If Yiannopoulos is the best the alt-right has to offer we have nothing to fear. He's a bombastic little twerp, like Miller and Bannon. On the other hand, he may have something to fear. Isn't he a member of the LGBTQ community now being discriminated against by Trump and Sessions?
What is it with your obsession with the alt-right pipsqueaks?
Have you not been paying attention or are you obfuscating to advance another agenda?
On August 19 of this year, the alt-right held a "free speech" rally on Boston Common. You know the rest. MPR reported that a few dozen rally attendees were escorted from Parkman Bandstand by police and placed into police vehicles for their own safety. There were 40,000 counter-protestors (says Socialistalternative.org).
Why are you inflating the importance of these pipsqueaks? If you are in favor of transparency, then practice what you preach.
24
He’s worse
9
Clinton was right when she said there was a right-wing conspiracy. The evidence is the cache of emails that BuzzFeed received. They were working together--exchanging email, helping one another, and planning: Yiannopoulos, Spencer, Bannon, Breitbart, the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists, the white nationalists and the alt-right.
49
the internet, where any faction can create their own celebrity.
1 year goes by, two, five, and pretty soon a whole new generation that knows nothing but fluff.
Tap into the crowd that will vote Trump, and Republican, and there's a buck to be made by losers like Milo.These losers have always been there, and now they feel they have a voice.
Love, and experience with a broader range of people outside the cocoon of the internet will change them, given the chance. I'm not talking about the jerks like Milo, I'm talking about the 15 year olds that will VOTE in 2020.
17
This is not plausible deniability. We burned that bridge awhile ago. This is out right racism. sexism, and xenophobia in all its ugly glory. This is hate speech used proudly, this is the worst of us on display, clamoring to be even more hateful then Trump.
35
Good piece. Thank you. I wonder how Milo takes himself seriously as a pawn of the homophobic far right in America. He is a gay man, correct? He has not an ounce of self worth, as far as I can tell. Fame is the opiate of the Trump foot soldiers. Their benefactors just take the money and fan out to find their trophy wives.
37
Except in the world of white supremacist myth, fiction and propaganda there is no 'alt-right' nor 'populist' nor 'nationalist' nor 'right' nor 'conservative' nor 'evangelical' nor 'intellectual'. They were and still all are hypocritical callous cleverly concealed cynical malign rhetorical euphemisms for mass bigotry. There is nothing plausible that they can deny by 'fake news' and 'MAGA' deception.
America loves hypocrites and rogues.
16
Plausible deniability is possible because people are so badly educated, they will take false statements at face value because they...ready for it...LITTERALLY do not know any better.
These are the millions who do not come to their own reasoned conclusions to choose for whom they vote based on professional, fact-checked journalism and an understanding of history, rather they get their marching orders from endless TV commercials blaring instructions on whom to vote for.
Plausible deniability is in every facet of our political-economy today, based on the foundation that politicians say they work for us but really work for the CEO and wealthiest's interests. Worse, this characterization isn't even true anymore: the private sector captains and the political sector bosses work together seamlessly in a gestalt that is the political-economy, and we are the herd as so well described by Walter Lippmann. They don't do each other favors, they do each other: like epoxy, part A and part B continually swirl together to run the farm, and we work for them for one sole reason: to build their wealth. That is why they are rich, and we are not. That they get you to disagree with this as just cynical pap is the plausible deniability working on you.
You want to see plausible deniability: you are free but you live in a box, go to work in a box, school in a box, shop in a box, race back to your homebox in a box, and you live among streets that look a lot like fences. Equality? Justice? Liberty?
18
If I get up an hour earlier than I have to in order to walk before the streets are crowded with people, possibly some of whom may be of color, could not that be construed as racism? The fact that I only love my wife and dog probably means the same thing too. I’m so tired of caring about what’s in people’s hearts. I wish everybody would just shut up.
11
There was nothing remotely "astonishing" about the Buzzfeed piece. Everyone knows and has known that the alt-right is racist. No, the entire point of today's silly exercise was for the writer to cement her position as a high status social media victim in today's victimocracy (they called me fat!). See the Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2015. Twitter is not, nor will ever be, life.
9
"It’s O.K. You didn’t do anything wrong. You earned everything you have. Benefiting from genocide is fine if it was a long time ago."
It actually is, in the sense that the idea of collective guilt is a discredited notion that the Left is still pushing. All societies are built on conflict. Should the Germans forcibly depopulate Silesia to regain territory which they lost as "punishment" for WWII? Or should they pay the Poles trillions of dollars in war reparations as the Warsaw government currently demands? No one should be deceived that the push for reparations is not simply a power move by those choosing to use moral arguments for their own aggrandizement.
15
Just to complete the circle, please note that Trump functions not as a president but primarily as an agonist of the various strains of white nationalists (referred to as "my people" in recent speaking opportunities). His tweets, quips, and speaking engagements serve to tweak the people who are not part of his constellation of hate, thereby energizing and targeting the attacks of those who are. He is the big star of the war on truth and equality surreality show described by this article.
Rarely does Trump concern himself with the responsibilities of the office he holds, but when he does engage the powers of the presidency, he uses them as weapons of a populist culture war, to target, provoke, and disenfranchise those who are not loyal followers of the white nationalist mob movements. We saw that this week in the executive orders to destabilize the ACA and a refusal to sign funding legislation unless it comes with funding for an anti-immigrant wall and a gestapo to perform a first wave of ethnic cleaning by way of deportation.
Sure, Milo and Bannon are informed by the alt-right (i.e., neo-nazis with little knowledge of history), but we must recognize that Trump is informed by them and acting as their super weapon as well as apologist-in-chief. Trying to relate to Trump as an elected official or leader only adds to the confusion the plausible deniability campaign instills.
19
What a sad state of affairs that as I enter into the twilight of my life that I should have to be subjected to the bigotry and hate filled rhetoric of an arrogant whipper snapper like this Milo character. It is unfortunate he appeals to young white millennials. Surely they will come to see his performance art for what it is - a bad actor who needs to go away and get out of the limelight. He is an attention seeking egocentric adolescent - grow up.
23
Allow me to interpret Milo for readers of easily offended, gentle natures: He hates that faction of feminism that espouses hatred, a reverse misogyny if you will; He hates social justice movements, like BLM, that use racial hatred and accusations as its primary currency; He hates a racially divided, and therefor weakened, America, knowing that the free world looks to us for help and protection; he loves the "idea" of America, over the broken promise of the U.K., and he loves free speech (and debate), even that which he is vehemently opposed; and he has the courage to stand for his convictions. A "true" American? Absolutely.
12
Two other code words for plausible deniability historically were States Rights, in which Southern States wanted the right to enslave blacks *and* to prevent Northern states from allowing escaped slaves passage or safe harbor; and The Lost Cause, substituting the Confederacy for the effort to save slavery for white people.
Excellent column!
17
It's The 1930's in Germany all over again, only with a stockpile of over 3,000 nuclear weapons. Reagan's hopeful Morning in America is nowhere to be seen. Now, it's 46 percent of Republicans approving of a PRE-EMPTIVE nuclear strike on North Korea. We start the war, which could end humankind,
The United States may very well coming to an end, if for no other reason that the rest of the world will ban together to protect themselves from us.
14
I want to thank you for so nicely articulating this phenomenon. As a white male who has had to endure this refusal to call white male supremacy what it is from his parents and family, his friends and co-workers and the entire system of white male privilege I was brought up in I seethe seeing it enter the white house and become a movement such as the alt-right. You inspire me to stand up and bark these snakes back into their holes until we can build this pathology out of our society.
15
Ms. West has shown the exceptional courage to, in effect, impugn the myth of a well informed electorate in the US. Americans just don't like the idea that they would much rather deny complex reality rather than search for an excuse -- plausible deniability -- to look the other way.
Trump was elected on a platform of plausible deniability. The electorate was intensely frustrated with a government that has swung strongly towards rich elites and big companies and ignores the man on the street -- an undeniable issue. But then along comes Trump who told whichever crowd he was speaking to during the campaign whatever it wanted to hear. Even with ample evidence that Trump is an inveterate snake oil salesman and a liar, the crowds elected to dote on every word he said and elected him. Having done that there continues to be an overwhelming willingness to buy into Trump lies. That acceptance in each case is unlikely to change until real catastrophe strikes, like closing 20% of the rural hospitals in the US because they can't afford to stay open with Trump changes in medical insurance, or like a nuclear war.
Let's all go and play with our smartphones or watch a sporting event, it'll all be OK. It is just more convenient to believe that it is OK than do something about it.
16
The disconnect I've had with this nightmarish world keeps growing, and this is the kind of article that feeds that disconnect. I feel like I'm living in unreality - that our universe is now something along the lines of The Man in the High Castle meets Lord of the Flies. In other words, speculative fiction, science fiction - whatever, but not reality. I keep waiting for it to end, like when am I going to wake up?
The politics and racism and sexism of it all is bad enough, but to think I share my country with hate-filled people who still support their Lord of the Flies is just appalling. I'm tired of seeing excuses for the anger and alienation these people allegedly feel. OK, sure, they're angry and alienated by the course this country has taken - but what they've done with that anger is just inexcusable. You don't tear down your own country just because you don't like what's happening - that's petulant, irresponsible and misguided, and you make it worse for yourself and everybody else.
The fact that these fellow citizens are behaving so badly anyway speaks volumes about their own character, and I can only conclude that the man they voted for and continue to admire - dishonest, incompetent, unbalanced, immoral, amoral, soulless, anti-democratic, profoundly un-American - is a reflection of themselves.
And the fact that there are tens of millions of such people in our country is the most nightmarish thing of all.
15
and THIS is why anyone STILL supporting Trump, Bannon or Milo ARE deplorable. It's hard to maintain hope, let alone rage through this period, but if you've ever loved your country, we have to get it through this deceitful, tragic Trump-period intact. Work faster Bob Mueller, we need this to be over. And Tillerson, Mattis, et. al: The quickest, easiest and most effective way out of this nightmare is the 25th Amendment. He's unstable, and you know it. Help us, the people. Save our country.
13
What underlies (and outright lies) the political thread of this column is Institutionalized American Corruption. Our government has almost wholly sold out to the billionaire, and aspiring billionaire, culture. Once you have suspended all integrity as a politician, officeholder, influence leader, lobbyist or corporate shill, you have effectively empowered the direct opposite of the poor. And the poor and downtrodden are poor and downtrodden because all the power has been seized. Look at this new tax plan the crooks are promoting and you will understand. Everything for the right is upward redistribution of wealth. Any attempts to reverse this trend is mislabeled and incessantly libeled. Yes, white male christians we're talking about you.
4
Ms. West misunderstands the notion of plausible deniability. It requires evidence to be plausible. When Trump claims he is "the least racist person," and isn't challenged; or when Milo Y. runs his "mere outrageous cad" shtick, what we're seeing isn't plausible deniability. It's not even much of a cover story. It's simply a flat denial, unsupported by evidence, easily challenged and refuted by competent investigative journalism. What we're seeing instead is a failure of journalism or a populace that doesn't care what the truth is. In my opinion, both.
10
Thank you for writing this, and thank you to the NYT for printing it. NYT, you've been behind the curve, frankly. More voices like this, please.
16
We're talking about misinformation and this article is citing "unnamed sources" found by Buzzfeed. Really? Look, I don't like Milo either, but we have to look at this realistically. As is, accusations of Russian meddling in social media point to them playing both sides, fueling both the left and the right. As far as I'm concerned, give both sides their time of day to speak and base their arguments on their merit (or rather, the lack thereof). But I am very skeptical, and have good reason to be so, if we're saying Buzzfeed out of all places is the source of this information. A highly popular platform amongst left leaning millennials happens to find all this dirt on the alt-right? Has there been significant fact checking on all this or are we going to hand's down believe an "anonymous" source while we're claiming to be vigilant about fake news? The alt-right may be disgusting, but let's take a pause before going on any witch hunts.
6
When you have an educational system that not only fails at, but actively discourages, teaching critical thinking, this is what you get. Pete Davidson's monosyllabic slacker teen character on SNL is the parody version but I suspect it's pervasive in lesser degree across age groups.
10
Why doesn't she name the "Nightline" producer who misled her about how her appearance would be handled?
Why does that person get the cloak of anonymity?
3
Thank you Mindy for your courage and the truth.
6
One small quibble: Ms. West describes the remnant Republican party as having a " ... ruthless determination to enrich the richest at the expense of the poorest behind lies about “small government” and “personal responsibility.” I do not think enriching, sheltering, or institutionalizing the rich is an end in and of itself for Republican politicians, it is merely a means to an end, and that is power.
5
I don't think Milo is that influential.
Although for years Breitbart had an entire section about him with almost daily news, the only articles gaining some traction in its discussion forum where those that focused more largely on freedom of speech and the idea that "the media" (read: non conservative media) would want to silence conservatives.
The articles Milo himself wrote on Breitbart were often poorly argued and not very well-informed.
Conclusion: I consider Bannon's attempt to turn him into a national star of the right a failure. The alt-right itself remains a minority in this country, by the way, whereas unfortunately racism and sexism are still very "alive and kicking". So that's what we should be focused on, if we want to understand and fight "Trumpism", not one or the other clown without any substance.
Trumpism is the result of two decades of Faux News, which Trump merely decided to vocally incarnate in order to win the elections.
Breitbart may have played an important role during the primaries, by attacking traditional GOP candidates (and often using totally correct arguments against them), and as a reward got some influence in the White House, but the real problem is what mainstream conservatives in this country believe to be facts, whether it comes to Obamacare or the climate or Iran and Muslims or racism and sexism ...
4
Let's stop giving Milo media attention. He is hateful and vicious. Even his alt-right neo-Nazi fan base has dropped him because they cannot accept his admission to having had sex with men. And most anyone with a shred of moral scruples was disgusted by his apparent support for pedophilia.
22
Suggestion: read that Buzzfeed expose (thanks for the link)--or skim it if you can't bear to read every hateful word--and then Nicholas Confessore's article this week on how the Russian hackers simply utilized our own social media poisons against us.
Our culture is sick--but not, I think, beyond repair.
18
We are in the midst of a brutal (dis)information war being waged by the Right...and they're winning. It's easier to destroy than to build.
25
"When faced with a choice between an incriminating truth or a flattering lie, America’s ruling class has been choosing the lie for 400 years". So true.
17
The US did not exist 400 years ago.
7
We are drowning in unhelpful euphemisms and overly simplistic labels. Speak plainly and factually, then others can decide. The deception/self-deception continues and money/power motivates...
www.thewaryouknow.com
6
In college in the 70's, we had speakers who offered diffeent points of view, who were scholars and venerable and respected journalists, people who dealt in facts and data. They were not there to entertain but to elucidate and stimulate the intellect. Today's colleges have often chosen to invite junk celebrities like Milo here, who are inflammatory propagandists for half baked beleifs, beleifs they may or may not even genuinely hold, who appeal to base instincts and emotion. Students have every right to protest being being presented with junk propagandists, from either side. The lines between quality thought and titillating nonsense are being blurred to the detriment of honest and logical intellectual exploration and it is killing us a a rational nation of laws and honest freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is arguably not the right to pollute the national conversation with gratuitous nonsense and spread inflammatory disinfornation. It deserves honesty and rigor.
93
Yiannapoulos is not an American citizen. Why should we Americans listen to him, any more than we would listen to Nigel Farage or Vlad Putin? He has no interest in contributing anything positive to the American political or cultural scene. Let's do our best to minimize his access to platforms from which he spews his noxious ideas.
22
Here are a few other people who are not American citizens, should we listen to any of them:
Jesus Christ
Mohammed
Moses
The Buddha
Isaac Newton
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Adam Smith
Mohandas Ghandi
Leo Tolstoy
Spinoza
Socrates
Aristotle ?
5
Yes! He's far more dangerous than any immigrant sneaking over the border to get away from a violent homeland and survive on the meanest wages he can get.
10
It should go without saying that those who deny racism and (other bigotry) are pervasive throughout American life almost always are racists who either are cynically lying or so blinded by their prejudices that they do not even realize they have them.
Racism protects itself with an almost invulnerable walls of ignorance and hate. A racist's anatomy is not all that difference from that of viruses protected by hard protein shells.
13
White Americans hunger for plausible deniability and swaddle in it and always have — for the sublime relief of deferred responsibility, the soft violence of willful ignorance, the barbaric fiction of rugged individualism. - Finally, someone telling the truth. What are White Americans going to do about the Trump fiasco they wrought upon the world?
14
Dear Professor, you ask an important question. What, indeed, are "White Americans going to do about the Trump fiasco...First they are not going to see it as a fiasco. Witness that thus far, one Senator has drawn the line in the sand, and one wonders why the other white Americans in Congress do not move to his right and left and express their own concerns about the Trump fiasco. The great unwashed masses, still harbor, their own brand of racism, that when challenged is denied. Trump gave voice to those middle-of -the-roaders and grabbed something in their unconscious minds that caused them to say "what the heck, we need somebody who is going to flip over table." They got more than what they bargained for, It is more than astonishig that this article draws a line between the alt-right, the white supremacists, and the president of the United States. What a combination. But the white Americans you ask about. Professor, are hanging in thuse far. Maybe in a year or two after the subsidies in health care have been cut off, some of those folks will continue to think that this president is doing a fine job.
5
As the child of survivors of the Nazi genocide, I will say that you lost me, and will lose a lot of people, here: "Benefiting from genocide is fine if it was a long time ago."
Everyone alive has benefitted from atrocity a long time ago. Better to be forward looking and to seek justice for the living and the future, rather than castigate the living for the injustices committed by the dead.
