Steve Bannon Says His Kinder, Gentler Racist Nativism Different From Buffalo Shooter's Icky Murder-y Kind
If it quacks like a milkshake duck...
In the wake of the revelation that the 18-year-old white supremacist shooter in Buffalo was brain-poisoned by the Great Replacement Theory lie, Steve Bannon is flooding the zone with an epic quantity of shit.
"He’s Azov, a gay guy, he’s got all these insignias. He comes across – he said he’s a left-wing authoritarian, an eco-authoritarian," he babbled to Rudy Giuliani on Monday. "It’s in the manifesto, which they won’t release. I don’t know, just release it, it’s not gonna warp people’s mind. People can make decisions."
Speculating on motivations, Steve Bannon claimed the Buffalo shooter was \u201ca gay guy\u201d and asked where the shooter was attending church.pic.twitter.com/d6VK0PbFBu— PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1652730424
Okay, first of all, Peyton Gendron's screed is a simple Google search away for anyone who chooses to read it. Is Bannon pissed that a mass shooter is being cancel-cultured by responsible media outlets who don't want to inspire the next massacre while giving free publicity to the bad ideas that inspired the current one? We don't know, but he's been flogging vile nativist ideas himself for years. And anyone who did read this demon's scribblings would immediately understand that, shitposting aside, he's not a gay eco-terrorist Ukrainian right-wing paramilitary trooper.
FFS, the man carried a gun with a racial epithet scrawled on it into a store he chose specifically because its clientele was predominantly Black, and shouted racist slurs as he went on a killing spree.
Azov? Fuck right off.
"Parents got to be on top of stuff. Why are the parents that – is this kid going to church? Is he in church?” Bannon wondered, as if being heavily churched has ever stopped a racist mass shooter before. Then he seamlessly pivoted to chastising the media for "inappropriately" blaming Tucker Carlson, who mainstreamed the very ideas about white replacement that inspired this attack.
Steve Bannon claims the media is \u201cinappropriately\u201d focused on Tucker Carlson in the wake of the Buffalo white supremacist shooting.pic.twitter.com/4dyROPBcYU— PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@PatriotTakes \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1652728242
"This situation up in Buffalo stinks to high heaven, and of course the mainstream media's focused on the wrong thing," Bannon tut-tutted. As if the problem is the media's impropriety, not the 10 people dead because the country is awash in toxic racism.
Now watch this asshole try to distinguish his brand of poison from the low rent, generic version flogged by the racist killer.
Steve Bannon claims the "replacement theory" is a distraction after it was allegedly cited by the Buffalo shooter. The racist theory sprang from a book that Bannon has promoted.\n\n"We're not going to back off," he insisted today. "We are ascendant!"pic.twitter.com/V3H9MG7El2— David Edwards (@David Edwards) 1652713758
"We are inclusive nationalists, right?" he said, invoking "Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley" and "African Americans in droves who are understanding the lies and misrepresentations of the Democratic party."
"We're winning. This is about the sovereignty of the United States and the citizens of the United States," he rambled, before going on a riff about ceding control of the country to globalists at the World Health Organization. Oh, hey, you know who else didn't like (((globalists?)))
Bannon credited his "inclusive nationalism and participatory populism" with the 80-to-100 seat gain he thinks the GOP will make in November. Although, we can't help but notice that the GOP's plan to achieve this relies on both a massive gerrymander and making sure that broad swathes of the population cannot participate in elections.
"We're not going to stop, we are ascendant," ranted the man who used to work at the White House and who now vlogs into a microphone all day, just 18 months after his party's standard-bearer was soundly rejected by the American people.
Look, it's all shit right now, no doubt. But Bannon's little freakout is because the media is finally learning to talk about his "movement" accurately. Because the bogeyman of the week is GRT, not CRT. Because nobody outside of Fox News is talking about a lone wolf — they're talking about young men getting radicalized by Bannon and Carlson and their ilk. Because mealy-mouthed euphemisms like "racially tinged" and "controversial" are getting replaced by "racism" and "white supremacist."
It's not going to happen all at once — shit, it took 'em four years to start saying Trump lied — but it is happening. Just ask Elise Stefanik. And that little tantrum there was Bannon trying desperately to regain control of the narrative.
No. Fucking. Way.
OPEN THREAD.
[Joe My God / Crooks and Liars]
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Ben Shapiro's Brain Trust: Replacement Theory True, So That Can't Have Caused Mass Shooting
Also, what about those lockdowns? They probably did it.
Rightwing pundits got busy Monday on the very important project of distancing themselves and their racist panic over immigration from the ideas espoused — and put into action Saturday — by the 18-year-old white supremacist who shot 13 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 of them. In what's become a mandatory feature of racist mass shootings, the shooter posted an online manifesto explaining why he had to kill innocent shoppers to save white culture, complete with racist memes and nonsense shitposting, like claiming he loves the environment and considers his political orientation as "authoritarian left wing," which righties have dutifully cited as proof that the massacre was clearly caused by Elizabeth Warren or possibly Antifa, as if there's a difference.
