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Home » Crazy: the left has doubled down, post-Mueller

Crazy: the left has doubled down, post-Mueller

The New Neo Posted on by

For years they were riding on “Wait for the Mueller report!” hype and hope.

It was going to sink Trump. It was going to destroy him on collusion and/or obstruction, and that in turn would lead to Trump’s impeachment or at the very least a sure and ignominious defeat for him in 2020.

Funny thing, though. Despite enormous expense and the marshaling of many partisan forces, the Mueller report – and then the testimony of the diminished Mueller himself – was a bust.

The left was then faced with two choices. The first was to accept the inevitable and engage Trump on the issues, offering the public their own agenda as an alternative along with some candidate who might seem to the public to be better than Trump. Or, as many others have put it: all they needed to do was not be crazy.

They’ve chosen crazy – but they’re hoping it’s “crazy like a fox.” You be the judge:

A former FBI assistant director used numerology on MSNBC Monday to link neo-Nazism to President Donald Trump’s decision to fly flags at half-staff to honor the victims of shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.

Frank Figluizzi floated the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory during an interview with Brian Williams.

Figluizzi, an MSNBC contributor, said Trump’s decision will appeal to neo-Nazis and supporters of Adolf Hitler because of the date that the flags will return to full mast. Earlier on Monday, Aug. 5, Trump ordered flags to be lowered for three days in order to honor the 31 victims of the two mass shootings.

Figluizzi said that he was “not going to imply” that Trump deliberately timed the flag maneuvers to appeal to neo-Nazis, but then he laid out his theory to an unflinching Brian Williams.

“The president said that we will fly our flags at half mast, until August 8th. That’s 8/8. Now, I’m not going to imply that he did this deliberately, but I am using it as an example of the ignorance of the adversary that’s being demonstrated by the White House,” he said…

“The numbers 88 are very significant in neo-Nazi and white supremacy movement. Why? Because the letter ‘H’ is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and to them the numbers 88 together Stand for ‘Heil Hitler.’ So we’re going to be raising the flag back up at dusk on 8/8,” he continued.

Williams appeared to accept Figliuzzi’s rationale….

However, I think we can safely say that Figliuzzi isn’t actually crazy. If he was, he wouldn’t be using the transparent “I’m not going to imply that he did this deliberately” ploy. If Figliuzzi actually were crazy, he would say that Trump did this deliberately, and he would believe what he said.

But despite his denial, the un-crazy Figliuzzi is indeed implying that Trump did this deliberately – at least, Figliuzzi is implying that to the portion of his audience that has gone off the deep end into utter paranoia about Trump. What portion that is I don’t know, but I think the numbers are sizeable who believe Trump to be an actual Nazi.

But Figliuzzi is also implying much more than that. He’s also implying that even if Trump isn’t a neo-Nazi outright, he’s in sympathy with neo-Nazis and the neo-Nazis understand that. And Figliuzzi is also implying that even if Trump isn’t giving a deliberate “Heil Hitler!” dog whistle, Trump is nevertheless so stupid that he doesn’t know that obviously his followers will see a US flag at half-staff until 8/8 as a clear and unequivocal shout-out of support for Hitler.

Of course. Doesn’t everyone understand this?

Furthermore, whatever the small number of neo-Nazis in this country might think, Figliuzzi wants all Democrats to know that Trump’s supporters are indeed neo-Nazis and that Trump keeps throwing them fish, either purposely or stupidly, and that if you vote for Trump you’re voting for the encouragement of neo-Nazis.

That’s my theory on what he’s doing – and on what a lot of other people on the left are doing as well. They are playing on the suggestibility of their listeners and deliberately stoking their hatred and fear, hoping to motivate them to go to the polls in 2020 and vote for Anyone But Trump.

It has become clear that whoever the Democratic nominee ultimately is, he or she will be a very strange and very weak candidate. And Democratic leaders and operatives are realizing that they must hype fear of Trump to bigger and bigger heights if they want to have any hope of winning in 2020.

As I said, crazy like a fox.

Comments

Crazy: the left has doubled down, post-Mueller — 66 Comments

  4. This is just, frankly, “bat shit crazy.”

    If you count up all the letters in my given, middle, and family names they add up to 15.

    That’s got to have some occult meaning, right?

    15, 15 who or what in the secret, occult history of the world does 15 signify?

    Does the number 15 have some secret meaning in the magick of Aleister Crowley, or something to do with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.? How about some secret connection with the Knights Templar?

    Wait, await, I know, it has something to do with the Kabbalah and a specific emanation in the Sepherot, which has a connection with the Nazi’s WWII Antarctic expeditions and their ideas about the Hollow Earth, and rumors that Hitler actually escaped to the extraterrestrial colony that exists under the ice there, which ties in with the recent uptick in UFO sightings, and the half concealed truths in the X-Files.

