#also dont realistically think i will reach 50 books in a year this year....im on a good pace but i am already 3 books behind according

[blamemma]

picked up a couple of books from charity shops over the weekend and had a book delivery today and now have 20 books on the physical tbr and if i finish all of them then i'll reach 50 books in a year 😌

[allofbeercom]

‘Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist’: America’s alt right

They present themselves as modern thinkers of extremism. But the US far right, discovers Sanjiv Bhattacharya, have the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white nationalist American Freedom Party (AFP), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to make America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd choice on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white nationalist he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor [of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald [an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republicans, theyre gone They hate him! So whos left? If we can lobby, we can put our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age (hes 61), nod and lean in. They all wear suits and ties, address the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys familiar with the Plum Book? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colour, but also because of the plum positions there are 20,000 jobs in that book that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of the men at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically bouncing in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange times. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their mans stubby orange fingers are within reach of actual power, so maybe its time to emerge from the shadows at last.

I first met Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person, not the bitter old racist Id expected but rather a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chuckling, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, he came to racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panels for a living and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he runs an alt-right fraternity in Manhattan Beach a beer and barbecues thing. Theyre called the Beach Goys. Were starting a parody band, he beams. Weve found a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white nationalists to appear less mean and he finds the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, mistakenly, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual bigotry. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation? But make no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer, a leading alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unites Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeating of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right loves to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their point is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044, non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers will be gentle and that slavery isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white nationalists burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most fiercely oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, says Johnson. Because white people hate white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering merrily in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He gets lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white nationalism in America. Jared Taylor, white nationalisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a state founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As he went from door to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he says. Oh, it was just the funnest time! A few years later, while working in Japan as an attorney, he wrote a book advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a copy to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as planned. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP just in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67-acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly lot backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife refused, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his horses and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter likes to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white nationalists, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I say different races have different strengths doesnt mean I think Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness falls multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate territories for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is welcome, even racial strife. I dont think friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the split that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He laughs. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighbourhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grins. OK, you ready? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We walked along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 words coined by the late David Lane of the group The Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH (H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he said. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a reference to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have seen the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they see the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we walked, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family picnics, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colour: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your average Nazi. He trained as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He laughs. You said it, not me!

In the late 70s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie, and took white supremacy out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right makes white supremacy sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It makes him more sinister in some ways, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about terms. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he says. But come on hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont say Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange story to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburb of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and businessman, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career giving readings and tarot shows at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turn. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, finding it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy theory. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: author Ann Coulter. Photograph: Aaron Davidson/Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around meeting his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally built as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont see myself as a bureaucrat, he says. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont reveal the AFPs membership numbers Maybe we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the march. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks… Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a deeply unsettling thought (which is why Eric loves it).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our beers, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He just doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns words ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric says. We must seize power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is probably not realistic.

We get along well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only despair and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice getting more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are competition. But they dont have to hate each other. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/call-me-a-racist-but-dont-say-im-a-buddhist-americas-alt-right/

[topsolarpanels]

‘ Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right

They present themselves as modern intellectuals of extremism. But the US far right, detects Sanjiv Bhattacharya, using the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white patriot American Freedom Party( AFP ), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to attain America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd choice on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white patriot he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor[ of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald[ an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republicans, theyre run They dislike him! So whos left? If we can hall, we can set our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age( hes 61 ), nod and lean in. They all wear suits and ties, relating to the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys very well known the Plum Book ? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colouring, but also because of the plum positions there are 20,000 jobs in that book that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of “the mens” at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically ricochetting in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange days. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their men stubby orange thumbs are within reach of actual power, so maybe its is high time to emerge from the darkness at last.

I first fulfilled Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person , not the bitter old racist Id expected but instead a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chuckling, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, he came to racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panel for a life and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he operates an alt-right frat in Manhattan Beach a brew and barbecues thing. Theyre “ve called the” Beach Goys. Were starting a charade band, he beams. Weve saw a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white patriots to appear less mean and he sees the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, mistakenly, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual bigotry. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation ? But induce no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer , a leading alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unifies Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeat of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right love to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their point is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044 , non-Hispanic whites will fell below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photo: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers will be gentle and that slavery isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white nationalists burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most fiercely oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, says Johnson. Because white people loathe white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering blithely in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He get lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white patriotism in America. Jared Taylor, white patriotisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a nation founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As “hes been gone” from doorway to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he says. Oh, it was just the funnest day! A few years later, while working in Japan as an lawyer, he wrote a book advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I guessed America was going to breakdown unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a transcript to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as schemed. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP simply in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67 -acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly plenty backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife rejected, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his ponies and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter likes to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white nationalists, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I say different races have differing strengths doesnt entail I guess Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I guessed America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photo: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness autumns multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate territories for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is welcome, even racial discord. I dont think friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the divide that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He laughs. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighborhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grins. OK, “youre ready”? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We strolled along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 words coined by the late David Lane of the group The Order: We must procure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH( H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he said. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a including references to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have ensure the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they find the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we strolled, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family picnics, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colouring: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your average Nazi. He trained as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He laughs. You said it , not me!

In the late 70 s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie-in, and took white dominance out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right attains white supremacy sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It attains him more sinister in some manner, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about terms. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he says. But come near hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont say Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange narrative to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburbium of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and businessman, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career giving reads and tarot depicts at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turn. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, discovering it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy hypothesi. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: author Ann Coulter. Photo: Aaron Davidson/ Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around gratifying his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally built as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont consider myself as a bureaucrat, he says. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont reveal the AFPs membership numbers Perhaps we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the procession. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks … Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a profoundly unsettling guessed( which is why Eric loves it ).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our brews, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He simply doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns words ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric says. We must confiscate power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is likely not realistic.

