#Conspirac in death

[signourneybooks]

Pocket Reviews 2024 | Part 4

Nearing the end of 2023 I discussed the idea of mini reviews with Jenna from Falling Letters I believe . I read so much and don’t always have the time nor enough opinions to write a whole review on them. But it also feels like a shame not to adress them at all. So now this new feature is born in which I will share mini reviews of all the other books that I read throughout the year. These might…

[dovescheck]

while everyones returning to the scu fandom because of that animation that got dropped here is a list of my favorite animatics of pre-100days scu

good day scu fandom... more non-100days art coming ur way soon...

[creature-wizard]

In The Illuminati Formula Used To Create an Undetectable Mind Controlled Slave, some fucking wild claims are made about L. Frank Baum and The Wizard of Oz.

The book claims that The Wizard of Oz is full of "satanic activity" and "satanic thinking." If you're baffled as to what this could possibly mean, remember that this is a book that claims Sleeping Beauty is about mind control. Anyway, it claims that the Illuminati has been using it to put people under mind control since the 1940's.

It also states that L. Frank Baum was a Theosophist (this is true) and claims that Hitler was also a Theosophist (this is not true) and implies a connection. Now yes, the Nazis were inspired by Theosophy, but they had their own thing going, and if you want to look into it you should check out The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.

The book also claims that MGM is building a Wizard of Oz themepark for reasons of mind control. Damn, it has been a hot minute since I've come across theme park conspiracy theories...

Anyway, the book asserts about the Oz series:

The books have so much material from inside the secret world of the Illuminati, that the few who understand the Illuminati wonder if Baum wasn't an insider.

...Fucker, you claim that literally anything that has even the remotest trace of magic in it is is Illuminati programming. Literally every piece of fantasy media is going to look like it contains "so much material from the secret world of the Illuminati." That's how your conspiracy theory operates; you train people to see signs of its existence everywhere by asserting that everything is a sign.

Anyway, the book gets its Adam West Batman on and makes a bunch of really dodgy claims about the supposed connections between The Wizard of Oz and the occult. For example:

Dorothy is brought to Oz by a cyclone. The word cyclone originally was the greek word cyclone which means both a circle or the coil of a snake. In other words, the snake takes Dorothy to Oz.

Literally what.

Also with the weird claim that green is Satan's color:

The colors and directions given in Oz may also have other symbolic meanings in the occult. For instance, Emerald City is green and green is the fourth point of the Eastern Star (women's Freemasonry) & Satan's color.

Dude... let's be real... it wouldn't matter how the city was, you'd link it to occult ideology, whether you found a plausible link or just pulled some shit out of your ass.

Also like, yes, Theosophy has a lot of issues, basically most of which come from Blavatsky having internalized a lot ideas about eugenics and thinking that Perennialism was the way to go, and also just generally thinking that making shit up about Eastern traditions was a thing to do. But just because The Wizard of Oz might have some Theosophical influence, doesn't make it inherently bad, because that's not how things work. Like, one of Theosophy's ideals is seeking spiritual truths. If someone was inspired to put that ideal into their story, it doesn't necessarily mean that their story is going to reflect each and every problematic thing about Theosophy.

Oh, and the book claims that Toto is Dorothy's familiar. And that the rainbow, with its seven colors, is an Illuminati symbol and hypnotic device. Supposedly the fact that Ms. Gulch and the witch are played by the same actress symbolize the double lives of Illuminati members. Which, if this is a pro-Illuminati book you gotta wonder why both of these characters are antagonists.

And at this point, I think it's pretty obvious that whoever is writing this is just making shit up to support their assertion that The Wizard of Oz is Illuminati programming, because this is just so random:

Several scenes involve transference of power via transference of slippers from a witch. In Illuminati ritual, to transfer power, a Matriarch, or Mother of Darkness will kill the person in a position of authority with a strike on the forehead with a special mace like staff, and then put on their slippers. Ruby colored slippers are actually used as a symbol of authority at the Matriarch level in the Illuminati. The shoes are said to be golden at the Mothers of Darkness level in the Illuminati.

Or maybe they're getting their wires crossed with Terry Pratchett, who knows. It's bullshit either way.

Oh, and by the way, the slippers in the book were silver, and were changed to ruby so they'd show up better on film. It wasn't deep.

Also, animism is bad now, because it's straight out of Druidism and the Illuminati believe trees have souls.

And then the book claims:

Dorothy kills the wicked witch of the west by a sharp blow to the forehead with the witch's staff.

Sure, dude. And Aslan turned into a giant octopus and Percy Jackson is the son of Mesperyian. Seriously, how do you just get basic facts about The Wizard of Oz so incredibly wrong? This is literally one of the most memed-upon scenes in movie history.

Anyway, it goes on, and it's all a bunch of ridiculous conspiracism. A lot of the time it really just looks like they took a scene from a movie and made up that sounded something like how they imagined this evil satanic conspiracy would work.

In any case, it all exemplifies the way conspiracists so often interpret media through the most hostile lenses possible. Overarching themes that normal people see in media, like the power of friendship, personal growth, coming of age, and all that just don't exist in in the worldviews they promote. Everything needs to have a secret evil meaning, everything has to have a twisted agenda. And don't get me wrong; there is a lot of media that holds very rancid ideas. But this kind of conspiratorial worldview isn't about analysis; it's about utterly dehumanzing and demonizing art. It's about creating a world where people are terrified of art and artists.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Lurie at Public Notice:

It is no coincidence that, as his 2024 presidential campaign comes to a close, Donald Trump is both coming out as an overt fascist and presiding over a Republican Party suffused with conspiratorial antisemitism. Fascism and anti-Jewish bigotry have been integrally linked since the 1930s. Over the past several years, Trump has so successfully remade the GOP as a fascist political party that a leading “mainstream” Republican governor greeted the recent news that Trump is a secret admirer of Adolf Hitler as a non-event, offhandedly declaring on CNN that it’s “baked in” to his appeal While Trump has declared himself to be the “protector” of the Jewish community at a time of rising antisemitism, he’s also spent the last eight years regularizing antisemitic conspiracism within the GOP and welcoming Jew haters and other bigots into the party. In recent days, Trump, along with his cronies and followers, are making their extremism and bigotry more overt. This is particularly true where their rhetoric about Jews is concerned.

Trump recently railed that Jewish Americans are “cursed” and warned that Jews will bear “a lot of blame” if he loses the presidential election. He has also more than suggested that his support of Israel’s current government requires the quid pro quo of political support from Jewish American voters. Many of Trump’s more devoted followers are even more explicit in their antisemitism. Long before he was also outed as a Hitler fan, Mark Robinson (who gained the GOP nomination for governor in North Carolina with Trump’s enthusiastic support) was an open and notorious antisemite who traded in Holocaust denial. Marjorie Taylor Greene — one of Trump’s favorite House members – recently voted against a bill concerning antisemitism out of concern that the statutory language denied Jews’ purported responsibility for the death of Jesus. And during last week’s Madison Square Garden rally — intended to send Trump’s “closing” campaign message to the nation — the same “comedian” who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” also “joked” about Jews’ supposed stinginess with money.  

Antisemitic conspiracism is now so common in “mainstream” Republican rhetoric that it often goes unnoticed.  Last week, for example, GOP Rep. Tim Burchett spoke of the “money changers” in Washington — invoking a longtime favorite trope of antisemites — without even raising the eyebrows of a CNN interviewer.  More insidiously, and with the encouragement of Trump and his cronies, antisemitic conspiracies — often focused on wealthy Jews, like George Soros, a Hungarian-born Jewish Holocaust survivor and one of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers — have become central to “mainstream” GOP political rhetoric. None of this should be surprising, given the history of Trumpism.

