Daily Kos

What is Gab? Everything you need to know about the breeding ground for the alt-right

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 3:00 PM PDT

2018/10/28 · 15:00

Screen_Shot_2017-09-11_at_12.16.34_PM.png

Robert Bowers, the suspected gunman in the massacre at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, reportedly killed 11 people and wounded six others when he entered the place of worship Saturday morning. “All Jews must die!” he reportedly yelled while shooting at random.

Bowers was apparently an avid user on Gab, the “alternative” social media site where many members of the alt-right (including white supremacists) convene. When Andrew Torba, an avid Donald Trump supporter, launched Gab in 2016, people compared it to sites like Facebook and Twitter, but were drawn to the less restricted atmosphere. Unlike on mainstream sites, Gab uers could post hate-filled ideologies with abandon.

Unsurprisingly, it’s become an echo chamber for the alt-right. Research even backs it up; Gab is essentially a breeding ground for white, male extremism.

Alt-right bloggers including Milo Yiannopoulos and Paul Joseph Watson are popular users on the site. Gab also hosts content from Alex Jones (of InfoWars, conspiracy theory fame), whose material has been banned from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

What connects Bowers and Gab? A profile that seemingly belongs to him had a considerable history on the site. Before entering the synagogue and allegedly committing mass violence, an account that appears to belong to Bowers posted a message, which read: "I can't sit by an watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I'm going in."

And this wasn’t a one-time sentiment. His profile included many anti-Semitic and anti-refugee comments, as well as conspiracy theories. Since the attack, Gab says they have backed up the data from the suspect’s profile and suspended his account.

Gab responded to the massacre with “disgust,” and gave a statement about the attack:

The heroes fighting voter suppression

Sher Watts Spooner

Community

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 2:00 PM PDT

2018/10/28 · 14:00

Everyone deserves a chance to vote. Period.

When the voting deck is stacked against Democrats, it’s time to fight back.

I’m not talking about bringing in high-profile speakers like President Obama to rally the base at candidate rallies, although that certainly helps. I’m talking about taking concrete actions to help people whose votes are being suppressed or voters whose access to the polls is being severely limited.

Donald Trump and Republicans keep harping on the “problem” of nonexistent voter fraud. It’s the scare tactic the GOP keeps using to make it harder to cast a ballot. Voter suppression can mean the difference between victory and defeat. It’s why the Georgia Republican candidate for governor, Brian Kemp (also coincidentally the guy in charge of voting rules as secretary of state), is frightened of Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation, “especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” as he was recorded saying at a fundraiser.

There are groups across the country going above and beyond the usual efforts to challenge voter suppression in the courts, to help voters get the needed IDs, and to aid voters in actually getting to the polls on Election Day. Many groups have always helped in those efforts, but as Republican-controlled legislatures pass more draconian voter ID laws, voter suppression efforts, and voter access hardships, more and more have stepped up to try to ensure that every voter has a chance to have his or her voice heard. These are just a few of those efforts.

Let’s call them the voting heroes.

The Republican Party promoted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: a week later, 11 people are dead

Hunter

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 1:00 PM PDT

2018/10/28 · 13:00

Screenshot from NRCC attack ad in MN-01 featuring photo of George Soros behind stacks of dollar bills. — A recent National Republican Congressional Committee campaign ad features a photoshop of George Soros behind stacks of money. Soros was the victim of an attempted bombing only days later.

What once was an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory peddled by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups has not just been elevated, in recent weeks, but adopted as campaign strategy by multiple Republican groups and office holders. The theory is that moneyed Jewish "puppet masters" are behind recent efforts to bring asylum-seekers and immigrants to America, part of a plan to destabilize white rule. It is a decades-old anti-Semitic trope by the far-right, but one that leapt to prominence in recent weeks with claims that a "caravan" of Central American refugees is the product of a devious plot by Holocaust survivor George Soros.

Rep. Matt Gaetz was overt in this. On October 17th he tweeted:

BREAKING: Footage in Honduras giving cash 2 women & children 2 join the caravan & storm the US border @ election time. Soros? US-backed NGOs? Time to investigate the source!

The tweet has remained undeleted, even after Soros was the target of an attempted bombing and after an anti-Semitic white supremacist murdered eleven Jewish Americans in their synagogue, wounding several others. The accusation was entirely false, and remains entirely false, but that did not stop Donald Trump himself from obliquely promoting it in a televised rally the next evening.

