Camestros Felapton

FELAPTONL

Larry C is stepping up the boogaloo rhetoric

Larry Correia isn’t famed for subtlety or nuance in his political analysis but unlike many in his wider circle, he has usually side-stepped some of the more extreme violent rhetoric of the overly-armed right. Things are getting a little too much for him now though and the kind of Civil-War-2 style rhetoric that has been bubbling away on the right (and in his comment section) for years has become a lot more overt.

Now note, as per his former Sad Puppy ally Sarah Hoyt, these kinds of comments are framed not in terms that his followers or the broader American right SHOULD take to arms because they can’t cope with a Democrat in office, but rather that the current administration is in some way so provocative that it is driving them over some sort of mental edge that makes violence inevitable. Somehow the free-will rugged individualists have a sudden and dangerous loss of agency in the presence of things like public-health measures.

So Correia’s specific advice is more bunker-down than take-to-the-streets.

“And then some of you will ask, but Correia, what’s your solution? Lol. What solution? Shit’s probably going to get weirder. My solution? Buy ammo and food storage. Make friends with your neighbors and be useful to your community. Don’t live anywhere run by democrats.”

https://monsterhunternation.com/2021/09/10/this-week-in-politics-its-all-bullshit-and-were-fucked/ and archive link https://web.archive.org/web/20210910171417/https://monsterhunternation.com/2021/09/10/this-week-in-politics-its-all-bullshit-and-were-fucked/

And later in the comments he clarifies that he is not advocating for a civil war…sort of:

“If you think I’m “advocating” for a civil war, you’re one dumb motherfucker. I’m warning morons like you what is inevitably coming if you don’t apply the brakes.
I don’t want a civil war. Sadly dumbfucks like you get a vote too.”

https://monsterhunternation.com/2021/09/10/this-week-in-politics-its-all-bullshit-and-were-fucked/#comment-105482

He’s not advocating for civil war but… Well, the guy is a writer I guess. The body of the post is more ranty and stream of consciousness than usual, mixing in a big list of grievances from the masks, vaccine mandates, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the January 6 insurrection and a truly wild idea that nobody faced any legal consequences from any of the violence in US cities surrounding Black Lives Matter protests.

“As our elected leaders continue to suck and fail, I expect to see a lot more civil disobedience happen. This isn’t a shocker. The left has already made it very clear that the rules don’t apply to them. The left burns, loots, murders, whatever. It all gets a pass. The right gets slightly uppity and it’s a world ending crisis that requires the full might of the federal government to come crashing down on their heads and 24/7 news coverage for months and special commissions and anybody who tangentially agrees with those uppity types needs to be driven from society for their extremist ways.”

Correia concludes his post with:

“And for the fools cheering this madness on, we have this system for a reason. We have laws for a reason. We create laws the way we do for a reason. The founding fathers weren’t stupid. They were smarter than you idiots. Quit trying to gut or destroy every protection they put in place. That shit is there to protect you. But these stupid motherfuckers are not going to quit pushing until a critical mass of Americans just says fuck it and go full on Rwandan machete party.”

The shift in government this year has heightened this kind of rhetoric on the right and obviously, we’ve seen the reversal of support for Trump saying he was ending US troop deployment in Afghanistan to Biden actually ending US troop deployment in Afghanistan. However, during the Trump years, this kind of sense of an encroaching tipping point/psychological-political crisis on the right only increased. Correia’s claim here that it is the left (as he sees it) being in government that is somehow pushing (right-wing) Americans into a blind range is undermined by the fact that the intensity of these kinds of comments increased on the right during the Trump years. It would coalesce on different topics obviously, for example here’s the relatively mild-mannered Brad Torgersen in 2019 after the death of Jeffery Epstein:

“When the dam bursts, I expect lampposts to be decorated from one end of America to the other. Money can’t protect you when the proles no longer fear jail, nor the cops, nor repercussions. When all there is, is rage at the latest, greatest double-standard and abuse of power.”

https://www.facebook.com/brad.torgersen/posts/3786463118046560?comment_id=3786505944708944&reply_comment_id=3786517568041115

One of the dangers of focusing on the kookiest aspects of phenomena like Qanon among these communities is missing how the framing and themes seep into the wider discourse. Neither, Larry C. nor Brad T. ever directly fell down either the Qanon or Pizzagate rabbit holes but through the Trump years, the idea that a nebulous Democratic Party/leftwing/big tech “establishment” was really in power and Trump was struggling against them, was an unspoken premise. For example, above Correia refers to the violence in American cities during 2020 as “The left burns, loots, murders, whatever. It all gets a pass.” Gets a pass from whom? And how? There’s not an answer there because if he were to try to unpack the idea then he would either find he was wrong or he would need to construct an elaborate conspiracy theory (or adopt an existing one).

