Before I start this, I don’t like “Dr.” Umar Johnson, I don’t like the Nation of Islam cult, or generally most black nationalist movements. However, I want the best for black people.
Blackness in the context of Western Civilization was intended to be the “antithesis” to the “thesis” of white supremacy, colonialism, exceptionalism, deification, etc. Better put, blackness is the “yang” to the “ying” of whiteness. Though this is a manufactured dialectic, an engineered binary, etc., which was intended to create a caste system for the benefit of generating wealth for a top-down hierarchy between the ruling class and the peasantry – where race was used as a layer of division to disunite the common human proletariat – the truth is that the dialectic has sunken deep into the ontology, consciousness, what have you, of Western civilization. Even if the dialectic isn’t purely from a wealth accumulation standpoint, the truth is we are all human laboring under the illusion of self, etc.
As a result, blackness as personified by African bodies that were forcibly absorbed into Western civilization during the Trans-Atlantic Slavery and Colonial periods, notably of the Americas and continental Africa itself, is…black. By black, I mean nihilistic.
Blackness is the personification of Western nihilism that was constructed to give purpose and meaning to “solution” of “whiteness”. Black bodies are seen as “challenges” to be triumphed against, trained for, brutalized, humbled, etc. Black culture is seen a reminder of the civilizing tendencies of “white culture”. Black de-valuation is seen as an easy means of boosting “white valuation”, for example, impoverished whites seeing themselves as more in alignment with the white upper class rather than black lower class, i.e., whites at the bottom can appropriate upwards, whereas black people who succeed are continuously dragged down by the “black bottom”, etc. Yet, the irony is that black culture is all of these things, i.e., black people also choose to live in the binary of being polar opposites just for the sake of it, and as a result, the system gets what it wants…an easily agitated and divided public.
The further construction of blackness is the tendency towards self-annihilation, and by that I don’t mean breeding or baby making, but rather the cannibalistic and infectious nature of toxic masculinity (street law, street justice, etc.). To me a black man for example means to push out emotion, care, sympathy, honor, etc. Black men brutalize each other each day as black men jockey over petty squabbles of maintaining societal notions of masculinity, but not just any notion, but this purposely crafted dialectical notion explicitly intended for black people.
Wow, I was probably nearly a year ago when I was living up in Seattle.
I was sitting in a restaurant for lunch and noticed a man outside pacing around a fairly busy intersection. He was speaking to himself, his pants sagged, and was walking in a defensive posture, as if he was defending himself from the world, a world of his possibly damaged psyche. He held a rod of some sort and twirled it around defensively at imaginary threats, who seemed to be after what few belongings he had on a rollable cart.
Yet even though my defensive senses were raised, I looked at the guy with a bit of sadness.
As I left the restaurant, I crossed eyes with the man, and I saw fear in him. His eyes had the pinkish redness of a crying toddler or that of an adult on the verge of tears – the eyes slightly burning. Maybe he is freaking out over the fact he doesn’t know where his next meal is coming from, where he will sleep, or if his meds might run out? You never know.
This erratic behavior seems to have been a defensive reflex. Maybe he “looks scary” because he has to? He likely was a mentally ill ex-prisoner fighting for survival, but now is basically a homeless man with shellshock roaming the city, fighting whatever demons he has.
Yet, even as he paced around, people walked right past him.
No one is going to call the cops, because people fear that cops might see a mentally-ill black man and treat him like a violent criminal possibly leading to his death. Police in general in the wake of the Summer of 2020 seem to be not doing their jobs as well as they can because of pride, i.e., they want the public who called them out to crawl back to them.
It seems our current times are this odd mix of dialectical (bipolar) tension. The Left is softer on crime, yet way more understanding about the factors that leads to social issues, whereas conservatives are tougher on crime but being tougher on crime doesn’t fix crime, but simply sweeps it away, just for it to reappear later, especially since crime isn’t simply a matter of oversimplified morals (right vs wrong). The conservative approach is to simply to lock up people, evict people, put them on buses to far away states (liberal ones), etc.
But, seeing people simply walk past him and not make much of a fuss, even as the man tried destroying a sign of an ice cream parlor, it made me think of Michel Foucault.
I’m no expert on the guy. Never read him. I’m aware of him. He’s one of those people who was so influential that you sort of gain his knowledge by osmosis since elements of progressive culture, similar to the impact of Herbert Marcuse, was so influential.
One idea that he was notable for writing about was how systems created a clinical gaze towards the mentally ill, whom previously had been a part of the overall community, e.g., the town-square drunkard or babbling homeless guy, but this modernist clinical gaze created inadvertently a new type of oppression, a type of reductionist viewpoint, resulting in mentally ill people not be treated holistically but being attacked by systemic violence that marginalizes their existences (solitary confinement, forced medications, strip searches, showers by hosing, experimentation, shock therapy, lobotomies, sterilization, etc.). Further, Foucault spoke about the prison style known as the panopticon which is a euphemism for the spy and police state.
Foucault seems to have been trying to say is that the mentally ill still have thoughts, even if their thoughts aren’t conventional, and maybe in some strange way, there’s certain levels of wisdom there, similar to how older or more ancient cultures might have looked on a mentally ill person, such as one suffering from what we consider to be schizophrenia today, and figured they were communicating on higher level.
It seems safe to say that Foucault’s then controversial views have made the world a better place by questioning ableism. For example, Greta Thunberg instead of seeing her Aspergers as a crutch, she rather embraced her condition as a superpower, and she shows she can still be a productive member of society who wishes for its well-being.
It seems that cities with progressive policies are today still subconsciously influenced by Foucault’s anti-ableist analysis and are tolerant of the mentally ill in public.
And, sure, let’s say that is all fine. The only issue is that this tolerance is still inhabiting a capitalist system, where I would argue that the capitalist system is making more mentally ill people, so we end up never getting ahead of solutions but always reacting to issues. Since liberals are still related to classical liberalism, it seems that the charity towards the mentally ill gets monetized and absorbed into bureaucracy, more so intent on provide jobs and administration, rather than fixing the underlying problem.
The pressures of working jobs where performance metrics are becoming more and more draconian on the grounds of maximizing profits; a materialist culture designed to emotionally, physically, and even sexually manipulate us into making consumer purchases to maintain our status in hierarchal social systems; the rising cost of living where most of a person’s income goes toward rents thus to entertain themselves they might self-medicate more (the cheaper option) or dissociate into digital fantasy landscapes, and, let’s not forget the postmodern implications of the internet spewing every conspiracy theory, hyper-real depictions of violence, etc.
We need to fund with taxes overnight and/or court-orereded mental health facilities, because A) they provide a place for people to sleep, eat, be safe, etc., and B) mentally ill people aren’t thrown into jails where they can be prey or harmful to others.
As capitalism continues to eat away at every aspect of modern life, commodifying everything in its path, it is no surprise that we in the United States live with crime, homelessness, disparity, mental illness, communicable diseases, police altercations, gentrification, etc., are growing in scope and scale.
The problem is that our society has merged three things which should be separately funded and managed which are prisons/jails/halfway houses/juvenile detention centers, drug rehab centers, and mental health facilities (i.e., formerly called asylums).
The “merging” is likely due to privatization as former government ran institutions were slowly “contracted out” to free-market businesses, where many are public, thus they have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value. The easiest way to maximize profit is of course to cut costs, reduce quality, and merge job specialties, which are argued for with fancy business lingo or phrases such as achieving economies-of-scale, lean management, maximizing shareholder value, reducing redundancy, etc.
The problem is that the scope of prisons, mental health facilities, and drug rehabs are often merged.
Drug addicts are thrown in jail and many become indebted to criminal gangs, and the inability to pay debts might lead people to be physically or sexually assaulted (pimped out, sexual slavery), etc.
This increases risk of contracting communicable diseases, even if no sexual activity is occurring, e.g., being in a bloody fight with another inmate, being stabbed, etc.
Further, mentally ill people might be exploited outright, and even more so if they have drug addictions. The way the system is designed, it creates a toxic ecosystem. Drug addicts fuel the gang activity, and gang activity is often but not always racially segregated, thus increasing risks of riots and radicalizing inmates who will take their hateful ideology to the public to recruit more people, etc. Many gangs require life commitments, so some inmates once released, potentially fearing for their lives or those of their loved ones, help sustain criminal activity on the inside, .e.g, sending money, smuggling drugs, committing violence against enemies or informants, etc.
Former prisoners often state that the guards purposely created racial division, or rather they sustain it. It’s not uncommon to hear stories of guards watching prisoner fighters, betting on fights, setting up informants to be attacked, assisting in criminal activity such as smuggling, turning a blinded eye to sexual assaults, sexually assaulting inmates, etc.
On top of all these factors, many former inmates have hard times finding jobs or places to live, so drug addicts and/or mentally ill people, or people in general who are on hard times, often become homeless, thus causing another problem. Many inmates once released are given a bus ticket and told good luck and find themselves landing at every seedy bus station in every American city.
Since the night is much more dangerous than the daytime, homeless people might sleep and eat in the day, but are on guard duty the entire night, and many turn to drugs to stay awake.
In other words, everything is connected and understanding those connections and giving each step of the process is the only way to truly bring forth systemic reform. For example, when waging war, counties rarely factor in the high costs of taking care of veterans, and many of these veterans find themselves in the cycles I’ve been mentioning.
We need to fund society, i.e., the people’s government, and not simply take tax money and hand it over to contractors who bloat costs, because bad procurement processes/monitoring by auditing agencies doesn’t do good due diligence.
This is where we come further into conflict with capitalism.
State governments pander to corporations so they come to their state by cutting tax rates, and this ends up leading to a race to zero amongst the state governments. This results in “national austerity” placing long-term pressure on residents and workers who cover the load of taxes to fund society because corporations will threaten to leave if not given what they want. Yet, many people vote for these neo-liberal policies out of desperation, but also good propaganda methods by conservatives who decry big government in favor of “personal freedom”, but they fail to mention that the freedom for a corporation is more powerful than the freedom of a person.
Corporations sell this idea of freedom to the working class so corporate personhood can go untouched. It’s that simple.
Sure, your state might get jobs, but you’ll have underfunded public services, which cost more and more to fix if the problems get too out of control, ironically since private businesses fill the void and there’s no to little control over what they charge for services. The jobs promised by the companies might not pan out, with many creating fewer jobs than they promised to community leaders.
Also, it’s a myth that states without taxes are better off. States that can raise capital through taxes have the ability to invest in the public good, i.e., expanding wi-fi access which helps the poor or young search for jobs or obtain online certifications/education. Well-funded infrastructure is simply good for business. States that invest in mental health and drug reform might see improved relations with communities who see that police aren’t just enforcers of a capitalist system, but rather helpers in the community who can help refer people who need help to the right agencies.
Sure, Texas has a powerhouse economy, and no hate to the state objectively, but it also executes more people than any other state, its separate power grid failed during a winter storm, and I really can’t fathom the amount of pollution or cancer causes by the fossil fuels and corporate farming industry.
How much money did Fortune 500s lose due to Texas’ energy grid disaster? Or, how many Fortune 500 companies have decided to stay in California despite the price because California has the government power to try new things, which has resulted in attracting a skilled workforce?
Every state should have some type of income tax to help fund/hedge public services that serve all people regardless of their identity. States need to stand in unity so all states have some type of income tax so corporations can’t pit the states against each other. This state competition for jobs by reducing taxes causes mass migrations, which can have even more of an impact on social issues.
For example, the popular California vs Texas divide.
Many Californians are leaving the state due to lack of housing (building codes, increased material costs, property taxes, home owner associations, zoning laws, short-term rental market – AirBnB, Vrbo, etc. – which takes homes off the market, and foreign nations buying whole neighborhoods for portfolio assets), taxes, fees, overcrowding, lack of blue collar work, forest fires, state universities prioritizing out-of-state students so they can be charged more money with out-of-state tuition rates, etc.
Yet, the issue isn’t that California has an income tax but it might be an issue of the rate they charge, and the issue with Texas is they have no income tax to create the proper nest-eggs, rainy day accounts or emergency funds, thus corners are cut.
A state like Washington State which is traditionally Democratic doesn’t have an income tax, which is more so to appease the conservative elements of the state, while also appeasing big business who have to deal with Washington’s traditionally strong unionist workforce (IBEW, dock workers, aircraft mechanics, teachers, etc.). Yet, in all my travels and having lived all over the United States, I always noticed the West Coast has a strong homeless or vagabond culture, where people often attribute this to the fact that the West Coast the last destination of the Continental United States. However, Washington State like many other states have been privatizing mental health. A former court-ordered mental health facilities called Western State near Lakewood/Steilacoom WA was closed.
Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust, have become, sadly, and oddly, a form of pop culture, and not just any pop culture, but a hyper-real form of culture perpetuated by the omnipotent and fate-sealing power of the “algorithm”.Quinton Mitchell
I call it Nazi Pop.
I understand that history should be taught and preserved. I also understand that having different content creators helps analyze topics form different perspectives. However, I think there should at least be more disclaimers relating to Nazi content or at least some sort more intensive vetting process including but not limited to peer-review for YouTube videos on the subject. Also, creators of such content should have to disclose their public identity rather than hide behind avatars.
A large chuck of the profit percentage should go to charities such as those dedicated to Holocaust education or hate-group watchdog groups.
It seems many content creators have learned that making videos about Nazis is an easy way to get paid, yet many people don’t care about the money but rather they are potential Nazi sympathizers who have adapted to not seeming radical but instead brand themselves as “amateur historians”. For example, the YouTube pages such as the Zoomer Historian and History-at-War.
Sure, not everyone talking about Nazis are bad and the intent is often educational. Yet, even with these good faith actors the need to make money off Nazi content still stands. For example, let us look at lovable and iconic YouTube creator, Simon Whistler.
When I type in Simon Whistler Nazi on YouTube I see the following videos. Why Did So Many Nazis Choose Argentina to Flee to After WWII? (on Today I Found Out); Why Did So Many Nazis Choose Argentina to Flee to After WWII? (on Into The Shadows); Adolf Hitler – The Rise of a Fanatical Fuhrer (on Biographics); The “Nice” Nazis (on Sideprojects); War and Drugs – WWII Soldiers Go Mad on Meth (on Brain Blaze); Inside the Meeting that Engineered the Holocaust (on Into the Shadows); The Rise and Fall of the Nazi War Machine (on Warographics); The 1936 Olympic Games: Nazi Germany’s Gambit (on Into the Shadows); The “XX System”: How MI5 Made Fools of the Nazis (on Into the Shadows)…and honestly, there is at least 20 plus more.
I must stress that I think Simon Whistler is a legitimate content creator interested in sharing snippets of lost history.
Him aside, we have to be real there are likely Attomwaffen SS sympathizers etc. secretly making ambiguous pro-Nazi videos.
This is what I am saying. Is it education or entertainment? Sure, I have hope that humanity has learned its lessons but…we do live in a world that does seem to be dangerously flirting with a nostalgia for strong-men fascism, largely as a means of curbing the externalities of global capitalism (mass migration, free trade, etc.), which ironically is controlled by those who often fund…fascism.
In other words, the elite capital class are responsible for most of the world’s social ills but while they make profit, they also fund isolationist, nationalist, and often racist regimes because these fascist regimes often side with capitalism, especially as a means of opposing egalitarian ideas such as communism.
Elon Musk is the avatar for everything negative I am stating or insinuating in this post. An alleged “autistic savant”, Sorrow of Young Werner, edge lord, “Sit on my face” (Grandma’s Boy film reference), billionaire capitalist who panders to right wing grifters because they are more so aligned with the economic ideology that enables him to exploit, loot, scam, borrow, fake it till he makes it, and profit, etc.
I call this tendency to make Nazi videos for money on YouTube as being Nazi Pop. Nazi Pop Culture.
There seems to be something going on. There are a lot of “historical analysis” videos dedicated to “studying” (cough – worshipping) the Nazis, especially with a target audience comprised of Millennials, Zoomers, and this odd new “Newsweek”-coined generation called “Generation Alpha”. It is as if there is a bot farm spewing out these Nazi historical analysis videos as a means of subconsciously brainwashing a new crop of unwitting racists, “race realists”, etc., notably in the wake of a world that is unfairly – in my opinion – rallying against “wokeness”, where said “wokeness” is often, but not always, code-word in conservative circles for anything that is not white, straight, male, capitalist, selfish and likely Christian.
“Whiteness” has cleverly positioned itself as an “oppressed” status group, however, the political left often can’t help but to not use “whiteness” as the target to most of its own philosophical juxtapositions. Adding to this, because of the burdens of globalism, climate change, poverty, and wars, many refugees have fled into the Global North, thus causing race realist nationalism to rise.
The political left – though not wrong in its political and economic analysis of contemporary issues, at least from a pure analysis standpoint, as opposed to real life political experiments – often uses whiteness as the focal and starting point for many of its analytical arguments, and this, therefore, helps create a situation that actual white supremacist can exploit by providing a “safe space” for the often lost, frustrated, guilty, etc. White people who are tasked with analyzing their privilege but then rejecting the guilt associated with it when they feel they are being unfairly singled out, and at worst, disarmed from self-defense from the basic truths of human nature beyond race or color.
In other words, many white people feel they can’t defend themselves while also being blamed for the ills of society, and many people reject these feelings and are often recruited by bad faith actors who want to inculcate them into race realism, racism, Nazism, etc. Yet, the left or liberals can often be dismissive of this sentiment, but being dismissive doesn’t mean it goes away. However, this does not mean we need to coddle or excuse the truths of toxic masculinity, entitlement, the hypocrisies of patriarchy and the male gaze onto the female form, racism, etc.
I am not saying that whiteness, colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, etc., as is, as they are linked in our contemporary society, are not topics worth studying, however, the folly of let’s say…Marxists analysis…is that it reduces everything to base “non metaphysical” material that is in need of study, analysis, etc. Yet, my argument is that human nature is sure able to be understood, yet most humans are not thinking too deep about social issues besides simply trying to survive in peace. Also, my rebuttal to a full acceptance of applying Marxist analysis is that life is inherently…nonsensical and absurd. The Marxist tries to reduce everything to realist, evolutionary struggle in a sort of godless universe where no objective truths actually exist besides the truths we can analyze based on our evolution as a species, here and only here on Earth, based on understanding the crux of class throughout space and time. Sounds somewhat reasonable.
But why do we make art? Why do we do anything? What’s the point? The point is there is no point but there is a point. Life has purpose and in theory doesn’t. Life is a walking contradiction but because it is, we naturally apply some level of metaphysical justification to our actions. Sure, we can debate about the scope and scale about how we apply metaphysical explanation or justification to sustain our existences, yet, still humans often operate indifferent to being “analytical nerds” where everything is seen as a mindless construction of petty human efforts.
The tin-foil hat in me thinks that our current racial situation is in part manufactured. A sort of dialectical warfare situation where those at the top, typically the capital owners, use race as a means of disguising the institutional power that ironically helps maintain the one percent. The left thinks it is immune to this, but I suspect this is not the case because those at the top, are smarter than given credit for, considering that the left spends so much time in analyzing them. The one percent needs a racially divided proletariat in order to maintain the systems that maintains their power, yet, oddly, when someone says that “things are rigged” notably in matters of race, I notice the political-left itself is often dismissive of this allegation (which I can understand because such as allegation can be used lazily as a means of not deeply analyzing systemic power, however, it is naïve for the left to not admit that pitting the races against each other has always been a key strategy in debasing proletarian and labor-centric power). However, those on the Left don’t want to be dismissive of marginalized groups voices by prioritizing class consciousness over intersectionality, so if anything, it’s on said marginalized groups to accept that such divisive strategies are possible, but it may ironically not be good strategy for historically oppressed groups to acknowledge this considering the status quo can use this as a means of furthering silencing specific causes. Just one of the many seemingly, damned if you, demand if you don’t Catch 22’s we live under.
With the toxic revolt and reaction against diversity and inclusion, I, as black man who grew up largely in predominately white environments (which, I admit were often positive experiences, but yes I have experienced blatant racism), I notice on YouTube that many “content creators” are uploading videos dedicated to studying Nazism.
