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.
Wikipedia isn’t really biased.
They’re pretty well sourced. I don’t think it’s meant to replace good old fashioned research for term papers and the like, but they do provide sources that one can check out themselves. That’s how I view it, anyway.
I didn’t get that the author wanted Wiki replaced, although that *is* what the alt-right wants. Remember, these are the same guys who say Snopes, Politifact, and the SPLC are a bunch of Lying McLiars.
I award the Alt-Right 9,463 Pinnochios for their “alternate facts.” And I hope their little wikifap goes nowhere.
? dslucia: CONGRATULATIONS!!! ?
Speaking of RationalWiki, the best “right-wing rando has a snit in public” incident I’ve witnessed was someone arguing that Cultural Marxism was too a real phenomenon that was threatening Western civilisation, and providing two links to support their point – the Wikipedia page for the Frankfurt School, which accurately describes it as a niche mid-20th century philosophy and art theory movement that occasionally pops up in baseless conspiracy theories, and the RationalWiki page for Cultural Marxism, which describes the theory as literal Nazi propaganda.
They then got very cross and accused everyone who pointed out that the sources they cited explicitly undermined their argument of “cheating”.
(Incidentally – I wonder if we could start convincing people that the origin of Cultural Marxism is not in fact the Frankfurt School, but the Heidelberg School?)
In a teaching context, Wikipedia certainly has an unfairly bad rep. Obv it’s nowhere near as credible as peer-reviewed articles, but a lot of the academic entries are well done and properly backed up. From my experience (anecdata alert), there’s too much emphasis in schools and unis on warning students against Wikipedia, and not enough on warning them away from those goddamn #$#%**$# essay factories.
@Diptych,
I was just reading something yesterday about the right’s obsession with the Frankfurt School. It’s truly, truly odd. I was wondering why they didn’t go for Althusser who’s been far more influential in this area – then I remembered that Louis wasn’t Jewish 😐
@Mish
If something on wikipedia is properly sourced, then you can use the sources rather than citing wikipedia. I’ve seen way too much fatphobia, homophobia, and anti-feminist views on there to call it a good source. Plus, back when I knew a lot of information under NDA about a company I worked for, I could find something factually incorrect on almost any article I read on wikipedia about that company or its products. Rumors repeated enough were considered fact. It was pretty ridiculous.
@Kupo
The fact that ‘black supremacy’ even merits a page on Wikipedia is clearly indicative of how skewed it is.
Mind you, I do, actually, get a lot of information from Wikipedia, so I’m not discrediting it; I’m just saying it does, in fact, have some ridiculous stuff on it.
@Fran, why?
Should black supremacist fringe groups recognized by the SPLC be swept under a rug?
@Fran
That’s messed up. I didn’t know that page existed. But, honestly, I shouldn’t be surprised.
I still use it as my go-to research tool, but more as a jumping-off point.
@kupo, @Empress Fran,
Absolutely, yes. I often tell students (1) check the sources themselves and use them if they’re good, & (2) if you’re completely unfamiliar with a theory or discipline (etc.) Wikipedia usually gives a good broad overview to get you started. I still wouldn’t allow it as a source, but I don’t think it’s the equivalent of Satan himself 🙂
My gripe was more about how Wikipedia is maligned as a source when there’s stuff online that’s far more problematic and that students are using. I guess this is about how we teach information literacy and critical thinking.
@PeeVee
No, but Wikieditors can add them as a footnote to an article that covers ideological platforms that they share. I feel like giving them an entire page lends credence to the ol’ “Both sides are the same!” mantra that’s been so much in vogue recently, and allows the public to feel as though they are as much a threat as white supremacist groups.
I don’t believe that they are nice; many of them consider LGBT black people, such as myself, to be abominations. I have heard people who Wikipedia would consider ‘black supremacists’ talk about how they would cut a t-word like myself, so it’s not like I think they’re snuggly little bunnies. They are, indeed, quite dangerous.
@Fran,
Well, I suppose that’s true of any page dedicated to any group at all, though, right? White supremacist groups, too?
And, of course, any group at all that thinks they’re “superior” to any other part of the population are assholes.
@Fran
I’m more with @PeeVee on this one. Specially considering what already gets it’s own page on Wikipedia. To me, the content of the page is more important than its existence. I do see your point tho 🙂
However
@PeeVee
Come on now, that’s not the same. And not what she was saying either…
@PeeVee
Well, given the fact that White Supremacists have had a great deal more clout, historically speaking, I think their getting a page is warranted.
