Trump's Pardoning Of Men Found Guilty Of War Crimes Is Extremely Dangerous

Ruben Gallego stood with Ted Lieu on the day Lieu was promoted to a colonel 

Ted Lieu (D-CA) served in the air force and today serves as a colonel in the Air National Guard. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) was deployed in Iraq as a Marine corporal. Today the two of them are prominent voices for peace within the Congressional Progressive Caucus. On Friday the L.A. Times published an OpEd the two of them had penned, Trump’s Leniency On War Crimes Weakens National Security. "George Washington said, 'Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable, procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.' The United States has the best military in the world," wrote the two vets, "in part because our soldiers abide by, and believe in, good order and discipline. President Trump’s pardon of a war criminal and potential pardoning of other troops accused of war crimes strikes at the soul of our armed forces, undermines unit cohesion and weakens national security."

Trump never served. We did. One of us fought in the Iraq war. The other prosecuted members of the military who violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice. From the first day of basic training, like every member of the military, we were taught to follow orders, regulations and laws. Unit cohesion suffers and lives are put at risk when troops go rogue and are not punished.

Discipline is so important to the military that Article 134 of the Uniform Code specifically makes it a crime for members to engage in conduct that is prejudicial to “good order and discipline” or that “bring[s] discredit to the armed forces.” Enforcing discipline in an organization as large as the U.S. military requires the certainty of punishment for those who violate regulations or the law. If only certain provisions of the code are enforced, or if members think they can get away with crimes because of a presidential pardon, it will have a corrosive effect on every aspect of readiness, and it will encourage others to disobey orders.

If our adversaries know the American military will flout the law of war, they will be more inclined to do the same.

All members of the military are taught to obey the Law of Armed Conflict, also known as the law of war. Its many provisions enshrine principles we all recognize as basic to appropriate military conduct, including this one: Unarmed civilians are not legitimate military targets. Articles 118 and 134 prohibit murder. It is criminal to intentionally kill a defenseless civilian or to kill prisoners of war.

Some of the war crimes committed by U.S. personnel are indistinguishable from murder.

Army 1st Lt. Michael Behenna was convicted of unpremeditated murder in a combat zone by a military court. He drove an unarmed Iraqi prisoner into the desert, stripped him naked and shot him in the head and chest. Trump recently pardoned him.

Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher has been charged with committing multiple war crimes in Iraq, including shooting an unarmed civilian girl and an unarmed civilian senior citizen, stabbing to death a defenseless teenage Islamic State captive, and indiscriminately spraying a neighborhood with rockets and machine gun fire. Seven members of SEAL Team 7 came forward and reported Gallagher’s actions to Navy authorities just as the law, their training and their honor demanded. Gallagher has pleaded not guilty. Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn will be court-martialed for the killing of an unarmed Afghan. Golsteyn admits to the act; the Army calls it murder, he calls it a legitimate ambush. According to news reports, Trump is considering Memorial Day pardons for Golsteyn and Gallagher.

Our military follows the law of war not just because it is the moral thing to do but because it is critical to mission success.

When troops kill civilian children, senior citizens and prisoners of war without justification, those crimes make peace more difficult to secure and hand our enemies a great recruiting tool. If our adversaries know the American military will flout the law of war, they will be more inclined to do the same, including killing future American prisoners of war. If American troops don’t obey the law, Iraqi and Afghan officials will be less likely to cooperate with U.S. military efforts, and civilian anger will put our deployed personnel at increased risk.

We acknowledge the president’s pardon power is nearly unfettered (although it can’t be used to obstruct justice). Trump can pardon war criminals, and there is not much Congress can do to stop him. But we can speak up against this travesty.

Trump may think that formally forgiving those who have been convicted of or charged with committing war crimes is being pro-military. Exactly the opposite is true. Rather than bring “esteem to all,” Trump’s pardons would undermine good order and discipline, increase the risk to our deployed personnel, and stain the soul of our military.