And, sure, there’s a lot of unpackage there, but I often suspect more sinister intentions. The phenomena are similar to the notion or trop of the “edge lord”. Instead of seeing what the Nazis did as bad, rather the Nazis are “pornified”. From their Hugo Boss uniforms, their innovations (rockets, synthetic oils, jet engines, the interstate systems, intercontinental ballistic missiles, propaganda, etc.), their national unity, etc., there is something that many people seem to deeply want to emulate. That is the sad thing about these YouTube videos for example. Many but not all seem to be about nostalgia rather than analysis of evil.
We must remember than since 2012 for example, which was the era that kicked off the police brutality riots – often against black people – than many college age people were children. Many have adopted the tenants of social justice to varying degrees, but others see social justice as establishment. This therefore opens the opportunity for actual Neo Nazis, who have innovated into doing video essays online, owning video game Reddit communities, etc., the ability to recruit a new crop of followers or apologists.
At first, the book White Noise by Don DeLillo creeps up in my mind. In that book, the main character, Jack Gladney, is the professor of Nazi Studies at some Midwest college, yet the character of Gladney was used by DeLillo as a means of detailing how even a monster such as Adolph Hitler became a sort of pop culture commodity in a postmodern and post-capitalist world. Even Family Guy by Seth MacFarlane pointed fun at this with his Hitler talk-show in his cartoon.
Even atrocities of wars gone by and the lessons thereof which should humble us as a species, instead become commodities or a means of gaining an income.
DeLillo’s prophetic words in his 1985 National Book Award winning novel (which were not done with justice in the 2023 movie adaptation in my opinion) sort of became reality. Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust, have become, sadly, and oddly, a form of pop culture, and not just any pop culture, but a hyper-real form of culture perpetuated by the omnipotent and fate-sealing power of the “algorithm”.
(1) Many Christian conservatives often fall into conspiracy theories, yet, isn’t obsessing over conspiracy theories a sign of not having faith? If their faith is so strong and God is in control, then it seems that Christians don’t really believe God…is…in…control. Once could go further and say that Christians who engage in conspiracy theory are actually engaging in blasphemy because people are still trying to control things rather than having faith in God making things right.
(2) It’s funny how people say the Second Amendment is about protecting us against a tyrannical government, yet, if that’s the case then why did so many white people not pick up arms to liberate black people from Jim Crow? Or, at a minimum be supportive of black people taking up arms to liberating themselves? Maybe it’s because what is “tyrannical” is subjective, i.e., just because you don’t like something you call it tyrannical, but what’s tyrannical to one is not to another. A lot of people seems Ok when a segment of the population was being oppressed.
(3) It’s interesting how conservatives said that COVID was a hoax, yet, the only way how Trump kept out migrants and refugees was through acknowledging that COVID existed with his use of Title 42 laws (the ability to keep people out of the USA because of public health concerns). So either COVID is real and was a real threat, or the Trump Administration used a hoax per conservative logic to keep out migrants, and in theory, per the law, violate the ability for people to seek asylum.
(4) Republicans say they want to bring money home, such as when talking about the Ukraine Russian War, etc., yet, this is the same party…. that wants to cut public education, raise social security (thus, increasing the chance of not getting it since you’re closer to dying, etc.).
(5) Conservatives are trying to argue that religion should not be separate from state, yet this just leads to xenophobia because society therefore becomes a battle of which religion has more power over the other because people don’t want to be rulee by a religion they don’t align with. Christian Nationalist also wanting secular power also negates their faith because in theory God is control and has a plan, yet it seems Christian Nationalist want to control the plan because deeply they don’t have faith and/or their faith is “bad faith”, i.e., for selfish, racist, sexist, etc., reasons. Which church would even rule? There are thousands of Protestant churches. Will we be…Church of God, Southern Baptist, Missionary Baptists, Anglican, Episcopalian, Methodist, African Methodist Episcopalian, Seventh Day Adventist, Unitarian, Roman Catholic, Coptic Christian, Orthodox, Quaker, Mennonite, Amish, etc.?
(6) Conservatives say they dislike government, despite hailing police agencies which are government institutions. Not saying that is good or bad, but just admit that conservatives do like elements of government.
(7) Conservatives want to ban adult content yet state they value free speech between consenting adults, where adults are legally allowed to enter into contracts, including contracts that includes the use of their bodies. By banning legal pornography all you do is create the market for illegal pornography which empowers criminals and ironically may help increase human trafficking. It’s also insane how Conservatives try to merge legal desire between adults with crime as a low IQ and strawman strategy to guilt people away from not being sexually empowered, educated, fulfilled, etc.
(8) Conservatives were saying All Lives Matters or say “I don’t see Color” but then freak out when a person of color is cast in movie in a role that was traditionally played by a white person.
(9) JD Vance, Trump’s Vice President, made fun of modern, independent-minded women by calling them “childless cat ladies”, yet, his benefactor, Peter Thiel is a gay man (not a crime) who can’t have children. Vance claims that people without children don’t care about the country, yet Peter Thiel is his benefactor and mentor
(10) It’s interesting how much the Blue Lives Matter crowd is silent when it comes to supporting Kamala Harris who was a prosecutor helping cops get convictions
(11) Conservatives are saying now that the Democrats are warmongers, yet, Republicans have made it very clear they are willing to go to war with Iran, and some even with China. They also pretended to care when Biden left Afghanistan. So… they wanted us to stay in the war in Afghanistan, yet are saying the want to end wars?
(12) Many American Christians are capitalist, but you can’t bring your money into the afterlife, and what is the point of making a lot of money if you want End Time to happen?
First off, black people can be racist despite this insane notion these days that black people cannot since black people “lack power”. But to believe this actually defeats Black Nationalist claims of supremacy and fosters a victim mentality, yet being ambiguous between victim and bigot is a form of power but being deceptive about it. Believing black people can’t be racist ironically is dehumanizing which defeats the claim of being empowered. Black people can be racist yet the scope of that racism is lesser if talking in terms of systems. So it’s not that black people objectively can’t be racist if we’re to entrain this often leftist notion, but rather their racism has little impact on larger systems; however, within smaller or interpersonal dymanics, of course black people can be racist within the context of tjem being minorities. Not holding us to the same standards is proof that certain forces want to instigate and perpetuate the racial divide. Everyone can punch but some punches have more weight behind them.
Regardless, I don’t want to hate Umar Johnson. I feel his intentions to want to help are correct but his prescription to solve the problems facing black people are unnecessary. He is playing the racial dialectic game without realizing that in many ways that is…the point of America, i.e., to keep the black-white binary (or, black-white and white adjacent binary – which includes white Hispanic, Arab, Asian, etc.) in perpetual struggle as a means of dividing the public, where such division notably amongst the traditional white poor (and, more recently the social climbing first to second generation Latino still figuring out where they stand in the racial hierarchy scheme) serves to protect the capitalist ruling class of predominantly white or white adjacent men.
Instead of a true class struggle beyond identity politics, figures like Umar Johnson exploit the more-so Left Wing (anti-colonial and self-deterministic) sentiment which calls for the need for certain communities to have their own “incubation period to resolve the issues of colonialism”, etc.
Umar usurps this calling for what I call the “incubation/healing phase” for oppressed groups and instead hijacks it to create a version of black supremacy and what I would argue is black fascism.
Hence, why I say Umar Johnson is the perfect example of the Horseshoe Theory, i.e., in the case of Left-Wing politics, if you go too far Left (for example through “woke territory”) you end up at the opposite end of the spectrum and wind up in Right Wing territory. Same can be said if you go too Right Wing, i.e., what we see to be white racial collectivism abandoning notions of individualism as seen in the liberal tradition in exchange for dictatorial leaders who oversee an expansive police-government state, i.e., a sort of Communist totalitarian state.
In theory, Umar is an unwitting agent to give the system what it wants (a continuation of the colorist and racial caste system needed for divide-and-conquer purposes over the proletariat) because it wants segregation and will use anything, including the political left or wokeness on top of the traditional right-wing methods to achieve that.
I do not think that black people attempting to incubate our own wealth and prosperity is bad thing at all considering the truth of our history, yet, you can do this without being a racialist, colorist, patriarch, etc.
One simple flaw that black people or activist seem to make without realizing it is that they don’t have to call every initiative that attempts to help black people as being “black”, because we already know who the initiatives are for, and often “the system” uses such “exclusive-seeming marketing” as a means of encouraging the further solidification of white supremacy. For example, White Power actually was a reaction to Black Power in the 1960s through white supremacist figures such as William Luther Pierce (author or The Hunter and The Turner Diaries), and sure, of course, we know that Black Power and White Power are two different things – at least in their origins and original intent – but still, black people need realize strategically speaking that marketing every helpful black movement as explicitly black, ironically and systemically is used to continue the oppression black people.
Yet, many black activists would reject my analysis on this because to them they are wanting to make a firm statement and they see anything that doesn’t go “hard enough”, i.e., seen as being un-apologetically black, as not being authentic.
However, my rebuttal to such an accusation would simply be…don’t broadcast all your moves, i.e., don’t put a target on your back just to make a moral or figurative statement. In other words, do not make this about prideful proclamations when you can achieve more without people noticing you often.
For example, “white companies” which are the majority don’t market themselves as “white owned” even though it is understood that most of the profits are going into white hands. Yet, black people wanting to make a powerful statement, flaunt, flex, etc., to prove “we can” always want to slap the “black” this or that label on everything, which ironically limits one’s market-size and potential for market capitalization because…most people will think it’s “only for them”. This is ironic because white or Asian business firms will take money from everywhere rather than just their own respective race or ethnic group, and thus have more capital to assert their dominance over institutions. For example, if we are to accept that hierarchies form naturally in society, then self-segregation limits the scale thus power of your “pyramid”.
And that last paragraph brings me back to the adage of “By Any Means Necessary.” By Any Means Necessary does not necessarily mean “by our own means only”.
Regardless, back to Umar, he cherry picks from the Marxist or Communist/Socialist or Critical Theory analysis of intersectionality and class struggle (spanning black leftist figures from Cornell West, Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Omali Yeshitela, Bell Hooks, etc.), yet, inserts his deep-rooted desires to have a conservative, Right Wing, “blood and soil”, male-driving nationalist community.
The mixing of Left-Wing analytical methods with that of Right-Wing concepts such hierarchies, firm binaries, hyper masculinity, etc., is textbook…fascism. We cannot forget that Mussolini started as a Communist before becoming a fascist. We cannot forget that even though Nazis were not “true Socialist” according to many socialist, notably the Communists because the Nazis hated Communism, we still must realize that early Nazi ideology was influenced in part by post-WWIs strong socialist sentiments. Hitler just so happened to reject the Marxist interpretation of history and co-opted socialism by infusing it with a Right-Wing traditionalism, which interestingly became advantageous to the pre-existing capitalist and industrialist class (i.e., Nazi economics was essentially corporatism ruled by a dictatorship of profit seeking industrialists operating in state-sponsored cartels who owed allegiance first and foremost to the German people and state, i.e., state capitalism nuanced by a cultural or racial supremacy).
Many fascists though they agree with concepts of collectives particularly on a racial-cultural sense, often reject the erosion of hierarchies. Fascist economics could be seen as a “Third Way” or “Third Position” framework where they combine some elements of socialist or egalitarian thought but often reject the Marxist view of history (class struggle), yet, through a type of Will to Power (coopted from Friedrich Nietzsche) via an unconscious “spiritualism” (e.g., Carl Jung’s emphasis on subconsciousness and archetypes) in the “zeitgeist” (i.e., collective spirit as in the writings of Hegel) apply a Right-Wing political framework that justifies the needs for rigid hierarchies, notably in a world of cyclical disorder (e.g., the Kali Yuga in Hinduism which inspired the Occultism elements of European fascism) and where people-groups are engaged in perpetual battle (for example through Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection).
This is why fascist countries, though seeming to emulate elements of socialism are effectively “modern feudalist states” shrouded with cultural imagery, religious devotion, etc. Yet, feudalism evolved into capitalism and capitalism into corporatism, thus current definitions of fascist countries could be defined as “hierarchical corporatist states”.
This is what Umar really wants. A black fascist state, but he could only achieve such goals by band-wagoning or “Trojan Horse-ing” off of current black Left-Wing movements such as Black Lives Matter or even the capitalist inclusion of black empowerment as a marketable product with Disney-Marvel production such as the Black Panther franchise. For example, we live in the era of hashtags such as #staywoke #BLM #wakanda or #wakandaforever. Yet, like most aspiring autocrats, they are often failures at something in their buried past they wish not to be discovered. They also lack the technical expertise to achieve their goals so instead they rely on fiery rhetoric to convince enough smart people to accomplish their goals for them.
In other words, Umar wouldn’t be the Umar we know without him using the current chaos of political discourse and Left Wing wokeness though he opposes the Left Wing and liberalism. Like fascism which has caused many debates about its actual definition, Umar represents a sort of logical ambiguity yet expresses emotionally his deep-rooted desires and dreams of grandeur. He splices ideology to achieve a fascist conclusion.
There are a lot of scars and traumas within the Black Community and in theory that is what wokeness attempts to heal.
Wokeness simply means aware, i.e., being aware of topics such as systemic racism, voter suppression, lack of access to capital markets, police brutality, gentrification, mass incarceration, the complex systems of industrial scale slavery, Jim Crow, Jim Crow’s effects on the modern prison industrial complex, unauthorized and/or inhuman experiments on people such as the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments or how economically weakened African nations are given foreign aid to fight diseases such as HIV/AIDs or malaria, etc., only on the condition they remain cheap resource depots for the “imperialist powers”, etc. We can go on and on. WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc.
I purposely rapped off all that because…that is what wokeness has become. Knowing so much but what does knowing do once it reaches a logical conclusion? It either A) creates a depressive state in a person once they realize how “smart they are” but how helpless they are, B) it creates anger and radicalism to resolve said problems of A, or (C) it creates a manic rollercoaster ride between A and B.
Wokeness is a mixture of factual analysis but also an emotional desire for self-empowerment in the face of a civilization that defined blackness to be the “antithesis” to the thesis of whiteness. Woke is also not inherently political but just so happens to lean to the Left. For example, figures such as Joe Rogan who often expresses Right Wing views could be considered “woke” himself because he too engages in the “factual rapping” of statistics or events to explain how our world works, why its oppressive, and why systems should be seen with suspicion.
So woke is not bad, however, the constant deconstruction, Critical Theory, qualitative studies, anthropology, intellectualism, and faux intellectualism, has not really achieved the goals of what communities such as the black community wants, because in many ways there is an underlying notion that someone owes us something or the reason why we can’t build ourselves up is because no one is providing us our “just dues”.
It’s a contradictory sentiment. We preach how strong we are to not need anyone but then often want someone to help us, and this contradiction can be heard in Umar Johnson’s rhetoric. Also, wokeness meaning aware does not actually mean intelligent, and if so, only means intelligent enough to sense things, but not necessarily to do anything about it.
What I mean by that is the black community needs science, technology, engineering, and math to navigate the complex challenges of the modern/post-modern world, yet, the resounding resolution within most woke circles is simply more…analysis, i.e., an emphasis on social sciences, political science, history, video essays, book publishing, etc.
Better put, wokeness has only solved a fraction of the problem, i.e., we know how to see the sickness within the body (problems within the community) but often don’t push for technical skills to do the surgery. Umar wants to get credit for organizing the surgery though he too is helpless hence he overcompensates with toxic rhetoric. In other words, he’s in his feelings.
For example, why would Umar Johnson start an all-boys residential school that will likely not going to achieve accreditation from any governmental body, when he could have had an online education model? Why invest in physical property with taxes, safety guidelines, health guidelines, FDA and Department of Agricultural school meal guidelines, etc., when he could have had a collective of certified educators via online subscription service? Yet, when Umar was talking on VLADTV, Umar made more excuses by saying that black people in charter schools can’t teach because they need professional certifications. But…wouldn’t you want educators to be certified? Also, there’s plenty of educators with certifications. The thing is, is that Umar wants a school with no accountability so he can craft it in his own image, but to do so he must simply blame the system for not giving him what he wants, though this is on the belief that the rules of the system aren’t there for good reason. For example, we don’t want an Aryan Nation Nazi Schools with no accreditation and un-certified educators teaching children about the superiority of the white race and teaching pseudo-science such as…white people are from Madame Blavatsky root races who once lived on Atlantis or some nonsense.
Umar Johnson at this point is just trying to stay relevant with his racist bombastic style.
I honestly think he is crazy, and I mean as far as mental health. I can’t prove it on the clinical front, but he seems to have some sort of narcissistic personality disorder (dreams of grandeur and with an emphasis on being chosen) and I suspect it may be childhood trauma induced (since he rarely speaks of his past, family, etc.). His professional work involves studying the effects of ADD/ADHD diagnosis on black male youths, which is a noble endeavor, but I’m suspecting that Umar (Jermaine) was one of these kids and held a grudge about his possible experiences. But, this is speculation. He’s set himself up like many online figures to not be criticized because he’s stitched himself to the movements he’s co-opted, so to many people criticizing Umar now somehow means…criticizing black empowerment, but this is the fault of certain segments of the black community for consistently searching for what I call…a “Fuhrer” or Chosen One.
As a side note, this emphasis on looking for a chosen one interestingly can be seen in hip hop with figures such as Tupac (who depicted himself on the Cross in Killuminati – The 7 Day Theory, i.e., Makaveli), the Biblical Ezekiel-like prophetic rage of DMX, and of course the current Charles Manson-like delusions of Kanye West (Ye) who associated with Nazi like figures such as Nick Fuentes.
Umar hiding his past to me is a sign of distancing one’s true identity, a possible sign of embarrassment, etc. This seems especially true since he specializes in family and childhood counseling. In other words, he is not providing any examples of his home life, experiences, traumas, over-comings, etc., to explain or relate to the advice he is giving. If anything, Umar (Jermaine) doesn’t practice what he preaches which will be discussed in this section of my post/paper.
I stumbled upon a video on Instagram by user ” Commonsenseeli” in which Umar is in a room filled with clutter with some odd speech patterns (repeating the same thing over) but he says he was moving to Wilmington, Delaware – where his school for black boys is at. I assume he was just practicing a speech or pitch.
As far as absurd rhetoric, recently he has told black people not to vote in the USA and South African 2024 elections, adding to the already cynical and paranoid public (post CV19 lockdowns, Donald Trump & January 6, the death of Jeffrey Epstein, the riots over George Floyd, etc.) as if not voting will somehow mean someone won’t win and won’t take power.
Even if black people do not vote, you are just increasing the odds of having a party that has openly said anti-black rhetoric or at least uses coded language to criminalize black people. In other words, he is suppressing the black vote or getting black people to suppress it themselves. But, Umar just like Elijah Farrakhan (who won’t die) want this because they are advocates for…Race War.
I personally think that how Marcus Garvey admired the KKK, Umar admires the modern Alt Right and GOP (defined by MAGA). He’s not a liberal. He admires power and a patriarchal form of it. Imagine Umar with unlimited power. It would not be a good thing. [See Article: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-must-go-campaign/%5D
It is as if the GOP and its wealthy donors realized the Candace Owens, Turning Point USA, etc., route can only work so much with black – especially “hood black” – audiences, so the GOP is getting “multi-racial and religious” in its caucus such as using patriarchal, anti LGBTQ rhetoric etc., within certain elements of black and/or Muslim political discourse.
For example, Patrick Bet David while hosting Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA advocates for including more Muslims into Republican politics despite a likely apprehensive Kirk realizing a big element of right-wing, predominantly white, and Western liberal (in the classical sense) politics has anti-Islam as a key cornerstone (e.g., the European Identitarian movement, the Deus Vult movement of Right Wing Catholicism — typically defined with an anti-Pope Francis undertone for his progressive and reconciliation views).
Culturally, the online space as of 2024 is a mix of “Capitalist grind culture” (which is nuanced by the concept of “manifesting”, i.e., the belief in using psychic power to create your dream reality — which thus links to Zodiac, astrology, and New Age beliefs), memes, A.I. videos pushing conservative tropes (e.g., Thomas Sowell, Pat Buchanan, Milton Friedman talking points, etc.), Jordan B. Peterson musings, the anti-feminist Manosphere/Men’s Rights movement, conspiracy theories with often pseudo-science and religious undertones, etc.
Many black people – some not doing too well economically – seem to be “chronically online” and find themselves absorbing information from the Black spaces of the Red Pill space.