The dogwhistles get louder

Donald Trump is a committed bigot at heart, and his worldview is deeply rooted in racism and religious stereotyping. His hatred and fear of non-European immigrants has been on open display since he announced his first presidential candidacy in 2015 in a “speech” laced with vitriolic rants about Latin American asylum seekers. Trump’s lifelong derision of Black Americans is never far from the surface, and has been starkly displayed in his now habitual dismissal of Vice President Kamala Harris as “stupid” and “low IQ.” Like many barstool bigots, Trump has also long exhibited a set of reflexive stereotypes regarding Jews, who he claims to admire even as he repeatedly characterizes them as money-hungry connivers. No wonder that Trump bonded on the subject of Jews with neo-fascist ideologue Steve Bannon, who managed the final stretch of Trump’s 2016 campaign.

[...]

In recent years, Soros and his son, largely through their Open Society philanthropy, have devoted considerable resources to projects in the United States focused on issues like voting rights, civic engagement, and alleviating racial disparities in the justice system — initiatives Republicans revile. In addition, Soros has been a major contributor to Democratic candidates for office. So it was not difficult for GOP “thought leaders” like Tucker Carlson and Bannon to convince “mainstream” GOP politicians to join Trump and Orbán in demonizing Soros and mainstreaming an American variant of the “great replacement” theory. By 2018, Republican leaders, including Kevin McCarthy, were enthusiastically disseminating propaganda that — much like Bannon’s 2016 “Jewish bankers” commercial — accursed Soros, sometimes together with other (frequently Jewish) “globalists,” of being part of a shadowy cabal directed at undermining the nation by “buying” elections. The next step was to join the neo-Nazis in accusing the “globalists” of systematically ushering hordes of Latin American asylum seekers into the nation to “replace” white Americans with fraudulent votes. The fact that this imported version of the European neo-fascist theory was factually baseless, patently racist, and unmistakably redolent of antisemitism initially made some GOP “leaders” hesitant to fully endorse it. But that hesitancy quickly melted away as Trump made the conspiracy theory a staple part of his messaging. Now the “great replacement” theory — much like the claim that January 6 was a “love fest” — is a familiar component of GOP political rhetoric and is regularly invoked during Trump’s rallies and on Fox News shows.

Donald Trump’s campaign has long trafficked in antisemitic themes.

[cchr11]

These are some concepts I developed for good ol' Ulrika. (It's all wip)

I forgot to mention: everything previously stated before this post about her and her relationships has been retconned

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Backstory in a nutshell:

2008: The swedish hitman 'Ulrik Bielke I' migrates to Russia wanting to join the Mafia. The Russian Organized Crime tests his loyalty for a whole year before accepting him as a member, foreigners face stricters trials and rules.

2009: Ulrik I is accepted and quickly marries with a russian woman from within the organization. Plans to climb to the top by establishing the Bielke family as the top hitmen in the group.

2010: Ulrik Bielke II is born. During this decade the country stands out as one of the leaders for bioweapons development and human augmentation.

2015: Ulrik II's brutal training and conditioning begins. Within the same year, Ulrik I offers himself for mechanical augmentation to extend his career as the Russian Organized Crime's influence and power gradually creeps higher in the country. They acquire access to human augmentation technology to test it with their men.

2027: Ulrik II's training pays off and becomes one of the top hitmen at 17, accomplishing the first step of his father's plan. The same year, the 'Aug Incident' takes place and Ulrik II along other colleagues are forced to kill Ulrik I. The ensuing battle left all the men severely mutilated, leading to all of them being mechanically augmented. The loss of his father left Ulrik II mentally unstable.

2030: A gradually unstable Ulrik II resolves in continuing his father's wishes and follows his footsteps. Marries with a woman from the Organization and impregnates her. After finding out the baby is a girl, he thinks of forcing an abortion but decides not to as the girls can be married to influential members of the group.

2031: Sara Bielke is born. A few months later he goes through a second succesful augmentation surgery but is rendered infertile. Frustrated, he decides to raise his daughter as if she were a son and changes her name to Ulrika Bielke.

2034: Ulrika Bielke's brutal training and conditioning begins the moment she learns how to walk. The training encompasses more than 'hitman activity' as it aims to turn her into a fullblown field agent, adapting to the evolving nature of the 'members who get dirty', which are becoming more sophisticated.

2042: Ulrik II grows more deranged and forces Ulrika to go through light mechanical augmentation. He's against radical alterations since he's afraid it could render her with long lasting health issues like infertility (But near death training is somehow ok). He concludes the amputation and replacement of her arms is the best lightest choice. Since then til the age of sixteen Ulrika required multiple limb replacement to match her growing body.

2050: Ulrika is chosen among other agents for deployment to Mexico to support the Russo-Mexican Alliance which was just consolidated. Ulrika mades up her mind and uses this opportunity to truly prove her worth, as she grew feeling inadequate for never meeting her father's expectations. It's during this time where a previously sheltered, or rather isolated Ulrika realizes mechanically augmented people are viewed as lower class citizens and are discriminated upon. This adds anger to the indifference she felt towards the world.

2052: A member of the Luminous Path Triad contacts The Russian Organized Crime to hire a 'gweilo gangster' to work as a field agent. This member is Tracer Tong, flexing the reach of his contacts to seek foreign aid that is free of Majestic-12 control. (Paul Denton had been sent back to New York and Tong needed a replacement to investigate Versalife). Ulrika is chosen for the task as she had been nothing short of excelent in the past two years in Mexico. After failing to infiltrate Versalife, Ulrika's whole worldview slowly crumbles when she's exposed to all the conspiracies and meets JC Denton.

Random characterization ideas:

Ulrika, like JC, has been raised her whole life to be a living weapon. Weapons are tools, and tools don't talk, don't think, and don't act without input. They must perform and most importantly, be effective. An ineffective tool is discarded: incompetence is death. Ulrika, however, and unlike JC, was not raised to be a weapon to "protect the weak and punish the evil" (or that's what JC thought he was doing in UNATCO). She hurts others to perpetuate "injustice and evil", although she doesn't view it that way.

Ulrika thirsts for power as her inner desire is to be the best, and she wants so to maker her father proud, to finally deem her worthy. Such ambition has been her life goal since forever, and once she accomplishes this, she thinks, she'll be able to conquer the Organization. This goal changes when she arrives to Hong Kong and meets JC Denton, realizing that all she believed to be important is miniscule in comparison to what she could achieve by sticking around him: true world conquest.

Talking about JC, she views him as what she should've been since the begining, what her father desired her to be. She develops an infatuation for him, although it's all focused on his skills and lethality. In truth, she can't give a damn about his personality or feelings, all that matters is that he's the strongest, most dangerous person in the planet. She'll encourage him to merge with Helios, not to save humanity or fix the state of the world but to gain total control and total power. She'll support the idea of annihilating all dissidents and would 100% erase the organization off the map. (Which is unnataible as Rusia becomes the Omar's birthplace. Ulrik II becomes a member, ceasing to be.)

