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Fox News has long touted the supposed firewall between its hard news reporting and its conservative opinions. But that line often becomes blurred, as is seemingly the case with White House correspondent Kevin Corke.

Although hes in a position normally reserved for the most fair-minded reporters, and on-air he presents himself as such, Corkes personal Twitter feed has often read like an outpost of retweets and supportive commentary for alt-right users and conspiracy-theorist zealots. At one point, he uncritically promoted a gossip-rag claim that Hillary Clinton had bisexual trysts.

On Monday, the morning after Emmanuel Macron handily defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the French election, Corke quote-tweeted a video from notorious Alex Jones associate and conspiracy theorist InfoWars editor Paul Joseph Watson alleging voter fraud.

The unverified footage purported to show duplicate Macron ballots being sent out with none for Marine Le Pen.

Corkes commentary: whoa... but then again, Im not surprised. Are you?

As a White House reporter, youd think Corke would know better than to skip right past the whole trust but verify step of the reporting process and give a tacit endorsement to the same conspiracy theorist whose greatest hits include 9/11, the London Tube bombing, and the Boston Marathon bombing were all inside jobs.

But Corke is apparently no normal White House reporter at a national news network.

Upon being called out, Corke deleted that tweet. And dozens of other questionable ones. His choice of which ones to delete are telling.

Among his now-scrubbed items:

On May 6, Corke affirmatively wrote Indeed to a tweet from conservative actor and Twitter troll James Woods (who infamously gloated when one of his online foes died), saying: How sad for #America that without alleged hacking, we would never have known about #Clinton operatives & #DNC rigging her nomination.

On May 5, Corke quote-tweeted an article about Macrons campaign being victim to a massive, coordinated hacking before the election. Yeah, uh huh... just in case you lose? #skeptical, Corke snarked in response.

On May 2, in response to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) calling upon President Trump to resign, Corke mockingly tweeted, The new face of the Democratic party? #MaxineWaters #goodluckwiththat.

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On April 19, Corke retweeted notorious alt-right ringleader Mike Cernovich excoriating The New York Times as fake news for a side-by-side image showing lower turnout among the New England Patriots for their White House visit in 2017 than in 2015. (Interestingly, however, Corke did not delete his retweeting of Cernovich from April 13, in which the troll wrote: The narrative went from, Trump was never wire tapped, to, It was during incidental intelligence gathering.)

On March 22, Corke retweeted Watson asking, following the London stabbing attack, Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, a city attacked over 5 hours ago, has not appeared once on camera to reassure the public. Where is he?

On February 10, amid ethical concerns over top White House aide Kellyanne Conway hawking Ivanka Trumps clothing items on national television, Corke tweeted this now-deleted non-sequitur: People worked up by @KellyannePolls comments about @IvankaTrump looked the other way about @HillaryClinton s email server #justsayin.

Several days after President Trumps inauguration, on January 23, Corke tweeted a flow chart asking, Is Donald Trump Your President? with all options for U.S. citizens leading to the answer Yes, Donald Trump is your president. Corkes caption: In case it wasnt clear

On January 17, Corke retweeted an InfoWars-branded image from Alex Jones official account showing a skeleton seated in a chair, with the caption: STILL WAITING FOR EVERYONE TO MOVE TO CANADA.

On January 14, a week before inauguration, Corke tweeted an image of the U.S. electoral map showing vast swaths of red (for Trump) with smatterings of blue (for Clinton). Just a little reminder, he wrote, this is the reality of the situation. Deal with it. Vote next time and or stop whining.

Fox News did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Neither did Corke, who could not be reached because he blocked this writer on social media. RTs and Likes mean nothing, his Twitter bio declares, however.

And while Corke seemingly scoured his recent timeline to remove questionable content, he missed a handful of other times hes uncritically retweeted the fringe musings of Jones, Cernovich, and Watson.

On April 10, Corke retweeted Cernovich posting photographs of walls allegedly protecting wealthy Mexican homes, with the caption, Mexican elites have walls, but Americans can't. In late 2015, Corke boosted at least two separate Alex Jones articlesone claiming the PC crowd wants to ban ham sandwiches (the PC crowd, in this case, was a British religious group) and the other claiming Sweden had banned the use of the word immigrants (they didntit was a TV networks guideline for employees).

