Mediaboss Marketing

Around the third or fourth time I logged into Twitter to find #AmberHeardIsAPsychopath at the top of the trending list, I realized that there was no longer any pretending that the Depp-Heard defamation trial was not a terrible, foreboding reflection of our cultures worst impulses.

The media has covered the degree to which this trial has served as a referendum on the Me Too movement and a siren call to domestic abusers.

The narrative of the trial has been shaped in part by what appears to be, according to multiple researchers, an army of bots spreading rhetoric favorable to Depp. One researcher found more bots favorable to Heard, but said most of those bots were from third-party apps trying to capitalize on the trial; meanwhile, they found the highest pro-Depp bot post was shared nearly 20,000 times. The work of those bots has been further amplified by mens rights activists the part of the far-right-leaning extremist manosphere that seems to have decided discrediting Amber Heard is the key to destroying every woman who accuses men of abuse or domestic violence.

Conservative media outlets have also promoted a one-sided narrative of the case; Vice recently reported that Ben Shapiros popular conservative news platform the Daily Wire has spent nearly $50,000 promoting ads about the trial on Instagram and Facebook most of it trashing Amber Heard. The presence of these bad actors has, if anything, only exacerbated the vitriol Heard has received within the mainstream.

Trial memes almost universally weighted against Heard have taken over every corner of the internet, from TikTok to Twitch to Etsy. Even Saturday Night Live has lampooned what have been portrayed as the many excesses and absurdities of the trial testimony, and social media users have similarly found the trial ripe for parody. On TikTok, for example, totally unrelated accounts seem to have given themselves over to full-time Depp-Heard trial mockery, to the point where the actual substance of the testimony seems completely irrelevant beside the need to mine the proceedings for entertainment. Sure, Amber Heard cried while on the stand, but did you see how ridiculous she looked while doing it?

To put it mildly, this surreal explosion of internet culture vilification of Heard feels dispiriting and troubling. What made so many millions of people feel so justified in treating such a personal, toxic relationship like popcorn fodder? At what point before the bot armies and mens rights activists poisoned the well of discourse around this trial could a reasonable assessment of the evidence and the facts have been made? Did that point ever exist?

Most of the reporting on these memes has placed the blame for their sensationalist tone squarely on the evolution of fandom content creation. But recall that the white supremacist alt-right movement has a long history of memeifying everything they want to normalize and legitimize, and keep in the forefront of your mind that the alt-right latched onto this case as its bulwark long before fandom and the internet at large did. By now, after years of political disinformation campaigns, were used to social medias natural ability to contort reality. Rarely, however, has it bent this far, this rapidly, for this many people, in service of something this vile.

Again and again over the course of this trial, basic human empathy seems to have completely flown out the window. More than that, nuance feels impossible, and there doesnt seem to be room for even the reality of the situation. The contours of the abuse were well-established before the 2018 opinion column Depp is suing over was published. The basic facts of the case have gotten their day in court once already, having been heard in a British court in 2020, with the judge finding in Heards favor. But the basic, well-established facts do not seem to matter.

They do not seem to matter to people who would normally care about facts, truth, and nuance. They do not seem to matter to the tabloid media gleefully reporting on every aspect of this case. They do not seem to matter to the TikTok creators who seize every chance to parody a tearful Heard, turning her objectively harrowing trial testimony into a farce of over-the-top fake weeping.

The facts do not seem to matter to any of the people who have gleefully latched on to the image of Heard as a manipulative villain, as if she split her own lip, punched her own face, and pulled out clumps of her own hair.

What were witnessing here are the dramatically compounded effects of internet researcher Alice Marwicks theory of morally motivated networked harassment, which holds that a group of social media users can justify any amount of abuse directed at a target if they feel their cause is morally right. At scale, this looks like, and effectively is, millions of people around the world lining up to eagerly subject one woman to untold amounts of abuse, public humiliation, and violent rhetoric. (Incidentally, this is exactly what Depp wanted to happen to her so even if he loses the case, he still wins.)

To be clear, this isnt an easy story of good and evil. Its impossible to completely absolve Amber Heard, who has her own alleged history of violence, or frame Depp as a monster incapable of kindness, charity, and the positive energy that amassed him millions of fans to begin with. Yet you dont need to do either of those things to acknowledge that this is a case about the deeply unfunny topic of intimate partner abuse and that the major points of this trial have already been decided in one court of law. The judge at the first trial in 2020 found Heard had proven 12 of 14 allegations of abuse. So far none of the trial testimony has substantially contradicted anything in Heards original claim of being a domestic violence survivor.

