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David Neiwert @DavidNeiwert
, 10 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
You really don't understand how radicalization works, do you?

Words have power. Ideas have power. They inspire acts. Claiming they don't is in fact blithering nonsense. The people who commit these acts choose to do so because alt-righters tell them to.

splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016…
2) Take sovereign citizens for example. These people actually murder police officers (nine since 2008, with 12 more injured in a total of 16 incidents) because they believe their ideology exempt them from law enforcement. That ideology is in fact a close cousin of the alt-right.
3) This post has a complete list of those incidents:

dneiwert.blogspot.com/2016/08/where-…
4) Now, where did they get the idea that their interpretation of the Constitution made them exempt from the law and thus could resist _by any means necessary_? From far-right sov-cit websites, of course.
5) More about them here:

splcenter.org/fighting-hate/…
6) Now, it is true that there is only limited legal culpability associated with spreading this ideology. Most of the time there isn't a direct link between ideologue and actor. That's how the far right's "Lone Wolf"/leaderless resistance strategy is supposed to work.
7) More on the long history of the "lone wolf" as an explicit radical-right tactic here:

brookings.edu/blog/markaz/20…
8) Headline notwithstanding, this is actually a very good piece that explodes the media's shallow use of the term:

theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/…
9) Now, the alt-right seems to operate on a different wavelength, but its ideologues are just as explicitly violent in what they publish and the actions they extol. You ever thumbed through the Daily Stormer and pondered what kind of mind emerges from that shitpile?
10) But seriously, if you really, really don't believe that what these guys read on their websites and social media don't help fuel their violence, I invite you to join me as an observer on the streets of Portland Aug. 4. Wear a helmet.
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Big news for my readers: It's with some sadness and some excitement that the new year will bring some career changes for me. I'm leaving the regular employ of @splcenter and joining the staff at @dailykos, where I will become their reporter specializing in extremism.
It's exciting because @markos and his team are gearing up to make @dailykos a major news operation, and it will be great to be part of that. Also, I can do some environmental reporting there!

FWIW, I will continue to write for @splcenter, just not as frequently or regularly.
I've been at @splcenter for over five years now, and am very proud of what we managed to achieve there.

If you'd like a retrospective on my work there, check out the Hatewatch YouTube channel sometime. I created all of these videos. It tells a tale.

youtube.com/user/hatewatch…
Read 3 tweets
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There's a big problem with this story: Hillborn simply is wrong about the SRKWs' primary food source. Fraser River Chinook are their primary feed only in summer months.

mynorthwest.com/1217574/expert…
In the non-summer months, multiple studies have demonstrated that SRKWs primarily feed on salmon along the Continental Shelf. The No. 1 source of those salmon is the Columbia. SRKWs have been recorded multiple foraging at the mouth of the Columbia in the winter.
Here's a graphic representation of the data:

westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/p…
Read 5 tweets
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Ahahahahahaha. I missed this in our exchange last week.

Let's do a compare-and-contrast, shall we, @caitoz? I'll list the pieces I've done attacking Trump and his followers, and then you can do the same, and we'll stack 'em up, OK?
First, there's this. It's 400 pages long.

amazon.com/dp/B01MT2KCB2/…
Then the piece I cowrote with Sarah Posner for Mother Jones. This, BTW, is known as _investigative journalism_ (the real thing) and took us eight months to assemble.

motherjones.com/politics/2016/…
Read 21 tweets

Related threads

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Liam Fox blames the people for Brexit mess: "I think we have to leave the EU because we have been instructed to do so by the British people. Parliament did not give the British public consultation. We contracted out our sovereignty on that particular issue to the British people"
That's a pretty unequivocal statement. Hard to square with Code of Conduct that all MPs pledge to follow, requiring them to act in the national interest, and in that of their constituents, and to make decisions on merit. Brexit fails all 3 of those tests.
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cm…
If we follow LF's logic to its conclusion, Parliament should do absolutely whatever blithering nonsense "the people" want it to, no matter how eye-wateringly absurd, so long as it was voted for.

Whereas in reality our political system works the opposite way: people vote in MPs,
Read 4 tweets
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I discuss misogyny fairly often lately, and today I need to bring that discussion closer to home.
30 days after his second ban for misogynistic behaviour, @Trainwreckstv will be back broadcasting on Twitch. Now, Gamers with a capital G behaving terribly isn't surprising, and women are a popular target.
But it's the severity of this behaviour and how Twitch responded that makes this situation something that needs to be looked at. So stick with me for a second and let's do that.
Read 45 tweets
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Isn't it interesting how transphobic pieces of garbage like to insist that nothing is in fact transphobic? A certain cis gay man wrote an article about how it's not transphobic to say trans women aren't women, just a difference of opinion. He says this makes transphobia too
encompassing or broad to be meaningful, when in fact the very foundation of transphobia is "trans people are not really the gender they say they are." In other words, this guy is trying to present a faux-reasonable argument that there's nothing wrong with misgendering trans
people, but what his actual real intention appears to be is to rob trans people (esp. trans women as he focuses on us) of the ability to speak coherently about our oppression. This goes farther than saying we can't call anyone cis or call transphobic fake feminists what they are.
Read 7 tweets
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For me, so far in my memory reconstruction, it seems like everything was just mind control; Pavlovian response conditioning through torture. But I remain open to the possibility that "demons" & "Evil entities" may exist. Per the Bible, ALL DEMONS SUBMIT to the power of CHRIST.
And whether these 'Demons' are objectively real ethereal entitles or simply subhuman people doing nasty sh*t to kids here on Earth, either way, invoking the name of Jesus & following Christ is THE WAY to escape this hell on earth. I know because I did it. Thank you God!
If I am ever feeling doubt, wondering if these "witches" are cursing me at any given moment, knowing that they target me on ritual dates with focused malice, I simply say aloud "Demons have no power over me. I am protected by Christ. In the name of Jesus, take a blessing & leave"
Read 39 tweets
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Character is a funny thing. It's one of those things we used to bundle a lot of qualities, but it's also one of those things we find relatively hard to define.
One might recall that Pride and Prejudice is essentially an extended meditation on a pun revolving around that word.
Character, Jane Austen suggested, can ultimately be identify, read, and understood as well as characters making up a novel, or more particularly, a letter.
Read 21 tweets
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I often find that White people don’t understand how racism works why things are considered racist against other groups and not against them because they don’t understand how power structures work and are put into play.
Why is it considered appropriation when white people do it but not when POC adopt white culture?

Power structures. The difference between appropriation and assimilation.
Why isn’t “cracker” considered a slur but words against other groups are?

Power structures. The word can’t harm y’all since y’all hold all the power.
Read 9 tweets

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