Judge Brown's oral argument hearing

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke up in one of her first oral hearings at the Supreme Court. Apparently, she is not going to be shy. On Tuesday, oral arguments were made in a dispute over whether Alabama’s racial redistricting plan is legal or not.

The case, Merrill v. Milligan, asks if Alabama has to create a second majority-Black congressional district. The state and probably the right-wing majority on the court will say no. The radical right argument is that the Voting Rights Act’s requirement to do so is unconstitutional.

A WaPo opinion piece comments:

First, some background: Republicans have been telling themselves a useful fiction, namely that racism has vanished, and any attempt to teach about the enduring effects or to remedy enduring discrimination is unfair to White people and is unconstitutional. We see the phenomenon in their contrived war against “critical race theory” in schools (even though it not taught to children).

.... The result [of the Civil Rights movement] was, among other things, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which specifically targeted measures that discriminated against Black voters in the South.

And that brings us to Jackson on Tuesday. Mark Joseph Stern writes for Slate:

In a series of extraordinary exchanges with Alabama Solicitor General Edmund LaCour, Jackson explained that the entire point of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments was to provide equal opportunity for formerly enslaved people, using color-conscious remedies whenever necessary to put them on the same plane as whites.

Jackson took her colleagues through the history of the Civil War amendments, revisions to the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and even the Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction from 1866. Jackson informed her colleagues: “The legislator who introduced [the 14th] amendment said that ‘unless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated Freedman.’ ” Jackson observed, “That’s not a race-neutral or race-blind idea in terms of the remedy.”

The right-wing’s fixation on a “colorblind” society serves to strip Congress of the power under the 14th Amendment to address discrimination. The right-wing justices are so determined to show the Constitution to require their “colorblind” result that they’ve ignored the history, meaning and intent of the document they claim to revere.

The court’s six-justice conservative majority has shown repeatedly that it has the votes to achieve the radical, partisan outcomes it desires, so it need not make convincing arguments — or even coherent ones (see it’s ruling overturning abortion rights). That’s what makes Jackson’s remarks so effective. Essentially, she said, “I’m making sure everyone understands what is going on here.”

Arguments like that are probably noy going to make any difference in the outcome. Alabama will be able to limit the influence of Black voters by gerrymandering. As the opinion itself points out, the six radical right Republican judges not not need to make convincing or even coherent arguments. All they need to do is vote for the radical right imperative in this case, which is taking power from voters and giving it to increasingly radicalized, anti-democratic Republican state legislatures.

Some people complain that the US has never been a democracy, citing things like the Senate and electoral college, both of which are inherently anti-democratic. Maybe so. But if they complained about insufficient democracy (voter power) before, they should expect even less going forward. Republican Party elites are taking power from citizens and giving it to themselves. This is an anti-democratic power grab, pure and simple.

News updates

The human mind is usually comfortable with incompatible beliefs

The NYT writes: 

Like many other conservative residents of storm-battered southwest Florida, Pamela Swartz has long been leery of government spending. But as she stood among the smashed boats, gutted homes and overwhelming loss left by Hurricane Ian, Ms. Swartz said that federal aid could not come soon enough.

“This is their time to step in,” said Ms. Swartz, whose garage in Fort Myers Beach had been flooded by Ian’s devastating storm surge. She was already frustrated after trying to file a federal storm claim. “This is what we pay our taxes for.”  

“Our governor is the greatest,” said Jay Kimble, a maintenance worker on Fort Myers Beach who lost everything. “I know he’s going to do everything he can to get us back on our feet. I’m not a Biden fan at all.”

Most conservatives like these two routinely vote for Republican politicians who routinely try to reduce taxes and domestic spending. That includes spending for disaster relief. Taxes are great when they are needed for themselves, but horrible socialist tyranny and treason when tax dollars go elsewhere. One could call it hypocrisy. But whatever one calls it, the typical human mind is usually quite comfortable with it. It does not have to make sense. It just has to feel right and good.