Culture critic Ella Dawson has a Twitter thread compiling reporting on the myriad ways in which this trial is not only destroying years of progress made against domestic abuse in the US, but also laying the groundwork for a culture in which bots and bad actors harass, vilify, and eviscerate all other prominent women who publicly name their abusers like Gamergate, but times tens of millions of participants, and gleefully endorsed by people all across American culture.

That, above all above the TikTok cat memers mocking Heard and Saturday Night Live dismissing the whole trial as for fun is whats absolutely jawdropping here. This trial, which amounts to a simple yes/no question over whether Heard had the right to call herself a victim of domestic abuse in a single sentence from that 2018 opinion piece, has somehow united far-right misogynists with middle-of-the-road liberals and geeky progressive fandom acolytes of Depp.

People who have spent the last decade hashtagging #believewomen, fighting online harassment campaigns, and, especially, resisting white male supremacy have, over the course of this trial, crawled into bed with the vilest kinds of internet refuse at least 11 percent of whom dont actually exist, according to one bot researcher possibly all because they really like Captain Jack Sparrow.

The sheer volume of this cultural takeover by Depp acolytes has created a seismic value shift to a degree that may be unalterable. Trial watchers seem to be welcoming misinformation about the trial while doing everything they can to reject or undermine actual documented facts of the case.

Some of the arguments made against Amber Heard sound like QAnon-level conspiracy rabbit holes. (Amber Heards trial outfits, for example, have somehow become part of a sinister narrative in which Heard is a manipulative abuser attempting to rattle and intimidate Depp by mimicking his own trial suits.) This trial has accomplished what our enraged, paranoid ideological fringe could not: a complete dismantling of the ideological breakdown that has divided us politically, and the general public acceptance of a narrative created and controlled by bad actors and far-right extremists.

The Depp-Heard trial has refined the Gamergate playbook in a way that will haunt us for years to come. It has proven to extremists that if you rally around the right beloved public figure or institution, blanket them in a protective sphere of outrage and misinformation, and weaponize fandom culture already so prone to ideological radicalization and irrational groupthink you can successfully push whatever media narrative you want into the mainstream.

Theres no coming back from this. The actual trial verdict is all but irrelevant now. Its not just that Amber Heard will forever be an imperfect accuser whose own volatile history was used to help destroy a revelatory movement in Me Too. Its that there will be other Amber Heards, and many of them will be marginalized, with far fewer resources to withstand this onslaught of hate.

Its not a coincidence that this spectacle is playing out against a backdrop of perpetually escalating racist violence and the rapid erosion of decades of human rights for women, queer, and trans people. The Depp-Heard trial has just trained millions of people to discard their own empathy, their own rational judgment, in exchange for the gleeful mockery, rejection, and belittlement of a woman making herself vulnerable in public. If you dont think that training will be weaponized against vulnerable targets, you havent been paying attention.

Read the original post:
The Depp-Heard trial has played right into the hands of far-right extremists. - Vox.com

Representative Madison Cawthorn may have lost his primary, but hes on a mission; the 26-year-old Republican vowed on Instagram to exact revenge against the cowardly and weak members of his party. But his post wasnt just one of bitterness. His conceding message seemed to embrace a fascistic proDonald Trump meme with dark and violent origins.

I am on a mission now to expose those who say and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering, globalist goal, he wrote in the Thursday Instagram post. The time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end, the post read, before it was edited to say, genteel politics. Cawthorn then hailed the rise of the new right, a rebranded strain of paleoconservatism popular among young pro-Trump Republicans. Its time for Dark MAGA to truly take command, he continued. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered.