17
When we deny that certain groups enjoy privilege today because of past genocide, slavery, discrimination, we really don't accept that the playing field isn't equal, that the past haunts the present. The line about benefitting from genocide etc was meant to be ironic. A challenge to those who, like Mike Ditka, see no evidence of discrimination in the last century.
The living may be castigated for not addressing injustice. May we agree?
12
Good article but lacking in nuance.
For instance, calling slavery and the death of indigenous peoples genocide is highly controversial. 98% of the deaths, we now know, were caused by the unintentional spreading of smallpox. Genocide is what the Germans and the Turks and the Hutus did-- a strategic attempt to exterminate another sect. In terms of moral culpability, what America did is completely different.
In regard to systemic racism and white supremacy, there's a vast portion of the American electorate, a majority probably, who believe that this country is not in fact systemically racist. They believe racism exists, yes, they believe that neo-nazi exist, yes, and they believe that there may be pockets of systemic racism in certain regions, like the Deep South. But they also point to the fact that Asian Americans-- who are also people of color-- have more income than whites, go to jail less, divorce less, use less drugs, and go to college more. A systemically racist society would never have allowed Asians to reach the pinnacle of society. These same people believe that Hispanics are also "whites" because they primarily come from Southern Europe, just like Italian American and Greek Americans do. To redefine "color" to mean "poverty" is largely a semantic trick without statistical backing. And the people who think this way, and again I think it's a majority, are neither bigots or racist.
10
Roberto, thank you for these clarifications. I would also add that this sweeping generalization by Ms. West is unworthy of serious analysis: "White Americans hunger for plausible deniability and swaddle in it and always have — for the sublime relief of deferred responsibility, the soft violence of willful ignorance, the barbaric fiction of rugged individualism." Logically, this implies that all White Americans are guilty of these sins. If I can show Ms. West just one white American who does not fit this unqualified assertion--and I would hold that there are many, many more--then I've undermined her argument. It concerns me that many of my brothers and sisters on the left are using this kind of all-or-nothing rhetoric. We've got to be more precise, more critical. We will defeat the Trumps and Milos, but not with sloppy thinking and overheated rhetoric. Check out the following Times article by Thomas C. Williams on Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/opinion/ta-nehisi-coates-whiteness-po...®ion=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0
3
Roberto, Yes, there are many Hispanics/Latinos who are European and whose ancestors can be directly traced to Europe.And there are Hiapsnics/Latinos who ancestors mixed with Africans, and the indigenous people of Latin America and the Caribbean. So with those folks what you see are phentypically different than the typical European...Latin American cultures had their own racial pecking order and many suffer racial/ethnic abuses in this country...In fact, in an effort to try to understand why Trump dismissed and disrespected American citizens in Puerto Rico, many saw it as an extension of his own racial understanding of that island nation, and a total lack of understanding of laws and treaties, and history that came before Hurricane Maria. Early historical accounts of the island shortly after the US invasion, will show their own racial stereotypes and these were once again repeated by Trump and others. The impression that Trump wanted to leave was the the victims of Harvey and Irma did everything they could to begin their recovery, while Puerto Ricans did not, he claimed. The Presidents response to this American Island was shameful and disrespectful, and simply mean and cruel, as he threatened to pull FEMA and the military off the island. Imagine that!!! And he felt justified, as did many totally uninformed stateside Americans, who know absolutely nothing about the relationship that Puerto Rico has had with the United States for over 100 years.
7
Wow! It was brave of you to be this honest. I agree with you, but am not used to seeing this much clear thinking on NYT.
1
Sadly, Lindy, you are playing directly into the Milo show. It’s a cynical comedic routine that uses “liberals” as the the but off all jokes. Limbaugh pioneered the genre, and has found fame and fortune from disparaging liberals as entertainment since the creation of radio. Of course it’s not funny to us, but if you’re some cynical apathetic guy it’s at least validating.
But that’s what it is. A lot of men are gullible for a laugh at other people’s expense. It’s pathetic that they would even vote to deny health coverage to people so they can laugh at liberals. Just pathetic. I’m sure rush limbaugh will enjoy lower taxes though, maybe he’ll be bothered to thank a few liberals for that.
4
Excellent piece of writing! You are unafraid to call things by their right names.
"Deniability" came to my attention in Adm. Poindexter's stonewalling in the Iran-Contra hearings. I thought Poindexter sounded like the Godfather's consigliere. What cowardice and sleaze from top to bottom in Reagan's White House, as in other modern Democratic and Republican administrations!
Trump and his myrmidons are natural heirs to this tradition.
13
No one should underestimate the neo-fascist elements gaining strength in this country. I would like to thank Lindy and all the other feminist writers who have been articulating this threat so well for several years now, sometimes at personal risk to themselves.
17
After 3 paragraphs, I knew. Lindy West is telling me something EPIC.
How did I fail to recognize Ms West's level of commitment to flush out those DEPLORABLE media decepti-cons? Did I misinterpret; do I owe her an apology; where's that file?
One thing I do now know, I owe it to myself to read everything that Ms West has written.
I want more stakes to pound into that storm-troopin' peacuck's plans. Emptying this quiver provided by Lindy West and Joseph Bernstein is a good start.
2
Yes we are easily manipulated in this country. The internet has become infested with propaganda...lies infused with niceness or humor or the implication that those who see the truth and expose the lies are the ones with the problem..ie,.too serious, too cynical, "how could you think such thoughts"?
It is a strange and increasingly alarming situation we are in. Thank you to the writer of this piece for being willing and able to keep telling the truth, exposing the lies, shining the light on the dark shadowy world of liars, propagandists, and purveyors of hate.
8
What surprises me most about this disturbing story is that the BuzzFeed scoop went virtually unnoticed by the mainstream media. For many years, otherwise responsible news outlets and much of the public have regarded outrages by white supremacy groups as beneath serious attention, the deranged ravings of nuts. Now, with Trump in the White House, it's clear that their poisonous influence is pervasive. The only thing that will defeat them is a steady, shining light.
13
"White Americans hunger for plausible deniability and swaddle in it and always have — for the sublime relief of deferred responsibility, the soft violence of willful ignorance, the barbaric fiction of rugged individualism. "
My god, this woman can write. That paragraph is brilliant. More of this, please.
17
The writer makes some strong points here. But the identity politics reflected
by her "white male supremacy" remarks weaken her stance. The fact that Trump is a racist and a crook are what define him, not his whiteness or maleness. If the latter traits are truly the defining ones then I guess we should throw out Bernie Sanders?
5
Come on, please. You missed the whole point of this essay. It is precisely his whiteness and his maleness and his racist utterings that have endeared him to the great unwashed center. The ones that deny it all so they can have this fellow set the standards for presidential behavior. Bernie Sanders, is white and he is a male, but he did not kick off his campaign by maligning Mexicans immigrants. Nor has a tape emerged that clearly has the President of the United States bragging about his freedom to grab female genitalia and more on to the next woman that strikes his fancy. I listened to the entire tape the other day and was blown away that so many Americans men and women, completely and utterly tuned out that entire episode. Ms. West connects the dots.
7
Powerful & complex article. Great as usual, Lindy!
8
When complex ideologies are reduced to conspiracy theories, we are in a dangerous territory. If people listen to alt-right, it is not because of some Milo guy's email but because they find its narrative seductive. If a majority of white women voted for Trump, it is not because of online trolling but because he spoke to their concerns and fears. This does not make these concerns and fears legitimate or moral but in order to combat them, you have to understand them instead of whining about online victimization. This article contains its own dog-whistles: what is the "genocide" "we" benefit from? The conquest of America? This was not the same type of atrocity as the Holocaust, Rwanda or Cambodia and we obfuscate history by pretending it was. "Transphobia"? I bet for most Trump supporters Islam is a more immediate concern than unisex bathrooms. How about the left addressing this concern in an honest and intellectually powerful way instead of raking up some obscure internal correspondence on the right?
20
People who get lost in the wilderness die most often from shame. Shame that they got lost and shame they didn't do more to prevent it from happening. When people like Bannon, Milo and the Mercer family give rise to this kind of hate, as country we feel lost in the wilderness. Their actions are by design intended to make people feel hopeless and ultimately perish by our shame for not doing more to stop them. We as a country can walk out of this wilderness.
7
Lots of allegations, not much proof.
4
Here we go again with utterly bogus equivalence between the "white supremacists" and Antifa/BLM. The former has a small handful of misfits, no organisation, support in the power structure, etc. It has the same influence David Duke had, i.e. almost zero. Whereas the latter can raise a violent riot of 10,000 with 24 hours notice, and they have publicly called for the killing of cops. Those measly right-wing marchers have not violently prevented attacked speakers all over the country or publicly called for killing cops like BLM. There is simply no comparison.
8
Ted George: I would like to recommend your comment 100 times. Thank you.
This comment is not supported by the facts. According to our own intelligence agencies, since 9/11 two thirds of the terrorist acts on American soil have been perpetrated by American neo-Nazis and white supremacists, who have killed approximately as many people as the Islam-affiliated terrorists.
Ted George wrote:
"Here we go again with utterly bogus equivalence between the "white supremacists" and Antifa/BLM. The former has a small handful of misfits, no organisation, support in the power structure, etc. It has the same influence David Duke had, i.e. almost zero. Whereas the latter can raise a violent riot of 10,000 with 24 hours notice, and they have publicly called for the killing of cops. Those measly right-wing marchers have not violently prevented attacked speakers all over the country or publicly called for killing cops like BLM. There is simply no comparison."
6
"All political analysis was cut in favor of a cursory description of bad things trolls have said to me."
Please put this in context: "all political analysis" is always displaced by anecdotes. We feed on lottery winners and horror stories and "reality" tv.
1
True. And Hillary wasn't really lying when she said she unknowingly violated all State Department procedures on the handling of government emails, suddenly developed an incredible talent for trading cattle futures making #100000 profit on trades on the Commodity's Exchange with Bill as governor of Arkansas granting favorable policies towards the cattle industry a short time later. Oh, and she had no idea about Harvey Weinstein and certainly condemns his behavior just as she knows every accusation of similar behavior by her husband towards women was nothing more than bimbos in the pay of the Right-wing conspiracy. Certainly more than plausible, too.
5
What I think is motivating Trump's "minions" is their belief that their jobs and economic security are being threatened by socially mobile groups like African-Americans, women, and immigrants. They feel a direct threat to their pocketbooks, but they don't put two and two together when they vote for Trump, who subsequently cuts corporate taxes and income taxes for the richest 1% of the population. His minions are so blind that they don't see that they are the ones who need universal health care, free tuition, and a higher minimum wage paid for by higher taxes on the richest Americans. So the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia stems from this basic pocketbook fear that they are too blind to resolve.
6
What a great critique of the alt-right, but more importantly, of much of white America – not the heart of American because many of us are far better than the ugliness described here, but rather the immoral tumorous growth swaddled in, as West writes, "the soft violence of willful ignorance".
Another great critique: "The worst among us have deployed it to seduce and herd the vast, complacent center: It's OK. You didn't do anything wrong. You earned everything you have. Benefiting from genocide is fine if it was a long time ago."
That's the problem in a nutshell. That and "the 'nu-uh' defense". Love the writing, hate what it so clearly exposes.
7
As a white progressive, I read columns like this and wonder if we need a great divorce - like the GOP seems to be having.
How can we ever win with rhetoric like this? How can we expect moderate Americans to take our side's hysterical and histrionic handwringing over "racism" and "white privilege" seriously when they can either walk into a black neighborhood and realistically face the prospect of being victimized, or open any paper covering crime and see that black communities are literally killing themselves?
We wind up looking like fools. Maybe it's time for those of us who take economic and environmental justice seriously to push people like this columnist into some other party, perhaps a Black Nationalist Party, where when they inevitably fail at the polls, they at least won't drag us down with them. Let them stew in their own racial animus and victimhood without putting the taint on us too.
If you want to know the real reason why we lost in 2016, it was because of columnists like this, who probably saw nothing wrong with riots over dead criminals, crowds chanting for dead cops, and domestic terrorists who killed 10 police officers in the name of Black Lives Matter. Identity politics is a dead end, and when i see such a toxic sign of it like what we see here, it almost makes me wonder if the author is internalizing the patronization, victim complex, "can't ever win" mentality that actual racists seem to have foisted on so many of them.
7
What you don't seem to understand is how "identity politics" are exactly what won Trump the election - it wasn't because Democrats have a commitment to rights of all people. The identity politics played in 2016 were those of white privilege - specifically the denial of its existence as a cover for the fear of losing it. The GOP pioneered identity politics with the "Southern Strategy" and Trump is nothing if not the logical extension of that thinking. Make the "low-information" white voter think that they're in some way better than people of color (or the educated, accomplished women, the LGBTQI community, people who live near the coast, etc.) and you can rob them blind while keeping their avid support.
5
Thank you. I have been a Democrat all my life but am planning to reregister as an Independent for all reasons you articulated in your post. Personally, I think we will soon see the development of a real third party, because Democrats like Ms. West are so far out of touch with most Americans' reality that they are making their party obsolete.
3
False equivalence is the hallmark of the mentally challenged.
And trump is its poster boy.
How can one man be the repository of every degenerate human trait?
And how can we explain that the last two GOP "winners" lost the vote in our "democracy"?
7
The press needs far more articles like this that call a spade a spade. The GOP has been basing its politics on racism ever since the time of the "Southern Strategy" following the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Racism, xenophobia, misogyny and homophobic hostility are the fuel for the Republican party. Any politician who offers to rid the world of black and brown people, LGBTQ people, and put women "back in their place," gets the vote of a huge number of dedicated hate-filled voters who will come out to exercise their right to suppress non-white, non-Christian, non-straight people, somehow thinking in their twisted minds that these people aren't "true Americans."
So please, journalists (and the rest of us), call these trolls out at every opportunity. Don't mince words. Tell the world what these creepy people are and what they espouse. Maybe the decent folks among us can eradicate the rot at the core of the GOP, and make the alt-right leaning public re-examine their vile views.
9
Ms. West seems to give the groups of which she speaks a pass on their homophobia because of Milo. Despite Milo's inclusion, these groups are homophobic. They're mostly white, male, straight, and Christian, but they love their apostates from minority groups. Ignoring the homophobia makes about as much sense as giving Trump a pass on feminism because of Kellyanne Conway.
2
Having rid itself of the shackles of its Christianity facade, the GOP no longer pretends to care about right and wrong.
9
It is a stretch to say that Yiannopoulos is somehow undercover about his views. He is a right-wing libertarian who is openly hostile to identity politics, which he thinks rest on seizing the moral high ground in politics and the formulation of social policy by construcitng racial or gender-based oppression.
Whether you agree or disagree with him, you can hardly accuse him of trying to win you over by slipping something into your drink. The best way to move forward politically is for the commentariat to discuss ideas rather than shooting off round after round of fireworks in the ongoing culture war. Preaching to the choir in media echo bubbles is not debate. Trump's idiotic birther ploy did not hurt Obama. Similarly, calling anyone who criticizes your world view and ideas a crypto-fascist isn't going to win many arguments either.
As for "plausible deniabililty", I'm all for it. It's grounded in the principle of affording anyone accused of a crime protection by asking the jury to condemn only if someone appears guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt". That's a protection we all need.
5
What needs reforming, then, is what constitutes reasonable and plausible.
2
Please let's not forget Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the victims of this tacit racism. Why are Texas and Florida promised help as long as they need it while Puerto Rico is told, "we can't stay forever" three weeks after the disaster while most people still don't have running water, electricity, or working telephones? Of course, Puerto Ricans are a complicated mix of black, white, and Taino (native American) so no free rides for them.
And then there's the Virgin Islands, where most of the population has African ancestry. Trump didn't bother to show up there, even to throw paper towels at them. No-- he says he met with the "president" of the USVI's. Which shows just how completely uncaring he really is. USVI's stands for UNITED STATES Virgin Islands, people. Trump doesn't even know or care that HE, himself is the "president of the US Virgin Islands!
7
You do realize that both TX and FL are states, while PR and VI are territories?
1
Not all of the Left has ignored your warning about Milo - the Berkeley antifa, among others has been attacked by both Liberals and the Right for protesting his appearances there and subject to false equivalence with the Fascsists. His followers target and attack immigrant and trans students (plus the violence toward anyone who dares protest them). Even though Milo chickened out of his most recent appearance, after making the U of California pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in security, alt right followers who came for the event still went around attacking people. For them, violence is part of free speech and that includes attacking feminists
7
When they say it's not about their race, it's about race.
When they say they don't see color, they see color.
When they say I'm not a racist, but, , , they are racist.
We've known this about the GOP for decades, and with every jump to the right it's become more and more apparent.
We are in serious trouble.
9
Honesty, clear-eyed and forthright witness, nothing less.
That paycheck, though. What are you gonna do without it? It's terrifying.
This guy with the Greek name that I won't even bother to learn how to say much less spell is so transparently full of nothing but self-congradulatory spite that I have never considered the possibility that he's worth even a first look, nevermind a second.
Trump the same, and all his abettors and minions.
And yet, here we cower in the shadow of his menace.
I don't know where this comment is going, except perhaps to say that the "plausible" deniability is not nor ever was plausible: it has always been a lie for proffet for every hand that touched it.
3
It is interesting to compare and constrast this "revelation" to the "revelation" of Powerful White Men in the entertainment industry who were sexually assaulting women while the Powerful Liberal White Politicatians ignored, obfuscated, and buried the Truth.
9
Yes, one has had days and days of coverage in all media outlets. The other I only even heard about because of this opinion piece. Now, tell me again: What liberal media??
