In addition to the hard Nazi right celebrating Donald Trump's election, we've got this kid who murdered all these students in Parkland wearing a Make America Great Again hat and putting his swastikas in his books.

According to Kali Holloway on Alternet, the Southern Poverty Law Center just come out with a new study. There have been more than "100 people killed or injured by alleged perpetrators influenced by the so-called 'alt-right' - a movement that continues to access the mainstream and reach young recruits."

This began in 2014, they're saying. This is just a three or four year old phenomenon.

"The SPLC report tracks the rise in alt-right related violence beginning in 2014, when 22-year-old Elliot Rodger murdered six people and injured 14 others in Isla Vista, California. Like many alt-right adherents, Rodger’s radicalization began in men’s rights forums, which helped stoke his racism, misogyny and self-loathing. "

Men's rights typically means white men's rights.

"The study identifies 13 killers who have collectively killed 43 people and injured 67 others. ... The SPLC notes that the most conspicuous unifying background trait among these individuals is a "history of consuming and/or participating in the type of far-right ecosystem that defines the alt-right.""

We need to be very clear about what right-wing movements are. Right-wing movements are authoritarian, hierarchical, patriarchal and prone to violence. You look at the the hard right movements in the Islamic world, there is al-Qaeda and Isis. You look at the hard right movements that are growing in Europe, Marine Le Pen and the National Front in France and the new neo-nazi movements in Poland, Hungary and in Greece. They all associate themselves with militarism, with guns, with violence, with white supremacy and with male power. And that's what's going on.

And these kids in Parkland now, boys and girls, young men and women, are standing up and saying, no, we don't want to have any part of this. We don't want to be part of this. We want a country that is safe, where children can go to school without fear of being murdered.

"An Anti-Defamation League report released late last month noted that there has been a drastic increase in the amount of "white supremacist propaganda -- flyers, stickers, banners, and posters -- appearing on college and university campuses"."

2017 was defined as the most violent year in the existence of the alt-right so far. You'll recall back in 2009 a report that was prepared at the direction of George W Bush when he was president. He left office on January 20th of 2009 and so George Bush's report on the alt-right, on the far right, by the FBI and the Department of Justice was published as Obama was coming into office. The hard right went nuts. Right-wing hate radio, Fox so-called News, all the publications funded by billionaires, all the networks controlled by billionaires, all these right-wing ones, they just went ballistic: "oh my god, they're talking about us, and Obama just stop the insanity." He said okay, we're going to pull the report. And so we were never even appropriately warned that hardcore right-wingers, these people who who by and large hate people of color, hate women, hate anybody who doesn't gender conform, hate babies, just hate and grievance is their currency.

It is the product that they sell. It is the water that they swim and it is the air that they breathe. Without it they're nothing, they're pathetic, frightened little people without their hate and their fear, without their weapons and their threats, without their bullying. Donald Trump has got to be one of the most frightened people on the planet right now.

-Thom


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