[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

The Guardian: The neo-Nazi plot against America is much bigger than we realize

In the early summer of 2017, US coast guard lieutenant Christopher Hasson had an idea. He had been trying to figure out an effective way of killing billions of people – “almost every last person on Earth” – but found himself coming up against the daunting logistics of such a task.

He suspected “a plague would be most successful”, but didn’t know how to get his hands on enough Spanish flu, botulism or anthrax. His idea, he wrote in a draft email from 2 June of that year, would be to “start with biological attacks followed by attack on food supply”. He acknowledged the plan needed more research.

While horrifying in their ambition, Hasson’s plans, gleaned from email drafts, are scatterbrained and bear the hallmarks of a person still trying to figure things out. His tentative plans, outlined mostly in emails to himself, were thwarted when he was arrested last month on firearms and drugs charges and investigators discovered his inner life as a neo-Nazi and his plans for mass murder – along with a huge cache of weapons and a hit list of prominent Democrats and media figures.

What is clear, however, is that Hasson was inspired by others who came before him, and that he is likely very far from alone.

What is clear, however, is that Hasson was inspired by others who came before him, and that he is likely very far from alone.

A lone wolf pack, so to speak.

Rand Paul to vote for resolution against Trump's state of emergency.

Twice a day a broken clock does something worthwhile?

(To be fair, I'm not sure Rand Paul does something commendable as often as twice a day. Except maybe brush his teeth.)

Rand Paul brushes his teeth and complains that it's slavery.

dejanzie wrote:
What is clear, however, is that Hasson was inspired by others who came before him, and that he is likely very far from alone.

A lone wolf pack, so to speak.

Stochastic terrorism at work.

I'm not sure where the label neo-Nazi applies. This is destructive nihilism on the level of the Joker.

Given that a bunch of the organizations concerned are explicitly neo-Nazi, such as the ongoing murders by the Atomwaffen Division, and a number of others do things like attacking synagogues. Many of them are accelerationists who are trying to destroy society with the explicit idea that non-whites will be purged in the aftermath and a new white supremacist society will rise. Plus they're all far-right white supremacists who are frequently trying to kill Jews and start race wars, so at some point the exact label becomes academic.

Gremlin wrote:

Given that a bunch of the organizations concerned are explicitly neo-Nazi, such as the ongoing murders by the Atomwaffen Division, and a number of others do things like attacking synagogues. Many of them are accelerationists who are trying to destroy society with the explicit idea that non-whites will be purged in the aftermath and a new white supremacist society will rise. Plus they're all far-right white supremacists who are frequently trying to kill Jews and start race wars, so at some point the exact label becomes academic.

Thanks for the links. It certainly starts with neo-Nazi. I guess my point is that even hate organizations still have to live here.

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I don't at all want to make light of these would-be mass-murderers. But destroying civilization on the way to something better is more rapture/evangelical ideology.

I'd say that just because they have to live here...doesn't mean they actually believe that they have to live here. There are enough people who either want to be martyrs or think that their Aryan blood will let them be triumphant after the collapse that it's not as much of a barrier as we might wish.

Our society is absolutely awash right now in post-apocalyptic fantasies of the determined rising up from the crucible of the end. How many post-apocalyptic video games with that theme came out in the last month? There are lots of people steeped in this idea of mass death as a purifier for society.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Our society is absolutely awash right now in post-apocalyptic fantasies of the determined rising up from the crucible of the end. How many post-apocalyptic video games with that theme came out in the last month? There are lots of people steeped in this idea of mass death as a purifier for society.

When 99% of a society scoffs or criticizes one's beliefs, it's easy to see how one would conclude that 99% of the population simply needs to die, because they're going to be in the way of implementing the 'correct' world order.

And here we are:

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Actually, I find the presence of "Additionally," to be sort of positive. He is accepting that perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes is not literally the same thing as questioning current U.S.-Israel policy, even if he does think that the latter is unacceptable (which I don't agree with).

The pile on is unbecoming.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Our society is absolutely awash right now in post-apocalyptic fantasies of the determined rising up from the crucible of the end. How many post-apocalyptic video games with that theme came out in the last month? There are lots of people steeped in this idea of mass death as a purifier for society.

#thanosdidnothingwrong

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Our society is absolutely awash right now in post-apocalyptic fantasies of the determined rising up from the crucible of the end. How many post-apocalyptic video games with that theme came out in the last month? There are lots of people steeped in this idea of mass death as a purifier for society.

I don’t really think this is anything new or unique to contemporary society.

Jayhawker wrote:

And here we are:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D017Kc9X4AIlKxt.png:large)

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...

I don't even know what to say. The Democratic leadership are a despicable bunch.

Of course no resolution is being to talked about to address this:

https://twitter.com/UNGeneva/status/...

or this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...

No, instead lets pile on the black muslim woman who dares to speak truth to power. Disgusting.