[horizon-verizon]

Daemon didn’t betrayed Rhaenyra. Her allies didn’t betrayed her, it was her who betrayed them first. I’m tired of this discourse of painting Miss Maegor (very insulting to compare him to Rhaenyra, unlike her, Maegor has achievements and is recognized as a monarch) as a victim of her council. Let’s see how Rhaenyra the merciful rewarded her loyal allies who did all the heavy lifting during the war, the only reason of why she’s still alive:

Corlys Velaryon: imprisoned and sentenced to death

Addam Veleryon: ordered execution

Nettles: ordered execution

Daemon: conspiraced behind his back to murder a teenager he sexually groomed

Lord Mooton: order him to murder Nettles in her sleep and violate her guest rights (literally the worst crime you could ever commit in Westeros)

She’d probably have still been alive had she not went mad queen, but Missy Anne alienated her base (minus Addam who still tried to prove her psycho behind wrong) and paid the price for it.

Anon, you may have to just block me. I wrote several times abt this. I wont' deny that this indeed alienated many allies, however...

A) The Betrayals against Rhaenyra BEFORE Addam's Arrest'

Ulf & Hugh (her once-allies)

Yes, Rhaenyra did all those to her allies...after Ulf & Hugh (her first pair of allies who were also dragonriders) at the Battle of Tumbleton, which was a disastrous result for the blacks and & win for the greens along with the resultant Sack/rape of the entire town. Not before.

The issue came up in response to the plans for making Addam the default guardian of KL in place of Rhaenyra's sons; the council people questioned his loyalty after the Whole Two Betrayes (Ulf &Hugh) thing. Now let's get into F&B's relation of why/how Rhaenyra tries to imprison Addam ("Rhaenyra Triumphant"):

Then both Corlys & Gerardys tried to argue for Addam & Nettles (before Mysaria's brought in):

This was a obviously huge deal, as non Targ dragonriders will always be highly potential issue not only for Targs but the entire realm...we saw what happened the last time there were so many dragonriders/units at once...:

("Birth, Death, & Betrayal")

The Greens

The greens were not her allies, but theirs was still a betrayal against her bc she was the heir and their future queen...they usurped her against the King's wishes and were thus nearly the same sort of "subjects" as as Robert was Rhaegar's, Brynden was to Daeron/Aerys II, Viserys (II) to his brother Aegon III, etc. etc.

Aegon (II), was part of that betrayal and it coincides with the blood betrayal of the Amethyst Empress and the Bloodstone Emperor. Aemond, her brother/"subject", killed her son Lucerys. Another betrayal, compounded with kinslaying.

Borros Baratheon

The same goes for Borros, another not-ally. Though they never met, his father made that oath and freely, binding him to that oath ideologically. Similarly to how eveyr house if boudn to House Targaryen after the Conquerors conquered Westeros. All of them and their kids for perpetuity became, legally, bound to the Targs and their heirs/line. For stupidly and cowardily turning Luke out and allowing Aemond to go after him, he is also complicit in Luke's death. For joining the greens at all, he betrayed Rhaenyra.

Yeah, and?

Once again, I'm not denying that her imprisoning/planning to torture Addam was a bad move AND not entirely sensical just as Gerardys said, since he has shown no hint of planning betrayal. (Corlys only said Addam & Alyn were both "true Velaryons" & that Nettles fought bravely back in the Gullet battle.)

At the same time, while she was calling for Addam's execution, she wasn't calling for an execution. who knows, maybe the fear of execution was well founded bc...you know, after Ulf & Hugh's betrayals no one wanted to really gamble on someone taking pains to investigate the truth or just not want to go through torture. Still, I am saying that she was ordering his arrest/torture...not his execution. Which shoes there is a chance that she was intending on doing some pretty horrendous investigation--investigation nonetheless. It appears Rhaenyra was trying to be cautious--for her and under this sort of context. And I don't blame Addam for either freaking out or wanting to prove himself without falling into the indignities of torture, but this point had to be made.

I am saying that on top of Rhaenyra's allies having had definitely betrayed her, others who also legally should have been loyal to her betrayed her & in the worse ways. Even Viserys kinda betrays her for how he dealt with/didn't deal with Alicent/Otto to finish them once and for all--which don't need execution-death but the man also failed Rhaenra many times so that he could keep Alicent (love)-the Faith/the Hightower (power) influence close in a false sense of doing his duty. Book and show. Which means that GRRM is trying to tell us that this woman developed a strong sense of distrust for people around her who weren't Daemon or her kids and it got worse once her kids actually started dying. This is the storyline.

Even with the whole Nettles thing, Septon Eustace tells us that she didn't "act at once", but she decides to check in with Mysaria:

Compare this to The Princess & the Queen's relation of how Rhaenyra hadles Addam&Nettles:

A -- She was still very paranoid but she also still needed dragons to patrol/protect KL instead of her own sons. who the text very clearly states--at least Joffrey--were thought to go scout/watch for the city...but both were not even in their teens AND were her heirs. Plus Jacaerys and Lucerys' deaths would not make her nor most mothers think of even putting their kids/heirs in such proximity to any idea of harm's way.

B -- Notice how Rhaenyra's weird rant abt Nettles' magicness, seduction, Mysaria's vivid imagery of Nettles carrying Daemon's kid as well as the Rhaenyra at all deciding to call on her abt any of the Seeds is not present. We could argue that P&Q had rhaenys having silver-gold hair instead of dark and thus GRRM could have added this in...however:

this is Septon Eustace relating how she spoke to Mysaria, who not only was a septon and clasist, but also hated Rhaenyra, wrote that she ate a lot and gave permission to Daemon to sleep wMysaria...the smae guy writes Mysaria liek some sort of witch with "spellbinding" words persuading the already susceptible and paranoid Rhaenyra to call for Nettles' execution

hair color is not the same type of retcon/rewrite as a whole conversation or a plot point -- I am of the mind that the 3 Velaryon boys were definitely Harwin's no matter the whole lack of/presence of phenotypical divergence of some Targs after marriages out of the family , so I think that the difference of hair color in relation to their paternity matters more towards highlighting how the accusations (rather than the truth) against Rhaenyra mattered more than the actual truth, to reflect the greens' intention and not Rhaenyra's supposed "wrongdoing"

All I am saying is that yes Rhaenyra ordering torture instead of just a light arrest for maybe personal (nonviolent) interrogation is a wrong/nonsensical...but it didn't come form absolutely no where. And that there weren't allies/those "close" who did betray is patently false.

B) "Maegor with Teats"

Rhaenyra is only called "Maegor with Teats" for raising taxes...Rogar Barathon/Edgar Celtigar also raised taxes, but the KLers nor Gyldayns call him a tyrant or a baby-killer for it, yeah? So knock it off with the blatant mud-slinging.

("A Surfeit of Rulers"; "Rhaenyra Triumphant")

C) Daemon, Nettles, Maidenpool

You:

Daemon: conspiraced behind his back to murder a teenager he sexually groomed

Daemon didn't groom nor have any sort of sexual-romantic relations w/Nettles.

Now did Rhaenrya send the letter for Nettles' head? Some argue that it could have been a sneaky agent looking to divide Rhaenyra & Daemon or cost Rhaenyra another dragon/dragonrider and thus send off a fake letter with her seal or whatever that changed the original just-arrest warrant to an execution one. This is plausible--Larys is still active and still had an effect, likely, on the public's eyes on her. The Shepherd could just as easily been a plant by a anti-Targ, Faith follower, a septa, a septon, or anyone.