The Qanon-lite framing bubbles up elsewhere in Correia’s rant as well:

“Best case scenario is the opposition party finds its spine and actually fights for something. That might stall the doomsday clock a bit. Realistically? They’ll screw it up. Or win (depending on how “fortified” the mid-term election is) and squander it as usual. Note however, I’m not saying the two parties are morally equivalent. That’s for cowards. Republicans suck, but the DNC as currently constituted is pure Satanic evil incarnate.”

That’s hyperbole but it’s a specific choice of words also.

I don’t think Larry Correia is going to take to the barricades any time soon but he will continue to push this idea that political violence against the Democratic party or against the left is something that they have brought upon themselves. The dangers of such rhetoric are obvious.

camestrosfelapton

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92 responses to “Larry C is stepping up the boogaloo rhetoric”

  3. First off, Correia would never advocate for civil war, or even participate in one, because Correia, like all of his ilk, is a coward.

    The funny thing is, when Correia says “don’t live in places where Democrats rule”, he’s basically saying “go live in the poorest, most economically unproductive, poorly educated, and sickest parts of the United States”. Because the places where Republicans have maintained power are, by almost every measure, objectively worse off than the places run by Democrats – including cities. Right wingers like to complain about how bad off American cities are, but the reality is that people living in urban areas, taken as a whole, enjoy higher standards of living, have better educational and economic prospects, and are generally better off than those not living in cities.

    Despite Torgersen’s claim about the “proles”, the reality is that the right wing is heavily outnumbered in the U.S., and the only reason they hold any political power is an archaic political system that was broken by a terrible decision in 1912 to freeze the number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives at 435. In the event the government breaks down and social unrest becomes the order of the day, guys like Torgersen are unlikely to be on the side that ends up rewriting the rules. He might become more familiar with a lamppost than he realizes.

    I think Correia, Torgersen, and all their buddies are due for a huge shock in the unlikely event that there is a civil war. They’ll find their side outnumbered and rolled over by the superior economic might of the people they despise. (Which is pretty much what happened in the first civil war).

    Liked by 7 people

    • I’m too lazy to look up the source of this now but in 2016 the counties that voted for Clinton produced 64% of the US GDP. In 2020 those that went for Biden were responsible for 71%.

      (Okay, I shouldn’t be that lazy: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-nations-political-economic-divide/)

      And of course red states (politically) are notoriously parasitic on blue states, in that they receive more in Federal outlays than they provide in Federal taxes; the converse is true of blue states. If it weren’t for that transfer of wealth by the Federal government, Republican-run states would be even worse off.

      Liked by 4 people

      • This is a horrible and disgusting way of framing economics. As if those responsible for the production were the parasites of those taking the earnings.

        It is the same as saying that low income people are parasites who live on the taxes of the elites.

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        • I don’t see that as the framing. I see it as proof that despite entity E saying “we are the productive backbone”, they’re actually not the productive backbone. But, crucially, I don’t think things would work better if you took them away.

          I see this as no different than pointing out that (say) Cornwall was a net recipient of EU funding and perhaps it would be in Cornwall’s best interest to not vote for Brexit (which, incidentally, it did), as it would most probably end up in a net worse.

          Liked by 3 people

          • GDP isn’t a way of measuring productive backbone. It is often the opposite. In Sweden, we are totally dependent on water power, mines, forests and farms outside of the cities. They are our backbone. But the earnings and the companies that own gets them are placed in Stockholm. So if you measured by that, the ones who we depend on will look as parasites while the opposite is true.

            Liked by 1 person

            • With all possible respect, I think it is more complicated than either you, or I, have presented it. There is a complex interdependency, and neither “rural” nor “city” is superfluous. And that is what I was trying to say. The rural person saying “we are the true X:er”, they’re ignoring lots of complexity and interdependency. And the city person saying the same is also fooling themself.

