"I Lost My Son to the Alt-Right Movement"

Sad story but with an unfortunate admixture of misinformation. For one thing, it links to a piece claiming without evidence that the men's rights movement, like the alt-right, "appeal[s] to men with fantasies of violent, sometimes apocalyptic redemption."

Here are a few of the main men's rights websites: www.avoiceformen.com, www.honeybadgerbrigade.com, http://ncfm.org/. You'll be hard put to find anything about violent redemption on them; the second, in fact, is run mostly by women and was created by one. Nor do all their posters even claim that men are "THE true victims of oppression" (emphasis added) -- only that we have issues that are being neglected.

Additionally, although I'm no fan of Stefan Molyneux, the article's claim that he's "alt-right" is widely contested and appears to be based on very thin evidence.

http://www.cultnews101.com/2017/08/i-lost-my-son-to-alt-right-movement.html

Defend Free Speech at Acadia University

I'm signing this petition in spite of the misleading and divisive language describing the opposing campaigners as "Marxist and Socialist." Their sort of authoritarianism can be found everywhere on the political spectrum, and falsely tying it to one ideological perspective can only needlessly limit support for the petition by repelling Marxists and socialists like me who agree with the arguments in libertarian Marxist Hal Draper's classic essay "Free Speech and Political Struggle."

https://www.change.org/p/acadia-university-support-for-professor-rick-mehta

Return to HOME

This evening, for only the second time, I took part in one of Project HOME's Potlatches.

The first time was about a quarter century ago, at the invitation of my friend Carolyn Jacobs, and I sang three antiwar songs by Fred Stanton.

This time was again at Carolyn's invitation, and I sang my filk song "Trinity," based on Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy novel The Curse of Chalion.

Mark Segal Smears Chelsea Manning for Having Principles

At a Liberty City Democrats meeting I attended a few years ago, I heard one member remark derisively, "Mark always supports the party" -- by which he meant the Democratic leadership vs. internal challengers. Oh, how true we can now see this is.

In his most recent column in the Philadelphia Gay News, Segal accuses Chelsea Manning of being "divisive" by choosing to run in the Democratic primary against incumbent Senator from Maryland Ben Cardin, asking why she doesn't run against a "right-winger" instead. Never mind that residency requirements might not make that possible -- Segal implies it must be about narcissism on Manning's part. I commented as follows:

"In her first-tweeted video, she opted not to say anything bad about Cardin, but used video of Trump. What a great way to divide us." Wth?!! Not criticizing her fellow Democrat, and instead focusing on the man all Democrats are united in hating -- that's "a great way to DIVIDE us"? In what universe?

"Why pick a member of the resistance [sic]?" Who defines "resistance"? Does it refer to anything principled, or just partisan affiliation? For Segal, evidently it's the latter.

His question is clearly rhetorical, since with a modicum of research he could have found a real answer to it. As Glenn Greenwald noted, "Cardin’s crowning achievement came last year when he authored a bill that would have made it a felony to support a boycott of Israel — a bill that was such a profound assault on basic First Amendment freedoms that the ACLU instantly denounced it and multiple senators who had co-sponsored Cardin’s bill (such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand) announced that they were withdrawing their support."

By contrast, Chelsea Manning is running as a self-described radical anti-authoritarian. Obviously, if that's how you define The Resistance, Ben Cardin isn't part of it -- he's part of the problem. And, by the way, there's nothing unitive about him either -- you unite progressives by standing without compromise on progressive principles like freedom of speech, not squelching it on behalf of inherently divisive ethnic nationalism. And it's ironic that Segal conveniently overlooks Cardin's anti-civil-liberties stance when, only a few months ago, he was denouncing the Chicago Dyke March for censoring a Jewish contingent's Stars of David (an editorial I endorsed on my blog, by the way). Is he only for freedom of speech when it suits his demographic?

A Double Header of Deception on NPR

Well, Morning Edition outdid themselves today, airing not one, but two stories containing defamatory misinformation.

First they have an interview with Brianna Wu, who's been building her personal brand for the past three years by slandering the #Gamergate "consumer uprising" (as Christina Hoff Sommers has described it -- watch this starting at 42:23) as a harassment campaign against women in gaming in general and her in particular. The specific function and purpose of this lie has been to divert attention from the movement's legitimate grievances about corrupt and authoritarian practices in video game journalism.

And then, in introducing a story on the class-action discrimination suit against Google being brought by its former employee James Damore, they repeat the lie that he wrote an "anti-diversity memo." If you read the memo for yourself you can easily see that that's not what it is; in fact, Damore specifically proposes new, evidence-based approaches to help make Google's diversity efforts more successful. And here's one female engineer's response to the canard that the memo "promotes gender stereotypes": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9SzOkOHzmM

I encourage others to join me in complaining to NPR about these libelous stories.