4
As has been well documented, NBC quashed the Wienstein story for well over a decade. On the other hand, NBC and MSNBC, for example, have been for months if not years running daily diatribes about the connections between the so-called Alt-Right Breitbart and White Nationalist Extremists. My post and your reply to it is exactly why I used the term "revelation" in quotes. In both cases, the facts were well-known "secrets," which people on both sides of the ideological spectrum now as refer as "shocking revelations." Or, in life imitating art, Captain Renault proclaimed, "I'm shocked, shocked ...."
2
Here's a big difference: Since his misbehavior became public, Harvey Weinstein has been subjected to nearly universal scorn and condemnation. He was voted out of The Motion Picture Academy. Shame on Harvey and those who protected him far too long. Donald Trump's sexual misbehavior, though widely known, is still being suppressed even as fundamentalists of several sorts grovel at his feet outdoing each other in sophistic apologia. Shame on Trump and those who have in the past and still continue to protect him. Here's the difference, at the very time in his career that Weinstein was shown the door, Trump was voted into the highest office in the land.
6
When someone says something stupid, hateful and vile, I believe it the first time.
21
"Milo Yiannopoulos wasn’t really that bad, was he?"
Yes, he was, and still is.
"...the so-called alt-right, youth-driven, arch-conservative online movement..."
Call them what they really are, fascists and reactionaries; they aren't conservatives by any stretch of the imagination. They're mostly a hate group.
"...Yiannopoulos has been working intimately with white nationalist leaders to normalize radical far-right ideology,..."
This is the vast right wing conspiracy long mentioned by the Clintons. The material they post is the real fake news.
17
The US has been racist since the genocide of the American Indians and Slavery of Blacks. The alt-right is just the latest version of hate.
13
Not all of us, Jacquie. Students left school to go to Mississippi and ride buses to register voters. Three of those students were murdered and buried in a construction site. They were not racists. Don't denigrate the progress made since slavery; don't denigrate the young men who went South to fight against slavery; they won that war. Racism exists; no one denies that. Just don't deny that Americans have sacrificed to change that, good people. The alt-right is another Flat Earth Society which provides a lot of click bait for the media. We are a moderate and tolerant society; we always have been.
3
So why don't you leave? Seriously. I'm sure you could find countries you prefer.
1
...In the mean time, under Jeff Session's Justice Department- the F.B.I. has created its own movement: "Black Identity Extremists", (foreignpolicy.com broke the story). This concoction has no identifiable members, no manifesto, no location, no leaders. But, they've taped their mouths shut on the matter of White Identity Extremists walking around with battle regalia, long guns, white hoodies with peep-holes hell-bent on defending their right-to-be-white.
11
1930: Hey, kid don't b'lieve all what ya read in d' newspapas.
2017: What? I have ta use facebrook and tweater? I don' think so.
2
"Milo wasn't that bad..." "Was"? He's still alive, isn't he?
4
A feminist conspiracy theorist. Hmmmm, well at least that is a novel approach but this woman, in her entire piece, says nothing new and certainly nothing of substance. It's hard to even oppose her statement as it is so full of air.
10
Trump has released the worst elements of this country by giving them a platform. All true patriots will fight against Trump, his White Nationalist supporters and the GOP enablers that Trump the power to destroy our democracy. This is not about freedom of speech is is about fighting the rise of fascism - Trump's true objective. He openly admires dictators.
How is plausibility linked to identifying racism and evil? The extreme right is pulling out all the stops in trying to solidify a neo-Nazi movement in the United States with Trump's blessings. Uncertainty in the name of "free speech" is not the appropriate response. That is exactly how intellectuals and progressives responded in the 1930's in Germany and Austria. We cannot afford to repeat history - we need to expose Trump's neo-Nazi and KKK buddies for who they are. We must call out racist fascists as true enemies of the people.
18
Someone needs to tell Milo his 15 minutes ended 20 minutes ago.
10
Bravo!
3
I was hoping to read a Lindy West article, and hello, there she is on page 9 of the Sunday Review section. Sweet. So, remember when Hillary Clinton spoke about the "vast, right-wing conspiracy" in 1995 and got laughed at? Well, turns out, she was right.
19
Isn't it interesting that Milo Yiannopoulos hides behind dark glasses in the picture on the page? Never trust a person who will not show you his eyes!
9
Melania wears dark glasses all the time as well. I suspect in her case it is to conceal the disgust in her eyes with that guy she is propped up next to.
4
Note to the Editor:
Of the new crop of columnists, Lindy West is by far the best one you have offered since you lost Frank Rich.
16
I wonder how much of this angst from which our op-ed writers and we, the people, seem to suffer came about as a result of the significant increase in the use of impersonal communication media like Facebook and comments to online news publications. It is much easier and far less dangerous to expose ones ugly underbelly using a keyboard than it is, say, face to face in a bar or on the street with someone of differing opinion.
Clearly, Facebook and Twitter have not caused much of anything other than the aforementioned increase, but surely they must have, even if they neither sense nor acknowledge responsibility for us becoming far less civil in our words and actions.
9
Four thoughts:
1. Speaking of "youth driven," it's the young who think we are at our end. This is not because we are, but because in a nation at it's end, the most important people are the young adults. The need to establish self importance is a driver of the current outrage trend.
2. White Nationalism is no more than nominally "conservative," & certainly not an "arch" version. It is radical, reactionary, and intrusive.
3. "The alt-right has always thrived on obfuscation and disinformation." As Orwell warned in Politics and the English Language; "Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable,and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Please look up LBJ & Vietnam.
4. The "remains of the Republican Party" are the Democrat Party.
12
CK - our youth...currently Millennial's, are not big fans of democracy. See the article in this issue. So Im not real secure they are our best fall-back.
4
"White Americans hunger for plausible deniability and swaddle in it and always have — for the sublime relief of deferred responsibility..."
This is a really great column. What's interesting IMO is there is lots of blame put on Trump voters. But there's absolutely no responsibility put on - or taken by - the people who voted for:
Gary Johnson (4,489,221 votes, 3.28%; exit polls indicated a mixture of anti-Trump Republicans/ Independents temporarily turned Libertarian).
Jill Stein (1,457,216 votes, 1.07%; exit polling indicated Democrats/Independents who disliked Clinton).
Evan McMullin (remember him)? (731,788 votes, .54%; anti-Trump Republicans).
Bernie Sanders (write-in; 111,850 votes; .08%; Democrats/Independents who disliked Clinton).
Change most of those votes and we wouldn't be in this long-term disaster that's barely begun. But those voters also got caught up in all of the Facebook/online hate and rumors just like Trump voters.
And yet many now still maintain Hillary would be worse than Trump (that's not even plausible deniability!) or repeat the meme first said by Susan Sarandon last year, when asked if her vote for Jill Stein might elect Trump: “People feel Donald Trump will bring the revolution immediately; if he gets in then things will really explode."
Sarandon isn't going to be affected by Trump. But many people like her (but without her income) still believe OTHER people will hit rock bottom because of Trump - not themselves. It's a "flattering lie."
26
Pure numbers of those voting for other-party candidates do not show the effect on the election. Many of those votes came from states where one candidate or another was a shoo-in.
2
Yes, but many still won't listen.
4
Susan Sarandon and Jill Stein have one thing in common: huge egos and enormous sense of self importance.
6
The general discontent that made people vulnerable to political trolling is palpable and likely more about people's entitled belief in relentlessly bringing children into the world irregardless of circumstance as a right, rather than racism. Some just haven't the economic and environmental tools to identify the source of their hate and others, on various sides including West, are alert to this.
1
The alt-right spokesmen and popularizers coordinate their efforts? Shocking, simply shocking.
Show me any group of supporters of an ideology who do not do so, and i will show you a failed movement. Was the coordination of the various groups marching in the days after Mr. Trump's inauguration equally galling, or is it only bad when people you do not like get together?
7
When "people you do not like" includes Nazis, then yes, it's bad.
13
You may also put me down as, "Well, yeah, Nazis and Klansmen getting together is a Bad Thing."
Am also opposed to lynch mobs, gangs of witch-burning religious fanatics, and Zombie Flash Mobs.
Liberals, eh? We're so, like, judgmental.
6
Mike - in the case of white males carrying torches thru a town...I ain't ever gonna like them. Or their tactics.
In fact, when ever white males gather in large numbers...I've learned to watch my back, sides and front. Be it a rally for supremacy, or even a sporting event.
6
It is not enough, and perhaps even irrelevant, to continue to document “plausable deniability,” “ignorance,” ”disinformation,” as complex words.Concepts.Processes and outcomesWe can even add toxic willful blindness and deafness.About violating words and deeds which shouldn’t be allowed in our enabled WE-THEY culture.Daily documenting the absence of much needed daily mutual respect,trust, caringness,civility and mutual help, when and as needed, will not be sufficient to overcome traditions as barriers to menschlich well being for ALL.The diverse “disempowered,” not just the “haves,” learned well how to disempower the socio-political constructed “the other.” With their strongly held, unprincipled, “principles of faith.” Oft times religiously underpinned by religiosity-in-name-only.Equitable sharing of limited human and nonhuman resources,critical for a civil society remains challenged.As we are by so many new, and old, unresolved man-made problems.Each mantraed promise by elected and selected policy makers continues as s/he doesn’t take personal responsibility for what they do.That they shouldn’t be doing.Saying. And not doing-saying what their role mandates!And each of us, in our own ways, enable what is happening.We can choose to be partners for making a needed difference for viable well being for all of us. More documented “Facts”aren’t necessary.THEY use up our energies and time which are needed for targeted actions.By each of US. Ourselves, and partnering with others.
I believe it is vitally important for collusive and destructive relationships such as those focused on by BuzzFeed News and highlighted by Ms. West be bought into the light. I applaud BuzzFeed. Unfortunately, Ms. West's opinion piece seems to have her own similar broad allegations that she cloaks in the veil of "plausible deniability" that she professes to reject. We need to be direct, transparent and stay with the facts as much as possible when we develop our opinions. Today few of those factors seem to inform many people's opinions. Everyone is entitled to an opinion some our just better than others.
1
The millennials stream their media as they refuse to pay for cable. This group is extremely frugal, sensible and money conscious. They do not waste money which is a foreign concept to the socialistic democrats. Not surprised by the young getting wise after they see the numerous deductions on their W2's.
2
Nobody objects to that sort of thing; however, we're talking abut the Hitlerjugend.
2
What happens if he remains plausible enough to get re-elected? In only 3 weeks we will have been reading and commenting on this for an entire year. I know what you're thinking, "It couldn't possibly happen." Think again.
Regarding being silenced: A large number of us in California, perhaps on the order of a million voters, were silenced. Once there were enough votes to win a state majority, all the rest of our votes were wasted. They counted for nothing and were effectively thrown away. Vexation without Representation in one of our largest, most productive, most well-educated states.
As long as they are in power, each of us will continue to be considered "poor things" too misled to get on the bandwagon, as in "the failing New York Times"
Indeed we will fail (again) if we cannot find in our ranks a capable, honest person of dignity and principle who can lead this country back into the light of day. Meanwhile, voter education is the first step toward meritocracy.
10
Plausible deniability works because people want to hear these things in the first place.
It is a demand-side problem.
6
I am grateful to Ms. West for writing this and for helping shine a light where we'd rather not look. Further, I think it often goes beyond plausible deniability into shrugging acceptance. There are a million euphemisms. Boys will be boys, locker room talk, economic anxiety, the pressures at the ballot box, etc.
When NFL players, Jimmy Kimmel, and Eminem are willing to challenge and risk their own fan base to draw a line in the sand about what is right and what is wrong, it is shocking in part because we are not used to such integrity. We literally cannot even imagine that level of integrity coming from Republican officials up for re-election. How could we?
But we do not let everyone off the hook. In the aftermath of the Weinstein scandal this week, the NYT editorial board and CNN demanded that Democrats (esp Clinton) speak out. Twitter silenced Rose McGowan. Trump holds Puerto Ricans accountable in the aftermath of a hurricane. Pence and the RNC chair demand that NFL players honor the flag. ESPN suspended Jamele Hill.
The concept of accountability itself becomes weaponized, applied unevenly, its sharp tip pointing disproportionately at some more than others, esp. women and those with dark skin. And while complaints about media coverage have become their own tired joke (but her emails!), I don't think we can ignore the group so often holding the spear.
As we head into the WH declared “National Character Counts Week” (yes, really), I feel wary. Whose character counts?
61
Pence and the RNC chairman demanded that the NFL honor the Anthem, not the flag. Players knelt during the Anthem, a WWI addition to sports venues. Why do we have military plane flyovers at sporting events? Why have sports been dragged into the political arena, forcing athletes to demonstrate patriotism the rest of us are not forced to do in our ordinary work places? I worked for a large corporation on the East Coast for 33 years; none of us had to salute the flag, or listen to the national anthem before we started work. This is jingoism, and it reminds me of those Hitler youth rallies with all those upraised fists. Despite all that, Jessie Owens won his race and his medal.
6
While I agree with the author's point regarding people choosing a "flattering lie over an incriminating truth", more to the point is people's desire to embrace a SIMPLE lie versus a complex truth.
Add to this the fact that 99% of "journalism" today is nothing more than answering the question "What sells?". Trump & co. sells because it all is so stunningly outrageous (and carnival- like) and that's all that matters to today's media.
The Fourth Estate's abdication of it's duty removes the last resistance to the flattering and simple lies that the citizenry are more than happy to cloak themselves in to avoid the hard work of sustaining and protecting a Democratic Republic.
3
There is nothing new here. Goldwater's speechwriter, confidante, and political philosopher Karl Hess was an Anarchist and atheist who was comfortable on both sides of the political extremes. As a member of the GOP he was comfortable with Black Panthers, Students for a Democratic Society, Libertarians and the antitax movement.
It is Hess who gave us "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice , moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." The only thing Hess never told us was whose liberty and whose justice.
5
Excellent job of laying out all the interconnections between 45 and these vile movements. They are all coalescing under 45's umbrella, and our country absolutely must confront and defeat this pernicious ideology before it takes deeper root.
13
Thanks. This has got to help in some way, even if small. Hopefully it is all adding up to deep and systemic change. We need you. Never give up.
6
For some years now, it has been common to hear the leaders of UKIP (the party behind Brexit) insist - loudly - that they are not racist. But having met one of them who, after a few whiskies demonstrated that he certainly was, I wondered why he had so often been allowed to get away with this.
'Concern about immigration' is the proxy sentiment over here and, of course, once you let 'concern' about something rule the debate (rather than debating the actual issue) you have handed over the debate to the bigot.
But 'concern' (that is anger, fear or hatred) has always sold newspapers and now it drives comment threads. Trump was given a free ride because he sold airtime. Nigel Farage in the UK was given a free ride because he was 'box office'.
Far rightists will continue to make the debate unless we can find a way to make their goading less attractive to broadcasters and websites. Do we have the discipline not to react to their provocations but to close down their inflaming arguments point by plodding point?
55
“There are none so blind, as those who will not see.”
Trump and the alt-right media blitz, have ushered in the “post-fact era” for millions of Americans and it is rich soil for Ms. West’s “plausible deniability.” We now have a Congress and a President largely comprised of the “willfully deceitful” leading the “willfully blind” - what could possibly go wrong for all but the wealthiest among us?
14
Excellent article, but while the technology is new, the facts, sadly, are not. Read Nancy Isenberg's book, "White Trash," an excellent and scholarly history of how we got this way. Mark Twain said that history doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme, and the "rhyming pattern " is spookily close to the rough-riding presidency of Andrew Jackson. What he brought to the fore was ultimately "resolved" by the Civil War. Let's hope we learn from history and not repeat it.
9
It's so asymmetrical - the mainstream media and the left are bringing lawyers and Robert's Rules of Order to a gun fight.
Plausible deniability is the skinny end of the wedge that the right uses to get its messages out. The more broadly the message gets out, the less they need dog whistles and the more they can use megaphones.
The mainstream media feels the need to parrot some version of the Fox News - Breitbart echo chamber -- Vincent Foster! Benghazi! Emails! Moronic Bernie Bros stay home or vote for Jill Stein, while motivated trolls and deplorables turn out for their guy. He is supported by a gerrymandered Congress, put in place by a Republican Party that cares only for power, not for rules, fair play, or governance.
But they do care about tax cuts. A story in the Boston Globe today discusses how much the Koch Brothers want this tax cut to go through. These are smart guys, and they fund lots of good biomedical research at MIT here in Cambridge. Are they unable to look around and see what their money is doing to our environment, our economic competitiveness, our politics, our civil discourse, our society?
How much money is enough for them?
11
Because Trump ran such an obvious hate filled racist campaign and won repeatedly we've moved past plausible deniability. He's revealed us to the world for what we truly are. Before Trump people may have privately held such views but thanks to the civil rights movement knew enough not to publicly express them.
I'd like to think we're capable of becoming an open minded tolerant country but recent events suggest otherwise. Since Trump's victory a lot of ugliness that was once expressed privately has become more public.
12
All that is required to clean up the ugliness now seemingly epidemic in our Nation is to rid ourselves of the Conservative elitism plainly influencing this blackness we call the Trump presidency. Sanity will return when that occurs. People with a more humane outlook toward fellow citizens will be the rule and not an exception.
4
Excellent piece. I reflect on a recent episode of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting titled " Street Fight: A new wave of political violence." Each person interviewed used the technique of plausible deniability. "I am not a racist" was said after the host, Al Letson, read through numerous racist posts on the persons Twitter feed. Bald faced lies said calmly in the face of all evidence to the contrary. This is psychological warfare.
7
Lindy West. you are a brave and powerful woman and I stand with you on everything you say here. I have forwarded this to many friends while I was reading it. I agree that this it the major reason that the creeps keep marching on and we have to stop being enablers with plausible deniability. Because if we don't stop it we will never recognize our country and its values again.