We get along well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/ macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only hopelessnes and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice getting more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are competition. But they dont “re going to have to” dislike each other. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post ‘ Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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[apsbicepstraining]

A Time Of Undertaking: 6 Styles To Become A Badass World Traveler In 2016

As 2015 comes to a open, its normal to get romantic and start looking back on the memories constructed over the past year.

Every year has its ups and downs, and some are more fateful than others.

But as I began to think about my 26 th year and the ones before it, I realized for me, theres one fool-proof lane to stir recalls that will stand out in my mind forever, and that mode is to travel.

On top of the priceless knows that “re coming with” exploring a brand-new region, traveling obligates you a most independent, open-minded party and teaches you life assignments you might never learnt cooped up at home.

So while your health and fitness destinations and saving coin are important( and Im right there with you on those, extremely ), I would argue that we should all puttraveling more towards the top of our to-do rosters for2 016.

To help, I reached out to two millennial wandering bloggers who are killing video games, Brooke Saward of World of Wanderlust and Trevor Morrow of Trevor Morrow Travel, to be determined how we can all realize interpreting “the worlds” a realistic resolution in 2016.

Get your priorities in order.

Whether its limited vacation eras or a lack of funds, its easy to make excuses when it comes to travel.

Morrow, who is based in Los Angeles and has done everything from Tarzan-ing in the jungle to brewery hopping in Australia, declares his globetrotting lifestyle isnt plausible for everyone, but he enunciates if there is even the smallestamount of wiggle area in national budgets, all you have to do is prioritize.

He responds,

If gazing fresh is your priority, youll waste your extra money on clothes. If sitting at home and playing video games is your priority, youll invest your money on the latest PlayStation. If traveling is your priority…well, you find where Im departing. You have to really want to travel. Just like you have to really want to break a bad dres or genuinely wishes to get in shape to supersede. If “youre going” it, youll figure out a acces to make it happen. Its as simple as that.

Start out small.

So perhaps you cant afford a ticket around the world just yet. The key thenis to think local.

Morrow mentions,

Try to take three long weekend expeditions this year. Boom, youre now a traveler. Wake up early one Saturday morning and drive a few hours to the nearest big city — devour a cuisine youve never hard-handed before( perhaps Malaysian) and keep walking a neighborhood like youre a neighbourhood. Boom, youre now a traveler.

Saward, who booked a one-way ticket from her dwelling on the Australian island of Tasmania to London in 2012 on the day of her college graduation and has been at it ever since, agrees.

She speaks,

It always surprises me how much enjoyable you can have by only making a short road excursion to the beach or trekking a nearby mountain. One of my favorite things to do is re-explore my home.

Be smart with your money.

Both Saward and Morrow have learned to apply expedition first when it comes to spending.

For Morrow, that means restraint how many times he dines out per month and manufacturing his own lunches every day.

For Saward, its ridding herself of properties she doesnt require, and locating free activities to do with friends.

She alleges,

Taking all your old invests and belongings to a weekend market is a great way to reach some quick currency, as is selling your gondola. Wreaking extra alters not only sets more money in the bank but too impedes you from spending money going out with sidekicks so often, and over time you realize there are plenty of free replacements like catching up with a acquaintance for a strength walk instead of spending money used to go for lunch.

Of course, both are also pros at being thrifty on the road when necessary.

Morrow shows leasing an Airbnb or trying out dwelling exchanges, Couchsurfing, and WWOOF-ing.

Saward is a fan of the app HotelQuickly , which labor kind of like Uber, but for last-minute hotels.

Both advocated grabbing providings at neighbourhood markets instead of dining out for every snack, and taking advantage of free walking tours. Morrow does,

Im a big devotee of Sandemans New Europe Tours. They render great free walking tours in a variety of European metropolis. I think its an awesome happening to do on your first day in town.

Morrow also recommends the book How To Trip The World On $50 A Day by Matt Kepnes, and Saward wrote a upright titled “50 Space I Saved( A Lot) Of Money To Trip The World”on her blog.

Do your research, but be flexible.

Saward isa visual person who starts projecting a potential trip-up as soon as a photo catches her eye.

Morrow has a directory of ends a mile long, but he speaks its important to be flexible.

Be is accessible to what moves your way naturally. If a pal asks you to travel to a destination youve never daydreamed about, consider exiting! Or if you hear about a concerted effort or a celebration that piques your interest, bulge that end up on your schedule so you wont miss it.

It can also be helpful to plan your journeys based on the time of year( Is it rainy season in August? Will it be packed with tourists in June ?), Morrow suggests, and dont keep forgetting current exchange rates.

Ive been to Europe when the Euro is killing the U s dollars, and Ive been in Europe when the Dollar and Euro are on equivalence. Its much, much more fun to make( to Europe or anywhere) when you can stimulate your fund go further.

Dont be afraid to travel alone.

Working around your own planned is hard enough, which is why many of “the worlds” top jaunt bloggers, Saward and Morrow included, often roam alone.

Saward says hugging the no commitments stage of their own lives realise it easier to jump right in.

She adds,

It pressured me to rely only on myself, which is a really humbling knowledge, just knowing that if your entire world was taken away from you, you could make it on your own.

Morrow remembers how he was scared shitless on the plane to Nepal alone at age 18.

But let me tell you, when you return home, youll be confidently swaggering through international airports high-fiving strangers( or at the least thats how youll look ). Are well aware that you may be scared now, and thats normal, but youll be very proud of yourself for doing it. Derive confidence from knowing that traveling alone realise you a badass. Thoughts about those people sitting at home, afraid to go out and suffer “the worlds”. Do you really want to be one of those people? No!