Air Force One by Nancy Ohanian

Pete Buttigieg seems as disturbed by this as Lieu and Gallego. Last week, he told a veterans rally in New Hampshire that "The reason that we can stand up tall and say that's not true, that having served honorably in the military, couldn't be more different than being a war criminal is because if we ever did anything that was wrong the United States under the Uniform Code of Military Justice would have held us accountable... And so when the President joins in with this idea, that it's just natural, that if you serve in conflict, that you're going to wind up murdering somebody, he is eroding the integrity of the military, and insulting the Constitution." You know who I'd like to ask about this? Some of the Republicans in Congress who, like Lieu and Gallego, served in the U.S. military. What does Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) think? How about Lindsay Graham (R-SC)? How about Joni Ernst (R-IA), who, this morning, called him on his loony statement about how North Korean missile tests are OK? And Silent Don Bacon (R-NE)? Tom Cotton (R-AR)? Greg Steube (R-FL)? Lee Zeldin (R-NY)? Steve Stivers (R-OH)? Martha McSally (R-AZ)? These are all men and women who know better but who have devoted their recent careers to enabling Trump. So far, none of them have made a peep, although veterans groups are furious over the pardons. I wonder if the Republican legislators will ever speak up on this. One has-- a criminal himself, Duncan Hunter (R-CA), not only excused the war criminal Trump says he'll pardon, but admitted he's guilty of one of same infractions, though not murder! Basically, Hunter's message was "Oh get over it; everybody does it."

Think this isn't all that important? Prominent figures on the Christian right [including] elected politicians have warned that the fight over abortion rights could lead to a new civil war... Republican lawmakers such as Ohio’s Candice Keller have openly speculated that the divide over abortion rights might lead to civil war... Earlier this month, The Guardian revealed that the Washington state Republican legislator Matt Shea had also speculated about civil war, and the 'Balkanization' of America, predicting that Christians would retreat to 'zones of freedom' such as the inland Pacific north-west, where Shea is campaigning for a new state to break away from Washington.

Asked on a podcast if the two halves of the country could remain together, Shea said: “I don’t think we can, again, because you have half that want to follow the Lord and righteousness and half that don’t, and I don’t know how that can stand.”

Shea has introduced a bill-- unlikely to pass-- which would criminalize abortion in the state.

Right-wing crackpot Trumpist, Milo Yiannopoulos was fomenting civil war this weekend too. And offering himself as the 21st Century version of Robert E. Lee, no less!

I abhor political violence. Let me be clear about that. But when someone takes away your freedom, your speech and your ability to protect yourself and your family, there aren’t many options left. At least, that’s how citizens quickly come to feel.

It getting close to the time when, per America’s founding documents, citizens will start forming into well-regulated militias in preparation for the lawful defense of the Constitution. And maybe I’m the right person to sketch out how that should work.

You know, maximum cell size. Encrypted comms. Like I said, I abhor violence. But civil war is coming, and, if it does, well-meaning but poorly-informed and relentlessly deplatformed conservatives are going to need a handbook.

Deplatformed conservatives? Poor widdle Yiannopoulos is pouting that he's been kicked off every social media platform with an audience of more than a thousand.

Right-Wing Snowflakes

Laura and Milo

Ever hear of Milo Yiannopoulos? Don't worry, no one else has either... unless they watch Fox News commentators as a lifestyle. Last week Talia Lavin wrote a piece about Milo for the Village Voice (I've written about him too so I won't remark on what a waste of time it is.) The adventures of Milo-ism, she pointed out, include how he finds it "impossible... to go out for lunch in most major cities," which, she continued "speaks to an intellectual barrenness at the core of Trump-era conservatism. Having found themselves in political power, but nonetheless without complete cultural dominance, these conservatives must manufacture a sense of powerlessness."

Milo Yiannopoulos would like you to know that he is “Dangerous”-- that was the title of his abortive nonfiction debut. Milo Yiannopoulos is selling T-shirts that say, “Everyone who hates me is ugly,” and, “Guantanamo Bay Waterboard Instructor.” A Milo Yiannopoulos fan once shot a protestor at one of his speaking engagements in the stomach, causing a critical injury. Milo Yiannopoulos would like you to be very indignant that he was recently heckled at a Manhattan bar.

I'll bet even fewer people have ever heard of Kevin Williamson, although maybe they know another Kevin Williamson from elementary school. This one helps highlight "the hollow core of Trump-era conservatism" Talia is portraying. Early in April "Williamson lost a columnist gig at the Atlantic after less than two weeks on the job, when certain of his past inflammatory comments resurfaced. He’s managed to parlay this tribulation into thousands of published words about his own silencing. Thus far, by my calculation, his columns this week alone make up a substantial portion of the word count of the Book of Job. Right wing publicists Ross Douthat, Conor Friedersdorf, Erick Erickson, Noah Rothman, et al share "an insistent refrain: this is, if not authoritarianism, then its prelude; it is 'chilling'; it is a flexing of the muscles of a fledgling despotism; it is a Soviet-style censorship regime." Don't be sorry you've never heard of Williamson or his tempest in a teapot.

