By The Old Paths Baptist Church of Minnesota
A Satanic stronghold on North Milwaukee Avenue.
Posted on December 21, 2016
Why The Nazis Studied American Race Laws For Inspiration
By James Q. Whitman/Aeon
On June 5, 1934, about a year-and-a-half after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of the Reich, the leading lawyers of Nazi Germany gathered at a meeting to plan what would become the Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi race regime.
The meeting was an important one, and a stenographer was present to take down a verbatim transcript, to be preserved by the ever-diligent Nazi bureaucracy as a record of a crucial moment in the creation of the new race regime.
That transcript reveals a startling fact: the meeting involved lengthy discussions of the law of the United States of America.
Posted on December 16, 2016
‘As a White Nationalist, What Do You Do?’
By A.C. Thompson/ProPublica
Chip Berlet has spent the past four decades studying right-wing political movements as a writer, activist and scholar.
Now retired, he worked for many years as a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a think tank based in the Boston area.
Working with Matthew N. Lyons, Berlet co-wrote Right-Wing Populism: Too Close for Comfort, which traces the politics back to the 1600s. He’s well-positioned, then, to make sense of the forces propelling President-elect Donald Trump’s ascendance.
While many observers have portrayed Trump’s rise as a total break from the traditions of American politics, Berlet takes a different view: as he and Lyons write, “demagogic appeals,” “demonization,” and apocalyptic thinking “have repeatedly been at the center of our political conflicts, not on the fringe.”
Posted on December 15, 2016
Huffington Post, BuzzFeed And Vice Are Blazing A New Trail On Climate Change Coverage
By James Painter/The Conversation
The deafening silence around climate change in the presidential campaign has left leading climate scientists baffled by the absence of debate about the “greatest issue of our time.”
Some commentators have laid the blame firmly on the media for sticking too closely to the political agendas set by the candidates.
But it’s not just in the U.S. where climate change and environmental issues have been virtually ignored. In the UK, a study by Loughborough University found that during the Brexit referendum, television news bulletins in the six-week period in May and June dedicated no time at all to environmental issues – despite the fact that much of UK environment policy is determined by the EU. Print media did little better.
So what’s going on? Part of the challenge is that TV editors often see climate change as too niche or too preachy. Another is that many audiences find the issue too remote, too frightening, or too consistently depressing. In many countries too, experienced specialist reporters, including science and environment correspondents, are on the decline because of cuts driven by dwindling revenue for legacy media.
In the UK, a 2016 report showed that of the 700 journalists surveyed, just over half self-identified as specialists. But while the most populous beats were business, culture, sports and entertainment, there were “few politics, science, or religious specialists.”
New Kids On The Climate Beat
The gap is partly being filled by “digital-born” players such as Huffington Post, BuzzFeed and Vice, who are the subject of our new book Something Old, Something New.
Posted on December 14, 2016
The Press Has Fallen For Fascists Before
By John Broich/The Conversation
How to report on a fascist?
How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair election is by definition “normal,” because his leadership reflects the will of the people?
These are the questions that confronted the U.S. press after the ascendance of fascist leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
Posted on December 13, 2016
‘Hail Trump’
By Stephanie Schorow/The Conversation
During a celebration of Donald Trump’s election triumph, members of the alt-right’s white supremacist in-house think tank, the National Policy Institute, were filmed extending a stiff arm in the iconic “Heil Hitler” salute of Nazi Germany. Ensuring there would be no mistaking the gesture, the NPI’s president, Richard Spencer, shouted, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!”
The video echoed, on a small scale, mass rallies that were once held in Nazi Germany. Huge crowds with their arms raised “were an essential part of Nazi propaganda, designed to demonstrate public solidarity with the policies of the Nazi Party,” writes Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell in Propaganda & Persuasion.
Posted on December 7, 2016
Examining The Literacy Lives Of Black LGBTQ People
By SIU Press
Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy analyzes the life stories of 60 Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people along with archival documents, literature, and film.
Author Eric Darnell Pritchard provides a theoretical framework for studying the literacy work of Black LGBTQ people, who do not fit into the traditional categories imposed on their language practices and identities.
Examining the myriad ways literacy is used to inflict harm, Pritchard discusses how these harmful events prompt Black LGBTQ people to ensure their own survival by repurposing literacy through literacy performances fueled by accountability to self and communal love towards social and political change, a process the author calls “restorative literacies.”
Posted on December 3, 2016
Five Poems To Ruin Christmas
By Tim Atkins/The Conversation
For actors, “never work with children or animals” is excellent advice. For poets, “never write a poem about Christmas” should carry equal weight.
In the same way that, come the festive season, one’s most unhappy colleague or relative gets pressured into a Santa Claus outfit, December is the time when the most desperate of poets squeeze their talents into festive verse. These poems – like the Christmas pudding sweater or Santa Claus pair of pants – are gifts that really should never have been given.
Posted on December 1, 2016