By David Futrelle
White supremacist blogger Matt Forney certainly picked a dramatic way to announce he would no longer be affiliating with the alt-right. In a Facebook posting several days ago, which he subsequently deleted, Forney declared that the internet-enabled fascist movement had become “a coven for homosexual pedophiles.”
Repeating accusations from a podcast that he said had been proven “100 percent true,” Forney charged that self-declared “fashy faggots” associated with the website The Right Stuff were
using … pool parties (IRL meetups) to groom teenage boys into sleeping with them, which [one alt-rightist named] Ghoul did to a 17-year old … at the Chicago pool party. Oh, and Ghoul had been grooming this poor kid since he was 15.
Forney said that others associated with The Right Stuff “knew what Ghoul was doing but didn’t say or do anything.”
Meanwhile, Lucian B. Wintrich of the far-right Gateway Pundit blog has been using Twitter to publicly question alt-right celebrity Richard Spencer about his alleged “degeneracy” — seemingly basing his “reporting” on DMs from second-hand anonymous sources.
.@RichardBSpencer so tell me about your degeneracy – I'm v curious…. pic.twitter.com/XqU7dq5vz6
— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) June 17, 2017
.@RichardBSpencer we're writing a story – comment? pic.twitter.com/uJIdl7ho6g
— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) June 17, 2017
In other tweets Wintrich gives up the pretense that he is practicing journalism entirely:
"Let's save the white race." — Richard B Spencer pic.twitter.com/FXz2a7OrNw
— Lucian B. Wintrich (@lucianwintrich) June 18, 2017
It’s worth pointing out that the “evidence” here is vague and second-hand, and that even if these charges are true it’s not clear that the accused have broken any laws. We don’t know the ages of the “younger men” referred to by Wintrich’s source. As for the “pool party” referred to by Forney, the age of consent in Illinois is 17, so Ghoul’s alleged sexual encounter would have been legal — if skeezy as hell.
It’s clear that both Wintrich and Forney expect others on the far-right to be at least as outraged by the idea that prominent alt-rightists have been having gay sex as by the possibility that they have committed statutory rape. In his deleted Facebook post, Forney repeatedly refers to allegedly gay alt-righists as “sodomites” and “homos,” and indignantly complains that
the people who freaked out about me living in the Phillipines and sleeping with non-white women were aiding and abetting sodomites who groomed teenage boys into sex. They’re worse than the left. …
If the alt-right is unwilling to expose, denounce, and cast out the homosexuals within its midst, then I am an enemy of the alt-right and I will work from this day forward to destroy it.
Forney and Wintrich’s accusations have been met with a good deal of skepticism amongst alt-rightists, most of whom seem far more concerned by other, more public, signs that their movement in on the verge of a virtual civil war.
Spencer, for his part, has devoted much of his time in recent days to attacking “alt-lite” troll Jack Posobiec and Rebel Media’s Laura Loomer for their instantly infamous disruption of a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
The first time this rube attends a play, he tries to shut it down. https://t.co/gO7OTmDsGK
— Richard Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) June 17, 2017
I absolutely support the arrest and imprisonment of Laurie Loomer and other "Alt-Light" activists who behave like antifa.#FreeLaurie
— Richard Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) June 17, 2017
In other tweets, Spencer has kept the feud running, calling Posobiec “an outright liar and hypocrite,” “Cuck Posobiec,” and “Crooked Jack Posobiec, lion of the Fake Right.”
Posobiec has responded by signal-boosting the accusations against Spencer and The Right Stuff.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/876511244945117186
Spencer and other alt-rightists have been organizing for a “Free Speech Rally” in Washington on June 25th. Originally, both Posobiec and Loomer were scheduled to speak. Both have bowed out because of Spencer’s attacks.
Now Posobiec has decided to organize a competing rally — also on the 25th, also in Washington — to protest “Political Violence.” Both Loomer and Wintrich are scheduled to attend.
