There’s been a recent wave of press for a certain unnamed Nazi Dork who threw a gathering in Washington, DC, for his Nazi friends this past week, attempting to use the Trump victory to raise the profile of himself and his Nazi “think tank.” The man who coined the term “alt right”—which has become a popular euphemism for those unwilling to use “white supremacist” or “neo-Nazi”—has of late received fairly softball interviews in Mother Jones (10/27/16), the LA Times (11/19/16) and, most recently, the Washington Post (11/22/16)
His Nazi get-together got endless coverage, from the New York Times to The Atlantic to USA Today to CNN. The actual event itself, according to the Post, had a Nazi attendee–to–reporter ratio of 6 to 1. The Nazi Dork’s goal was to exploit and feed off the Trump campaign and subsequent victory, and he did it with tremendous success, thanks in part to a shiny-object obsessed media.
The balance between covering hate and promoting it is a difficult one, and one that we shouldn’t dismiss out of hand. But after a week of wall-to-wall coverage, most of which one could imagine the Nazi Dork and his Nazi friends reading and posting to Facebook with a smirk, the balance has come down heavily on the side of fascist agitprop.
The profiles themselves, while frequently bringing up the more disgusting aspects of the Nazi Dork’s ideology, were written like any other glossy-magazine celebrity profile, complete with scene-setting details of their fancy meal. The Mother Jones profile began:
[He] uses chopsticks to deftly pluck slivers of togarashi-crusted ahi from a rectangular plate. He is sitting in the Continental-style lounge of the Firebrand Hotel….
The Mother Jones story, which was promoted with a tweet that referred the the Nazi Dork as “dapper”, went on to “both sides” race science:
[He] believes that Hispanics and African-Americans have lower average IQs than whites and are more genetically predisposed to commit crimes, ideas that are scientifically controversial to say the least.
“Controversial.” OK.
Even more problematically, the piece claimed that the “anger fueling the alt-right” was the “product of a white working class left behind by automation, outsourcing and the era of rising income inequality.” This is asserted, without evidence or irony, 30 paragraphs after Harkinson told us that the Nazi Dork, the son of an ophthalmologist, “grew up wealthy” in an affluent suburb of Dallas, Texas.
The LA Times followed up with a profile on Wednesday that was met with immediate social media backlash due to its sexy framing. “The Los Angeles Times glamorized the white supremacist,” Fusion’s Katherine Krueger wrote, “with a lead image of [him] posing like rebel-with-a-cause bad boy wearing black Ray-Bans”
The piece included a chatty Q & A video segment with the Nazi Dork and, though it had obligatory critical quotes from the Southern Poverty Law Center, also had an excited “the next big thing” tone:
As the up-and-coming intellectual voice of the movement, [he] is credited with popularizing the term “alt-right.”…
Nazism was back on the scene, and men in suits, with good haircuts and manners, were leading the charge.
Tuesday, the Washington Post tacked on another breezy profile, similarly presenting the Nazi Dork as a regular Don Draper:
Last weekend, the articulate, highly educated 38-year-old hosted a conference in the nation’s capital that drew nearly 300 white nationalists and at least 50 reporters.
Like the others, writer John Woodrow Cox felt the need to sell the Nazi Dork’s norm appeal to the reader. This is likely supposed to create tension in the piece (“no longer are white supremacists a bunch of toothless hicks!”), but the effect is outright promotion. Indeed, this is why the Nazi Dork named his think tank the benign sounding “National Policy Institute” and coined the term “alt-right”—it was all rebranding, an attempt to normalize neo-Nazism as something fresh and socially acceptable. By indulging in this narrative, the media helps do just that.
The profile went on, making genocide incitement seem witty and cheeky:
[He] of course, would expel Muslims from his ethno-state. And most women, he said as he was being driven from the hotel to his next appointment, would return to their traditional role of bearing children.
His attitude toward women and minorities made his admiration for Tila Tequila, the Nazi-loving Vietnamese American, surprising. Would he allow her in the ethno-state?
“There are always exceptions, I guess,” an amused [him] would say later. “I’m a generous guy.”
A generous ethnic cleanser. All right, then.
In isolation, this type of glossy prose isn’t necessarily a grave injustice—many of the above reporters are honest journalists charged with a knotty task—but when taken as a whole, the media have spent the past few weeks raising his profile and further normalizing him and his Nazi friends.
Any editors considering another profile of him or his aspirationally named “alt-right” movement should pause and consider what benefit this would have beyond giving further exposure to a sad, loathsome Nazi Dork.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
From SS to GQ
Fashionable fascism on parade
The conclusion of Sam Kriss’ recent Baffler column about parallels between Trump and Reagan is applicable in a much more directly terrifying way:
“As thousands still march in the streets, establishment liberals are pleading for us to give [neo-Nazis] a chance—the grand fetish of the Presidency has transformed [neo-Nazism] into something respectable. This is why so many liberals were so aghast at the idea of President Trump. They weren’t scared of what he might do to the anonymous masses; they were repulsed by the vision of themselves sucking up to [neo-Nazis], because they knew that this is exactly what they’d end up doing.”