Read More:
Racist Kills Ten People In Hopes Of Convincing Nation To Not ‘Replace’ Him
Elise Stefanik Can’t Outrun Her Racist Great Replacement Rants
New Zealand Shooter's Manifesto: Sh*tposting For The Whites
Who Is Mass-Murdering Everyone All The Time? 'Diversity.'
And just like the other racist mass murderers, the Buffalo murderer said he was acting to stop the "great replacement" of white people by immigrants and minorities, a racist conspiracy theory that's just the latest variation on the centuries-old white anxiety that white supremacy is doomed, and must be preserved at any cost. In the most far-Right versions, it's a devious Jewish plot, because what good is a devious plot that's not driven by the Jews? The goal of these nefarious plotters is to "import" brown immigrants, and also to make white people eventually go extinct by having to share their America with people who aren't white.
In its slightly more genteel versions, pushed by more mainstream rightwing sources like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and others, the explicitly antisemitic language may be reduced to dogwhistles so the plot is blamed on "elites," "globalists," or "George Soros," or it may be left out altogether to blame Democrats (the distinction almost doesn't matter, since Dems are of course tools of the elites, the globalists and George Soros).
Naturally, folks on the right who've been pushing "Great Replacement" drivel are furiously distancing themselves from the shooter, some by positing alternative theories (It was furries caused the shooting!) or by insisting that their own Great Replacement rhetoric is totally not to blame for the shooting, because they didn't turn up in the manifesto's Works Cited list.
You know we've reached a whole new level of hair splitting when people pushing racist conspiracy theories say their hands are clean because while they and the shooter are both spouting the same toxic crap, the shooter never personally referenced them. And while it's true that there's no evidence the shooter ever watched Carlson, that's hardly a defense of pushing the very same rhetoric that motivated the shooter. Hooray, Tucker isn't responsible for this horrific shooting. Maybe he's working to incite the next one.
Matt Walsh: But My Paranoia Is REAL!
For example, take Matt Walsh (please!), one of the second-tier pundits at Daily Wire, AKA Ben Shapiro's Internet Whine-A-Torium. Last summer, Walsh indignantly insisted that the "Great Replacement" IS TOO a thing that is real and is a deliberate Democratic plot, and how dare anyone say it's a creation of far-right racists! The he talked loudly and volubly about how you're not allowed to talk about that, and while no one stopped him, a lot of people said he was defending a racist trope, and that's totally the same as censorship.
Naturally enough, Walsh reacted to accurate media reports that the "Great Replacement" is a racist conspiracy theory by indignantly insisting all over again that it IS TOO a thing that is real and is a deliberate Democratic plot, and how dare anyone say it's a creation of far-right racists! And also time is a flat circle. Video and transcript via Media Matters:
[This] — I was going to call him a kid but he's 18 years-old — this man's ideology is a mess — he's, again, a lunatic — all over the place, he does mention the so-called great replacement theory. And this is what they're trying to hang around the neck of Tucker Carlson, Fox News, really any conservative, myself included. Because Tucker Carlson and other conservatives have in the past pointed out that the Democrats have been very open about the fact that, you know, they want to minimize what they call whiteness in America. And they want to bring in voters, you know, from other countries.
That is actually a lie, but do go on.
They don't want voter ID laws, you know, they want to be able to bring in the voters and have them vote because they know they're going to be voting Democrat. So, they want to replace, especially white male voters, with voters who they think are going to be beholden to them.
Also a lie: we don't like voter ID when it's used to exclude otherwise qualified people from voting, and there's no "voter fraud" crisis to start with. We want people to vote legally. That's it! As for "bringing in voters," again, no, that would be bullshit. We want to help people escape war, oppression, gangs, and people trying to kill them, because we're just monsters that way, shame on us. We actually understand that people are individuals and may not automatically vote one way or another. Also, as a white male, I can say with certainty that my vote will never go to a Republican. Walsh went on lying:
Now, this isn't a conspiracy theory. There's nothing wild or speculative about it. It's just a fact. And one of the ways you know that it's a fact is the left and the media -- The New York Times, CNN -- they've been very open about it, many times.
Walsh continued in that vein, complaining that discussions about the dangers of white supremacy equal a plot to eliminate white people, and so on, and then I fwowed up at all the lies.
Also, Lockdowns Were The Real Shooter
Walsh tweeted that maybe we need to investigate how it was really the pandemic lockdowns that are to blame, because the shooter wrote that he found 4chan racism while he was bored and out of school. This is a great theory, since no teens ever go online when in-person school is in session.