12
This country was built by racism, and much of the country remain proud of that extremely inconvenient fact.
Only since the sixties has it become "uncool" or politically untenable to boast about it openly, hence the requisite "plausible deniability" you outline.
Is there now any doubt as to the reason why we've had to live under the veil of this fantasy version of America?
It's because the truth of it is too ugly to confront. James Baldwin said as much many years ago, and it's become clear he was correct.
9
The U.S. is a racist country and has been from its inception, from the days of genocide against Native Americans and slavery of blacks. The struggle against racism during the 1960s and 1970s was countered by Republican dog-whistle politics that began with Nixon, expanded under Reagan, and has reached new heights under Trump. With the vast reach of hate radio, Fox News, and similar internet sites, things are likely to get much worse before they get better. If they get better, that is.
I could write a similar paragraph about the struggle for women's rights and the current backlash in this country, but you get the idea.
6
I couldn't care less about my 'chyron', but I really like your writing. Very real and true. You talk of the Republicans' ' ...ruthless determination to enrich the richest'. Yes, this is the foundation; though many aren't really sold that, as such.
Our job is to point this out. I'm from Arkansas and taught many, many poor, white kids. I'm tired of the 'white privilege' talk. We need to focus on 'green privilege' : who has the green.
Trump is smart/evil enough to just say the same lies over and over again. So, that's all people hear, and maybe, slowly hear it as truth, or part-truth. Well, we can tell the truth: the best way to create a civilized society, a safe and healthy world, a 'more perfect union', is to be caring and loving and implant this in our politics and legislation. We must destroy the ghetto. We must give people decent lives. We have to treat each other as equals, including recognizing that we all deserve a quality of life that helps us achieve our true potentials. That's a requirement for both the individual and the larger whole.
It 'is' the economy; but it's more than that. It's the distribution of wealth and income, property and power. That's the real. I have no problem discussing humanity, morality, spiritual matters with anyone. Most faiths are against greed and material acquisition. They know that's a moral corrupter. We know that.
So, turn away from love of lucre, riches. That's the cure. And, put that in our political decisions. Tax rates matter.
6
As long as Republican leaders remain silent in the face of bigotry, anti-semitism, homophobia and the daily lie-machine now known as the White House, nothing will change. I write my senator, Rob Portman, regularly, with serious questions and concerns, and receive the most warmed-over piffle in response. Talk about plausible deniability! It's the sum total of his rhetorical strategy. I'd say he could teach a master class, but his skills are practiced far and wide already.
Let us agree there are policy differences. Some, perhaps, that simply can't be ironed out between the parties. Let us also agree that the methods of the alt-right, its media assassins (Yiannoplulos, Bannon, et al.), its vainglorious hand puppet Trump and its army of angry racists will destroy the country, because - and it's hardly difficult to discern - they will.
10
I agree and hate it that I have to agree. I want to call Donald names but know that it would not provide us with a President who has a sense of fair play. Tearing at women---I just don't know. Even when he was playing the race card against football players he managed to invest his hostility with profanity that demeaned their mothers.
The hostility toward women has always been as obvious as his racism.
The real poison, as our writer points out, is the polarity between his words and his behavior. Kelly Ann Conway asked in an interview months ago why we could not imply good intentions when he spoke rather than dwelling on the negative statements in which he ignored the poor, minorities, women and those who live at or just beyond the margins of a wealthy culture.
Because Kelly Ann, we know through our common sense and hearts that he is a liar without any shard of conscience, that he and his buddies on the alt-right want to "Make America Great Again" by shredding the sense of family we have spent so many generations building.
I hate him and offer no apology. He hurts others when he could help.
If he wants to let the "non-right" know he means well he could begin with the sentence, "Nazis---there is no room for them or their thinking in America.
We are a family and have to act like it if we are going to get through the extremely difficult problems facing us."
A really Great America would at its core be one in which leadership lined up its language with fair policies.
15
Lindy West is unfailingly willing to confront these uncomfortable issues with precise language and clear-eyed honesty. The fact that Milo and the legion of wrong hate her (and she downplays the vicious harassment she received at their hands in this article) demonstrates that her assessment is spot-on.
8
This represents the BuzzFeed article accurately, but that article was full of sweeping generalizations. Yiannopoulos consulted white supremacists, asking for their views, because he was writing a big article about the alt-right. Buzzfeed doesn't quote his statements about the white supremacists or about race in the article. If he "took guidance" from white supremacists, he would have made racist statements in his own voice. I bet BuzzFeed would have quoted them.
4
Did anyone ever doubt the alt-right's intentions? I hadn't even heard of Milo Yiannopoulos until a year or two ago. When someone first mentioned his name, I was legitimately confused. That's not a good sign for someone who consumes news as broadly as I do. The red flag immediately went off. I watched thirty seconds of some performance and I had his number pegged. I didn't need an exposé to recognize his intentions. He's like an evil Stephen Colbert draped in a cloak of false intellectualism and self-professed legitimacy. However, I will admit I do appreciate being right every once in awhile.
The hard part for me is getting the center, particularly disaffected young white males, to honestly recognize and admit their mistake. As much as I like being right, no one likes admitting they were wrong. They especially don't like admitting they were wrong when their favorite media icons are undeniably associated with evil agendas. The tendency is to double down and support the false narrative. The alternative is to willingly associate themselves, even inadvertently, with a horrible cause. I can only imagine the response of the first person I heard mention Yiannopoulos if I had said, "You know he's an outrageous bigot, right? Like seriously, he's a verifiable, no holds barred bigot. You think he's funny?" I wish I had known at the time but the conversation would have ended much less politely. I doubt I would have changed his mind anyway.
8
"It's not about race."
--old white proverb
11
Finally, a refreshing takedown of Milo and his scam. This is so much more relevant that any of the main-media pieces on 'free speech controversy' related to his appearances on college campuses. It's the true reason students at Berkeley marched against him and his fellow charlatans.
9
Seems like we've developed many techniques and habits that ultimately impede real thought and analysis. I'm not certain this is distinct, but it bothers me more and more that we discuss things as if a court's rules of legal proof apply. Can't fully document and seal the case that he's basically a white supremacist? Then it's not an admissible point. Except that we don't live in a courtroom, in front of a jury. So we hem ourselves in with this legalistic habit unnecessarily. Is it too many hours watching Perry Mason, okay more realistically CSI, on TV? Or just lazy thinking habits?
(By the way, one point that's well established ... is that seeing your name means I'm in for a good read! Thanks!)
6
I am thinking of the musical "Camelot," where Arthur's knights are so fed up with kindness, justice, and mercy, that they cry out - "Fie on goodness, fie!" They'd rather be killing and plundering and raping than adhering to the rule of law and being good to others. They are all too ready to succumb to the pleasures that conflict and chaos allow them, and all too willing to be agents of Camelot's ruin.
Of course, Camelot never existed, in America or anywhere else.
But I think that the Trumps and the Bannons and the Milos thrive on conflict and chaos and they have found kindred spirits in all too many white Americans who are fed up with the fight for justice and equality, and just want to be told that they're superior to everyone else, deserve to be privileged and rich, and that it's some other group's fault that they're not.
All too many have gone beyond trying to make denial of their racist and sexist attitudes plaausible, to embracing them. From being reticent about them to joyously letting them loose.
There is more to the rise of Trump, Bannon, and white supremacy in the US than that. But the steady and increasing viciousness of decades of right wing propaganda, with its scapegoating, bigotry, sexism, and divisiveness, has taken it's toll, and I fear that the time is long past where reason and decency could have prevailed. I fear that our descent into conflict and chaos is too far gone to reverse, and only when we have burned ourselves out, will we hit bottom.
43
I cannot agree more with Ms. West’s analysis of racism and misogyny that passes as political word, thought, and deed. Trump is a visible expression of the Id of America. The contrast with Obama is jarring on every level. Yet, how did the same country elect these two men only a few years apart? How did things fall apart so quickly?
The reality is that things were never put together that well. Trump came along and used social, press, and entertainment media to topple that 200+ year old mess we call the United States using the 400-year old messaging we call America. Trump made it okay again to be overtly racist and misogynist in the name of swinging the political pendulum. The rich white men who run things benefitted directly from his rise—Yes, I’m talking to you CNN.
We did an amazing thing in 2008 and 2012 in electing Barack Obama, but it was not the achievement of the white folks. It was the African-American community that brought him to the Oval Office. Trump is both a reaction to that achievement and a reversion to the mean. The fact that he is energetically trying to erase Obama’s achievements shows that he wants to disempower those who elected his predecessor.
So far, justice and progress has been helped a bit by the disarray of the GOP and Trump’s own incompetence. That won’t last much longer.
88
What happens to the GOP in all this is a big question. Fifty years of dog whistling , a reliable staple, have been given a megaphone by Trump. The GOP's most treasured secrets, "law and order" , "strapping young buck" , "welfare queen" , etc. have been blown wide open in Trump's quest to win. Hordes of blacks and Mexicans roaming the land while white unemployment (coal miners ) is a terrible shame and are the victims in a conspiracy of liberal's "war on coal". Plausible deniability has done well for Trump but is now becoming increasingly implausible
32
Love how your writing style Lindy West! Most appreciative of your point of view. So glad you are a contributing op-ed writer here. Was happy to meet you recently; you signed my copy of Shrill. The Introduction in the PB is a must read for anyone despairing of the current occupant of the Oval Office. Thank you!
22
The primary purpose of pieces like this isn't to expose the far right and uncover their tactics. No, this piece instead serves the voracious demand for stories that tell certain people what they want to hear (over and over and over again until it is beyond doubt and central to what they want to 'know'), namely that America is a vile, bigoted, horrible, terrible, DEPLORABLE country full of people beyond redemption. That's the message. Drill that into your head and become proudly intolerant of other opinions and reflexively capable of labeling all nonconforming views as deplorable.
24
Or, it could be that she is trying to create a space for redemption. It it hard for change to occur until you realize there is a problem.
5
It's pointing out how the alt-right try to shut down other opinions. Portraying it as a message of intolerance is Orwellian Double Speak.
8
Did you read the leaked emails? Yiannopoulos would send his articles to Andrew "Weev" Aurenheimer before publication. The man has a massive swastika tattooed on his chest.
6
Equivalency is an important tool whenever the mask of the alt-right slides off too far. Trump's core supporters now use the term "alt-left" when they are caught in the spotlight as if to suggest that they are merely the opposite and that all things have an opposite, right? They portray themselves now as simply within the natural spectrum of political views by casting an imaginary left.
32
Great point; let's include the prefix 'false' to tell the whole story. False equivalency is the tool of the demagogue, the grifter, anyone who relies on untruth to advance an agenda or gain an advantage.
Johnathan Edwards, the fire-and-brimstone preacher of early America, would have said, "False equivalency is the tool by which The Devil lures men's souls to his House of Perdition." The uneducated respond better to such language....
3
It's weird how the right has embraced relativism: "No, carrying a torch and yelling anti-Jewish slogans isn't necessarily wrong. Might be okay!"
They really are intent on muddying the water. I think one reason is the mainstream GOP policy platform of deregulation and tax cuts doesn't appeal very broadly. This forces them to obfuscate or else gin up new weird wedge issues (bathroom bill!), which are also a form of obfuscation.
5
They consider anyone not alt-right to be alt-left. That makes most Americans alt-left, whether we know it or not. They are going to run things to benefit the wealthy and the alt-right, which means the rest of us are out of luck.
"How did such a conglomerate of transparent bigots (transparent by any honest reckoning, at least) achieve enough mainstream credibility to win the White House? "
You must have missed Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and Reagan in Mississippi applauding "states' rights."
Don't deny it.
29
...she didn't miss the point, that is her point. She doesn't have enough column inches to list, in detail, every single historical reference point.
3
That's like discussing WW2, and not mentioning the Atom bomb.
1
Headline: "...America Loves Plausible Deniability..."
...NO, we don't!
Every time I hear these / other superficial rhetorical buzz_phrases, ("Plausible Deniability', "Collateral's, Damaged", and/or, "Alternate Facts"!!), I KNOW the person(s), at the podium / speaking is-are lying, to me-/-us!
Such lying has enormous consequences, including...how, in the case of the ongoing Pillage, (initiated by those two Pro_Life_Xian_Jihadists, Bush, 'N, Blair), afflicting Iraq, Afghanistan 'N, Pakistan...
I find 'Collateral's, Damaged', especially, LAME, as it refers by euphemism, to, (profitably), disposed, of...men, women, and children!
9
It is amazing to me, this NFL thing. White people telling black people how to behave and it’s being lead by the leader of this nation. It’s nutty that white people wont recognize this for what it is. Maybe it’s time for other nations to put sanctions on us.
85
@S Peterson, Yeah, why are white people telling black people how to
behave? How condescending! I hope the athletes never stop kneeling
till all blacks have the same rights as whites and do not have to fear
being shot dead by racist police, and of course there are lots of cops
who are great and not racists. And the leader of our country is an idiot
and out of control and no one would ever hire him for any job
because he has no skills to actually hold down any job, let alone the presidency. I think other countries sanctioning us is a great idea.
I really love your comment!
6
Great point and not all white people or white women are unable to see this racist, demonic and twisted abuse of power.
3
Yes, it's been 400 years of the ruling class choosing the lie! Give Ms. West a regular column, please.
I had read about Buzzfeed's expose of Milo/Breitbart's direct email strategizing with white supremacists, and can only say that the scant coverage of it once again proves that the liberal media ain't really liberal. Not in the least. Of course the press could also emphasize voter suppression of minorities by the mainstream GOP too, but that would be rude I guess.
88
The US has not been in existence for 400 years.
1
For anyone who has a sense of history - and my generation may be the tail end of it as our parents, who are dying of of old age now can give fewer and fewer people first hand accounts of the newsreels showing rise of Fascism, Nazis and Hitler real time - the tools the alt-right are using are frightening,
People in their 80s and 90s saw it all first hand, 80 years ago, and saw the world ignore it, or even cheer it on as an antidote to communism. On the subject of the crowd marching with torches in Charlottesville, my mother asked: "What are we waiting for? Kristallnacht?"
Propaganda is wildly effective, but the generation who truly know this, and truly understands its effectiveness and the horror it can lead to, are no longer large enough in number and influence to sound the alarm. Too many of us have no sense of history.
Scapegoating "the other," demonizing those who are different, demanding a kind of cultural purity can lead to - has lead to in the memories of our parents and grandparents - wholesale evil and destruction. Yiannopoulis and Bannon are dangerous, because they prod on the torch carrying mob. The situation is dangerous, because too many are willing to say that there are "some good people" in that mob, and that both sides are to blame for violence.
What are we waiting for? Kristallnacht?
330
The sad thing is, should an event like Kristallnacht occur, you can bet the alt.right will claim that the antifas started it--and those who want to believe in Trumpland uber alles will greet that story with open arms.
8
Yes, it's happening again grandma, unfortunately, many elders are the ones who voted for our current problem if you check voter stats. The darkness that has been festering needed to be exposed. We are in the battle grandma and we are fighting on every front through it.
4
How many people even know what Kristallnacht refers to, or care to find out. We are seeing the death of knowledge and intellectual curiosity. Defunding public education and white washing history so it support American exceptionalism? Of course that is always tops on the agenda of Republican state legislatures.
6
Spot on about the Trump's expressing "American anti-black hostility without ever quite calling Barack Obama a racial slur".
As for the rest of this "movement," it's as simple as the quotations on the Führer's Wikipedia page: "If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed. Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it. He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future."
44
The Republican party has been doing this for most of my lifetime. It started with Nixon and Ehrlichman. Continued with Reagan. Then there was Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove. To say nothing of the Koch brothers here would be ridiculous but I'll just let their foundation speak for itself ("Americans for Prosperity"- seriously?) and then there was George Bush and the weapons of mass destruction. And Paul Ryan with his roadmap to prosperity. And finally Trump with his tax cuts for America. The list just goes on and on. And now the blatant racism of the party is finally on display for all to see. When are we going to figure out that if it walks and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck? Shame on us!
6
I expected more info on the Buzzfeed emails.
12
Our country was founded on lies. But, so was every country.
2
So it's ok then???
Exactly the problem!!!
1
What happens to this country if the president and the alt right win out in everything? Will all freedoms that currently are still in place be lost? Will the Declaration of Independence and Constitution wind up on the "ash heap?" Will we ever again welcome immigrants with "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses?" Will 240 years of effort be for naught? Will the "Greatest Generation" simply be fiction? And the final question: Will truth vanish forever from the face of the earth?
19
Well the “greatest generation” also came home and were perfectly willing to maintain the status quo of blacks and other people of color as second class citizens. They are the very same people who rallied around Nixon and Reagan as they marshaled the forces of white resentment in a southern strategy whose poisonous fruit we are choking on today. Whatever claim to greatness they might have had was squandered not long after they came home in triumph.
6
You've got it backward. Conservatives are trying to save our Nation and its Constitution from the predations of the looney Left, which will never be satisfied until the government takes full control of our economy and our lives. Trump is a flawed personality, true, but he is all we've got. That's why freedom loving Americans support him and will continue to do so.
3
Sadly, our media interlocutors are complicit in enabling the success of Republican and "alt-right" political leaders' "plausible deniability" strategy by simply getting competing sound-bites, denials, and obfuscations along with a healthy dose of false equivalency and "both sides do it" nods to fairness.
It would be more useful to the electorate to force Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, Steve Bannon, et al to answer for their associations at the policy level.
Make these leaders answer for why they hold the same stance on Immigration as White Nationalists, the same stance on Civil Rights as Neo-Nazis, and the same stance on women's and LGBT rights as theocratic fundamentalists.
