Tag: mike cernovich
MSNBC Sides With Rape Apologist, Fires Contributor For Tweet Mocking Rape Apologists

MSNBC Sides With Rape Apologist, Fires Contributor For Tweet Mocking Rape Apologists

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

MSNBC reportedly cut ties with contributor Sam Seder after far-right date rape apologist Mike Cernovich spread a 2009 tweet in which Seder mocked defenders of Roman Polański, a film director charged with raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. MSNBC’s decision to fire Seder comes on the one year anniversary of the shooting at Comet Ping Pong, which Cernovich helped spark by relentlessly pushing the “alt-right”-fueled “pizzagate” conspiracy.

According to a December 4 report by The Wrap, MSNBC “has decided not to renew its contract with contributor Sam Seder after an old tweet emerged … brought to wide attention last month by the pro-Trump journalist and activist Mike Cernovich.”

Seder explained Cernovich’s “smear involves the willful misinterpretation of a tweet that I posted in 2009” that was criticizing rape apologists, but MSNBC sided with Cernovich, who previously asked “Have you guys ever tried ‘raping’ a girl without using force? Try it. It’s basically impossible. Date rape does not exist,” and claimed“A whore will let her friend ruin your life with a false rape case. So why should I care when women are raped?”

In a tweet, Media Matters Senior Fellow Matt Gertz added that the attacks against Seder ignored that when Seder made the satirical joke in 2009, he may have been responding to the media outlets and personalities that were inappropriately defending Polanski at the time.

The reported termination of MSNBC’s relationship with Seder comes one year after a gunman walked into Comet Ping Pong, a popular family pizza restaurant, to investigate a fringe right-wing conspiracy theory that the restaurant was a cover for a pedophilia ring. Cernovich repeatedly promoted the false claim on Twitter.

By severing ties with Seder, MSNBC has now made the same mistake that former New York Times Public Editor Liz Spayd made when she legitimized Cernovich’s harassment campaign against New York Timesreporter Sopan Deb.

MSNBC and The New York Times’ willingness to affirm a conspiratorial right-wing troll’s campaign to smear journalists and media figures sets a dangerous precedent. It threatens the credibility of serious media outlets when they choose to side with personalities like Cernovich who have a long track record of racismmisogynyconspiracy theories, and misinformation.

Language has been updated for clarity.



Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

9 Ultranationalist Trump Supporters Who Are Rapidly Losing Patience With His Presidency

9 Ultranationalist Trump Supporters Who Are Rapidly Losing Patience With His Presidency

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

To understand just how fractious and ungainly the Trump coalition truly is, look no further than his administration. You’ll find establishment Republicans (White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry), former Tea Party insurgents (CIA director Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke), Wall Street players (Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn), and for the time being, clash-of-civilization ethno-nationalists (Deputy Assistant to the President Seb Gorka), not a few of whom seem to be working at cross purposes.

For the first few months of Trump’s presidency, this unholy confederacy has largely kept in formation. But in the wake of Trump’s recent Tomahawk strike on a Syrian air field, it has begun to splinter, with the president drawing the ire of some of his most loyal troops: the Pepe brigade known as the “alt-right.” Now that he has all but banished former Breitbart chair Steve Bannon from the West Wing, Trump could soon be facing a full-fledged mutiny. Even his neo-fascist admirers in Europe have begun to question his commitment to the nationalist agenda on which he campaigned. (That a loose collection of white supremacists and far-right extremists, however vile its motives, has shown a more unified opposition to military intervention than the Democratic Party is another post for another day).

Here are nine Trump diehards who appear to have turned on their beloved president and political ally. One might even hazard to call them “cucks.”

1. Richard Spencer

The self-proclaimed founder of the alt-right movement, Spencer is the president of the National Policy Institute, a think tank devoted to “peaceful ethnic cleansing.” As recently as November of 2016, Spencer led a conference of more than 200 attendees in a cheer of “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!” while delivering a Nazi salute.