    It all becomes clear.

  6. I agree that his guy is not crazy. He knows exactly what he is doing with this nonsense, and knows that the many moonbats of the left will believe 8/8 is a signal to neo-nazis. At least a third of the population has become moonbats. If DJT cruises into a second term the moonbats will act like a raccoon with rabies.

    BTW, I love Patsy Cline, so thanks for giving her the neo stage.

  8. What I find amazing is how the far left seems to have a vast reference source of every word, number, thought or act that ever, anywhere, by anyone, was used in a racist/sexist/bigoted/Nazi way. You’d almost think that … they were the racists, sexists, bigots and Nazis.

    But seriously, they find the most remote, obscure reference and then pretend that all conservatives know and use it as a “dog whistle.” And the left base laps it up.

  9. and made movies to insite more shootings!!!!
    and of course the mania and coverage makes lots think thats the way to infamy


    “Did anyone see what our ratf***er-in-chief just did?” one character asks early in the screenplay for The Hunt, a Universal Pictures thriller set to open Sept. 27. Another responds: “At least The Hunt’s coming up. Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables.”

    The script for The Hunt features the red-state characters wearing trucker hats and cowboy shirts, with one bragging about owning seven guns because it’s his constitutional right. The blue-state characters — some equally adept with firearms — explain that they picked their targets because they expressed anti-choice positions or used the N-word on Twitter. “War is war,” says one character after shoving a stiletto heel through the eye of a denim-clad hillbilly.

    The violent, R-rated film from producer Jason Blum’s Blumhouse follows a dozen MAGA types who wake up in a clearing and realize they are being stalked for sport by elite liberals.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMuY_V07zD4

  10. The number thing with neo-Nazis seems to be real, though — from a 2011 piece in Der Spiegel, “The Truth about 88: New Book Reveals Secret Meaning of Neo-Nazi Codes”:

    If you were at a German soccer game and saw fans holding up the numbers 14 and 88 in cardboard numerals, you might imagine them to be, say, the shirt numbers of fans’ favorite players. But you’d be wrong. In fact, the numbers hold a much more sinister meaning: They are actually neo-Nazi symbols.

    It’s just one example of how right-wing extremists in Germany use hidden codes to get around a legal ban on Nazi symbols such as the swastika. Very few people know the real meaning of such codes, says Michael Weiss, a German expert on right-wing extremism. …

    The secret code numbers can be found “everywhere,” says Weiss, including on license plates, tattoos and on signs at football games. “There are fans who travel 400 kilometers (250 miles) to a game just to hold up the four numbers that form 1488,” he says.

  11. SMALL number of neo-Nazis? I don’t understand. I thought all Trump voters were neo-Nazis (and ate babies.)

  14. The democrats, Hollywood, and the media are all implicitly supporting assassination.

    Their wet dream had better not happen, or the gloves come off on the other side.

  15. Ann:

    Your point?

    Of course there are some neo-Nazis, and no doubt that tiny number of people do all sorts of things.

    As do witches and warlocks, and people who worship Satan, and whatever else there is in terms of human variety of crazy in this world of ours.

    So what? BFD.

    No one could possibly keep up with the variety of their secret signals. And no president is signaling to them. But people who launch the idea of that narrative are preying on the paranoia and tinfoil-hatness of their own voters.

  16. Neo, I was responding to a comment or two above in the thread that questioned whether there even were any special, hidden codes. Wasn’t implying anything about Trump.

  17. Neo, I will agree this guy’s conspiracy theories are crazy but conservatives have a set of odd conspiracy theories as well including QAnon and Pizzagate or that Sandy Hook was a hoax [by Alex Jones who has quite a following] and of course the whole Birther thing [started by a Hillary staffer, yes, but used by many Republicans and Trump]. I find all conspiracy theories nuts.

    They might be tapping into legitimate anger and frustration but they lead down a very odd and irrational road. Having observed politics since the 1980’s I can say that both the right and the left embrace some odd conspiracies. The key is to sift through them ultimately you find that many people just don’t trust politicians or government and they are sometimes willing to believe some odd things to justify that distrust.

  18. The fundamental problem with this strategy is that at some point Trump and the Democratic candidate are going to stand on the same debate stage. The Democrat then either has to treat Trump like he’s Hitler, and look ridiculous, or they treat Trump like a normal candidate, and implicitly repudiate their entire argument against Trump.