We could also say that Rhaenyra was also very capable of calling for Nettles' execution after Addam's flee, as she does have an edge that swings towards cruelty OR preemptive violence when triggered OR was just a much more self-interested person:

Vaemond being fed to Syrax [though I don't fault her at all for this--IF she even did this...Rhaena theBB was going to do similar to the femicidal Androw Farman and Vaemond violated a clear and direct royal order/just wanted Driftmark for himself and was going behind Corlys' back]

tortured Tyland Lannister for info abt the stolen treasury, removed his eyes, etc., and even here I remember that she wasn't going to be merciful to people who enabled her sons' deaths/the usurpation...again Alyssa Velaryon did something similar and Jaehaerys faced some consequences for not killing a ser or a knight who followed Maegor later when he tried to ally himself with Alaric Stark, so this is more like "typical" and higher-stakes nobles-being-nobles...that could be bc not a lot of people know abt Alyssa V like that and they would actually hate on her, esp since Gyldayn is still the one writing abt her...another woman who was looking for revenge for her dead sons (Aegon the Usurped and the prince Viserys who Maegor tortured).

with whatever money she had to set up a celebration and fixings for investing Joffrey as her heir while whatever moneys she had or Corlys had (note how Corlys didn't even offer& no Rhaenyra can't just out and demand hi do so without facing some "uncomfortable" backlash after Rhaenys' death and her being so dependent on his ships/overall support...) didn't go to some aid relief for many KLers

But these are all things that not many would harangue male-usurped people's for or as protest about bc it'd be seen as him asserting his rights/making sure he has no "surprises" down the line.

And at the same time, if not for morality, for the mere presence of another dragonrider she could maybe use if only for her two son's sake, it's also possible she recalled Nettles for that and to await interrogation/to "prove" she was not inclined to betray her. She obviously was unwilling to ever let her sons have to or risk them being put in any harm's way after Jace & Luke; this was her hard line. Or not since Daemon would then be forced to face Vahagr and Aemond alone. We don't know.

Part of it is also how GRRM decided to write her: POST & POST.

So this is one of those grey-black grey areas that we'll likely not know the truth of, when before I was pretty adamant abt Rhaenyra displaying some heavy misogynoir. Why did I shift? Again, read the above abt TP&tQ vs F&B's different tellings of how Rhaenyra handled the idea of more Dragonseeds betraying her.

..........................................................................................

And jut bc exaggerations sometimes become the basis for unironic support for people's sincere argument -- You:

Lord Mooton: order him to murder Nettles in her sleep and violate her guest rights (literally the worst crime you could ever commit in Westeros)

Violating guest rights is not more of an issue-crime-taboo than kinslaying, so it is not the "worst". Perhaps it can be said to be "equal" to kinslaying, but no it's not "worse" than kinslaying.

[mariacallous]

A Texas bankruptcy court judge brought Infowars back from the brink of death on Friday, a surprising ruling which conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones attempted to use to—naturally—make more money. This time, Jones is promoting a supplement company owned by his father.

Judge Christopher M. Lopez issued a split ruling last week, saying that Jones can follow through with a plan his attorneys had requested and liquidate most of his assets to pay the nearly $1.5 billion judgment he owes to the families of children and staff members killed at Sandy Hook after repeatedly calling the mass shooting a “hoax.”

Though Jones lost by default in defamation cases brought by Sandy Hook families in both Connecticut and Texas, the families have yet to see a dime of the money owed to them; Friday’s hearing was one piece of a long-awaited day of reckoning for the man they said was the single biggest driver of lies about their dead children and hatred, threats, and harassment directed toward their families.

But the judge rejected a bankruptcy plan that would have also liquidated Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, the 25-year-old media empire that made Jones into the foremost face of conspiracism in America. The network will live for now, although it remains unclear how long. Jones responded to the crisis in his usual way: by shilling supplements, albeit this time with a curious twist.

As the bankruptcy proceedings have dragged on—and on and on—Jones has used his one true talent to powerful effect, urging his viewers to send money to an entity not directly owned by him, and thus not answerable to the Sandy Hook families and his other creditors.

In recent weeks, Jones has been promoting a new supplements site, Dr. Jones Naturals, on air. He says it’s owned by his father, David Jones, a dentist. Alex Jones has been urging people to spend their money there in addition to, or instead of, at Infowars' in-house store. “My dad is a sponsor, and he has a warehouse that’s not under their control, full of products ready to ship to you,” Jones said on-air last week. A representative for Free Speech Systems also testified in court that Infowars had stopped ordering supplements for its in-house store several weeks ago, expecting an imminent shutdown.

The things on offer from Dr. Jones Naturals don’t differ greatly from the things Infowars sells itself; there’s the usual bouquet of colloidal silver products, a longtime faux cure-all in the natural health world, along with something oxymoronically called Rocket Rest, a product called Top Brain, and, for the completist, a set of products called the Patriot Pack. There’s also a pack of “super silver lozenges,” where the product photo shows an expiration date of 2022.

“It’s an obvious fraud on the bankruptcy court,” Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Connecticut families, tells WIRED, referring to Jones' directing people on-air to his father’s supplements website. “He’s not supposed to divert assets.”

This isn’t the first time the families have credibly accused Jones of diverting Infowars’ assets to businesses owned by family members. When the company first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2022, lawyers for the Texas families accused Jones of “conspir[ing] to divert his assets to shell companies owned by insiders like his parents, his children, and himself.” One of those companies was an entity called PQPR Holdings, an alleged Infowars vendor that claims to supply virtually everything in its online store. Other shell companies, the lawyers alleged, were holding companies that the lawyers said were “directly or indirectly” owned by Jones, his parents, or his children, and which in some cases bore their initials. (The fight over PQPR continues in bankruptcy court.)

For both sets of families, the concern about Jones allegedly looting the company on his way out the door remains very real. Lawyers for the families made clear during the hearing that they were ultimately looking to preserve the value of the company to create an equitable distribution of Jones’ assets to his many, many creditors, and, of course, prevent him from carrying out what they allege is the latest fraudulent scheme he’s using to keep money hidden.

In the hearing, Jones’ assets were ordered dissolved. Though he will be allowed to keep his house, other personal assets, like his gun collection, could also be up for auction. But since the court rejected a bankruptcy plan for Free Speech Systems, the families can now try to collect the judgments they won in state court. The Connecticut plaintiffs had asked the judge to pave the way for an “orderly wind down” of Jones’ business affairs, as several lawyers put it, while the Texas families favored a plan to keep the company operational for now, with their lawyers arguing that they could better pursue claims for their clients that way.

Besides hawking his dad’s business, in the leadup to the hearing, Jones also milked every bit of content and attention from Infowars’ possible imminent nonexistence that he could. He sat down for laudatory interviews with both Tucker Carlson and Russell Brand that aired on Infowars and loudly ruminated on what he called “the twilight” of the network and “the countdown to the end of this place.”

Jones’ last week of broadcasts was a greatest-hits of weird characters from across the conspiracy-verse. Besides Brand and Carlson, Mikki Willis, the filmmaker behind the viral faux-documentary Plandemic, also showed up with friends to promote a new project, as did Stew Peters, an antisemitic far-right broadcaster who has recently been named the communications director of an armed national militia. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes also hosted a segment where he ranted about Black Lives Matter.

On Friday morning, Jones posted a video on X of himself driving down a Texas highway toward the courthouse, declaring that “the Democratic party and the Deep State” were trying to take control of his assets and social media accounts.

“This is real tyranny,” he declared, adding that if Trump is reelected, “he’s going to put them all in prison.”

Jones also claimed on-air last week that an Infowars shutdown would only make him more powerful. “You make it bigger by shutting it down, dumbos,” he declared. After the verdict, in an “emergency broadcast” over the weekend, Jones called the hearing “absolutely epic” and denounced allegations that he was “stealing money” as “fake.”