Umar’s core demographic is “woke” people from low income urban areas, black women (despite his patriarchal overtones), and maybe many Africans or Caribbean peoples with online access to black American media. Yet, these African and Caribbean cultures often apply what we would consider in the West to be pseudo-science such as spiritual medicine, witch doctors, but also the residuals of Christian missionaries where many pastors in Africa and the Caribbean use faith-healing, etc. You can also add on indigenous “pagan” religions, Rastafarianism (which has nods to Zion, i.e . Blackness as ordained since Ethiopia for instance has a biblical link) etc.
What we are witnessing in “woke” black culture something similar to European white reactionary politics which also “rejects modernity” and strives for a “racially pure”, organic, etc mindset.
For example, the Fresh and Fit podcast despite being hosted by two black men where one is a Muslim, are linked to figures such as “Rollo Tomassi”, author of the Rational Male, who has ties to racist figures such as Stefan Molyneux, who therefore leads to figures such as Lauren Southern, which therefore links to figures such as Jay Dyer who has contributed to Alex Jones’ InfoWars. We know Alex Jones is the kink between the conspiracy Right Wing to the MAGA movement, with Alex Jones even being on-site with Kenneth Chesboro of the Trump fake-elector plot scandal.
Popular black YouTuber, DJ Akademics (of a conservative Jamaican heritage) is a vocal Trump supporter and he’s collaborated with Fresh and Fit thus by proxy Andrew Tate, Kevin Samuels, and Rollo Tomassi. All are Trump supporters. This thus creeps further and further down the Rabbit Hole leading to the Young Americans (whose clips have been used by Fresh and Fit), the Alt Right, and back to literal Nazis.
In other words, figures like Charleston White, Umar Johnson, Fresh and Fit, etc., represent the “Red Pill of Black Culture”, but the Red Pill community is adjacent to conspiracy culture across racial lines, since conspiracy theories often have the underlying agenda of preserving the status quo by vilifying progressive movements.
Who is Umar Johnson?
But, who is he? He was born Umar Rashad Ibn Abdullah Johnson (Jermaine Shoemake) on 21 August 1974 to a father named Jamal Abdullah Johnson. Doing a simple Google search of Jamal Abdullah Johnson, I see a Jamal A. Abdullah-Johnson, Appellant,v.William J. Henderson, Postmaster General, United States Postal Service (Allegheny/Mid-Atlantic), Agency.
Umar’s possible father filed a suit against the US Postal Services in 1998 alleging discrimination for his race, religion, and mental health issues. KryeirBut this Mr. Abdullah Johnson was denied. Could this possibly have influenced Umar? Umar in an interview admitted to having a disciplinarian father.
I also found online Jamal Abdullah Johnson who served in the US Marine Corps from 1975 – 1985. Possibly, if this is Umar’s dad, that means his dad enlisted just after he was born and possibly after 10 years, went to work for the Postal Service, likely working there for a long time before he had his lawsuit. So, possibly a Black Nationalist, intense Marine, postal service worker father but had a gripe with the “white man” and government. His marine only served 10 years and not the 20 years required a pension. Also, there’s a chance he also didn’t service his 20 years as a postal worker which would give him a pension.
Yet, Umar’s real name may be Jermaine Shoemake, according to a Facebook post I had found, his name was changed by his father per this post when he was in the 3rd grade while in North Carolina. The idea of changing your child’s name when he’s already at least seven years old insinuates his father was a true believer in the Pan Africanist cause.
Philadelphia has always had issues with race like many Northern cities which emphasize racial/ethnic neighborhoods, yet poverty, crime, drugs, etc. are rampant. From New York, Boston, Philly, D.C., Baltimore, etc.
Philadelphia is where the 1985 Move Bombing happened in which the Philadelphia Police Department dropped C4 on the home on the MOVE organization. MOVE is an Afrocentric, anti-government, and naturalist movement founded in 1972 by US Army veteran Vincent Leapheart, i.e., John Africa. 61 homes were destroyed, 250 homeless, and 6 adults with 5 children were killed.
Umar’s possible father if he was the US Marine left the military in 1985, the same year as the MOVE bombing. So, if Umar was born in 1972 by the time, he was 13 the MOVE bombing happened, but Umar’s father likely got involved in similar Pan Africanist movements earlier in the 1970s. I am sure such as event played a role in the Umar, we see but would have likely influenced his father’s beliefs as well.
On VLADTV, he stated he grew up in North to North-Central Philadelphia. He attended George G. Meade Elementary School in Philadelphia. Per a Facebook post, he also attended at least two other elementary schools in the Philadelphia area such as Hartranft and Duckery Elementary. But he didn’t go to an HBCU, which could’ve been for various reasons, yet there are many HBCUs in the Mid-Atlantic such as Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, Delaware State, Morgan State, Bowie State, Howard, etc. I assume this is because interestingly, Umar may have benefited from some sort of affirmative action or racial scholarship to attempt Millersville.
In the interview, he stated he went to the Scotland School for Veterans Children which I found is near Chambersburg, I Pennsylvania. According to Matthew Christopher (2019) of Abandoned America, “According to a state website, “Founded in 1895, SSVC is the only residential school in the nation specifically designed and accredited to educate and care for the children of Pennsylvania military service veterans.”
This would validate the possible link to Jamal Abdullah Johnson.
In the same VLAD interview, Umar said his goal is to open an all-boys residential school…
When I googled Scotland School for Veterans with the word “abuse” a few articles comes up.
I have said aid this before but Umar as an aspiring Right Wing black authoritarian is a rare example of the “Horseshoe political theory” being true in which contemporary progressive discussions/movements of the Left opened the Pandoras box of fringe Afrocentrism which is ironically ultra conservative (patriarchal, homophobic, etc.) and contradicts reason because it is often in alignment with New Age conspiracy theory/cults.
He has a doctorate in osteopathic medicine which is widely considered pseudo-science using practices such phrenology.
Also, for all of his racial division standpoints, Umar claimed descent from Frederick Douglass (which has been denied by the Douglass estate) yet Frederick Douglass had a white wife despite Umar being so against interracial marriage. So, either Umar is a partial descendant of European ancestry (common among some Black Americans) or he hates (well, per his own theory) his family…for being interracial?
Further, Umar says that a “non-African” can’t be good at things “created by Africans or black people”, but sports like basketball were created…by a white guy. Yet, I am sure Umar’s rebuttal is to simply say…black people invited this or that, etc.
Umar also continues to live in a multi-racial country which is 60%+ white and could leave anytime he wants just as Marcus Garvey – who Umar wants to name a school after – would have advocated for. Umar says he respects Kanye because of his antisemitism (a lazy way of explaining the complex issues affecting the world), but Kanye was married two non-black women.
He says the “Prince of Pan Africanism” (a clear sign of narcissism) but then wants to rep Foundational Black Americans who are theoretically opposed to Pan Africanism since there’s an inherent territorialism to FBAs. For example his xenophobic comments about Daniel Kaluuya.
Further, he plans on opening a school, which in theory is noble but…who will accredit the school especially with a curriculum that could be argued as fostering racial supremacy? Not getting accreditation would make the children’s education be worthless as far as higher education, etc.
Version 1 posted on 8/17/2023. Version 2 updated on 8/18/2023. Version 3 updated 8/22/2023. Version 4 updated 8/27/2023.
I. Digging into the Hawaii Emergency Management System anddebunking the rumor that only $700 was given in Federal Aid to Maui Fire Victims
Disclaimer: This section about Hawaii despite having some research backing my thoughts is speculative. I am not putting any personal blame or libelous claims on any companies, government officials, etc. The general theory is that the fires were started by downed power lines in conjunction with environmental conditions, e.g., dry grasses. However, I wrote this specific section of this paper on Hawaii to research more about the emergency siren system itself, its possible OEMs (official equipment manufacturers), etc.
Sadly, in early August 2023, there were multiple fires on the Hawaiian Islands. Conservatives, conspiracy theorists who have blamed the fires on “Chinese Space Lasers” or arsonists trying to clear the precious real estate, anti-Ukraine War people, etc., have tried to place the blame on President Joe Biden. However, it seems this fire situation was an accident (downed power lines per Brianna Sacks, 2023, of The Washington Post) exacerbated by environmental conditions.
I personally know people from Hawaii. I went to college with many and some of my best friends are from the various islands spanning Oahu and Maui. According to one friend, when consulting his father-in-law, the emergency system was simply old and outdated. According to another friend whose father was a federal firefighter on the US military bases in Hawaii, his father said that local firefighters only “contain” fires, whereas federal fighter fighters serving the US military bases are required to fully put out fires. Sometimes there’s coordination between the firefighters on federal facilities with those of civilian firefighters, but my friend did not know much more than that.
There are many rumors being circulated online, such as Biden only gave $700. These rumors often negate to go into detail about how programs, bills, funds, etc., all work, yet, instead they appeal to emotion and rage within our already divided country, with a good chunk still reeling that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Many of these Trump supporters, but not just them, believe in various conspiracies that been within the pop culture for years such as “FEMA Camps” which are code-word for concentration camps, the New World Order, Mark of the Beast which is code for implants, surveillance, etc.
For example, regarding the $700 payment, FEMA.gov (2023) addressed the rumor, titled, “Rumor: FEMA is only giving Hawaii wildfire survivors $700 per household.”, but responding with “This is not true. There is a range of federal disaster assistance available. Critical Needs Assistance provides a one-time payment of $700 to address immediate needs such as food, water, and clothing. This is just one of several types of federal assistance you may be eligible to receive. As applications are reviewed, you can check your application status online or call 800-621-3362 to find out what types of disaster assistance you are eligible to receive.”
Looking into the CNA Program, FEMA.gov (202) stated that, ““FEMA may provide financial assistance to applicants who have immediate or critical needs because they are displaced from their primary dwelling. Immediate or critical needs are life- saving and life-sustaining items including, but not limited to: water, food, first aid, prescriptions, infant formula, diapers, consumable medical supplies, durable medical equipment, personal hygiene items and fuel for transportation. Critical Needs Assistance (CNA) is awarded under the Other Needs Assistance (ONA) provision of the Individuals and Households Program (IHP).Funds awarded for CNA count toward an applicant’s financial ONA maximum for that disaster, which is an annually-adjusted amount based on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index. CNA is a one-time $500 payment per household. An affected state, territorial, or tribal government must submit a written request to FEMA to implement CNA. FEMA’s Individual Assistance Division Director may authorize assistance when the majority of applicants from the declared area are, or will be, displaced from their primary residence for an extended period of time, generally 7 days or more.” (end quote)
Note, that this quote/reference is from 2020, so that $500 must have been bumped up to the $700.
Further according to FEMA.gov (2021), Other Needs Assistance (ONA) falls under FEMA’s Individuals and Households Program and provides financial help after a disaster to cover necessary expenses and serious needs not paid by insurance or other sources (FEMA, 2021). The first two categories of assistance – transportation and personal property – are dependent on residents applying for a low-interest disaster loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration beforehand. If applicants are denied a loan, or if the loan does not cover all their needs, they may receive a FEMA grant to replace or repair transportation and/or personal property (FEMA, 2021). Survivors do NOThave to apply for an SBA loan first to be considered for the following categories of assistance, which includes (A) moving and storage equipment, (B) Medical and Dental Assistance, (C) Funeral Assistance, and (D) some miscellaneous item (FEMA, 2021). If you have already applied with FEMA for Housing Assistance, you don’t need to apply separately for ONA (FEMA, 2021).
Regarding the Small Business Loan, states such as Washington State’s Emergency Management page under its Department of Military (i.e., the National Guard) stated that, “SBA disaster loans are available even without a Presidential Disaster Declaration and are a great tool to provide low-interest loans to individuals, families, businesses and organizations that suffer physical or economic loss due to a disaster or other disruption”
But what about this Other Needs Assistance (ONA) maximum which the $700 from the Critical Needs Assistance falls under?
First off, Other Needs Assistance programs are administered by the state and funded 75 percent by FEMA and 25 percent by the state (Washington State Military Department – Emergency Management Division). This 75 to 25 cost sharing between the federal government and states can be found on multiple state’s webpages, etc.
Secondly,
According to the Federal Register (2021), where the Federal Register could be understood as the Federal Government’s bulletin board it was stated that Section 408 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (the Stafford Act), 42 U.S.C. 5174, prescribes that FEMA must annually adjust the maximum amount for assistance provided under the Individuals and Households Program (IHP). FEMA gives notice that the maximum amount of IHP financial assistance provided to an individual or household under section 408 of the Stafford Act with respect to any single emergency or major disaster is $37,900 for housing assistance and $37,900 for other needs assistance. The increase in award amount is for any single emergency or major disaster declared on or after October 1, 2021. In addition, in accordance with 44 CFR 61.17(c), this increases the maximum amount of available coverage under any Group Flood Insurance Policy (GFIP) issued (Federal Register, 2021). [See: https://www.fema.gov/fact-sheet/group-flood-insurance-policy%5D
Further, Federal Register (2021) FEMA bases the adjustment on an increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers of 5.3 percent for the 12-month period, which ended in August 2021. The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor released the information on September 14, 2021.
To wrap our heads around this for the sake of clarity, $700 was given in immediate assistance under the CNA (Critical Need Assistance) Program which is based on an annually-adjusted amount based on the U.S. Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index, but CNA falls under FEMA’s Other Needs Assistance (ONA) provision, which is a larger type of “expense account budget” where FEMA provides 75% of funding and the state provides the other 25% (as well as manages the program), which is for personal property, transportation, funeral expenses, etc., that is not necessarily for FEMA Housing Assistance (but can be applied for at the same time if applying for FEMA Housing Assistance). ONA however falls under the Individuals and Households Program (IHP) of FEMA. Per Section 408 of the Stafford Act, the ONA maximums are $37,900 for housing assistance and $37,900 for other needs assistance. So, $75,800 overall, but you get $700 up front.
The White House has begun the process of disaster relief, but it is important to remember that the Federal government must work with the State Government regarding disaster relief such as in relation to laws such as Posse Comitatus (federal troops can’t police states in theory), the Stafford Act, etc.
Regarding the conspiracy theory that the fires are due to “Chinese Space Lasers”, even though I have no way of verifying that, nor do I really want to encourage the conspiracy because of its jingoistic/xenophobic undertones, back in February 2023, mainstream outlets such as Newsweek, Popular Mechanics, etc., did address the space laser situation. So, I understand why people may believe this, even though I am not sure if it’s believable or not.
Brodsky (2023) stated that the Chinese pollution-monitoring satellite Daqi-1 probably produced the lights spotted over Hawaii on January 28, according to a NASA scientist.
In other words, a sort of optical illusion in the atmosphere.
Yet, back on track, according to CBS News (2023) by way of CNN, residents did receive some text messages about winds and fires, including a National Weather Service fire warning, but per some residents there was not a major alert akin to an Amber Alert and most importantly there were no sirens. Hawaii residents have long been accustomed to the monthly tests of the outdoor siren warning system (CBS News, 2023).
While Maui’s warning sirens were not activated, emergency communications with residents were largely limited to mobile phones and broadcasters at a time when most power and cell service was already cut (CBS News, 2023).
Most Americans can relate to the feeling. We often get Tornado, Flood, or other Emergency warnings, but often it is hard to gauge the severity of the matter.
Relating to Hawaii, the National Weather Service operates the National and Pacific Tsunami Warning Centers ensuring there is free and not-for-profit tracking of tsunamis which can be caused by earthquakes. The PTWC dates to 1946 when 165 U.S. citizens were killed by tsunamis in Alaska and Hawaii.
However, this Tsunami system seems different than the siren warning system involved in the Maui Fire Disaster.
After looking into the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (n.d.), the actual siren system under question seems to be the Hawaiʻi All Hazard Statewide Outdoor Warning System managed by the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA) which is the largest single integrated Outdoor Siren Warning System for Public Safety in the world.
This Warning System is one part of the larger Hawaiʻi Statewide Alert and Warning System (SAWS) which includes FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert & Warning System (IPAWS) which used both the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) to alert the public.
So, who made or worked on the All-Hazard Statewide Outdoor Warning System?
I searched terms such as “Contract”, “Award”, “Supplier”, and “OEM” (Official Equipment Manufacturer), in relation to the All-Hazard Statewide Outdoor Warning System, which we should shorten to AHSOWS, and found an official government website by the State of Hawaii that reveals procurement data of state awards to suppliers. This website is called HANDS, i.e., Hawaii Awards & Notices Data System.
I noticed a few contracts awarded to Federal Signal Corporation by the State of Hawaii for its Defense Department. The Federal Signal Corporation is based in Oakbrook, Illinois, founded in 1901, and specializes in emergency vehicle equipment, warning sirens and public safety systems. They are listed on Nasdaq under NYSE: FSS.
From June 2022 through November 2022, I noticed a few procurements (buys) relating to sirens such as 110w Solar Panels and affiliated equipment for the State’s Emergency Warning Siren System which was awarded to Federal Signal Corporation via a Sole Source procurement (i.e., they were the only supplier solicited, i.e., not procured via a competitive bid) issued under Purchase Order Number G22A0157 in a dollar amount of $60,974.27.
Federal Signal Corporation also received a sole soured award Purchase Order under PO # G2218071 in the amount of $58,366.47 for Satellite Activation and Services (Isat Data Pro System Service) for Emergency Siren Communications. According to the posting, “SAT Data Pro System Service ‐ satellite to provide communication with the State’s Emergency Warning Siren System. The SAT service is a backup communication to the Siren system should the Cellular network fail. Service period from July 01, 2022 – June 30, 2023 DAGS Job No 16‐14‐7242. Federal Signal Sole Source # 21‐001‐SK. Approved Dec 11, 2020. CHANGE ORDER 1 Approved”
Also, under PO G2218061, in amount of $ 40,722.50, via a sole source procurement, Federal Signal Corporation was awarded an annual renewal for their Commander One Subscription Services which per the posting states, “Annual Renewal of Commander 1 Subscription for service period: 7/1/22 to 6/30/23 Includes: 1. Mobile apps & Web access 2. 20 SEATS 3. 5 Organization 4. 512 devices supported, 5. 24/7 after hours suppor 6. SmartMsg updates and 5,000 text and email notifications/month Approved for Sole Source pursuant to HRS 26‐6, 103D‐306, HAR 3‐122‐143 on 12/11/2020 Ref No. 21‐001‐SK, Federal Signal Sole Source Contract DAGS Job # 16‐14‐7242, CHANGE ORDER 1 Approved 3/8/2022.”
Further, PO 22807001, Federal Signal Corporation was awarded a contract for emergency siren equipment due to environmental reasons and vandalism.
Using a different search term I discovered that Federal Signal Corporation was awarded a $9 Million dollar award by the State of Hawaii for the HI-EMA, under PO 16-14-7242, issued by Daniel Jandoc, which in an Indefinite Quantity type of contract. FSC was to furnish Outdoor Warning Sirens for Public Safety (Sirens). This PO had a Period of Performance of 1/1/2021 to 12/31/2022.
The Period of Performance was 7/1/2022 to 6/30/2023 for the Satellite Activation and Services Contract and 6/14/2023 – 6/30/2023 for the Annual Renewal of Commander 1 Service.
Is it possible that the Period of Performance for certain subscriptions expired and that the State of Hawaii was trying to re-issue a new award or exercise an option, but due to lapse in time from June 2023 to early August 2023, there were lags or drops in coverage between the satellites, cell phones, controllers, towers, etc.? It would be nice to know the actual business and contracting behind the emergency system, i.e., was there pre-planning or were procurement offices reactionary once they realized funding was about to dry up or a new contracting vehicle was lingering in some sort of approval phase.
In other words, Federal Signal Corporation as the prime contractor has a complex system in place to support Hawaii (a combination of Software as a Service -SaaS- mixed with Hardware that integrates with other equipment), but while they were waiting for the state to issue funding for a new award or exercise a contract option, that lap in coverage, possibly mixed with vandalism, weather, etc., disrupted parts of the overall Emergency System, and once the fires started, their high temperatures fried the actual hardware.
II. The Federal Response
According to the White House.gov (2023) in an official press release it was stated that Mr. Maona N. Ngwira of FEMA has been appointed to coordinate Federal recovery operations in the affected areas. Further, President Joe Biden, likely by evoking the Stafford Emergency Act, authorized federal funding available to affected individuals in Maui County including assistance on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures statewide which includes grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster.
