| No Images? Click here   This is HUFFPOST FRINGE, your weekly postcard from the political wilderness, with reporters Luke O'Brien and Christopher Mathias.What a week for the team at HuffPost Fringe!We witnessed the utter humiliation of the alt-right in Michigan, where anti-fascists chased Nazis from Detroit to Ann Arbor to East Lansing. The Nazis’ itinerary got leaked to the press, and the venues they had reserved for eating and drinking and singing karaoke all canceled on them. And when a battalion of Nazis tried to march into the Michigan State building where Richard Spencer was set to speak, some 500 anti-fascist protesters repelled them with punches and pepper spray. Spencer ultimately delivered a rambling speech about ethnostates in a largely empty auditorium most often used for livestock auctions. Victorious anti-fascists, sitting guarded by police and handcuffed in folding chairs, laughed in an adjoining room and sang “Solidarity Forever” and then “Part of Your World” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” We exposed a Florida middle school teacher’s double life as the host of a white nationalist podcast. Dayanna Volitich, using the name Tiana Dalichov, bragged on her podcast about molding her students into young white nationalists. She tweeted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, suggested Muslims be eradicated from “the face of the Earth,” and praised neo-Nazis and white supremacists like David Duke and Mark Collett. With a little sleuthing, HuffPost exposed this side gig, and the story went viral.Other major media outlets then dug into the report: A parent with a kid in Volitich’s class told NBC that the teacher had been telling students that maybe segregation wasn’t all that bad. Vox explored whether Volitich’s job might be protected by the First Amendment. (Answer: prob nah.) And Right Wing Watch’s Jared Holt documented how the women of the alt-right are rushing to Volitich’s defense. White supremacist Lana Lokteff decried how reporters covering the far right (hi!) are consumed by a “witch hunt” to “sniff out teachers everywhere.” Lana, for once, you’re not wrong. To all the other white nationalist teachers out there: HuffPost is gonna find you. We triggered Ann Coulter into going on a half-joking anti-Semitic tweet spree. HuffPost published an article Wednesday expressing some alarm over the increased use of the word “globalist” in the White House. The term is synonymous with “Jewish” among the anti-Semitic far right, and references a neo-Nazi conspiracy theory about an international cabal of Jews seeking to control world finance and government so they can undermine white interests. At 12:38 this morning, Coulter tweeted about how she thought our article was just silly.She then proceeded to name all the “globalists” out there. “Fun Fact: Randy Grossman, former tight end for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is a Globalist,” she tweeted. “Jake Tapper is also half Globalist,” read another tweet. “Boy, a lot of Globalists popped up in the #MeToo scandals!” The posts were a loud dog whistle to the alt-right, which has always adored Coulter.Coulter, after all, has always been a white nationalist, just one who people like Bill Maher find so darn entertaining. And lastly, friend of the newsletter Andy Campbell published a scary story yesterday about how Steam, your kids’ favorite video game app, has a big Nazi problem. From Campbell’s story:HuffPost identified thousands of accounts and user groups on Steam in which users claim to be Nazis, defend school shooters, and spout racist and violent bile. Plenty of these users are likely trolls, posting extreme claims they may not actually believe to get a rise out of people. But actual Nazis also brag of using humor and trolling to confuse the unindoctrinated about whether they’re joking.And some young men seem to have taken it all with deadly seriousness. Among them: Nicholas Giampa, the teen accused of murdering his girlfriend’s parents in northern Virginia late last year. Have you ever seen a cuck this shook?! This is Richard Spencer in a Michigan jail last weekend, ostensibly there to bail out a Nazi. Look into his eyes. You will find fear in them. A fear born not just of the realization that he may never be able to move freely through decent society without getting slugged, having coffee thrown on his smoking jacket or, at a very minimum, being told to piss off straight to hell. No. This is a deeper fear. It is the fear that grips an egotist who has just addressed a tiny gaggle of people in a room used for the auctioning of chattel, while his Praetorian guard of tubby fascists catches a beatdown outside. It is the fear that a life of privilege may have been permanently shunted into a political midden. Spencer can’t fight his own battles. His warriors can’t either. Behold the shook cuck.Paul Nehlen Teams Up With Major Racist Pseudo-Scientist This is a report from another good