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Sounder » Sat Apr 14, 2018 5:47 am wrote:Edit: Man, am I late to the party. But just for the record - Sounder, your bit on weightlifting and "poetic justice," aside from being completely off topic, is disgusting. Speaking of showing one's true colors...
I am sorry for that and agree it was in poor taste, and I do not applaud injury to anyone and think transgender folk should have opportunity to compete.
Podcast: against pro-war 'anti-war' jive
In Episode Seven of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg rants against the sinister development of pro-war propaganda masked as "anti-war" propaganda. The overwhelming response of the "anti-war" left to the Douma chemical attack and Trump's retaliatory air-strikes is to baselessly deny that Bashar Assad was behind the attack, to portray the victims as CIA-jihadists, and to change the subject ("What about Gaza, Yemen, etc?") These are all propaganda tactics lifted directly from the Assad regime's playbook. "Anti-war" hypocrites may protest that they do not support Assad, they just oppose US air-strikes. But when you echo the Assad regime's propaganda and rush to exculpate it of every atrocity, you objectively do support Assad. You are actively abetting his war of extermination against the Syrian people. Any legitimate anti-war position must begin with opposition to the genocidal regime of Bashar Assad and his foreign backers in Moscow and Tehran, and with solidarity for the Syrian Revolution.
Listen on SoundCloud.
Bill Weinberg rants against the sinister development of pro-war propaganda masked as "anti-war" propaganda.
Weinberg wrote:
The overwhelming response of the "anti-war" left to the Douma chemical attack and Trump's retaliatory air-strikes is to baselessly deny that Bashar Assad was behind the attack
More to come...
White Supremacists And Conspiracy Theorists Rage Over Syrian ‘False Flag’ Attack
But it wasn’t just the Left that demanded an end to the bombing. So did the extremist Right, though not for the usual humanitarian reasons. In the lead up to the airstrikes, fringe conspiracy theorists and alt-right activists warned that the chemical attack in Douma — like many atrocities — was actually a “false flag.”
Wingnut “journalist” Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars interviewed Maram Susli, a pro-Assad media personality better known as “Syrian Girl” or “Partisan Girl.” A longtime conspiracy theorist herself, Susli labeled the Douma incident a “false flag chemical attack” in a short video for the YouTube channel Russia Insight.
In her appearance on Watson’s show, Susli condemned the White Helmets, a group of Syrian first responders, as “basically [the] Army of Islam or al-Qaeda basically putting on a white helmet.”
The claim that the White Helmets are a terrorist organization or in league with radical Islamists is just one of many unfounded smears against the humanitarian group. According to a report from The Guardian, several of these conspiracies have been linked to a Russian disinformation campaign:The analytics firm Graphika has spent years analysing a range of Russian disinformation campaigns including those around the Macron leaks and the Russian doping scandal. In research commissioned by the human rights group the Syria Campaign, it found that the patterns in the online network of the 14,000 Twitter users talking about the White Helmets looked “very similar” and included many known pro-Kremlin troll accounts, some of which were closed down as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the US election. Other accounts appeared to generate more than 150 tweets per day (more than 70 is seen by scholars studying bots as suspicious).
Susli also claimed that the White Helmets had been caught fabricating rescues, informing Watson that they “did a very silly video of themselves basically frozen in time, rescuing this guy, and later he comes out and he’s like, ‘Oh I’m fine,’ but his acting during the rescue was as if he was very much in pain.”
As the Guardian article pointed out, this conspiracy centers around a group of White Helmets who posted their version of the “mannequin challenge,” an online video trend in which people “film themselves frozen mid-action.” In 2016 the video was uploaded by the Revolutionary Forces of Syria Media Office, but was “stripped of its context and reshared” in order to prove they staged their own rescues.
But that’s not all. Susli also alleged that the brains behind this organization is an MI6 agent. “And of course, the group is funded by Holland, the U.S., [and] the U.K.,” she added. “And it’s interesting that Holland actually, at the United Nations, said, ‘Oh this is a very trustworthy group.’ Well of course they’d say that because they’re the ones who are paying them!”