Per, the White House.gov (2023) article, residents and business owners who sustained losses in the designated areas can begin applying for assistance at www.DisasterAssistance.gov, by calling 800-621-FEMA (3362), or by using the FEMA App.
According to Claims Journal (2023), Two firms have released early estimates of losses and damage from the devastating wildfires across Hawaii’s Maui Island and the historic town of Lahaina. Catastrophe modeler Karen Clark & Company issued new estimates showing the insured property losses from the Lahaina Fire in Hawaii to be around $3.2 billion. AccuWeather on Monday increased its estimate of the total damage and economic loss to $14 to $16 billion (Claims Journal, 2023). That update followed AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate last week of total damage and economic loss of $8-10 billion, and the latest AccuWeather loss estimate would equate to about 15% of the state of Hawaii’s gross domestic product and would exceed the GDP of Maui (Claims Journal, 2023). The Lahaina fire burned approximately 2,170 acres and devastated the town of Lahaina on Maui, according to KCC (Claims Journal, 2023).
According to Jim Garamone (2023) of DOD News of the US Department of Defense, Combined Joint Task Force 50, under the command of Army Brig. Gen. Stephen F. Logan, has mustered almost 700 DOD personnel and 140 Coast Guardsmen that are part of the coordinated response to the Maui wildfires that killed more than 100 people and destroyed the city of Lahaina last week, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. This includes FEMA asking for space at the US Army’s Schofield Barracks for billeting (i.e., rooms for troops and personnel, etc.). The Joint Task Force includes the US Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines, Homeland Security, FEMA, and the National Guard. The Task Force is flying two Boeing CH-47 Chinooks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_CH-47_Chinook) with fire suppression buckets capable of 189,000 gallons of water, and the Navy also has two Sikorsky (a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) SH-60 Seahawks and three Boeing CMV-22 Ospreys on standby to support incoming requests.
More specifically this CJTF 50 is comprised of 402nd Field Support Brigade (responsible for assisting in Quartermaster duties, Sustainment Support, etc. in the Pacific Region) under Colonel Courtney Sugai and Lt. Colonel Timothy Page. Also, there is the 249th Engineer Battalion which is a power generation battalion that answers to the US Amry Corps of Engineers and serves more in a Reservist Capacity. The 249th Engineer Battalion Company is comprised of four companies, but specifically Company A is based at Hawaii’s Schofield Barracks and answers to Lt. Colonel Langston J. Turner. Lastly, the US Air Force and Navy have also established Liaison Officers, i.e., Points of Contract, to help their respected branch coordinate in the CJTF effort. Further, there is the Third Marine Littoral (i.e., nearshore) Battalion under Colonel John G. Lehane of the US Marine Corps providing General Dynamics MQ-9 Reaper Drones for aerial surveillance, Boeing MV-22 Osprey, and a Lockheed Martin KC-130J Super Hercules.
III. We have money for Ukraine, Hawaii, the Border, Crime Prevention, etc.
Sofi Stadium cost $5.5 Billion.
Lionel Messi at FC Barcelona had a $675 Million contract….to himself… but Christiano Rinaldo at Al Nassr has a $536 Million contract.
So that’s $1.2 billion of pledged (not necessarily paid) money on just two athletes.
So, why not hate on sports and not a country trying to maintain independence from Russia, when Russia invaded Ukraine?
[See video, Shut up about NATO expansion]
[See Video: The Dumbest Arguments About Russia’s War on Ukraine]
Regarding the 2008/9 Bailouts of US Auto Industry with giants like Ford and GM, “In all, the federal government extended nearly $81 billion to bail out the auto industry in a rescue effort that began under Bush’s watch and ended in December 2014, well into Obama’s second term.” (Source: Andrew Glass, Politico, 12/19/2018, Bush Bailouts US Automakers, Dec. 19, 2008).
Further, the New York Post (2021) by way of the Associated Press, released an article, titled: Costs of the Afghanistan War, in lives and dollars, which referenced a meta-study by Harvard University’s Kennedy School and Brown University’s Costs of War project. These studies estimated the amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020 was $2 trillion but with interest will be $6.5 trillion by 2050.
According to Jonathan Masters and Will Merrow (2023) of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), since the war began, the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress have directed more than $75 billion in assistance to Ukraine, which includes humanitarian, financial, and military support, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute (end quote). Much of the aid has gone toward providing weapons systems, training, and intelligence that Ukrainian commanders need to defend against Russia, which has one of the world’s most powerful militaries (Master and Merrow, 2023). Yet, according to the US Embassy to Ukraine (2015) Vice President Joe Biden announced today in Kyiv, Ukraine, that, pending consultation with Congress, the White House plans to commit approximately $190 million in new assistance to support Ukraine’s ambitious reform agenda.
Note this was when Biden was Vice President, speaking for President Obama in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so this was only a policy promise and pledge. Yet, Donald Trump got into office and then threatened to pull funding away that Congress was ready to approve if Ukraine didn’t give dirt on Joe Biden.
But, fast forward, according to Lawrence Richards (2022) of Fox News in an article, titled: US leads the rest of the world with $196 billion given to Ukraine amid war with Russia – Russia first invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the article’s headline states that use has given $196 Billion, but in the article, it states “$200 billion in promised or sent aid”. Emphasis on promised or pledged, not actually spent, yet it looks like the US has spent over 200 billion.
Yet not all this money is “new money” being randomly created, but it was already spent on existing hardware or approved on existing budgets. Or it is pledged money that has not been approved yet.
Tom Norton (2023) of Newsweek, in his article, titled: Fact Check: Have U.S. Taxpayers Sent Over $200B to Ukraine? In the article Norton (2023) details how Republicans have repeatedly and misleadingly used the $200 Billion price tag. From Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Monica Crowley who stated, “”$200 billion+ of your hard-earned money has been disappeared into the corrupt money-pit of Ukraine.”, Andy Briggs, Keri Lake, Steve Bannon, and Fox News have all chirped this dollar amount.
Norton (2023) summarized as of April 2023, that Congress has only approved $113 billion for spending in Ukraine. Researchers tracking spending suggest that only around $77 billion has gone directly to Ukraine, a combination of financial, military and other forms of aid.
So let’s summarized…Fox News or at least prominent conservatives have dubiously stated the US has already spent $200 Billion, yet, per Norton (2023) back in April 2023, the US had spent $77 Billion out of $113 billion approved by Congress. Yet, to update this figure, in July 2023, Masters and Merrow (2023) stated that the US has sent $76.8 Billion, so that matches what Norton (2023) was saying on money actually spent, not promised, not pledged, not talked about, etc.
I do not blame people for being angry about Hawaii vs Ukraine situation regarding the perception and reality of responses and funding, but…Ukraine is not affecting Hawaii, no more Social Security or Medicare are affecting Hawaii. We are talking about different pools of money, bills, authorizations, etc. We have checks and balances, appropriation, and financing rules, etc., so to change rules we need Congress to change such rules. I get it. Why can’t we just command things into existence, but the thing is that we in the United States have rules based on checks and balances and tight appropriation laws (color of money rules, Misappropriation rules, etc.)
A lot of the Ukraine Lend Lease Money is money already for paid for assets via the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), and Foreign Military Financing (FMF). According to the CRFB, i.e., the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (2023), using PDA, the President can send military hardware out of the U.S. military’s own stockpiles directly to Ukraine (CRFB, 2023). Through USAI, the federal government contracts with the private sector to provide training, supplies, and other operational needs to the Ukrainian military and other allies (CRDB, 2023). Also, per CRFB (2023), the federal government uses FMF to backfill the stockpiles of NATO allies that have sent their own military hardware directly to Ukraine.
So, when you see this or that billion that is being spent on Ukraine a lot is basically a receipt and public disclosure of something already paid for, not more “pork barrel waste” adding onto our debt. The government did not just “print” with the “Federal Reserve” the money, but the money was also on the books, appropriated, and in many cases already spent on hardware that were sitting in stockpiles. Think of it all as receipts against existing appropriated budgets.
But I get the confusion. Defense funds come from NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) pot of money whereas FEMA funding under Homeland Security comes from the Homeland Security Bill (See HR 8257).
In other words, sending already paid for tanks wouldn’t help Hawaii in a freak act of God accident no one saw coming, so it’s a false equivalency to compare the two, though emotionally I get people’s frustrations. And Congress controls the “power of the purse”, so it is on them to attempt to reform laws, even the constitution, if need be, if they want to change how money is appropriated and spent.
Republicans in Congress, running for office, or anti Biden types talking about this are gaslighting. Congressional Republicans had no problem voting for the NDAA same as Democrats, so if people want more FEMA funding it’s on Congress to do the bills such as budget more for the Homeland Security Bill. The President only signs or vetoes the bills but has certain executive powers to tap into those already existing and approved pots of money, i.e., the PDA program.
According to John M. Donnelly of Rollcall.com (2022), “The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to pass the final defense authorization bill for fiscal 2023, clearing the sweeping measure for President Joe Biden’s signature. If Biden signs the NDAA into law, as he is expected to do, it would be the 62nd straight fiscal year that the defense policy measure has been enacted. The Senate’s final NDAA passage vote was 83-11, and 60 votes were required. The House passed the bicameral compromise on Dec. 8. When Armed Services Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., noted that the bill is named after the committee’s top Republican, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chamber resounded with applause. Reed said that Inhofe’s leadership of the committee, both in the majority and minority, had been “monumental.” Inhofe is retiring at the end of this year. With enactment of the bill, Washington will have authorized spending about $858 billion on defense programs in this fiscal year, mostly at the Pentagon. That is $45 billion, or 5 percent, more than Biden asked for in March.” (end quote).
Think about that. (A) Both parties voted for the NDAA (because it’s political suicide to not), (B) Congress added more money than what Biden had even asked for, meaning that Congress could have potentially shifted $45 Billion to the Homeland Security Bill or had planned on doing that, which theoretically could have pushed the Homeland Security Bill from $80 Billion to $125 Billion, (C) the bill was named for a Republican.
If you are angry at what is happening in Ukraine, then take it up with your legislators.
According to the Appropriations page owned by the US Senate’s website, The Fiscal Year 2023 (FY23) Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill includes a total of $82.068 billion, including $60.7 billion in net discretionary appropriations.
The below picture is from the US Congress.gov
According to the US Senate Armed Services Committee (2023) 857.9 billion was appropriated for the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023. Out of this 857.9 billion most of the funds goes to the Department of Defense whereas some funding also goes to the Department of Energy considering the DOE overseas nuclear power, certain infrastructure such as electricity attached to our dams (whose construction is monitored by the US Army Corps of Engineers), etc. The bill does allow for up to 6 billion for General Transfer Authority for unforeseen high priority needs via “Reprogramming”. On an interesting note, this FY23 NDAA also authorizes funding to support a 4.6 percent pay raise for both military service-members and the DOD civilian workforce.
So, the NDAA got 857.9 billion, whereas the FY23 Homeland Security Funding Bill of $82.068 billion. So, the NDAA has over 10 times more funding. Yet, whose fault is this? It starts with Congress.
So, can we fund Ukraine to defend itself while protecting the border, funding cops and drug rehabs, investing in public housing and schools, etc? Yes.
The US has money to fund Ukraine and take care of most of its issues at home because our allies are gonna vouch for our debt anyways and buy our US treasuries, because that’s the brilliance of the scheme.
The EU, UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Canada, etc., will vouch for our debt and even if the US dollar weakens, a weak US dollar can boost US exports since foreign currencies rise, i.e., they have more purchasing power.
They’ll vouch for our debt because they already have so many US investments that dumping our debt would crash them too and cause a Global Depression. I do not think most of the world wants the Chinese Yuan or Russian Ruble as their reserve currency. And, sorry to the Crypto currency bros, but there’s only so many bitcoins that will ever be made.
The US despite its flaws has a good relationship with most powerful albeit non-Super Power nations. Yet, people have a very conservative framing of how sovereign debt and taxes work as if national financing is the same as personal financing in your personal life, when they’re not the same. Also people forget there were tax cuts on the highest income earners/corporations starting with Bush, the Obama Era Bush tax cut extension, and the Trump cut.
According to the Emily Horton (2017) of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “In 2013 CBPP estimated that, when the associated interest costs are taken into account, the Bush tax cuts (including those that policymakers made permanent) would add $5.6 trillion to deficits from 2001 to 2018. This means that the Bush tax cuts will be responsible for roughly one-third of the federal debt owed by 2018.”
In theory if Bush didn’t do these cuts and if Americans accepted increases as opposed to reductions in taxes that $6.5 Trillion bill by 2050 with interests included according to Harvard and Brown University’s would have been hedged significantly by the $5.6 Trillion is projected loses in revenue.
So it’s not a matter of not having money for home improvement and Ukraine, when (A) our allies don’t care if we create money because we have the most lethal military as far as weapons that we use to protect them so they do not have to fight, i.e., the US economy is a Spartan mercenary operation at industrial scale, (B) the US has the safest banking system to store the world’s money and if they don’t store it here, they often store it in US dollars, and, (C) we can always reverse the 20 years of tax cuts because the rich are likely investing in this war anyways.
It’s a gaslight to make it seem as if we can’t afford both. Further even if we weren’t funding Ukraine to keep Russia away, our conservative minded, pro business politicians wouldn’t fund the things we want anyways like housing, etc. When has the government ever really invested in people? Bill Maher freaked out when people got COVID relief money.
So pretending like cheapskate frugal Republicans and phony progressive corporate Democrats will make us into a utopia is laughable.
Most people who are against the war are (A) Trump supporters just being Trump supporters, despite, ironically their blood-lust for war with “Communist” China, (B) hippies who have no realpolitik or concept of defense policy who believe peace exist in nature rather than something maintained by projecting force, (C) fake hippies who are actually conservatives who simply want the current Biden Administration to fail but not appearing to be conservative adjacent, e.g. The Hill owned by Nexstar Media, (D) Russian, Chinese, etc., psy-ops that want Russia to win even if they get concessions.
Brown University (2023) Cost of War by the Watson Institute – International and Public Affairs. Source: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures (Date Retrieved. 17 August 2023).
Federal Emergency Management Agency (18 August 2023) Hawaii (DR-4724-HI): Rumor Response and Frequently Asked Questions. Source: https://www.fema.gov/disaster/4724/rumor-response (Date Retrieved 27 August 2023).
John M. Donnelly (15 December 2022) Senate sends fiscal 2023 NDAA to Biden’s desk – With enactment, Washington will have authorized about $858 billion on defense programs in this fiscal year. Source: https://rollcall.com/2022/12/15/senate-sends-fiscal-2023-ndaa-to-bidens-desk/ (Date Retrieved 27 August 2023).
There are so many bot accounts discrediting Black Lives Matters on social media platforms such as Instragram, Twitter (now X), etc. Bots aside, it is a popular talking point to muckrake against Black Lives Matters and you’ve seen this in the Right-Wing eco-system of Charlie Kirk, Candance Owens especially, Tim Poole, Gavin McInnes, etc.
With BLM Global Network having been exposed for money issues such as with Patrisse Cullors buying a 6 Million dollar home, using funds for a birthday party (which she supposedly paid back), and hiring her family members for a near 1 million dollar security contract, this gave the Right Wing the ammunition they needed to further perpetuate anti-black sentiments such as black people aren’t capable, that we are “race baiters”, that we blame all our problems on white people yet seems to want white people’s money, etc.
Anti-blackness runs deep across the globe and its not just the West. Perception does matter, which is why I was disappointed that BLM didn’t do an aggressive PR campaign to own the situation, get a head of it, and create a pathway forward.
Rather, the leaders faded away such as Cullors posting “crystal mommy” Instagram posts or Alicia Garza going off to start other non-profit projects. The attacks of the Right Wing, the money scandal, and other issues such as social media and the news showcasing situations of black citizens attacking Asian Americans, the system got what it wanted…letting “black people” get hopeful, just to pull the rug from up under our feet, so we end up embarrassed after appearing as “mouthy” “angry”, etc.
It is exactly what the Right Wing wanted, and BLM’s anonymity allowed them to use BLM as a means of recruiting arngry white males to Far Right causes, which includes people such as the Buffalo Mass Shooter. Sure, these weren’t BLMs intent but it was a result.
But, I think there’s still hope for BLM but it will take work. PR, scholarships, auditing reports by legit third parties such as Ernst Young, conference calls, grants, an aggressive media campaign, etc. Or, the new non-profits that Garza created need to be absorbed into BLM.
But, regardless…
What about BLEXIT? What are they doing to help the black community, especially since they have more access to billionaire money as opposed to Left Wing organizations who have to scrap for small dollar donations? Candance Owens according to the Daily Beast (2022) article by Kelly Weill, titled: Blexit’s Finances Are Slumping – but Its Paycheck to Candance Owens Keeps Coming, stated that Owens received $230,000 in 2022.
I repeat, BLEXIT has way more access to fundraising and capital potential but it doesn’t seem like there is a coordinated effort to help the black community, but rathe piece-milling grants here and there. For example, Turning Point USA with Owen’s ally Charlie Kirk has received money from billionaires. “Turning Point USA is funded by numerous right-of-center foundations and big Republican donors.
According to InfluenceWatch, TPUSA received $275,000 from the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, the Rauner Family Foundation (run by former Illinois Governor Bruce Raunder (R)) gave $150,000, the Folgia Family Foundation gave $210,000, and the Marcus Foundation gave $72,500. TPUSA has also received smaller donations from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Michael and Andrea Leven Family Foundation, the Huizenga Foundation, the Mike Miller Foundation, Dunn’s Foundation for the Advancement of Right Wing Thinking, the Einhorn Family Foundation, Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation (run by the in-laws of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos), the Gianforte Family Foundation (run by Montana Governor Greg Gianforte (R)), the Thomas Patrick Morrison Foundation, and the Family Taxpayer’s Foundation.” This doesn’t include the various sponsors such as the Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Reason Foundation, the Foundation for Economic Education, PragerU, the Job Creators Network, the Leadership Institute, and the Generation Opportunity Institute. [Source: https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/turning-point-usa/%5D
These people and organizations have enough money to buy entire neighborhoods, pay for people’s private schooling or college, but the goal of BLEXIT isn’t help but rather pushing anti-black liberation politics to support the capitalist system as is, which means supporting the 1%, as is.
TPUSA has ties to Lynde and Harry Bradley are related to the Allen Bradley company which is now Rockwell Automation. Harry Lynde Bradley was one of the founders of the John Birch Society which are the group that paved the way for far-right, New World Order, anti-UN conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones with InfoWars. The John Birch Society had an early member, Revilo P. Oliver, who left the JBS because he felt it was “too Jewish” and went to help found Neo Nazi organizations alongside William Luther Price (the author of The Turner Diaries).
1) Participatory Budgeting where citizens vote on what percentage they want their taxes going, everyone’s submissions are averaged out, but then legislators do the same thing. Both are averaged and used as a baseline for Budgeting.
2) Merge the census with tax returns to cut costs if not by law, then by executive order
3) Review federal acquisition procedures to ensure procurement practices are optimal
4) Deleted
5) Better publicize what the federal government does in fun commercials such as what’s going on in science, agriculture, historic preservation, national parks, environmental efforts like the restoring animals on the Endagered Species List, Army Corps of Engineers, NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration)
6) Instill a spirit of customer service amongst public (civil) servants so the general public improves their perception of government
7) The possibility of using Enterprise Resource Planning system tools like SAP in government agencies to better coordinate finance (as to comply with rules such as the bona fide need rule, Misappropriation Act, colors-of-money), procurement offices, auditors, senior leadership, etc. One government, one language as far as ERP, SaaS (Software as a Service), Asset Management Tools, freight carrier guides with 3PLs (third party logistics).