Corkes uncritical retweeting of fact-free, alt-right trolling seems to have frequently caused a problem with some of his followers. Oy, reading is fundamental. I just told you that I stand by my tweets... From me. Tweets from me. My opinions... Clear now? he tweeted at one user in November who perceived his feed to be too pro-Trump.

And in October 2016, Corke retweeted a proudly alt-right user promoting a National Enquirer story claiming Hillary Fixer Breaks Ranks: I Arranged Sex Trysts For Her With Men & WOMEN. Corke included no commentary or explanation for his decision, as White House correspondent, to retweet a clearly salacious story boosted by a near-anonymous alt-right troll.

But when called out for so un-skeptically promoting such content, Corke replied to one irate user: just making sure you know what's out there.

View original post here:
Fox News White House Reporter Mass-Deletes Tweets, Including Alt-Right Conspiracy Theories - Daily Beast

At least nine fliers promoting groups associated with the so-called alt-right were posted around campus on Tuesday. | Greg Fails/The Cougar

Several fliers promoting so-called alt-right groups were found Tuesday morning posted on bulletin boards and dropped in newsstands across the University of Houston campus.

Six of the nine fliers, which contain an image of a protester wearing a gas mask and carrying a shield and American flag instructing readers to report Antifa Activity to your Local Proud Boys or Alt-Knights #Maga, were found by members of The Cougar at the courtyard within the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication.

The other three fliers were found taped to the Cougar Postings board between Agnes Arnold Hall and the Science and Research 1 building and dropped in a newsstand in Philip Guthrie Hoffman Hall near Einstein Bros. Another was on a bulletin board at the Blaffer Art Museum taped to another flier which promoted an anti-fascism website.

According to the groups Facebook page, the Proud Boys valueminimal government, maximum freedom, anti-political correctness, anti-racial guilt, pro-gun rights, anti-Drug War, closed borders, anti-masturbation, venerating entrepreneurs, venerating housewives, and reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism during an age of globalism and multiculturalism.

The Proud Boys group which was founded by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes in 2016 accompanied the recently formed Alt Knights during April protests at the University of California, Berkeley where the two organizations clashed with members of Antifa, aworldwide anti-fascist organization.

Whats been going on, until recently, is the communist group Antifa has been showing up in face masks to attack people on the right, said Alt Knights founder Kyle Chapman, 41, in an interview with The Cougar. Chapman goes by the moniker Based Stickman online, and he said the individual pictured on the fliers spread throughout campus is supposed to be him.

The organization, which Chapman called a grassroots movement led by people inspired by the battles at Berkeley, has no official structure. Its members purpose is to attend free speech events to protect protesters on the right from physical assault, he said.

Chapman said he didnt know who posted the fliers at UH, but he said active members of his group live in Houston.

The alt-right phenomenon is one that has been very difficult and odd for the conservative movement on campuses, said history senior Matt Wiltshire, former president of the College Republicans at UH. It takes certain aspects of the right and left and combines them into something that I dont think is a political philosophy.

Wiltshire said the College Republicans and Young Americans for Liberty were unaware of the fliers and both groups should not be associated with the alt-right. He said he believes the fliers may be connected to what he called a nasty feud between the YAL and the UH chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.

The posting of fliers doesnt sound like tactics used by the alt-right. It sounds like that of the left like, say, the Students for a Democratic Society, Wiltshire said.

History senior and President of the YAL chapter Michael Anderson said he agrees with Wiltshires assertion that the fliers were planted by a left-wing group. He acknowledged the existence of a feud between the organization and Students for a Democratic Society, calling it kind of petty and kind of funny.

A spokesperson for the Students for a Democratic Society at UH denied the allegations. The group advocated for students to tear down similar fliers on sight.

They are full of s***, and we are confident that many students are well aware that white supremacism is on the rise and very real in Texas and across the United States, the group said in a message to The Cougar from its Facebook page.

These flyers were put up by groups organizing explicitly around the banner of white nationalism in an ongoing effort to intimidate and target oppressed communities, anti-racist organizers, and local progressive forces.

[emailprotected]

Tags: alt-right, anti-fascism

Does the construction along Spur 5, which will eventually impact the U.S. 59 north and south on-ramps from I-45, affect your commute to class?

Total Voters: 106

Link:
Fliers promoting alt-right groups found on campus - The Daily Cougar

Image: Screengrab via Altrightreport

Yesterday, protesters and counter-protesters gathered around Lee Circle in New Orleans, the site of one of the states many monuments to Confederate figures which are now scheduled (over 150 years after the Civil War ended) to be torn down. Since the election of Donald Trump, weve seen many images like the one above from demonstrations that have turned violent. In this case, however, the man on the ground wasnt hit by antifa or the police: Americas far right are beginning to turn on their own.