Their intentions for the public can be known by the company they keep from a policy perspective, and this cannot be obfuscated or spun by plausible deniability.
144
We are fighting all previously hard won battles all over again; our battles against racism, misogyny, bigotry, and fascism. The rise of white supremacy is neo-fascism but too many people do not see the danger in their beliefs and where it can lead. Trump has been a long time women hater who sees our place in the world as only sex objects or mothers. Again we have to fight male domination. McConnell had no women on his secret locked away committee for the first and second drafts of that egregious health care plan. That was no accident. Women were deliberately barred and not regarded as fellow Senators or colleagues. We have lost our voice in this WH administration. The bipartisan women in Congress are fighting a war.
In essence, unless you are an extremely wealthy white male you are an inferior to Trump, and to many members of the ruling GOP and his Cabinet. We do not have a president representing his people. We do not have a GOP representing their country or constituents, only themselves and their agenda of personal greed which is profits over people. We are under siege in our own country. We are not under-represented, we are not represented at all.
Everyone is losing ground under this WH administration and in grave danger of a totally demolished or ripped asunder democracy. We need to make our Constitution work again and remove the most in-American president in history. There is no justice for all under Trump, only for the privileged few.
29
But we are fighting it on higher ground. Don't lose heart- history is a spiral.....just comparing to 1930 or 1950 : yes, women in congress are ignored and have to fight....but there are women in congress; yes the birther nonsense was racist dog whistles......but it was agAinst a black president finally ; yes there are some nasty attacks against LGBTQ citizens........but most are not hiding in the closet of despair; yes there is currently a dismissal of intellectualism and higher education.......but far more people go to college, especially women and minorities; yes, anti semitism is openly expressed (and I'm not talking about criticism of Israeli policies which is valid but out right, never thought I'd see again slurs and hate).........but it's widely recognized as vile and not just normal chit chat..
Clear eyed realistic optimism in the face of these times can be a valuable tool in strengthening the will to continue the forward progress of humanity.
3
Wish I had said this and said it so well.
3
This opinion is another hysterical “the sky is falling” article. I challenge any one reading this to spend a week documenting the number of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, alt right and KKK members, hate crimes or ethnic slurs they personally witness, not read about, but actually see and experience in their daily lives. It will be zero to minuscule. I say this not to dismiss racism and antisemitism, but it’s prevalence is dramatically blown up by groups like the SPLC to get donations. Harsh, but true.
To put this in perspective, look at last summer’s Charlottesville rally. It was a highly publicized, organized gathering of extreme right groups with high profile leaders that usually don’t associate with each other. Charlottesville is a days drive from 40% of the US population. Yet this event attracted less than 500 extreme right members for their tiki torch parade and park protest. 500 out of a country of 320,000,000 people. I’m not exactly hiding under my bed. Let’s use some common sense and stop connecting dots that barely exist.
23
I live in southern Virginia and came home this week to neo-nazi propaganda on my front door. Slick, full color, expert graphic designs- these pamphlets were the product of a group with funding and a write up by the Southern Poverty Law Center, not some disgruntled internet troll using a home printer.
6
Well put Mr Chamberlin
1
Hitler started small also. The issue is not that 500 marched. The issue is that they marched at all. They glorify one of the most horrific periods in the world's history with their march. They sow hate, discontent, misogyny, racism, and a lot of other nouns, none of them positive. That they feel they have been given license now to protest is the most frightening part. Where does it go? Where does it end? If they have their way our country will be absent women, gays, jews, blacks, and any other minority for no other reason than they are not blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned. The only point of the marches is to gain followers.
When you say that evidence of this negativity in daily life is zero or miniscule, I suggest you look more closely. The evil is spreading. The fight outside Starbucks a while ago over a coffee spill is representative of it. The murder in the bar several months back of an Indian man is representative. The attack on the bus in Portland is the same. Look at what is coming out about sexual misbehaviour in the workplace lately. Ask a black person how comfortable they feel lately. Ask an immigrant. When is the next attack on a citizen who is not measuring up to that Aryan appearance?
The insidious evil that is being pointed out can't happen often enough. It is contagious and frightfully scary to our way of life, to our citizenry, to our nation. Hitler started small also.
8
the people responsible for placing Trump in the white house are the people who,(Democrats and independents all), didn't vote for her as they had voted for Obama four years earlier. Why does the NY Times and other pro Democratic organizations think that their candidate is due a fair, lie free, propaganda free campaign? As Mr. Trump has said, "Hillary should have won". What happened? If the various members of identity groups, including blacks and women didn't vote for her, was this the fault of the USSR? (Russia)
Germany used all kinds of propaganda to get the US to give up in WWII, but it didn't work. Yet why should we now expect the enemies of democracy to be any gentler then the Germans in 1942? The real question is why do so many idiots among Mrs CLinton's party think Obama deserved a "third term" (sic), and why, when I point this out, other fools think I do not know the Constitution forbids this.
We have fallen apart, again, into a pre Civil War like America of squabbling factions, but we are too big and important and powerful now to allow this to continue very long. Our biggest fault lies in our willingness to blame everyone but ourselves for not having got up, out and doing the voting that was called for..
6
It is a direct parallel to Hitler's rise. Propaganda is an art and Hitler knew it; was the basis of his rise to power. Mein Kampf. His on-going slogan was "Make Germany great again." Not making this up. At age 76 this is all too obvious. But the kids are easy marks.
32
Again like an article the other day on white supremacists, authors need hard numbers. If you understate lower middleclass concerns about losing jobs to globalism and overstate the number of alt right voters ( minuscule in my view ), you will again lose to Trump by being in your bubble. Radicals in the US are never large in numbers....communists, Black Panthers, etc. etc. were never large in numbers. People with reduced income in the red states and people fed up with political correctness and seeing Muslim immigrants murder innocent people in Europe voted for Trump...few were interested in whiteness.
25
In my 77 years of observing things, I firmly believe that 25% of white males are functionally indistinguishable from Nazis. They are, however, adept at disguising this fact. So if 500 showed up in Charlottesville, it's amazing that so many crawled out from under their rocks.
7
I struck the people in my life that voted for T from my life. I don't bait people into telling me who they voted for but if I know, I'm done. That includes relatives of whom I was always quite fond. When you peel back the layers on a T voter you will find a racist at the core of every one of them. Rich or poor. Educated or not. Throughout the campaign T was blatant about it and "good" people voted for him anyway. Maybe, just maybe, I would understand if your family was starving and Steve Bannon offered you a million dollars to vote for his boy Donald. But that didn't happen to anyone , did it?
Over the years reading books about the Holocaust always made me ponder if I would have been a "good" German or a resister. T has forced me to test that question. So far I have not knowingly relented and I don't miss a single one of those friends or relatives and they know why I don't bother with them anymore.
Initially, some people thought I was being harsh but that changed after Charlottesville. I realize you can't pick your co-workers and relatives but you don't have to be lunch buddies with unrepentant T loving co-workers and if the T voter doesn't live with you you don't have to be anything more than polite at family gatherings.
Sorry for you if your married to one or the only one in your family who isn't a racist.. I would be interested to know how T and "anyone but T" mixed marriages are working through this period of white hetero supremacy and T's anti-Obama presidency.
31
Your choice. Lots of good people voted for Trump. But I agree that I have a hard time with people who actively support his presidency today. It's always worth remembering that people have other perspectives and priorities. If you shut yourself off from them, you deserve the complete loss of influence you could otherwise have.
11
No: the people who voted for Trump are not "good people": they were ALL prepared to overlook his bigotry and sexism, not to mention his total lack of competence, knowledge, and self-awareness; his whipping up of fear and loathing of large segments of our nation; his bullying, bragging, braying personality; and his multiple open incitements to violence and stifling of the free press. Enough!
5
Dah! Of course, who really needed more proof that these selfish, nationalistic, racist mysogenists were self serving and out to do harm.
7
Would that your email about Milo Yiannopoulos could live in infamy, Lindy West, but social media in all its hydra forms (including emails) is ephemera, and its technology will prove to have been the major cause of the failure of our American democracy under president Donald Trump and his band of white supremacist hounds. Trump`s trolls. Deniability is never plausible, Ms. West, especially now at the end of the world`s crowning `democratic experiment` by our founding fathers. The status quo of the United States of America has become antifa. The Republican party is dead as a doornail. Neo-Nazis, no matter what you label them, are on the rise. They create havoc. They are Trump`s dog whistles. They do not remember our world`s last century. We are all victims.
12
"The soft violence of willful ignorance": spot on.
21
This is all very reminiscent of Germany in the 1920’s. These alt-right people should be taken very seriously. Right now they’re going after the GOP, but when they are through mopping up them they’ll go after the rest of their political opponents. Will they be successful? Well they’ve come this far…
That is why it is so important that the left does not split its forces.... and go down some rabbit hole, i.e., Bernie Sanders.
The alt-right only lacks oxygen for its cause to gain max power. That oxygen being an economy in free fall. Once that happens run for the hills, because you’ll have two choices, join them or get thrown into a camp.
N.b, originally, the German camps were for the fascist’s political opponents, criminals, then work shy people, “social outcasts”...... then the Jews ( ref Wachsmann book KL). Also I’d not count on your beloved and glorified military to pull your bacon out of the fire, most (> 51%) in the military side with the alt-right and share their ideology.
Of course there are other choices that I’ll not delineate here
“All life…the world…is will to power and nothing besides.”
Nietzsche
15
Re The “left” splitting and losing. The Democrats are far from ideal and Madame Sec’y evoked negative feelings among many but it is possible to blame the egoism of the Greens for the November fiasco.
If right wing crazies can so easily subvert the dumbos of the Republican Party, how is it the Greens cannot see that if they became involved in Democratic Party politics that in a few decades they could determine American policy? It is no longer acceptable to run for office and cause the failure of democracy in order to make a point. Green expression of the horrors of militarism and the need for social, economic and labor justice and for an equitable medical system will be FAR more effective when coming out of the mouths of Greens in Democratic clothing!
3
This piece makes one of the most essential points in today’s political environment: if you say racist things you are a racist. Since Trump’s speech to date has been so filled with racist remarks, his denial is no longer plausible. There are no nice nazis who are “fine people.” America has a racist leader and those who support a racist must now stop and think.
15
All you are doing is diluting the term 'racism' of any real meaning.
10
While I agree with the linking of Milo, the alt-right, Bannon, Trump, and historical racism, it is unhelpful to paint “white America” with one broad stroke. What of “white” Americans marching for BLM, against the fascists, and standing in support of people of all colors and creeds?
Is it not the very definition of racism to assign a common set of beliefs and behaviors too one race?
11
Wait, didn't that kid already out himself as a pedophile-apologist thereby rendering himself radioactively contaminated?
Well I suppose it's helpful that Lindy West & Joseph Bernstein are willing to keep tabs that troll because I refuse to.
Dog whistles & thinly-veiled closet-racist demagoguery are nothing new in US politics, but that guy is a ridiculous clown-act that needs to be ignored.
The only thing to be learned from radicalized activist gay Trumpists is that being gay is rather a state nature, not a political affiliation or position.
Persecution of gays did not necessarily engender a gay pursuit of justice or make an ugly attitude more humane or less hideous.
As there are gay pedophiles & straight pedophiles, there are gay bigots & straight. Tribal hate seems to be an equal-opportunity affliction & being gay isn't a tribe.
The only people to be bigoted against are the bigots themselves. But Milo shouldn't even be further validated with all this ink. Cut him off. He's just a troll.
6
I hope everyone reads that BuzzFeed article, and closely notes Steve Bannon's role at the pinnacle of this stuff. Anyone recruited by Mr. Bannon to run for U.S. Senate is making a decision to join other recruits of his and Mr. Yiannopoulos's -- including flat-out Nazis.
11
Thank you
6
By exonerating America's Racist Sheriff all plausibility was eliminated from America's Racist President's feeble denials.
6
The playbook of saying publicly "no I didn't say that I don't believe that it's not true" is astonishingly successful at every level of the media and government.
Consider Andrew "weev" Aurenheimer who straight-up told the NYT that he stalked and harassed Kathy Sierra. Then, before during and after his stint in prison as he began to realize this was a pretty serious admission of a major crime he shifted to "nah I said that but I was lying". We cannot take seriously people whose words literally mean nothing and we should not give a public form to people whose words literally recall Nazi Germany.
Several of them are among the senior advisors to the President. Public discourse should not accept this. This is not normal or right.
70
Complacency and “plausible deniability” are what gave the world Adolf Hitler.
Response: exaggeration, hysteria, intellectually dishonest, partisan, absurd. Until it’s not. Cohesive coherent compromise are NOT possible under circumstances in which Milo and Steve are normalized. Policy?
Blowing up the Iran deal, Obamacare, Energy Policy, North Korean dialog, NAFTA, would not be possible if the alt-right, neo Nazis, had NO voice. Today they are equal to protesters. Nazis are equal to protesters. Iran is a “terrorist state” while Nazis are fine people. Only the death of WWII veterans makes it possible for Nazis to be “fine people” instead of the very worst group of terrorists the world has known.
13
Goebbels for the 21st century. Milo can claim he was just following orders at the trial.
10
Right wing psychopathy does numb people into apathy until they are crushed.
9
Isn't that Milo guy a confirmed pedophile? I guess that's okay with white supremacists? Why is he still allowed to be trotted out?
5
Milo: Gay. Jewish. Foreign-born. Married to a black man. Yes, absolutely the BEST spokesperson of the Neo-Nazi white-supremacist ALT Right. Thank you Lindy for this deeply true and provocative expose on how this all works. Truly a work of honest journalism. Readers - go to Amazon, buy his book (Dangerous), read it, and actually for once in your life: THINK FOR YOURSELF. For instance, why does the NYT allows this kind of idiocy to be published yet not give Milo his own Op-ed? Hmmmm.... Why is that?
19
NYT hasn't even given Thomas Franks an op ed. He's a Democrat, but he defends white working class midwesterners, which is probably why he's never published by either NYT, WAPO, or HuffPo...
12
I read the buzzfeed emails for free, I don't need to buy his book
6
Sorry, Ms West, but even you and your oh-so- liberal friends are white supremacist in the way you think, feel, and act. "Oh, but we are good people " you protest. "We are against racism" you state. It's the liberal version of plausible deniability. Ask any black person.
4
Sorry Lindy, but it sounds like you don't like what they have to say - so they shouldn't be able to say it.
'“Please mock this fat feminist,” Sunderland wrote to Yiannopoulos, . . . ' It's a fight - don't expect your enemies to fight the way you want them to.
They " . . . obfuscate and use disinformation." Check - what are you going to do about it? It seems pretty clear to most of us that illegal aliens are driving down wages and taking jobs from US citizens. Jobs more people would be willing to do, if the wages were higher.
Lots of people who are underpaid and underemployed don't like ILLEGAL immigration. The Left obfuscates and uses disinformation about 'migrants' on a daily basis. If you're an unemployed Black youth in Oakland, those 'migrants' are taking away your ability to create a decent life for yourself. 'Dreamers' are not a finite set of 12-year-old orphans. If and when Dreamers are given permanent legal status, The Left will begin clamoring for the next, younger group to be legalized. And their parents, and their cousins.
Yeah, Yiannopoulos is a sleazy creep. But the Right has no monopoly on twisting the facts.
15
"It seems pretty clear to most of us that illegal aliens are driving down wages and taking jobs from US citizens".
Pretty clear, maybe. But still not, what's that word? True.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/17/immigrations-effe...
There is nothing currently on the Left to compare with the alt-right for the simple fact that there is no progressive president, congressmen or senator, that embraces
left-handed craziness.
The right's crazyness has the monopoly-- on power.
5
They aren't the alt-right they are white supremacists, neo nazis and the KKK so lets drop the phony nomenclatures. They are also impotent with ideas, life accomplishments and of course also relationships. What group in their right mind would ever pick a 64 year old drunk to lead their "revolution"? Some of plausible deniability is created because people don't recognize that if it looks like a snake slithers on its belly and has a rattle on its tail - it is a snake and these guys and their movements are snakes.
9
Never mentioned is that Milo is an outrageously open gay man who talks of a gay black lover. He has a remarkable command of the english language, an insightful mind, superb speaker and is funny to boot. It is both laughable and sad that the author tries to paint him as a white supremacist, transphobic, misogynist, neo-nazi.
12
Yes. The neo-nazi charges are ridiculous especially considering Milo is Jewish, too. As was Andrew Breitbart. The nazi claims are the liberal version of The Big Lie - repeat it enough and maybe people will believe it.
2
read his emails, they speak for themselves
4
Ignorance: I don't know.
Stupidity: I don't know, and I don't care.
10
It is obvious to every sane reasonable skeptical independent thoughtful American that our democracy is under attack. .
By Yiannopoulos and Bannon who couldn't care less about fair elections, civil rights, election interference, free speech, and just about anything required by the Constitution.
By their intimate associates the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who have perpetrated two thirds of the terrorist acts on American soil since 9/11, and who have killed approximately as many people as the famous Islamic terrorists.
By the plausible-denier-in-chief who is willing to undo as much of our democracy as he can get away with, and by his mob of millions of unhinged and untethered plausible deniers who hide behind pseudo arguments about western culture and free speech and flag idolatry.
10
Thank you Ms. West for dsescribing so clearly the means which will lead to our end.
"Well, because they said, over and over, that they weren’t bigots — the “nu-uh” defense."
"The Big Lie" A German Nazi era propoganda technique coined by Hitler.
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
Is there any issue or question where this is not this administration's answer?