              Liked by 3 people

    • Correia sounds like a South Carolina Fire Eater. Their actions contributed to the destruction of what they wanted to save.

      Liked by 1 person

  4. I agree that Correia is generally pretty batshit, but you also have to factor in the Mormon angle. All that stuff about storing food and connecting with your neighbors and such is very Mormon. A lot of it is also very socialist — centralized food stores, community support, and so on — which always confuses the hell outta me when I see a Mormon ranting against socialism.

    Liked by 3 people

      • You need to ensure that your generosity is accompanied by proper shame. Otherwise, the recipient may not magically become a better person.

        FWIW, I don’t think it’s much less “argh” receiving socialised wellfare (but, I have never tried it with the religious version).

        Liked by 2 people

        • I suspect some of the conservatives who say churches should handle all the charity instead of the government imagine the poor coming to the elders, hat in hand and clearly acknowledging the superiority of their betters.

          Liked by 3 people

          • I stopped donating to the Salvation Army years ago after I found out that they require their beneficiaries to participate in religious activities.

            Charity isn’t actually charity (or kindness, or compassion) if it comes with a price tag, it’s just extortion.

            Liked by 3 people

            • The Salvation Army also literally threatened to close their soup kitchens in New York because the city had passed a law extending partner benefits to same sex couples. The SA is just vile.

              Liked by 3 people

    • It isn’t that socialist.

      Those who have to rely upon the church food stores are shamed incredibly more than people who get government assistance like food stamps. They have to go begging, literally, from the bishop, and show how pure and worthy and uber-Mormon they are, and everyone in the community knows they’re getting the support. They’re pariahs.

      Food stamps, you get a debit-like card and a bureaucracy who doesn’t care about your personal life.

      (Source: grew up with lots of Mormon friends, know some not-batshit-insane ones now)

      Liked by 3 people

      • Why would anyone want to take the mealworm-ridden wheat stores? Or is that something that only makes sense in Mormon mythology?

        That said, I find the whole premise of “You need ammo and guns to shoot the people who want to steal the bean cans you stored in case of the apocalypse” ridiculous anyway. Especially since real world experience has shown that people tend to help each other in case of real world disasters, i.e. they’ll share the bean cans and mealworm-ridden wheat with their neighbours.

        Liked by 2 people

        • The bags of wheat that people used to keep would inevitably get bugs in them, so that’s where the mealworms came in … but yes, in the “end times” it was expected that the righteous LDS folk would have to battle the “gentiles” for food and they should be prepared.

          Of course it’s ridiculous, as I suspect most folk would want to help one another as well.

          Liked by 1 person

          • There’s a Mormon version of the phantom hitchhiker legend in which the hitchhikers are actually some mystic Mormon figure and they give cryptic warnings that bad times are ahead (better five years food supply than one!).

            Liked by 2 people

  5. If the starting point of the negotiation is “You are evil incarnate” why the ever living fuck would I want to negotiate?

    That’s probably the point, of course. Call your opponent evil, claim to be willing to negotiate, use their unwillingness to negotiate as casus belli

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Hello all. Back again to check on puppy wars. Went to Monster Larry’s and read how his heart bleed’s for Toni. He should get Toni to edit is blog. I never saw so many words saying nothing at all. Read the whole thing and then had to go to 770 to find out what he was talking about. Well not surprised that now they are sad because Joe wants to stop a pandemic. What a fantasy book they could have written.

    Liked by 4 people

  7. Followed the first link above. Saw this:

    “Outrageous! Vietnam Vet Dead After Hospital Defied Judges Order – Refused to treat him with Ivermectin”

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      • I read about one guy who went into liver failure and went blind from ivermectin.

        He isn’t eligible for a liver transplant, because they only give those to people who are in good enough shape to live through surgery and then survive the anti-rejection drugs.

        His system’s shot from Covid and the horse paste, so neither of those is true. He’s just taking up a hospital bed till he dies horribly.

        Liked by 1 person

        • Ivermectin is an anti-parasite drug and it is used for humans as well, though in western countries, where parasitic infections are extremely uncommon, the vast majority of ivermectin is used for veterinary purposes, e.g. deworming horses.