Both travelers agree that the world isnt as creepy as it looks on TV.

Morrow tells,

In general, beings are route more category and good natured than the mainstream media would have you believe. Be street smart, be informed about, be informed, but dont be scared. Oh yeah, and dont be afraid to strike up a communication with beings at your inn/ hostel, at a bar, or on the street. If it gets weird, who attends, youll never attend them again.

Do it right while youre young.

Whatever stage in life you get bitten by the travel defect, own it! But the earlier “youre starting”, the easier it to be able to reap the benefits.

For Saward, who recommends everyone obligate Southeast Asia, South America and a Eurotrip priorities in their twenties, traveling young mean becoming more self-confident in herself.

I became a person I actually like to be around. Before advance I cared too much about what others thought of me and didn’t just knowing that I did and didn’t like( because I wasn’t intrepid enough to try anything new ).

Morrow points out that a well-traveled resume sees you a better being on paper and off.

He reads,

Aside from realizing you a lane more interesting party at parties, traveling while youre young can really change the rest of their own lives. Traveling builds you kinder, more understanding, more patient, more self sufficient — certainly potential benefits are interminable. And its not mentioned often, but the experiences had and sciences acquired from traveling while youre young, especially for longer periods of time or in places that one might consider challenging, can really be selling items in a job interview.

He proposes three types of tours for millennial travelers to kick off your 2016 bucket index TAGEND

1. Lead somewhere as geographically far from being, and as culturally differences between, your residence as you can. And if you can, stay here for as long as possible. A few illustrations would be places like India, Nepal or Japan.

2. Travel in your “countries “. Its easy to be seduced by beautiful photos to foreign targets, but its important be informed about the two countries you call dwelling and the ones who inhabit it. America is utterly gargantuan, and diverse, and beautiful. Take a superhighway trip-up, clique, visit national parks. Visit out of the lane homes. Eat at diners. Talk to the waitress. Youll be surprised that exactly inspecting different parts of American can provide a foreign experience.

3. Party! Drink vodka in Russia, defendant on a beach in Greece, go to a nightclub in Eastern Europe. Attend Carnival in Brazil. Hangovers simply get worse as you get older, so do your party traveling now!

Well, what are you waiting for ?!

Are in favour of Elite Dailys official newsletter, The Edge, for more narrations you dont want to miss .

The post A Time Of Undertaking: 6 Styles To Become A Badass World Traveler In 2016 appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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They present themselves as modern thinkers of extremism. But the US far right, discovers Sanjiv Bhattacharya, have the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white nationalist American Freedom Party (AFP), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to make America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd choice on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white nationalist he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor [of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald [an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republicans, theyre gone They hate him! So whos left? If we can lobby, we can put our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age (hes 61), nod and lean in. They all wear suits and ties, address the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys familiar with the Plum Book? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colour, but also because of the plum positions there are 20,000 jobs in that book that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of the men at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically bouncing in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange times. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their mans stubby orange fingers are within reach of actual power, so maybe its time to emerge from the shadows at last.

I first met Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person, not the bitter old racist Id expected but rather a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chuckling, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, he came to racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panels for a living and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he runs an alt-right fraternity in Manhattan Beach a beer and barbecues thing. Theyre called the Beach Goys. Were starting a parody band, he beams. Weve found a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white nationalists to appear less mean and he finds the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, mistakenly, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual bigotry. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation? But make no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer, a leading alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unites Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeating of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right loves to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their point is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044, non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers will be gentle and that slavery isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white nationalists burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most fiercely oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, says Johnson. Because white people hate white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering merrily in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He gets lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white nationalism in America. Jared Taylor, white nationalisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a state founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As he went from door to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he says. Oh, it was just the funnest time! A few years later, while working in Japan as an attorney, he wrote a book advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a copy to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as planned. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP just in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67-acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly lot backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife refused, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his horses and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter likes to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white nationalists, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I say different races have different strengths doesnt mean I think Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness falls multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate territories for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is welcome, even racial strife. I dont think friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the split that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He laughs. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighbourhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grins. OK, you ready? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We walked along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 words coined by the late David Lane of the group The Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH (H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he said. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a reference to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have seen the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they see the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we walked, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family picnics, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colour: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your average Nazi. He trained as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He laughs. You said it, not me!

In the late 70s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie, and took white supremacy out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right makes white supremacy sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It makes him more sinister in some ways, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about terms. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he says. But come on hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont say Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange story to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburb of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and businessman, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career giving readings and tarot shows at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turn. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, finding it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy theory. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: author Ann Coulter. Photograph: Aaron Davidson/Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around meeting his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally built as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont see myself as a bureaucrat, he says. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont reveal the AFPs membership numbers Maybe we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the march. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks… Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a deeply unsettling thought (which is why Eric loves it).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our beers, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He just doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns words ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric says. We must seize power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is probably not realistic.

We get along well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only despair and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice getting more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are competition. But they dont have to hate each other. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

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‘ Call me a racist, but don’t tell I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right

They present themselves as modern thinkers of extremism. But the US far right, detects Sanjiv Bhattacharya, have the same white supremacist obsessions

Every few weeks, William Johnson, the chairman of the white nationalist American Freedom Party( AFP ), holds a lunch for members, the goal being to stimulate America a white ethnostate, a project that begins with electing Donald Trump. This week, its at a grand old French restaurant called Taix, in Echo Park, Los Angeles an odd option on the face of it. Echo Park is a trendy hood. Its hipster and heavily Hispanic. In fact, given the predominance of Latino kitchen staff in this city, it may be wise to hold off on the Trump talk until the food arrives.