8) Establish a Loving Day based on the Loving Supreme Court case to celebrate multiracial families where celebrities of biracial or multiracial heritage talk about their lives such as Derek Jeter, Pete Wentz, Patrick Mahomes, Mariah Carey, Halle Barry, Blake Griffin, Zach LaVine, The Rock, Meghan Markle, Cameron Champ, etc. See article: https://andscape.com/features/black-pga-golfer-cameron-champ-is-going-places-his-grandfather-wasnt-allowed
10) Encourage telework and refurbish commercial space into residential space
11) Deflate the College Cost Bubble by using the Department of Labor to challenge hiring criteria of businesses where many require expensive advanced degrees when jobs might require less costly education, i.e., increasing the value of a high school diploma again, etc.; requiring schools getting federal assistance or whom have had past substantial federal assistance on financial brink to consolidate to cut costs
12) Allow negotiation of Medicare drug costs
13) Establish a federal corporation that invests in prescription drug stocks because by doing so this agency can better negotiate by buying or selling shares
14) Medicare Now! Let people use thru Medicare earlier before retirement
15) Lay the ground work for single-payer Healthcare by flipping the FICA formula so out of the 7.65% where 6.20% goes to Social Security and the rest, 1.45%, towards Medicare/Medicaid (where your employes matches your contribution), you flip it but you do it slowly so those who paid into Social Security and are near retirement can get their full benefits (unless they opt for more Medicare). Raise the overall 7.65% to 8-10%.
16) E.U. style data protection for US consumers
17) Also require digital currencies be backed by some sort of convertible asset like gold or silver
18) Issue a Defense Production Act edict to gold miners to mine more gold and silver to continue increasing our vault reserves
19) Not to Exceed Age Limits for Justices such as 70 or 80 as opposed to term limits so we don’t get activist judges who constantly flip on laws as one judge takes over from the other, etc. Yet, we don’t get judges who are always in the hospital once very old
20) A Total Energy Policy that includes both green and fossil fuels including converting nuclear weapons into energy fuel for reactors, while handing over fuselages to the aerospace industry such as to send satellites into in orbit
21) Full Legalization of Cannabis and help with military recruitment by disallowing the asking about prior or post service (in the case of re-entry) Marijuana usage.
23) The possible establishment of a US Space Force Academy in a place like Cape Canaveral or Daytona Beach (near Embry Riddle Aeronautical University), Houston, Hunstville AL, Prescott AZ, or Santa Barbara CA near Vanderberg AFB (even if it has to still fall under the guidance of the USAFA and Air Education Training Command). Even if the school has to start off as a two-year school for junior and seniors who do their first two years at the USAFA. An academy size comparable to smaller academies such as US Coast Guard Academy or US Merchant Marine Academy. Sports will be in the small NAIA or NCAA III. Name facilities after famous astronauts or space pioneers.
24) (My personal favorite) Operation Gerbil or Gerbil Maze with NASA and companies like Blue Origin, SpaceX, Astra, etc. Replace nodes on the International Space Station with new sections but send the old ones to the Moon so we have materials to establish a small research facility. Scrap junk missions to land materials on the moon such as wiring, aluminum, etc.
26) Re-establish mental asylums with funds and grants to states via DHHS to help with the mentally ill homeless population.
27) Separate mental asylums, drug rehab, and jail where in many cases these are merge to cut costs especially as jails become more privatized
28) Fund clean needle exchanges and promote one-time use needles.
29) Urge cities that have lax policies on homeless peoples to encourage these people to clean their areas, aka, you can stay here if you clean the streets. This can be done by coordinating with nonprofit organizations, local police, etc.
30) Urge ISP service providers to require ALL adult sites have Two Factor Authentication to prevent minors from accessing pornography but protect pornography as free speech between consenting adults. Sites that don’t apply this such as those incorporate overseas can be blocked. I support the right to watch adult entertainment, but it is too accessible.
31) Reform federal sugar subsidies
32) Transition After Training (TAT) for Transgender service people where recruits after basic training, completing trade school and upon reaching a rank that permits off base living or single quarters will have the ability to transition.
33) Department of Justice mandate to protect Trans people if jailed be it local, state, or federal such as solitary confinement or protective custody to prevent them being abused or harassed
34) Artic Defense Pact as an extension of NATO, NORAD, and AFNORTH with Canada, US, Denmark, UK, Japan and Nordic countries to exercise and coordinate defense of the arctic especially as climate change opens waterways
36) Expand the early commissioning program at Junior Military Colleges but also schools like Embry Riddle Aeronautical University
37) Expand the payout for Enlisted College Loan Repayment Plans in the military
38) Expand the Segal Education Award for the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Teach America
39) House arrests for petty crimes as opposed to jailing
40) Policies to end racial segregation in jails such as isolating violent criminals from inmates capable of rehab. Segregate based on crimes committed and character (not race) instead of bunching all types of criminals together.
41) STD testing for all inmates before entry, while incarcerated, and before exit
42) Encourage the expansion of open stock market exchanges on Eastern Time to close on West Coast or Central (Chicago) Time so trading hours are extended a little bit
43) Include Mexico’s top universities into the Association of American Universities with the US and Canada to promote goodwill
44) Use Border Wall funding as leverage for increased gun control (not confiscation)
45) Return parts of federal land to Native Tribes and Native Hawaiians
46) Fly the flags of Native Tribes on federal property and deed back parts of federal lands to Native American tribes
47) Investigate Highway of Tears Native femicides with Canada
48) As Reparations Package: Free or very cheap HBCUs; free genetic testing to find African ancestry, and 0% federally insured fixed rate mortgages (Freedman Loans) as a reparations package for black Americans similar to the GI Bill and VA Home Loan
49) Require truck drivers submit DNA swabs since many unsolved crimes were submitted by truckers. Also, pilots such as those who use smaller off the radar air strips.
50) Authorize a “hacker hunter unit” with law enforcement and clandestine operation authority within the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA)
51) Have (RPCs) remote processing centers where the US can have courts and processing centers for refugees in foreign nations similar to forward-operating bases (FOBs), thus reducing the need to migrate all the way to the United States when judges can do virtual court sessions, but you have onsite translators, law enforcement officials to run background checks, etc.
52) Cash Preservation Act to ensure that large businesses are still required to do a certain percentage of businesses with paper cash currency
53) Link all successful experiments at attempting to cure HIVAIDs to race for a cure, spanning stem cells, medications, nanotechnology, gene therapy, etc.
Terrence Howard, Kanye, B.o.B, Tyga, DeSean Jackson, Will Smith…something is going on.
I appreciate Umar standing up for black people but I disagree with him on things.
He’s another talker in a sea of people doing the same, chasing that easy money from the “algorithm”
I wonder how many women Dr. Umar Johnson sleeps with after his seminars while touring the country considering a lot of the applause in his crowds seems to come from black (maybe single, maybe not) women. Seriously. He’s selling a product that many want, and I figure many women might want the honor of saying they’re the muse to the “honorable” Dr. or “Chief” or “Emir” Umar Johnson.
For such a judgemental person he’s out of shape and should cut back on the deep fried lemon pepper wings.
Considering his misogyny and bigotry, like the “reject modernity, embrace traditionalism” “black people were better under segregation” of thinkers like Kevin Samuels, with the late Mr. Samuels having been associated with podcasts like the Fresh and Fit Podcasts (which leads to Rollo Tomassi, Andrew Tate, Stefan Molyneux, Lauren Southern, The Young Americans, etc.), I wouldn’t be surprised if Johnson, with his version of Pan-Africanism, is a proponent of polygamy, considering many men are doing whatever they can these days to “get their balls” back, even though I’d argue they were never taken/they’re embarrassing themselves/saying things they might not be able to take back one day. But, who knows? That’s just speculation my part…
I guess according to Umar… people who love each other and have children across “racial lines” have to get…divorced? Split time with their kids? Feel shame?
Fuck you.
Umar chirps about staying in your race and that black men should only date black women but this puts all the blame on men as if black women don’t set the criteria. Marrying someone simply for their race and no other characteristic is stupid to me but it works for some.
There’s plenty of black men for black women and if a woman can’t find a partner that’s more of a sign of her than men. There’s always a willing man more than a willing woman in my opinion. Black women are also allowed to date outside their race and this doesn’t offend me. I remember growing up and there was no love thrown my way and I can admit that. I also grew up traveling as a military brat where environments are very diverse and non-segregated.
Honestly all the anti-whitey talk is a turn off. It’s a turn off to air this supposed dirty laundry. Hate is a turn off. Ignorance is a turn off.
I admit, I’m dating a white woman but black women are beautful but my lady isn’t black. Cool. She makes me feel supported, free, and she doesn’t think she knows better when I speak about race. I can be a nerd. I don’t have to worry about appearances. I can listen to whatever music I want. She simply listens. She shows me affection and there’s no real power struggles. I support her.
No one supported me so why turn my hand away from someone I care for just because of a fat and fat mouthed bigot rapping off black stats and woke talking points I already know about?
I use to live in “Hotlanta” and went to high school there but it wasn’t my style 100%. Bougie. Fast. Heartless. Fake it to you make it. Avarice. Leased cars. Shootings. Strip clubs. Hook up culture. Some of the most spoiled black children I’ve ever seen living in mansions but making fun of poor kids or bullying white kids. Granted there was plenty of old Dixie hate around. I know the S.W.A.T, Ben Hill, Greenbrier, Fort Mac, Old National, Riverdale, the West End near Morehouse and Spelman, just as much as I know the burbs where I grew up where my school was 50% black. Church on Sunday, wings for lunch with extra bleu cheese or Publix chicken with “fixins” on the side. To be honest I miss old days of black culture before rap, before “woke”, but I’m not hating. I grew up with two parents, one from the hood of Miami near Liberty City by way of kinfolk from Alabama near Selma (my grandmother grew up near Coretta Scott King), and my other parent is from the backwoods country of Georgia.
Yet, Umar Johnson has no right to tell a black person who lives the black experience, which is an experience of many experiences, from poor to bourgeoisie, rural to urban, Northern to southern, East to West, native born American or new African immigrant, part black, extrovert, or introvert, straight or gay, tall, or short, “proper sounding” or ebonics, that they aren’t black because they don’t meet his criteria.
When will black people ever stop this? Time and time again…This purity testing? Blackness could be this all-encompassing and loving movement, happy to spread sacred wisdom of the Motherland to influence all mankind, but instead it comes off as hate against hate.
And, who care’s if he’s “eloquent” or “funny”. Hitler was eloquent. Idi Amin was eloquent. Mao was eloquent. Grand Wizard’s can be eloquent or funny.
Dr. Umar who is essentially in the Intellectual Dark Web, like quacks such as Jordan Peterson, Stefan Molyneux, Eric Weinstein, etc. He’s not building anything. He’s not engineering anything. He’s not coding for anything. He’s just another…talker. A paid, viral, algorithm chasing talker with some papermill doctorate, in our postmodern hellscape of self-help gurus with fascist underpinnings hidden under Joseph Campbell Jungian analysis or whatever.
I find it offensive that Umar as one American guy thinks he can single handedly define what Pan-Africanism is. His Pan-Africanism seems like a black man’s wet dream of Hitler grandeur with his Pan-Aryan ideas or some George Orwell 1984 dystopia. Pan-Africanism, Umar aside, despite the noble intentions and the many contributions of self-ascribed Pan-Africanist is inserting a black framework into larger discussion, seems like a form of reverse colonialism where predominately American voices are dictating the narrative, despite America, compared to black countries abroad, is privileged. Yes, systems do oppress black people, but one black American has more opportunity than many black Africans abroad.
I understand the need for we as black people to regain a sense of our roots, but often Pan-Africanism seems like erasure, oddly. It attempts to merge all black aesthetics into one on the grounds of unity, but incidentally might erase the unique nuances that makes the black experience so unique. Further it might not even include things which some might not consider “black enough”. It also might insert toxic elements from the America’s into the family oriented, rural, and pastoral cultures of many African groups. It’s not that Pan Africanism is bad, but how it has come to be, seems slightly problematic but questioning it in certain circles is grounds for something akin to “excommunication”.
And, by the way if you’re some white liberal reading this. Respectfully, all love to you, thank you for being allies to black people in time of need, but on this matter… white liberals have a tendency of listening to the loudest black voice in the room because they’re constantly searching for the blackest “diamond” in the rough.
Pan-Africanism in one way could be considered a bridgehead for the United State’s growing interests in Africa to hedge countries like China, and the US State Department (and intel community) could use “Pan-Africanists” to insert US ideas into Africa.
Adding insult to injury as Umar goes around threatening the existences of interracial couples who are already receive hatred from certain parties, he also DID NOT go to a Historically (emphasis on historically) Black College and University (as if it matters or makes you less black if you don’t go to one). Sorry, is Obama not black enough for going to an Ivy League college, a place where black people were denied for most of American history? Why are we shaming black dance teams at “white colleges” when this could be a showcase of black culture, etc.? Black people act like white folk don’t have (or, didn’t invent) remote controls. It’s not hard for others to watch Grambling vs Southern or the Celebration Bowl.
Umar went to Millersville University and got an advanced degree from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, where osteopathic medicine is heavily criticized by traditional medicine, but it’s not that Umar cares, or many of his follower’s care, considering we live in a world of Zodiac followers and hand-readers, because he simply needed a Dr. in front of his name to give himself more credence. Good on him for achieving it, but simply because you’re a “doctor” doesn’t mean your prescription to the world’s problems are entirely accurate.
He’s even been caught lying talking about his ancestry to Frederick Douglass according to The Root (2017) article by Michael Harriot, titled: We Fact-Checked Umar Johnson’s Hotep Tantrum with Roland Martin Because Someone Had To. That should have cancelled him, but his hotep followers don’t care, his black female followers obsessed with black men with white women don’t care, no different than Trump supporters not caring for his multiple lies.
The further irony of Umar is that he’s some type of Muslim, but for whatever odd reason, black Americans never question the fact that Islam played a huge role and still does play on in the enslavement of black people. Muslims, whom I have no problem with, but relating to the history of slavery in Africa, weren’t permitted to enslave fellow Muslims, so being in Northern Africa and the Sahel, Muslims made raids into Sub-Saharan Africa or traded for slaves for goods with black African tribes or kingdoms. Tribes who didn’t want to be enslaved and wanted to make money from the gold trade routes converted to Islam as a business decision. These gold trade routes helped Timbuktu flourish, but the wealth of gold trading Muslim African Kingdoms likely tipped off the Europeans who had contact with Islam (for better or worsts).
After the Reconquista of Spain and Portugal over the Moors, the Portuguese simply sailed to areas that Muslims were familiar with, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade began in the Age of Discovery, especially after Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand sent Christopher Columbus to what would be the new world.
If certain black people are so committed to “de-colonization”, then why not go further, and return to nature-worship which is more indigenous than any Abrahamic religion? However, our ancestors in the USA fought with Christianity inspiring us, so why throw away what our ancestors fought with simply because we want “consciousness”? Why can’t you be a Christian or a cultural one at least (identifies as one, but not a hardcore follower) like most Americans and be equally as intrigued with African culture? Are we better than our ancestors because they were more oppressed than us, but they didn’t “fight hard enough” according to or modern standards? I dunno…
I would argue the existence of black people is miserable because not only are you oppressed by systems out of your control that inherently criminalized or stereotype you, but you’re also policed, haggled, and harassed by your own black people where everyone walks around purity testing the authenticity of the other instead of owning their own lives. You’re a target of white supremacists and get the ire of black nationalists.
Yet, maybe I can’t be mad at Umar because black people are human and most humans care about what other’s think and try to fit in as to not bring negative attention to themselves.
II. Want to Hear a Conspiracy?
Anyways,
Want to hear a “conspiracy theory”?
Ok. Here we go…
White supremacists love black separatism.
Oh, wait, that’s not a conspiracy.
It’s as if the Founding Fathers who supported slavery but knew that the freedom of black people was inevitable, knew that one day, particularly with black people being treated so poorly, would segregate themselves, because they would hate white people, which was their plan all along.
There’s something odd going on to me, but it seems we as a people have accepted the contemporary discourse of self-determination and tribalism as a needed tenant for a more just world, yet, to me, I suspect that this tribalism, particularly in the United States, where white and black are more similar than we given credit for, is and has been pre-planned or is the expression of past segregated/nationalistic ideas still echoing into the present (for example, even the hippies of days past were still racially regressive compared today’s standards but their views or analyses on race, gender, etc., largely remains unchanged to this day).
The Great Replacement Theory” or “Kalegri Plan” is something spouted by conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, and Nazis (and, Fox News) alike, but I would argue that the future is the “Great Re-Segregation”.
The Great Re-Segregation is the innocuous herding of groups into defined spaces (maybe, even “smart cities” with “themes” and within meta-verse spaces, i.e., no different than racially segregated neighborhoods) in a globalized world where groups are essentially herded like animals (without thinking of it as such), where our data is collected (genetic information included), surveillance is everywhere, and the mass media is used to stir up unrest in the public, yet, since levers of power will be largely influenced by Westernized European inspired ideas, policy, etc., but also the growing influence of the homogeneous Chinese.
A society ruled by a technocratic elite (i.e., like things already are), indifferent to progressivism or conservatism, who operate with a pragmatic and “syncretic” viewpoint and manages the species, like a Darwinist exhibition. Sure, we will still have overlap between the groups, because we as a species have always had overlap, because sharing genetics helps “keep gene pools” humble (not inner-bred), which helps the overall longevity of the species (i.e., genetic vigor), but most people will be herded (socially groomed) to segregate and the political right and political left are both responsible.
Countries are essentially “centers” overseeing commodified groups where all nations answer upward to institutions and systems effectively ran by a small group of people, i.e., a pyramid scheme. When consumer bases start to slow down in how fast they replicate while also demanding more rights as they climb the economic ladder, economic down-turns are manufactured, new bodies from around the globe are shifted into industrial ones, and process of segregation in one hand and assimilation in another takes course.
However, I don’t want you to lose faith in all institutions, and institutions in many ways are highly effective at mitigating risks and subsidizing costs to help the public; however, there’s players within these systems that seem to have an agenda, or maybe these leaders are simply operating subconsciously the way the system was designed to, i.e., an empiricist, scientific, sterile mindset of mitigating groups, creating grand narratives, managing the scarcity of resources, etc.
III. Trauma, Conspiracy Theory, etc., etc.
But on black people.
Terrance Howard is flying around the world telling people that he has disproved gravity. Kanye “Ye” West is having a psychotic episode for our sick entertainment as he is handled by white nationalists and antisemites using him as a “pet to prove that they aren’t has “unstable” as Ye. Rapper, B.o.B., attempted crowdfunding to raise money to help prove the Earth is flat. NFL Wide receiver, DeSean Jackson was called out for saying antisemitic things. Rappers such as Tyga often talks about “Jewish money”, etc., the irony is that there’s likely Jewish management working on his albums (with rappers also somehow allowed to say terms like “white bitches”). Will Smith, likely feeling emasculated by social media and his wife (or, life partner, what have you, whom had a relationship with Tupac – who holds a messianic status amongst certain black people), calling his manhood and even blackness into question, assaulted another black man on stage, in front of the whole world, at the world’s most prestigious acting award (even if the event has fallen off in popularity in recent years as far as ratings). Kyrie Irving did share a post of a “Black Hebrew Israelite” adjacent documentary (not to be confused with black people who practice Orthodox or Reformed Judaism) that has antisemitic tropes.
The comedian, Godfrey, and even the radio personality, Charlemagne the God, whom I would say have their heads on right for the most part, sometimes praise the Farrakhan’s of the Nation of Islam, which as a group espouses…Black Nazi rhetoric, even if they make certain good points analyzing power, how things work, etc. I found it interesting that everyone called out Ye for his obvious hatred, yet, there this veneration for figures like the Farrakhan’s which is often a way of proving “how down you are” in a culture were purity testing, i.e., sizing each other up seems prominent.
Black people have been taught that we cannot be racist, but only prejudiced, since we lack institutional power, yet, the irony of this idea is that A) it allows black people to not challenge our potentially bigoted ideas and to feel empowered within those beliefs because traditionally we lack power, and B) this notion seems like a form of infantilizing black people by saying our actions aren’t as comparable to that of our supposed “superiors”, and this can be problematic on multiple fronts such as empowering sociopaths who already lack the ability to take self-accountability, and yes, black people can be sociopaths as well.
Bullet point (B) in my opinion tends to be promoted more by non-black liberals or non-black Leftists, who struggle with how to help or listen for fear of offending. Building empowerment solely on the idea that we as black people don’t have power or haven’t had an impact on power systems, seems defeatists to me, i.e., a victim-based mentality, which sure has plenty of merit – considering black people were and are victims in many ways – but, this tendency also has elements of “erasure”, i.e., it erases the impacts black people have been able to insert on power systems.