The theory that George Soros is secretly responsible for nearly all political events in America–to an extent that far exceeds any other named American–continues to be both one of the most commonly expressed current anti-Semitic tropes and the one that regularly, and incessantly, finds its way to Fox News, to Republican lawmakers, to Republican election campaigns and PACs, and in statements by the Republican president. But it is not Trump that has been doing the heavy lifting on advertising, promoting and mainstreaming those notions: That role has been embraced by Republican Party leadership.

Donald Trump is a historically weak president who is undermining America's national security

Laurence Lewis

Community

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 12:00 PM PDT

2018/10/28 · 12:00

The world is laughing at Donald Trump. That isn't to say that they aren't afraid of the global damage he can do, but in the moment his buffoonery sometimes supersedes that. A month ago, a president of the United States spoke to the United Nations General Assembly, repeated one of his usual hyperbolic lies, and the response was open laughter. The world was laughing at Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has been a bully his entire life. He takes advantage of the weak and the vulnerable. He uses his positions of power to harass and molest women, and laughs about it. Having inherited massive wealth and status, he uses it to stiff creditors, tying them up in court or in endless negotiations. As a public figure and politician he gleefully mocks and punishes the historically and structurally dispossessed, including racial, religious, sexual and gender minorities, desperate refugees, and even the disabled.

Donald Trump apparently enjoys inflicting pain. It's transparent proof that he is conscious of his own weakness. He is a little man who tries to act big, but he is too small to understand wherein greatness lies. He kicks those who are down while sniveling to avoid being kicked by those who aren't. He is afraid of being exposed because he is incapable of comprehending how completely he already is.

Donald Trump pays obeisance to Saudi Arabia's despotic crown prince. Donald Trump gets his ass kicked by North Korea's bloodthirsty dictator. Donald Trump is subservient to Russia's authoritarian despot. Donald Trump was a laughingstock at the United Nations. To Trump's fan base, this is called making America great again.

Vladimir Putin is openly gloating:

In a wide-ranging exposition at the annual Valdai forum, Mr Putin continually returned to the idea that US hegemony was the cause of many global ills — but that its twilight offered opportunities for Russia and its friends….

“A country can get the sense from impunity that you can do anything,” he told an audience at a ski resort close to the southern city of Sochi. “This is the result of the monopoly from a unipolar world... Luckily this monopoly is disappearing. It’s almost done.”

Mr Putin said president Donald Trump had listened to his arguments and was not impervious to advice as suggested by some US media, adding that he still thought the US leader was working to restore a good US-Russian relationship.

11 killed in Pittsburgh synagogue massacre identified, including 97-year-old woman

Marissa Higgins

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 11:00 AM PDT

2018/10/28 · 11:00

PITTSBURGH, PA - OCTOBER 27:Tammy Hepps, Kate Rothstein and her daughter, Simone Rothstein, 16, pray from a prayerbook a block away from the site of a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood on October 27, 2018 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. According to reports, at least 12 people were shot, 4 dead and three police officers hurt during the incident. The shooter surrendered to authorities and was taken into custody. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Saturday morning, suspected gunman Robert Bowers, 46, invaded the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people before being taken into custody. During his brutal rampage, he allegedly talked about wanting to kill Jewish people and genocide.

His social media history is filled with anti-Semitism and racism. He was deep into conspiracy theories. His accounts have pictures of his guns and shooting targets, posted to Gab.com, a social media site where alt-right wingers and white nationalists frequently gather. Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones are some of the site’s more well-known users, for example.

Bowers posted to his Gab account that he “can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” seemingly in reference to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HAIS), shortly before he attacked the synagogue.

While his account has since been deleted, some people grabbed screenshots of his alleged posts.

There is no room for nationalism in the promise of America

Mark E Andersen

Community

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 10:00 AM PDT

2018/10/28 · 10:00

When I was a child I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my dad. I still see it so vividly, the mint green walls, and cabinets, the metal kitchen table, the Naugahyde upholstery on the chairs. I could not have been more than nine or ten. He would have a few beers in him, and would be reminiscing of his time in the Navy during WWII. The story would always come back to him saying, “Our country is not perfect, but we must be doing something right when so many people want to come here.”

Now, I love this country, and its people, all of them, not just the folks who agree with me. I will also say that our country has been far from perfect, our history is riddled with racism, war, genocide, enslavement, and cruelty. But, I do believe in the promise of America, that promise that makes people want to come here.