About three months ago, Johnson begins, I was talking to Richard Spencer about how we need to plan for a Trump victory. Spencer is another prominent white patriot he heads the generic-sounding National Policy Institute. I said: I want Jared Taylor[ of American Renaissance] as UN Ambassador, and Kevin MacDonald[ an evolutionary psychologist] as secretary of health and Ann Coulter as homeland security! And Spencer said: Oh Johnson, thats a pipe dream! But today, hed no longer say that, because if Trump wins, all the establishment Republican, theyre run They detest him! So whos left? If we can foyer, we can set our people in there.

Around the table five young men, roughly half Johnsons age( hes 61 ), nod and tilt in. They all wear suits and ties, relating to the waiter as sir and identify as the alt right, the much-discussed nouvelle vague of racism. Are you guys familiar with the Plum Book ? Johnson asks. Its plum because of the colouring, but also because of the plum stances there are 20,000 jobs in that volume that are open to a new administration.

So we need to identify our top people! says Eric, one of “the mens” at the table.

Just anyone with a college degree! Johnson says.

Right. Eric is practically ricochetting in his seat with excitement. We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!

A whiter future: pro- and anti-Trump supporters clash outside Trump Towers in New York. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its not every day that a brown journalist gets to sit in on a white-nationalist strategy meeting. But these are strange periods. Racism is trending. Like Brexit, Trump has normalised views that were once beyond the pale, and groups like the AFP have grown bold. Their humen stubby orange thumbs are within reach of actual power, so perhaps its time to emerge from the darkness at last.

I first satisfied Johnson in May after he signed up as a Trump delegate before being swiftly struck off by the campaign when the press found out. Hes a surprising figure. An avid environmentalist, fluent in Japanese and, in person , not the bitter old racist Id expected but rather a jolly Mormon grandfather, bright eyed and chortle, a Wind in the Willows character. Eric is even more unexpected. Tall and impassioned, “hes come to” racism via hypnotherapy, of all things. He sells solar panel for a living and practises yoga. Together with his friends Matt and Nathan, who are also here at lunch, he runs an alt-right fraternity in Manhattan Beach a beer and barbecues thing. Theyre called the Beach Goys. Were starting a parody band, he beams. Weve determined a drummer!

Between them they represent two poles of a racist spectrum, young and old. And judging from this lunch, its the millennials who are the more extreme. Johnson wants white nationalists to seem less mean and he discovers the JQ, the Jewish Question, archaic. But Eric loves the meanness of the alt right. Were the troll army! he says. Were here to win. Were savage! And antisemitism is non-negotiable. In fact, hed like to clear up a misnomer about the alt right, propagated by the Breitbart columnist Milo Yiannopoulos, who is often described, erroneously, as the movements leader. Milo casts the alt right as principally a trolling enterprise, dedicated to attacking liberal shibboleths for the lulz theres precious little actual intolerance. But Eric insists otherwise. Yes, they like to joke, they have memes, theyre just as funny as liberals have I heard of their satirical news podcasts, the Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation ? But attain no mistake, the racism is real. Eric especially enjoys The Daily Stormer , a resulting alt-right news site, which is unashamedly pro-Hitler.

What unites Johnson and Eric is what they describe as the systematic browbeat of the white male namely all this talk of privilege, the Confederate flag, Black Lives Matter and mansplaining. But beyond that, its the looming extinction of the white race. This is the language they use. Also: Diversity equals white genocide. The alt right loves to evoke genocide while harbouring Holocaust deniers. Their phase is that white people are melting away like the icecaps, and they have a primal drive to stop it. In 2044 , non-Hispanic whites will drop below 50% of the US population. The generation of the white minority has already been born, Eric says. Look at South Africa and Rhodesia. Thats where were headed. Total disenfranchisement.

Mexican activists on the campaign trail. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

I want to reassure him that his Brown Rulers is likely to be gentle and that bondage isnt so bad when you get used to it. But its not me they want to hear from, its white people. This is the white patriots burden the very people theyre trying to save are the ones who most ferociously oppose them. The only group I cannot get along with is white people, tells Johnson. Because white people hate white people who like white people.

A couple of days later, Johnson is at his cluttered desk in downtown LA, nattering merrily in Japanese to a woman in Tokyo. He get lots of media requests these days, but especially from Japan. Theres an uncanny connection between Japan and white patriotism in America. Jared Taylor, white nationalisms foremost intellectual, is another fluent speaker. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he says. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God blesses them!

For his part, Johnsons racism was shaped in Japan. He grew up in Eugene, Oregon, a country founded as a white utopia, in a modest Mormon home, back before the LDS church gave black people the priesthood in 1978. But it was his two-year mission to Tohoku, Japan, that turned him. As he went from door to door, locals would opine on the greatness of white America. They had an inferiority complex after the war, so we were treated like celebrities, he tells. Oh, it was just the funnest day! A few years later, while working in Japan as an attorney, he wrote a volume advocating the repatriation of all non-whites with appropriate reparations, because I believed America was going to breakdown unless I did something. When he returned to LA, he sent a copy to every congressman. He was 32.

Clearly things didnt work out as schemed. His forays into politics floundered and then his offices were bombed. So he retreated from activism for nearly 15 years, only returning in 2009 to form the AFP just in time for the rise of the alt right.