On its face, the post can be read as the ramblings of a resentful soon-to-be ex-politician. But Cawthorns shout-out to Dark MAGA, an apparent reference to the latest meme movement launched by the terminally online alt-right, is a window into a fanatic faction born out of Trumps loss in 2020 and his ongoing denial of Joe Bidens victory. It envisions a vengeful, dictatorial Trump returning to office in 2024 to vanquish Washingtons neoliberal and neoconservative order while ruling the country as a Christian authoritarian. (Think, Napoleon retaking the throne after escaping from Elba.) At its core, Dark MAGA is a Pinterest mood-board exercise for young white nationalists who demand that Trump embrace fascist symbolism in his second term. It is also aspirational fan fiction la the America depicted in Philip K. Dicks novel The Man in the High Castle, in which the U.S. is incorporated into the Third Reichand a way for alt-right zoomers to differentiate themselves from middle-aged and elderly Trump supporters.

Much of the movements ideology is masked with multiple layers of irony, but in one #DarkMAGA post, an apparent proponent of the movement wrote that Dark MAGA calls for Torture, nuclear holocaust, genocide, extermination. It is unclear if Cawthorn is aware of the memes origins, or if a sanitized version trickled into his social media feeds. Vanity Fair contacted his office for comment but did not receive a response.

Cawthorn appears to have identified his Dark MAGA allies; in the Instagram post, he thanked a number of America First Patriots, many of whom stood by him amid the torrent of scandals he was at the center of in the past few months. His list of acknowledgements included representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and Paul Gosar; and Tucker Carlson, the unofficial mouthpiece of the New Right. Gosar replied to Cawthornspost by writing that his outgoing colleague has a bright future as a leader, adding, I have no doubt you will be back and better than ever.

The lawmakers posts come two days after Republican voters in North Carolinas 11th Congressional District nominated state Senator Chuck Edward over Cawthorn. Though Cawthorn did not explicitly name the cowardly Republicans he plans to depose, he has many detractors in elected office. Among them is GOP senator Thom Tillis, who spearheaded the push to unseat Cawthorn and openly backed Edward. Tillis, North Carolinas junior senator, first turned on Cawthorn in March when the freshman member claimed that his colleagues used cocaine in front of him and had invited him to an orgy. (Cawthorn has since walked back the claims, according to House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.)

See the rest here:
Madison Cawthorns Farewell to Congress Is a Signal to Dark MAGA - Vanity Fair

In the week since a gunman killed 10 people in a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., countless articles and television spots have unpacked the racist conspiracy he shared in a hate-filled manifesto before his shooting spree.

The conspiracythe so-called great replacement theoryis the idea that Democratic lawmakers and other elites are working to force white people into a minority in the United States, usually by increasing immigration. Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson has hammered on the idea more than 400 times while railing against immigration on his show, according to a New York Times investigation, and elected Republicans, including Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida have bluntly echoed the language in comments and campaign materials criticizing Democrats immigration policy.

But the conspiracy theory also animates another cornerstone of the modern Republican agenda: opposition to abortion.

The anti-abortion movement was born in the 19th century of white fears of a declining white birth rate, says Jennifer Holland, assistant professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. The idea was that by allowing white women to receive abortions, lawmakers were leaving white populations vulnerable to demographic replacement by non-white or immigrant groups with higher birth rates. In the 1870s and 80s, the fear was primarily focused on Jewish and Catholic immigrants, especially those from Italy or Ireland, who had higher birthrates than white Protestants at the time; now, white power organizations that embrace replacement theory focus on Black and Latino communities, which have higher birth rates than whites.

While the Buffalo gunman did not explicitly mention the word abortion in his manifesto, he references birth rates more than 40 times, according to a TIME analysis, and repeatedly expresses his belief that white birth rates must change.

This week, Matt Schlapp, the head of the Conservative Political Action Conference, explicitly linked replacement theory, immigration and anti-abortion, telling reporters in Hungary that overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision enshrining a right to abortion, would be a good first step in fixing the U.S.s immigration problem. If youre worried about this quote-unquote replacement, why dont we start there? he said. Start with allowing our own people to live.

The modern mainstream anti-abortion movement denounces racist groups and ideologies. In January, after white supremacists marched alongside protesters at March for Life event, then showed up at the March for Life rally in Washington, DC, the anti-abortion movements biggest annual gathering, organizers decried any association with them. We condemn any organization that seeks to exclude a person or group of people based on the color of their skin or any other characteristic, Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, said in a statement to TIME after the January rally. Neither Mancini nor National Right to Life, another prominent national anti-abortion group, responded to TIMEs requests for comments for this article.