I mean, they did actually manage to make an ethnostate in the form of Nazi Germany, wrote well-respected scientific tomes about the superiority of the White Race that were accepted by past academics as being perfectly reasonable knowledge, terrorized an entire nation for years after slavery was ended in the US in the form of the Notorious K.K.K., and countless other small things I’ve probably forgotten to mention, not to mention the deaths they’ve caused that probably number in the thousands if not the tends of thousands.
This.
Plus, if you say black people are superior beings that can attack you with their mind and shrug off damage, you’re just going to encourage police officers to keep killing us, and for the medical profession to harm us the way they usually do by not using enough anesthetic, withholding pain medication and psychiatric medication, and ignoring our symptoms.
So they’re fucking it up for us. On that I agree entirely.
@Axe, I meant that the editors can put it’s own spin on their platform. Because that is what Fran’s objection was to.
@Fran, I hope you were using the umbitquitous “you.”
@PeeVee
Yup! Not you personally, because, you know, you personally are an intelligent person who realized the danger such nonsense poses to our community.
@PeeVee
Oh, OK. I thought her objection was to there being a page at all, regardless of spin…
Eh, it really is, but in the opposite direction.
SFHC, oh, I knew about their sexism and misogyny, but that’s not what I was actually talking about when I said that they’re not really biased.
I mean, every goddamned industry out there has this shit going on.
@Mish & PeeVee:
Thanks. I was pretty surprised to get that letter in the mail today, especially since this was my first year back in school since I graduated from high school in 2010.
@dslucia
http://cdn.smosh.com/sites/default/files/bloguploads/epic-high-five-panny-phantom.gif
@Axe ‘Danger’ Calibur:
Now I’m thinking which one of us is Danny and which one is Tucker? ‘Cause I could dig having ghost powers, but I’d also like being a tech genius.
@Bina: There is a fascinating book, M.I.A. or Mythmaking in America, by H. Bruce Franklin (who was fired from the faculty of Stanford for his anti-Vietnam-War activities). Franklin shows how the POW/MIA issue was developed in large part by H. Ross Perot to help the Nixon administration block peace talks and blame it on the North Vietnamese to help pacify the US people. He then discusses how the non-existent POW’s who were supposedly kept by the Vietnamese after the war were taken by Hollywood to create a national myth about the goodness of the US and the evil of the nasty little yellow rats they were fighting against, of which Rambo is the best known example. (It was all just an excuse for the most outrageous kind of racism.) In fact, there is only one known case of a US soldier who stayed behind; that was Robert Garwood, who served as a prison guard and interrogator for the North Vietnamese, and then eventually decided to come back to the US — and the Vietnamese let him go, gladly one suspects.
The classic book on the Spanish Civil War that I’m familiar with is Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.
@Alan: I was raised by a Harvard-educated lawyer who had to volunteer several times in order to serve in World War II — he was overage and color-blind. He served as an artillery instructor and never got into combat; he ended up as a lieutenant colonel in the reserves. He supported my decision — while I was going through the courts he was running for Congress as an anti-war candidate — because he thought that the US had no legitimate national security interest in Vietnam, and in any case was stupid to get into a land war in Asia. He himself had a scar in the corner of his mouth where he was knifed by a Communist counter-demonstrator while leading a Socialist protest outside the New York Stock Exchange. I wasn’t brought up to avoid a fight even though I wouldn’t use violence.
I forgot to mention that Perot was rewarded for his work on the POW issue by being given the contract to do IT work for Medicare that made him a billionaire.
Been reading up a bit on the whole Nazi punching thing. There’s a lot of stuff out there; it’s practically a genre now. Found this, which I think nicely encapsulates the general issue.
Not getting a huge amount of work done today. But anyway, this is Miss Victory. Her stories centered around the fantastical notion that there could be Nazis in Washington DC.
Is anyone else secretly hoping that GrumpyOld SocialJusticeMangina continues to tell us snippets of his life story? It’s amazing.
Alan’s awesome comics reminded me of the present I just sent off to my sister, who lives interstate. I got her: a bio of Brett Whiteley; a notebook with a cover made out of an old Blondie vinyl (Parallel Lines, fyi); and a sketchbook fashioned out of a very old Marvel Superheroes digest (thank you, Supanova!).
I must confess it kind of hurt, parting with them 😀