The dueling rallies neatly symbolize the current state of animosity between the alt-right and the alt-lite. Forney and Wintrich’s accusations didn’t create these divisions, but have certainly helped to cement them.
I ran out of time to finish my footnote:
That meant that you had to break the law and submit to prosecution and hope that the trial court would find in your favor. The judge in my district would sentence people to two years of hospital duty instead of prison, but by the time I was sentenced I wasn’t in the mood for that sort of cop-out.
@GOM
Honestly, I think O-Wizzle was talking about people who say we shouldn’t send armies to fight Nazis.
I don’t think he really meant we should all personally drop what we’re doing and go fight Nazis, just that we shouldn’t prevent other people from doing so.
Upon reflection, I should’ve put “cis women” and “cis [X] men” rather than just leave it implied.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Nice shirt!
I wore my “social justice street samurai” shirt in my local pride parade Saturday.
I don’t think punching Nazis at a protest or getting involved in violence at this point will accomplish anything. Recently (past 20 years or so), Ward Churchill argued that nonviolent tactics are racist and hypocritical, but I think that mindset often misrepresents nonviolence (which is situational and not strict pacifism) and does more harm than good.
Nonviolence doesn’t mean that Nazis deserve “equal time” to force you to listen to their propaganda when you don’t want to.
@GrumpyOldSocialJusticeMangina
Both of my late grandparents on my mom’s side were just teenagers when the Vietnam War started. I’d believe that they’d appreciate your political actions if they ever had the chance to know you.
One aspect of the Night of the Long Knives that surprised me – the SA (storm troopers) were typically working class or working class sympathetic. During the early years, they attracted numbers of embittered veterans who would engage in street brawls with Communists and were instrumental in defeating the Bavarian Soviet Republic. They managed to be anti-capitalist *and* anti-communist.
Years later, when Hitler was consolidating power, the industrialists and financiers he was courting for support found the SA unacceptable to their bourgeois sensibilities. Between that, Rohm’s popularity, and the homosexuality, it was clear that something would have to change.
@ gosjm
FWIW, I think there’s a world of difference between someone like yourself who took a principled stand in relation to a specific conflict (and was willing to put some skin in the game with regards to the consequencess) and somebody who isn’t a target of Nazis telling victims they should just turn the other cheek.
Grumpy, you bring up a solid point: Kids from poor families being sent to fight rich men’s wars, with strict-pacifist religion from birth as only exception? Sounds like fascism to me. Therefore, it must be fought with whatever weapons were to hand. Conscie status was all well and good if one could get it, but as you point out, very few could. That was no doubt on purpose. Under those circumstances, draft-dodging was no dishonor, and as a Canadian, I can say without a doubt that my country was changed for the better by the thousands of anti-war, anti-draft US guys who came here around the time I was born.
I’d be remiss, though, if I didn’t note that the biggest anti-war movement during the Vietnam era wasn’t hippies or not-yet-inducted draft dodgers, it was uniformed GIs fighting the system from within. There were over HALF A FUCKING MILLION desertions from US armed forces during ‘Nam. That’s over ten times the number that came home in body bags to have their names inscribed on the Wall! In other words, the picture painted by “Rambo” and other ’80s revisionist movies, of hippies spitting on soldiers coming home wounded, is complete bullshit. (I’d highly recommend the documentary “Sir! No, Sir!”, and Jerry Lembcke’s book, The Spitting Image, for proof that the civilian anti-war movement and the soldiers who fought in the war were, in fact, eye-to-eye on this issue…and not on opposing sides, either.)