    Mike

  19. I went to a wedding recently. While sitting around I overheard two liberal personages talking about impeaching the criminal Trump. I wanted to laugh, but stopped when I realized that they honestly, thoroughly, 100%, truthfully believed that Trump has done criminal actions and actually IS a criminal. A criminal to the point that he is not worthy of being president, but rather should be in prison.

    These are not stupid people. I can only assume that all their information and “news” is from sources that are pushing this narrative as being totally true.

  20. Yes, both sides have conspiracy theories.

    (The left has more, and wilder, ones. QAnon is little more than a cooperative game of “Where’s Waldo?” whereas holding that 40% of the American public are raving white supremacists exchanging dog-whistles is the kind of paranoia that makes a person a danger to himself and others.)

    Yes, German Neo-Nazis have hidden codes, disguised expressions of identity.

    But in America there’s never been any need for them, at least not as something disguised. Postwar Germany outlawed open Nazism; consequently, expressions of Nazism had to be disguised lest those using them find themselves jailed for their trouble.

    But in America, people like David Duke and Malcom X and Al Sharpton and Ilhan Omar have long expressed their racial hatreds openly, and are not jailed, because of the First Amendment. That makes for a very different environment of expression and identification: In America, a failure to sound one’s barbaric yawp openly is perceived as tentativeness among “true believers” of any stripe, nice or nasty. (I remember being asked in the Southern Baptist churches of my upbringing, “If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”)

    That’s why the cryptic expressions of Nazism don’t mean the same things here. In Germany, a person uses them risks jail; but here? Here, they’re used primarily (with a naughty giggle) by rebellious teenagers indulging in the fun of being transgressive. A real neo-Nazi in America talks all about it on his social media. Yes, he probably throws in the “88” stuff alongside his swastika profile image and his long, internet-searchable history of antisemitic blog posts.

    But that’s not because he’s being clandestine, but rather because he isn’t. He is aping his German counterparts in order to openly double down on the whole thing.

  21. Montage:

    Sure, the right has conspiracy theories, too. The difference? This guy Figliuzzi is a former FBI assistant director.

  22. Love Patsy!
    No, the MSM and Dems are bat@#& crazy. Maybe they want Trump to win? Like Ted Koppel said; “Trump has been very, very good for news”. What will happen to MSNBC and CNN if a Dem becomes President?
    It’s economics.

    https://youtu.be/uDTMGgE5ojU

  23. Well, Louis Farrakhan is a Democrat into numerology, and has been accorded respect in Democrat circles for decades. This guy Figliuzzi fits right in.

  24. Trump’s response to Biden’s disgusting speech linking him to the El Paso shooter: “Joe Biden has truly lost his fastball, that I can tell you.”

  25. The left sees to have adopted White Supremacy as the post Mueller marching song. Joe Biden was on TV today, as we sat in a hospital cafeteria, going on about this topic. Like Transsexuals, white supremacists seem to be an imaginary force in America. Their numbers are minuscule but, as with adolescents, leftists adopt strange themes and beliefs if they think others find them stylish.

  26. It doesn’t take deep psychoanalysis to explain these people. They’re Democrats. Period.
    They voluntarily joined the political party of plantations, KKK, dogs & fire hoses, and standing in school doorways. How do they explain that? With denial and hatred.

  27. Dave Parsons:

    Those were the old un-woke Democrats.

    The new woke Democrats embrace socialism/communism, extermination of other views and those who hold them, Science (but not the actual methods of science), and the “arc of history” (but reject actual history and human experience). And on and on …

  29. BD. No doubt that the couple you overheard at the wedding think that Hillary is pure as the driven snow and the accusations against her are delusional nonsense despite Comey laying out some of her crimes in complete detail. If they read the NYT and just listen to NPR they will be completely unaware of all but the most trivial facts about her.

  30. No, no, Trump doesn’t send dog whistles. “Good people on both sides.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWQLbzxAcFQ

    Remember how they marched around the synagogue? Why didn’t he hold a rally down there afterword to condemn the bigotry? Instead he waited until the killing of 11 innocent Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburg to voice his faux sympathy, and only after his daughter and son-in-law intervened.

    And here he is a few months ago making jokes about shooting Mexicans:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt5dzCd1pJQ

    Maybe Crusius got his go-ahead from it.

    As George Will says in his latest column, Trump’s Republican groupies are complicit. You dare not say a word of condemnation lest you give aid and comfort to the enemy left. You’ve made your bed with this little man, this weak loudmouth with the attention span of a child. He’s leading you down a path of no return. The more he is provoked the more he provokes. He’s not only weak, he’s a coward who can’t ever, ever admit a mistake, own up to his own shortcomings, let alone atone for his sins – because he has none. Always right, always perfect, always great. He would be pathetic but for the fact the his flaws are the epitome of evil.