IMAGE(https://i.postimg.cc/MKWJ6H0b/4upw8k7tr7k21.png)

Racism and bigotry is not a good look, Dem leadership. Look around yourself in the chamber and remember who the people elected.

BadKen wrote:

Racism and bigotry is not a good look, Dem leadership. Look around yourself in the chamber and remember who the people elected.

To be fair, the answer is "literally everyone in the room".

ClockworkHouse wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Racism and bigotry is not a good look, Dem leadership. Look around yourself in the chamber and remember who the people elected.

To be fair, the answer is "literally everyone in the room".

Exactly the point. Punishing a member for not toeing the line is denying representation to Americans.

The sh*t that is happening with Ilhan Omar is ridiculous. She wasn't being anti-Semitic. Not in the slightest bit. In fact, I'd say this is both some good ol' racist bullsh*t because Ilhan Omar is dark-skinned and because she is rightly criticizing the lobbying arm of the corrupt Israeli government.

Trump, Jim Jordan, Steve King, and so forth BLAST anti-Semitic remarks, but they don't get even a fraction of the attention. I wonder why.

1. Why is it necessary conflate your opinions on the Jewish religion with the actions of the Nation of Israel?

2. Where were these people when the PotUS said there were "good people" on both sides in Charlottesville?

Well, you can be Jewish without being religious. Case in point my boyfriend is a Jewish atheist. But yeah, your point stands. Israel is a Jewish state, but it is not the Jewish people. Criticism of Israel is not criticism of the Jewish people. My boyfriend is deeply critical of Israel and their oppression of Palestenians.

And yeah, where? All the outrage in the world over remarks that weren't even remotely anti-Semitic, but actual anti-Semitic incidents like "Jews will not replace us" or "Tom $teyer" are met with utter silence.

America is not "polarized": it's a land where a small minority tyrannize the supermajority

Writing in the New York Times, Tim Wu (previously) describes the state of American politics after decades of manipulation dirty tricks and voter suppression, where policies with extremely high levels of public approval like higher taxes on the super-rich (75%), paid maternity leave (67%), net neutrality (83%), parallel importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada (71%) and empowering Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices (92%) are nevertheless considered politically impossible.

Of course the thing that all these policies have in common is that they would make life vastly better for nearly all of us, while making the super-rich a very little worse off.

As Wu points out, this is not a picture of a "heavily polarized" nation, as the pundits would have it. These policies are wildly popular and are outside of the political mainstream because a minority have figured out how to suppress the will of the supermajority.

This is clearly by design. Libertarian thinkers -- at least those who subscribe to the Ayn Radnian idea that a small number of people are innately superior and thus should be liberated from the constraints of lesser people -- have long fretted about the danger that democracy poses to these supermen (see, for example, Peter Thiel's infamous belief that "democracy is incompatible with freedom").

This point is forcefully and frighteningly made in Nancy MacLean's 2017 book Democracy in Chains, which, despite some serious defects, is excellent at explaining the "anti-majoritarian" project that has been at the heart of right-wing politics since Reconstruction.

The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these. Call it the oppression of the supermajority. Ignoring what most of the country wants — as much as demagogy and political divisiveness — is what is making the public so angry.

Some might counter that the thwarting of the popular will is not necessarily worrisome. For Congress to enact a proposal just because it is supported by a large majority, the argument goes, would amount to populism. The public, according to this way of thinking, is generally too ill informed to have its economic policy preferences taken seriously.

Americans are becoming more polarized, though.

IMAGE(http://www.people-press.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/06/PP-2014-06-12-polarization-0-01.png)

The issue is that a lot of the people who want higher taxes on the rich, paid maternity leave, net neutrality, etc. aren't nearly as politically engaged as people who are ideologically opposed to such things.

And people who want those things also don't have the reach and resources of say, a billionaire, who funds a network of think tanks, advocacy groups, non-profits, and media outlets to champion their causes and can pull together hundreds of millions of dollars to back politicians who will agree with them.

But the country is being held hostage by ideological extremists who primarily come from the political right. Hannity pulls just three million viewers a night--less than 1% of the country--and yet has a wildly outsized impact on politics.

OG, you're arguing in favor of the article farley posted.

Partially.

The main premise of the NYT op-ed--that Americans aren't polarized--is false. We have become way more polarized (and that's largely due to the right deciding that MSM is fake news and that patriotz4merica.ru preaches the truth) and I'd guess that that polarization has increased rapidly over the past decade (especially the last couple of years).

And behind all of that is the simple fact that a lot of things don't happen politically because those high poll numbers start to crater as they go from pie-in-the-sky idea to actual policy. Part of that can be attributed to manipulation, but America has long been a country where people want services and benefits from the government just as long as they don't have to pay for them (or that they aren't also given to people they feel don't deserve them).