          But if you happened to catch e.g. a tapeworm infection, you may well be prescribed ivermectin.

          Liked by 1 person

          • Small doses of ivermectin, for a limited time. With careful monitoring of your liver.

            That stuff bio-accumulates and stays in your body for a long time, so even the idiots who are taking people doses are taking it too often and too much.

            Liked by 1 person

            • Yes, ivermectin is definitely not a medication you should take without medical supervision. And normally, you only take it for a short period, until your parasite problem is gone.

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        • The biggest problems with ivermectin use in Covid:

          1. Covid is a virus, not a parasite
          2. It’s very easy to overdose a human when trying to use veterinary formulations of ivermectin, not to mention all the other stuff added to many veterinary preparations.
          3. People who use ivermectin for Covid are likely to forego using things that really WOULD help — like masks, social distancing, vaccines, and monoclonal antibodies.

          Ivermectin is actually a very good drug for both humans and animals, WHEN USED PROPERLY. Which, of course, these yahoos aren’t doing.

          (Full disclosure: I keep a bottle of injectable ivermectin on hand at all times. Full disclosure #2: I don’t use it on myself!)

          Liked by 1 person

          • I’m not even sure where the claim that ivermectin helps against covid came from, though I’ve been seeing it in the odder corners of the internet for a few months now until it suddenly exploded into the mainstream.

            Of course, it’s not entirely implausible that a drug designed to do something completely different might have unexpected benefits. There are all sorts of off-label uses.And while an anti-parasitic drug helping against a viral infection is a long shot, stranger things have happened.

            But whereas there at least was a study (eventually discontinued) about hydrochloroquinine, there doesn’t seem to have been anything along those lines for ivermectin. It’s just a rumour that started somewhere in the depths of the internet and then ran wild.

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    • Oh, that’s the comment where Larry can’t work whether it is anti-semitic or not (hint: it was anti-semitic). A fractional amount of kudos to Larry for spotting that it *might* be.

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  9. What strikes me most about that weird rant is that Correia honestly seems to believe that the debate about the near-total abortion ban in Texas, a law enacted in a Republican ruled state, is somehow an attempt to distract from the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. So a Republican governor was nice enough to provide a convenient distraction for Joe Biden? Sorry, but that makes no sense even by the admittedly low standards of Larry Correia.

    Liked by 6 people

      • Larry Correia writes: That’s always easy for people for people who nobody cares what they write to tell me how I should communicate. Back in practical reality if I am able to post on Facebook and people share it there, my articles get read by another 20,000 people. If it goes viral, 100k easily. But thanks for the advice.

        That kinda scares me, honestly.

        Liked by 3 people

        • Yeah, Facebook is the social network where all the rightwing jerks hang out and they’re not very good at moderating, though Correia keeps get banned for his aggressive rhetoric and eventually he’ll get a perma-ban.

          Liked by 4 people

        • You would think that, knowing that, Larry would fact check what he writes more carefully. That way he wouldn’t look like a complete idiot on a regular basis.

          Liked by 4 people

    • If you can believe that Mike Pence is a traitor it’s not that much of a stretch to believe that Greg Abbott is part of the Deep State. A less extreme conspiracy theory would be that the hullaballoo isn’t organic, but has been exaggerated by the media as a distraction.

      Liked by 3 people

      • I actually feel kind of sorry for Mike Pence, because the people he thought were on his side are the ones who think he’s a traitor for following the US constitution and want to kill him, while his political opponents are the ones who say, “I don’t like him and would never vote for him, but you can’t just kill him.”

        The poor man must be very confused right now.

        Liked by 1 person

        • I have absolutely no sympathy for Mike Pence. Not only is he a garbage human being, but he made his choices with his eyes wide open. He knew what the far right is like, and he pandered to Trump and Trumpism anyway. The consequences of his actions are all his own fault. He earned his own way into his situation. Let him rot there.

          Liked by 3 people

        • I don’t. If he had any principles, he spent the past four years getting rid of them.
          As Fred Clark at Slacktivist has pointed out, this is one of the advantages of the current Republican Party. They’re Stalinist in the sense that any deviation from party dogma gets you tagged as a liberal or an adenochrone-drinking pedophile. No matter how loyal you are, you can always be pushed further right.