    And yes Mr. Vanderleun, it will lead to guns – which people like you are itching for. You picked the right vehicle to achieve your ends.

  32. Sad to see that The Other Chuck has gone off the deep end. The “good people on both sides” is a flat out lie, which everyone in the country who’s not living under a rock, including you, no doubt, TOC. OMG, he laughed at a joke! And then diverted it. And the joke wasn’t about Mexicans, anyway.

    Now, watch closely The: Trump is an asshole. I know that, and have repeatedly said it, as have most everybody on this list. Oh my word, I’m still here! My pro-Trump card hasn’t been pulled! Must be some slipup at International Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy HQ!

    Do us a favor, will you — go join Mr. Figliuzzi and work out some numerology. Wait! This just in! If you take the square root of pi and divide it by Colin Kaepernick’s head size, the resulting number, multiplied by the number of angels who can square dance on the head of a pin — proves that TRUMP IS HITLER!!!

  33. The really scary part is that this turkey used to be an Assistant Director of the FBI.

    From what we have learned of the inner workings of the FBI over the last several years, it is obvious that all of the good publicity that the FBI has gotten over the years–that “glamorization,” that trumpeting of it’s fidelity to the Constitution, and to the Rule of Law, the dedication, knowledge, and competence of its agents and Directors was a cover for a lot of incompetence, intense leftist partisanship and, apparently, some really crazy people.

    How deep does the rot go?

    Who knows.

  34. Richard Saunders:

    We have indeed come to a complete parting of the ways. I’ve given credit where it is due. The judicial appointments, his one, and only one, legislative achievement the tax cut and reform, his rolling back of Obama’s administrative edicts, his support of oil independence, and to the extent he’s standing up to China and Iran, even his foreign policy. So far he’s also been a good advocate of the 2nd Amendment but that may change now.

    What I cannot support is his toying with the alt-right and his continued demonization of “invaders” from the south. You can make all the excuses in the world about crazy gamers with AKs, that we’ve had them before, that they are a tiny fraction of the killers and killings nationwide, etc. The fact remains Trump got elected because he singled out illegal aliens as “invaders” and continues to hammer it away at rally after rally. He’s whipping up the mobs – on both sides. He can extol for hours without a script on this subject, but needs a teleprompter to deliver his wooden tut tut after a mass shooting.

    As to the Charlottesville question, here is the best in depth account of what Trump said, including his forceful condemnation of racism.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-trump-has-attempted-to-recast-his-response-to-charlottesville/2019/05/06/8c4b7fc2-6b80-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html

    When he reads a script given him, all is well. When he expresses his real feelings you get:

    “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis or white nationalists because they should be condemned totally. [but]…there’s blame on both sides…very fine people on both sides.”

    This wasn’t a misquote taken out of context as his defenders assert ad nauseam. He can get the talking points given him exacting right when he reads them, but equivocates and backtracks to give cover when speaking off the cuff. How many rallies do you need to witness to know exactly who the enemy is? How many times must he rail against the “invaders” before you wake up and realize they are his foil, as the Jews were Hitler’s?

    Is it any wonder David Duke praises him:

    [Charlottesville was] “a turning point for the people of this country.”

    “We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

    Do you really want to be on this man’s side?

  35. El Paso was a tipping point. The decent people in this country are not going to re-elect Donald Trump. You can count on it.

  36. The El Paso murders were no tipping point that I can see.

    Sure, some nutty legislation is being proposed, yet it’s doubtful any of it will see passage. Addle brained commentary abounds at the moment, as such gibberish always does in the aftermath of every insane mass murder which takes place in our nation. But there is no substantial movement being born that I can see.

    Hysterics flail about, waving their arms and sloganeering, symps buy into the propaganda for a few hours or days — ptfffffff.

  37. And here he is a few months ago making jokes about shooting Mexicans:

    Chuck, you sound like the Chuck from Althouse. You used the edited clip that CBS put out. Despicable. He did not say “Shoot them,” the crowd did and after the “Panhandle” comment, he added that you cannot do that.

    I see where you moved.

  38. The Charlottesville quote was about the people “on both sides” of the argument about whether to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, and he explicitly excluded the Nazis and white supremacists, whom he condemned. The media and leftists would prefer some alternate reality in which he didn’t say what he did say, or, like Dan Rather, they claim to know what he really meant instead of what he clearly said. I prefer this reality, since it’s where we all live.

  39. Even NRO, not a fan site, is debunking the lie that Other Chuck tells here, now that he has been run out of Althouse.

