“Coordinated at a higher level”: White supremacist propaganda soared to all-time high last year

Stephan: 

MAGAt world has awakened a level of hate, antisemitism, and racism in the United States greater than anything I have ever seen. I don't remember anything this bad even at the height of the civil rights conflict in the 1950s and 60s. That epoch was mostly in the Southern states and the antisemitic aspect was not a major part of it. This is nationwide,  and more randomly violent whereas in the civil rights conflict it was mostly aimed at Black Americans. The one constant is that the violence in both epochs was, and is, being perpetrated by ultra-conservative White men consumed by hate and resentment. I increasingly see this as a sickness made all the more violent because of a second cultural sickness, America's obsessive gun psychosis.

Members of the right-wing group Patriot Front march with anti-abortion activists during the annual March for Life on Jan. 21, 2022 in Washington, DC.  Credit: Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times / Getty 

The Anti-Defamation League recorded the highest number of white supremacist propaganda incidents in 2022, according to a new report released last week. 

The number of incidents increased by 38% from the previous year, with a total of 6,751 cases reported last year, compared to 4,876 in 2021, ADL’s Center on Extremism found. 

Similarly, the number of groups involved in incidents last year also increased, rising from 38 different groups to 50, said Carla Hill, Director of Investigative Research with ADL Center on Extremism.

At least three networks, including Patriot Front, Goyim Defense League (GDL) and White Lives Matter (WLM) were responsible for 93% of the activity, she added. 

The groups use different tools to spread propaganda, varying from graffiti, posters, stickers, and banners to even yard signs and laser projections. The propaganda is then promoted online after members share messages on social media with the purpose […]

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‘Shocking’ ban of book about Holocaust survivor’s granddaughter in DeSantis’ Florida

Stephan: 

The MAGAt world is not fact-based. It cares about the indoctrination of children not education, and this leads to all kinds of weird anti-historical efforts, of which this story is but one example. What is particularly strange in this instance is that Florida has a notably high percentage of Jewish residents. Presently, there are approximately 514,000 Jews living in South Florida. The population of Palm Beach County, for instance, is 15.8% Jewish.  Yet Florida is banning a significant novel on antisemitism. 

MAGAt Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Credit: Shutterstock

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has empowered state and local officials to remove classroom and library books that they deem offensive, and author Jodi Picoult was surprised to learn this week that her book about the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor was recently targeted for a ban in Florida.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Picoult called out Martin County, Florida for removing her book “The Storyteller,” in which the aforementioned granddaughter of the Holocaust survivor meets with an elderly S.S. officer.

“Banning ‘The Storyteller’ is shocking, as it is about the Holocaust and has never been banned before,” she tells the Post, and went on to describe the decision as “a shocking breach of freedom of speech and freedom of information.”

She also chided Martin County for being “the first to ban twenty of my books at once.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Picoult called out Martin County, Florida for removing her book “The Storyteller,” in which the aforementioned granddaughter of […]

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House GOP Refuses to Denounce White Supremacy and ‘Great Replacement’ Theory

Stephan: 

This is how definitive the Great Schism Trend has become, and how racist the Republican Party is. When asked to condemn White Nationalism and White Supremacy not a single Republican member of the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee would sign, while all 20 Democrats on the committee enthusiastically signed. I take this as a measure of MAGAt world's racism. As I have said many times for years now one of the big culture trends is that the United States racially is becoming a majority-minority nation, and about a third of White America cannot stand that. That is what is behind all the CRT replacement crap.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), on right, and ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) prepare for a hearing titled “On The Front Lines of the Border Crisis”
Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call / Getty

Led by ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, Democrats on the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee this week warned that Republicans doubled down on “a dangerous lie” when they refused to back a statement denouncing white supremacy.

Raskin (D-Md.) was joined by all 20 Democrats on the committee in signing a brief, straightforward statement condemning

EditSign “white nationalism and white supremacy in all its forms, including the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory,” which claims that white Americans are intentionally being “replaced” by people of color, particularly through immigration policy.

“These hateful and dangerous ideologies have no place in the work of the United States Congress or our committee,” reads the statement.

Raskin sent the statement along with a letter to committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), saying he was driven to call on his 26 Republican colleagues to sign on to the statement […]

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Republican Budget Plan would Throw Millions off Social security

Stephan: 

It is a measure of the hate and resentment of MAGAt world that they put their hate and resentment ahead of their own wellbeing. Anyone needing childcare, or who is a vet, or is soon going to be on Social Security, or is poor enough to need Medicaid, who votes for a Republican is voting to degrade the quality of their own life as this report describes. And yet as we will see White Americans will do so by the millions. When a country is dealing with that level of hate and resentment it is in very dire shape, and the only remedy is for those who support wellbeing to get out and vote in numbers so great it overwhelms the haters. Will that happen in 2024? We will see.

Republican proposals cut Social Security Disability and Supplemental Security Income together by 21% by the plan’s final year. Collectively, the two programs serve nearly 16 million people, and a 21% cut could push 3.3 million off the program, or reduce already modest benefits.

At a time when more than one in eight households with children are food insecure, the Republican proposals cut $412 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. These harmful policies could result in benefits being eliminated or reduced for up to 40 million people. The Republican budget also combines several child nutrition programs into one block grant and slashes them by $100 billion over 10 years.

Republicans also want to raise the retirement age to 70, slash $1 trillion from Medicare, gut Medicaid, cut veterans’ benefits, make it more difficult for people to qualify for disability, and throw 20 million Americans off of their health insurance.

To call the GOP budget plan extreme is an understatement. Republicans have gone out of their way to make it clear that they only support protecting Social Security […]

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The GOP Wants You to Pay More Exorbitant Credit Card Fees

Stephan: 

Here is yet another example of political whoring by Republicans made possible by the legalization of bribery authorized by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. We are not going to solve the corruption of Congress, which is at banana republic level, until we have publicly funded elections, and contributions like those of the credit card companies are made illegal.

Credit card companies funneled more than $600,000 during the last election cycle to House Republicans now fighting to preserve the companies’ ability to charge excessive late fees. Credit: FreePix.uk

In February, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule that would limit most credit card late fees to $8. The rule is being fought by a group of House Republicans. Credit card companies funneled more than $600,000 during the last election cycle to House Republicans now fighting to preserve the companies’ ability to charge excessive late fees.

Among the seventeen Republicans who sent a letter to federal regulators this month opposing a Biden administration effort to rein in the fees, at least fifteen received contributions from the credit card industry in the 2022 election cycle. Three of the lawmakers are among the top five House recipients of campaign cash from the industry.

In February, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) proposed a rule that would limit most credit card late fees to $8, down from the $41 companies are currently permitted to […]

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