On July 8, 1947, Harry S. Truman said in a special message to Congress,

… America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

George Washington, in his farewell address, written in 1796, said we should,

[G]uard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

Since September 11, 2001, we, as a nation, have been living in fear, and have seen well-intended patriotism turn into nationalism before our eyes. I often wonder if what we are seeing is what the German people saw during Hitler’s rise to power. They saw their friends and neighbors support and defend a madman.

I am not one for hyperbole—I believe in researching a topic, and presenting facts, and evidence to back up my claims. I know I have a personal bias that leans left in the political world. I take all of that into consideration when I come to a conclusion about a subject, especially one that touches upon politics.

Political terrorism has always been part of America's national fabric

Frank Vyan Walton

Community

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 8:00 AM PDT

2018/10/28 · 08:00

"The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor," lithograph depicting the 1773 Boston Tea Party.

Last week, I wrote an examination on the nature of pure evil within American politics following the Donald Trump’s accusations that Democrats were “evil” in how they handled and responded to sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

In that post I went over the last few years where we’ve had violent right-wing and racist attacks ranging from the gun massacre at Las Vegas, to the assault on Charlottesville, the Sikh Temple attack, the Planned Parenthood shooting, the attempted assault on the ACLU and Tides Foundation, an attack on the Holocaust Museum which had targeted David Axelrod, a mass murder at the Knoxville Unitarian Church, the massacre at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, and last week’s violent Proud Boys attack in Manhattan, all of which are part of a pattern of increasingly dangerous right-wing terrorism.

Recently we’ve had the violent gun attack on the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, and the butchering of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by people linked to our great “ally” and Jared Kushner’s very good friend, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

I then argued that all of this is considerably worse than anything Justice Brett Kavanaugh may have endured on his way to his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

This week saw a series of pipe-bomb terrorist attacks attempted simultaneously against Secretary Hillary Clinton, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder, former CIA Director John Brennan (through the New York offices of CNN), Rep. Maxine Waters, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris and against financier George Soros, all with a return address of the offices of former DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. We’ve also had a shooter who had attempted to enter an African-American church kill two black people at the nearby Kroger, and also 11 people massacred at a Pittsburgh synagogue by a genocidal anti-semite who had been fueled by Right-Wing conspiracy theories about George Soros funding the Honduran migrant caravan.

Some have argued that there is no place for this in America, that “America is better than this.” But no, it's not better than this and it never has been—although it should have been by now. I would argue that this has been the dark face of America for decades and even centuries, from the anthrax attack on Democrats who opposed the Patriot Act, to the church bombing in Birmingham Alabama, the lynching and murder of thousands of Americans by the terrorist KKK in the wake of the Civil War which killed more Americans than anything else in history, to the first nations of Native Americans massacred before and during the Trial of Tears. Red-lining, segregation, job discrimination, voter suppression, the poverty-to-prison pipeline, the internment of Japanese-American citizens, the Tuskegee experiment, and the ongoing mass incarceration and summary execution of unarmed innocent black and brown children (whether native-born or immigrants seeking asylum)—it’s all political violence. What many won’t admit is that the American Revolution was also an act of political violence, as were the Whiskey Rebellion, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party.

This country wouldn’t exist without political violence. Political violence has always been a part of who we are, and it always will be unless we finally admit that basic truth and start to make changes. It’s always been part of us—but it doesn’t have to always be that way.

Democrats are the party of diversity, and Latinas are becoming a bigger part of it

Denise Oliver Velez

Community

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 6:00 AM PDT

2018/10/28 · 06:00

Democrat Veronica Escobar is running for Congress in the 16th Congressional District in El Paso, Texas

The United States Congress should mirror the diversity of this nation. The Republican majority doesn’t. But Democrats are continuing to forge a party and field candidates who represent “us,” the rich tapestry of people who make up the citizenry of the United States.

“We can change the direction of this country,” said Congressman Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, and chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Ã¢ÂÂWe can change the direction of this country.Ã¢ÂÂ Ã¢ÂÂ DCCC Chair @repbenraylujan is shining a light on the vast diversity of 2018 Democratic candidates pic.twitter.com/PfDWPvjMDy
Ã¢ÂÂ NowThis (@nowthisnews) October 23, 2018

Luján points to the campaigns of diverse Democrats running for office this year: vets, women, LBGTQ Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latinos.

Following up on my story from last Sunday about the importance of supporting organizations who are working hard to get out the Latino/Hispanic vote, one of the things discussed frequently was the fact that we as Democrats can’t expect Latinos to be super enthused about voting when they see a Congress and Senate that doesn’t reflect their diverse communities.