    The truth about that rally.

    went back and watched that part of the rally (about 101:30 in this video). What no one notes is that immediately prior to that moment, Trump was talking about a migrant caravan heading north, and he said of border patrol agents, “Don’t forget, we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that.”

    Then, shortly afterward, the guy yells, and Trump smiles and shakes his head and says, “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement.” Clearly, this is not meant as an endorsement of the statement, but a good-natured way to acknowledge its outrageousness.

    111
    Trump then goes on to continue to plug changing the asylum rules and building the wall as the means of addressing the border crisis.

    You can criticize how Trump handled the rally-goer’s shout and certainly object to his rhetorical extravagances generally. I’d probably agree with many of the criticisms of how he talks and tweets. But the idea that this shouted interruption, in the midst of a long Trump riff about how we need to make lawful changes to address the border crisis, somehow constitutes presidential incitement to mass murder is manifestly absurd.

    “Other Chuck” is a liar well known to me.

  41. Mike K is all wet.
    I’ve never posted at and have rarely visited Althouse.
    I did not choose an edited clip of Trump’s joke at the Florida rally, nor did I imply he said “shoot them”, as the clip clearly shows he was responding to some guy in the audience.

    Neo well knows who I am and where I’m coming from. I’ve been a lifetime conservative, voted for Reagan for governor of California, for Nixon, Ford, Reagan twice, Bush Sr., Dole, Bush Jr., etc. I support the policies Trump has fostered since he was elected. BUT, he’s a demagogue who thinks ideas don’t matter, and is using Mexican and Latino immigrants, legal or otherwise, in his fear mongering. It’s come back to bite him in the ass.

    He’s the worst thing that has happened to the Republican Party in my lifetime, including Nixon’s little episode. He will go down as the man who destroyed it. His achievements are temporary and will amount to little more than a pause in the relentless leftist take over of this country. His lasting damnation will be tainting conservatism with a believable shroud of bigotry.

    As to the quote that you all think was taken out of context, the one after Charlottesville, maybe it was, but it captures his wider carelessness with words, what his political opponents call his lies. He can very well communicate his hatred for illegal immigrants, those invaders who are taking jobs, filling the prisons, and smuggling drugs. Whether through endless tweets, or campaign rallies that mimic Nuremberg in the 1930s, he has found his focal point, and they are brown skinned refugees, like the ones killed in El Paso.

    Is this how he wants to make America great again?

    I only bothered to post these responses here because a great many of you are Jewish and know exactly where this leads. But if you’re OK with it, who am I to judge. Let history do that.

  42. “. . . campaign rallies that mimic Nuremberg in the 1930s”

    Hey. Take a hike off with that shit.

  43. The Other Chuck:

    You claim that Trump is “toying with the alt-right.” I don’t know what that claim means.

    Toying with them how, precisely? And to what end? And motivated by what, precisely? And which of the putative “alt-rights” is he toying with? What are their (for want of a better world) “doctrines?”

    I mean, according to CNN & Co., any vote for Trump is an overt vote for white supremacists and neo-Nazism.

    That makes Candace Owens pro-white-supremacism and Ben Shapiro a neo-Nazi, but whatever. It also makes them both (and most commenters here for that matter) “alt-right.” Yet Shapiro has been condemning the “alt-right” for years, has been harassed by them for just as long, and has to have extra security to defend himself from them.

    So “alt-right” is one of those Inigo Montoya words which screams out for clarity of definition.

    From what I can see Trump routinely condemns white supremacists (just as he did in Charlottesville, contra the “fine people” hoax). If David Duke likes Trump, it can only be because Duke has fallen in love with the phantasm projected by CNN. If David Duke — philosophical leftist that he is — is what people mean by “alt-right,” then I suppose that’s an instance of the “alt-right” thinking they like Trump. But what they’re actually in love with is CNN’s hologram.

    Now, I myself would like to propose a definition for the term “alt-right” which I believe will help advance the conversation towards truth. But I’ll do that in a separate post.

  44. Argh.

    In the above post, where I said “for want of a better world,” I meant, “for want of a better word.”

    Not really a Freudian slip, exactly: No cigars there to be anything other than cigars. And it isn’t exactly the proverbial Jungian camisole. Perhaps a Maslovian peignoir.

  45. I, like probably the vast majority, had no idea that the number 88 had any other meaning than 80 + 8. So I looked it up…

    https://www.ridingthebeast.com/numbers/nu88.php

    Apparently, virtually every number has some cultural meaning to someone. Using numerology you could imply anything about anyone simply doing something as arcane as counting the words in a public speech and then implying that the decision to use exactly that many words was a hidden message.