You could be forgiven, amid all this furor, for forgetting that Williamson was fired for stating-- publicly, repeatedly, and emphatically-- that women who have abortions should be punished by execution. That is, women who have had abortions-- fully one-quarter of American women-- are a criminal class, and some portion of them, after being convicted, should be publicly hung by the neck until dead.

There are, of course, a multiplicity of ironies here-- that a man so blithely willing to strip women of their rights is so avid in defense of his own; that the inventors of the terms snowflake and triggered overheat so easily at a professional slight; etc.-- but at its heart, what arises when one surveys a media landscape pitted with Williamson hot takes is an emptiness at the heart of conservative rhetoric, and an attendant need to create victimization where none, in fact, exists.

In the absence of material oppression of any kind, one wonders what motivates conservatives to cant toward martyrdom-- to seek, perpetually, a marginalization that cannot be measured. Recent research suggests that the Trump-era right suffers from “status anxiety”: to wit, a fear not of losing their ability to speak, but rather that their speech will become part of a chorus of equals. In expressing a groundless fear of being silenced, they reveal their true fear-- that of no longer being in a position to dominate the national conversation.

To an extent I empathize: It is difficult to maintain a sense of utter righteousness, difficult to feel the great maw of the white page, without a real claim to struggle. There are those who say that creative generation only comes through struggle; that forward momentum is possible only when obstacles arise to be smashed; that only a rough road can lengthen one’s stride, and straighten one’s back, and lead one forward to brighter lands. So it is not without some sympathy that I look to the nation’s conservatives who, finding themselves in possession of all three branches of government, and a plurality of state governments too, find themselves so bereft of struggle that they must invent it. What I cannot forgive is the laziness of the central metaphors, which return again and again to the well of twentieth-century authoritarianism, without ever pausing to consider how transparently ridiculous these metaphors become.

Thus we find Laura Ingraham called a Twitter boycott of her prime-time cable news show "Stalinist." One need not be a student of Russian history to recognize that Stalin's primary methods of punishment were not bitchy tweets, and the Soviet Union did not, historically speaking, have much of an advertising industry to boycott in the first place. Stalin tended to line his opponents up and shoot them. He tended to exile them to Siberia, or confiscate their grain, under the guise of “dekulakization,” until they starved to death. Laura Ingraham lives in what the Washington Post described as a “gated Northern Virginia mansion.” But it is entirely possible that she avoids eating grain (too many carbs).

There have been so many column inches in the New York Times and the Washington Post excoriating college students for protesting speakers that one might justifiably think this is the most pressing problem facing the United States educational system. (Never mind that many of these speakers were invited precisely to attract such a response, and the concomitant editorials, an ouroborous of specious victimization. And please, ignore the teachers’ strikes erupting in multiple states, and the fact that many public school students cannot even afford pencils.)

Talia reminds her gentle readers that there is no "lacuna of genuine problems to address in the United States of 2018. We are a country of patriarchal domination, of appalling racial injustice, of rising seas and falling wages. The problem with the Williamsons (and newspaper conservative columnists) of the world is that they have willingly chosen to turn a blind eye to what exists. Faced with the proverbial widow and orphan, conservative ideology posits stripping them of food aid. Faced with injustice in the courts, the conservative instinct is to embrace a status quo that perpetuates it. In an era in which conservatives find themselves winning-- with officials like Scott Pruitt and Betsy DeVos stripping this country of onerous regulations that do things like protect the air, or transgender students-- I am almost disappointed to find these would-be heralds unable to trumpet their success. It turns out that the rhetoric of celebration, of triumph, is too one-note for these wordsmiths. In service of obscuring the oppression they ignore, they must create one of their own.

And this is mirrored in right-wing members of Congress as well, of course. Katie Porter, who's running for the Orange County seat occupied by garden variety Republican Mimi Walters told us that "Rep. Walters is spending her millions of corporate PAC money dollars to convince her constituents that she is standing up for women in DC. Rep. Walters may claim to be standing up for women, but in her 20+ years in elected office, Mimi Walters has repeatedly stood with Paul Ryan and Donald Trump in their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and ban a woman's right to choose."