          Liked by 1 person

    • I think he’s saying that the protests against the law is a diversion tactic by The Left, not that the law itself is a distraction.

      I.e. he thinks the new Texas law is good and reasonable, and he believes most people secretly agrees with that. If The Left didn’t need to distract people from Biden’s alleged failures, the law wouldn’t garner much of a reaction.

      Which is still crazy, of course, but arguably slightly less crazy than believing Texas republicans are all undercover agents for the liberal elite.

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      • It may just mean “discussing this topic we’d like to avoid is distracting us from serious stuff like Biden’s murder of those Americans in Afghanistan!” Ted Cruz said something similar about Tod Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks back in the day. “Distraction” is simply a way of saying they don’t want to talk about it.

        Liked by 1 person

  10. Last fall, for reasons that are probably obvious, I re-read 1984, which I read decades ago. The thing that really struck me was how optimistic it turns out Orwell was: the drones at the Ministry of Truth work themselves to exhaustion seven days a week rewriting history and current events to match the current Party position. But it turns out, thanks to the internet and social media, that immense effort is completely unnecessary: all you have to do is post on Facebook. Or Twitter. It doesn’t matter if it’s an easily-refuted lie, because most people won’t check. If they want to believe something is true, they will, no matter how stupid or crazy it is.

    Liked by 6 people

  11. I note the abuser rhetoric: “If we commit violence, it won’t be our fault, it will be because you made us do it.”

    Which is rich in irony, coming from the guy who threw a huge tantrum because an old schoolmate of his wife’s, upon finding out that Correia was buddies with a guy who advocated throwing acid in the faces of women who try to get an education, called her to make sure she was okay. 🙄

    Liked by 5 people

  13. “And for the fools cheering this madness on, we have this system for a reason. We have laws for a reason. We create laws the way we do for a reason. The founding fathers weren’t stupid. They were smarter than you idiots. Quit trying to gut or destroy every protection they put in place. That shit is there to protect you. But these stupid motherfuckers are not going to quit pushing until a critical mass of Americans just says fuck it and go full on Rwandan machete party.”

    What’s funny is that every single sentence except that last one could have been written about the insurrectionists at the Capitol, which he calls the right getting “slightly uppity.” Yes, we do have this system and these laws for a reason, meaning that overthrowing the government by force is illegal. Yes, it’s a good idea not to destroy existing laws, like the ones set up to make elections as fair and transparent as possible — not to mention the ones against killing elected officials. The only difference is that we don’t think of resorting to violence first thing when these laws get broken. (I won’t repeat Larry’s description of the kind of violence he imagines, because genocide is too serious for the throwaway line he uses.)

    Liked by 8 people

    • As I said before, guys like Larry don’t really seem to realize that if their civil war fantasies were to come true, they would almost certainly be on the losing side. The only way this sort of thing would happen is if dumbasses like Correia pushed for it, but they would quickly learn just how delusional the right-wing is about the parts of the country they despise.

      I will also point out that the only people who routinely “push” to overturn what the “founders” put in place (although that cannot be defined very well, especially since so much of the Constitution has been changed since the founders were alive) are on the right. The most lawless political group in the United States is the right-wing. The most routinely violent political group in the United States is the right-wing, and it isn’t even close. When you compare politically-driven violence, the right is in the lead by a huge margin.

      Correia and his buddies should be very grateful that their political opponents are as forgiving as they are, because if justice were applied without that forgiveness, a lot of the right-wing would have been put in jail decades ago.

      Liked by 6 people

      • The problem is that everyone, not just in the US, but in the world as a whole, would lose from an American Civil War. Sensible people realise that, which is what allows Yokel Haram to get away with making terroristic threats to get their way; US law enforcement is still soft on white supremacist domestic terrorism and seditious conspiracy.

        Liked by 1 person

        • In fact, I’m always surprised by the weak response of the otherwise powerful US law enforcement agencies against rightwingers, e.g. the folks who occupied that federal land in Oregon or the religious nutcases in Waco. I mean, US law enforcement agencies are known for being quasi-paramilitary and extremely aggressive and yet they have endless standoffs with a bunch of rightwing idiots?