But yeah: the wars against fascism were different. There, it was leftists volunteering to fight them, no drafts needed. I used the plural purposefully here, because there was not just World War II, but the Spanish Civil War. The latter was, in fact, the first anti-fascist war, and it was the war the fascists won. Spain remained fascist until Franco died in 1975. It was an utter disgrace. And the so-called “democracies” of the west ought to be held to blame for that, because they forbade their citizens to fight in the International Brigades, and tried hard to deprive them of passports so they couldn’t travel to the south of France and get into Spain that way (it was usual for Brigades joiners to cross the French/Spanish border at Perpignan). The Spanish war against fascism is also notable for being the first instance of fully racially integrated armies coming together to fight a racist enemy (who was, ironically, NOT above using Moorish mercenaries from Morocco, turbans and all, to bolster his insufficient “pure” Catholic Spanish troops — the first and only real example of Islamofascism!)
I’d also recommend some reading on the subject, by Dorothy Livesay, whose Archive for our Times, a collection of letters, poems, journalistic clippings and essays on the subject was compiled in a book by Porcépic several years ago. She (who was a communist back in the day when it was most common) talks about the Canadian left and its moral struggle with the fascism dilemma: do we fight, on principle, or refuse to go to war — also on principle? One really does get a sense, from reading her, how torn the Canadians were. And to see what it was like through the eyes of the Canadians who went with the Abe Lincoln and Mackenzie-Papineau brigades and actually fought in Spain, there’s a documentary by the NFB, hard to get one’s hands on here anymore, but the NFB site has it:
https://www.nfb.ca/film/los_canadienses/
But yeah. Anyone who says it’s “sinking to their level” to punch a Nazi should remember this: The Nazis didn’t just punch people, they rounded them up into cattle cars. They gassed them. They tortured them in “scientific” racist experiments. And bombed them. And even shoved some of them into crematory ovens while still alive. And they didn’t do it just because somebody in a black mask bopped their Dear Leader upside the head. “Sinking to their level” to merely punch one, and so discourage him from disrupting the Women’s March on Washington, just as the Battle of Cable Street finally showed Oswald Mosley and the rest of his British fascists what was what? I don’t think so. That one punch, that barely messed up Dickie’s hair, discouraged him from showing his face where it wasn’t wanted. On more than one occasion, I suspect.
And it’s their side that advocates for genocide, although they’re doing their damnedest to spin it so that people think it’s whites being wiped out by all those dark, dangerous, overbreeding Others. No. No, it’s not. Merely being reminded that white people have no right of ownership to the entire fucking planet isn’t genocide. It’s putting things in perspective. And perspective is one thing that every fascist sorely lacks. (If they had it, they wouldn’t be fucking fascists, and they wouldn’t need to get smacked upside the head to make them see straight every now and then.)
I do suppose that if one tries to talk back to thugs in their own language, it’s not a good look. But if it’s the only language they understand, then for fuck’s sake, belt ’em. How else are they going to realize that they are NOT the voices of the Silent Majority that they claim to be? I’m not going to clutch my pearls over that. I’m gonna hand ’em to someone else to hold while I do my bit for real democracy…
Well, looky here. Look what Dox Vay has been up to.
https://www.wired.com/story/welcome-to-the-wikipedia-of-the-alt-right/
(H/T to Boink x 5, my buddy supreme. ?????)
There would be pretty bad consequences for me if the far right gets more powerful. I’m not saying victims should try to be civil to fascists or that they have some obligation to be civil. Being civil is functionally pro-fascist.
Oops, correction: The Dorothy Livesay book I’m referring to is Right Hand Left Hand. I just spotted it on my shelf. Sorry for the confusion!
Fascist and communist groups had their own paramilitary wings in the 1930’s and some were bigger than the number of active duty soldiers in the state military. The situation was different.
The alt-right is trying to provoke people to engage them violently. Don’t give them what they want. They’re a death cult and they want escalation.
It can never be said enough. Facts have a liberal bias. The right knows that can’t win on the facts so they simply create their own.
http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/files/2012/09/339059_276719229095557_1579820924_o.jpg
@ history nerd
I’m not so sure. The quote about “History repeats. First as tragedy, then as farce.” is feeling uncomfortably pertinent right now.