But if mainstream anti-abortion activists flatly reject rightwing extremists, the relationship is complicated by the fact that rightwing extremists see the anti-abortion movement as a useful political allyand a potential pool of new recruits. In December, Thomas Rousseau the leader of the white nationalist group Patriot Front reminded his members of approaching opportunities to recruit and proselytize. Our two March For Life events are coming up, he wrote to his followers, according to leaked chats published by media nonprofit Unicorn Riot. The aim is to be more understated, friendly, in smaller groups, and get as many flyers out as possible.

Rightwing extremists attach themselves like a leech to traditional Republican constituencies, Mike Madrid, a veteran Republican strategist who has been critical of the party in the age of Trump, told TIME earlier this year. In doing so, he says, they legitimize and normalize their extremist positions.

Read More: The Coming Battle Over the Anti-abortion Movements Future

Some mainstream anti-abortion activists worry that racist and nationalist groups appear to be increasingly vocal at their events. When you breed this nationalism together with a movement thats largely religious, you start to see these types of things crop up, says Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, the founder of the anti-abortion group New Wave Feminists, which calls itself a pro-life feminist organization. But never to the degree this year. I was horrified that an actual white supremacy group was there at the March for Life rally in D.C.

In 2018, Herndon-De La Rosas organization pushed out its vice president, Kristen Hatten, after she began sharing white supremacist ideas, including reportedly sharing a Tweet that mocked the idea of Muslims becoming a British majority on social media, according to HuffPost. Hatten later told HuffPost: Ive said I identify with the alt-right to a large extent, and I doThat said, there are elements within the alt-right with whom I dont see eye to eye. I am not a national socialist nor am I a Nazi. I am not a eugenicist. In fact I remain pro-life.

Belief in rightwing conspiracies is ascendent in an increasingly conservative Republican Party, says Kurt Braddock, assistant professor of communications at American University and a faculty fellow at the schools Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab. What weve seen from the Right in recent years is that what was originally on the fringe in 2015, from 2016, forward, the fringe has moved more and more into the mainstream, he says.

Nearly one in three American adults now hold a belief that is in line with the replacement theory. According to an Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll published May 9, a third of Americans believe a group of people is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains. Another 29% shared the concern that a rise in immigration is leading to native-born Americans losing influence in culture and politics.

Prior to the Civil War, abortion was legal with minimum restrictions in the U.S. But when the war ended, white Protestant Americans fears shifted. After slavery was outlawed, the womens suffrage movement began, and immigration increased, the idea that a white Protestant America would soon be diluted or replaced by immigrant groups gained steam. In 1858, group of physicians with the American Medical Association, led by Horatio Storer, began lobbying lawmakers to begin restricting and banning abortions on the grounds that a low birth rate among whites would allow immigrants, particularly Catholics from Ireland and other parts of Europe, to overtake white Protestants demographically.

While replacement theory wasnt given a name until 2012, these 19th century activists embraced the notion and language explicitly. If a majority of all the youths and children under fifteen years of age in a place is made up from those of a foreign parentage, and is relatively increasing in number every year, how long will it be before such a power will be felt in the management, if not in the control, of the municipal government of those cities and towns? said one of those physicians, according to researchers at Northwestern University and University of California, Berkeley.

Storers movement was successful. By the year 1900, abortion was illegal in all U.S. states, marking a profound shift in four decades. (Ironically, Storer would in the later years of his life convert to Catholicism, according to James Madison Universitys undergraduate research journal).

It really is a radical break from American laws before then, Holland, at the University of Oklahoma, says. Prior to this group of physicians involvement in the procedure, abortion was widely legal and was inherited by English common law. The question is, why would state legislatures be open to [abortion restrictions]? Holland adds. It very much has to do with race.

Read more: How the Great Replacement Theory Has Fueled Racist Violence

Even on its own terms, the logic of anti-abortion racism is deeply convoluted. People of color receive disproportionately more abortions than white Americans. But Seyward Darby, author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, says logic is not the point. You have to step away from theory, and you have to realize the kind of wider world worldview, she tells TIME. What they ultimately want is a series of policies, including making white women have more babies, by force if necessary, and then finding ways if not to reduce the number of children who are not white in the country, then to marginalize them to such an extent that they have no power.

