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Tag: paul joseph watson
Trump Opposes ‘Censorship’ — But Yearns To Censor His Critics

Trump Opposes ‘Censorship’ — But Yearns To Censor His Critics

An ordinary hypocrite would know better than to demand absolute freedom of speech for his friends, and deny it to his critics in the next breath. But then Donald J. Trump is no ordinary hypocrite. Because that’s exactly what the president did last week.
 Last Thursday, social media giant Facebook announced that it was banning a bunch of crackpot conspiracy theorists and professional race-baiters from its platform. The list included Infowars’ Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson, racial provocateur MiloYiannopoulos and the notorious Jew-baiter and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
All but the last, of course, are Trump’s allies in seeking the crucial antisocial sorehead vote. Taking to Twitter, the president erupted: “I am continuing to monitor the censorship of AMERICAN CITIZENS on social media platforms. This is the United States of America—and we have what’s known as FREEDOM OF SPEECH!” Trump wrote. “We are monitoring and watching, closely!!”
Actually, the First Amendment begins “Congress shall make no law…” It doesn’t say a word about private entities such as Facebook, the Washington Post, the National Enquirer, or the publication in which you are reading this column. All are free to publish or not publish, as they choose. The Constitution’s purpose is to enhance press freedom, not limit it.
As usual, Trump’s got it backwards. His pet bigots remain free to speak, but nobody’s required to amplify their voices.
By Sunday, the president had changed his tune on censorship. He retweeted a Twitter account calling for the defenestration of a Fox News personality who criticized him. “When you look at the continuous incorrect statements by [Judge Andrew] Napolitano over the past 2 years, it is fair to ask FNC why they allow him to have national air time…Unacceptable! Take him off the air!”
 Napolitano, see, had committed the unpardonable sin of reading the Mueller Report. Like the 450 or so former federal prosecutors who have signed a statement saying that anybody but the president would be prosecuted for obstructing justice for his attempts to hamstring the Russia investigation, Napolitano was shocked by Trump’s actions. He used words like “immoral” and “repellent.”
Remember, this is the same president who once threatened a federal investigation of Saturday Night Live for lampooning him. Twice, actually. Both when actor Alec Baldwin’s comic impersonation first got under his skin, and then again when the show was re-broadcast a few months later. 
 It’s axiomatic: show me a bully, I’ll show you a coward.
Not that Facebook deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. With regard to InfoWars, what took them so long? From the social media giant’s perspective, this amounts to a cost-free publicity stunt. Former Fox News sweetheart Megyn Kelly did a takedown of InfoWars’ sweaty, blustering proprietor Alex Jones during the first outing of her ill-fated NBC News career almost two years ago.
Banned from Facebook? Jones and Watson, his British alter ego, deserve to be tarred, feathered and exiled to a desert island in the remote South Pacific, along with their imbecile followers. Preferably one that gets swallowed up as the oceans inexorably rise. Global climate change has got to be good for something.
Just to remind you, Jones is currently being sued for his bizarre insistence that the 2012 massacre of 26 children and teachers at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut was a hoax—supposedly an Obama-orchestrated theatrical spectacle to promote gun control.
It’s not going well for him.
Another of InfoWars greatest hits was a 2016 YouTube posting in which Jones asserted that Hillary Clinton had raped, murdered and dismembered scores of children. “Yeah, you heard me right,” he claimed. “Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can’t hold back the truth anymore.”
So naturally, he’s Trump’s bosom buddy. In the midst of the 2016 campaign, the candidate gave Jones’ radio program a 30-minute telephone interview. “Your reputation is amazing,” Trump said.
That’s definitely one word for it.
On Saturday, Trump re-tweeted Paul Joseph Watson’s indignant response to his Facebook banishment. “Dangerous’. My opinions? Or giving a handful of giant partisan corporations the power to decide who has free speech? You decide.”
 It’s an easy call. Among Watson’s greatest hits are a same day post arguing that the mass murder of 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech University “could very well be another government black-op.” According to Nico Hines in The Daily Beast, within a week of the 2005 London Underground terror attack that killed 52 of his countrymen, he published “How the Government Staged the London Bombings in Ten Easy Steps.”
This joker wants a mass-media platform with no strings attached? Let him petition the BBC.
 Anyway, these two are probably the least noxious of the rabble-rousers Facebook banned. The others, such as neo-Nazi pal Yiannopoulos, and “white genocide” promoter Laura Loomer, like Farrakhan, traffic in overt race-hatred.
It’s a damned shame to see even Trump defending them.
IMAGE: Screenshot of Milo Yiannopoulos.
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.