If we're reading this lunatic's "manifesto" and taking it seriously then what about the part where he says he was radicalized from spending all his time online during the COVID lockdowns? I guess we're just glossing over that part. Not the conversation the media wants to have.— Matt Walsh (@Matt Walsh) 1652650614
Teen murders 10 people, rants extensively about how the Jews are replacing him with Black people and immigrants, so let's look far more closely at the single line about the lockdown. By that logic, we should lock up Candace Owens for the New Zealand massacre. (We should instead ignore her because she's A IDIOT.)
In conclusion, Matt Walsh wants you to know his hands are clean and he sleeps fine at night, because he has definitely not personally incited any racist mass shootings, the end.
[Media Matters / NBC News / Joe. My. God.]
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Once Roe's Overturned, Fetus Cultists Can't Wait To Start Executions, Oh Boy!
Maybe some light civil war, too, as needed.
You've probably already heard that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade next month as expected, some 26 states are set to ban most abortions almost immediately, because they either have old pre-Roe bans still on the books, or because they've passed "trigger" bans that will become effective the moment the Court rules, if not when CNN misreports the news.
Read More:
A Citizen's Guide To Hell: US Abortion Laws After Roe
DO NOT F*CKING TELL US TO CALM DOWN
And while you might be worried about what the new legal hellscape will mean for reproductive health, women's rights, and other constitutional protections, you may want to keep in mind that people who have been looking forward to the end of Roe also have a lot of concerns about what comes next. Like, for starters, how soon can they start executing people for performing or getting abortions?
See, we're not so dissimilar, are we?
As Right Wing Watch reports, forced-birth advocates Stew Peters and Abby Johnson are very concerned about what'll happen in the roughly half of states that are set to recriminalize abortion. You might remember Abby Johnson from her appearance at the 2020 Republican Convention; she's the former Planned Parenthood director who says she suddenly became an anti-choice activist when her evil bosses told her to "sell" more 'bortions and she saw, via ultrasound, a 13-week fetus recoil from getting aborted. She had a crappy movie made about her and everything! She told the story again at the 2020 RNC, because that's her job now, even though journalists have pointed out it doesn't really add up.
In any case, Johnson is now all in on the imminent criminalization of abortion, but she and Peters discussed the need to go far beyond simply outlawing the procedure that nearly a quarter of American women have by the time they're 45. What good is outlawing abortion, they wondered, if you aren't also killing people to make the point that you're "pro-life"?
Here's video of the conversation, from Peters's internet chat show Tuesday; we were very impressed by the chyron reading "EXCLUSIVE: INSIDE PLANNED PARENTHOOD / THE UNDERBELLY OF THE SOROS PLAN TO KILL AMERICAN BABIES." Because if you're planning a campaign of Dominionist authoritarianism, you may as well throw in a little blood libel against Jews, too.
Johnson explained that she's "a little afraid" that the outlawing of abortion won't have any "teeth" behind it. Some states may ban abortion, sure, but "if there’s no criminal penalty behind procuring an abortion, you know, then so what?" She urged voters to find out what it would actually mean in their states when abortion is outlawed.
Peters didn't need any prompting to jump right in: "It means that it's murder. It's murder."
Johnson agreed: "If it’s murder, then it needs to be treated like murder."
Fact check: from a legal standpoint, it's only murder if a state statutes defines it as murder. Otherwise it's a bumper sticker slogan.
While wingnut state legislators love introducing bills that would indeed impose the death penalty for abortion, none has passed, although that may change when Roe is gone. Louisiana Republicans are pushing a bill to treat abortion as "homicide," although the bill as written doesn't specify a penalty.
Read More:
Anti-Choice Texans Want To Murder To Death Any Woman Who Commits Abortion
Louisiana Fixin' To Redefine Abortion As Murder, Because That's What The Bumper Sticker Says
Peters was very excited about the prospects, if not particularly worried about trivial details like "passing laws," because he's on a mission from God:
PETERS: That’s right. We need a governor with the balls to stand up and say that: "I will bulldoze every single Planned Parenthood facility in my state. I will bulldoze any facility that facilitates this murder of unborn babies, preborn, real living people. I will make it a criminal offense to fund anybody that does this, and if you’re found out funding murder or carrying out murder, you will be executed. Period." That’s what needs to happen.”
Fact Check: Planned Parenthood, as normal sane people know, is mostly in the business of providing a range of healthcare, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, sex education, STD testing and prevention, birth control, and other stuff women need, and also some men, and LGBT people use their services a lot also too. Not that any of that matters, bulldoze 'em!
Johnson went off on a tangent about how on earth could anyone see a difference between an eight-week fetus and a two-year-old child, because obviously they are exactly the same. It reminded me a bit of the fundamentalist view that real Christians must take the two stories of creation in Genesis literally, because it they're only metaphors, then maybe everything else in the Bible is open to question too. Ya think?