Spencer was quick to condemn the missile strikes on Syria, calling for Bannon’s resignation and likening Trump’s presidency to a third term of George W. Bush. The white nationalist, or identitarian as he prefers to be known, even intimated he’d throw his support behind Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) in 2020.

2. Mike Cernovich

While he denies any formal ties to the alt-right, this purveyor of deranged conspiracy theories and dubious vitamin supplements has been one of Trump’s most vocal and vitriolic supporters on social media. Just last week, he earned the praise of Donald Trump Jr. for “breaking” the Susan Rice story, a fallacious scandal involving Obama’s former national security adviser that has gone precisely nowhere.

Shortly after the airstrikes, the attorney with a “gorilla mindset” took to Twitter to express his disgust:

3. Milo Yiannopoulos

Yiannopoulos has mercifully retreated from the public eye after video surfaced of him saying pedophilia was a rite of passage for gay men, but prior to that he was Breitbart’s most recognizable personality. He has staged all manner of tedious stunts to express his support for Donald Trump, including bathing in pig’s blood, and refers to the 45th president as “daddy.”

Trump’s about-face on Syria appears to have sent the would-be author into a Freudian tailspin:

4. Paul Joseph Watson

Along with fellow Info Wars host Alex Jones, Watson has spent much of the past year and a half crowing about the globalists in our midst, at least when he’s not daring journalists to visit the mean streets of Malmo. (In February, he suggested the small Swedish city had been overrun with violent immigrants.)

Watson’s journey on the Trump train appears to have come to an abrupt end:


5. Ann Coulter

The conservative radio host and political commentator has been a mouthpiece for right-wing reactionaries before 4chan was a glint in the reddit alien’s eye. Her racist screeds are legion—she’s made a lucrative career of trolling—but lowlights of recent vintage include arguments that Mexicans are “culturally deficient” and that soccer’s growing popularity in the States is a product of our moral decay. Earlier this year, she appeared to offer a bizarre half-nod to neo-Nazis on Twitter.

Coulter has been one of Trump’s staunchest defenders—she actually published a book with the title In Trump We Trust—but even she has been rattled by his interventionist turn:


6. Steve King

Last year, the Iowa Congressman argued that white people have “contributed more to civilization” than any other racial “subgroup.” Just last month, he defended Holland’s far-right presidential candidate Geert Wilders, tweeting “Widers understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore civilization with someone else’s babies.” In a related story, he was one of Donald Trump’s most faithful supporters in Congress throughout the 2016 Republican primary and presidential election.

King has grown increasingly disheartened about Steve Bannon’s marginalization in the Trump administration. “A lot of us look at [him] as the voice of conservatism in the White House,” he told Politico.

7. & 8. Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen

Farage is one of the architects of Brexit and a member of Britain’s far-right U.K. Independence Party; Le Pen is the leader of France’s extremist National Front and quite possibly her country’s next president. Both have lavished praise on Trump (Farage adoringly called him a “silverback gorilla” after the second presidential debate). And both have criticized his military action in Syria.

“I think a lot of Trump voters will be scratching their heads hard and asking, ‘Where does this go from here?'” Farage told British radio host Nick Ferrari. “It plays absolutely into the ISIS narrative. I’m really pretty worried about this.”

9. Steve Bannon

It’s premature to include Trump’s chief strategist on this list; Bannon is still a member of the inner circle, and reports indicate that he’s “laying low” so as not to further alienate the president. Yet those same reports seem to suggest that Bannon has grown as disenchanted with Trump as Trump has with Bannon.

According to the Daily Beast, the one-time Breitbart chair calls Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a “cuck” and a “globalist” behind his back. Axios published a separate story Wednesday that revealed Bannon’s allies, if not the man himself, are similarly disdainful of Gary Cohn, who they refer to simply as “Globalist Gary.”

Steve Bannon has called Breitbart a platform for the alt-right and professed his admiration for any number of fascists and white supremacists.

Jacob Sugarman is a managing editor at AlterNet.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.