Some far right anti-abortion extremists oppose both immigration and abortions for white women only, and throughout history, similar racist thought has undergirded forced-sterilization campaigns of women of color. For white supremacists, they are not seeking to end abortion because of any kind of morality related to the fetus itself, says Alex DiBranco, executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, an organization of experts and scholars who study misogynist movements and ideology. Theyre very much seeing this as a strategic and tactical way to force white women to give birth.

With replacement theory and other racist ideologies no longer relegated to 19th century lobbying efforts or the fringes of the internet, experts on political extremism say that Americans must now grapple with the implications of these beliefs on mainstream politics. Its difficult to get into the minds of the people that engage in this violence and say that theyre pro life, says Braddock, at American University. Generally speaking a lot of these individuals, what theyll say is that they had to engage in violence to precipitate something that would inherently make the world better around them.

With reporting by Vera Bergengruen

More Must-Read Stories From TIME

Write to Jasmine Aguilera at jasmine.aguilera@time.com and Abigail Abrams at abigail.abrams@time.com.

Read the rest here:
Where the Buffalo Gunman and the Anti-Abortion Fringe Meet | Time - TIME

We still don't know all the facts aboutwhy 18-year-old white maleperpetrated a horrific hate crime at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York last Saturday. What appears irrefutable, however, is that his violent act was fueled by racist and xenophobic misinformation online.

As I discussed the shootingwith my husband, an immigrant, person of color, fellow psychiatrist and the bravest person I know he spoke with uncharacteristic vulnerability: Im afraid. Grappling with our fear and anger, we begana heated discussion about what should and canbe doneabout digital extremism in a society that has become tragically passive aboutletting people of color fear for their lives on a daily basis.

In public health, primary prevention solutions are considered the most effective toavoidillness, because they eliminate the source of the hazardsono one is exposed. But what do you do when the illness is white supremacy woven into the framework of a nation?

Primary prevention requires government mobilization and national policies. WriterEileen Riverspoints out,for example, how this shooting highlights the need for national education reform that addresses Americas racist and violent past. But if white supremacist theories are becoming increasingly mainstreamwithin the government, primary prevention measures seem infuriatingly improbable. (Although as I wrote this, Congress did narrowly pass a bill to fight domestic terrorism.)

[W]hat do you do when the illness is white supremacy woven into the framework of a nation?

We could try to crack down on extremist content online, butremovingone problematic forum,like cutting off the head of the Hydra,spawns two new ones in its place. Case in point: TikTok is the latest platform caught in the never-ending pro-ana promoting anorexia problem.

Then there are gun control measures, but again, a lack of bipartisan support makes this fix repeatedly a non-starter.

We're left with a call for individualsto confront online extremism. Because young, white males make up the majority of those committing hate crimes in the name of white supremacy, the individuals who may be able to make the most difference are teachers, mental health professionals and especially, parents. As a child psychiatrist and researcher in problematic digital media use, I have some advice on what we (including myself!) might do better:

*Ask what your child/patient/student does online. Let me be clear: The internet does not cause someone to become racist or violent. But the ways social media platforms uniquely facilitate terrorist group recruitment are well-established. Fringe groups use the internet to lure in new recruits with support and camaraderie, all the while stoking in them a sense of moral outrage, feeding them misinformation, and convincing them that unless they commit to their cause, their very lives are at stake. (This isknown as mortality salience.) A young person's devotion to a single forum or website should, at the very least, prompt additional questioning.

*Monitor closely for behavioral changes, especially now. Much like the internet, pandemics dont cause violence or racism, but they may foster an environment where teens with racist views become radicalized. Troubled youth are especially easy targets for online extremist groups and the COVID-19 pandemic created troubled youth in droves. Grappling with sudden, dramatic shifts in their everyday lives, the teenagers of 2020 flocked to the one remaining source of consistent connection: the internet.

[A]nger is a feeling that extremist groups are masterful at taking advantage of online.

While teens increased their chances of encountering extremism as they spent more time online, the pandemic also slashed healthier opportunities for teenagers to build a sense of identity, community and self-esteem. No more hanging out with friends after school, football games or clubs.

The media may have focused predominantly on the rise in teen suicides during the pandemic, but teenanger has also exploded. I worked on an inpatient psychiatric unit during the early days of the pandemic and pediatric admissions for aggression were sometimes more frequent than those for depression.Unfortunately, anger is a feeling that extremist groups are masterful at taking advantage of online. These groups tell youthlike the Buffalo shooterwhere to direct their anger:

There isnt a problem with you, but with Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants. Youre being replaced. Its up to you to do something.

