption at what pretends to be America’s finest university, and it is on top of the 24 years of nothing but lies from the previous three two-term presidents, who between them have murdered and dislocated millions of people in numerous countries, and not been held accountable for even one of the millons of lives destroyed, you cannot avoid realizing that for the United States and its corrupt vassal states, Truth is something to be avoided at all costs.

When Trump collapsed under pressure and fired his National Security Adviser, Gen. Flynn, he unintentionally gave credence to the charge that any and all who think well of normalized relations with the other major nuclear power are “Russian agents,” and that to be a “Russian agent” means that you are guilty of treason and deserve to be impeached if you happen to be the President of the United States.

The consequence of Flynn’s removal from office has been to enable the Russophobic forces to define as treason the desire for detente with Russia. If this had been imposed on US presidents during the First Cold War, probably life on earth would not exist today.

What is scary about the US and Europe is not merely the gullibility and insouciance of such a large percentage of the populations.

What is very frightening is the willingness of the media, government officials, military, and members of professional organizations to lie for the sake of their careers.

Try to find any shame among the liars that their lies expose humanity to thermonuclear annihilation. It is not to be found. They don’t care.

Just let me have the Mercedes and the McMansion for another year.

The Saker, an observant being, says that the color revolution being conducted by the neoconservatives, the Democratic Party, the presstitutes, the liberal/progressive/left, and by some Republicans against President Trump is “de-legitimizing the entire [democratic] political process which brought Trump to power and upon which the United States is built as a society.”

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46658.htm The consequence, says The Saker, is that “the illusion of democracy and people power” has been destroyed both domestically and abroad. The propaganda picture of “American Democracy” has lost its believability. As the false picture crumbles, so does the power that was based on authority constructed by propaganda.
The Saker asks: do we face an endless horror or a horrible end?

As George Orwell said decades ago, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

This is the way the criminals who rule us see it, and it is the way their whores in the media see it. If you tell the truth in America, you are a purveyor of fake news and possibly a traitor.

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Trump versus the Media

SUBHEAD: The crack-up of the U.S. global industrial, financial system has reached a new stage. 

By Richard Heinberg on 27 January 2017 for Post Carbon Institute -
(http://www.postcarbon.org/trump-versus-the-media-this-could-end-badly/)


Image above: Entrance of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. Photo by Diego Grandi. From original article.

The first week of the Trump presidency has seen an extraordinary and unprecedented confrontation between, on one hand, the new leader and his spokespeople, and on the other, mainstream American media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and CNN.

On Saturday January 21st, Trump press secretary Sean Spicer made an issue of the size of the previous day’s inauguration crowd, insisting that it was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

When the New York Times called this a “false claim” and other news organizations showed photos clearly demonstrating the bigger turnout for Obama’s inauguration in 2009, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway responded that the Trump administration was merely adhering to “alternative facts.”

Then, only a couple of days later, the new president insisted that massive voter fraud was responsible for the popular vote victory of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Again, press secretary Spicer backed him up, and again the press called the claim (for which no evidence has been produced) a “lie” and a “falsehood”—terms that news outlets named above are not in the habit of using to describe statements issuing from the government’s executive branch.

How will this tug of war play out? Don’t expect Donald Trump to back down; it’s not in his character. After all, he still hasn’t apologized for spending years promoting the “birther” fallacy, which held that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States and was therefore legally unqualified to be president—even though Trump later quietly acknowledged that Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate is genuine.

Rather than saying he’s sorry, Trump is far more likely to double down on his claims, counterclaims, denials, and accusations—as he is doing by insisting that all the women accusing him of sexual assault are lying. And he can draw some justification for his antagonistic feelings toward the press: he’s not alone in objecting to its unquestioning embrace of allegations of major Russian hacking in the election.

For their part, the media are hardening their own position. By focusing so much attention on symbolic issues about which the administration is clearly dissembling, they effectively shunt to the second page actual policy changes that will have major impact on the direction of the country. (Thom Hartmann argues that the media have “a higher commitment to sensationalism than to issues that impact everyday Americans.”)

So, again, how will this shooting match end? Here are two of the more easily identifiable possibilities.

First, the Trump administration will be tamed (which is highly unlikely) or discredited. As a result of media standing up to blatant falsehoods, all “serious people” will simply stop taking the administration seriously.

The president will become an object of derision among an increasing share of the general public.

Only a dwindling core of loyalists will soldier on as the Trump White House’s messaging hurls the Republican brand toward disaster.

At some point the adults in the room will find a convenient way to remove Trump from office. Already, according to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, “I am hearing from Republicans, and other reporters are as well, that there is open discussion by members of the President of the United States’ own party about his emotional maturity, stability…”

In the second possible end game, the president will find an excuse to proclaim emergency powers, then effectively shut down the mainstream media (this could mean putting them out of business or merely forcing them to toe the line).

Press censorship is standard operating procedure in authoritarian regimes, and plenty of current (China, North Korea, Vietnam, Russia) or historic (Germany, Italy, the Philippines, Japan) examples could be cited.

One bellwether of the concern that people have about this possibility is the factoid that George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984—in which the fictional-future Ministry of Truth goes about its bureaucratic business of manufacturing a daily litany of falsehoods—now sits atop the Amazon best-seller list [link].

If this is the way things go, the media could be seen as playing into Trump’s hands, as they reveal which outlets, and which reporters, are friendly and malleable, and which should be the first to shut down when the appropriate time comes.

On the other hand, a suitably severe crisis might lead the media simply to censor themselves, as largely happened in post-9/11 America.

The managers at the New York Times and CNN are no doubt keenly aware of these possibilities, but their strategic options are constrained (partly by their own inside-the-box worldviews, and partly by their for-profit business models and their deep but mostly secret ties to the U.S. intelligence establishment).

Think of the Trump team, then, as a presidency in search of an emergency. Without a suitable crisis, prospects are fairly bleak. But given a financial meltdown, an epic natural disaster, a war, or a spectacular terrorist attack, opportunities open up.

One way or another, we’re in for a big show—one that’s impossible to turn away from.

And sadly, the distraction of having to practically deal with, and mentally process, the events of the coming weeks, months, and years is inevitably going to draw energy and attention away from the long-term work of building alternatives to the industrial growth economy that seemed to work so well in the twentieth century, but is failing increasingly in the twenty-first. (Its failure, in my view, was a major contributing factor to Trump’s victory.)

Right now, many elites in the media, in politics, and even in the financial world are pining for the more stable business-as-usual of a Barack Obama or even a George W. Bush (never mind that nasty hiccup of a financial crash back in 2008). But that’s as much a denial of reality as Donald Trump’s crowd estimates or voter fraud claims.

The crack-up of the U.S.-dominated global industrial-political-financial system has proceeded to a new stage (Donald Trump is symptom and proof of that), and there is no going back.

What might be implied by “the way forward” in this context may be scary to contemplate.

Unfortunately, much of that trajectory may be out of the hands of ordinary people: giant forces are at play, including political parties, intelligence agencies, national governments, major media outlets, financial conglomerates, and more.

Most of the population will stand back and watch, petrified or thrilled but nevertheless transfixed.
Many will protest and resist.

Hopefully some who have managed to attain a big-picture understanding of the inevitable overall trajectory of the human project in this century (i.e., the end of growth and the need for resilient alternative economic arrangements) will continue the important work of building local cooperatives, of finding ways to meet human needs with less energy and material resources, and of wrapping the results in satisfying and inviting cultural experiences.

In the long run, that’s the only work that will get us through the mess that lies ahead.


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