The verdicts against Jones, Mattei told WIRED last week, were “a cathartic moment of validation. And Friday if the judge rules that the company needs to be liquidated will be another moment where they feel like they’ve done everything they could do to protect others. They didn’t lay down.”

But that is, of course, not what happened. “It’s just Biblical,” Jones exalted over the weekend, speaking to one of his frequently replaced junior hosts. “It’s almost like God is really just being entertained by all this and is just wanting to see the fight continue.”

While the families have clearly fought hard, Friday’s split ruling is, instead, a signal that their fight is, for now, not even close to over. And as Jones and Infowars keep covering their own unlikely survival, they’re still hawking both their in-house store and Dr. Jones’ Naturals.

“We’re selling it for $12 and change,” Jones said at one point during the “emergency broadcast,” extolling the virtues of a certain supplement. He paused for a moment. “My dad is.”

[azspot]

So. Here we are. Drowning in an ocean of white rage and radicalism. So far ashore that we have little idea what direction to turn. MAGA is evolving into the full-blown death cult many of us have warned you about. 2020 and the Big Lie of the stolen election, mixed with the fetid layers of Right Wing conspiracism, has left the true-believers convinced liberal democracy has not only failed but that it is irredeemable. The only thing left is to install their God King and let him sort through the ashes.

We All Know What This Is

[bohemian-nights]

Daemon didn't betrayed Rhaenyra. Her allies didn't betrayed her, it was her who betrayed them first. I'm tired of this discourse of painting Miss Maegor as a victim of her council. Let's see how Rhaenyra the merciful rewarded her loyal allies who did all the heavy lifting during the war, the only reason of why she's still alive:

•Corlys- imprisoned and sentenced to death

•Addam Valeryon- ordered execution

•Nettles- ordered execution

•Daemon- conspiraced behind his back to murder his ward(lover)

•lord Mooton- ask to kill Nettles in her sleep and violate her Guest rights (literally the worst crime you could ever commit in Westeros)

People don’t want to admit this(hell they don’t even want to admit that Daemon put Nettles safety first), but it’s the truth.

She’d probably have still been alive had she not went mad queen, but Missy Anne alienated her base(minus Addam who still tried to prove her psycho behind wrong) and paid the price for it.

[creature-wizard]

Some warning signs you're dealing with a cult

Conspiracism Now to be fair, it's not always clear what's conspiracy theory and what's fact, and people sometimes end up believing some amount of conspiracy theory because they heard it somewhere and it didn't cross their minds to question it. (This is why historical literacy matters!) The thing to watch out for is when a group's beliefs hinge on a conspiratorial narrative. A common one these days is the New Age narrative that Christianity as we know it was created as part of a conspiracy to conceal the "truth" from people in order to keep them bound in slavery to the "elite." (I highly recommend reading The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings by Bart D. Ehrman.) This can also include things like the belief that anyone who doesn't agree with their teachings is part of a conspiracy to bring them down, or that an underground Satanic cult is out to hurt them.

Belief in a grandiose existence If the group and/or their leaders make themselves out to be really special, watch out. This can be things like claiming they're reincarnations of famous figures, claiming they're on the side of light in a cosmic war against darkness, or claiming they're going to save the whole world with their teachings. A healthy group has quite a bit more humility than this.

Contempt for nonbelievers If they talk as if outsiders are stupid, disgusting, and generally just beneath them - that's a sign you should get away now. Same goes if they're comfortable with the idea of mass death and believe that huge numbers of people will be destroyed in a coming shift/cataclysm/whatever.

Contempt for science and empirical evidence An example of this would be refusing to accept that legitimate archaeologists and historians have found everything but evidence for Atlantis and ancient aliens, and instead insisting that the transmissions they're channeling from alleged alien beings are more reliable, because something something scientists distort the data to fit their preconceptions. It can also include a rejection of modern medicine, and shaming or fearmongering people into relying on faith healing or "natural" remedies. It can also include generally refusing to acknowledge modern scientific advancements, like claiming that science can't explain things that have actually been explained for years. (And this is why scientific literacy matters!)

You have to believe in their UPG - or else! The reality is that everyone is going to have different experiences with spirits, deities, etc. Sometimes these experiences will suggest things that are completely contrary to each other, because that's just what happens. By and large, there's just no real way of knowing whose experience - if anyone's experience - is the most objectively "valid." If they act like their own UPG is the only valid UPG, and belittle everyone else's experiences, that's a sign you should steer clear. Throwing around spiritual diagnoses This can include quickly and confidently asserting that people are possessed by demons, controlled by low-vibrational entities, suffering from past life trauma, living in their ego, and other similar things; especially in response to people expressing doubt, criticism, or just telling them no. (Worth noting, tossing out spiritual diagnoses can be a form of gaslighting.)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Radley Balko at The Watch:

For all the talk of Project 2025 and the debate over whether it is or is not a roadmap for a second Trump term (it definitely is), you don’t really need to delve through a 900-page document to find potentially catastrophic proposals that, in a sane world, would be disqualifying for any major party candidate. You can just look at what Trump has said himself. What’s sobering is just how many such promises he has made. He proposes about a dozen things in every speech that would have doomed any other candidate early in the primaries. Some of these promises have been well-covered. But some he throws out almost as an aside, and given the rambling, string-of-consciousness nature of his speeches, they don’t get nearly as much attention.

So I want to take a more in-depth look at some of the more destructive policies Trump has promised his followers. Today, we’ll start with one of the most gobsmackingly ignorant proposals to ever escape the lips of a major party candidate: Trump’s vow to withhold federal funding for any school that requires students to be vaccinated. This policy wouldn’t be limited to the COVID vaccine. He’s talking about all vaccines. Here he is on Saturday, speaking at a rally in Minnesota: “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.” This has been a long time coming.

Trump is the most boastful man in American politics. He takes credit for things others did, things he actually opposed, and things that never happened. But since leaving office, Trump has stopped taking credit for one of the few unquestionably laudable achievements of his administration — facilitating the rapid discovery, approval, manufacture, and delivery of the COVID vaccine. The vaccine has saved millions of lives. Its effectiveness and the speed at which it was brought to the public is one of the most miraculous scientific achievements of our time. Yet Trump didn’t mention it in his acceptance speech at the RNC. He rarely mentions it at all anymore. This is because vaccine denialism has swallowed the right whole. Trumpism is a cult of personality. There’s almost nothing he can say that his fans won’t thirstily lap up. Vaccines are the exception. Here, for example, is Trump getting booed in Alabama after telling rally attendees that they should get vaccinated.

[...] Vaccine conspiracism was once the province of hippies, far-left wellness zealots and technophobes, Christian Scientists, and libertarian off-the-grid types. It’s now a mainstream position in the Republican Party. The political right’s six year slide into vaccine denialism is perhaps the most striking and destructive examples of how the bizarre obsessions of an rich, eccentric old man who has long lived in a bubble of yes-men merged with the fierce devotion of his increasingly radical supporters to mainstream ideas that had once been properly shunted to the far fringe.

Trump himself has long dabbled in vaccine skepticism. But by the time he announced for president in 2015 he at least seemed to realize this was a fringe position that made him look like a loon to moderate voters. The pandemic changed all of that. When COVID first hit, Trump played down the threat, not for deep-rooted ideological reasons, but for purely selfish ones — he didn’t want to be blamed for it. So he discouraged testing, interfered with the distribution of tests, and pressured the CDC to change its testing guidelines. This undoubtedly resulted in infected people remaining ignorant of their status, then infecting others. It undoubted caused unnecessary deaths.