We head to his 67 -acre ranch near Pasadena, a hilly lot backing on to a national forest. I asked to meet his family, but his wife rejected, so we tour the farm instead his persimmon orchard, his ponies and ducks. And there on his pick-up truck is a stencil of Jimi Hendrix. My daughter said that she wished to paint, he says proudly. None of his five children are white patriots, though they have promised to marry within the race.

Youre a white supremacist with a black artist painted on your truck, I tell him. And he flinches. Thats the meanest, most hurtful swearword there is. Just because I tell different races have different strengths doesnt entail I think Im superior. He doesnt like racist either. Its a pejorative. I prefer race realist.

But its not my reality, Bill. Im sticking with racist.

Well, OK. But people who embrace racist are mad at everybody. I get along with people. You cannot function in Los Angeles without encountering other races, so I look for areas of similarity and agreement. Its important to treat everyone with the highest respect on a micro level.

I thought America was going to collapse unless I did something: William Johnson, chairman of the American Freedom Party, at home on his ranch near Pasadena. Photo: Barry J Holmes for the Observer

On a macro level, however, darkness autumns multiculturalism is doomed, the different races will never get along, and our only hope is Balkanisation: separate provinces for separate tribes. And whatever accelerates that transition is greet, even racial discord. I dont suppose friction is a good thing, he says, but it would help facilitate the divide that is necessary.

We stop to feed his alpacas. Theres a brown one, a black one and a white one, standing peacefully together against the chicken wire fence.

See Bill, theyre getting along.

He giggles. I wish people were like alpacas.

Im with Eric at a Mexican restaurant in Manhattan Beach where he lives, an upscale, white neighbourhood in the South Bay. He clears space on the table and grinnings. OK, you ready? Your first tarot card reading with the Hitler Youth!

Its been an odd afternoon. We strolled along the beach and I asked about his gmail address which includes the number 1488, a potent number for white supremacists. The 14 stands for the 14 terms coined by the late David Lane of different groups The Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. And the 88 refers to HH( H being eighth in the alphabet) or Heil Hitler. Eric sighed. OK, but this stuffs hard to talk about, he told. It depends how red-pilled you are.

Alt-righters love talking about the red pill. Its a reference to The Matrix blue-pilled people bumble through a life of illusion, while the red-pilled have find the truth and theres no turning back. Like all conspiracy theorists they insure the hidden hand that guides all things, but for the alt right that hand is Jewish. The red pill is classic antisemitism, rebooted for a younger generation. As we walked, he laid it out the banking, the media, the globalism. We passed games of beach volleyball and family barbecues, while he explained why the Holocaust was exaggerated and Hitler got a bad rap.

A nation without colouring: William Johnson speaking at an AFP conference in 2013.

Have you noticed that kombucha isnt as fizzy as it used to be? he asks, along the way, because Eric isnt your median Nazi. He developed as a spiritualist. He has taught meditation. He brought his tarot cards in case I wanted a reading.

Dont tell me its the Jews, I tell him. He giggles. You said it , not me!

In the late 70 s, the Klansman David Duke swapped his hood and robes for a suit and tie-in, and took white domination out of the cross-burning fields and into the boardroom. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center describes the alt right in similar terms, as Racism 2.0, a rebranding for the digital generation. Its a trendy reboot alt right makes white dominance sound like an art collective. And Eric, the kombucha Nazi, just takes it a step further into the aisles of Whole Foods. Hes a locally sourced, wild-caught bigot high in omega-3s and antisemitism. It constructs him more sinister in some ways, and more harmless in others. As Nazis go.

Hmm, Nazi. Like Johnson, hes squeamish about words. Warriors against political correctness can be awfully sensitive. Its such a slur, he tells. But come near hes a Hitler apologist. OK, fine, he says. Just dont tell Im a Buddhist, because Im actually more into Norse and Celtic mysticism now.

Itll come as no surprise that someone whod rather be called a Nazi than a Buddhist has a strange story to tell. Originally from a well-off white suburb of Chicago, he moved to Las Vegas to pursue music. Then one day, in the gym of his condo building, he met a guru figure well call Frank. A spiritualist and tycoon, Frank introduced Eric to New Age mysticism and Japanese Buddhism. And it was under Franks guidance that Eric moved to LA to study hypnotherapy and began a career devoting reads and tarot reveals at a psychic bookshop. Frank, he says, was his mentor and best friend. But then Eric took a turning. He radicalised himself. He left the New Age life, detecting it too feminine, and spiralled down a sinkhole of conspiracy hypothesi. He and Frank have been estranged ever since. Frank is black.

By the book: writer Ann Coulter. Photograph: Aaron Davidson/ Getty Images

Today, Eric still meditates and practises yoga. His weeks are spent like David Brent, as a travelling salesman, driving around satisfying his solar energy clients. His weekends, however, are all about the Beach Goys, which now has 15 members. Last week, they went on a hike to the Murphy Ranch in the Pacific Palisades, a decrepit old property that was originally constructed as a refuge for Hitler after the war. Next week is their first band rehearsal. Erics going to play guitar and sing. And this is the future he wants not a plum job with the Trump administration. I dont see myself as a bureaucrat, he tells. I want to take the Beach Goys national. I want to inspire people.

It could happen. Trump has unleashed something in America. Johnson wont uncover the AFPs membership numbers Maybe we want to appear bigger than we are? but Eric insists the alt right is on the procession. Were growing with every hashtag, every BLM protest, every city that becomes a Detroit, or a London, he says. Were everywhere! Were the guy next to you at yoga, the barista at Starbucks … Its like Fight Club for supremacists, a profoundly unsettling thought( which is why Eric loves it ).