          In fact, I’m stunned that the dominant US narrative regarding the Waco thing is “The FBI were in the wrong and the creepy gunhappy cult people are the victims”, because when it happened, I remember Germans being boggled that the FBI would just patiently wait outside that ranch instead of going in and arresting the lot of them.

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          • It’s like the definition of “rapist” for many people is a stranger attacking someone on the street, not a woman’s boss, teacher or coworkers. Conservative white people don’t get the tag as easily as BLM or Muslim groups. A lot of which reflects Republicans freaking out and complaining when right-wing terrorism comes up, and pushing to focus on more suitable targets (the FBI infiltrated groups such as Greenpeace to look for ecoterrorists in the 2000s, even though they acknowledged Greenpeace wasn’t an ecoterrorist group).
            That seems to be wearing off but not fast enough.

            Liked by 2 people

            • Fascist and Dominionist ideology are identical here: there are good people, and there are bad people. Anyone who is good is either doing good or might be temporarily erring, but will be forgiven; anyone who is bad is incapable of doing good except by accident.

              Liked by 2 people

            • I’m not a fan of Greenpeace at all, but they don’t more than protest, put up posters and occasionally block someone’s way. Terrorists they’re not.

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              • The rationale was supposedly that they might have individual members who were Up To Something or might have connections in radical groups. Of course, nobody was applying this to right-to-lifers despite their documented history of terrorism and terrorist sympathizing.

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            • Saith Cora:
              “I’m not a fan of Greenpeace at all, but they don’t more than protest, put up posters and occasionally block someone’s way. Terrorists they’re not.”

              Paul Watson left Greenpeace to found the Sea Shepard Society when Greenpeace wouldn’t let him be a terrorist under their name so the FBI (and RCMP, among others) is right to keep an eye on their members.

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            • Regarding Greenpeace and why I dislike them, in the 1980s my Dad worked for a company that operated two ships which burned toxic waste at sea at very high temperatures. It was at the time probably the safest method to deal with that waste without overly impacting humans. Greenpeace, however, hated those ships. Those ships were blamed for everything up to and including seals dying of a virus infection, which had nothing whatsoever to do with toxic waste burning.

              My Dad was the technical supervisor for those ships and one day he invited several Greenpeace people to take a tour of the ship, explained how the process worked, that everything was monitored, that everything was as safe as it could be etc… And the Greenpeace people nodded and thanked him for the explanation. And the very next day, they and another environmental group blocked the ship, as it tried to enter Hamburg harbour.

              My Dad had taken my Mom and me along to visit the ship (yes, I’ve been aboard the terrible toxic waste burning ship lots of times and I’m still alive and healthy) and maybe go into the city afterwards. And then Greenpeace and that other group blockaded the ship, while we were standing on the quay waiting for the ship to arrive together with the families of several of the sailors. It took hours for the harbour police to chase away Greenpeace and that other group and they didn’t do a great job of it either. It was fucking cold and I really desperately needed to pee. And through it all, Greenpeace and the other group (who were even more aggressive) hurled terrible abuse at the ship and its crew and also at my Dad.

              Even once the ship was moored at the quay, the protesters wouldn’t let them let down the gangway. It was obvious they were only hurting the families of the crew who were waiting to go aboard, but they didn’t care. We were not even human to them.

              In the end, the crew let down a rope ladder and we all had to climb aboard via this rope ladder. I was eleven and too small to get over the railing, so a burly sailor lifted me over. In retrospect, it’s a miracle that either I nor anybody else fell into the harbour basin.

              And this is why I can’t stand Greenpeace in particular and have serious issues with environmental groups in general. That’s also why I will never vote for the Green Party. Ironically, my Dad has probably done more to protect the environment and combat climate change than any of those Greenpeace idiots ever did.

              Liked by 2 people

      • I don’t think he realized that the Interahamwe lost. Or maybe he’s fine with going into exile in northern Mexico and making things miserable there.

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  14. “Somehow the free-will rugged individualists have a sudden and dangerous loss of agency in the presence of things like public-health measures.” I’ve been seeing this for years — friends posting on FB that we MADE them vote for Trump by disrespecting them and calling them racists and homophobes. I have occasionally pointed out that despite right-wingers calling liberals traitors, fifth-columnists, agents of Satan and enemies of America we’ve never voted for anyone just to say FU Republicans.