We as black people always focus on depression as black people. Our movies are either hilarious comedies or the most depressing family or slavery stories. It’s one extreme to the next. It reminds me of the Greek mask where one half is smiling and the other is sad.
Many self-ascribed black nationalists don’t know every single black person who contributed something of prominence, and we often talk about social leaders and celebrities, as opposed to our engineers, scientists, doctors, etc., which interestingly is something that all groups do, further showing we’re no better or worse than anyone else.
Before I go on, I want to state that I want all humans to be inspired by blackness. I do not want black exclusivity, black segregation, black hierarchies, black gatekeeping, purity testing, etc. We are all humans and should find inspiration and commonality amongst each other because we all have different ways of seeing things, so it’s intelligent to learn and adapt to each other. The same way how when I was kid found a moral is tales like Robin Hood who fought the rich and the state for the benefit of the common man, I want a white kid feeling lonely in the boonies to be inspired by Shaka Zulu.
I’ll get to the point of my beliefs. I don’t like segregation. I was raised with a Christian inspired Abolitionism that seeks a future where are people judged by their actions solely and not for their race.
Even though I am by no way a good Christian, and many Christians would reject me as being a Christian because I’m not an extremist, I still place merit on the teachings on mercy, love, humility, etc., that Christianity teaches.
Interestingly, my political left leanings are in part inspired by Christian mercy.
I believe that racial segregation is social engineering derived from our colonial roots and is a way of dividing the public by manufacturing dialectical (diametrically opposed) tension, cultures., etc.
I find it “funny” that white nationalists support the rhetoric of black separatists, so…if logic is to persist, and black people or the political left say that the US is white supremacists (i.e., Amerikkka), then maybe black separatism was intended to be another force that keeps the races separate, so they can be “farmed” “herded” etc. I find it interesting that certain elements of Left-Wing thought, with its anti-colonial, post-colonial, and de-colonial framework calls for self-determinism, yet, white nationalists or other Right-Wing forces call for self-determination too.
I believe that those in power use both left-wing and right-wing because they have a pragmatic view of power, to maintain racial segregation, hierarchies, etc., but these people, seeing themselves as entitled to “evolve the species”, use tension to merge elements of bipolar opposites, so from the explosion of these opposite agents, you create a new paradigm, but the later repeat the cycle as new diametrically opposed binaries reveal themselves.
There’s a Darwinists and Enlightenment Period based mindset (which includes liberalism, Communism, fascism, and capitalism) that sees chaos and flux as essential in the process of evolution and these concepts are embedded into Western thought, didactic, etc. The common man, burdened by the grind of existence, where the system knows and manipulates our Maslow Hierarchy of Needs by creating scarcity (competition, unemployment, etc.), is more likely to find solace in their identity (the cheapest form of currency in my opinion), and not question how those identities are constructed to be binaries in a system of control for the benefit of a few.
For example, the Nation of Islam, which is listed as a hate group by the US State Department, Southern Poverty Law Center (who helped take down the KKK in the 1960s), and Anti-Defamation League, believes that black scientist named Yakub (insinuating Jacob from the Jewish tradition) created white people and other races with an unspecified birth-control method to be “diametrically opposed” to blackness, and to conquer black people.
Nation of Islam by the way was allegedly created by a man impersonating a black man, and he mysteriously disappeared, potentially stealing money from membership fees of poor blacks. Many poor black people fled up north, and the creator of the Nation of Islam, using the then popular trend of secret groups, like B’nai B’rith, the Klu Klux Klan, etc., focused on these new black migrants who became jaded by racism up north. Before the twentieth century, after the Civil War, the United States saw an increase in spiritualism, mesmerism (hypnosis), seances, etc., because there was a lot of death from the war and a changing of America as new immigrants came in. The N.O.I., is simply a byproduct of these events. Today, the Nation of Islam has ties to Scientology, which is further proof of the mind-control elements the N.O.I. seeks out.
Simply reading this I can pull so much. A) black people descended from slaves often make similarities to that of the ancient Jews in captivity since that was the only book that slaves were allowed to read (or, be read too), granted it was redacted by slave owners to justify slavery, B) because of Christianity being forced upon us – my people, as it was for most groups, including tribal Europeans in the Dark Ages, newly freed black people after slavery, notably those exposed to other ideas in Northern Cities, were searching for identity and some chose a religion that was perceived as polar opposite to Christian, rural, and Southern, yet still beholden to the credibility of Abrahamic faiths, and chose unorthodox Islam, and C) the figure of Yakub – a rip off of Jacob – is essentially the concept that not only chirps to anti-Jewish thought, but also the notion of the “Uncle Tom”, “sell-out”, “race traitor”, etc., meaning that the Nation of Islam inserted this character, as a “purity testing” trip-wire figure, as a means of taking the high ground to call any detractors or critics “enemies of the race”, which is a pretty low and lazy way of winning arguments.
There was also an aversion to the COVID-19 vaccines, despite black Americans in certain categories being at increased risk for contracting it due to high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, etc., but also black and Latin workers often work in businesses that were prone to outbreaks such as warehouses, meat packing facilities, restaurants, etc.
Sure, my last point about COVID-19 is more understandable, because to be frank, the virus was new, people had limited information, the virus did fundamentally change how we operate (such as tele-work, social distancing, etc.), and there is a general mistrust of institutions; however, for all the other previous points stated, there is a trend of black men, notably popular black celebrities, descending into what I consider to be postmodern solipsism, relativity, and conspiracy theory.
Further, as this phenomenon of black celebrities going mad is happening, which is not necessarily new, there are public figures willingly to use this distortion or confusion of what is real or what is not real to mix it with Pan-Africanism so these public leaders to ascend to prominent positions.
Umar Johnson, for example, is a Men’s Rights Activist, likely inspired by the late yet controversial Kevin Samuels (whom like Jesse Lee Peterson, tells the story that black people were better off segregated).
IV. Fascism hiding under Postmodernism
Misinformation affects all people regardless of demographic because as a society we are now living in a hyper-reality of late-stage, globalized capitalism – full of parody, pastiche, bad actors, i.e., trolls or agents of misinformation, and recycled pop culture – where the distinction between real and fake, or simulation and simulacra is hard to discern.
We live in a world where corporate power for example is so strong, innocuous, and entrenched and it pervades all aspects of life, including the commodification of race, culture, sexuality, orientation, ideology, religion, education, healthcare, and just about…everything. Even misinformation is commodified.
I say that postmodernism is the chameleon skin that shrouds the predatory animus of capitalism.
The disorienting “skin”, i.e., postmodern culture, is simply a way of capitalism to sustain itself by a) creating relativity so we don’t know what is real or fake, and b) recycling culture, often in anachronistic fashion, because most growth or markets have already been exhausted, and most production isn’t from labor value but is from financialization, i.e., using fiat money to speculate on assets to create artificial demand where those at the top benefit the most, and manipulate business cycles to their own benefit (knowing government’s, already being privatized, will insure their loses at taxpayer expense).
As a result, we live in a world where “Continental Philosophy” encompassing fields such as metaphysics and existentialism merges with “Analytical Philosophy” encompassing fields like linguistics, game theory, logic, etc. In other words, we have a lot of intensive research and data alongside endless subjective interpretations of said data thus leading to a “collective flux”, i.e., mass solipsism, resulting in statements such as “my truth”.
Even though this democratization of information can be inspiring and helpful (e.g., checking institutional power), it does lead to a “triumph of the will” of ideas, i.e., the strongest survives, hence we may be subject to constant and ever-growing ideological conflict as ideas battle each other with no sense of moderation or consensus in sight.
But as a fellow black man, I can understand why there’s this need for truth among black people, yet, it seems to be leading black men (not saying more so than anyone else) down conspiracy rabbit holes.
The truth is, of course, black people had our diverse and often differing indigenous identities stripped and were forcibly yet partially assimilated into Western Civilization, to be labor power, but also to serve as an aesthetic binary to whiteness, where blackness became the magnet for the vileness of white supremacy.
Black Americans were designed to arouse a sense of supremacy in white settlers, many who had nothing but the value of being white.
Black people historically were denied education, reading, the ability to speak up, and our own destinies. Yet, this doesn’t mean that black people lacked aptitude, but rather we were disbarred from understanding the civilization which fell upon us, and which also devalued us. There’s a tendency to think that we’re not getting the entire story, or, there’s a paranoia of some higher deeper and nefarious truth – which is true but can be untrue depending upon on how we seek those truths.
But, how far black people have come is a true miracle.
We must be willing to check our own theses.
Simply because we feel something doesn’t mean that it is true, and the also the simplest path towards a solution is often not the truth but its tempting to take the less arduous path. For example, antisemitism is often a gross simplification of the truth, because Jews don’t run the world, even though, of course, there are powerful players that are Jewish pulling the levers of power, but to time and time again blaming Jews is intellectually lazy and ironic. If Jews really ran the world, why would they not just bulldoze anyone in their way?
White nationalist for example, preach that they are superior one second, while claiming to be victims at the same time, and most of the bad ideas that are affecting everyone – white people included – were created by white people. Karl Marx, a Jew, or a BIPOC person didn’t steal your job, but Mitt Romney working in Leveraged Buyouts did.
The temptation to jump to antisemitism, is disingenuous, and an easy scapegoat, but black people do this too, i.e., we try to find a simple explanation without understanding all the nuances, conflicts, inner diversity of various groups, etc.
When you add all of this with the fact that black men are often the most criminalized, black people in general – traditionally speaking – are often seen as having “less quality” or “less refined tastes”, etc., there is an insatiable thirst for truth to rebuild or regain our “consciousness” “regalia” “honor”, but the trauma on black people, both present and past, both anecdotal and institutional, seems to corrupt the path towards truth. This corruption, which objectively is from a good place I would argue, seems to have some black people questioning everything, even basic principles such as Terrance Howard arguing against basic arithmetic (something all humans developed and understood on their own).
History is already a confusing and rigorous endeavor, but most people fall for conspiracy theories, where I defined conspiracy theories as theories where the conclusion is already predetermined, but the researcher with a specific or ideological bias uses facts that simply serve their point, instead of actively challenging their own thesis or idea. Conspiracy theories as opposed to let’s say investigative journalism often lacks rigorous peer review, panel presentations, debates, etc.
She’s not a horrible person, but I don’t get much from her opinions and they seem highly biased, reactionary, and not reasearched that well. I think she has learning to do on issues, but she has a platform to spread her “contrarian” ideas to the masses and add to the paranoia that’s already out there. You hear the word shill a lot online, and in many ways despite her seeming “against the man”, I think she’s only libertarian as a rebuttal to progressive politics so conservatism can be sustained without verbally admitting it, yet, her Fruedian slips in her Tweets reveals a lot of where she is coming from.
Idaho, where Kim is from, is a lovely state with its own unique albeit small progressive elements, but hearing Kim Iversen talk it reminds me of a conservative person from Idaho who really didn’t grow up around a lot of diversity despite her having family who are Asian. Yet, she was indoctrinated within a largely white environment – which isn’t bad – yet, that can shape a person’s biases similarly to if it were the opposite. Put it this way, I’m sure many Right Wingers love her, despite her coming off as “progressive”. I feel she is closeted cheerleader for white supremacy without even realizing it because she equates the talks around white supremacy as being hostile towards white people but fails to get its a conversation about a system.
This take by Kim Iversen and Joe Rogan…is stupid. I’m sorry, it’s stupid. White Supremacists can’t be threats because they…wear khakis? Kim is so paranoid that white people will be “criminalized” that she’ll actually downplay people in a movement that has done violence in the USA such as terrorism.
Another goofball take by Kim. So liberals are leaving supposedly. OK. But Ryan Grim rebuts her claim by saying liberals are moving to liberal areas and her best comeback is “well, they’re not the same sort of Demcrats”. Oh really, can you elaborate more? She also doesn’t address the larger reasons behind the housing crisis such as the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy making home prices soar, innovations in online homebuying making home buying faster, etc.
I’m glad that Kim Iversen runs her mouth. Seriously. She could easily slip away as another innocuous ambiguous newscaster, yet, by her talking and her Tweeting, her true biases, thought process, and beliefs become more apparent.
See exhibits below….
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She can’t understand why people are mad that a vigilante went to a protests which resulted in two deaths? She doesn’t get the symbolic nature of the case considering it was a BLM protests but Kyle being acquitted is a form of the state scaring people to not protests etc.
Forward: Before I get into the article, I want to write a quick list of white supremacists hate crimes, since it seems Kim Iverson is skeptical that white supremacy is a threat, largely since she feels doing anything about it would violate some sort of libertarian principle. But I’m not sure if she’s a libertarian necessarily, and could simply be a free thinker, yet her segments on Rising by The Hill to me have been helping to stoke a sense of mistrust, conspiracy, and even apologetics for right wing ideology.
After I wrote this, it struck me that Kim Iversen is following in the tradition of former MTV VJ, Kennedy, and MTV contributor, Kurt Loder, who are both libertarians. Yet, Kim’s style on her show, Rising by The Hill, seems to be picking up notes from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, i.e., opining in real time, firmly anchored by a bias, rather than giving in-depth analysis of the issues she’s talking about and with nuance. Kim Iversen seems like a decent person. She’s continuously worked and built a career for herself, and that is commendable. However, I notice that she seems flat-footed when it comes to having a good pulse of what’s going on, and in many ways, I think her upbringing has left her a bit ignorant or unable to understand nuance on many issues, such as those relating to race. Her politics are all over the place, which isn’t problematic in and of itself, but discerning what Iversen believes is task. To me, she’s ultimately a “progressive Republican” with a tendency of spreading paranoid energy, and seems strongly influenced by her upbringing in Idaho, but she takes the “hip position” of being a libertarian (without stating it publicly), meaning she’s really nothing more than a Republican. As she decries the tyranny of the state, her political position ends up being nothing more than apologetics for Republican politics. She can be the most progressive conservative pundit on YouTube if she wants, but in reality, the Republican Party doesn’t care about any of her “progressive ideas”, yet she continuously muckrakes the Democratic Party – a party, which of course, can be embarrassing and counter-productive, but still the Democratic Party gives more people across the country, regardless of background, a sense of belonging (as opposed to the monolithic politics of the GOP).
White Supremacist Violence and/or Mass Shootings by White Suspect Crimes:
Payton S. Gendron (10 kills in Buffalo NY). Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (168 Kills and 680 wounded). Dylan Roof (9 Kills at a church in Charleston, SC). Stephen Paddock (60 Kills and 411 wounded). Robert Crimo III (killed 7 and injured over a dozen in Highland Park, IL). Phoenix Ilkner, a College Republican called exteme by classmates (2 killed and injured others) at Florida State University. Scott Decry (8 dead, Seal Beach CA). John T. Ernest (Poway Synagogue Shooter. 1 dead. 3 injured). Ethan Nieneker, charged with two counts of capital murder and one count of first-degree felony murder (Austin TX). Vance Boetler, shot two Democrat politicians in Minnesota, with no National Mourning from the Trump Vance Administration. Eric Rudolph (1 Killed and 111 injured at the Atlanta Olympics). James Huberty (21 Kills and 19 wounded at McDonalds during San Ysidro Massacre in 1984). Devin Kelley (26 Kills and 22 wounded at the Southerland Church Shootings in TX). Robert Long (8 Kills and 1 Wounded in Atlanta). Dimitrios Pagourtzis (10 Kills and 14 wounded at Santa Fe HS in Texas who was found with Nazi and Soviet regalia). Brenton Tarrant (51 Kills and 40 injured at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand). Buford Furrow Jr. (1 Kill and 5 wounded at a LA Jewish Day Care). John King, Lawrence Brewer, Shawn Berry (1 Kill of James Byrd Jr who was decapitated by being dragged by a truck in Jasper, TX). Frazier Glenn Miller (3 Kills at a Jewish Synagogue in Kansas). Robert Bowers (11 Kills and 7 wounded at a Jewish Synagogue in Pittsburgh). Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (15 Kills and 17 wounded at Columbine HS, where the sole black victim was called the N-word before being shot while calling for his mother). James Harris Jackson (1 Kill with a sword of a black homeless man collecting cans in New York City, NY). Jeremy Joseph Christian (2 Killed and 1 Wounded in Portland OR). James Alex Fields (1 Killed by car and 35 wounded in Charlottesville. Trump supporter). John Earnest (1 Killed and 3 Wounded at Poway Synagogue). Gregory Bush (2 Killed in Jefferson Town KY). Kenneth Murray “Death” Mieske, Kyle Brewster, and Steve Strasser (1 Killed by baseball bat beating. Mulugeta Seraw was beated by Neo Nazis of W.A.R. in 1988 in Portland, Oregon. Brewster was found fighting alongside Proud Boys in Oregon in 2021). Jonathan Russell Kennedy (1 Murder and two attempted murders in Huntington Beach, CA, 1994). Erik R. Anderson (1 Fatal Stabbing of Native American, George Mondragon in 1996 in Huntington Beach, CA). Samuel Woodward (1 Kill of Ben Bernstein in Lake Forest, CA).
Intro in Kim Iversen’s Questionable Analysis on Ethan Crumbley and the Patriot Front March
There’s some controversy around Kim Iversen. I don’t hate her, and I will try to put her into context. Yet, she is quite a mystery. For a public figure she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, not even a locked account that prevents public edits. Basic Google searches pulls up some information but not much about her background.
I don’t think she’s an evil person and I feel she’s fairly interested in the topics she speaks on. Yet, the controversy around Kim has been going on for a while but it really came to fruition with her “interesting” take of Oxford High School mass shooter, Ethan Crumbley. According to Kim, the reason the Sun publication showed an angelic photo of the mass shooter was because the media was trying to make it seem like all innocent white Christian males appear to be terrorists. She didn’t really miss the point as to why people were disappointed at the photo of Crumbley, in that she acknowledged that when people of color are shown in the media they are often depicted with the worst imagery, yet, Kim decided to be a contrarian for the sake of being one, by spinning as if showing an innocent photo of Crumbley was another attempt to “demonize” white males.
Honestly, it caught everyone off guard and left people scratching their heads. It is as if when progress about fair coverage relating race is happening, she felt she had to insert a contrarian opinion for the simple sake of doing so, which could be authentic, or could be for money reasons, i.e., it’s her job, but when you see her Twitter account response to criticism she doubled down on her defense of white Christian males (which makes sense considering she was raised in white society and has a white father and family members).
Traditionally, black people for example were always stigmatized via the media (something that Kim Iversen has acknowledged), e.g., just peek at George H.W. Bush’s campaign ad referring to Willie Horton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUxAMG8UqIw
Yet, even if we can all agree that racialized news coverage is bad, the fact that white supremacy is being analyzed seriously seems to have many people feeling uncomfortable, either out of fear of being unfairly associated with the movement, some who are angry that they feel black crime rates are displayed (despite has already stated there’s historical use of stats when referring to black people), or some people are living with a sense of false consciousness, in that America is largely based on white supremacy and people are naturally wired to act as if it doesn’t exists because that defies a certain set of morals mythologized within American culture such as “we are all individuals” or “all people are equal”, when in fact, many groups are not treated equally. Talking about and combating white supremacy isn’t anti-white, where certainly in the past talking about black crime was anti-black considering the U.S has an explicit anti-black history.
The backlash to speaking about white supremacy comes from fear, in which there’s an inherent fear centering around reprisal, which is ironic because if people are terrified for reprisal (which isn’t or won’t happen), what they’re admitting is that in the past they used similar tactics to make minorities live in fear. Basically, their unfounded fear of reprisal is based on them understanding the horrible past of this nation. If logic were to persist, if white supremacy is not a thing, then why are there so many people eager to point out black crime statistics? If America wasn’t built on racism, then why do so many white people fear “reverse racism”?