From the milquetoast rule of law files: The first time an executive 

has been prosecuted for bad behavior after a computer hack??

The NYT writes:

In 2016, while the Federal Trade Commission was investigating Uber over an earlier breach of its online systems, Mr. Sullivan learned of a new breach that affected the Uber accounts of more than 57 million riders and drivers.

The jury found Mr. Sullivan guilty on one count of obstructing the F.T.C.’s investigation and one count of misprision, or acting to conceal a felony from authorities.

The case — believed to be the first time a company executive faced criminal prosecution over a hack — could change how security professionals handle data breaches.

This is only the first time? Corporations have been hiding huge hacks from everyone for decades. Once again, the exceptionally holey (full of holes) Swiss cheese that is the rule of law, has reared its ugly head and nailed a corporate elite. This nudges the track record up to nailing white collar crooks to about 1 in 10 million from about 1 in 20 million. Good job! The rule of law is working as intended. The elites remain secure in their homes and beds.

Clearly, this will change how corporate security professionals handle data breaches. They will up their plausible deniability game and find a low level employee to take the fall. The janitor did it!!

Election truth denial and what to do about it

The WaPo writes:

A majority of Republican nominees on the ballot this November for the House, Senate and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the last presidential election, according to a Washington Post analysis.

Candidates who have challenged or refused to accept Joe Biden’s victory are running in every region of the country and in nearly every state. Republican voters in four states nominated election deniers in all federal and statewide races The Post examined.

Although some are running in heavily Democratic areas and are expected to lose, most of the election deniers nominated are likely to win: Of the nearly 300 on the ballot, 174 are running for safely Republican seats. Another 51 will appear on the ballot in tightly contested races.

A WaPo editorial board opinion comments:

Yet the greatest single measure to protect U.S. democracy lies in Congress. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) voiced his support last week for the Electoral Count Reform Act, which would make it harder for conspiracy theorists to hijack the electoral process and overturn a legitimate vote. It is an essential response to the wave of election deniers likely to take office next year — and, as such, it is the most important legislation federal lawmakers will have considered in recent years.

Time will tell if democracy can be defended or if it will fall. Most Republicans in congress will oppose trying to defend democracy and elections. Even McConnell's claimed support is probably just insincere window dressing.

News bits

The Supreme Court again

The Hill raises the same alarm that other sites are raising about what the radical right Supreme Court is going to do to us in its 2022-2023 term. Although The Hill blandly calls the effort “remaking U.S. constitutional law in a conservative image,” that misses the point. Republican judges are remaking the law into a Christian Sharia and brass knuckles capitalist kleptocracy-theocracy. The article mentions several cases including these little gems:

•  Sackett v. EPA is likely to lead to greater land development and loosen requirements on businesses that discharge pollutants into waters (brass knuckles, anti-regulation, pro-pollution, pro-development capitalism)
•  In Moore v. Harper, the radical right is asking for state legislatures to have power to rig elections and overturn election results the controlling state party dislikes, where that power is almost absolute and essentially unreviewable by state or federal courts (GOP’s anti-democratic tyranny of the minority)
•  In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the radical right wants all businesses to be able to discriminate against anyone in the LGBQT community on the grounds that it burdens religious beliefs or practices (Christian nationalists building Christian Sharia law for Christian Taliban legal standing) 

The Hill, like most or all other major MSM news sources still do not understand. What is happening is not merely conservatism. It is theocracy, single party tyranny and unfettered kleptocracy for both capitalists and the Christian Taliban. The MSM appears to be clueless.

Toxic GOP rhetoric

The Hills reports that on his propaganda site, the former president commented that Mitch McConnell must have a death wish because he supported some legislation backed by Democrats. It is a surprise that McConnell supports anything the Dems support. There must be something in it for him. 