    Liked by 4 people

  15. Typo: “directly feel down either the Qanon or Pizzagate rabbit holes”, I assume “feel” should be “fell”. Or perhaps “burrowed”?

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  16. Tyop:
    “And later in the comments her clarifies that he is not…”

    Should be ‘he’, nyet?

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  17. The Problem with Larry is not that I am afraid that he is violent. He is just someone who talks.
    The Problem with Larry is that his words and actions invite the violent people. His kind makes the more evil posible. He has no problem getting on with the farest right. They are not left so not a problem in his worldview.
    He just makes those technically not-Nazis part of his group, we have seen that before.

    On other points: Germany and the USA have a lot of diferences. But here is also the far right the most danger to our people. Islamistic terror is only the second bigest theoristic problem and while we had a very famous far left theoristgroup at the moment they are not our bigest problem. And while (most of the) policement and other securitygroups are not on their side, we have our problems, that they are not locking at the far right enough. A famous case where a group of 3 Neo-Nazis were killing people with a migration background was one shameful case and don’t let me start on the former Chef of our Incountry Spys (I don’t know how to translate the BND in English) that is very near to our bigest far-right party and is seeing far-left theorists everywhere (even in our own government). He is currently a candidate for the Bundestag and not for the far-right party. (Sorry a bit of rant on a only semirelated topic)

    Liked by 3 people

    • According to Wikipedia BND translates to Federal Intelligence Service. (It also says that it is the foreign intelligence agency; the German domestic intelligence agency being the BfV.) A literal translation via Google Translate is Federal News Service, but I assume that’s a mistranslation due to imperfect alignment of word and concept across languages.

      I assume that you mean terrorist/ic rather than theorist/ic.

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    • A lot of these far right pundits like Larry, Brad or even VD and JCW won’t become violent themselves for all their martial rhetoric. However, one of their followers may well cross the line. And when that happens, the Larrys, Brads and VDs of the world will wash their hands of them and say, “Well, it’s not my fault that someone took what I said seriously.”

      See what happened when it turned out that Anders Breivik (of whom VD is a big fan) had borrowed chunks of his manifesto from various far right blogs and websites. “OH, but it’s not our fault that this guy took everything we said seriously. We never told him to kill anybody.”

      I also agree that at least in Germany and most of Europe, the far right is a much bigger threat and islamistic terrorism or far left terrorism. We do have violent far left extremists in a few cities, but they confine themselves to property damage and maybe getting into fights with police officers. They don’t kill people, unlike in the 1970s and 1980s. Islamistic terrorism does exist and there are attacks on occasion, but nowhere near on the scale of what the NSU did. Never mind that the worst single terrorist attack on German soil after WWII, the 1980 Oktoberfest bombing, which killed 13 people and injured more than 200, was far right terrorism. Oddly, that bombing is also almost completely forgotten. For a while, I even wondered whether I imagined the whole thing, because it’s almost never talked about, there are no memorials, no anniversary rememberances, nothing.

      One of the worst, if not the worst terrorist attack in Europe post 1945, was a leftwing attack BTW. In 1967, a fire broke out in the L’Innovation department store in Brussels and would kill at least 251 people (some say the death toll was higher, more than 300). The department store had been hosting “American weeks”, i.e. an exhibition of American products, which caused them to be picketed by anti-Vietnam war protesters. The cause of the fire has never been determined – largely because the entire building went up in flames and reports by survivors were conflicting – but it is believed that the fire was set by one of the protesters and then got out of hand, because the turn-of.the-century building was basically a beautiful fire trap. Oddly enough, the L’Innovation fire is also rarely mentioned, when talking about leftwing terrorism.

      Hans-Georg Maaßen is a disaster and should never have been head of the Verfassungsschutz and he should not be running for parliament for the CDU (i.e. Angela Merkel’s conservative party) rather than the far right AfD either.

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      • “And when that happens, the Larrys, Brads and VDs of the world will wash their hands of them”
        A standard right-wing shtick. Any comment from the left that sounds even mildly suggestive of violence is provocation to violence, proof they want to kill all the good Real Americans; stuff like Sarah Palin’s gunsights ad or “Rope.Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.” are just Free Speech, you can’t possibly suggest those incite anyone, waaaah, my right!

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