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Ruth King

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MY SAY: ANTIFA EXPLAINED ON CNN

By on August 20th, 2017

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/us/what-is-antifa-trnd/

The group is known for causing damage to property during protests. In Berkeley, black-clad protesters wearing masks threw Molotov cocktails and smashed windows at the student union center where the Yiannopoulos event was to be held.

Crow, who was involved with Antifa for almost 30 years, said members use violence as a means of self-defense and they believe property destruction does not equate to violence.

“There is a place for violence. Is that the world that we want to live in? No. Is it the world we want to inhabit? No. Is it the world we want to create? No. But will we push back? Yes,” Crow said.

Levin said Antifa activists feel the need to partake in violence because “they believe that elites are controlling the government and the media. So they need to make a statement head-on against the people who they regard as racist.”

“There’s this ‘It’s going down’ mentality and this ‘Hit them with your boots’ mentality that goes back many decades to confrontations that took place, not only here in the American South, but also in places like Europe,” he added.

White nationalists and other members of the so-called alt-right have denounced members of Antifa, sometimes calling them the “alt-left.” Many white nationalists from the Charlottesville rallies claimed it was the Antifa groups that led the protests to turn violent.

Peter Cvjetanovic, a white nationalist who attended the Virginia protests over the weekend, said he believes the far left, including Antifa, are “just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than the right wing could ever be.”

“These are people who preach tolerance and love while at the same time threatening people with a different political ideology. We go to our rallies and they harass us and attack us but they held theirs and we ignore them. You don’t see right-wing protests get like this,” Cvjetanovic told CNN affiliate KRNV.

But Crow said the philosophy of Antifa is based on the idea of direct action. “The idea in Antifa is that we go where they (right-wingers) go. That hate speech is not free speech. That if you are endangering people with what you say and the actions that are behind them, then you do not have the right to do that.

“And so we go to cause conflict, to shut them down where they are, because we don’t believe that Nazis or fascists of any stripe should have a mouthpiece.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Rejects Calls to Resign, Defends President Trump ‘Some of these issues are far more complicated than we are led to believe by the mass media,’ Treasury chief says By Nick Timiraos

By on August 20th, 2017

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected calls for him to resign in protest of President Donald Trump’s response to violence at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, and defended the president in a statement Saturday evening.

Mr. Mnuchin condemned the “actions of those filled with hate and with the intent to harm others.”

“While I find it hard to believe I should have to defend myself on this, or the president, I feel compelled to let you know that the president in no way, shape or form believes that neo-Nazi and other hate groups who endorse violence are equivalent to groups that demonstrate in peaceful and lawful ways,” Mr. Mnuchin said.

About 300 of Mr. Mnuchin’s classmates from the Yale University undergraduate class of 1985 posted a letter online Friday asking Mr. Mnuchin to resign in protest of Mr. Trump’s comments.

“It is your moral obligation,” they said. “We know you are better than this, and we are counting on you to do the right thing.”

One week ago, Mr. Trump endured a weekend of criticism for saying in his first reaction to violence at a Charlottesville rally of neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups that there were “many sides” to the unrest. On Monday, he more explicitly condemned white supremacists, including the driver who killed a 32-year-old woman when he plowed into a crowd protesting the white nationalists.

‘While I find it hard to believe I should have to defend myself on this, or the president, I feel compelled to let you know that the president in no way, shape or form believes that neo-Nazi and other hate groups who endorse violence are equivalent to groups that demonstrate in peaceful and lawful ways.’
—Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin

But at a combative press conference in New York on Tuesday, Mr. Trump defended his initial response, saying both sides were to blame for the clashes. “You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” Mr. Trump said, with Mr. Mnuchin standing next to him. There were “very fine people on both sides,” the president said.

Mr. Trump faced an intense backlash, including criticism from members of his own party for what elected officials and business leaders said was a failure to provide moral leadership. Two CEO councils created by the White House disbanded, and the administration abandoned plans for a third panel on infrastructure.