Anyway, the main point is that, given T****’s track record of publicly inciting violence using toxic rhetoric, some folks took his death wish comment as incitement for some enraged, hate-driven crackpot with a gun to assassinate McConnell.

In the old normal times, this would not have made news. But in these new normal toxic times, it’s likely that Republican rhetoric is creeping into calls for assassinations by elites, with the approval and support of most of the GOP rank and file.

From the brazen crackpot files

In a truly strange twist of brazen mendacity, the former guy (TFG) is suing CNN for defamation. TFG is asking for $475 million in damages for CNN’s reporting on the Big Lie about the stolen 2020 election fantasy. The AP comments:

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, focuses primarily on the term “The Big Lie” about Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud that he says cost him the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.

Trump’s lawsuit claims “The Big Lie,” a phrase with Nazi connotations, has been used in reference to him more than 7,700 times on CNN since January 2021.

“It is intended to aggravate, scare and trigger people,” he said.

Golly, we wouldn’t want to aggravate, scare and trigger anyone. TGF conveniently ignorers his own copious but ruthless aggravating, scaring and/or triggering rhetoric. One can only hope that the court throws this brazen crackpottery out. The fear is that a T**** judge, e.g., Loose Cannon (Aileen Cannon), will get the case and find lots of merit because the 2020 election really was stolen in their fevered, hallucinating radical right mind. 

In the old normal times, this would not amount to news worth reporting. But in these new toxic normal times, replete with toxic T**** judges, no one can know what this will lead to. How much damage this case might cause is unpredictable. Probably little to none, but that is just a guess.

One thing is almost certain. Lawsuits like this will continue until the right case with the right facts gets taken to the Supreme Court. Then, all bets are off. 

Accelerationism

 ‘Accelerationism’ is a term used by white supremacists and other extremist groups to refer to “their desire to hasten the collapse of society as we know it”. Generally, acceleration is used in the context of white genocide conspiracy theories, which believes white people are under threat and are being systematically targeted through e.g. immigration and other means.

A collapse of modern societal structures and political systems is seen as the only means through which to stop these perceived injustices against white people. Indeed, many accelerationist groups desire this collapse and call for replacing modern society and governance with one founded on ethnonationalism.

Accelerationism continues to have a growing international audience. Terrorist groups like the Atomwaffen Division, which embrace and promote accelerationism, were founded in the United States but have produced offshoots (e.g. the Sonnenkrieg Division and the Feuerkrieg Division) across Europe and Australia.

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Why is it dangerous?

Accelerationism is at its core an encouragement of civil discord that employs an “ends justify the means” approach towards violence. Most white supremacist accelerationists view violence as a necessary means for catalysing societal collapse and implementing new power structures that prioritise the “needs” of white people.

There have already been notable instances of violence affiliated with accelerationist ideology. For example, the perpetrator of the terror attack against the Muslim community of Christchurch in 2019, dedicated an entire section of his “manifesto” to accelerationism. The perpetrator of the Poway synagogue shooting in 2019 similarly expressed accelerationist beliefs, saying he “used a gun for the same reason that [the Christchurch attacker] used a gun… the goal is for the US government to start confiscating guns. People will defend their rights to own a firearm – civil war has just started”.

Accelerationism is therefore not just dangerous because of its potential to encourage violence, but in the fact that violence is seen as the primary means to bring about the desired goal of societal collapse.

Background

Accelerationism comes from an amalgamation of:

 Neoreaction, or NRx – a doctrine developed by Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin, which claims democracy doesn’t work nor does it allow for good governance. Neoreaction instead embraces autocracy or authoritarian rule, where a single individual is given full power to lead. Neoreactionaries often liken what they perceive to be valid and effective national leadership to that of corporate governance, where a national ruler should lead a country similarly to how a chief executive officer would his company.

 White supremacist beliefs that “‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization.” As opposed to neoreactionary belief, which posits democracy as the biggest obstacle to a better future, white supremacists tend to scapegoat Jewish people and other religious and ethnic minorities as the greatest barrier to a future that upholds white dominion.