There are Latinx running this year who understand that, and are taking action to fire up their supporters and get new folks involved. They will be joining other Democratic members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus when they win, and are sworn in, in January, 2019. Their campaigns are bringing out young voters, and older people who have never voted.

Quite a few of those candidates are Latinas.

One of the things I realized when researching this story was that though I was aware of many Latinos running for or already in office in the New York metro area, most that I knew about, supported, and followed were Puerto Rican or Dominican. So I decided to educate myself about other campaigns— because if we truly want to see a blue wave take place in this country, we need to support candidates across the U.S. and not simply on our home turf.

My first surprise was Delaware, where I discovered two Latinas are running for the state House.

Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: Pittsburgh, Pipe-bombs, and the rotten core of the problem

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Sunday October 28, 2018 · 4:00 AM PDT

2018/10/28 · 04:00

It’s 10PM on Saturday and the last two hours of this day can’t run out fast enough. This is one of those days that definitely needs to be over. Not that time or distance will improve it. Not only did this day show that the Antisemitism festering in too many places, and too many people, in America can erupt in moments of horrible violence, it was a reminder that no healing is possible so long as Donald Trump remains center stage. Trump took a grieving nation today and rubbed salt in every wound. Rather than acknowledging the issues, he blamed the victims. Rather than look for solutions, he demanded more death. Rather than providing consolation, he complained about how hard this day was for … Donald Trump.

By the way, if you were watching yesterday for Abbreviated Science Round-up or This Week in Space … first off, bless you. But the events of the day demanded that those pieces, even though they might have provided a diversion, just were not possible against the pace and content of the day’s news. Expect these features to return in two weeks, once the election is in the rear view.

Okay, let’s read some pundits. The weird thing is … many of these articles were written earlier in the week. It’s almost as if they were sadly, horribly, prescient. Except that the events of the last two days were all too easy to predict. The word is … inevitable.

Leonard Pitts on how Donald Trump promotes violence in the name of politics.
Miami Herald

He just can’t help himself, can he? Seems like every time he opens his mouth, out falls the bovine excreta, great lumps of hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance.

He was at it again Wednesday. The mind reeled as Trump, arguably America’s most enthusiastic proponent of political violence, made a statement deploring political violence. This, as investigators sought the person or persons who sent explosive devices to CNN as well as to Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder and other prominent critics of Trump’s chaos presidency.

No, Trump isn’t the first president to say something at sharp variance with what he said before. Obama once claimed he never said, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” George W. Bush once claimed his administration never advocated “stay the course” in Iraq.

This is an article that Leonard Pitts wrote on Thursday. What was the topic of the day? How Donald Trump was inspiring violence against his opponents. In fact, Trump’s uniquely negative ways in which Trump demonizes his opponents — crooked, lying, enemies of the people, evil — and the way he has from the beginning encouraged his followers to engage in fantasies of violence toward protesters, toward his opponents, and towards the media didn’t just lay the groundwork for the events of the last few days. It made them all but inevitable.

Open thread for night owls: Well before the Pittsburgh slaughter, anti-semitic acts had soared

Meteor Blades

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday October 27, 2018 · 7:30 PM PDT

2018/10/27 · 19:30

UNIVERSITY CITY, MO - FEBRUARY 22: Volunteers look on during a vigil at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery on February 22, 2017 in University City, Missouri. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence were on hand to speak to more than 300 volunteers cleaning up after recent vandalism at the cemetery. Since the beginning of the year, there has been a nationwide spike in incidents including bomb threats at Jewish community centers and reports of anti-semitic graffiti. (Photo Michael Thomas/Getty Images) — On February 22, 2017, in University City, Missouri, volunteers look on during a vigil that followed the clean-up of the mess made by vandals when they toppled more than 200 tombstones at the Jewish Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery.

From the Anti-Defamation League on February 27, 2018:

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a new report today that the number of anti-Semitic incidents was nearly 60 percent higher in 2017 than 2016, the largest single-year increase on record and the second highest number reported since ADL started tracking incident data in the 1970s.

The sharp rise, reported in ADL’s Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, was in part due to a significant increase in incidents in schools and on college campuses, which nearly doubled for the second year in a row.

There were 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents reported across the United States in 2017, including physical assaults, vandalism, and attacks on Jewish institutions. That figure represents a 57 percent increase over the 1,267 incidents in 2016. Every part of the country was affected, with an incident reported in all 50 states for the first time in at least a decade.