But his delight in being a secret Nazi detracts from the seriousness of it all, the white genocide stuff. Hes having too much fun. And I wonder, as we finish our beers, if it will pass for Eric, this Nazi phase. He simply doesnt seem that threatening. Then he starts up about a race war, that old white-supremacist chestnut. Because behind the trolling veneer, the alt right is more traditional than alt. What Eric believes is vintage racism, the same old wine in a new ironic cask. And Tony Benns terms ring as true as ever: Every generation must fight the same battles again and again.

Our civilisation is at war and we need to secure our people, Eric tells. We must confiscate power and take control. And the idea that we can do this peacefully is likely not realistic.

We get along with well enough, Eric and I, but he has the same micro/ macro discrepancy as Johnson. And at a macro level, there is only hopelessnes and division. I do not advocate violence, but I will give my life for my blood and for the honour of my ancestors.

He thrums the tarot cards in his hands, his voice becoming ever more animated. We accept the game thats being played. We accept that the lion and the gazelle are rivalry. But they dont have to detest one another. Thats just how we view it.

He shrugs. Its scary. The world is scary. This is not a game for children.

Read more: www.theguardian.com

The post ‘ Call me a racist, but don’t tell I’m a Buddhist ‘: America’s alt right appeared first on Top Rated Solar Panels.

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A Time Of Undertaking: 6 Styles To Become A Badass World Traveler In 2016

As 2015 comes to a open, its normal to get romantic and start looking back on the memories constructed over the past year.

Every year has its ups and downs, and some are more fateful than others.

But as I began to think about my 26 th year and the ones before it, I realized for me, theres one fool-proof lane to stir recalls that will stand out in my mind forever, and that mode is to travel.

On top of the priceless knows that “re coming with” exploring a brand-new region, traveling obligates you a most independent, open-minded party and teaches you life assignments you might never learnt cooped up at home.

So while your health and fitness destinations and saving coin are important( and Im right there with you on those, extremely ), I would argue that we should all puttraveling more towards the top of our to-do rosters for2 016.

To help, I reached out to two millennial wandering bloggers who are killing video games, Brooke Saward of World of Wanderlust and Trevor Morrow of Trevor Morrow Travel, to be determined how we can all realize interpreting “the worlds” a realistic resolution in 2016.

Get your priorities in order.

Whether its limited vacation eras or a lack of funds, its easy to make excuses when it comes to travel.

Morrow, who is based in Los Angeles and has done everything from Tarzan-ing in the jungle to brewery hopping in Australia, declares his globetrotting lifestyle isnt plausible for everyone, but he enunciates if there is even the smallestamount of wiggle area in national budgets, all you have to do is prioritize.

He responds,

If gazing fresh is your priority, youll waste your extra money on clothes. If sitting at home and playing video games is your priority, youll invest your money on the latest PlayStation. If traveling is your priority…well, you find where Im departing. You have to really want to travel. Just like you have to really want to break a bad dres or genuinely wishes to get in shape to supersede. If “youre going” it, youll figure out a acces to make it happen. Its as simple as that.

Start out small.

So perhaps you cant afford a ticket around the world just yet. The key thenis to think local.

Morrow mentions,

Try to take three long weekend expeditions this year. Boom, youre now a traveler. Wake up early one Saturday morning and drive a few hours to the nearest big city — devour a cuisine youve never hard-handed before( perhaps Malaysian) and keep walking a neighborhood like youre a neighbourhood. Boom, youre now a traveler.

Saward, who booked a one-way ticket from her dwelling on the Australian island of Tasmania to London in 2012 on the day of her college graduation and has been at it ever since, agrees.

She speaks,

It always surprises me how much enjoyable you can have by only making a short road excursion to the beach or trekking a nearby mountain. One of my favorite things to do is re-explore my home.

Be smart with your money.

Both Saward and Morrow have learned to apply expedition first when it comes to spending.

For Morrow, that means restraint how many times he dines out per month and manufacturing his own lunches every day.

For Saward, its ridding herself of properties she doesnt require, and locating free activities to do with friends.

She alleges,

Taking all your old invests and belongings to a weekend market is a great way to reach some quick currency, as is selling your gondola. Wreaking extra alters not only sets more money in the bank but too impedes you from spending money going out with sidekicks so often, and over time you realize there are plenty of free replacements like catching up with a acquaintance for a strength walk instead of spending money used to go for lunch.

Of course, both are also pros at being thrifty on the road when necessary.

Morrow shows leasing an Airbnb or trying out dwelling exchanges, Couchsurfing, and WWOOF-ing.

Saward is a fan of the app HotelQuickly , which labor kind of like Uber, but for last-minute hotels.

Both advocated grabbing providings at neighbourhood markets instead of dining out for every snack, and taking advantage of free walking tours. Morrow does,

Im a big devotee of Sandemans New Europe Tours. They render great free walking tours in a variety of European metropolis. I think its an awesome happening to do on your first day in town.

Morrow also recommends the book How To Trip The World On $50 A Day by Matt Kepnes, and Saward wrote a upright titled “50 Space I Saved( A Lot) Of Money To Trip The World”on her blog.

Do your research, but be flexible.

Saward isa visual person who starts projecting a potential trip-up as soon as a photo catches her eye.

Morrow has a directory of ends a mile long, but he speaks its important to be flexible.

Be is accessible to what moves your way naturally. If a pal asks you to travel to a destination youve never daydreamed about, consider exiting! Or if you hear about a concerted effort or a celebration that piques your interest, bulge that end up on your schedule so you wont miss it.

It can also be helpful to plan your journeys based on the time of year( Is it rainy season in August? Will it be packed with tourists in June ?), Morrow suggests, and dont keep forgetting current exchange rates.