So obviously, if life begins at conception, and a fertilized egg has all the rights of a two-year-old child, then anyone using an IUD is a serial killer, and anyone who performs abortions or prescribes some forms of birth control is Dr. Mengele.
JOHNSON: If we truly believe that abortion is murder, then we need to start acting like it.
PETERS: Abortion is murder, and those who carry it out should be executed. This is the most powerful prayer in recent history answered by God for the entire world to watch and witness and see his greatness, his glory, his power. This is a time that we all need to unite. We’re at war. This is a war.
Notice that throughout the conversation, both of them mostly talk as if they'd only want to execute abortion providers. Presumably they want a little plausible deniability when it comes to those who choose to have abortions, but it's not difficult to see how they too might need a good killin' to prove that abortion is murder. After all, those who "fund" abortion — George Soros, clearly — must be executed, so anyone who pays to have their pregnancy terminated would need to be made a lesson of, too.
Finally, the talk turned, as it so often does with True Believers, to the need for the cleansing fire of a literal war. Johnson's all in on that:
JOHNSON: We went to war over slavery, right? Why? Because there was a group of people who were seen and treated as subhuman. And right now, in our country, there is a group of people who are seen and treated as subhuman. We are, in our society, at war, but maybe it means more than that.
And maybe it should. If there was ever a time, if there was ever an issue for us to actually go to war over—when this becomes illegal, and if these clinics try to remain open and kill these babies, then maybe direct action needs to take place. If there was ever an issue for us to stand up and say, ‘"this is something that we are willing to physically fight for," this is it!
Gosh, wonder if anyone in the class can point out any significant differences between people who were held in slavery and a zygote? We're certain Johnson thinks it's a very ennobling comparison, at least for the holy fetuses. We have little hope that she'd recognize how deeply insulting the comparison is, since it suggests that enslaved people were helpless not-quite-humans who needed the benevolent help of real adults to be rescued. There's always a white savior narrative, isn't there?
Read More: RNC Speaker Abby Johnson Knows If Cops Profile Own Black Son, He'll Have It Coming
We can talk a bit more about the appropriateness of that metaphor further, just as soon as the 54th Massachusetts Fetus Regiment marches into battle. But we suppose it's a bit mean of us to expect Johnson to consider African Americans really truly people, given her own contention that it's logical for her adopted Black son to be racially profiled, since after all, she explained, Black people really do commit lots of crimes.
[RightWingWatch / Guttmacher Institute]
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Tucker Hates New Press Secretary, Guess Why, Bet You Can't
Yep, that's it!
Oh nothing, just Tucker Carlson analyzing the news through the lens of all his myriad inadequacies and masculinity complexes: the bathroom, the one he bragged about:
Tucker Carlson attacks incoming WH Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre on the basis of her race and sexual orientation: "That's why she got the job. She is in the right group [...] It's really simple, show us your picture and we will tell you if you are qualified for the job."pic.twitter.com/Y5G0tj9PPw— nikki mccann ram\u00edrez (@nikki mccann ram\u00edrez) 1652227878
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Karine Jean-Pierre is our first out LGBTQ+ White House Press Secretary and that's all you need to know. It's a good thing, shut up and celebrate. That's why she got the job.
She's in the right group and so the Biden administration, which thinks exclusively in terms of groups and never in terms of individuals because individuals are messy and inconvenient, the group is all that matters.
No, you mediocre milquetoast porcelain-assed white boy, that's not why she got the job, it's just another glass ceiling broken. She got the job because she's great at it.
This is exactly how they pick Supreme Court justices or vice presidents or members of the Federal Reserve Board.
It is not. But do you know a thing the most recent Supreme Court justice has in common with the vice president has in common with the newest member of the Federal Reserve Board has in common with Karine Jean-Pierre?
They all intimidate Tucker Carlson for SOME reason. What y'all think it is?
And now, the all-important press secretary gig has gone to someone on the basis of group. It's really simple, show us your picture and we'll tell you if you're qualified for the job.
This is how inadequate white men explain why they were passed over for the job.
And in many ways, Karine Jean-Pierre is perfect for the job.
This should be good.
Not only is she a member of the out LGBTQ+ community, she's also, critically, the product of a private school and an Ivy League college and yet still oppressed somehow. She is furious at America despite her ample privilege and enraged by its racist systems of oppression. And she's happy to tell you about it.
Okeydoke, Tucker.
He followed that up by playing a clip of Karine Jean-Pierre doing none of those things, but we guess it sounds like it when you're that inferior.
Anyway, if you watch the clip, you'll see that Tucker does his high-pitched yelps a whole lot and really overpronounces Karine Jean-Pierre's last name, because as we all know, French names are gay and if you pronounce them like a normal person without affecting a mocking tone, you will now be gay. Those are the rules.
Or something.
The end.
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