This wasn’t Susli’s first InfoWars appearance either. A devoted acolyte of Alex Jones, Sulsi made an appearance on July 9, 2014 where she claimed that ISIS received covert funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the U.S., and Israel — the “usual suspects” as she labeled them. Nearly a year later she was on the show yet again, defending the Gamergate movement against charges of misogyny, and claiming it was a response to “cultural Marxists” ruining video games.
And she’s associated with other extremist media outlets too. On November 13, 2015, Susli was a guest on the white supremacist podcast Radio 3Fourteen hosted by Lana Lokteff. During the episode Susli and Lokteff chatted about the evil “globalists” seeking to destroy Syria, as well as the similarities between Susli’s birthplace and Nazi Germany — both countries banned secret societies, Lokteff cheerfully pointed out.
Speaking of white supremacists, Lana Lokteff’s husband Henrik Palmgren also weighed in on the Syrian chemical attack — likewise dismissing it as a “false flag.” In an April 11, 2018 episode of Red Ice TV titled “Staged Chemical Attack in Syria: Provoking Irreversible Conflict,” Palmgren claimed that “We don’t know if anyone has been hurt, or if this is just staged, if this is theatre.”
Like Susli, Palmgren repeated the claim that the White Helmets “have staged and faked footage in the past” — e.g., the aforementioned mannequin challenge — and referred to them as a “fake humanitarian group with ties to al-Nusra Front.”
JOHN WILLIAM KING QUOTES FRANCIS PARKER YOCKEY IN STATEMENT ABOUT HATE CRIME
Yockey and the Modern Right
Yockey's books and articles continue to be distributed by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the U.S. and abroad. German and Spanish translations of Imperium are now available in European bookstores.
In addition, Yockey is admired by leading British neo-Nazis, including former British National Party chief John Tyndall, who described Imperium as a work "of outstanding philosophical importance." And a group of French Yockey fans were involved in launching a new European Liberation Front, which has close ties to "red-brown" extremists in post-Soviet Russia.
Yockey's influence also persists today among the growing number of practitioners of Odinism — in particular, the Ásatrú Alliance, headquartered in Arizona — who seek to revive the pagan rituals of pre-Christian Nordic culture.
These circles intersect with the occult underground, the Church of Satan, and racist elements of the "black metal" music scene. For several years, Kerry Bolton, a New Zealand-based publisher of Yockey's writings, has been advocating a bizarre fusion of occultism and fascist politics.
Kevin Coogan, author of a recently published authoritiative biography of Yockey (Dreamer of the Day, Autonomedia, 1999), notes that elements of what he calls "the current Yockey revival" also can be seen reflected in personalities like Michael Moynihan, a musician and writer who inhabits the netherworld of black metal/occult/fascism and is a leading member of the Ásatrú Alliance.
Moynihan's Portland, Ore.-based Storm Records even sells a CD which includes a song that, according to Coogan, is "directly inspired" by Yockey. Coogan also points out the interest in Yockey within the Abraxas Foundation, "a Church of Satan-influenced group."
While Yockey remains a cult hero only among right-wing extremists, his story has broader significance. It underscores the fact that resurgent fascist movements can assume widely diverging forms, some of which may be difficult to recognize.
This is important to remember at a time when progressive and far-right critiques of economic globalization and the World Trade Organization appear, at least on the surface, to overlap in certain respects. If fascism should return as a serious political force, it is much more likely to appear in an unexpected guise than in a hooded sheet or a brown shirt with a swastika.
Martin A. Lee is the author of The Beast Reawakens (Routledge, 1999), a book about resurgent fascism and right-wing extremism in the U.S. and Europe.
American Dream » Wed Apr 18, 2018 7:07 am wrote:I think we ourselves have done far too much towards bringing on this current state of affairs.
White Supremacists And Conspiracy Theorists Rage Over Syrian ‘False Flag’ Attack
I think we ourselves have done far too much towards bringing on this current state of affairs.
angrywhitemen wrote wrote:The claim that the White Helmets are a terrorist organization or in league with radical Islamists is just one of many unfounded smears
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