    Personally, I would doubt that Trump or any of his staff was even aware of this meaning, and even if they were, never even considered if the ending date of the mourning period might have any numerical significance. But that is just me being rational. If I were not rational and already inclined to believe anything bad about Trump, maybe it gives me doubts. I will be interested to see if this gets any traction. If it does, then no one is safe.

  46. So, I just checked to see if the twitterverse has woken up to this. There are only two hashtag references (as of now) with “88”. One is #88keys, which is the number of keys on a piano. The other is regarding an Asian Hip Hop Festival in LA called 88 Rising.

    Let’s see if that changes throughout the course of today.

  49. About Definitions:

    We can’t meaningfully discuss the “alt-right” without defining that term.

    In casual conversation, I suppose one must adopt the most common usage(s) of the term “alt-right,” in spite of the muddle that causes.

    But for constructive analysis, I propose that the “alt-right” be defined as follows:

    1. They are persons who would like to see results in the United States which agree with the professed intentions of Reagan/Gingrich/Cruz-esque Republicanism more (at least marginally more) than they agree with the professed intentions of any Democrat agenda (whether left-liberal or Leftist).

    2. They largely gave up voting for mainstream Republicans because the mainstream Republicans were conspicuously campaigning on those priorities then abandoning them in office. They were thus “right” in their goals, but in search of an alternative; and because their goals are actively anathematized by the Left, the Left offered no alternative.

    I like that definition because it provides a plausible argument why these persons should be regarded as part of the “right” rather than the “left.”

    Now there is a tiny subset of the U.S. population — well under 0.01%, but in a nation of 350 million persons, that means there’ll still be up to 350,000 of them — who are white supremacists. They present themselves to the “alt-right” (as described above) as an alternative outlet for their hopes and political identification.

    Given that definition, Trump himself is a threat to white supremacists: To the degree that Trump persuades conservatism-friendly disaffected white male voters to re-engage in voting for him and Trump-friendly conservatives, he gives them an active and constructive mainstream outlet for their political desires, and restores their hope that solutions exist for them somewhere outside the fringe groups. That deprives white supremacists of a recruitment pool.

    Now, white supremacism is an identarian ideology. That means, philosophically, it’s leftist, just as black supremacism/separatism, La Raza, etc., are philosophically leftist. The philosophy of the right is antithetical to identarian movements, inasmuch as it refuses to make distinctions in law between persons on the basis of their unchosen attributes.

    But, of course, the Left, whose armed wing (the KKK) previously endorsed white identarianism in the 50’s, now endorses everything-except-white identarianism. That leaves the white identarian leftists without an obvious home. They can’t migrate to the right without abandoning their white identarianism.

    CNN’s current propaganda tactic is to push a narrative about Trump calling him a Nazi and a white supremacist. This propaganda has the effect of deceiving some white identarians into thinking Trump’s on their side, although Trump has offered them no policy gains whatsoever, routinely condemns white supremacists, has a Jewish daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, and is for Israelis probably the most-beloved U.S. president ever. “Worst Nazi Ever,” as they say: But such details are excluded from the usual cherry-picking.

    To the extent that any white identarians vote for Trump expecting either policy gains or friendly rhetoric, they will be disappointed and drift away later, if they don’t convert away from white identarianism.

    But such persons, when they’re part of the “alt-right,” probably constitute less than 5% of it. Most of the “alt-right” (as defined above) are sour, cynical, conservative-leaning voters who were tired of elected officials campaigning one way and governing another, and began staying home on election day. And to the degree they retain their doctrinal American conservatism, judging men by the content of their character, they will remain allergic to racialist ideologies.

  50. Conservatives, who value the rule of law, see hundreds of thousand of people coming across the border illegally.

    Leftists see these people as “brown,” whether or not they are, and think that because of their alleged skin colors, they are entitled to come here illegally.

    The group which defines people by skin color rather than by behavior is the group which should properly be called “racist.”

  51. The Democrats are Wiley Coyote and Trump is the Road Runner. They have hatched all these schemes to take Trump down ( Russia collusion, Stormy Daniels affair, foreign emoluments, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, he’s a Nazi, he’s a white nationalist, he’s a racist. etc.), and they’ve all failed. Just like Wiley Coyote, they keep doubling down, rather than doing some self reflection to analyze why their emotions are overwhelming their good sense.

    While we Republicans hated Obama’s policies and there were a small few who went over the edge on trying to combat him, there was never this level of irrationality, and unthinking venom. I can’t recall anyone calling all Obama supporters bigots, fools, or evil people. I don’t recall anyone calling Obama lawless , which is an everyday occurrence in Trump’s world. And when you ask what specific law he has broken, they can’t name one. I never recall a President being called the variety of hateful names on a daily basis. You would probably have to go back to Lincoln’s Presidency to find such invectives against a President.