Yes, the Entertainment news media love their monsters and are fascinated with the dark side of the force. Also many establishment liberals are more concerned about their standing in the world, once the bodies start piling up in America due to Trump’s mass-deportation and Muslim “registry”, and their ability to show their face at cocktail parties in gold-plated hotels abroad than the actual welfare of Blacks, Latinx, gays, lesbians, transgender men and women, Muslims and all those people who catch AIDS under Pence’s policies. The sad part is that this is the second time genocide might hit America. Terrifying indeed!
The irony of this article, and especially the title, escapes the author, the editor and Fair.org.
For years, Congress and the courts have abdicated their responsibilities and allowed the Executive branch to get away with unconstitutional wars of aggression, Tuesday Kill Sessions, and massive violations of the 4th amendment rights to freedom from unlawful search and seizure. It’s not too late for them to actually perform the jobs for which they are paid and make the benefits of the theory of Separation of Power in government manifest, by providing the appropriate checks on presidential power. It’s not brain surgery, it’s the job description under the Constitution.
One wonders whether we might have more people, better prepared to deal with political change and its attendant chicanery, had Secretary of “Education,” Arne Duncan included Critical Thinking skills in the Common Core Standards during his seven years in charge of the Department. His boss and basketball buddy, President Obama reportedly acclaimed that “Arne has done more to bring our educational system — sometimes kicking and screaming — into the 21st century than anybody else.” Now we have at least one person to thank for this rather frightening and pathetic exposure of a government and a general population seemingly too ignorant and insecure to deal calmly with the results of this election.
K.S:
You’ll need to look up “irony”.
Agreed, no punches should be pulled when dealing with these A@@H@LE$. I’m not sure how much sucking-up the press can manage before they retch into the little waste basket beside their desks, but, it looks to be plenty. I almost feel sorry for them. I can only consider the event and sycophantism a grand step towards normalization of separatist ideology before the launching horrid policies. Such tactics aren’t to be underestimated or dismissed because these racist f@#$s are just getting warmed-up and it’s foolish to think some mass movement of magical thinking will stop them…they have a large coherent trolling base, half the population already ideologically complicit, powerful communication (propaganda) tools and the ability to effectively use it, a president, congress, and likely a sympathetic supreme court of the future…a centrist press fearing the wrath of Trump is icing on the cake. I can’t see how centrism in media can survive unless it is to be directly aiding and abetting these whining privileged ur-fascist death eating anti-American fu#ks..Harvard alums should be cringing and retching. I’ve withdrawn all donations and funding and so you. We should be trolling the hell out of all these sympathetic journalists, but we are too educated to be so impolite…right?
Stick them in a room with Neil DeGrasse Tyson for an hour. He’ll have them crying and wetting their pants in ten minutes.
I wish that was the case. You cannot successfully argue with people that are victims of the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The more likely possibility is Neil would end up crying.
They live in a bubble. They have a barrier to the truth.
The documentary “The California Reich” exposes the subtle ways that neo-Nazis insinuate and propagandize themselves into people’s minds, and getting themselves into school classrooms to speak. This movie was trashed in the 1970s by neo-Nazis, in theaters wherever it was shown. Nazi goons came into the theaters and destroyed the film before the operator could show the movie. So the theaters would have a spare copy of the film to show it after the goons left the theater. The neo-Nazis appear to be “nice, regular people.” That’s how they come across. In the methods of any abuser, they groom their targets with love bombing, and gradually, step by calculated step, often “convert” them to join the Nazi goals and activities. The readers here may want to see the video, which can be purchased at several online sites. For more info see wikipedia about the film. Another great film, “Swing Kids” was very popular with teens at the time it came out. Here again, the main Nazi in the film comes across as a really kind, caring, loving man. Both these movies are as frightening as they are educational.
Neo-Nazis constitute a threat to our society, and they need to be discussed by adults. Adam Jonson’s use of junior high school naughty words doesn’t help enlighten us.
You’re right. That would be like putting Sarah Palin in a room with Tyson. Maybe lock them in a room with Richard Simmons’ videos playing instead. His infectious joy will either affect them or melt their faces. I guess I can still dream, huh?
It terrifies me to think that author Jim Wright’s banishment from Facebook for doing nothing more than referring to Nazis as Nazis is a symptom of what we can expect. The exile was temporary, and the uproar and outpouring of support for him that followed was superb, but these people have been empowered by the president-elect and are being succored by the idiots in the corporate media whose only criterion for what’s publishable is how much it will generate for their bottom line.
Oops, I was looking for the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting website. Has anyone here seen it?