The White House on Thursday issued a statement to deny rumors that Gary Cohn, Mr. Trump’s economic policy director, would leave the administration over the president’s remarks. Mr. Cohn was also at the Tuesday news conference. Messrs. Cohn and Mnuchin are both Jewish.

Mr. Mnuchin served as Mr. Trump’s campaign finance chairman before being named as Treasury secretary and has a close personal relationship with the president.

In his statement Saturday, Mr. Mnuchin implied that Mr. Trump’s political opponents, including Republican rivals in last year’s primary campaign, were unfairly seizing on the Charlottesville uproar to “distract the administration” from policy issues.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Accurately Blames Both Sides for Charlottesville Mayhem The Trump-hating press hammered Trump’s factual ‘blame on both sides’ statement. By Deroy Murdock

By on August 20th, 2017

How dare he?

President Donald J. Trump stood before journalists on Tuesday and said the unsayable: “I think there is blame on both sides.”

Rather than denounce only the execrable white supremacists and swastika-wielding neo-Nazis who organized Saturday’s hate-o-rama in Charlottesville, Va., Trump observed that there was violence coming from the KKK side and from extreme leftists who opposed them with force — not with tranquility, as did those at a peaceful vigil Wednesday night.

The reaction to Trump’s comments was vitriolic:

“We can truly say his words have absolutely emboldened white supremacists,” said CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

The Chicago Sun-Times called Trump “America’s bigot in chief.”

“This is not my president,” declared Senator Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii).

But if these and other Trump haters were outraged at Trump’s comments, where was their anger when the reliably liberal ACLU described the situation as it unfolded? “Not sure who provoked first. Both sides were hitting each other at Justice Park before police arrived,” the ACLU of Virginia declared via Twitter on Saturday afternoon. The group identified both factions in a video of an open-air brawl on Charlottesville’s streets. “The guy on the ground is a Unite the Right protester. Those in black and red are #Antifa protesters,” referring to far-left “anti-fascist” thugs. The ACLU labeled another violent snippet, “Clash between protesters and counter protesters.”

There was no angst when Reuters reported that “Many of the rally participants were seen carrying firearms, sticks and shields. Some also wore helmets. Counter-protesters likewise came equipped with sticks, helmets and shields.” Reuters correspondents Amanda Becker and Jeff Mason added, “The two sides clashed in scattered street brawls before a car plowed into the rally opponents, killing one woman and injuring 19 others.”

This AP photo from #CharlottesvilleVA is incredible pic.twitter.com/9YZ8SLHnPj
— don (@donswaynos) August 12, 2017

The fury was absent when NBC Nightly News’ Gabe Gutierrez explained that “witnesses say both sides came prepared for a fight.”

The Trumpophobes left their spleens unvented when the Associated Press published this headline, “View from the street: Police stood by as adversaries fought.”

And there was no venom when Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas said: “We did have mutually combative individuals in the crowd.”

ABC-TV affiliate WRIC reported that police nabbed eight people tied to this melee. While some clearly were white-power extremists, others were anything but. These include Troy Dunigan, 21, of Tennessee. “He was arrested Saturday for throwing objects at ‘Nazi protesters,’ according to court documents.” Beth Foster, director of the Mercy Junction Justice and Peace Center, told

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

When Feminists Join Islamist Terrorists by Majid Rafizadeh

By on August 20th, 2017

The fact is that these supposed feminists not only turn a blind eye to those atrocities, but their presence at these events actively endorses and legitimizes the rule of these dictators.

When the subject turns to the specific cases of millions of oppressed women around the world — such as Asia Bibi, a Christian mother on death row in Pakistan for seven years for taking a drink of water; or the 19-year-old who, this year, was raped by her cousin at gunpoint and then sentenced to death by stoning for “adultery”; or women who were forced to marry their rapists; or child marriages at 12,000 a day; or women who are beaten by their husbands or who have acid thrown in their faces; or women used as suicide bombers.