Dressed in metal armor and bearing an American flag, an unidentified man clashed with Stars and Bars-waving neo-Confederates guarding the monument of General Lee. In a Periscope video, the man claims to have traveled from Los Angeles to take part in the protest, and alludes to his involvement as a Trump supporter in the bloody and vicious streetfights that broke out in Berkley. You guys dont understand youre working against the movement, he tells a group of people who wanted to see the statue stay, referencing the obvious racial implications.

Removing the statues requires specialized equipment, and the ugly spirit of Dixie refuses to die quietly. As reported by the Times-Picayune, every heavy crane company in southern Louisiana has received threats in one form or another.

Ive never seen anyone cause in-fighting like this, but this is also the first time people that are what I call MAGA supporters have encountered real white nationalists, Alt Right Report, a Twitter user who was at the event, told Gizmodo in a direct message. You could tell a lot of the people there supporting the statue did not want to identify with the nationalist groups.

While some in the alt-right suspected the armored manwho theyve since dubbed the cuck knight, a demeaning spin on the alt-knight Kyle Chapmanto be a leftist plant, others later noted that the man stayed through the remainder of the event. Another user who filmed the incident was quick to point out that Twitter users within the moderate spheres of the alt-right werent helping to signal-boost the infighting. Maybe they didnt want to dox an ally. Maybe they just werent comfortable siding with Confederate flag-waving white nationalists.

Animosity has long existed between the various factions of the far right. 4chans /pol/ views Redditr r/the_donald as normies; 8chans /pol/ sees 4/pol/ as soft for refusing to seriously acknowledge the Jewish question and other tinfoil hat theories; The Right Stuff, Daily Stormer, and other more overt hategroups disregard basically any forum that doesnt devote itself to humping the corpse of Adolf Hitler. Is InfoWars controlled opposition? Whos really /ourguy/? For a while it didnt matter, as these groups were united in electing Trump as the best hope for achieving their own goals. Now that hes in power and revealing himself to be the spectacular failure half the country knew he would be, those unaddressed questions are spilling out into physical conflicts.

And for some, physical conflict is their entire reason for participation. One of the men pushing against the ersatz knight in the video holds a sign that reads Im just here for violence.

Historically, even alliances between explicitly white power groups do not last. A coalition of MAGA rubes, neo-Nazis, trolls, ethno-nationalists, ex-GamerGaters and other reactionaries will be all the more volatile. Friction between ideals is tearing them apart, or members are forced to clear an increasingly high bar to prove their loyalty. Its a familiar form of scene policing called a purity spiral, and its what attentive people have already seen happening on various imageboards and forums for the past few weeks. Make no mistake, this may be the first fight of this kind within the far right, but it will be far from the last.

Read this article:
So Begins the Alt-Right Purity Spiral - Gizmodo

Who, or what, is Kek?

A typical 'Kek' meme combining Donald Trump and Pepe the Frog.

You may have seen the name bandied about on social media, especially in political circles where alt-right activists and avid Donald Trump supporters lurk. Usually it is brandished as a kind of epithet, seemingly to ward off the effects of liberal arguments, and it often is conveyed in memes that use the image of the alt-right mascot, Pepe the Frog: Kek!

Kek, in the alt-rights telling, is the deity of the semi-ironic religion the white nationalist movement has created for itself online partly for amusement, as a way to troll liberals and self-righteous conservatives both, and to make a kind of political point. He is a god of chaos and darkness, with the head of a frog, the source of their memetic magic, to whom the alt-right and Donald Trump owe their success, according to their own explanations.

In many ways, Kek is the apotheosis of the bizarre alternative reality of the alt-right: at once absurdly juvenile, transgressive, and racist, as well as reflecting a deeper, pseudo-intellectual purpose that lends it an appeal to young ideologues who fancy themselves deep thinkers. It dwells in that murky area they often occupy, between satire, irony, mockery, and serious ideology; Kek can be both a big joke to pull on liberals and a reflection of the alt-rights own self-image as serious agents of chaos in modern society.

A 'Kekistan' banner was part of the scene at the alt-right "free speech" rally April 15 in Berkeley, CA.