[...] This COVID skepticism almost immediately bled into sowing fear about a possible vaccine, even before it was clear that a vaccine was possible. Once it was clear a vaccine was coming, Trump pushed back on the conspiracists, rightly defending the coming vaccine and his record in accelerating its approval. But with Biden in the White House, Trump has been increasingly willing to entertain vaccine conspiracists. He occasionally defended his record, such as when he directly confronted Candace Owens in December 2021 about her absurd claim that the vaccine was killing people. But six months earlier, he was telling parents that they shouldn’t vaccinate their kids. Trump has now completely capitulated to his base. He admitted as much last year in an interview with Brett Baier. When Baier asked Trump why he no longer touts his role in expediting the vaccine, Trump replied, “I really don’t want to talk about it, because, as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about.” The RFK, Jr. campaign recently shared a video in which Trump told Kennedy in a phone call that he shares Kennedy’s vaccine nuttery. It’s difficult to overstate the threat of Trump’s public school policy. Currently, even here in deep-red Tennessee, public schools require students to receive the vaccine for Hepatitis B; Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis; Poliomyelitis; Measles, Mumps, Rubella; Varicella; and Hepatitis A.

[...] But even if Trump isn’t able to implement his school policy, another four years of MAGA will further entrench vaccine skepticism in the Republican Party. It’s already pretty bad. In April the New Hampshire legislature passed a bill removing the requirement for a polio and measles vaccine to attend public schools. Republicans in Wisconsin, Georgia, Montana, and Iowa have tried to restrict or remove vaccine requirements for public facing government jobs, which may include public schools. Other Republican legislatures have passed or introduced bills that erode support for vaccines in other ways, such as barring state governments from advocating them. The Republican party in Lee County, Florida, wants to ban the COVID vaccine for everyone, and Montana Republicans have tried to ban people who have received the COVID vaccine from donating blood.

[...] It’s notable that a key component of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s strategy to defeat Trump in the primaries was to outmaneuver him on vaccine skepticism. So DeSantis appointed a vaccine truther as state surgeon general — who then advised against the COVID vaccine for Floridians younger than 65. DeSantis also floated the idea of appointing RFJ Jr. to a high-level position at the FDA or CDC. Trump responded in kind, amplifying a supporter who criticized DeSantis for “vaccinating more people than Trump and Fauci combined.” This is now what constitutes an attack between Republicans — “accusing” one another of vaccinating too many people from a deadly disease. Multiple studies have also shown that the Republicans’ vaccine skepticism has been killing off their own supporters. There’s a strong correlation between excess COVID deaths and Republican registration, Trump support, and viewers of Fox News — and this disparity in excess deaths widened after introduction of the vaccine.

Radley Balko wrote a solid piece in The Watch detailing Donald Trump’s reckless pandering to anti-vaxxer bozos with his “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate” statement. Last year was when he began to make this pitch, likely to ward off Ron DeSantis and RFK Jr., who were making major appeals to the anti-vaxxer crowd who were disgruntled with Trump.

If he wins again, it’s open season for diseases long thought to be eradicated to make a comeback.

Trump himself is vaccinated and boosted for COVID, but he has downplayed those because the few times he brought them up at the rallies, he was booed for it.

This pitch tracks with Trump’s anti-vaxxer past, especially in regards to falsely linking vaccines to autism.

[anticonspiracist]

Oh. Wow. Like literally I never realized that you are THIS dumb and dense. You have written " Interested in Larries Bullshit" right at the top of your blog in your bio, and when someone ask you about the actual issue you just duck out of that situation because you yourself don't have any fucking idea about that. And I genuinely believed that you actually have some brains to talk about larrie bullshit.

The funniest thing is someone asked you about Rebecca few days ago and you replied - conspiracy theorist don't care about facts, so trying to prove reality to them is a waste of time. LMFAO. Now m realizing that you don't even know what THE REALITY is. You are seriously so stupid.

How can someone be that stupid to write Interested in Larry Bullshit in their bio and then say I literally have NO TIME for that Bullshit?? Like really woman, you don't know ANY reality related to Larry bullshit. And it took me time to figure it out.

And let me tell you that if you have created a blog where you talk to strangers and where you have literally written Interested in Larry bullshit, then saying that you don't owe people anything just describes how obtuse you are. But actually you know what thank you for showing how idiotic you are, you actually helped me here to decide that which side of fandom I'm gonna support. And people like you who pretend to know about conspiracism should get your brain checked.

You are so fucking stupid, and I'm publishing your ask in full so everyone who reads this blog can see just how fucking stupid you are.

I guess you don't understand a couple of basic concepts, among them time and also what campaign season means. What you're responding to is me saying that until after the November 8 election, I don't have time to pay attention to larrie bullshit. It is October 13, early voting starts on October 24, and so political campaigns, including the one I volunteer for, have events every day, weekday and weekend.

I have a full-time job that I spent 50 hours per week at, plus I am in grad school which takes up 18 hours of the rest of my week. Any time that I would be using to pay attention to larrie bullshit is currently being taken up by me helping to turn out Democrats to vote in a deeply red district. I am knocking on doors and talking to voters, phonebanking, writing and mailing postcards, attending events, registering people to vote (I registered 110 ON MY OWN in one day on ONE high school campus, the fuck have you done lately?), training to be an election judge, coordinating with election workers, attending protests and ejecting MAGA assholes from safe spaces ....

But no. YOU expect that I should feel obligated to discuss stuff that a woman said TEN YEARS AGO, that has already been discussed to death and nothing new has been revealed? And because I decline to do so, I'm "dumb and dense"? I'm "seriously so stupid"? I should get my brain checked because I "pretend" to know about conspiracism? You fucking idiot, this is what I'm formally studying eighteen hours a week and I've been informally studying for the last six fucking years. Take a goddamn seat.

I'm going to compare you to a troll that my candidate ran into on Instagram. A user by the name of "Baby Maga" DM'd him to say that he was "disgusting" for hosting a Drag Show, and that until that, Baby Maga had supported him. Baby Maga had NEVER supported a Democrat for state House and he was only saying so to make my candidate feel like taking the right stance was politically untenable. Fortunately, my candidate knows how to spot a troll. Just like me.

Me refusing to re-discuss something isn't what made you "Decide which side of fandom" you're "gonna support." You already made up your mind to be a conspiracy theorist. You already made up your mind to troll me and other people. You already made up your mind to spend your time vomiting thousands of words into my inbox over several months.

It's sad that you have to put me down, someone who is positively contributing to society. Cease and desist.

[finitevariety]

sorry but this is flat-out not true. He died of MRSA after also suffering pneumonia and a stroke during his two weeks in hospital (source).

You can't just be like 'yeah Boeing is killing people' with no evidence lmao. In fact, the problem with Boeing is not that it is operating beyond the law; it is that it is operating within the law to prioritise profits over safety. You don't need to make this a dark and shady conspiracy because the arguably scarier reality is that this is how all profit-motivated companies are encouraged to operate.

Are whistleblowers subject to immense pressure and terrible behaviour from the companies they whistleblow? Yes. Likely, the stress of retaliatory practices from employers contributes to extremely poor health and social outcomes for whistleblowers (source).