When Mogherini smiles in her hijab in Iran, she is delivering a strong blow to women rights movements that attempt to remove the compulsion of the obligatory hijab and grant women equal autonomy, education and freedom. She is empowering suppression.

The social democrats and so-called feminists have been raising their voices for all to hear. They boast about advocating gender equality, individual rights, and advancing women’s rights. They argue that these values are universal; that every person, especially every woman, everywhere in the world, is entitled to these “inalienable” rights. Speeches are given, fundraisers are held, and an army of champions charges toward the cause.

Everyone is equal, and everyone deserves these rights. The chants, the inspirational lectures, the determination that echoes through television interviews, and is spread across the pages of magazines, all fill their followers with enthusiasm. But what is the reality?

Alongside other social democrats, Federica Mogherini, the current High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, recently visited the Islamist state of Iran to attend the official endorsement and inauguration of the regime’s president, Hassan Rouhani. Instead of enforcing the standards she professes — such as the strong support for women — she folded in with those around her. Others who accepted Iran’s invitation were North Koreans, members of Hezbollah, and leaders of Hamas. All three of these groups are known for cruelty, especially against women, and crimes against humanity.

The presence of such people makes the issue of despotism more complicated than it needs to be. By attending these kinds of events, social democrats such as her repeatedly endorse and give legitimacy to repressive states that implement Islamic law, Sharia. As Mogherini rubs elbows with men who have ordered the deaths of thousands of women (and men), she toes the line of their expectations. Instead of evolving their mindset, she allowed all of the women she claims to represent, to remain oppressed, as they have been for so very long.

Mogherini took the problem even a step even farther. Instead of attempting to appear as if she were working toward progressive thinking among these violent Islamist leaders, she acted as if they were friends. She appeared proud to snap selfies with the representatives of this repressive regime. The story came under the international spotlight. Some of the deputies used their selfies with Mogherini to project their legitimacy to the international community while others created self-promotional posters of themselves with Mogherini wearing the mandatory hijab. Mogherini, a social democrat Italian politician who speaks of women’s rights and was once a member of the Italian Communist Party, delightedly agreed to follow the Islamist rule of wearing a mandatory hijab. This act of compliance sends a brutal and unshakeable message. Women in these Islamist societies are controlled by laws which proclaim they must be hidden, or treated as their husband’s property. The hijab has become a symbol of this. Conversely, when Iranian leaders visit Mogherini’s country, they do not follow Italy’s rules. Instead, Italy follows the regime’s Islamist rules by offering appeasements such as covering up nude statues and not serving wine.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Kissinger’s Analysis of Mideast is Full of Loopholes by Amir Taheri

By on August 20th, 2017

Whatever one might think of Henry Kissinger’s view of the world, not to mention his contribution to international debate during the past six decades, one thing is certain: He has his own matrix for measuring right and wrong in policy terms.

That matrix is balance of power, a European concept developed during the medieval times that reached canon status with the so-called Westphalian treaties to organize relations among emerging nations in Europe. Call him a “one trick pony” if you like, but you will also have to admire Kissinger’s consistency in promoting foreign policy as a means of stabilizing the status quo regardless of moral — let alone ideological — considerations. In his version of Realpolitik, the aim should be to freeze rather than try to change the world, something fraught with dangerous risks.

Henry Kissinger in 2008. (Image source: World Economic Forum/Wikimedia Commons)

Kissinger’s neo-Westphalian view of international relations produced détente which, in turn, arguably prolonged the Soviet Union’s existence by a couple of decades. His shuttle-diplomacy froze the post-1967 status quo in the Israel-Palestine conflict, postponing a genuine settlement for God knows how many more decades. The same approach put the seal of approval on the annexation of South Vietnam by the Communist North, despite the latter’s defeat on the battleground.

The good doctor’s latest contribution concerns the campaign against ISIS. Kissinger warns that destroying ISIS could lead to an “Iranian radical empire”.

In other words, we must leave ISIS, which is a clear and active threat to large chunks of the Middle East and Europe, intact, for fear of seeing it replaced by an arguably bigger threat represented by a “radical Iranian empire.”