One question of caution: In this time of hacks and misinformation aimed at creating division, hatred and chaos, how certain is your BuzzFeed email leak? If Russia will stoop to using Pokemon go......I'm just saying.
6
Being Republican/Alt right doesn't make you a racist, but being a racist will make you a Republican/Alt right.
3
“'Please mock this fat feminist,' Sunderland wrote ... "
Is plausible deniability the problem, or the fact that a large segment of the American population refuses to outgrow high school?
You'd think we would all be eager to leave behind that stage of life when you know it all and can't understand why the world doesn't recognize your rock-star awesomeness. But no: We have man-boys who think calling a woman fat, referring to "Killary" or "Shillary" Clinton and chanting "Lock her up!" is the height of brilliant put-downs, and we have woman-girls who giggle when they do.
Watching the reactions of the crowds at Trump rallies, his appeal becomes clear: He is the Top Jock, the senior who specializes in confining small freshman boys to lockers and garbage cans; a budding rapist who comes across as a womanizer even though he is secretly afraid of women; the ringleader who specializes in making substitute teachers cry.
As high school students, most of his admirers desperately wanted to be in the Top Jock's inner circle. The fact that he seems to accept them now is a dream come true. They don't notice the 100 pounds he has put on since high school, that his face and hair are discolored and ruined, or that the language of an 18-year-old sounds bizarre coming from a winkled mouth. They don't want to hear that an elderly man should be more dignified. They are finally in with the In Crowd, and it will take more than tsk-tsking from the likes of us to make them abandon their hero.
14
Brilliant. Thank you.
5
I realize that these people are dangerous, but honestly, Milo Y and his ilk?
We should be laughing them out of public discourse.
3
It would be a most interesting experiment to ascertain the support Milo and his cabal would maintain if the truth of his nationality and sexual orientation were well known by his community: he is a foreigner (Brit) and a sexual deviant, according to the teachings of his own block (a gay man). The real hypocrisy or brillance of the alt-right movement is in its embrace and intellectual reconciliation of two fundamental no-nos to their cause - foreign-ness and non-mainstream sexuality - while going after everything and everyone else. We deport hard-working Mexican immigrants but allow an effete, British hate-monger to roam freely among us... all under the guide of free speech and rights the alt right would happily take away from the average person.
9
You obviously have never looked at Milo’s Facebook page. He is so upfront about his black husband and flamboyant gay lifestyle that it’s impossible to miss. Watch any YouTube video of his talks and it’s in your face. Especially his recent Bill Maher interview. Your “experiment” shows your ignorance about Milo more than it reveals anything sinister about Milo. Also, Milo is a British citizen and travels here on a legal visa. Illegal Mexican immigrants are breaking immigration law and that is why they are deported. Big difference. Legal vs. illegal. Understand?
2
This piece relies on questionable news and evidence from BuzzFeed that the “far right” wrote emails to Breitbart where Milo was an editor and therefore there is a link between Milo and the far right. This is a tenuous connection at best. I usually disagree with the opinions published in this newspaper and send an email. Does that mean the NyTimes agrees with me? The alt-right should not be confused with the far right of neo-Nazis and Klansmen. This is obfuscation on the part of the Left which leaves you wondering how Trump won. Be careful or someone from the Democratic party will be writing, “What Happened” in 2020.
14
On the contrary, the BuzzFeed article provides plenty of evidence that Milo Y communicated directly with neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders through regular email correspondence and through personal interactions on his peripatetic journeys around the US and Europe. He solicited and shaped story ideas, mentored young would-be fascists, cleverly laundered out the most blatant racist and anti-Semitic verbiage, and dutifully reported to his boss at the time, Steve Bannon. The article includes copies of actual emails and a chart of his many contacts with these supremacists and the source of his funding, the Mercer Foundation. Read it here:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-sm...
6
"When faced with a choice between an incriminating truth or a flattering lie, America’s ruling class has been choosing the lie for 400 years."
West needs to bring the Brits, Spanish, French and Portuguese into her diatribe.
"White Americans hunger ...You earned everything you have. Benefiting from genocide is fine if it was a long time ago."
We see what is really bothering the author - not anyone's belief that a person is superior or inferior due to their genetic makeup (racism) but rather it's the fact that some folks are not contrite enough. And by extension a minority's problems are not at all of their own making. This is perpetrated by the false liberal narrative of modern American that all white males attended college on the WW2 GI Bill and purchased homes with VA home loans which the Federal Government denied or limited for African Americans.
I saw my city, Detroit, slip into levels of crime and racial violence during the grand awakening of the 1960's and 70's. As these problems increased we moved out (white progressives and liberals for the most part had long since moved on ala Bernie Sanders). I wondered how the African American city administration would react to criticism of the growing violence in the neighborhoods. How would they stop the descent (started long before the mortgage meltdown or auto industry bankruptcy) of a once great city? They didn't and guess what? It was all my fault.
On and on goes, the liberal guilt perpetual motion machine.
5
The best thing that could happen, now, would be for media to ignore these craven, worthless ideologues. Ignore, and destroy.
5
Denying denial will likely not result in progress.
4
The idea, treasured on the young left, that every white man in America is engaging in "plausible deniability" if they don't think their success is wholly tainted by the history of racism in the United States, does an injustice to so many Americans.
My father fled Nazi Germany in his mid teens, arrived in America without any parents, one dead, one soon to be interred in a detention camp, and worked his way up the ladder of success into the upper middle classes.
Is it really right or fair to say that his success was a function of white privilege, not hard work, dedication, honesty. and all the other traits that made him a good businessman? Did he have some "privileges" that women and people of color did not? Perhaps, perhaps not. But he had many obstacles they didn't, including a family torn by Nazism, the difficulties of being an immigrant Jew, etc etc. Even if we accept the fact that people of color had some disadvantages he didn't, doesn't the lion's share of the credit belong to my parents, not self deluding succors of "white privilege" but two, hard working. relentlessly honest and decent people who made the most out of what America has to offer? The idea that white privilege accounts for their success is false and defamatory and the reason the left has relinquished the loyalties of millions of Americans. Throw another trash can thru the pizzeria, Ms. West. you'll only elect more Trumps. You're deluding yourself with your radical distortion of American history.
10
hmm, I don't think anyone said that your parent's success was due to white privilege.
but it's easy to say that many many many blacks it spite of equally hard work and commitment did achieve the same level of success or have the same opportunities
2
Yep, you were treated like all female victims, like the dead, run-over-multiple-times carcass in the road we can't help but look at.
1
If anyone with a bit of common sense and a smidgen of intelligence can't figure out that the president is a racist it's because they don't want to.
It's so sad that he wants to tear this country apart. All we can do is to not let him succeed.
9
Fox News and Limbaugh, the genesis of the dumbing down of America.
9
They are like particularly obnoxious frat boys, with Internet. Not worth your time or attention. Just saying.
3
Isn't this the tran kid who Bannon fired? Did he not notice Trump's order to ban people like him from the military? So they used him and spit him out and he still does their bidding. Sounds like he's missing more than a few marbles.
3
Everyone gets 15 minutes of fame. Milo’s is over.
3
Frightening.
3
Superb critique.
4
Bigotry is both explicit and implicit. On the one hand, there are neo-Nazis and outright misogynists, on the other hand, there are the residents of all-white neighborhoods and the members of all-male golf clubs. Those who are explicit about their bigotry are pretty darn stupid. Those who are implicit run the gamut and they are the ones who rely on plausible deniability. Respectable people don't associate with explicit bigots, but they do associate with implicit bigots and they often move in the same circles. America protects us against explicit bigots. Implicit bigots pretty much have free reign. Until the explicit bigots cause me harm, I am more concerned about the other kind.
117
Supporters of individuals like Trump and Yiannopoulos downplay their bigotry because they don't want to see themselves as bigots. Donald and Milo work by making people comfortable with prejudice. They don't look like the stereotyped image of Nazis or Klansmen, so it is easy to overlook their dangers.
And that is what makes them so dangerous. They try to normalize and rationalize biased and backwards ideas. They play with fire, and fan the flames of hate, but won't call themselves arsonists. And their admirers follow suit, never owning up to the darkness in those men or in themselves.
25
The Liberal Journalistic Academy overuses and misuses the words 'Terrifying' and 'Frightening', but Ms. West has put her finger on something that is very troubling. Notice should be taken and preparations should be made to counter this problem before it gets out of hand.
16
You can write, Ms. West!
I read the BuzzFeed article and was hoping you'd have something/lots to say.
"These people" are dangerous because there is nothing they will not do to get what they want, not just unethical but, I strongly suspect, criminal.
The vines of fascism are creeping in everywhere.
Paper ballots needed now and the left better get it's act together....you're running out of time...the right's long-term plan is sufficient power to impose Constitutional amendments....do you realize how very close they are to realizing this goal?
23
What I see after many months of Trump at the helm is already numb neighbors, when they encounter a Republican praising Trump, saying leave it alone, they can't be changed, just walk away from them. They're not all bad. Relatives and friends call truces instead of confronting each other. But that's the thing about racists, women haters, fascists and anyone who supports them. Bad people prevail when good people say nothing.
So, confront them. Don't walk away. Walk right up to them and shout no. Scorn them back into their dark corners. Stand in front of anyone they malign, and shout. Yes, it will make people uncomfortable. Your friends and family will beg you to just let it go. But don't.
Do not become the one whose children or grandchildren,and the next generation of Americans will ask, but, why didn't you say anything, why didn't you do anything to stop it?
History tells us this is not new. We know what to do. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
22
Hitler used a lost war and a battered economy crippled by a bad peace treaty and marshaled his people towards a militarized industrial buildup. Chamberlain ignored the danger; Churchill did not. Eventually, Britain was the only democracy left standing and Churchill came into power. We do not have a Churchill to confront Trump; however, we do have a Democratic Party which needs to marshal its forces to fight this demagogue. He will lead us into terrible alliances, i.e. Saudi Arabia, which profit his business interests. He will destroy treaties honored by our allies, i.e. Iran. He will allow the EPA to be trashed in the interests of mining corporations. He will starve the Public Park system. He will gut the ACA which affords health insurance to millions of Americans. He and the GOP will allow insurers to raise rates so that fewer Americans will be able to afford the premiums when subsidies disappear. He will allow the richest among us to get even richer, and the poorest to become even poorer. The middle class will shrink due to poor job opportunities, lack of education funding, and stagnant wages. This is a case where we need to look behind the curtain; Trump is a puppet. Who are those pulling the strings?
6
Wow, you've identified exactly the problem I've been facing. Thanks for encouraging those of us with willfully ignorant friends and family to not give up, to cease avoiding the glaring issues staring us in the face.
3
The middle class began shrinking DECADES ago, and neither Clinton nor Obama did ANYTHING to protect either middle or working class Americans. This was long, long before Trump. Please read the NYT article about a working class person who lost her job long before Trump declared for office. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/union-jobs-mexico-rexnord.html
In the US, if it walks like a chicken, talks like a chicken, it's a bald eagle.
We are the masters of delusion.
20
Bravo. Brilliant writing, thank you.
6
Mainstream media is the accomplice with its reporting of all information as equally factual.
11
Ms. West's brilliant analysis is the latest link in a powerhouse chain of writing by women thinkers and writers in the past few days. I only wish that more people had access to these essential views offered by the NYT so that enlightenment could spread faster than the troglodyte views that beset the nation.
9
This piece puts so well my own discomfort and dismay about the collective national amnesia that enabled the ascension of the tangerine boy-prince to the oval office.
His presidency was constructed entirely on a foundation of bigotry. In all of American history, what president has ever been harassed to produce his birth certificate and academic transcripts. Only one, and what was unique about that president?
With the election of Barack Obama, I admit having been lulled briefly into the feel-good narrative about my country having at last entered a post-racial era. Wrong!
What Obama's election did was to open our Pandora's Box of bigotry, prompting the tens of millions of toxic haters in our woodwork to wriggle out, noxious parasites to our shared national community.
I share Ms. West's main thesis. We're headed straight to heck (may I say that?) in a hand-basket, and we're driving our own cart.
30
This is too simplistic and does not account for the millions of people who voted for President Obama in both 2008 and 2012 but chose not to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
They've dispensed with plausible deniability long ago. Trump and others demonize the main-stream media, repeat ad nauseam that it's all fake news, and sit back and watch the faithful swallow the whole nonsense of Trump as a populist. How do I spell hypocrite? As in Hannity? (My spell-check wants to change that to humanity... imagine!)
12
When a child is raised by a Nazi as Trump was, then sent off to a military school because he acted out so selfishly and heartlessly as a young sociopath, what can we expect him to become as a man?
It's a tired cliche "born on third base and thought he hit a triple" but it's worse than even that. He was born in a home filled with prejudice and hatred and the money and horrible education only isolated him more. I don't write this to excuse but to explain, though it's obvious to most people. The thing that disturbs me the most and I think surprises so many of my friends is the size of the undercurrent of racial hatred among Trump voters...not all of them but a huge chunk. Think about the fact that 70% of Trump supporters during the primaries believed Obama was not born in this country. Aside from the willful stupidity of that belief they also were unaware that it makes no difference at all where a child of an American woman was born. He could have been born on Mars and under our Constitution he is an American by natural birth. It was simply a racist notion.
Now I do not contend that that large a percentage of actual Trump voters are racists. I do believe it could be half that many. We all know them. It's not confined to any particular region of the country. I've lived in the south but also in Boston and central PA and inherited hatred and isolation are just as prevalent in these places. We evidently have to go thru this to get to the other side. Let's hope it comes quickly.
12
Take some comfort in the knowledge that a lot of these extremist cretins are their own worst enemies, and more often than not their fate is to have a sudden and well-deserved downfall. They do something that is beyond the pale, they are exposed for what they really are, they have a mental breakdown, they are arrested for assault. This Milos character won't be around forever. He's by nature an aberration, and the same things that drive him to be an aberration will drive him to his public demise.
5
The deniability is only "plausible" to those who are so filled with hate and rage, particularly for older prominent Democratic women, ie, Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, and Hillary Clinton, and so afraid of the changing demographics of America and that they will lose the White Privilege they deny happening, that they will accept any evil.
As a White man, I've long seen and even felt the pressure exerted that "real men don't vote for Democrats or Liberals. Real men vote for conservatives!"
I've long seen that if you threaten a man's masculinity most men will accept almost any atrocity to protect their image of their maleness.
The kicker is that the techniques being used, of using our liberties against us to undermine those very liberties, are not new. The current version goes back 100 years to the rise of Mussolini after WWI and the techniques have been repeated world-wide many, many times. It's been tried here, before, even before Mussolini (think of Hearst Papers) but never as effectively as now. Bannon, Milo, Gorka, Miller, Spencer are all seeking to create a dictatorship where White Males have a free hand to act with impunity, and they are led by the most un-patriotic man to ever run for the White House.
30
Yes. Thank you for sharing this.
2
Only rich white males will "have a free hand to act with impunity". They are planning an oligarchy.
Scratching my head on this one..."America’s ruling class has been choosing the lie for 400 years."
Plymouth Rock 1620–Americans, ruling class? Credible, not
3
The argument can be made (and already has been) that in early America, each colony had its ruling class. Separatists in New England, Quakers in Pennsylvania, planters in the Carolinas, etc. So, entirely credible.
As to which "lie" Ms. West refers in early America I am not speculating, but there were many. It is a hallmark of our species to buy into lies that we think will benefit us, even (or especially) at others' expense.
4
Sorry, I meant to say "Separatists in Massachusetts Bay."
The Founding Fathers based voting rights on property ownership. They were a ruling class, educated under the Enlightenment, but a ruling class. Later, their descendants allowed the South to keep slaves in order to bring the plantation owners into the Union; the Northern mills needed Southern cotton. Martin Luther King had to die for the right to vote in the South. American Indians were exploited, cheated out of land rights, given alcohol and cheap cotton wares. We have a history of ruthless exploitation as we crossed the Continent. Trump is a recent personification of that, even more corrupt and powerful than Harding could have dreamed of. Taking back our country will be a long, hard slog.
3
You nailed it.
5
Well-written piece, but it's always a bit ironic when people who crave the public eye seem outraged when the opinions of others don't conform to their own expectations. Yes, people can be cruel and stupid and it's the price of fame and influence that not everyone will be universally lauded. But as usual, commentary here continues to conflate Republicans with racists. Here's a flash - most Republicans are not resist and simply don't agree with the priorities of the Democrats. So long a liberals continue to dismiss every counter opinion as flawed and racist, I don't think they can win back the presidency. Finally, the faux-outrage seen here seen about who associated with alt-right nitwits was somehow missing when we learned of the 20 years President Obama spent listening to the Rev. Wright, the proven sexual predation of Bill Clinton, etc etc.
5
Isn't it interesting that a major alt-right figure is a quite openly gay man with an African American husband? How does that work?
7
That's his plausible deniability!
5
If you want to try and reach those who support Trump and the alt-right, the mainstream media (MSM), especially the NYT, needs to take an unflinching look in the mirror to see why "fake news" gets so much traction with these people. Admit that you pick and choose the things you publish, and how you slant them, not just in your editorials, but in your "news" articles. Whether you admit it or not, you do have an agenda, just like Breitbart and Faux News do, and everyone knows it. So while you try so earnestly to convince Trump supporters to listen to you, you turn them away by your inherent deceit. The irony is that if you simply published the unvarnished truth, you wouldn't need to try so hard to win believers.
Those who try so hard to fool others only wind up fooling themselves.
4
I knew that America was in deep trouble when the governor of Texas sent Texas troopers out to guard the perimeter of the Jade Helm Special Forces exercises.