 Siege culture – a violent subculture of white supremacy inspired by James Mason and his neo-Nazi essays, SIEGE. Mason argues that “only the full collapse of American democracy and society will bring conditions sufficient to bring order through Nazism”, and calls for violence to expedite this collapse. More on SIEGE can be found below.

Accelerationism derives from cross-pollination of these ideologies, combining anti-democratic neoreactionary beliefs with white supremacist siege culture to manifest a belief that the “future of the white race is bleak,” and that a better future can be secured through an escalation of social disorder that facilitates the collapse and replacement of existing political and societal structures (referred to by accelerationists as “the System”).

*Accelerationists view most phenomena that spur public anxiety and/or disorder, including things like COVID-19, as potential catalysts for recruitment and eventual societal collapse.

Related Narratives and Terminology

White Genocide

White supremacist accelerationists believe white people are experiencing an ongoing genocide caused by multiculturalism, immigration and deliberate attacks on white people both culturally, through politically correct establishment and individually, through violence committed by minorities. A collapse of modern political and social institutions is seen as the only way to counter this threat and to reimplement structures that prioritise white people. Similar conspiracies like the ‘Great Replacement’, which argues white Europeans and Americans are being “deliberately replaced at an ethnic and cultural level through migration and the growth of minority communities”, are also prominent in accelerationist circles.

Race War and Racist Tropes

The societal collapse desired by accelerationists is often framed in the context of a “race war” that would bring about the end of American democracy and enable the implementation of a white nationalist system of governance. To this end, white supremacist accelerationists propagate racist tropes that treat non-white communities as inferior, physically, emotionally and intellectually, to white people. Further, “race-mixing”, non-white immigration and multiculturalism are all seen as part and parcel of efforts to decimate the white race. Most accelerationists therefore desire racial segregation through the implementation of a white ethnostate.

The Turner Diaries

The Turner Diaries is a foundational text of contemporary white supremacist movements in the US. Written by William Pierce, leader of the neo-Nazi National Alliance until his death in 2002, the fiction novel tells the story of Eric Turner, who, as part of a white supremacist revolutionary army, helps overthrow the US government and implement an Aryan republic. The novel is rife with antisemitism, giving a platform to antisemitic tropes that claim Jewish people are deceitful and that they are “Satan’s
spawn.” Further, violence is a key part of the story, presented as a necessary means through which to achieve white domination not just in the US, but globally.

The novel is affiliated with notable instances of violence, including Timothy McVeigh’s terror attack in Oklahoma City in 1995, which killed 168 and injured over 600. The white supremacist terrorist group, The Order, was founded by an affiliate of Pierce and, inspired by The Turner Diaries, committed assassinations and other crimes in an attempt to incite white revolution.

SIEGE and Siege Culture

SIEGE by James Mason is a compilation of neo-Nazi esssays. The book graphically incites violence against Jewish and Black communities across the US, claiming “civil war, a total revolution” would give these communities the “death they so richly deserve”. The book is so influential in white supremacist circles that it has inspired what is now dubbed ‘siege culture‘, referring to violent accelerationist groups and their forums online.

Antisemitism

Tying in with conspiracies about white genocide are antisemitic beliefs that blame Jewish people for these perceived threats against white people, building on antisemitic tropes that claim Jews control major financial and media institutions around the world.

The Anti-Defamation League reports, for example, an anonymous 8Chan post that reads “‘acceleration’ means… making things worse… [the Christchurch perpetrator] understood that ZOG would double down on censorship, gun grabbing, free speech, etc.,” where ZOG stands for “Zionist Occupied Government”, a conspiracy that claims the US government is controlled by Jews. Here, the user clearly alludes to the accelerationist domino effect, in which the Christchurch terror attack is seen as a catalyst for increased government imposition and censorship, which would inspire those “on the fence” to choose anti-state groups and/or to contribute to civil disorder through violence or otherwise.