Ive been to Europe when the Euro is killing the U s dollars, and Ive been in Europe when the Dollar and Euro are on equivalence. Its much, much more fun to make( to Europe or anywhere) when you can stimulate your fund go further.

Dont be afraid to travel alone.

Working around your own planned is hard enough, which is why many of “the worlds” top jaunt bloggers, Saward and Morrow included, often roam alone.

Saward says hugging the no commitments stage of their own lives realise it easier to jump right in.

She adds,

It pressured me to rely only on myself, which is a really humbling knowledge, just knowing that if your entire world was taken away from you, you could make it on your own.

Morrow remembers how he was scared shitless on the plane to Nepal alone at age 18.

But let me tell you, when you return home, youll be confidently swaggering through international airports high-fiving strangers( or at the least thats how youll look ). Are well aware that you may be scared now, and thats normal, but youll be very proud of yourself for doing it. Derive confidence from knowing that traveling alone realise you a badass. Thoughts about those people sitting at home, afraid to go out and suffer “the worlds”. Do you really want to be one of those people? No!

Both travelers agree that the world isnt as creepy as it looks on TV.

Morrow tells,

In general, beings are route more category and good natured than the mainstream media would have you believe. Be street smart, be informed about, be informed, but dont be scared. Oh yeah, and dont be afraid to strike up a communication with beings at your inn/ hostel, at a bar, or on the street. If it gets weird, who attends, youll never attend them again.

Do it right while youre young.

Whatever stage in life you get bitten by the travel defect, own it! But the earlier “youre starting”, the easier it to be able to reap the benefits.

For Saward, who recommends everyone obligate Southeast Asia, South America and a Eurotrip priorities in their twenties, traveling young mean becoming more self-confident in herself.

I became a person I actually like to be around. Before advance I cared too much about what others thought of me and didn’t just knowing that I did and didn’t like( because I wasn’t intrepid enough to try anything new ).

Morrow points out that a well-traveled resume sees you a better being on paper and off.

He reads,

Aside from realizing you a lane more interesting party at parties, traveling while youre young can really change the rest of their own lives. Traveling builds you kinder, more understanding, more patient, more self sufficient — certainly potential benefits are interminable. And its not mentioned often, but the experiences had and sciences acquired from traveling while youre young, especially for longer periods of time or in places that one might consider challenging, can really be selling items in a job interview.

He proposes three types of tours for millennial travelers to kick off your 2016 bucket index TAGEND

1. Lead somewhere as geographically far from being, and as culturally differences between, your residence as you can. And if you can, stay here for as long as possible. A few illustrations would be places like India, Nepal or Japan.

2. Travel in your “countries “. Its easy to be seduced by beautiful photos to foreign targets, but its important be informed about the two countries you call dwelling and the ones who inhabit it. America is utterly gargantuan, and diverse, and beautiful. Take a superhighway trip-up, clique, visit national parks. Visit out of the lane homes. Eat at diners. Talk to the waitress. Youll be surprised that exactly inspecting different parts of American can provide a foreign experience.

3. Party! Drink vodka in Russia, defendant on a beach in Greece, go to a nightclub in Eastern Europe. Attend Carnival in Brazil. Hangovers simply get worse as you get older, so do your party traveling now!

Well, what are you waiting for ?!

Are in favour of Elite Dailys official newsletter, The Edge, for more narrations you dont want to miss .

The post A Time Of Undertaking: 6 Styles To Become A Badass World Traveler In 2016 appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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[apsbicepstraining]

A Time Of Undertaking: 6 Styles To Become A Badass World Traveler In 2016

As 2015 comes to a open, its normal to get romantic and start looking back on the memories constructed over the past year.

Every year has its ups and downs, and some are more fateful than others.

But as I began to think about my 26 th year and the ones before it, I realized for me, theres one fool-proof lane to stir recalls that will stand out in my mind forever, and that mode is to travel.

On top of the priceless knows that “re coming with” exploring a brand-new region, traveling obligates you a most independent, open-minded party and teaches you life assignments you might never learnt cooped up at home.

So while your health and fitness destinations and saving coin are important( and Im right there with you on those, extremely ), I would argue that we should all puttraveling more towards the top of our to-do rosters for2 016.

To help, I reached out to two millennial wandering bloggers who are killing video games, Brooke Saward of World of Wanderlust and Trevor Morrow of Trevor Morrow Travel, to be determined how we can all realize interpreting “the worlds” a realistic resolution in 2016.

Get your priorities in order.

Whether its limited vacation eras or a lack of funds, its easy to make excuses when it comes to travel.

Morrow, who is based in Los Angeles and has done everything from Tarzan-ing in the jungle to brewery hopping in Australia, declares his globetrotting lifestyle isnt plausible for everyone, but he enunciates if there is even the smallestamount of wiggle area in national budgets, all you have to do is prioritize.

He responds,

If gazing fresh is your priority, youll waste your extra money on clothes. If sitting at home and playing video games is your priority, youll invest your money on the latest PlayStation. If traveling is your priority…well, you find where Im departing. You have to really want to travel. Just like you have to really want to break a bad dres or genuinely wishes to get in shape to supersede. If “youre going” it, youll figure out a acces to make it happen. Its as simple as that.

Start out small.

So perhaps you cant afford a ticket around the world just yet. The key thenis to think local.

Morrow mentions,

Try to take three long weekend expeditions this year. Boom, youre now a traveler. Wake up early one Saturday morning and drive a few hours to the nearest big city — devour a cuisine youve never hard-handed before( perhaps Malaysian) and keep walking a neighborhood like youre a neighbourhood. Boom, youre now a traveler.

Saward, who booked a one-way ticket from her dwelling on the Australian island of Tasmania to London in 2012 on the day of her college graduation and has been at it ever since, agrees.