*Watchfor sudden changes in beliefs. While adolescence is normally a stage where teenagers try on new ideologies, if a teen suddenly starts espousing beliefs entirely inconsistent with previously held worldviews, it is time to investigate further. Los Angeles-based writer Joanna Schroeder described this well when she documented her own experiencewatching her sons' online behavior. The red flags started going up for us when, a year or so ago, [our kids] started asking questions that felt like they came directly from alt-right talking points,she said.

*If a teen is exploring online extremism sites, focus on maintaining an in. While yourfirst instinct may be to forbid or admonish, the fastest way to lose access to a troubled teen is to shame them. Extremist forums make recruits feel empowered, and then work to isolate them from opposing (read: true) viewpoints. Adults must remain curious and invested, correct misinformation, and stay in it for the long haul. This is not to condone racist behaviors, but rather to watchfor potential violence. Increase mental health supports when needed and provide alternative screen-free activities that offer connection and validation. Any suspicion of violent intent should be met with an emergent mental health evaluation.

It is critical now more than ever that white allies do all that they can to fight digital extremism. Even if our country is slow to make systematic changes to confront white nationalism, our Black, Hispanic and Asian neighbors deserve far more from us than passivity during these turbulent times. Diverting just one youth away from these forums could quite literally save Black and brown lives.

Correction: A previous version of this piece mischaracterized Joanna Schroeder's descriptions of her children's online activity.

Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Twitter.

Here is the original post:
We cant control guns or the internet. But we can watch kids for signs of extremism - WBUR News

The Buffalo area is home to a small but growing cadre of right wing extremists who are making inroads at both the grassroots and electoral level

Some people here are taking solace in the fact that the white supremacist who killed 10 people in Saturdays supermarket massacre is from out of town.

As if Western New York doesnt have its own growing cadre of right-wing extremists.

Ill start with a reminder of a story we did last June in which Investigative Post reported only one county in the entire country had more of its citizens arrested on charges related to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol than Erie County.

Among those charged was an Amherst man who assaulted a Capitol Police officer, stealing his badge and radio, and a Cheektowaga man who damaged CNN camera equipment and invaded the Capitol building. They were among the 100 or so Western New Yorkers who traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the rally headlined by Donald Trump that precipitated the attempted insurrection.

At the time, Heidi Jones, a Buffalo attorney who researches local right-wing activity, told Investigative Post: Theres intertwined networks that have been recruiting and been active for many years. The COVID pandemic has given such an opportunity to recruit more people into it with the strongly divisive political environment that were in.

Cloee Cooper, a research analyst with Political Research Associates, told Investigative Post: Erie County is kind of a hotspot for militia and far-right groups and local elected officials have been privy to some of that, or endorsed it in the past.

Which brings us to the politicians. Lets start with Tim Howard.

Some 30 people died in the Erie County Holding Center during his tenure. That didnt stop Howard from getting elected no fewer than four times, the third time just months after he spoke at a political rally featuring Confederate flags and attended by avowed white supremacists. One attendee, frequent local political candidate Ricky Donovan, carried a sign that stylized the first letters of Senator Schumer as in U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is Jewish in the font of the Nazi SS.

In that 2017 election cycle, Howard joined fellow Republicans Mickey Kearns (county clerk) and Stefan Mychajliw (county comptroller) in waging a campaign that used overtly racist flyers. The mailers featured images of Black football players kneeling and dark-skinned immigrants scaling walls, presumably at the southern border, along with pro-police and anti-immigrant wording that told voters they better vote Republican.

Howard, Kearns and Mychajliw all won election.

When he decided to step down last year, Howard won election as supervisor of the Town of Wales.

Then theres the guy who didnt get elected governor, Carl Paladino.

His track record for racist rhetoric is unsurpassed in recent Western New York history. He won the Republican nomination for governor in 2010 before being trounced by Andrew Cuomo. While Cuomo won statewide by a 2-to-1 margin, Paladino carried all eight counties of Western New York.

He retreated to Buffalo, won election twice to the Buffalo Board of Education in 2013 and 2016 and served until he was removed by the state education commissioner in 2017 for publicly disclosing confidential information obtained in executive session.