@Gussie Jives I saw that Richard III documentary, too. 🙂 I was sooo happy that they let him keep the armour. Loved his comment about ‘I’ll be riding around the garden on my bike with the armour on!’ 🙂
@History Nerd
I understand. It would be a problem for most of us. To be honest I think it’s better to just ignore them and focus on rebuilding the left. The far right already chose to depict the leftwingers as violent, irrational destroyers, no debate can exist between us and them now. Hearing the word “antifa” is enough for them to yell bloody murder and play the victims.
Today I learned about Randy Bryce, one of the democrat candidates for Congress in Wisconsin. He’s going against Paul Ryan. I really like him, he still hasn’t published his list of policies but I intend to support him anyways. The GOP doesn’t speak about him because they don’t think he stands a chance to win but I trust him. Watch his ad on youtube, it’s pretty sweet.
@weirwoodtreehugger
Correction: Most people would be at least center-left once they’re aware of the facts as long as they’re not complete chauvinists.
@Grumpy
Thank you sharing your story. There was a lot there that I did not know.
WW1 created many pacifists among the French vets. But many vets eventually went the other way, toward fascism. I am starting to suspect that preference for/tolerance of authoritarianism on a personal level is key to this. Remember that was the common denominator among T supporters…
Apologies if this has been already posted.
http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/338620-senate-to-reject-trumps-air-traffic-control-plan-in-aviation-bill
Ha hahahahahahha eat bar soap you pathetic excuse of a world leader!
@PeeVee @WWTH
Boom! Exactly.
Seriously though. Have they ever wondered why Wikipedia is so biased? To me it doesn’t even look biased, it just seems like the writers are trying to be fair.
I just read Cernovich’s Wikipedia page and there’s really nothing wrong with it. If the conspiracy theorist part bothers the far right then it’s their problem, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s indeed a conspiracy theorist. If Pizzagate is true then he should investigate further and prove it. If not, then keep his label.
Even Rational Wiki is liberal.
By the way, one thing about the article really bothers me. It’s not the first time Wired leaves me speechless. They’ve been promoting the alt-right for a while now, and it’s really starting to annoy me. It’s almost as if the writer of the article is wishing for Wikipedia to be replaced. This type of biased writing I really can’t accept, it’s not like Wikipedia is hurting anybody. It’s an encyclopedia stating the facts about people. It receives way too much hate.
@Bina, Lady Commander of Empress Francesca I’s Cohor Germanorum
Re: The Holocaust
The Alt-reich like to minimize or erase the Holocaust for exactly the reason you describe; they can’t meaningfully say that we’re just like the nazis if one takes into consideration the actions of the real Nazis, because we are simply incapable of the sort of atrocities that the real Nazis perpetrated.
So they make fun of the Holocaust and minimize it by reducing it to a punch-line of a funny joke, by doing things like posting epic memes such as “Oy vey, muh SIX GORILLION! GIB ME SHEKELS! MUH SHOAH! OY VEY WHAT A SHOAH!” and calling themselves The Daily Shoah and so on.
I am certain that their bloviating and bellowing about “MUH WHITE GENOCIDE! DA JOOS ARE TELLING MUH WHITE WOMENS TO BUY CATS AND BE LGBT AND HAVE SEX WITH BLACK MEN TO DO A WHITE GENOCIDE! JOOS ARE DOING A WHITE GENOCIDE ON US!” is intended to also draw attention away from the atrocities the Nazis committed and the atrocities the Alt-Reich would like to commit.
After all, you can’t accuse them of evil intention for wanting to genocide other races if they are already the target of a phony, bogus genocide comprised of cute cats, interracial sex, and being LGBT.
Or they do things like this:
So the Nazis are being retconned to look like glorious heroes who were just trying to make being White great again, and the Jews are cast as these horrible, evil monsters who want to erase all white people from the earth, ever.
@Gussie Jives,
Thank you for posting about that Richard III documentary!!! Bloody fantastic 😀
@dslucia,
Congratulations, you smart cookie – that’s awesome 🙂