    One good thing about all this is that the MSM has revealed itself as being heavily biased toward the left. Even the most casual news reader can now see that. They will never be able to claim they are objective again. Few will believe them.

    I

  52. R.C.,

    Very well constructed analysis. Thanks for helping me clarify my thoughts on this.

  53. FWIW: The Hell Angels use “81” as a numerical shorthand for their club. ‘H’ is the eighth letter of the alphabet and ‘A’ is the first.

  54. not crazy if you understand what Wickard v. Filburn (1941) got us…
    not that it matters…

  55. Too bad about The Other Chuck. Once you’ve slipped into the alternate universe of NeverTrump Land, you see different facts, hear different words, understand and interpret events through a completely different lens. And there’s almost no chance of you’re ever coming back to this universe.

  56. “When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.” – Sandburg

    On closer inspection we find the unmistakable sign of a failing republic, one that lost its vision, is the collapse of just law. Just law (law) protects life and property and is consistent with the Law of Nature. When government loses sight of the purpose of law, when it stops protecting the law-abiding from the lawless, when law enforcement fades, anarchy is around the corner.

    This isn’t to imply an absence of rules. On the contrary, an explosion of unnatural and special interest-serving regulations dressed up as law often accompany the downfall. Minute regulation of normal activities in the form of thousands of petty, contradictory, and unnecessary “thou shalt nots,” as well as suffocating social “no-noes,” displace the legitimate duty of state legislatures and our Article I Congress. – Rodney Dodsworth

  57. Tragically, US law began its drift from equal justice adjudication to victim group exceptions some sixty years ago. The purpose of government grew hazy. Was it to impartially enforce the law of the land or was it to bust up neighborhoods through the busing of school kids? Much of US law entered Bastiat’s “plunder” phase, in which the purpose of the law is inverted; instead of protecting people and property, it assaults them. Legislators, he wrote, “Think only of subjecting mankind to the philanthropic tyranny of their own social inventions. Like Rousseau, they desire to force mankind docilely to bear this yoke of the public welfare that they have dreamed up in their own imaginations.” [no better description of Blasio exists]

  58. As far as I know, “The Other Chuck” is not the Chuck of Althouse comments. He is more of a NeverTrumper.

    However, Other Chuck, in this thread you have repeated the distortions about Trump that are ordinarily the province of the left. I’ve actually seen quite a bit of that from NeverTrumpers, so it’s not surprising. But if Trump’s so awful, you shouldn’t have to distort and mislead about what he actually says. The unvarnished truth should suffice.

    Other commenters here have told you what’s wrong with the assertions you made about the 2 videos you linked in previous comments here. That NR article someone posted is a good one, for example. And the “people on both sides” myth has been thoroughly debunked many times.

    Now you appear to have focused instead on the idea that Trump calls Hispanic immigrants “invaders” because he’s a racist. First of all, he has made it crystal clear that he is not talking about legal immigrants, ever. He has gone out of his way to say that many times. He is only talking about ILLEGAL immigrants of ANY race or creed. That many happen to be Hispanic is irrelevant (many legal ones are Hispanic, too). So although if you are in favor of open borders you might say that Trump doesn’t favor illegal immigration and you disagree with that position of his, it is simply false to say this has anything to do with racism. It has to do with illegal immigrants being lawbreakers.

    What’s more, “invaders” is exactly correct for the large groups of illegal immigrants who marched here (with leftist help, most of them quite organized) shouting militant slogans and invading their fellow Latin American and Central American countries along the way, not always welcome there by any means. Many Mexicans considered them “invaders” as well, for example, in interviews. These marches of illegal immigrants planned to storm the border and overwhelm the guards there, and thus gain illegal entry.

    Those are the people who are rightly called “invaders.”

    I don’t watch Trump rallies ordinarily, but I was curious to see how he used the words “invaders” and “invasion,” since you said the following: “the fact remains Trump got elected because he singled out illegal aliens as ‘invaders’ and continues to hammer it away at rally after rally.”

    So I decided to get transcripts of his rallies. Now, I have no intention of spending hours checking this, but I checked two recent ones, this from mid-July in Raleigh NC, and this from 8/1 in Cincinnati, as well as this from two years ago in Phoenix. I did a search on each page for “inva” which should lead me to either “invasion” or “invader” or “invaders,” and I got nothing.

    So it is very clear that Trump does not use that word in every speech.

    The truth—which you have distorted and misrepresented—is that Trump called the huge illegal caravans an “invasion.” I think the caravans were exactly that, and they were actually quite explicit about it.