As usual, there are many problems with Kissinger’s attempt at using medieval European concepts to analyze situations in other parts of the world.

To start with, he seems to think that the Khomeinist regime in Tehran and the so-called ISIS “caliphate” in Raqqa belong to two different categories. The truth, however, is that they are two versions of the same ugly reality, peddling the same ideology, using the same methods, and helping bestow legitimacy on one another.

What is the difference between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claiming “supreme leadership of all Muslims throughout the world” as “Imam” and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s similar claim as “Caliph”? And aren’t both regimes claiming to have the only true version of Islam with a mission to conquer the entire world in its name? One may even argue that without Khomeinism in Iran, there would not have been ISIS and ISIS-like groups, not to mention the Taliban, in our part of the world — at least at this time.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

MARK ZUCKERBERG’S HYPOCRISY

By on August 20th, 2017

For Mark Zuckerberg: Hamas are ok, neo-Nazis are not: Micah Avni

Attached is a link to the Hamas Media Office Facebook page. Hamas is a terrorist organization and is officially recognized as such by the United States government. Hamas has murdered more Americans, and more Jews, over the past twenty years, than all of the neo-Nazis on the planet together have since World War II. Significantly more.

After my father, Richard Lakin, was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists almost two years ago, I began a campaign to pressure Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the other social media giants to proactively remove materials that incite to hatred, violence and terror. I have written to Zuckerberg directly, published opinion pieces, spoken at conferences, appeared in the media, participated in movies, initiated legislation andfiled law suits.

Over the past year, Facebook and Zuckerberg have issued numerous corporate statements talking about how seriously they are taking the issue of terrorism. Unfortunately, those statements are fake news. Facebook has yet to take any significant action. The facts speak for themselves: the Hamas Media Office Facebook pageattached to this post is just one of many examples which include theHamas TV Facebook Page, and numerous private Facebook groups used by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (the Hamas military branch) to communicate. Just type their name into Facebook in Arabic to see the long list:
كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, Facebook took down a few neo-Nazi and white supremacist pages. Zuckerberg posted “There is no place for hate in our community…That’s why we’ve always taken down any post that promotes or celebrates hate crimes or acts of terrorism – including what happened in Charlottesville.”

Of course, I applaud Zuckerberg for acting against neo-Nazis. What I cannot accept is his refusal to take action against Hamas (a recognized terrorist organization) and other radical Islamic groups and leaders who openly and actively incite to hatred, violence and terror. Clearly, Zuckerberg has the ability to identify and take down these posts and pages; yet, for the most part, he refuses to do so.

Why? It’s big business. Facebook makes billions of dollars from traffic generated around hate speech and incitement to violence and terror. Not to mention fake news, cyberbullying, and lots of other unpleasant stuff.

Zuckerberg and Facebook have proven that they are not responsible enough to wield the massive power which they have amassed. It is time for governments to intervene and regulate social media.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Breathtaking Confederate Monument Hypocrisy at Duke University By D. C. McAllister

By on August 20th, 2017

Duke University has cowered to political pressure and is removing the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from its chapel. The snowflake students don’t want it, so this paragon of higher learning is bowing to the will of the propagandized.

Here’s the thing. If Duke is going to be consistent (and I’m conceding leftists rarely are), they need to scurry on over to East Campus and tear down the statue of George Washington Duke because he was a Confederate soldier and, according to Robert Durden, author of The Dukes of Durham, owned a slave named Caroline whom he bought for $601. He also hired a slave from a neighbor to work on his tobacco farm.

In the 1920s, Duke’s son, Buck, gave a hefty endowment to Trinity College, and in appreciation, the school changed its name to Duke University in honor of Washington—a slave owner who fought to keep black people working in the tobacco fields under the strap of the white man’s whip.

Given this horrific history, the university must tear down all images of and all references to the Duke family, including changing the name of the university itself. If they refuse to go that far, they at least need to change their mascot to the White Devils.