The entire episode, where conspiracy loons thought Obama was invading Texas, was so far fetched, so ridiculous, so insane, and even so logistically absurd.......yet here was the leader of America's second largest economy, and second largest area and population, treating this insanity as if it were actual State business.
Much of what has happened since, and the social media discussions swirling, have convinced me that at least 30% of America is stone cold crazy.
Pizza-gate anyone????
26
I can't wait to attend Milo's upcoming speaking event in Chicago. If for nothing else but to defend the free speech of the institution where he is speaking. Of course there are a parade of far leftists announcing they will try to shut it down. They claim Milo, a gay man who recently married a black man, is homophobic and racist (seriously).
Perhaps a collection plate should be extended, with all proceeds to go given to a respectable human rights organization, unless if the speech is blocked/attacked/terrorized, in which case the donation reverts to Trump.
As for West, modern feminism is an inherently political activity. Of course you will be opposed by those who hold opposite views. She cannot be this naive. There are those of us who believe in true equality, not a culture of grievances and victimhood.
2
Yes, Milo was indeed that bad!
3
I fear for this country every day as I see the manipulation, collusion and awkward indifference for accountability of any kind. Your column today just about says it all.
We are in deep trouble here of losing all we have come to hold dear and depend on. That are fates are in the hand of an ignorant racist tool and his henchmen is scary and appalling. That women have been targeted in such a way as to extinguish our rights and our flame is only prelude for what is to come.
I have come to believe that most people are just so overwhelmed each day now with all there is to absorb that the ignorant put their faith still in a con man like Trump and put blame on everyone else.
The rest of us keep hoping that the GOP congress will step up and do their job or Mueller's investigation will free us of this group of grifters, racists and anti-everything good crew on display all the time at the local administration.
Hope abounds but nothing changes.
The intolerable is somehow getting tolerable. And we are now poised to fight once again the same battles already won in a different time.
I wonder how we wake up the ones asleep and save our nation from those who undermine it with false promises and transparent bigotry. Is it too much to accept that we are not immune just because this isn't Nazi Germany?
12
I agree with everything here. That being said I just can't shake the feeling that we are playing their game. When we step back from the rubble of our democracy and look up at the wall that the oligarchs built to keep us out, will we wonder what we were doing when they built it?
17
How many people were actually fooled by the denial of Republicans that they relied on racism? The MSM essentially pretended to be fooled - the denial was almost always taken seriously in news sections and even in many opinion pieces. There has been no revelation and no "proof" was ever really needed.
Since the racist element was always present, it is a stretch to attribute Trump's rise to it - although he has hit the racist element in immigration harder than ever. Racists and misogynists have certainly been empowered by the rise of Trump and the Tea Party, but what has really increased over the last 40-50 years is economic inequality.
16
I agree completely. We must call out bigotry of every kind, but we need to call out people to vote and unless the Democrats focus primarily upon economic inequality and candidates who are concerned about it. the votes they need will continue to stay at home.
Trolling victim -- hah - so we are all trolling victims, demeaned by these hate mongers who thrive on disruptions, misinformation, fear and old fashioned lies.
Great writing.
12
Love your piece. You present a perspective on the complacent white majority's ongoing sins against minorities (of every stripe and color) that I never considered before. Plausible deniability provides cover for enjoying white privilege without pain or guilt. And that is why Trump can get away with disgracing our country, trampling our values and hurting the many to gratify the few.
Keep your voice strong. America must wake up to the truth about us.
34
Simply put, brilliant op-ed piece.
Add to the American story of plausible deniability, how policy wonks and politicians, especially Republicans, have used denial about the extent of mental illness, alcoholism and substance use in the United States, in order to advance a false narrative of American "greatness".
Just listen for the lies and observe the behavior of the president, his advisers, cabinet members and many of his followers, keeping in mind that the "fake news" defense is just a form of denial about their own and their family's emotional problems, relationship failures and personal inadequacies.
Recovery begins when a human being acknowledges that they are the problem and makes a commitment to change.
17
I started volunteering for Democratic candidates in the aftermath of Watergate, when I was 16, and registered with as a Democratic voter as soon as I turned 18. I'm not suggesting that the Democrats are all saints, but as soon as I started evaluating critically what both parties were saying on virtually every issue, it seemed clear to me that while there were some decent conservatives who really believe in smaller government and local control, the GOP agenda has been racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and pro-authoritarian for decades. Of course I'd like to pay less in taxes, but not if the way leads through the alt-right or even the center right.
20
Why have these guys gained traction with American voters? Because, plain and simple, American voters believe what they believe. For so long the Trump base could not express how they truly felt. Their beliefs were forced into the shadows by "political correctness". In other words, they were cowards. But now they have been given the freedom to take off the cloak of invisibility. For so long being racist or xenophobic or misogynistic was the kiss of political death. But now they have a president who has their back. So they are free to express themselves. And express themselves they will. But eventually, and it may take years, their offensiveness will be their undoing. Then the nation will begin to heal. And no one will be interested in their plausible deniability any more.
15
Yes, Trump is a racist and so holds true for his following that turn a deaf ear to his utterances.
This never ending war of racial dominance, that we continue to fan the flames of speaks directly to a truth, the social evolution of our human race is in its infancy.
I cite the second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence, which starts as follows:
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.'
These words remain to be simply a notion. We have a long and uncharted journey ahead of ourselves bringing these words into fruition. The strength of our species, the strength of our democracy lies with embracing the inherit diversity of our population.
9
DT saw his "in" with Mitt Romney, who was such a chameleon that he could flip on any issue at at any time for political expediency. Yet you could at least sense some discomfort, sense-of-shame, or tacit admission of the fact from Mitt. DT just bold-face, and unabashedly lies repeatedly. He covers his lies with lies, "I know you are but what am I?", "you shut up, I'm the president", tell the lie over and over until the opposition withers from exhaustion. Mitt was a rookie playground bully, the Republican Party was looking for a true believer.
11
"relief of deferred responsibility, the soft violence of willful ignorance..." are indeed the weights that are bringing us down, no matter color or creed...we're bunkered in our differences, and so the "pluribus" repels the "unum."
dumping your complaint into a basket, "white nationalism" this one, helps no one, these labels, born as shorthand become generalizations through uncritical use (see "willful ignorance")...and so meaningless in argument but useful as an accelerant poured on the nearest fire.
no one guilty of the genocide of original tribes is alive today but responsibility is borne by all americans, maybe not for the actions of our forebears but certainly for our continued mistreatment of survivors.
the root cause then is not "plausible denial" but "pathological denial"...a form repression that does not sit like a block but grows like a tumor, an affliction, not an addiction, that we must confront "to save our country"...the same for slavery, the condition is past but effects still remain and, like the tribal reservations, they are present and real and can either be tolerated (which will continue to feed them) or opposed and eradicated which will free all of us from their weight, unify us and "save out country."
like any patient in analysis, progress toward recovery will be impeded if not prevented by failure to confront root causes...unless we do, if we keep settling for "conversations" instead of strong actions, all we'll have is more "lurid entertainment."
5
Thank you, Lindy. Fantastic writing, brilliant synthesis of recent events, as I have come to expect from you. I am grateful for your voice.
12
This shows after the worst year in politics I can still be shocked. The rich believe in personal responsibility and small government so we won’t question their of responsibility to the nation, let them pay an ever diminishing share of taxes, and then blame ourselves for not being billionaires like them because we don’t work as hard and really have taken responsibility for ourselves and our destiny, our career, our financial plans. It’s not the government that shares any responsibility in educating us, in helping to lift the poor up, in reigning in the pay day loan banks, etc. They have no responsibility but to protect us with missiles and brave soldiers and really brave cops and firefighters. It’s us, we should have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps. Even if we weren’t born with them and can’t afford to buy them.
8
A sharp and clear statement of the "ruthless determination of the Republican Party." "Nightline" and many other news-related programs are produced and edited more for entertainment than for enlightenment. Ted Koppel has left the building. The language of obfuscation has blown a putrid fog into attempts at reasoned, enlightened dialog. Hypocritical appeals to gut emotions have succeeded in giving Milo and his ilk an undeserved, prominent platform --
a platform Donald J. Trump has commandeered to great advantage.
No matter what it is, if the say it ain't so, or say it is so, it is whatever they say it is. Welcome to the world according to Lewis Carroll. Publishing Ms. West's analysis is an important step, but there must be more to come.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
9
Yes, yes, yes and a no. Plausible deniability...it comes in all flavors, even progressive. The self-flagellation is becoming irrational, tiresome and self defeating given the unique circumstances the world now finds itself in.
2
We are not at the end of America. America has survived bigoted presidents and their bad ideas. And we are not powerless, so...
Write to your senators and representatives and tell them to challenge Donald Trump to a live public debate to defend his tweets against the free press. He is disgracing our constitution and he needs to explain himself to the public and defend his views. This is not a partisan issue. Every elected official should be prepared to defend the constitution, especially when threats to it come from the president who took an oath to defend it.
6
What has social media actually ever done besides cause an epidemic of distracted driving, made some clever entrepreneurs insanely wealthy, and empowered the unscrupulous movers and shakers out there to turn American politics into their little toy?
6
Social media is a tool. The results it procures are due to how it is handled. I choose to chime into echo chambers, as well as diverse forums and make the effort to think independently.
3
Don't forget the Fox News and right-wing news outlets were very good at bullying the mainstream media into not portraying them as they truly were by making the "there's extremism on both sides" argument.
News outlets need to present the facts, and not be bullied or fooled.
11
The topic sentence is correct but the opinion writer then ignores the CIA, original purveyor of plausible deniability. Of course it has existed with espionage and certain state actions throughout history but came into modern parlance in the US with the rise of the national security state after World War II. After the assassination of JFK and the failure of the Warren Commission (which, given what has now been revealed about FBI and CIA lies to Warren Commission inquiries, was designed to fail), an entire generation lived plausible deniability. Watergate and Iran-Contra just some of the other events that followed. All about plausible deniability. So, yes, America was brought low by plausible deniability but it began many years ago.
That said, as bad as it may be, there could be worse places and times to live.
4
Another CIA incident I would add is the 1953 Iranian coup that was a major step down the path to where we are today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
3
I feel like I finally read something which, in the middle of all this insanity, actually made sense and gave me the feeling that the world hadn't gone completely mad.
15
Thank you. I’ve missed you this last month. Brilliantly articulated as usual.
5
Yes, and the pernicious effects of hate and authoritarianism are routinely defended under the banner of liberty. Even while protecting "free speech" for Nazis and hate groups, Donald Trump is threatening major news sources with reprisals for criticizing him and his administration. It's unfortunate too many of our fellow citizens can't make crucial distinctions between speech that offers ideas for dialogue and argument and speech calculated to harm and dominate. Thank you Ms West for seeing through the flimsy defenses of hate groups into the dark heart of racism and misogyny.
10
Once again, the most effective method of concealment is the most open exhibition. The Trump GOP is R A C I S T and B I G O T E D, and everyone knows it - and in the end that’s what will bring them down. Lindy West, keep writing the truth about the Trump GOP, because ultimately, their administration is going to be as much a footnote in history as Anthony Scaramucci’s tenure in Washington. And in 100 Years, this article, and others like it, will be a major point of reference for historians.
6
Maybe it is just the title of this article that's off, but the damage being done is actual not merely plausible.
2
"Plausible" to whom? It's a term that is directly proportional to the stupidity of the interpreter. Hate is a strong word, but nothing else describes the way I feel toward these people, what they're doing to the country, and why they're doing it. And we're too forgiving when it comes to their lemming followers. I'm sick of reading about the legitimacy of their feelings of abandonment. They're susceptible because of who they are, and being stupid doesn't make them innocent. The whole anger thing cuts both ways, and it's time that we, the majority, started letting them know it.
8
To say that plausible deniability is "beloved" by America in terms of racism and misogyny, etc. is a calculated overstatement of the status quo. In most cases those who claim plausible deniability hide behind a thin disguise that they are not racist or misogynist because they say they are not while evidence screams that they are. On the other hand, overstating the strengths and numbers of your enemy isn't working; it is costing you house seats and senate seats and presidencies. Maybe it feeds the hungriest of your base but at what cost? If you want to "herd the vast, complacent center" like so much sheep as you imply, pretend, at least, that there are problems that do not fall into the lap of racism and misogyny. Most Americans in the 'herd of the center' rarely think first about race or sexual identity problems when choosing political candidates; first, they think about survival problems. It's not that we, the center, do not agree with you that the alt right movement is morally repulsive, we're just tired of being forced to choose among such a poor stock of political candidates- one side of which seems to want a confederacy and the other side of which seems to insist that this confederacy is the only problem in town. Now, I can't wait to hear the "false equivalency" and "thinly disguised racist" objections that should arise from Times readers, but if you think about it- why do you lose? Is it because the other side is that "good" at winning or because you're not?
5
The other side was good at electing governors in States with electoral college votes they needed to win. They were also good at electing right wing legislatures to support gerrymandering. They were busy cementing a voting base with suppressed voting in districts they could not win. We assumed the elections held were transparent and evenly held. They were not.
7
No argument and maybe the fraud of gerrymandering will be corrected. That process transpired over decades and with the advent of "perfect" computer models only poor prosecution of protests should prevent the courts from acting on this. Further, it is probably true that voter suppression still happens and it is still a serious charge that warrants jail time when proved. If the whole system is corrupt why isn't this being proved? Are honest people inept in the face of voter fraud? The undeniable fact, over and above those issues is that Democrats outnumber Republicans still and yet when it comes to elections Republicans run to the polls and Democrats stay home. My whole argument is that Democrats fight against oppression and yet the oppressed are unimpressed because they can't see how their lives are going to change. Democrats need to develop plans to give them hope, not empty complaints and insults about how bad the other guys are. They have a serious credibility problem and that's why people stay home. They don't believe Democrats understand or even care about their problems.
Donald Trump is a national dumpster fire in a crowded theater set off by a nationwide collection of political juvenile delinquents who prefer professional wrestling to public policy.
And with the assistance of the Grand Old Pyromaniacs, Trump and his nihilistic voters happily burn down truth, the national IQ, the office of the Presidency, the climate, voting rights, diplomacy, reasoned discourse and a functioning federal government.
The right loves anarchy, like any deranged teenaged boy who has trouble getting along with reality and reason.
Thanks, Fake News, hate radio and Grand Old Propaganda.....for years, you paved the way by dousing the country with political kerosene, matches and Up Is Down nonsense.
Thanks for burning down the country for kicks so you could have a bigger boat.
Nice GOPeople.
330
Regardless of what Milo and his pals are doing behind the scenes, the undeniable (plausibly or not) fact is that we all saw and heard the Clown do and say the things he did and is still doing.
.
There were people (too many of them) who were willing to suspend their belief in what they saw and heard and ignore the Clown's awful and inexcusable behavior.
.
There were people whose intelligence is so flawed that they were able to create in their mind a belief that whatever the Clown had done, Hillary Clinton had done far worse. These people also failed to recognize which candidate's experience was objectively greater.
.
There are people who are not smart enough to apply any amount of skepticism to what they read on social media, and are as gullible as they are stupid.
.
Then there are those who simply want exactly the same racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, and generally dangerous kind of government the Clown represents, run by hateful, stupid, ignorant, and unqualified rich people who are in it for themselves and their fellow rich people.
.
Oh, and I forgot the people who actually think it's a good idea to vote angry. Many of them would agree it's not a good idea to go to sleep angry with one's spouse, but they see no problem going into the voting booth in a surly mood and throw this country's future into question.
161
Citizen is absolutely spot on!
The people who voted for the Clown, those who accept the lies and half truths which he spouts and which are published on his behalf are the ones we must fear. These are his supporters and they will go to the grave believing that hate and discrimination and misogyny and xenophobia and all he represents will restore our national pride and strength. They will vote for him and people like him time and again.
Somehow, those who oppose this man must find a way to restore sanity to our republic. And get us out of this nightmare.
6
This is a movement to turn America into a fascist state. It only takes a small core of believers to become a movement. Think of Arlo Guthrie's Alices Restaurant.
"Walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in, say, "Shrink, . . . you
Can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant", and walk out.
You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he's
Really sick and they won't take him.
And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and
They won't take either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin' in, singin'
A bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walkin' out? They may think it's an
Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walkin' out? Friends,
They may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's what it is: THE ALICE'S
RESTAURANT ANTI-MASSACREE MOVEMENT! . . . and all you gotta do to join is to
Sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar."
58
That might just work.
I've think we've dispensed with the requirement for plausibility.
79
Science fiction is now the dominant genre in both entertainment and conservative political commentary.
Yes, plausible deniability is a curse on our politics. Yes, Trump has exploited it.
Was he the only one? It would be more difficult to find an example that did not. None of them could be his opponents in the last election, anything to do with Clintons.
It is a curse on the whole of our politics more generally. That means more than they all do it, and more than pointing at the other side.
WHY is it such a general problem?
It starts with those to whom the denial is not plausible. They know better, and they let it happen. Access journalism, partisanship, all the things raised up as more important than mere truth, they all justify letting the plausible slide by those who know better.
What would have happened if feminists and friends had called out Bill Clinton? We'd have had President Gore from about 1998 to 2008 instead of Dubya. But they allowed denials when they knew better, because it was more important to protect Bill Clinton.
That is the price we've paid for plausible deniability, long before Trump appeared.
66
So, Trump is Bill Clinton's fault?! LOL!
"Plausible deniability" as a political phrase gained currency under Ronald Reagan, where he pushed policies and the right-wingers around him engaged in all sorts of nefarious misdeeds but did so in ways that he could deny he was aware of what was going on!
Iran-Contra was one of the biggest examples. Even Reagan's so-called "mea culpa" was anchored in the obfuscating passive voice phrase: "Mistakes were made".
