"You know who's not canceled? The endless parade of conservative pundits and politicians complaining about 'cancel culture.' You know who is canceled? George Floyd is canceled." Turn off the gaslight. #ConservativeCancelCulture is real. 1/12 salon.com/2021/05/01/con…
"Cancel culture" is a meaningless term, @mmfa editor @ParkerMolloy writes. But "For conservatives, that meaninglessness is a feature, not a bug," I note. "Those words mean whatever a right-wing accuser needs them to mean in the moment": 2/12 mediamatters.org/fox-news/woke-…
But there are two constraints on what "cancel culture" means: that it's new & comes only from the left. The truth is exactly the opposite: #ConservativeCancelCulture#gaslighting 3/12
Just a few highlights of #ConservativeCancelCulture in US history (Notice how often Blacks & immigrants the ones being cancelled? Coincidence? Not so much!): 4/12
But the term "cancel culture" is new. And @CAMcGrady explains how the white grievence usage is so tellingly at odds with its black-coined meaning: 5/12 washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/canc…
In bills suppressing voting rights (361 bills/47 states) & BLM-style protests (81 bills/34 states) #ConservativeCancelCulture has gone wild this year. But education attacks date back to William F. Buckley's first book, as @FAIRmediawatch noted: 6/12 fair.org/extra/william-…
The abrupt suspension of 52 class sections at Boise State University in March--affecting 1300 students over a rumored accusation--was a wild over-reaction years in the making. PoliSci prof @donmoyn saw it coming at UW Madison, wrote 2017 NYT warning: 7/12 nytimes.com/2017/01/09/opi…
Here's some of what @donmoyn told me about what led him to write that op-ed: 8/12
"Attacking universities became a staple of the far right, propelled by an entire ecosystem of media funded by donors like the Koch or DeVos families," @donmoyn told me, but worse was the mainstream acceptance: 9/12
Conservative free speech controversies are primarily trolling by a handful of provocateurs: 10/12
Me at @Salon: Trump's Six Gaslighting Keys To Victory:
Climate denial, Great Replacement theory, the myth of mass voter fraud, his gaslighting Roe, being "great for the economy" vs Dem disaster & thus, Dems as threat to democracy, Trump as savior. 1/11 salon.com/2024/11/09/six…
Calling the MSG hatefest "a lovefest" is #gaslighting, A guide:
Lying is deceiving people about the state of the world
#Bullshitting is deceiving people about one’s motives.
#Gaslighting undermines people’s entire sense of reality & imposes an invented reality in its place 2/11
Several progressive journalists highlighted episodes of Trump's #gaslighting in 2016. I cited them in my own story building on @leahmcelrath's brilliant dissection of Trump's #gaslighting "apology" for the Access Hollywood tape, a template for how he rolls: 3/11
“When we fight, we win!” Kamala Harris has made that the clarion call of her campaign. But the judicial tyranny of SCOTUS stands in the way. It CAN be defeated with jurisdiction-stripping & more. It's a fight we can no longer avoid. 1/28 salon.com/2024/08/31/how…
SCOTUS granting Trump (who else wants it?) king-like powers in Trump v US highlights how un-American/anti-democratic SCOTUS has become. Dobbs made its anti-freedom agenda personal. But those are just 2 examples of a wide array of decisions overruling the will of the people. 2/28
So it's one thing for Dems to win in Nov, it's another to overcome judicial tyranny blocking anything they might do--including Roe restoration. A SCOTUS that makes up law out of thin air can surely find ways to sabotage that. Unless... 3/28
Donald Trump and JD Vance: Decoding a double dose of right-wing racism. Even if they're defeated, forces behind them have joined. New from me at with help from @DavidAstinWalsh & @Annaleen whose recent books illuminate each: 1/24 Salon.com salon.com/2024/08/18/don…
Trump most makes sense to me as a champion of the far right aka paleocons, as traced by @DavidAstinWalsh in “Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right,” my author interview here: 2/24bookshop.org/a/2464/9780300… salon.com/2024/04/20/a-p…
Vance & his Silicon Valley backers further the 1990s neocon "Bell Curve" race science @Annaleen describes in "Stories Are Weapons" my author interview here: 3/24bookshop.org/a/2464/9780393… salon.com/2024/06/16/ann…
“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS,” the lying, thieving, covetous adulterer Donald Trump trumpeted in all caps on his Twitter knock-off site. He loved it as branding & the Louisiana's version was a Cecille
B. DeMille Hollywood production. via @Salon 1/22 salon.com/2024/07/07/ten…
In this story you'll learn: 1) The law's text was promoted by Hollywood 2) It edits out blatantly un-American text 3) Gov Landrie's justification contained 3 lies 4) the bible's account of the 10 Commandments is self-contradictory...
and MUCH more. Let's begin! 2/22
The law itself follows from the Project Blitz playbook (first described here in 2018: ), one architect of which, pseudo-historian David Barton, claimed credit for helping to pass it: 3/22 salon.com/2018/04/29/onw…
SCOTUS decisions & the debate got you down? Take a step back with a broadview story of untapped democratic possibility being developed in LA from @RandomLengths 0/21
Democracy's under worldwide threat but there's a answer: an Athenian model of jury-like deliberation, used over 700 times but still little-known in the US. Activists in LA vow to change that: 1/21
"Athens In LA: Working Towards A Rebirth of Democracy" randomlengthsnews.com/archives/2024/…
Known as civic or citizen’s assemblies, they use sortition — jury-like selection by lot — to convene a representative sample of a city, state or nation to engage in factually-based deliberation to achieve consensus on a path of action. 2/21
My latest at Salon: A 3-part glossary provides a guide to the dominionist threat in America. Biden's Gaza policy may be horrific, but these folks think Armageddon is a good thing. We damn sure need to understand them in order to stop them. 1/15 salon.com/2024/05/26/cra…
The glossary's first section, "Preliminary Terms" lays the foundations for understanding dominionism today. White "Christian nationalism" for example (the belief that America was founded as—and was intended by God to be—a Christian nation) has been around much longer: 2/15
"Christian Zionism," around since the 19th century, is key to understanding MAGA "support for Israel" that's actually destructive to both Jews & Palestinians: 3/15