Most of all, Kek has become a kind of tribal marker of the alt-right: Its meaning obscure and unavailable to ordinary people normies, in their lingo referencing Kek is most often just a way of signaling to fellow conversants online that the writer embraces the principles of chaos and destruction that are central to alt-right thinking, as it were.

The name, usage, and ultimately the ideas around it originated in gaming culture, particularly on chat boards devoted to the World of Warcraft online computer games, according to Know Your Meme. In those games, participants can chat only with members of their own faction in the war (either Alliance or Horde fighters), while opposing players chats are rendered in a cryptic form based on Korean; thus, the common chat phrase LOL (laugh out loud) was read by opposing players as KEK. The phrase caught on as a variation on LOL in game chat rooms, as well as at open forums dedicated to gaming, animation, and popular culture, such as 4chan and Reddit also dens of the alt-right, where the Pepe the Frog meme also has its origins, and similarly hijacked as a symbol of white nationalism.

At some point, someone at 4chan happened to seize on a coincidence: There was, in fact, an Egyptian god named Kek. An androgynous god who could take either male or female form, Kek originally was depicted in female form as possessing the head of a frog or a cat and a serpent when male; but during the Greco-Roman period, the male form was depicted as a frog-headed man.

More importantly, Kek was portrayed as a bringer of chaos and darkness, which happened to fit perfectly with the alt-rights self-image as being primarily devoted to destroying the existing world order.

In the fertile imaginations at play on 4chans image boards and other alt-right gathering spaces, this coincidence took on a life of its own, leading to wide-ranging speculation that Pepe who, by then, had not only become closely associated with the alt-right, but also with the candidacy of Donald Trump was actually the living embodiment of Kek. And so the Cult of Kek was born.

Constructed to reflect alt-right politics, the online acolytes of the religion in short order constructed a whole panoply of artifacts of the satirical church, including a detailed theology, discussions about creating meme magick, books and audio tapes, even a common prayer:

Our Kek who art in memetics

Hallowed by thy memes

Thy Trumpdom come

Thy will be done

In real life as it is on /pol/

Give us this day our daily dubs

And forgive us of our baiting

As we forgive those who bait against us

And lead us not into cuckoldry

But deliver us from shills

For thine is the memetic kingdom, and the shitposting, and the winning, for ever and ever.

Praise KEK

Kek adherents created a whole cultural mythology around the idea, describing an ancient kingdom called Kekistan that was eventually overwhelmed by Normistan and Cuckistan. They created not only a logo representing Kek four Ks surrounding an E but promptly deployed it in a green-and-black banner, which they call the national flag of Kekistan.

The banners design, in fact, perfectly mimics a German Nazi war flag, with the Kek logo replacing the swastika and the green replacing the infamous German red stripes. Alt-righters are particularly fond of the way the banner trolls liberals who recognize its origins.

In recent weeks, alt-right marchers at public events planned to create violent scenes with leftist antifacist counterprotesters have appeared carrying Kekistan banners. Others have worn patches adorned with the Kek logo.

Video compiled from alt-right sources.

Besides its entertainment value, the religion is mainly useful to the alt-right as a trolling device for making fun of liberals and political correctness. A recent alt-right rally in support of adviser Stephen Bannon in front of the White House, posted on YouTube by alt-right maven Cassandra Fairbanks, featured a Kekistan banner and a man announcing to the crowd a Free Kekistan campaign.

One of the leaders of the group offered a satirical speech: The Kekistani people are here, they stand with the oppressed minorities, the oppressed people of Kekistan. They will be heard, they will be set free. Reparations for Kekistan now! Reparations for Kekistan right now!

We have lived under normie oppression for too long! chimed in a cohort.

The oppression will end! declared the speaker.

The main point of the whole exercise is to mock political correctness, an alt-right shibboleth, and deeply reflective of the ironic, often deadpan style of online trolling in general, and alt-right troll storms especially. Certainly, if you any normies were to make the mistake of taking their religion seriously and suggesting that their deity was something they actually worshipped, they would receive the usual mocking treatment reserved for anyone foolish enough to take their words at face value.

Yet at the same time, lurking behind all the clownery is a serious idea that alt-righters actually seem to take seriously: Namely, that by spreading their often-cryptic memes far and wide on social media and every other corner of the Internet, they are infecting the popular discourse with their ideas. For the alt-right, those core ideas all revolve around white males, the patriarchy, nationalism, and race, especially the underlying belief that white males and masculinity are under siege from feminists, from liberals, from racial, ethnic, and sexual/gender minorities.