Nothing else will be acceptable. How can they keep the statue and name of a slave owner who freely enlisted to serve in the Confederate army when they can’t tolerate the man who led that same army? The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

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Is Google Working with Liberal Groups to Snuff Out Conservative Websites? By Paula Bolyard

By on August 20th, 2017

Google revealed in a blog post that it is now using machine learning to document “hate crimes and events” in America. They’ve partnered with liberal groups like ProPublica, BuzzFeed News, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to make information about “hate events” easily accessible to journalists. And now, there are troubling signs that this tool could be used to ferret out writers and websites that run afoul of the progressive orthodoxy.

In the announcement, Simon Rogers, data editor of Google News Labs, wrote:

Now, with ProPublica, we are launching a new machine learning tool to help journalists covering hate news leverage this data in their reporting.

The Documenting Hate News Index — built by the Google News Lab, data visualization studio Pitch Interactive and ProPublica — takes a raw feed of Google News articles from the past six months and uses the Google Cloud Natural Language API to create a visual tool to help reporters find news happening across the country. It’s a constantly-updating snapshot of data from this year, one which is valuable as a starting point to reporting on this area of news.

The Documenting Hate project launched in response to the lack of national data on hate crimes. While the FBI is required by law to collect data about hate crimes, the data is incomplete because local jurisdictions aren’t required to report incidents up to the federal government.

All of which underlines the value of the Documenting Hate Project, which is powered by a number of different news organisations and journalists who collect and verify reports of hate crimes and events. Documenting Hate is informed by both reports from members of the public and raw Google News data of stories from across the nation.

On the surface, this looks rather innocuous. It’s presented by Google as an attempt to create a database of hate crimes — information that should be available with a quick Google search, it should be noted. But a quick glance at the list of partners for this project should raise some red flags:

The ProPublica-led coalition includes The Google News Lab, Univision News, the New York Times, WNYC, BuzzFeed News, First Draft, Meedan, New America Media, The Root, Latino USA, The Advocate, 100 Days in Appalachia and Ushahidi. The coalition is also working with civil-rights groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, and schools such as the University of Miami School of Communications.

ProPublica poses as a middle-of-the-road non-profit journalistic operation, but in reality, it’s funded by a stable of uber-liberal donors, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and Herb and Marion Sandler, billionaire former mortgage bankers whose Golden West Financial Corp. allegedly targeted subprime borrowers with “pick-a-pay” mortgages that led to toxic assets that were blamed for the collapse of Wachovia. The Southern Poverty Law Center, of course, is infamous for targeting legitimate conservatives groups, branding them as “hate groups” because they refuse to walk in lockstep with the progressive agenda. And it goes with out saying that The New York Times and BuzzFeed News lean left.
Tech Companies Begin Blacklisting Alt-Right Sites, Purging Them from the Internet

A perusal of the raw data that’s been compiled thus far on hate stories shows articles from a wide array of center-right sites, including The Daily Caller, Breitbart News, The Washington Times, National Review, and the Washington Examiner. It also includes many articles from liberal sites like BuzzFeed News and The New York Times. One story from PJ Media’s Bridget Johnson is included in the list. It’s a report about a Sikh ad campaign aimed at reducing hate crimes against members of their faith community. Many of the articles are simply reports about alleged hate crimes from sources running the gamut of the political spectrum.

ProPublica vows to diligently track “hate incidents” in the coming months. “Everyday people — not just avowed ‘white nationalists’ — intimidate, harass, humiliate and even harm their fellow Americans because of the color of their skin, how they worship or who they love.” [Emphasis added] Note that they’re not just focusing on hate “crimes.”

It’s easy enough to figure out the direction of this project by taking it for a test drive. A search for “Scalise” returned four results, one of which didn’t even mention Steve Scalise, the congressman who was shot by a crazed leftist in June. A search for “Trump” during the same time period yielded more than 200 results. A search of the raw data resulted in 1178 hits for Trump and not a single mention of Scalise.