She speaks,

It always surprises me how much enjoyable you can have by only making a short road excursion to the beach or trekking a nearby mountain. One of my favorite things to do is re-explore my home.

Be smart with your money.

Both Saward and Morrow have learned to apply expedition first when it comes to spending.

For Morrow, that means restraint how many times he dines out per month and manufacturing his own lunches every day.

For Saward, its ridding herself of properties she doesnt require, and locating free activities to do with friends.

She alleges,

Taking all your old invests and belongings to a weekend market is a great way to reach some quick currency, as is selling your gondola. Wreaking extra alters not only sets more money in the bank but too impedes you from spending money going out with sidekicks so often, and over time you realize there are plenty of free replacements like catching up with a acquaintance for a strength walk instead of spending money used to go for lunch.

Of course, both are also pros at being thrifty on the road when necessary.

Morrow shows leasing an Airbnb or trying out dwelling exchanges, Couchsurfing, and WWOOF-ing.

Saward is a fan of the app HotelQuickly , which labor kind of like Uber, but for last-minute hotels.

Both advocated grabbing providings at neighbourhood markets instead of dining out for every snack, and taking advantage of free walking tours. Morrow does,

Im a big devotee of Sandemans New Europe Tours. They render great free walking tours in a variety of European metropolis. I think its an awesome happening to do on your first day in town.

Morrow also recommends the book How To Trip The World On $50 A Day by Matt Kepnes, and Saward wrote a upright titled “50 Space I Saved( A Lot) Of Money To Trip The World”on her blog.

Do your research, but be flexible.

Saward isa visual person who starts projecting a potential trip-up as soon as a photo catches her eye.

Morrow has a directory of ends a mile long, but he speaks its important to be flexible.

Be is accessible to what moves your way naturally. If a pal asks you to travel to a destination youve never daydreamed about, consider exiting! Or if you hear about a concerted effort or a celebration that piques your interest, bulge that end up on your schedule so you wont miss it.

It can also be helpful to plan your journeys based on the time of year( Is it rainy season in August? Will it be packed with tourists in June ?), Morrow suggests, and dont keep forgetting current exchange rates.

Ive been to Europe when the Euro is killing the U s dollars, and Ive been in Europe when the Dollar and Euro are on equivalence. Its much, much more fun to make( to Europe or anywhere) when you can stimulate your fund go further.

Dont be afraid to travel alone.

Working around your own planned is hard enough, which is why many of “the worlds” top jaunt bloggers, Saward and Morrow included, often roam alone.

Saward says hugging the no commitments stage of their own lives realise it easier to jump right in.

She adds,

It pressured me to rely only on myself, which is a really humbling knowledge, just knowing that if your entire world was taken away from you, you could make it on your own.

Morrow remembers how he was scared shitless on the plane to Nepal alone at age 18.

But let me tell you, when you return home, youll be confidently swaggering through international airports high-fiving strangers( or at the least thats how youll look ). Are well aware that you may be scared now, and thats normal, but youll be very proud of yourself for doing it. Derive confidence from knowing that traveling alone realise you a badass. Thoughts about those people sitting at home, afraid to go out and suffer “the worlds”. Do you really want to be one of those people? No!

Both travelers agree that the world isnt as creepy as it looks on TV.

Morrow tells,

In general, beings are route more category and good natured than the mainstream media would have you believe. Be street smart, be informed about, be informed, but dont be scared. Oh yeah, and dont be afraid to strike up a communication with beings at your inn/ hostel, at a bar, or on the street. If it gets weird, who attends, youll never attend them again.

Do it right while youre young.

Whatever stage in life you get bitten by the travel defect, own it! But the earlier “youre starting”, the easier it to be able to reap the benefits.

For Saward, who recommends everyone obligate Southeast Asia, South America and a Eurotrip priorities in their twenties, traveling young mean becoming more self-confident in herself.

I became a person I actually like to be around. Before advance I cared too much about what others thought of me and didn’t just knowing that I did and didn’t like( because I wasn’t intrepid enough to try anything new ).

Morrow points out that a well-traveled resume sees you a better being on paper and off.

He reads,

Aside from realizing you a lane more interesting party at parties, traveling while youre young can really change the rest of their own lives. Traveling builds you kinder, more understanding, more patient, more self sufficient — certainly potential benefits are interminable. And its not mentioned often, but the experiences had and sciences acquired from traveling while youre young, especially for longer periods of time or in places that one might consider challenging, can really be selling items in a job interview.

He proposes three types of tours for millennial travelers to kick off your 2016 bucket index TAGEND

1. Lead somewhere as geographically far from being, and as culturally differences between, your residence as you can. And if you can, stay here for as long as possible. A few illustrations would be places like India, Nepal or Japan.

2. Travel in your “countries “. Its easy to be seduced by beautiful photos to foreign targets, but its important be informed about the two countries you call dwelling and the ones who inhabit it. America is utterly gargantuan, and diverse, and beautiful. Take a superhighway trip-up, clique, visit national parks. Visit out of the lane homes. Eat at diners. Talk to the waitress. Youll be surprised that exactly inspecting different parts of American can provide a foreign experience.

3. Party! Drink vodka in Russia, defendant on a beach in Greece, go to a nightclub in Eastern Europe. Attend Carnival in Brazil. Hangovers simply get worse as you get older, so do your party traveling now!

Well, what are you waiting for ?!

Are in favour of Elite Dailys official newsletter, The Edge, for more narrations you dont want to miss .

The post A Time Of Undertaking: 6 Styles To Become A Badass World Traveler In 2016 appeared first on apsbicepstraining.com.

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