“Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Heather Digby Parton: The disturbing dawn of the alt-right: Donald Trump’s the leader of a dark movement in America
After months of squabbling about whether it’s acceptable to use the “F” word (fascism) it seems at long last that we have come to some kind of consensus about what to call Donald Trump’s “philosophy”: alt-right, also known as white nationalism. With the hiring of the former chief of Breitbart media, ground zero for the alt-right movement, as Trump’ campaign chairman, the interest in it has now gone mainstream. Hillary Clinton will be making a speech about it later today.
Alt-right white nationalism is an apt term for a campaign that has electrified white supremacists so it makes sense that most people would focus on the racial angle. According to this analysis in the Guardian, the rising right-wing ethno-nationalist movement in Europe is the progenitor of this American version, which adheres to its basic premise but brings its own special brand of deep-fried racism. Both share a belief that the white race is under siege and that “demands for diversity in the workplace which means less white males in particular forms the foundation for the movement.” So it stands to reason that Trump’s border wall, Muslim ban and bellicose appeals for “law and order” (along with his overt misogyny) is a clarion call to this faction.
Rebecca Carroll: Leslie Jones faces constant abuse – because that’s how racism works
What else do people need to see before they realize that racism is a vile, vicious daily assault that faces black Americans today – in every sphere and on every platform, but egregiously so online?
Actor and comedian Leslie Jones has been attacked again – her website hacked, filled with racist images and stolen nude photos, along with pictures of her driver’s license and Harambe, the gorilla killed in an Ohio zoo earlier this year. These actions make me think that racism is so integral, so regular a thing in this country, like water running from the kitchen faucet, that the majority of people see it as merely who and how we are. Racism: it’s what we do.
Where is the practical response to this grotesque, debilitatingly mean-spirited violence? It’s one thing to offer her digital apologies for others’ racism. It’s another to actually take a stand to help eliminate it from our society.
Lucia Graves: Trump and Farage are playing the same dangerous game
Donald Trump’s movement has often been compared to that of a rightwing European party. Now, his union with Europe’s right is official. At a rally on Wednesday Trump presented himself as America’s Nigel Farage, holding the former Ukip leader up as his populist, nationalist twin. [..]
Trump has long harnessed America’s wave of white nationalism. But with the encouragement of his campaign’s new chief executive, Stephen Bannon (previously an outspoken Brexit cheerleader at the rightwing Breitbart news website), he has now harnessed something else. Namely, he’s enlisted Farage to help him airbrush bigotry from his message in much the same way Farage did with Brexit.
It’s telling that in the wake of Brexit’s victory Farage has, rather than assuming a position of leadership, found himself stoking populist flames elsewhere. And it underscores another unspoken parallel with Trump: trafficking in the politics of anger – not governance – is what he does best. If Trump wins in November, expect more of the same.
Norman Solomon: The Debut of Our Revolution: Great Potential. But.
While Bernie Sanders was doing a brilliant job of ripping into the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the livestreamed launch of the Our Revolution organization on Wednesday night, CNN was airing a phone interview with Hillary Clinton and MSNBC was interviewing Donald Trump’s campaign manager.
That sums up the contrast between the enduring value of the Bernie campaign and the corporate media’s fixation on the political establishment. Fortunately, Our Revolution won’t depend on mainline media. That said, the group’s debut foreshadowed not only great potential but also real pitfalls.
Even the best election campaigns aren’t really “movements.” Ideally, campaigns strengthen movements and vice versa. As Bernie has often pointed out, essential changes don’t come from Congress simply because of who has been elected; those changes depend on strong grassroots pressure for the long haul.
It’s all to the good that Our Revolution is encouraging progressives around the country to plan far ahead for effective electoral races, whether for school board, city council, state legislature or Congress. Too many progressives have treated election campaigns as impulse items, like candy bars in a checkout line.
Mona Sarfaty: Climate change is thawing deadly diseases. Maybe now we’ll address it?
Earlier this month, an outbreak of anthrax in northern Russia caused the death of a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother and put 90 people in the hospital. These deadly spores – which had not been seen in the Arctic since 1941 – also spread to 2,300 caribou. Russian troops trained in biological warfare were dispatched to the Yamalo-Nenets region to evacuate hundreds of the indigenous, nomadic people and quarantine the disease.
Americans are likely to associate anthrax with the mysterious white powder that was mailed to news media and US Senate offices in the weeks following 11 September 2001. The bacteria – usually sequestered in biological weapons labs – killed five people and infected 17 others in the most devastating bioterrorism attack in US history.
In 2013, the National Academy of Sciences hosted a forum on the influence of global environmental change on infectious diseases. In his keynote speech, Dr Jonathan Patz stood in front of a large slide of a mosquito and warned: “Global warming’s greatest threat may also be the smallest.” The forum focused on many causes of disease, from fungi, bacteria, viruses and mold spores, to vectors like bats and mosquitoes. Climate change can exacerbate the spread of infectious disease by changing the behavior, lifespans and regions of diseases and their carriers.
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