Is Boeing terrible? Yes. Is Boeing directly murdering people? There's no evidence of that. Both of the deceased whistleblowers had already given depositions at the time of their deaths. Barnett was due to record more testimony at the time of his death, but he was also on record as suffering from PTSD (source). The scarier issue here is not that Boeing put out a hit on these guys (they didn't, lol) but that the effect of their retaliatory practices on whistleblower health, both mental and physical, is such that they might as well have.

If you want to look at the directly murderous practices of corporations, look at the Coca-Cola murders in Colombia (source), or the similar murder, also in Colombia, of a trade unionist at Nestle (source). There is a parallel to be drawn between Boeing's whistleblower retaliation and the brutality with which other companies put down labour organising. It can and has happened in the US, too (source)--but please fucking apply a tiny bit of Occam's razor, here.

Cynically, I think there's a benefit to this sort of conspiracism because its framing precludes the chance that anything you do will have an impact. If Boeing are soooo powerful that they can kill a guy in broad daylight in a parking lot, then what hope do you have to change the situation? But this construction also argues that Boeing is so weak as to let whistleblowers record depositions in the first place. Conspiracist thinking has this in common with fascism: its enemies are strong and weak at once; it is obsessed with a grand plot against it, and it abandons critical thinking and even multi-syllable words to rob its targets of the desire to interrogate what they are told.

Pleaaaaase grow up and learn to read.

May 1, 2024 - It seems Boeing has murdered a second whistleblower. [link]

Joshua Dean, a former quality auditor at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems and one of the first whistleblowers to allege Spirit leadership had ignored manufacturing defects on the 737 MAX, died Tuesday morning after a struggle with a sudden, fast-spreading infection.  Known as Josh, Dean lived in Wichita, Kan., where Spirit is based. He was 45, had been in good health and was noted for having a healthy lifestyle. He died after two weeks in critical condition, his aunt Carol Parsons said. Spirit spokesperson Joe Buccino said: “Our thoughts are with Josh Dean’s family. This sudden loss is stunning news here and for his loved ones.” Dean had given a deposition in a Spirit shareholder lawsuit and also filed a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration alleging “serious and gross misconduct by senior quality management of the 737 production line” at Spirit.

[puttingherinhistory]

“PORTLAND, Oregon—Outfitted in a flak jacket and fighting gloves, Enrique Tarrio was one of dozens of black, Latino, and Asian men who marched alongside white supremacists in Portland on Aug. 4.

Tarrio, who identifies as Afro-Cuban, is president of the Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, who call themselves “Western chauvinists,” and “regularly spout white-nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Last month, prior to the Patriot Prayer rally he attended in Portland, Tarrio was pictured with other far-right activists making a hand sign that started as a hoax but has become an in-joke. Last year, Tarrio said traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, for the Unite the Right rally that ended with a neo-Nazi allegedly killing an anti-fascist protester. (The Proud Boys said any members who went to the event were kicked out.)

Tarrio and other people of color at the far-right rallies claim institutional racism no longer exists in America. In their view, blacks are to blame for any lingering inequality because they are dependent on welfare, lack strong leadership, and believe Democrats who tell them “You’re always going to be broke. You’re not going to make it in society because of institutional racism,” as one mixed-race man put it. 

If racism doesn’t exist, I ask Tarrio, how would he explain the disproportionate killing of young black men by police? “Hip-hop culture,” he says. It “glorifies that lifestyle… of selling drugs, shooting up.” Because of that, “Obviously you’re going to have higher crime rates. Obviously you’re going to have more police presence and more confrontations.” (Police kill black males aged 15 to 34 at nine times the rate of the general population.) 

Elysa Sanchez, who is black and Puerto Rican, attended the “Liberty or Death Rally Against Left-Wing Violence” in Seattle on Aug. 18, joining about 20 militiamen open-carrying handguns and semi-automatic rifles. 

Sanchez says, “If black people are committing more murders, more robberies, more thefts, more violent crime, that’s why you would see more black men having encounters with the police.” 

Also in Seattle, Franky Price, who said he is  “black and white,”wore a T-shirt reading, “It’s okay to be white.” 

They are among nearly a dozen black, Latino, and Asian participants at far-right rallies on the West Coast interviewed by The Daily Beast recently. They represent the new face of the far right that some scholars term “multiracial white supremacy.” 

The Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer, which overlap, embrace an America-first nationalism that is less pro-white than it is anti-Muslim, anti-illegal immigrant, and anti-Black Lives Matter. “Proud Boys is multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide,” a lawyer for the group’s leader, Gavin McInnis, said in a statement. “The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best.” 

Daniel Martinez HoSang, associate professor at Yale University, co-author of the forthcoming Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, says “Multiculturalism has become a norm in society” and has spread from corporations and consumer culture to conservatism and the far-right. 

Indeed, Patriot Prayer’s leader is Joey Gibson, who is half-Japanese and claims Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a hero. But his agenda is the opposite of King’s. Gibson’s rallies have attracted neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis. 

His right-hand man is Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, a 345-pound Samoan American who calls himself “a brown brother for Donald Trump” and is notorious for brawling. By bringing diversity to what is at heart a white-supremacist movement, people of color give it legitimacy to challenge state power and commit violence against their enemies. 

David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, says, “The ranks of people of color who show up to these right-wing events are totally dominated by males.” He says the alt-right targets white males between the ages of 15 and 30 with a message of male resentment, which ends up attracting black, Latino, and Asian men as well.

Neiwert says many young men of color in the far-right grew up on conservative traditions common in minority communities. Their journey to the far-right has been enabled by the ease of recruitment in the internet age and the endorsement of extremism by Trump. 

Entry points to the far-right include male-dominated video-game culture, the anti-feminist gamergate, troll havens on 4chan and 8chan, and the conspiracism that flourishes on websites like Infowars. Libertarianism is another gateway. 

“A lot of these young guys,” Neiwert says, “especially from the software world, who are being sucked into white nationalism, start out being worked up about Ayn Rand in high school.” 

Andrew Zhao, 25, a software engineer, says his parents, physicists who emigrated from mainland China, “are Trump fans.” He found out about the Seattle rally from Reddit and Facebook and said, “We need more patriotism. A lot of liberals don’t like America.” 

Daniel HoSang says some people of color are drawn to the far-right because they “identify with the military, with nationalism, with patriotism, with conservatism.” 

Wearing a Proud Boys hat, David Nopal, 23, came to the Seattle rally alone, like others. Nopal, whose parents crossed illegally from Mexico, said, “I’m very patriotic. The U.S. isn’t perfect, but we are a hell of a lot better than other countries.” 

Sanchez comes from a military family. “They all love America. It’s a big part of the reason I’m a patriot.” 

Similarly, Tarrio attributes his anti-socialist politics to his grandfather’s experience in Cuba under Fidel Castro. 

They proudly identify as “American” without modifiers. In their America they’ve never experienced racism. They eagerly talk politics, but evidence of their America is scant beyond the internet. Institutional racism has been ended by affirmative action, “black privilege,” and equal protection under the law. Any remaining black inequality is caused by social welfare and liberal policies. In any case, it was Democrats who started the Klan. 

People of color within the far-right play a role that “excuses white racism and bears witness to the failure of people of color,” HoSang says, adding that they make “white supremacy a more durable force.” 

HoSang said the far-right is trying to broaden its appeal from a whites-only movement in a multiracial America, so it is “laying claim to the ideas of anti-racism, racial uplift, and civil-rights progress.” 

HoSang says, “It’s hard for people to wrap their head around how Dr. King and civil-rights language are being used to legitimate positions approaching fascism and violence to restore hierarchy and order. But they are.”