“A confluence of events in 2017 led to a surge in attacks on our community – from bomb threats, cemetery desecrations, white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, and children harassing children at school,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO and National Director. “These incidents came at a time when we saw a rising climate of incivility, the emboldening of hate groups and widening divisions in society. In reflecting on this time and understanding it better with this new data, we feel even more committed to our century-old mission to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.”

The Guardian reported at the time:

Donald Trump’s administration has been accused of failing to condemn religious bigotry. Jewish groups scolded the president last year for not mentioning Jews or antisemitism in a statement about the Holocaust.

Following August violence at a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists waved insignia from Nazi Germany and yelled “Jews will not replace us”, Trump was slammed for suggesting a moral equivalency between members of the far right and counterdemonstrators. “You had people that were very fine people on both sides,” he said.

The ADL’s report said US schools and colleges were particularly affected, with antisemitic incidents nearly doubling since 2016, often including swastikas drawn on school facilities or Jewish students’ notebooks. Sometimes vandalism included phrases such as: “Hitler was not wrong” or “white power”.

TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES

TWEET(S) OF THE DAY

Straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Just moments ago, Lou Dobbs guest Chris Farrell (head of Judicial Watch) says Caravan is being funded/directed by the "Soros-occupied State Department". pic.twitter.com/QBSong7uk1
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 27, 2018

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BLAST FROM THE PAST

On this date at Daily Kos in 2007—Tell Me One Good Thing About a Candidate You Don't Back:

Here we are, mere weeks away from [primary] votes being cast in what may well be the most crucial presidential election since '68, and, not surprisingly, we're shrieking at each other. Again. That's politics, leftist-style, progressive-style, Democratic-style. Perhaps it could be done without shrieking, but it isn't, and I doubt it ever will be.

For the moment, however, for one brief pause, I'd like to see everyone who's already selected a presidential candidate to write one positive and substantive thing about the policies and/or political behavior of a candidate s/he doesn't support. Something positive and substantive about which your candidate isn't as good.

Not a compliment that conceals a slap. Not a yes, but... Rather something that you wish your chosen candidate would adopt without reservation. Something that, if the time comes when your favored choice fails to get the nomination, will make you feel better about voting in November 2008 for that other candidate.

Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download the Stitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio.”

Megyn Kelly is the personification of white (woman) privilege and its elements within the media

Doctor RJ

Community

Saturday October 27, 2018 · 7:00 PM PDT

2018/10/27 · 19:00

Megyn Kelly's non-apology apology explanation as "never ... a PC kind of person" about why she didn't understand blackface is offensive shows she's either a moron or a liar that's horribly out of touch with everyone ... except other out-of-touch people.

A recent poll found that, among Trump voters, there is a belief that men are the most discriminated-against group in the United States. Trump supporters think men have it worse than people in LGBTQ communities, African-Americans, or Mexican-Americans. In the past, I’ve written a lot about conservatives seeing themselves as victims and how that mirrors trends in popular culture. There is a significant portion of white people, and especially white men, who are frustrated about what they don’t have and what others might get, and who see their equalized status within society as a slight against their worth as a person. These are the people nodding when black athletes are castigated for exercising their rights to protest. These are the ones watching Tucker Carlson every night when he denounces the value of diversity. And these are the people who get coddled with long news segments and think pieces excusing support for the despicable, lecturing critics about how these fools need to be understood with “civility.”

Just as some journalists have a problem using the word “liar” when it’s warranted, there is a tendency within the media to not like calling racist behavior the work of “racists,” even when Nazis with Tiki torches may be involved. Some months back, Meghan McCain defended Trump voters’ strained grasp on reality on The View by saying these are people who “didn’t have any other choice.” And therein lies the great truth about white privilege: White people who act like horrible assholes get a certain benefit of a doubt and an active defense of rationalizations that people of color and other minority groups never do.

Nuts & Bolts: Inside a Democratic campaign—Help a voter out!

Chris Reeves

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday October 27, 2018 · 6:00 PM PDT

2018/10/27 · 18:00

Welcome back, Saturday Campaign D.I.Y.ers! For those who tune in, welcome to the Nuts & Bolts of a Democratic campaign. Each week we discuss issues that help drive successful campaigns. If you’ve missed prior diaries, please visit our group or follow Nuts & Bolts Guide.

In the end, every campaign has one goal: to secure enough votes to win. While we’d like to think that voting in America was so easy that everyone took it for granted, voting for many in American can be difficult or time-consuming. Getting voters to turn out and vote for your campaign, though is a necessity, so this week we’re going to talk about some of the strategies that can be put in place to help voter outreach in your down-ballot race.

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