In 2016, while still serving on the School Board, Paladino hit rock bottom, telling the alternative weekly Artvoice that in the coming year hed like to see Barack Obama die of mad cow disease contacted after having sex with a young cow. As for Michelle Obama, Paladino said: Id like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

Did all this make Paladino a pariah?

No.

He remains part of the citys power structure.

For example, he continues to serve on the board of Buffalo Place, which promotes downtown and manages the Main Street pedestrian mall.

His campaign donations have long been accepted by Democrats and Republicans alike, including Byron Brown, the citys Black mayor.

His company continues to do business with various levels of government, including the City of Buffalo, as well as the Buffalo Bills, which has had a sponsorship deal with hotels his company owns since 2013.

Repeat: the Buffalo Bills do business with Carl Paladino.

When Paladino ran for governor, he tapped Michael Caputo, a protege of Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, to run his campaign. The East Aurora native, who recently moved to Florida, worked on Donald Trumps presidential campaign and later took a job in his administration. He has advised numerous local right-wing candidates, including Mychajliw, the former county comptroller, and Assembly Member David DiPietro.

In 2020, Caputo brought alt-right idol Steve Bannon to an Elma fire hall to rally support for then U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, who was running for reelection while under indictment for insider trading. Collins won.

Paladino, Caputo, Mychajliw and DiPietro all maintain at least informal ties with the New York Watchmen, a quasi-militia group that frequently attends protests is support of right-wing causes. Caputo, in a September 2020 Facebook post, wore a Watchmen shirt as he warned of violence should Trump lose his reelection bid. He describes the groups founder, Charles Pellien, as an old friend.

Some Watchmen favor combat gear at protests. Members were in D.C. during the assault on the U.S. Capitol and a pro-Trump rally two months earlier. Locally, their encounters with other protesters sometimes have turned violent.

Pellien, the groups founder, responded to news of Saturdays massacre by tweeting, Black neighborhood, white suspect in custody. Buckle your chin straps.

The local right-wing scene includes other players, including anti-vaxxers whose activities included picketing the home of Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz when he acted to curb the spread of Covid-19.

A small but growing number of elected officials align with this rag-tag collection of right-wing extremists.

DiPietro, the East Aurora Republican who represents much of the Southtowns and Wyoming County, comes immediately to mind. He rarely gets any legislation passed: his failed proposals include making English the official state language, requiring recipients of public assistance to submit to drug testing, dividing New York into three autonomous regions, and exempting private and parochial schools and day care centers from immunization requirements.

On Twitter, DiPietro followed accounts of right-wing militias and their members. He followed an account with the display name Caucasian Spring, whose bio read I love my whiteness. And yours. Another account he followed tweeted frequently about #WhiteGenocide and decried the de facto genocide of Western Man by immivasion.

DiPietro and Paladino were co-sponsors, along with Howard, of the 2017 rally that drew neo-Nazis and Confederate flags.

Not to be overlooked is Congressman Chris Jacobs, a one-time moderate who has gone full Trump. The last thing I read on him he was pushing to punish the Walt Disney Co. for opposing Floridas Dont Say Gay bill. Because, you know, thats a burning issue to his constituents in Upstate New York.

You can find a small but growing number of right-wing extremists in local government.

For example, theres Williamsville Mayor Deb Rogers and two of her colleagues on the village board, who have equated state measures to limit the spread of Covid to the abuses of Nazi Germany and Communist China.

The far right this month lent its support to at least 26 candidates running in 13 school districts in Erie and Niagara counties. Eleven of them won, in districts that include Williamsville, Akron and Grand Island.

The Constitutional Coalition, which along with WNY Students First assisted right-leaning candidates, said another 11 of their candidates won election in other counties in western and central New York.

These candidates ran on platforms that opposed the teaching of sex education, critical race theory and mask and vaccine mandates to address Covid.

Our base is energized. These school board victories are a strong foundation for future success. The mission is far from done, Nancie Orticelli, founder of The Constitutional Coalition, said in a joint statement with WNY Students First posted on Facebook.

If her words arent a wake-up call for progressives, moderates and other thinking people, I dont know what is.

True, last Saturdays shooter wasnt from here. But remember who was: Timothy McVeigh.

Geoff Kelly and Layne Dowdall contributed to this column.

Original post:
The rise of the radical right in WNY - Investigative Post