Tying in Contemporary Events

Accelerationists leverage contemporary events to recruit and further their agenda to take down “the System.” Among others, accelerationist discourse in the past year has addressed:

 Black Lives Matter protests – especially those where there was confrontation with law enforcement, were viewed by some accelerationists as potential catalysts for civil war. White supremacists have also “infilrated” these protests, vandalizing properties to provoke disorder.

 COVID-19 – where public confusion spurred by inconsistent government messaging has been exploited by accelerationists to “prove” that existing political structures are incapable of managing crises. COVID-19 conspiracism is also prevalent in accelerationist discourse, where the virus is claimed to be a weapon used by the ‘New World Order‘, the Chinese government and others to decimate the white race.

 The Second Amendment – accelerationists rely on increased gun control legislation to catalyse disorder and violence. They hope stricter gun ownership legislation will inspire (violent) backlash and encourage more individuals to take on the accelerationist agenda of societal collapse.

 January 6 attack on the Capitol – the insurrection at the US Capitol Building on January 6 2021 was celebrated by many accelerationists as a key catalyst for their desired civil war.

These are a few examples that demonstrate how accelerationists rely on public disorder and violence to further their narratives – accelerationists believe that the more chaos ensues, the more people are likely to abandon moderate views or political stances for the extreme.

Affiliated Movements and Forums

 Atomwaffen Division (AWD) is a white supremacist group that “encourages violence to intimidate minority populations in pursuit of its goal of destabilizing society to instigate a race war.” AWD has many off offshoots and similar movements are dotted across Europe and Australia, the biggest of which are the Sonnenkrieg Division, Feuerkrieg Division and Antipodean resistance.

 The Base, founded in 2018, is a militant neo-Nazi group that claims a race war is a necessary and desirable means to catalyse societal collapse and implement a white ethnostate. The group recruits online and offline, with related propaganda sited throughout the US and Canada. The group has also been tied with a number of arrests, with charges ranging from drug possession to conspiracy to commit murder.

 The Order was a terrorist group active in the 1980s and founded by Robert Jay Matthews, a known affiliate of William Pierce, author of the racist and violent text, “The Turner Diaries”. The Order is responsible for multiple felonies, including assassinations, committed to incite a white supremacist revolution. Although the group is no longer active, their members still celebrated as heroes and martyrs amongst contemporary white supremacists.

 Siege-Culture, Fascist Forge and Iron March are part of accelerationism’s significant digital presence, using existing platforms like Telegram, Parler, Discord and others to network. They have also created their own forums, which have served as hotbeds for planning and inciting violence and as directories for extremist propaganda, including Mason’s SIEGE. Iron March, for example, is a now defunct neo-Nazi forum that is “considered to have been key to the formation of [AWD}”, which has been linked to white supremacist violence offline. Fascist Forge is considered a successor to Iron March and similarly emphasizes violence as a means to expedite societal collapse.

The Accelerationist ‘Brand’ – Imagery

White supremacist accelerationist movements generally use logos and imagery that present “grittiness” or “roughness” and militancy. This imagery often integrates neo-Nazi symbolism. This is supplemented with narratives that propagate racist and antisemitic tropes. Terminology found in white supremacist forums embodies the homogeny with which perceived enemies of the white race are viewed (e.g. “the Jew”, intended as a catch-all phase to refer to all Jewish people, or “the System”, referring to existing governance and mainstream institutions and media).

The ‘SS bolts’ (pictured) derive from the Shutzstaffel, a paramilitary organisation operating under Hitler in Nazi Germany. Other symbols co-opted by Nazism and used by white supremacists today include the Sonnenrad and the Wolfsangel.

A link to the source web page is here. This was written by the Institute for Strategic Dialog, which says it is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to safeguarding human rights and reversing the rising tide of polarization, extremism and disinformation worldwide.

Examples of Accelerationist imagery.