What when on was far worse than simple "mistakes" -- it was a wanton disregard of federal law, involved selling arms to enemies, and funded paramilitary groups fighting elected governments.
Furthermore, by using the passive voice in his address, Reagan never admitted he was in charge; that he had exercised very bad judgment; and that he had deliberately misled the nation.
18
Mr. Thomason, I’m afraid you must be too young to remember the 1990s. Gore vigorously distanced himself from Bill Clinton, to the point of being unwilling to dwell on any of the positive things Clinton had done. Despite this distancing, Republicans called Gore dishonest, cast Democrats as libertines and made sure that no one heard about how well the economy did under Clinton. In the midst of all this, there is no way that feminists calling out Clinton would have won a single vote for Gore.
11
As I recall Clinton left us with peace, jobs and a full treasury. The treasury was looted by "W" to finance an unjustified war against a country which had nothing to do with 9/11 or WMD. The GOP and "W" orchestrated the quagmire in the ME we are still mired in. Their donors, aka the MIC, are doing very well. Ordinary unemployed Americans, not so much.
8
Why not make all donations anonymous, sent to a clearing agency for a particular candidate? The agency would be prohibited by law from releasing the name of the donor and jail time for failure of the person(s) who do so.
Donations would likely fall, but that's all to the good.
23
I was a H of R legislative staffer for about 20 YEARS. Mr. Mitchell's idea is terrific, but recognize that most political contributions are to the candidate the contributor thinks will win, rather than the candidate he wants to win.
So if we go to anonymous contributions, the value of these contributions will drop BIGTIME. That might not be a bad thing.
7
I thought Anonymous Donorship was our current system.
An idea! What a rare and beautiful thing. Remove the trace and audit trail. Match secret ballot with secret funding. Just change the amount range by the check box on the IRS 1040 Form.
While we are at it, move Federal Office Election Day to April 15, so your mouth and your money are aligned with your mood.
1
Once again, phenomenal. Your honest and clear perspective and righteous anger are so brilliantly articulated.
152
What's a chyron? I'm a reasonably literate native speaker of English, and I've never heard the term. It's not in the Oxford English Dictionary, the ultimate reference for the English language.
If you don't like what's on "social media", don't look. I never have.
17
chyron
:a caption superimposed over usually the lower part of a video image (as during a news broadcast)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chyron
18
Chyron is the trade name for the identifying graphics used in TV interviews. AKA supers or lower thirds.
4
It isn't hard to find out what a chyron is -- just Google it, and you get the definition: ``an electronically generated caption superimposed on a television or movie screen.'' Although I already knew what it was, I wanted to give you an easy, quick way to find out. (BTW, the term is copyrighted by the Chyron Corporation, which I didn't know.)
3
It is a hard thing to look in the mirror and Americans aren't inclined to do so. We dodged a big opportunity with the civil rights movement and another with with the Vietnam War. In both instances shooting the messengers came to be the preferred solution. And what lesson did we learn from Vietnam? Certainly not that people get annoyed when strangers invade their country. The very sad lesson was that if people aren't drafted to fight they just won't care.
The current line is that we aren't racist bigots. We're just tired of having to be "politically correct," which means simply means being polite. I despair for our national character.
203
The last "progressive Democrat" to be even remotely polite to working class whites was LBJ. But that was before the Dems became the Yuppie/GQ party..
2
My generation was there, and what we learned was not to trust a single word coming from a Democratic politician in DC. LBJ: "I won't send American boys....". Hubert Humphrey: "there are no quotas in this bill." Numerous politicians: "We will fund this mandate...trust us" (e.g. Obamacare)." BHO: "You can keep your insurance." All lies.
3
The most remarkable thing about Trump's election win is the transparency of the man. When a presidential candidate pitches a racist and xenophobic platform with all the subtlety of the stench of rotting flesh, and wins, something other than plausible deniability is afoot. Trump voters, or at least the ones who continue to support him, are thrilled with his stance on immigration, Muslims, Puerto Rico, Charlottesville. America needs to deal with the fact that 50 million citizens aren't that interested in denying racism. Rather, they are celebrating it in their support for Trump.
537
Your point is well taken and as I watch this political nightmare unfold, I find myself waiting (and waiting) for some thing or some one to explode on the scene that will bring this unworthy man to ground. What will undo Trump? That is my question.
5
I totally agree with your comments.
I also think that another contributing factor to the Trump election was the public's general disgust with both the republicans and democrats.
They have gone from parties that understood (to a degree) that there job was to serve the people to opportunists who just want to stay in power to keep their lucrative positions and stature and really don't work on behalf of the people. Very often using scare tactics regarding issues like immigration, rational gun legislation and women's rights to mislead the public.
The sad part is even with the wackiness of Trump-world they show very little desire to change and serve the people.
I was listening to NPR this week and heard an interview with someone who had worked with Trump on The Apprentice. He said that Trump could be fun, but that he made comments much worse than the Access Hollywood tape. They were about women, but the worst comments were racial and they were so offensive that people's jaws would drop. The crew would be reminded to never repeat them because Trump was the reason they had this show to put on.
If you go to NPR's website, you can listen to the interview yourself.
I hope there is a patriotic soul out there that can leak some of this material to the "fake news" and expose this man as the bigot and racist he truly is. The state of denial that Trump supporters live in is not plausible and there is nothing lovable about it.
668
It's impossible for rational human beings to miss how much of a bigot, misogynist and racist Trump is. No exposé will change anyone's support for him. Trump supporters have not been deceived; they know exactly who he is and, either share his views on race and gender, or are willing to sell their souls to get what they want *cough* "Christians" *cough*.
8
Ken Burns maybe.
1
Do you think it would matter? That it might change the mind of a single trump supporter? When the evangelical "christians" came out for him in force after Billy Bush Weekend, we knew what their true values were. Bannon was right in that that event was a litmus test, and now we get to see everyone's true colors. Maybe that's a good thing, for you can't fix a problem you don't know you have.
I feel the only thing that *might* bring him down with his base is a hot mic where he comments on how much he despises them and how easily they are fooled. Much of his base is driven by umbrage at the scorn of "elites"; when they see how he truly feels about them. It's fine to hate blacks, Jews, feminists, muslims, etc, but to hate whites, any whites, is unacceptable. Like you, I hope for theft, leak or hack of this footage.
8
Ah, Milo. Still triggering his trolling victims after all this time.
There's nothing arch-conservative about Milo. The guy repeats the same rhetoric as mainstream conservatives, only in a flamboyant manner. He is certainly not a white nationalist would not meet the standards of real nationalism in any non-western country. He is wrong about the pederasty statements. But right about most other things.
The simpler reason why so many "bigots" achieved mainstream credibility is because the average person doesn't possess a morbid fear of bigotry, nor do they use the absurdly broad criteria for bigotry you see among sheltered white urbanites.
Perhaps Milo and co. wouldn't need "plausible deniability" if your society wasn't so committed to backwards values. They could just come out and say directly: "Social justice movements need to squashed." Then there would be applause from the non-western world and average westerners alike.
20
isnt the social justice movement exactly what the Chinese communist party is deathly afraid of?
4
China apparently shares your views on social justice vis-a-vis Hong Kong.
5
The right to freedom of speech is a protection from government interference: America has long mistaken this as a right to speak. I argue that society has a right, even a duty, to establish acceptable norms in social and especially in political discourse. For example, there is no societal right to call a feminist fat so as to distract from her argument. Free speech is to enable debate; speech designed to suppress it should be characterized as anti-freedom and called out. When one attacks the speaker rather than the argument, one reveals that ones argument is flawed or non-existent. If this is not normally recognized, the society will suffer under ideas of no merit and under Presidents like Donald Trump.
232
So, there is no "right to speak", and society has "a duty to establish acceptable norms in... discourse." How does "society" do that, exactly, and according to whose criteria?
1
Trump is the guy who yells "Fire" in a crowded theater and creates a chaotic rush for the exits. The exits he is pointing to are the ACA, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, the EPA regs which keep toxic mining activity out of public parks and mining sludge out of rivers and streams, flood control measures put in place by Obama, and any other vestiges of civilized behavior and governance. We have all heard his scrambled rants, repetitive insults and lies about everything. He is a case of arrested development; unfortunately, he is also a bully who dodged Vietnam with fake bone spurs when his current victims, Puerto Ricans, joined the military. No doubt, Puerto Ricans will end up fighting in the ME or So. Korea. At least the military will provide the means to sterilize their drinking water. When Trump can no longer dismount from his golf cart without the help of attendants, or lumber up into AF One without an aide pushing from behind, he might just stay in his penthouse, or at Mar-a-Lago where he can yell at staff and demand two scoops of everything on the menu.
4
There are libel laws in place so you cannot publish false accusations and smears against others. There are laws against "hate" speech which incites violence against certain identifiable groups. Public discourse has devolved into insults and demonizing of public figures. "Crooked Hillary" is an example of 26 yrs. of demonizing a hard working public servant; none of the accusers had anything to offer, just accusations. Obama suffered from smears about his birthplace, his race, his family et al. He rose above it, and gave us eight years of decent government; his Jobs Bill was poisoned; his ACA had to go through multiple court processes in order to give health insurance to millions; he was insulted and obstructed by a corrupt Congress which produced no legislation. Trump is so far out of the mainstream, he has even managed to confuse his own Congress; they assumed his "handlers" would contain him. As any parent can tell you, it is not possible to contain a 4-yr. old having a tantrum.
4
In most other laguages and cultures the expression "rugged individualism" is more an insult than praise, unveiling the selfishness of a rogue member of society - a person who profits from the community without constructive participation or empathy for others.
224
I am sorry, but I think we (women) need a different approach, a different or alt-approach if we want to make headway. We need to stop using the label feminist and stop enabling the label feminist to define us and move past this label. It hasn't helped women, and won't help us get past being treated differently, less, and in an uneven way. We need to come down to earth and call a spade a spade without invoking feminist into the equation.....
25
Sounds great! How would you recommend doing this? I'd love to help.
8
Betsy, this is why they are winning, they have convinced you that being called a feminist is a bad thing, and that in order to "win" that we need to stop demanding equality, that we should play the game and know our place like the alt-right wants.
20
No, I will not relinquish the self characterization feminist, anymore than I will relinquish truth about myself. Doing so would be the opposite of calling a spade a spade. Give it another name and the misogynists will try to undermine the ideas under the new name.
What you are proposing is simply a cowardly retreat, and it will not help feminism in the least.
If women are not willing to speak truth to power they will become powerless.
The suffragettes did not win the vote by refusing to acknowledge what they were fighting for or by hiding behind other names. They owned their crusade proudly and persisted.
There is nothing to be ashamed of in the label feminist. I am proud to be a feminist, as was my mother and as is my millennial daughter.
16
Whenever someone says, I'm not racist, but I support Trump for other reasons, they should realize who and what they're empowering.
457
I find that, “I’m not racist, BUT...” is almost always the beginning of a clearly eacist remark.
20
Or simply put (and it is not complicated at all):
If you support Donald Trump you ARE a racist, a sexist, a bigot.
If you are willing to accept his darkest characteristics, you are endorsing them.
Do we not prosecute a thief or murderer because they say things that stir our deeply suppressed anger?
8
Exactly. They may not think they are racist. But the racism, misogyny, vulgarity, and crude attacks on people ranging from Gold Star parents to the disabled weren't dealbreakers for them. And that reflects on Trump voters and their character.
6
The larger picture is that misogyny is being used to steer young men to vote against their economic interests for their "beliefs" and sense of tribe. The political strategy of using any and every method of recruiting these essential voters to the general cause of defunding the federal government has been operational at the donor base of the Republican party for decades.
The web just keeps expanding. First disenfranchised southern white Democrats after integration, than single issue "prolifers" and gun lovers. Now men who feel emasculated by liberated women.
Those caught in it will be the last to know. When they do some may even celebrate the permanent aristocracy their ignorance helped create. At least then they will be able to blame their failures on their place at birth for we will then be in a world where merit is of little consequence and birthright is everything.
120
Tribal interests always come before economic interests. Failure to accept this means political defeat. Aristocracy is not a problem as long as it is nationalistic.
18
"Aristocracy is not a problem as long as it is nationalistic"
Whether aristocracy is nationalistic or global has little to do with its affect. It is the use of personal economic power to assure the continued dominance of progeny over other human beings based on their inherited wealth and/or power.
The only argument for nationalistic aristocracy being OK is that such a nation is doomed to failure when competing against more meritocratic systems. This will assure that the more aristocratic government will eventually fall and be replaced.
At this point, even China has a more meritocratic system than the U.S.- at least it's leadership intends to make it so. The U.S. is heading in the opposite direction and if we weren't sitting on such a treasure of natural resources we might have already crashed.
The increasing concentration of wealth and decreasing economic mobility in our nation is proof of this.
18
The last time that rang true was when young British aristocrats fought and died in the Battle of Britain. However, Britain might have lost anyway had not FDR been persuaded by Churchill to help. Of course, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor gave FDR the power he needed, because Japan was part of the Axis. Americans plebians, not aristocrats, came to Britain's aid and sacrificed lives to keep Western democracies alive. We did not aid Churchill in his attempt to hold on to British colonies.
1
Frankly, the deniability doesn’t even have to be plausible to a sentient being.
32
Yeah, my take, too. I think she's just using "plausible" out of habit, since plausibility used to be a standard we as a society adhered to. We all probably need to update that in our heads, painful as it is.
5
I will remember this phrase, "the sublime relief of deferred responsibility, the soft violence of willful ignorance, the barbaric fiction of rugged individualism," for a very long time. It absolutely captures the moment we white Americans live in. It also describes pretty well the myth of progress and cultural evolution we work into histories of ourselves, including the self-congratulatory ones we left-tending whites write to reassure each other that we're not "those kind of whites."
187
As a student of history, one enduring theme is " myth is reality". Since the Contract with America, the tea party, and now Trump, a straight line has been drawn to the lies and disinformation, the far right calls "truth" and now we have a president who has made a business model of selling the "truth". The electorate, young or old, rich or poor who voted for Trump view the "facts" as an impediment to a world view, in which they are the true and only deserving citizens of government largest.
7
Americans are victims of their own propaganda since its founding. No worse than most others, better than some but by no means "exceptional ".
Yes, “the soft violence of willful ignorance” struck me. I read it several times. Brilliant.
2
Plausible Deniability was a term I learned from the Vietnam vets I worked with over the years...
37
When alt-rights kill
As oft' they will
It doesn’t bother Don.
With empathy
And sympathy
Mild words bestows upon.
Their adversaries
Dubbed alt-left
By Bannon and the Don
Evoke despair
And au contraire
Trump's vevom only won.
Since Bannon left
Don's heart is cleft
His absence now is felt
Had he remained
The Don, dim-brained
More bias could be dealt.
84
Larry,
I admire your talent to rhyme and amuse while generally cutting to the chase, but this time the third stanza seems quite off to me. Naivety is how we got into the mess, and to assume that the don and steve don't talk and aren't still in cahoots together is very dangerous. SB "leaving" the WH is another act of plausible deniability. He is now out organising likeminded candidates in easily flipped states to build a 60+, filibuster-proof Senate of creeps so that a few good women and a single man cannot forte the agenda of greed and hate they wish to impose upon the US. Bannon was the wizard behind the curtain during the last election; he has not gone away.
92
There seems to be a fine line between hiding from accountability behind plausible deniability and maintenance of the bedrock of any democratic society: Innocent until proven guilty. How one demolishes the former without putting the latter in jeopardy may prove to be a difficult task.
25
The problem now is that there are so many (in)plausible deniabilities that no one can keep up with proving guilt or innocence! It is hard to be fair in a democracy based on "the violence of willful ignorance". It seems to be OK for Trump and his followers to lie and spout falsehoods without any consequences, but heaven forbid if the media or anyone else mis-speaks or even tells the truth and then Trump twists it and makes it into a tornado that captures everyone's attention and screams "fake". He has the bully pulpit! How do we resist--how do we take back America?
8
The thin slice of male prerogative to declare reality, has been sliced and diced to include the right to deny the right to reality...to women who dissent, people of First Nations, and imported slave labor, and most importantly, to me, New Yorker, those waves of immigrants, including Trump's forbearers, Italians, Jews, Finns, Slavs and Polish peoples. How did we get mixed in with the weird Protestant/Catholic minority who wanted us out? The 19th Century and most of the 20th settled the exclusion of us---that great and compassionate multitude. And now, with this weirdo, we want to be among the narrow and hateful? Bring your democratic heart to life. See.
4
"All political analysis was cut ...". Why am I not surprised? Can people see how hard it is to put out liberal and progressive ideas, while America's internal enemies are normalized by suppressing the facts about them?
267
Absolutely. You could criss-cross America by car, rarely encountering a progressive radio signal and rarely being out of range of right wing radio. Even on satellite radio, there's precisely one progressive channel among a variety of conservative ones in various guises ( one of them, not-so-subtly, named "Patriot").
257
But isn’t that the fault of progressives? Didn’t Air America try this but couldn’t get enough support from liberals and progressives?
Conservatives get their way because they know what they want, even if it’s terrible for them and they don’t know how to make it happen. Progressives have all the answers, “if only everyone would just agree with me and my analysis.” When we want healthcare the way they want guns (unrestricted access for everyone), then maybe we can get something done. I have very little hope that progressives will figure out how to find a way to work together.
9
And the situation has gotten so bad, even our NFL "gladiators" are not allowed to be anything but amusements. They are accused of some fictional crime against our "military" for exercising their right to protest. They are pilloried, ridiculed, threatened, fired from their jobs, and forced to work "or else." This is the troll-ridden world we live in.
8