Note that Google, which recently fired an employee for expressing his counter-progressive opinions, thinks this information could be used to “help journalists covering hate news leverage this data in their reporting.” What do they mean by “leverage this data”? They don’t say, but an email sent to several conservative writers by a ProPublica reporter may give us some indication. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer along with some others received this from ProPublica “reporter” Lauren Kirchner:

I am a reporter at ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative newsroom in New York. I am contacting you to let you know that we are including your website in a list of sites that have been designated as hate or extremist by the American Defamation League or the Southern Poverty Law Center. We have identified all the tech platforms that are supporting websites on the ADL and SPLC lists.

We would like to ask you a few questions:

1) Do you disagree with the designation of your website as hate or extremist? Why?

2) We identified several tech companies on your website: PayPal, Amazon, Newsmax, and Revcontent. Can you confirm that you receive funds from your relationship with those tech companies? How would the loss of those funds affect your operations, and how would you be able to replace them?

3) Have you been shut down by other tech companies for being an alleged hate or extremist web site? Which companies?

4) Many people opposed to sites like yours are currently pressuring tech companies to cease their relationships with them – what is your view of this campaign? Why?

In other words, nice website you’ve got there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Great Robert E. Lee By J. Robert Smith

By on August 20th, 2017

Robert E. Lee was a great American. He was in rebellion against his country for four tortuous, bloody years. At the head of the Army of Northern Virginia, he came darn close to winning Southern independence. Lee was a brilliant field commander, full of audacity. His daring was a gift and a bane. He was a man of integrity. He was a man of his place and time. He deserves our remembrance and respect.

The left – and the mainstream media, the Democratic Party, the race industry, and establishment go-alongs – want to destroy our history. Destroy anything that honors the men who fought for the South in the Civil War. Destroy, as the left does – here and abroad – history that doesn’t comport with its worldview. Destroy it or ignore it and rewrite it, as the Stalinists did. As Orwell warned.

That’s a villainous mindset. It contains an awfully destructive logic if not defeated. The left won’t stop at discarding the soldiers of the South’s rebellion. It will advance to anything and anyone the left deems inconvenient to its narrative – a narrative it fashions to gain power and control over all of us. If successful, the left will turn with a terrible vengeance on our founders. It will eviscerate the nation’s leaders in the generations up to the Civil War, and then beyond. It’s a means to tyranny.

Goes the left’s argument: the South’s secession was to preserve an evil institution, slavery – negro slavery, precisely. In large part, it was. But we live in dumbed down times, when schools fail to teach, or foist revisionist history on our kids; when history is barely remembered, much less understood; when tens of millions of citizens are open to falsehood, misrepresentation, and certainly lack of context about the momentous events and times and people in the past who shaped our nation.

Robert E. Lee was intimately connected to the nation’s beginnings. From Biography:

Lee was cut from Virginia aristocracy. His extended family members included a president, a chief justice of the United States, and signers of the Declaration of Independence. His father, Colonel Henry Lee, also known as “Light-Horse Harry,” had served as a cavalry leader during the Revolutionary War and gone on to become one of the war’s heroes, winning praise from General George Washington.

Lee married Mary Custis, whose great grandparents were George and Martha Washington. He graduated from West Point and distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War. In the small postwar army, Lee rose to the rank of colonel. He served as superintendent of the United States Military Academy.

Lee’s star rose when he was ordered to quell John Brown’s rebellion at Harper’s Ferry. He was then regarded as a possible leader of the Union army should civil war come.

When the war came, Lincoln offered Lee command of Union forces. Lee declined. It’s important to understand why – and it wasn’t because Lee was pro-slavery. Like most every American, he was, first and foremost, a citizen of his state: Virginia. When Virginia seceded, Lee acted from conviction: his duty lay with his state.

Modern Americans often travel across state lines. They relocate for work or lifestyle. They fail to appreciate mid-19th-century life. Though change was coming, Americans were still overwhelmingly rural, rarely venturing more than a dozen miles from their villages or farms. The nation was only loosely knitted together through the Revolution, rudimentary media, religion, and culture. The Civil War commenced just 72 years after Washington was sworn in as president.