In such alt-right haunts as Andrew Anglins neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, references to the Kek religion have become a commonplace, and Kek as the god of chaos has been credited at the site, besides electing Trump, with killing over 30 people in a fire at an Oakland artists collective. A very early Stormer disquisition on Kek by Atlantic Centurion, published in August 2015, explores the many dimensions of the Kek phenomenon in extensive theological detail, connecting their belief system to Buddhism and other religions.

It is the Kek the Bodhisattva who can teach our people these truths, if we are willing to listen and to commit ourselves to the generation of meme magick through karmic morality and through the mantra of memes. By refusing to cuck and by rejecting the foul mindsets of our invaders and terrorizers, we will move the nation away from its suffering under the pains of hostile occupation, and closer and closer to its final rebirth. If instead, our people cuck and adopt the foul mindsets, they will generate not Aryan karma but further mosaic samsara.

The trve power of skillful memes is to meme the karmic nation into reality, the process of meme magick. By spreading and repeating the meme mantra, it is possible to generate the karma needed for the rebirth of the nation.

Anglin himself makes frequent references to Kek, making clear that he too subscribes to the underlying meme-spreading strategy that the religion represents. Describing a black artists piece showing a crucified frog which appeared to Anglin to be a kind of blasphemy of the Kek deity he declared that theres some cosmic-tier stuff going on out there. Another post, published in March, was headlined: Meme Magic: White House Boy Summoned Spirit of Kek to Protect His Prophet Donald Trump.

Anglin devoted the post to explaining a teenagers use of an alt-right hand signal while meeting Trump, concluding that the only possibility here is that this is an example of Carl Jungs synchronicity seemingly acausal factors culminating to create an event based on its meaning. But it is not really acausal it merely appears that way to the non-believer. It is our spiritual energies, channeled through the internet, that caused this event to manifest, he wrote. It is meme magic.

Whether they really believe any of this or not, the thrust of the entire enterprise is to mock everything politically correct so loudly and obtusely and divertingly that legitimate issues about the vicious core of white male nationalism they embrace never need to be confronted directly. The alt-rights meme war is ultimately another name for far-right propaganda, polished and rewired for 21st-century consumers. The ironic pose that Kek represents, and accompanying claims that the racism they promote is just innocently meant to provoke, in the end are just a faade fronting a very old and very ugly enterprise: hatemongering of the xenophobic and misogynistic kind.

Visit link:
What the Kek: Explaining the Alt-Right 'Deity' Behind Their 'Meme Magic' - Southern Poverty Law Center

Ann Coulter was planning on speaking at UC Berkeley on April 27. That is, until the university said they couldnt guarantee her safety due to the threat of violence and massive protests.

The Berkeley College Republicans and the Young Americas Foundation backed out of their support for the Coulter event. Coulter waved her arms and howled and threw a tantrum. Then, on April 27, right-wing protesters showed up in Berkeley to protest the non-event.

The alt-right called it a Rally for Free Speech at the Berkeley Civic Center, where these pictures were taken. They came from all over the US, festooned with flags, pins and bumper-sticker patriotic quotes velcroed to leather vests. Also, they came preparedwith an armory of helmets, shoulder and knee pads, fighting gloves, baseball bats, knives, radios, gas masks, goggles and scores of big dudes with big arms.

To treat their wounds (should the Antifa engage them in battle), they had an alt-right M.A.S.H field medical unit, with helmet-wearing nurses in Red Cross T-shirts.

Interestingly, the alt-right had a somewhat diverse cross section of supporters at the microphone: blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos stood alongside the Oath Keepers, American Freedom Keepers, Sovereign Nation, Bikers for Trump, Latinos for Trump and various and sundry neo-Nazi, anti-immigration, skinhead and militia groups.

They were pent-up and watchful for those Antifa to come at them. Its been a long time since Ive heard someone call someone else a communist and actually mean it.

But the battle gear was for nought. The anti-fascists had better things to do. Speeches were spoken, and fists and slogans were hurled over Berkeley police in riot gear at their opponents across the street. Vigorous debating wasnt quite the battle they came for. But no blood was shedthey got their free speech, and the Berkeley clean-up crew got a break.

All photos by Dwayne Newton of San Francisco.

Continued here:
Among the Alt-Right (Photos) - thebolditalic