[septembersghost]

The loop industry is a million times worse than Hollywood. These people are circus animals and nothing else. Just go into any kpop news site, 9 out of 10 posts are along the lines of "netizens worried after (insert any idol here) cries on Instagram live and posts concerning message online" (it's insane how many times the same headline repeats with different idols), "(idol) rushed to hospital", (idol) apologizes after backlash for (something nobody should have to apologize for)" (it's Korean culture, and their agencies make them apologize for everything, even yawning on camera, we're talking handwritten apology notes (this is a big thing in Korea) for the simplest things. Etc. Honestly, Hara's death is painful but not unexpected, she had been hospitalized days before that for an OD, and Sulli constantly went live on IG and started crying and saying suicidal things. Jonghyun too was extremely sensitive and his doctor blamed him for being depressed and basically pushed him to suicide even more (he left a heartbreaking note). Everyone failed these young people.

:((((( i hate this, it is so inhumane and upsetting.

i saw this post on twitter yesterday:

there are a lot of factors and reasons for this, many tied to social media, but the idea that they're commodities up for grabs and conspiracizing (we're pretending that's a word) about their private lives and treating them like they only exist for content creation and our entertainment is SO distressing, and has only become more so the more i've begun to notice it, and it is DEFINITELY worse than it's ever been thanks to tiktok. this was in reference to western media, i know the kpop industry is a whole other topic unto itself. all of it is toxic and unfair.

there is absolutely NO excuse for performers and artists to be treated like this anywhere. what you describe, and i've seen little bits of this in passing, is negligence and abuse, and should be completely unacceptable. no amount of money or fame or whatever measurement is being used here is worth the harm and degradation done to living, breathing human beings, and there needs to be a serious reckoning in how these industries treat people, and, frankly, how we as audiences speak about and treat them as well.

[chaeryybomb]

nct dream reactions: the rooftop fight

nct dream rooftop fight?

more like nct dream’s excuse to finally ending it all

i’m not saying that they have a target list but that’s exactly what I’m saying

without further ado:

CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER

mark lee

literally does not want to be there

he says he's there to supervise them so they don't commit murder

"i'm looking at you renjun"

sits with jaemin at the side, watching the rest of them run from renjun and jeno

until haechan p r o v o k e s the fuck out of him

"come on you cOWARD FIGHT ME MARK LEE"

(mark to jaemin) "hold my glasses for me"

accidentally sucker punches hyuck in the gut and internally panics

and haechan's dramatic ass doubles over in "pain" and starts wailing

"holy shit hyUCK ARE YOU OKAY I DIDNT MEAN TO OH MY GOD JOHNNY IS GONNA KILL ME—"

until he sees the hidden grin and mark kicks him into the next comeback with no regrets

huang renjun

(renjun, who's been waiting for this for years) "i've been waiting for this, TURN IT UP"

NO MERCY

NONE AT ALL

(renjun to the dreamies) "this is the day you die, say your prayers fuckers"

we all know renjun will not hesitate to sucker punch the dreamies

like he is ready to risk it all on cam just to do so

yk how he usually grabs someone to hold it back or he grabs his jacket to hold himself back

hAHAHA YEAH HE'S NOT DOING IT HERE

his target is literally haechan

renjun finally letting out all the anger his tiny ass body has been storing

dhshd I honestly picture them wearing "boom"'s suits while throwing hands

you know how rooftops usually have broken pots and bricks sitting around

and how renjun is always picking something up to hit the dreamies with?

bricks and flower pots? more like free weapons

or

he will mfing stRANGLE YOU

you saw how he put jisung in headlock without hesitation

mans is COMING FOR YOUR NECK

HE IS OUT FOR B L O O D

lee jeno

jeno is fucking built okay

y'all have seen his mUSCLES

MANS IS S T R O N G

and he's always reading to punch the dreamies while having his eye smile on

but we all know he won't actually hurt them bc he loves them

so he's there trying to convince renjun to not shove jisung off the roof

"c'mon guys, why don't we just watch netflix and ord—WHO THREW THEIR FUCKING SHOE AT ME?!"

(.◜◡◝)

(.◜◡◝)

ᕦ(҂.◜◡◝ )ᕤ

(jeno, rolling up his sleeves) "alright sQUARE UP ASSHOLES"

he's going to start chASING THEM

WITH HIS FISTS RAISED

now imagine this: jeno's adorable eye smile as he does his ostrich run

but add his fists raised up

and chasing chenle

and that, ladies and gents, is rooftop fighter lee jeno

lee haechan

boy is all talk and no bark

yk how he always provoking them

yeah he’s basically doing that

he's just a grade a b r a t

(hyuck, bouncing back and forth) "what are you gonna do huh? punch m—HAHSHAH WAIT I WAS KIDDING"

he is definitely not going after jeno

hyuck may be annoying but he has the braincells to know that jeno will plummet him

he considers renjun but then he sees renjun pick up a brick as he goes after jisung

and decides he'll kick mark's ass instead because he's been doing it for years

oh he's definitely going after the maknae line

all the times chenji made fun of him

oh boy he's getting his REVENGE

it is the day he finally makes chenji regret being born

(hyuck to jisung) "you are officially an adult which means you are no longer a minor which also means I am legally allowed to beat you up"

na jaemin

he's going after chenle

period.

y'all see how badly he wanted to strangle him in that one huya live

y e a h

at first he's like jeno, he doesn't want to harm any of the dreamies

but it all took one mockery from chenle and he SHOT right out of his seat to beat his ass

I feel like jaemin will also smother the dreamies with kisses and hugs instead of actually fighting them

he knows that his can kill them with love

he'll be like "JISUNG-AH MWAH MWAH MWAH" (ﾉ´ з `)ノ

and once he gets ahold of one them

oh boy good luCK GETTING OUT LMAO

his arms are gonna be WRAPPED AROUND THEM AND HE WILL KISS THEM TILL THEY DROP TO THE GROUND D E A D

renjun kills with anger and jaemin kills with what he does best, loving the dreamies

zhong chenle

okay idk why but I picture chenle with a weapon

like he and jisung definitely has a plan out for everything

he's conspiracing against his hyungs ya know

and he knows that 127 hyungs love him

he's definitely going to take it to his advantage

"taeyong hyung, can I borrow your bat?"

"of course chenle but what for?"

(chenle, deadpanning) "to beat up the dreamies"

I also feel like he'll ask Johnny for advice on how to kick someone down and make sure they stay down

like he'll go around the hyungs who have experience and ask for advice ya know

and by that I mean johnny, jaehyun, doyoung and yuta-

he'll probably tell jisung something like "okay I get to punch you once and then I'll go after the hyungs"

his dolphin ass is a l w a y s screaming

park jisung

OH BABY BOY IS GONNA HAVE TO GIVE HIMSELF A PEP TALK

is he afraid of his hyungs? debatable

but boy he keeps second guessing himself but then reminds himself

"I can beat them I can beat them I can beat them I-"

he uses his long limbs to his advantage

aka running away from renjun

spends 80% of the time running away from jaemin and his death kisses dhwhdje

honestly he's gonna be running most of the time fhehhd

threatens to call the parent line whenever renjun or haechan gets too close

"I'M CALLING TAEYONG HYUNG"

"JISUNG THIS WAS YOUR IDEA"

lets chenle punch him one (1) time on the shoulder and stops him after that dhshd

"yayayAYAH LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS SHDHSH"

he's just a giant babie, taeyong come collect ur son