    Comparing any of this to the Holocaust is an abomination. If you are sincere in doing that, you understand nothing—and I mean NOTHING—about the Holocaust. For starters, Jews were legal residents and citizens of the countries in which they and they families resided, in many cases for many centuries. They were being rounded up and murdered by Germany and by other countries Germany had invaded. They were running away from death and torture, being forced to leave their countries very much against their will. The doors of almost every country in the world were closed to them. To equate anything Trump is doing with that is to be a demagogue or deluded and/or ignorant.

    The caravans are voluntary. People are coming for economic reasons, as well as to escape turmoil in their own countries that is not specifically directed at them. Crime, for example. Poverty. People from all over the world want to come here for those reasons, and they have to wait in line to come here legally. The caravans should be no different.

    And of course, a certain percentage of the people in the caravans are not just breaking the law because they are entering illegally, they are habitual lawbreakers, child smugglers, and/or gang members. That is just the case. The legal immigration system is designed to weed them out. They want to overwhelm that system illegally and get in.

  59. ” Whether through endless tweets, or campaign rallies that mimic Nuremberg in the 1930s, he has found his focal point, and they are brown skinned refugees, like the ones killed in El Paso.

    Is this how he wants to make America great again?

    I only bothered to post these responses here because a great many of you are Jewish and know exactly where this leads. But if you’re OK with it, who am I to judge. Let history do that.”

    Chuck, you say: “…rallies that mimic Nuremburg in the 1930’s” ?

    Look, I can understand that you’re feeling your emotions at the moment, but isn’t that a way-overheated remark?

    And “refugees …”

    You know this reminds me a bit of the attempt I unsuccessfully made pre-election to get to the crux of the Never-Trump matter with Bill, and “Mac”. (Presumably a different “Mac” than the one occasionally commenting currently.)

    The question, my insistent question, at that time, was how much of the rule of law they were willing to sacrifice in the name of their feelings of compassion and altruism; and relatedly, what moral obligation any other American had in their view to sacrifice even part of his posterity’s self-interest or future or even convenience, for people who would rather flee than fight, or who chose to ignore the laws that made our civil associations – this political space – worth preserving in the first place.

    Bill, eventually after much hectoring, and to his initial credit, but later annoyance, admitted that he would, in effect, sacrifice law, and the few shared principles of our fundamental social compact, in the name of compassion … or at least his compassionate feelings.

    What neither Bill nor Mac were never able to explain in either the immigrant or election case was just exactly how after 4 to 8 years more of Executive lawlessness under Hillary, entailing even more systemic subversion, and even more administrative persecution of political opponents, we were supposed to recover that freedom, self-direction, and social peace which they promised would live smoldering somewhere to somehow burn again.

    If you do not think that preserving the rule of law, effective self-government, and political sovereignty, are more important than welcomingness, then please explain to me why; and also why any rational actor with a choice would wish to live in thrall to such a sociopolitical system.

  60. Neo:

    Thanks for you thorough and patient response to Other Chuck. I hope he will climb down off the rhetorical ledge he is perched on, but if he doesn’t, well just another enabler of the left. It will be sad, but you tried.

    Godwin’s Rule is bad enough, is there a rule for casual and ignorant invocation of the Holocaust?

  62. It’s strange how humans twist logic into a pretzel to convince themselves that evil outcomes are justified by moral intentions.

  63. It’s strange how humans twist logic into a pretzel to convince themselves that evil outcomes are justified by moral intentions.

    Why yes, and there you have Agamemnon “explaining” his actions to Klytemnestra. She wasn’t buying, “but do have a nice comforting bath, my husband”.

  64. Or, we now have this:

    Biden’s new conviction in “truth over facts” mirrors the philosophy of the far left’s new star, Ocasio-Cortez, who has been on record saying facts do not matter when one is what she considers to be morally right.

    In a “60 Minutes” interview with Anderson Cooper in January, the New York congresswoman was pressed on her claims about Pentagon spending that were fact-checked as false, with four Pinocchios, by the Washington Post. Ocasio-Cortez brushed off the criticism, arguing that her version of moral superiority is more important than getting the facts right.

    “There’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/09/joe-biden-endorses-ocasio-cortezs-support-truth-facts/

  65. sdferr,

    One of my least favorite, two word combinations is, “my truth.”
    “My” is either redundant, and therefore unnecessary to be said, or “my” is in contradiction with “truth,” and subsequently negates it.

    “My belief,” “my hypothesis,” “my theory…” Yes. “My truth.” No.

  66. I’ve seen that pair written a few times in the last few years (five yrs, at most) but only heard it spoken once, now about a month and a half ago, I guess. I laughed so hard at the kid who said it he lost all interest in continuing his asseveration.

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