friend of the newsletter, Paul Blumenthal:Republican congressional candidate Paul Nehlen, who is challenging Speaker Paul Ryan in his Wisconsin primary, went full Nazi in December. So why stop now? On Friday, Nehlen upped his alt-right power level by announcing that Kevin MacDonald will serve as his new campaign spokesman. A retired professor of psychology from California State University, MacDonald has been the preeminent anti-Semitic academic in the U.S. for more than two decades. He authored a trilogy, praised by David Duke, that attempts to use evolution to explain a conspiracy theory about how Jews take over gentile societies. For MacDonald, anti-Semitism is simply the logical response to what he calls a Jewish “group evolutionary strategy” to invade and destabilize societies like viruses.What a swell guy!Curiously, the Nehlen campaign’s previous spokesman, “Josh Smith,” is a gay Jew named Daniel Nusbaum who concealed his background to push white supremacy and homophobia. When Smith learned that MacDonald was interested in joining the campaign, he responded enthusiastically. “The man is a legend,” Smith gushed, according to a Nehlen press release. “If he wants to help you, tell him yes immediately.” (Smith will move into a new role as Nehlen’s “legislative director.”) MacDonald’s influence in white nationalism is considerable. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump Jr. followed the professor on Twitter and retweeted him several times. Even so, it’s hard to imagine that MacDonald can do much for Nehlen, who got spanked hard when he ran against Ryan in 2016. Nehlen was a closeted white supremacist then and only got 16 percent of the vote, despite having the backing of important far-right conservatives like Steve Bannon (and Breitbart), Laura Ingraham, Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity. White supremacists will surely be looking to see how Nehlen performs now that he’s running as an out-and-proud bigot with MacDonald as his mouthpiece.Up Shitzkrieg Martin Shkreli, the “Pharma Bro” who got famous for jacking up the prices of a lifesaving drug, cried in court today before being sentenced to seven years in prison for defrauding investors. It was some wonderful schadenfreude for America. Shkreli was friendly with alt-lite dolts like Lucian Wintrich and Milo, as if you needed more evidence of their utter depravity.Blood and SoiledTo understand the dangers posed by today’s far-right extremists we need to listen to them. Each week, the Angry White Men blog highlights a snippet of conversation from an “alt-right” podcast to show you how fascists and racists really think. Don't say we didn't warn you, America….On the 46th episode of the podcast “Third Rail,” pseudonymous white supremacists Spectre and Ricky Vaughn devoted a segment to mocking the Holocaust. Many alt-right members are Holocaust “revisionists” – what most people would call “deniers” – who claim the number of Jews who perished in the genocide was vastly inflated. Many question the existence of lethal gas chambers.And the Holocaust humor serves a purpose by helping them attack the tenets of multiculturalism. Vaughn, a notorious alt-right troll, called the Holocaust the “pseudo-religion of secular Judaism” because the tragedy binds Jewish people together.“Well, it’s not just central to Judaism,” Spectre said. “My take has been for a while now that if multiculturalism is a religion – and it really is when you think about it, it has all the aspects of a religion – then its virgin birth, its Christ child, is the Holocaust.” He suggested that the fear of another Holocaust prevents society from allowing the creation of an exclusively white homeland.The Holocaust must, therefore, be “demystif[ied],” argued Ricky Vaughn. “I just think this goes to show the importance of dismantling this shibboleth around the whole Holocaust, and just making light of it, making it a less serious thing is very powerful,” he said. Spectre chimed in to say that the JQ – or “Jewish Question” – was “one of the hardest red pills to swallow” for many white nationalists, and that this “transgressive humor” helped them along.This is one of the chief functions of The Right Stuff, the white supremacist website that hosts “Third Rail” and several other podcasts. The flagship podcast of TRS, “The Daily Shoah,” is itself a Holocaust pun. For a time, the website’s store sold autographed oven mitts, a reference to Hitler’s crematoria. And alt-right personalities casually drop sarcastic references to the systematic extermination of millions of Jews on a regular basis (e.g., “Don’t forget the six gorillion!”). But like everything else on the alt-right, humor masks a more sinister purpose.Related links:  White supremacy won't fall with just a few statues.Did a friend send you this? Subscribe to HuffPost Fringe.©2018 HuffPost | 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 |
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