If we were to isolate this take by Kim on Ethan Crumbley, sure, OK, we can leave it as an “agree to disagree, but really disagree” moment. Yet, just a few days later Kim Iversen on her Rising program by The Hill released a segment titled, “Kim Iversen: Joe Rogan Calls BS on Patriot Front March, Is the Group Backed by Feds?”, published on 9 December 2021, which when accessed by me on 13 December 2021, amounted a total of 512,000+ views. In this segment it is important to notice that Kim is strategically positioned in the segment in the middle of her two co-hosts, meaning she is the focal point of the video and steering the conversation. In the video, she referenced a Joe Rogan segment, featuring Matt Taibbi (Episode 1745), in which Joe calls into question a recent march of white supremacists called Patriot March that occurred in late November 2021 in Washington, D.C. Joe claims that because they’re “in shape”, and wearing the same clothes, etc., that they look like the Feds. Joe does state jokingly that he’s an unreliable source because he’s a comedian (which is interesting because if that’s the case they why take you seriously anytime?), but still double downs on the fact that they can’t be white supremacist because…they have drums, and they have Khakis?
Kim event got the leader of Patriot Front’s age wrong by claiming he’s eighteen years old (I’m assuming she read an article from 2017) but is about 23 or 24 years older having been born in 1998 according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021). Further, Kim if she just read a little more into this or at least provided more context for her audience, she would have discovered that Patriot Front has ties to the Daily Stormer, being one of the most popular white supremacist websites. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021), “On November 3, 2017, roughly 30 members of Patriot Front marched through the University of Texas at Austin to the campus’s George Washington statue where Rousseau delivered a torchlit speech. The following day, Patriot Front members convened at Austin’s Monkeywrench Books with members of Daily Stormer and The Right Stuff meet-up groups for a flash demonstration.”
The fact that Patriot Front employs Flash Demonstrations seems to more evidence to detract from the idea that the November 2021 march was a Federal Law operation.
“The origins of Patriot Front lie in neo-Nazi organizing that began in 2015 at the message board IronMarch.org, itself an outgrowth of the community of dedicated fascists who commented at online forums such as 4chan and Stormfront, and allegedly founded by Russian nationalist Alexander Slavros. IronMarch in turn spun off the activist group AtomWaffen (German for “Atomic Bomb”) Division, whose members engaged in various far-right actions earlier this year.” (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2021). Lastly, Southern Poverty Law Center (2021) stated, “After an AtomWaffen member in Florida shot and killed two other members in May 2017, telling authorities the group was planning to blow up a nuclear plant, a number of AtomWaffen participants joined ranks with Vanguard America.”
Relating to Alexandr Slavros stated within the Southern Poverty Law Center (2021) article about Patriot Front, I find it interesting that Matt Taibbi being Russian (which is not a crime, and I don’t want to promote Russophobia) spoke against the Russia-Gate situation during the Trump Administration. I can understand and accept that the case was likely fraudulent, yet, it wasn’t entirely fraudulent in my opinion. My opinion, is that Russia-Gate took facts, omitted some facts, and conflated others in order to check the balance of power of Trump who did display a sense of being imbalanced himself, and also threatening to unravel US foreign policy especially with Russia whom he and others in his administration such as Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobil and Michael Flynn had relations with. It was a flex of power not only to the Trump Administration who were creating their own unauthorized foreign policy, but it was a sign to leaders abroad, like Vladimir Putin, that the US State will go to about any means to protect our democracy from foreign influence.
Taibbi and other commentors such as Michael Blumenthal and Andrew Mate of The Grey Zone, rallied against Russia-Gate, but nowhere to my knowledge did they or have they admitted that Russia was providing online Far Right propaganda which influenced the Alt-Right which therefore fell under the tent camp strategy of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. The only sort of Far-Right ideology spoken about by members of the Grey Zone often revolves around the Azimov Battalion in Ukraine, who were revealed to have received US military financing against Russia. In essence, Taibbi and others will call out Eastern European fascism and Nazism when it comes from a US ally to discredit US foreign policy, yet they remain silent on Russian Far Right ideology such as the popularity of thinkers like Aleksandr Dugin who provided essential literature for many in the Alt Right (alongside the writings of thinkers like Julius Evola). Taibbi and others effectively “threw out the baby with the bathwater” as an analogy. Yet, the US government has endangered the US public with Russia-Gate because they didn’t focus hard enough on the far-right ideology actually coming into the USA and West, but rather appropriate facts for their own Machiavellian politics.
Yet, back to Iverson, after showing the Joe Rogan segment laughs before going into the history of plausible or proven examples of state-sanction terror cells. Kim also shows screenshots from Twitter by people like Mr. Reagan, an obvious right-wing pundit, who did have a YouTube channel for a long time and went so far as alleging that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was a fake politician and actress. Kim goes into the background of Patriot Front in which she explains the group was a splinter group that broke away from a group called Vanguard who were the group that set up the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA. Yet, Kim inserts some interesting commentary by stating they are “non-violent”, which might be true in theory, or at least that what’s they say to not bring poor press to their movement, yet, it seems Kim is saying they are non-violent as a way of dissuading any sort of threat by Patriot Front or influence they may have on other groups.
It’s as if Kim is undermining the potentiality of the movement because she’s coming from a libertarian mindset, e.g., she states, “the big question is, how big of a threat are these things though? Yes, do these things exists, yes. Do terrorists exist in all forms, yes. But how large of a threat? What are the American people willing to give up to root out this threat?”.
Before I criticize what Kim just said there, to be fair, the group, where leader Thomas Ryan Rousseau spoke, was relatively small (numbering around 100), and this is according to Ellie Silverman (2021) of The Washington Post, who further stated that the event was pushed by fake Twitter account. “It shows how a small troupe of fascists in uniform can … exploit the loopholes around a social media company like Twitter and absolutely make themselves look much more fearsome, look much more scary,” said Michael Edison Hayden, senior investigative reporter and spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, “and give themselves a much better shot at getting the mainstream coverage they so desperately crave.” (Silverstein, 2021).
The likelihood of what happened at the march is either A) the anonymous Twitter account as owned by a person associated with Patriot Front who sent the message to rally, employing their “flash mob tactics”, but then quickly erased their account, or to give more credence to the idea that the Federal Authorities were involved, is B) the account was set up by law enforcement, with them knowing their “flash mob tactics”, to snuff out Patriot Front to get evidence of its members and gain intelligence on the group. Even if masked, the members had to get to the Capitol somehow, so traffic cameras or other means such as triangulating cellphones can easily build a possible registry of suspects.
But, saying the group was a false flag set up by the federal government seems unlikely, if not disingenuous (my favorite Joe Rogan word he uses a lot), since the authorities would have to recruit about 100 people to march and with 100 people you get the chance that at least one person would spill the beans, or a person that any of those 100 people knew could become suspicious and possibly spill the beans, thus jeopardizing the operation. The possibility of a leak would jeopardize any sort of integrity the government has and be disastrous, culminating in Congressional hearings, firings, even possible cause for actual white supremacists to appeal their cases or convictions, etc.
Joe and Kim’s take on the event possibly being a false flag event has an underlying element of conspiracy, and what one could extrapolate from that claim is that other hate marches or even the Capitol Insurrection itself was a false flag. This therefore takes away from the severity of these situations in an attempt to sweep them under the rug as quickly as possible since they are ammunition for government or activist to continue seeking reform against topics such as white supremacy.
Kim also offers some very thin and weak arguments about the group. She claims that because they have a “polished website” and that they seem well-organized, and that the leader is allegedly only an eighteen-year-old person, somehow means this group can’t be real or be a threat. What Kim and Joe seem to be missing is that white nationalist groups aren’t unsophisticated and have adapted to not looking like traditional Skinheads with red-laced jackboots, being out of shape Good Ole Boys reading Soldier of Fortune with a cache of weapons, or Klansmen. It’s not that hard to get a professional website made if you have a lot of people and tap into someone’s talents or even pay someone do set up your site for you. Also, even if the supposed founder of the movement is young, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have funding from powerful people who have fascist sentiments, similarly to how Richard Spencer came from money, set up the National Policy Institute (ran from his mother’s $3 Million dollar home), and had powerful connections such as with Stephen Miller from the Trump Administration whom he attended Duke University with (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic, 2017).
White Nationalists are not all junkies or meth-heads, or disenfranchised angry white youths, or men who have spent time in the prison system who are tatted up with Swastikas, but as Charlottesville proved, they can be a computer programmer, a cop, a military servicemember, a real estate agent, a college student, a bailiff, or even an adult actor, etc.
Note: The adult actor is Paul Kryscuk, whom according to Joseph Wilkenson (2020) of The New York Daily News, is a 35-year-old reported porn star, who sold multiple manufactured weapons to 21-year-old then-Marine Liam Collins, the feds said. Kryscuk allegedly mailed the illegal DIY weapons from his homes in New York and Idaho to Collins in North Carolina. Kryscuk and Collins were regulars on the online neo-Nazi forum Iron March back in 2017 before the site was shut down, according to the feds. During that time, they recruited Jordan Duncan, a 26-year-old ex-Marine and military contractor, and Justin Hermanson, a 21-year-old current U.S. Marine. According to the feds, the crew filmed a “training montage” of themselves shooting guns near Kryscuk’s home in Boise, Idaho. The video ends with all four giving the “Heil Hitler” salute under a black sun flag, a Nazi symbol. The phrase “Come home white man” then appears on screen to conclude the video. Kryscuk’s vehicle was also spotted at two different Black Lives Matter rallies in Boise, Idaho, over the summer, according to the indictment. Kryscuk and Duncan later discussed shooting the protesters, with Kryscuk calling their group a “death squad,” the feds said. Collins, who was enlisted until September, and Duncan had moved to Boise to work closer to Kryscuk before they were all arrested in late October, according to the Justice Department. (Wilkerson, 2020).
As we can see with Mr. Kryscuk, who lived in Idaho where Kim Iverson calls home, he was attached to IronMarch, similarly to Mr. Rosseasu of Patriot Front, where these groups interface with the Daily Stormer, Atomwaffen SS, and possibly even foreign Neon Nazi sources in Russia.
The analysis of Joe and Kim are both weak and lazy at best. The burden of proof to prove if this is a false flag is on them, but Kim especially didn’t do any sort of investigative research to prove if they aren’t real. Her skepticism is based on a libertarian position, mixed with historical precedent that the government has been involved with groups like this before (for example, Red Squads that infiltrated Leftist groups in the 1960s), but no actual investigative muscle to back up her opinion, despite being an employee of a multi-billion-dollar media corporations that owns hundreds of new stations across the USA.
It’s my suspicion that Joe had his take because he’s tired of Left-Wing politics particularly that centering around the topics of white privilege, wokeness, gender inclusion, gender assignment, etc.
Joe seems agitated by the Left because he’s a comedian and many in the comedian community are revolting against cancel culture. In the segment with Matt Taibbi, Rogan when talking about the Rittenhouse Case, insinuated that black people were so passionate about racial issues that they didn’t even know the victims were white, alleging he has black friends – who remain unknown – who told him they didn’t know the victims were black (I am assuming this is Charlamagne da God who was on the JRE with comedian Andrew Schulz on episode 1314).
Joe then shares a meme, showing the gas station owners of the Car Source that Rittenhouse was allegedly defending who are possibly from the Indian subcontinent, and the victims who were white. This is important because when showing the meme, Joe smugly says “I have a bunch of memes. I have a folder of my phone”, and this seems to be in reference to the backlash Rogan has received on his Instagram in which he’s posted questionable memes, such as one insinuating that the authoritarian right makes strong men and the libertarian right makes good times (silly, because conservatives don’t really care about personal freedoms including the marijuana Joe likes to smoke), but the left spectrum makes weak men and hard times. It’s easy for him to tap into the already existing mistrust of the mainstream media, take out his annoyance with the way things are, and use his platform/popularity to convince people that it’s all a hoax.
Lastly, Kim in this segment states that she was raised in Idaho which in the past was the headquarters of the Aryan Brotherhood near cities like Coeur d’Alene and Lake Hayden (now located in West Virginia) in the upper panhandle of the state. She states that people never really saw them as a threat, which is partially true, considering I grew up in the Pacific Northwest as child and later as a young adult, and remember counter-protestors at these events when showed on the local news. People would show up to protest the Aryan Brotherhood and other groups when they marched, yet, what Kim fails to admit is that this isn’t the 1980s or 1990s anymore. Back then, the United States and specifically Idaho still operated with a sense of white racial majority politics. White America could afford to not take them seriously since society then was still largely controlled by white people, e.g., most TV sitcoms featured white families (and, to even show an interracial relationship for example even in the 1990s was still taboo as to not anger the “Middle America” demographic), every President up to that point had been a white Christian male, etc.
Yet, fast forward, come after the election of the first black/bi-racial President in Barak Obama, the election of the first black and Indian American Vice President with Kamala Harris, and an evolution in society as far as acceptance of gay marriage, the inclusion of immigrants such as those from Latin America, the growing popularity of socialist or progressive politics, and the fight to include Trans people into everyday life, one could argue that white nationalists are gaining steam from this progress. The time Kim grew up in Idaho, gay marriage wasn’t even legal anywhere in the United States, the word Socialism was a political campaign killer, and BIPOC liberation politics had been largely anesthetized by the corporate white-wash appropriation of the MLK “can we all get along” iconography (despite MLK having socialist sentiments merged with Christian ideology). The change in the overall culture of America from when Kim grew up in Idaho to now is further amplified by advancements in technology where at the time Kim is referring to the fastest internet speed as dial-up, whereas now is lightspeed broadband communication across the globe, as well newer notions such as the dark web, using crypto currency, having aliases, etc. For example, the company Gab, located in Clarks Summit, PA., BitChute based out o of the United Kingdom, and Epik, located in Sammamish, WA, host white supremacists and Neo-Nazi websites, blogs, videos, torrents, etc., where Gab was associated with the 2018 Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting. The world Kim is nostalgically looking back on didn’t have 8chan, BitChute, Gab, Parlor, Epik, etc.
When you add the differences between the past to the present with clear examples of white terrorism, then it’s unwise at best for Kim Iversen to simply be downplaying the threat movement of white supremacy. Hell, Fox News itself with commentators like Tucker Carlson openly panders to fascists rhetoric bordering upon “blood and soil” politics, and let’s not forget, Emperor Nero in exile himself, Trump and all the toxicity he and his administration platformed (including Steve Bannon going on a tour of Europe to inspire nationalists, influence EU elections, and set up a training center in Italy to train Right Wing activists).
According to Silverman (2021), “There were more than 5,000 cases of white supremacist propaganda in 2020, a near doubling from the prior year, the ADL found. The Patriot Front accounted for more than 80 percent.”
Is Kim Iversen really “Anti-Establishment”?
Kim Iversen despite appearing as if she’s anti-establishment, is establishment in that she is employed by The Hill and represented by N.S. Bienstock, which is a major TV talent agency representing the likes of establishment news figures such as Dan Rather, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, Bill O’Reilly. United Talent Agency acquired N.S. Bienstock on 22nd Jan 2014. Grace N.S. Bienstock is owned by the private company United Talent Agency which is one of the top 7 talent agencies in Hollywood.
When it comes to the Rising segment, The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group, NASDAQ symbol NXST, which had Fiscal Year 2020 revenue streams of $4.5 billion with a Fiscal Year 2016 total equity position of $284.35 billion. Nexstar, owns TV stations across the United States who are affiliates with the major TV networks (e.g., CBS, ABC, NBC, etc.), and owns shares of Food Network.
According to OpenSource.com (2021), Nexstar Media Group has donated to both Democrats and Republican politicians such as in 2014 with $2,600.00 to Mitch McConnell; $1,000 to Adam Kinzinger in 2014; $5,000 to both Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Donald Trump in 2016; $2,500 to Joe Manchin in 2016, $5,000 to Jim Jordan, and $10,000 to Team Graham in 2020 which I assume is Lindsay Graham who went up for re-election in South Carolina, etc. So, Nexstar does lobby and donate to politicians like most corporations do.
What happened to Krystal Ball and Seegar Enjeti?
Before the current cast of Rising with Kim Iversen, Ryan Grim, etc., it features Krystal Ball and Seegar Enjeti. Krystal representing more of leftist viewpoint and Seegar representing more a conservative view, were quite popular, but were oddly fired from the segment. It is my belief that The Hill, being an extension of Nexstar (a major corporation most know nothing about, yet, that’s the nature of many corporations), were trying to overstep the traditional monopoly of the big TV corporations so they focused on YouTube in a way that touched into alternative media market yet still trying to keep the traditional news segment feel.
Yet, it seems that Krystal and Seegar were too good at their jobs, where in many cases Krystal’s left leaning commentary that rallied against corporatism likely sealed her fate. She worked for a corporation arguable with conservative politics, spoke against capitalism, became a relatively popular figure, and then she was canned. Yet, Kim Iversen was brought on with an enhanced model of focusing on click-bait and to covertly anchor the show with libertarian, i.e., right wing, i.e., capitalist, sentiments. Whether, Kim thinks she’s simply defending libertine ideals, or our notion of individualism based on classical liberal ideals like David Hume, the truth is that ideology has largely manifested itself obviously as Republican, and therefore as corporatist by nature. Essentially, sure we have our individual rights, but this notion of individual rights is also the basis for corporate personhood, which is no surprise that libertarian billionaires like the Koch Family funding right-wing grassroots movements.
Kim Iversen seems progressive enough, but underlying her psychology is what could be considered “red pilling”, i.e., opening the window to turn listeners into right wing viewers suspicious of authority and slowing attempting to chip away at the progressive gains the left has made. Her left leaning counterpart in Ryan Grim, though often inserting his counter opinion to Kim is often overshadowed, which to me insinuates that Ryan Grim is coming for a centrist position. What we’re left with is what we have if we were to look at Congress, i.e., a centrist’s democratic party lethargically talking about progressive talking points stolen from the few progressives in that party (as seen through Ryan Grim) but accompanied by an ever-growing fascist Republican party.
She’s hungry for clicks, she’s not doing this for free (she’s in it for a pay check and career), she comes from the radio world so she knows the power of sensationalism, it’s a matter of time before she’s on the Joe Rogan Podcast, she’s fairly stubborn when dealing with criticism instead of seeing it as an opportunity to grow her worldview, and likely will get crowned by the Right Wing as a darling sooner than later. A part of me feels she’s just being controversial for the sake of controversy because he’s aware that it’s about the algorithm and clicks, and this likely comes from experience in radio, where such shock tactics are needed, but this is amplified by the medium of social media like YouTube.
Another contrarian in a landscape of contrarians competing for attention.
Unpacking Kim’s politics
Kim Iversen has an ambiguous politics, similarly to that of Joe Rogan (note: if interested read by article titled, Is Joe Rogan a Neoplatonist? The syncretic politics of Starship Troopers, zany ESP, magick, the Human Potential Movement, Howard Hughes, Disney and the RAND Corporation by Quinton Mitchell).
But, that’s her right. Not everyone has to fit into a proper definition, necessarily, but I don’t really like Kim’s political analysis. I think she comes off as “progressive” but her underlying worldview is libertarian, where libertarianism despite having representation on the left, e.g., socio-anarchism in the tradition of thinkers like Noam Chomsky (author, of Manufacturing Consent (1988) with Edward S. Herman). However, the truth is that libertarianism within US political history has always been an extension of conservative and Far Right politics – the prevailing ideology for most of the United States history – and in many ways libertarianism has been a politically correct way for the Far Right to appeal to mainstream audience. For example, the libertarian positions of individualism and property rights often translates to segregation (such as with State Rights used the desegregation debates), not supporting social services which might go the poor/minorities/or immigrants, and maintaining an economic ideology – capitalism, i.e., a variant of colonialism – which exploits labor so owners who traditionally are predominately white keep ownership over the means of production. The very basis of property rights in the United States were originally written for white male landowners who were originally intended as being the only ones allowed to vote considering many had a Republican model idea to government, before Democratic ideas came about to expand the franchise to common people.
Whether she admits it or not, she’s a libertarian, but I define her as a Gen X 3rd Position syncretic libertarian and contrarian wavering in postmodern fashion between New Age, Far Right, the Left, etc., while using click-bait and suspiciously stupid opinions (considering, she’s represented by one of the top talent agencies in Hollywood, even though I thought Hollywood was now called “Hollyweird” by the Qanon crowd). How can she ever allege a conspiracy or shadowy “deep state” when in fact she’s an extension of institutions of power? The conspiracy is she’s a populist libertarian talking on a corporate media network. She’s really a libertarian, leaning in the vein of libertarianism one would find in the ideology that Joe Rogan displays. With her coming from a radio background and now getting more notoriety via the internet, Kim is picking up on hot button issues like COVID-19, China vs. the United States, buzzwords like the Deep State, or any other hot topic floating in the collective consciousness, i.e., the zeitgeist.