Lillian Salerno has her runoff on May 22 before she'll have to face GOP robot Pete Sessions in Dallas. "And deep in the heart of Texas is a worst-case offender in Pete Sessions, operating with a seemingly mindless loyalty to party over constituents in a state that many argue is a non-voting blue state that presents as red when it's represented in DC. Arguably one of their most powerful representatives doesn't even reside in the state, only coming in and out to chastise its citizens for not knowing how to listen as he rubber stamps on behalf of special interests that prop up the systems of oppression that the state can't seem to maneuver its way out of with these cronies like these at the helm."

Paul Clements is the progressive opposition to Fred Upton in southwest Michigan this cycle. "The fundamental political issue for America," he offered, "is increasing economic inequality-- most of the benefits of our economic growth going to the wealthy, due to a corrupt political system creating a rigged economy. The second issue is we are moving in the wrong direction on rights-- to live without hunger, for fair pay, for women to control their bodies, to equal treatment under the law (not policemen shooting you) … voting rights, equality for LGBTQ persons, and immigrant rights. The third issue is care for the environment, particularly major action on climate change, but also against despoliation for profit, and so all can enjoy nature. While Trump avidly promotes backsliding, the standard conservative response, which Fred Upton exemplifies, is in public to narrow all issues to minor steps and bland sentiments, and then to vote to enable Trump, corporate donors, and more backsliding. As long as Republicans can divert attention from the big questions they can win. Let’s not let that happen."

Jenny Marshall is taking on Trump rubber stamp Virginia Foxx in northwest North Carolina. "Foxx," she said, "is the epitome of right wing conservatism. Her world view is so narrow and selfish that I am truly shocked that she gets re-elected over and over again. She has voted against every pro-environmental bill that has come up, vowed to abolish the Department of Education and wants to get rid of the free lunch program yet she claims her values are American values. I disagree. To truly live up to American values we must ensure that everyone has the opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This means building equity into a system that lacks it, empowering communities that have been silenced and investing in our future now.

Tom Guild is running for the Oklahoma City centered 5th congressional district. He told us that "Steve Russell received word of the first two females qualifying as Army Rangers with a call for an investigation into whether the test requirements had been watered down to unfairly help the women pass the required tests to become Rangers. He remained silent when Donald Trump equated demonstrators in Charlottesville who protested the Nazis and White Supremacists and their taunts of 'no Jew will take my place' accompanied by many ugly virulent racists acts and rhetoric, with the Nazis and Klan members. We heard only the sound of crickets from Russell when Mr. Trump said there were “good people” in the group protesting racism and those promoting racism in the Nazi and KKK contingents in Virginia. He supports and votes for budget cuts for the SNAP program that feeds millions of children and low income single parents. His campaign scoops up hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate, special interest, and PAC contributions. His only relevant audience are those with God’s unlisted phone number who can give big bucks to his campaign. He is in the pocket of fossil fuels companies who pollute our air and water, and do permanent continuous damage to our planet. He supports oil company puppet Scott Pruitt who has the ethics of a snake and never misses an opportunity to visit great damage on our planet. He follows a policy of benign neglect regarding public education, enabling Betsy DeVos to further her quest to make education available only to those born with a platinum spoon in their mouths. Clearly as Mark Twain quipped long ago, “No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” Certainly Twain hit the mark, particularly if Russell is a member of the legislature. The top .01% is coddled and catered to by Russell. His cut, cut, cut…no matter what philosophy regarding programs that help working people, the middle class, and those who need a hand up, is designed to favor the overlords at every juncture. Despite his claims of charitable Christianity, he missed the part of the Bible where Jesus said, as you do unto the least of these, you do unto me. His actions and rhetoric are tragic for the people of Oklahoma and our beloved America."

Kara Eastman is the progressive Democrat running for Congress in Omaha for the seat conservative Don Bacon is sitting in. "The current representative for the Nebraska Second," she told us with specificity, "has voted 97.1%  of the time with Trump. As a member of the climate caucus, he has said he does not believe that climate change is caused by humans. He is in favor of taking away healthcare from his constituents. He also supports big government regulations for women’s reproductive health. It is time for a leader in NE-02 who will stand up for the residents in the district. We need someone who has seen the positive impact that environmental protections have on children here. We deserve to have leaders who protect women, children and working families. We need someone who is listening to residents in the district and fighting for them."