Slavery had been contentious from the time the Constitution was debated and drafted. It remained contentious, in ebbs and flows, throughout the early decades of the republic. The 1850s saw an escalation in tensions and conflict about the issue. Lincoln’s election in 1860 proved the deal-breaker for 11 lower Southern states.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Anti-Israel Academics Launch Campus Antifa Group for Faculty Group will combat ‘fascists’ who use free speech ‘as a façade for attacking faculty’: Rachel Frommer

By on August 20th, 2017

Prominent anti-Israel academics launched a campus antifa group earlier this month for faculty across the United States.

Purdue University’s Bill Mullen and Stanford University’s David Palumbo-Liu created the Campus Antifascist Network (CAN) to combat “fascists” who use “‘free speech’ as a façade for attacking faculty who have stood in solidarity with [targeted] students,” as Palumbo-Liu described it on his blog.

Mullen, in an interview with Inside Higher Ed, said the mission of CAN was “to drive racists off campuses and to protect the most vulnerable from fascist attack,” and “to build large, unified demonstrations against fascists on campuses when they come.”

When Inside Higher Ed asked Palumbo-Liu about CAN’s views on the use of violence—such as the alleged assault by masked, black-clad antifa members of a conservative student earlier this week—he said the group “would advocate self-defense and defense in various forms of those who are being threatened by fascists, but not violence.”

Palumbo-Liu was more forthcoming about his opposition to the alt-right and white supremacists on campuses, saying he was primarily concerned by their “propensity to physical violence, aggressive confrontation and provocation, and violations of others’ civil rights.”

In his blog post, Palumbo-Liu wrote that CAN would support faculty who fascists “aggressively sought to smear, bully and intimidate … especially faculty of color.”

“Progressive scholars such as Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor, Johnny Williams, Dana Cloud and George Ciccariello-Maher, among others, have each been threatened with violence, or firing, for strong anti-racist social justice commitments,” he claimed.

Trinity College’s Williams wrote on social media after GOP House Whip Steve Scalise was shot that white people are “inhuman a-holes” who need to “die.” Drexel University’s Ciccariello-Maher tweeted in 2016, “All I want for Christmas is white genocide,” and this year tweeted that he wanted to “vomit” when he saw someone give their first-class seat on a flight to a uniformed soldier. Both were investigated by their respective academic institutions for these comments.

Meanwhile, both Palumbo-Liu and Mullen have been leading figures in the academic campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. In 2014, Mullen issued a call on anti-Israel site Electronic Intifada to “de-Zionize our campuses.” Palumbo-Liu, in a 2016 piece titled, “9 things you need to know about the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” recommended readers look to alternative news sources for their information on the region, including several sites accused of publishing anti-Semitic content. He later updated the article to remove If Americans Knew from the list, after receiving backlash for recommending an outlet that has repeatedly published conspiracy theories about Jews. IAK has been marginalized even by virulently anti-Israel groups, such as the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace.

CAN has created an open-access “anti-fascist syllabus” that “analyzes past and present contours of fascist thought and organizing in their various forms, and provides tools for understanding and for fighting fascism today … Primarily, the syllabus articulates fascism as an historical expression of capitalism’s tendency to exploit and dominate poor, working class, and oppressed people.”

“The syllabus is … intended for students, activists, teachers, unionists, workers, and communities: Muslims, Jews, women, LGBTQI+ individuals, socialists, communists, anarchists, people of color, working-class people, and the alternatively abled, and is an act of solidarity with these communities’ struggles for self-defense,” according to the description.

The syllabus has collected dozens of articles from left-leaning sources such as the American Socialist Quarterly, Socialist Register, The Nation, Mother Jones, Jacobin magazine, and publications from the defunct communist Sojourner Truth Organization.

In the wake of the white supremacist march at Charlottesville, CAN issued an invitation for more academics to join its cause. The group has already reportedly seen a spike in membership.

Neither Palumbio-Liu nor CAN responded to inquiries about the program.

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