She like Russell Brand really dug into COVID-19 skepticism. She is a supporter of Palestine which might give her points with elements of the political Left coming from a de-colonialist tradition but also, she might get points from the racist elements of the Right Wing where supporting Palestine or even radical Jihadism is because they are antisemites (for example, the case of Devon Arthurs, who is Neo Nazi associated with Atomwaffen SS, converted to Islam and his roommates were planning on blowing up a nuclear facility in Florida, per the source A.C. Thompson, 2018, ProPublica. Also, Ethan Melzer, a former private in the US Army, was charged with treasons for divulging information about his Army unit to a Satanic Neo Nazi group called Order of Nine Angels, per Kyle Rempfer, 2020, Army Times).
She has spoken against US interventionism in Latin American nations, which is good. Yet, she doesn’t believe that white supremacy isn’t as big of threat as what the media is saying, even though the media never talked about it in the past at least as being indicative of a growing social trend, so the fact the media is finally acknowledging white supremacy doesn’t mean it’s a false story but, more so we’re finally pointing the light at white supremacy. Sure, we can debate the scope of white supremacy, for example, there’s not hundreds of thousands of hate crimes occurring, yet, white supremacy can’t be measured with a scope of simply being large or small, because all it takes is a few individuals to conduct terrorist attacks, and white supremacy isn’t always with terrorism but cast with ballots at the voting booth. Whether she wants to admit it or not, Donald Trump’s MAGA is an expression of white supremacy, or what I like to call “white settler politics”.
Deconstructing the aesthetics of Kim’s political ideology
Before I go on, I must state that I don’t think everyone in list below is bad or entirely problematic, yet, some are, yet, all of the people listed below represent the “alternative space”, and this space seems influential on Kim Iversen’s ideas.
Kim could be best associated with the alternative media sphere that has Jimmy Dore (who spends a lot of his time attacking progressives for not being aggressive enough despite not realizing that a person such as Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is just one person in the House of Representatives who has to send legislation through a burdensome progress of drafting, committee, vote, Senate review/approval/or kick-back, and Presidential signature); Russell Brand; Graham Elwood, Joe Rogan (who has platformed and joked around with figures like Gavin McInnes – founder of the Proud Boys -, Alex Jones who shilled for Donald Trump and has ties to Roger Stone, Jordan B. Peterson [multiple times], figures of the Intellectual Dark Web, and any array of thinkers bordering upon being kooks); the Useful Idiots with Katie Halper (who really isn’t problematic at all – whom, interestingly hasn’t been invited to the Joe Rogan Experience. Kim Iversen has participated on Katie Halper’s podcast), and Matt Taibbi (a critic of Russia-Gate, yet, being Russian he seems to have bias and can’t seem to acknowledge the fact that even if Russia-Gate was fraudulent it doesn’t mean it entirely was, but even if it was entirely false, Far Right ideology from East Europe such as Russia and Ukraine, e.g., the concept of a Nazbol or monarchism, did influence the American Right Wing which therefore falls into the spectrum of MAGA politics. For example, Richard Spencer and his follower sang at Charlottesville, “You will not replace us” but also “Russia is our friend”), Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept, possibly The Grey Zone with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté (critics of NATO, Russia Gate, Israel, the CIA, etc.), maybe a little Peter Schiff (an proponent of Austrian Economics spanning Fredrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard – a father of anarcho-capitalism, the Mont Perelin Society, and Ludwig Von Mises), sprinkle in some Ron Paul (an influential figure in anti-Federal Reserve politics, the Tea Party, etc. But, we can’t forget about Libertarian Presidential nominee, Gary Johnson, whom Joe Rogan admitted to voting for in 2016), and Tulsi Gabbard (who is pretty much the presidential choice for everyone listed before, yet Tulsi is an active duty military officer, who seems to be playing the same game that Kim Iversen is playing, i.e., being appealing to the Leftism developed by Bernie Sanders, the state via her ties to the Pentagon via her committee assignment to the Armed Services Committee, but also appealing to post-Tea Party libertarianism one finds on the political right).
Loose cultural markers or aesthetics that float around the world that Kim’s ideology wavers around are the following: A distrust of mainstream media (MSM) especially those associated with liberal politics such as CNN or MSNBC (where the MSM have issue of ethics and integrity, yet, to assume that mainstream media doesn’t do any good job at all is false, and for some reason conservatives don’t consider Fox News to be MSM), Naturalism, holistic medicine, anti-vaccinations (an easy way to gain followers in a heated debate on vaccines, but anti-vax culture often revolves around conspiracy theorists in the traditional of the New World Order, fears of racial replacement or de-population, the Christian Right, etc.), con-spirituality (i.e., conspiracy spirituality, the nexus between conspiracy theory culture and New Age spirituality such as zodiac, charms, UFOs, parapsychology, etc., where New Age spiritualism is a successor of older Occultic and Neoplatonic ideologies mainly from the late 19th to early 20th century such as of Alastair Crowley, Austen Osman Spare, or Madame Blavatsky, where some these older ideas did have intersection with right-wing ideologies, i.e., Nazi Occultism. For example, take the curious case of the MAGA Shaman arrested for the January 6th Insurrection. Think of it as when the Right Wing trips too much acid at Burning Man or when hippies and paleo-conservatism merge), Boomerism, Generation X MTV generation cynicism (a spoiled generation, despite being the product of the divorce generation of their Boomer Parents, from America’s Goldie Lock’s era of the 1990s after the Cold War but whom where anti-establishment largely because corporations appropriated anti-establishment fashion, e.g., punk, rap, grunge, etc.), comedians revolting against cancel culture (despite comedy often being a cover for actual oppression or further stigmatizing historically marginalized groups), a cynicism towards wokeness (e.g., insinuating that corporate America is only being inclusive now for profits as opposed to being humanist, when this argument fails because capitalism catered to white supremacy but I guess people didn’t have a problem with them?), the Manosphere (appealing to men’s rights in the face of what some consider to be the radical feminist takeover of institutions and culture, particularly at the detriment of white heteronormative males, which has spawned a subculture of dating gurus, Incels, but also women who can profit by simply saying what these men want to hear, i.e., “I’m not like other women”), T.E.R.Fs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), skepticism towards government or central authority (despite displaying a sense of disassociation because the right wing is anti-government in many ways, often because they feel they can’t benefit from government as they use to, but in other ways many support police and militarism, but they seem to fix this my favoring “paramilitary” culture, i.e., militia culture), liberalism based around the rights of the individual which naturally leads more so towards a favoring or apologetic of capitalism (despite having some socialist sympathies, but we have to remember Gen X was born and indoctrinated during the Cold War, so the recent Millennial and Zoomer generation acceptance of Leftism isn’t as strong necessarily within Gen X, i.e., it’s still a taboo ideology that defies their materialist needs, career ambitions, etc., considering many are in managerial positions now), decentralization, etc.
Her politics could be understood as a synchronistic 3rd position that merges elements of left and right. An overlap between the anti-establishment left of old mixed with elements or right-wing libertarianism, yet she seems firmly based on conservatism (her default position), which could be from the fact she was born and raised in a very conservative state, with one of the largest white populations, during the Cold War, etc. Then we must consider her personality, which could be naturally contrarian for the sake of being so (which is just one possible element of her personality, i.e., I am not saying she’s an overall bad person, i.e., we all have our quirks), and when you compound this by the fact that she is a career-woman (I’m assuming she identities with feminism) she likely has a chip on her shoulder. I am not saying that being a strong empowered career driven woman is bad at all (I support it), but when factoring in her own personality, it could translate that she essentially double-down hard on her beliefs to not relent since relenting even if she has a bad take on a subject is a form of losing. Appearing wrong or giving credit when due might be possibly hard for Kim in that she’s possibly self-conscious about what people think of her (getting into Twitter beefs), yet she doesn’t see it this way and double downing on bad takes.
It’s anti-establishment and seemingly progressive so it can appeal to actual progressive people, yet the issue with 3rd Position politics is that even though it seems natural, and many are prone to moderate politics, when you’re platforming 3rd position politics to a mass audience, typically through an opinion piece format such as what Kim Iversen does, then you do pose the risk of legitimatizing actual Far Right ideology and end up seeming likely a disingenuous centrists who cherry picks elements from whatever side of the spectrum they feel comfortable with.
Generation X
All these people, expect for Jimmy Dore, could be grouped into the Generation X demographic, i.e., millennials before millennials, but unlike millennials, they’re more influenced by the precursor Baby Boomer generation, and weren’t as emersed with technology as Millennials. For Generation X, technology was there but it was still speculative, such as William Gibson Cyberpunk, Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrix, etc., but the physical world wasn’t as technologically integrated as it was with Millennials and Zoomers. In other words, Gen X being older now, isn’t as nuanced around technology despite using technology, and their worldview whether they admit it or not is influenced by a nostalgia of how things were. In other words, sometimes Gen X misses the mark because they’re not as technologically emersed as what they think they are. For example, understanding certain memes might go over the heads of some Gen Xers because they’re older and not as culturally engulfed in the levels and sublevels of contemporary pop culture.
What I notice with people like Joe Rogan for example, is that he sounds old or lacks a sense of gravitas where the world is now. His podcast ends up simply being “Joe talking to Joe”, where it’s a platform for him sharing his opinions more so than really challenging his own opinions or even that of others. As a Millennial myself who is about to be 35 years old, I’m getting “up there”, yet Generation X is already “up there” yet Generation X was one the most prolific “youth generations”, probably on par with teenagers right after World War II, i.e., they were the MTV Reality TV (Real World, Road Rules) generation meaning that they defy age in a traditional sense. They’re older but are frozen in youth. Kim Iversen’s news coverage could be defined as when Tool listeners, with all of its Jungian psychology and appeals to the hippie moniker of “It’s all a lie man!” from the 1990’s enter institutions of power but end up not being as progressive as what they think they actually are.
Generation X was defined by postmodernism. Postmodernism being a philosophical worldview that was a reactionary movement to the objective truth claims (grand narratives or meta-truths) proposed by modernism or structuralism, e.g., the postmodernist rejecting the claim that science will save us all. To the postmodernist there is no grand truth but various truths meaning reality is ultimately subjective since most alleged truths are often biased by those who state such truths, or there are limitations in what humans can understand. The goal of presenting this subjective worldview was to undermine oppression that postmodernist blamed on the objective truth claims of objective truths. Postmodernism resulted in a merging of high-art with low-art (pop culture), a general sense of nihilism considering no truth could be objectively determined, but overall postmodernism, outside of being a philosophical worldview, is also a condition resulting from when capitalism reaches its zenith, i.e., late-stage capitalism.
If postmodernism could be easily defined, I refer to it as modern people existentially living as individuals within late-stage capitalism, in which the landscape is dominated by corporations who recycle culture but also use clever ways of shrouding power, conspiracy theories are endemic since people can’t discern between factual information or misinformation, people communicate through pop culture references, and no one really knows who is running the show system systems are highly complex and interwoven often creating problems by proxy of being so complicated.
Generation X was defined by this. They were the byproducts of Reaganomic consumerism, consumption, TV, the declining crime rate from the 80s into the 90s, and the general sense of global peace and American exceptionalism after the Cold War ended. The United States was the sole hegemonic force in the world, exploiting global supply chains built off cheap labor from America’s now competitor in China, and corporatism dictated culture. Yet, Gen Xers despite living in this relatively peaceful time, have a tendency for punk rebelliousness, where punk itself emerging in the 1970s, could be considered a form of postmodern music in that it revolts against order and plays with nihilism, yet, it became just another commodified movement of capitalism considering there is no real escaping capitalism.
I know all this because I was born in 1987, so I am an older Millennials, i.e., I’m Gen X’s baby brother who grew up with same tropes and cultural influences despite not being old enough to adequately partake, yet my childhood was still dictated by a sense of corporate culture (Beavis and Butthead, Daria, Liquid TV, The Simpsons), aggressive campaign marketing to children, etc. If you ever read the book White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo, my generation of Millennials are the baby charter of Wildmer, i.e., a baby born into a nineteen-eighties household absorbing CNN doomsday footage.
Idaho and Bio.
Boise is like a smaller Denver, yet development has grown rapidly largely since people form California migrated to the state for affordability reasons, similarly to how Californians flocked to states like Arizona. What do you notice about both states? They are traditionally very conservative such as Arizona being known not only for suntans, retirement communities, a love of John Wayne aesthetics, strict watering laws, and memories of late 1990s commercials featuring Arizona State University Girls Gone Wild footage, but also Barry Goldwater and John McCain neoconservatism. Not only do you have a local conservatism, but you have a conservative influx by newcomers mainly from places like California who fear taxes, dislike big cities, support the police, but want the convenience of nice homes, shopping centers with everyone favorite Cheesecake Factory or P.F. Chang’s, perfect suburban high schools, etc. It’s as if Orange County in the heyday of its John Birch Society paleoconservative phase landed in Arizona and Idaho. Cities and towns centering around Boise (located in the region called the Treasure Valley) include Nampa, Eagle, Meridian, Star, Emmett, Caldwell, etc.
I am familiar with Idaho. I lived in the Pacific Northwest in Washington State, and with my father being military, I stayed at Mountain Home Air Force Base for a short period of time since my family moved all over the place, but later in life, my first serious relationship in college was with a woman from a small town just outside Boise. When I traveled to Idaho to meet my girlfriend’s family and attend her cousin’s wedding (as the only black person there which wasn’t a problem), Boise was growing, but it was still relevantly new as far as being a “happening city”. In other words, Zillow or Realtor.com hadn’t gotten its hands on Boise quite yet. This was right around the time of Boise State’s iconic win versus Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl with the famous Statue of Liberty play.
She was born and raised in Idaho on March 28, 1980 (Alchetron.com, 2021). She attended Capital High School in Boise, ID (Metrobiography.com, 2021), and is a trained jazz drummer (Alchetron.com, 2021). It probably wasn’t until she got to college at The University of California – Davis (majoring in philosophy), where she first got her true sense of diversity and be able to break free, with UC-Davis being accessible to both metropolitan Sacramento and San Francisco. Yet, even California itself isn’t the most diverse state overall. Sure, in metropolitan regions, yes, but the State of California itself – same as everywhere else in the United States – does have a history or racism and segregation which culminated in segregated and often poorer/people-of-color communities. We often hail the West Coast as progressive but in many ways the West Coast is symbolic of the Dream of Manifest Destiny, i.e., white Zionism, where Western states did purposely segregate people of color, e.g., Portland, Oregon with Sunshine Laws (curfews), The Oregon Territory barring African Americans from settling after the Civil War in which Confederate settlers moved into the territory, the eradication of Native Tribes, discrimination against Hispanics even if they were native to California before the American take-over, etc.
In other words, whatever diversity Kim was exposed to when was attending college in late-1990s, it likely wasn’t the best depiction of diversity and even if there was diversity this was in a time when people didn’t analyze structural racism or oppression as much. This was the time of the MTV era 1990s where it seemed the “world was perfect” under corporatism and corporate America.
Kim being from Idaho which for most of its existence has been a predominately white state, expect for pockets of Tribal Lands such as those of the Nez Perce tribe, a significant Hispanic population due to the state’s reliance on agriculture, and others such as small demographic of Asian Americans, yet, very few African Americans traditional (outside of college towns like Boise, i.e., Boise State University). There’s also a very large Mormon population, arguably with the second largest Mormon population outside of Utah. There is also a significant Basque community in Idaho who hail from Basque Country in Northern Spain and Southern France.
According to Alchetron.com (2021), Kim worked for radio stations such as in California such as KDVS, KDND, and KWOD, but also co-hosted a show in Indiana called WAZY Wake-Up Crew with Big Jake and Kim Iversen on WAZY-FM. Yet, she received her own show in Austin, TX, Your Time with Kim Iversen on KAMX, and she has co-hosted the radio show Loveline. She has done stints as news reporter for News 12 Networks and as a VJ for Concert TV. Kim as a diverse portfolio of experiences which is good for her and her career.
Kim’s Ethnicity, Biracialism in White Spaces, and understanding orientalism (the sexualization and mystification of Asian Women) in relation to white supremacy
Kim is of Vietnamese and Danish-American descent. Her Vietnamese lineage likely comes from the Vietnam War Era where many Vietnamese refugees were resettled throughout the United States such as California, Louisiana, etc. So, likely she has anti-Communist beliefs because her family fled Communist Vietnam. I am not sure if her father is a war veteran but many veterans (just like Earl Wood’s, i.e., Tiger Woods dad) took Vietnamese wives. She was also raised in the Cold War in a conservative state meaning she likely grew up in a home that favored Ronald Reagan. Being in a home led by a white father, which isn’t bad, it’s easy to see that Kim grew up “white”. Sure, she was a minority in many ways and likely had connections to her Asian roots, but the environment around her was overwhelmingly white conservative, so she was indoctrinated with that belief structure of Republicanism.
Being partially Asian likely wasn’t a problem since Asian Americans were often treated as “model minorities” and it’s not uncommon for white men to marry Asian women. There’s nothing wrong with interracial marriage or love, yet, in relation to white supremacy, Asian woman are often victims of orientalism, i.e., Asian women are casted or lusted over as being mysterious exotics with submissive and consoling characteristics, and often not burdened by white supremacy as other groups of color traditionally.
Since Asian Americans are often seen to be treated with model minority status (which is a controversial term as stated by Audrea Lin (2018) in which she stated the model-minority myth obscures the vast differences among Asian-Americans), the truth is that Asian woman are often sexualized through orientalism. One could assume that the Far Right does tolerate Asian Americans despite when they need to activate white supremacy against Asian Americans to remind who is “on top of the totem pole”. It might sound off record, but for example with the Alt-Right online communities there is a love of anime for example, where women are often depicted with hyper-sexualized and white-washed features.
Audrea Lin (2018) of The New York Times wrote about white supremacy’s fetish for Asian women in an article titled, The Alt Right’s Asian Fetish. The article discusses how Andrew Anglin (founder of the Daily Stormer), Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich, John Derbyshire, and Kyle Chapman all dated, had sexual relations, and/or married Asian women. Lin (2018) even references Charleston AME Church shooter, Dylan Roof, who stated that Asians “could be great allies of the white race,”. Lin (2018) also references Adolf Hitler, who stated, ““I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves,” Adolf Hitler said in 1945. “They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own.””. Lastly, Lin (2018) interestingly points out that the Alt-Right fetish for Asian woman could be in part due to white women more so adopting feminism.
We must remember that Japan as an Axis power and to this day is a homogenous nation that has visible nationalist parties, paramilitary groups, etc., and this fact of course resonates with the Alt Right. For example, when it comes to showcasing history in the West, history is often dominated by Greco-Roman or Dark Ages European culture, yet, there is a soft spot for the aesthetics of Asian cultures such as that of the Japanese (for example, Samurai), yet, the cultures of let’s say Africa before slavery is pretty much non-existent within mainstream historical documentaries, etc.
Like many minority children living in predominately white spaces or multi-racial children, especially before society started talking about Critical Race Theory, often have a sense of identity crisis. Children of color are often the sole representatives of what other’s think their group is or how they see them on TV. For example, being a black child in suburbia but people assume that child to be like black people they see on TV, i.e., hip, tough, athletic, not academic, etc. Kim likely experienced this to a varying degree. For example, particularly as a female in a white environment and in a nation where beauty standards for the longest were catered to a European aesthetic of beauty, she likely had some issues with identity. Assuming she is cisgender heteronormative, most of the boys she likely liked growing up where obviously white. In other words, she was fitting into a culture that was predominantly white and emulated that culture’s view on the world (remembering this was the 1980s and 1990s – nowhere near as progressive as what we have now), becoming an apologist or defender of that culture, despite always being slightly on “the outside” of it.
If she adopted the worldview, politics, beauty standards, gender roles, and possibly even racial biases or racial lack of awareness (cultural sensitivity) of the predominate group, she was able to fit in and be just like any other kid, yet, I’m sure she’s experienced at least a little racism or ignorance while growing up as a kid.
Mitchell Research Group 