Lisa Brown is the progressive Democrat running in eastern Washington in the district occupied by 4th highest-ranking Republican in the House, a Ryan rubber stamp. "She told its this morning that "so-called 'fiscal conservatives,' like Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, vote for a 1.5 trillion dollar tax plan for the top 1% , then brazenly call for balanced budget amendments and cuts to food assistance and the social safety net programs. She lauds 'work requirements' for food stamps though 3 counties in her district have double digit rates of unemployment."

How Did The Republican Party Allow Itself To Be Taken Over By A Wack Bunch Of Neo-Nazis?

A gathering Of American Neo-Nazis-- a powerful fringe of Trump's Republican Party-- will feature their newest heroes: Bannon and Roy Moore.

In less than two weeks-- October 13-15-- the extreme right of the Republican Party will gather for their annual bund rally at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in DC. Announced speakers include hate mongers and racists like Michele Bachmann, Sebastian Gorka, Laura Ingraham, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, a couple of Duck Dynasty guys, Jerry Boykin, Frank Gaffney, Mat Staver, Dana Loesch, Mark Meadows (R-NC), Oliver North, Paul Ryan (R-WI), Mark Walker (R-NC), Jeff Sessions and, as a human piñata and target for derision, Miss McConnell (R-KY). Oh and Señor Trumpanzee will be making an appearance as well. But, according to Breitbart News, the keynote speeches won't be given by Trumpanzee or Speaker Ryan or Sessions but by American neo-Nazi strategist Steven Bannon and his Alabama candidate for Senate, ex-Judge Roy Moore.

The far right hate group, Family Research Council, hosts the annual event, which bills itself as "the single largest gathering" of... well they call themselves "social conservatives," but it is basically a neo-Nazi gathering in the nation's capital. Too harsh? Nope. Let's look at Joseph Bernstein's report this week for BuzzFeed on how the Mercer and Bannon run Breitbart News smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist ideas into the heart of the Republican Party.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right-- the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was Milo Yiannopoulos, the site’s former tech editor known best for his outrageous public provocations, such as last year’s Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and September’s canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to “computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.”

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum-- and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.

It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.

These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website-- and, in particular, Yiannopoulos-- links the Mercer family, the billionaires who fund Breitbart, to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content, and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate.

They capture what Bannon calls his “killing machine” in action, as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world, sifts through these grievances for ideas and content, and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld, collecting advertisers’ checks all along the way.

And the cache of emails-- some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public-- expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos, who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannon’s grand plan for Yiannopoulos, whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often, the documents reveal, this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.

...Now Bannon is back at the controls of the machine, which he has said he is “revving up.” The Mercers have funded Yiannopoulos's post-Breitbart venture. And these documents present the clearest look at what these people may have in store for America.

...Early in the morning of August 17, 2016, as news began to break that Steve Bannon would leave Breitbart to run the Trump campaign, Milo Yiannopoulos emailed the man who had turned him into a star. “Congrats chief,” he wrote.

“u mean ‘condolences,’” Bannon wrote back.

“I admire your sense of duty (seriously).”

“u get it.”

In the month after the convention, Yiannopoulos and Bannon continued to work closely. Bannon and Marlow encouraged a barrage of stories about Yiannopoulos’s late July ban from Twitter. Bannon and Yiannopoulos worked to distance themselves from Charles Johnson’s plans to sue Twitter. (“Charles is PR poison,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Charles is well intentioned--but he is wack,” Bannon responded.) And the two went back and forth over how hard to hit Paul Ryan in an August story defending the alt-right. (“Only the headline mocks him correct,” Bannon wrote. “We never actually say he is a cuck in the body of the piece?”)

But once Bannon left Breitbart, his email correspondence with Yiannopoulos dried up, with a few exceptions. On August 25, after Hillary Clinton’s alt-right speech, Yiannopoulos emailed Bannon, “I’ve never laughed so hard.”

“Dude: we r inside her fucking head,” Bannon wrote back.

And on September 15, Sebastian Gorka, then an adviser to the Trump campaign, sent Yiannopoulos, Bannon, and Michael Flynn Jr., the son of Trump’s future national security adviser, a meme “as found on Twitter.” Watermarked by a conservative satire site called the Patriot Retort, the image was titled “The Deplorables,” and had superimposed various TrumpWorld faces on top of the all-star action movie heroes of the 2010 Sylvester Stallone vehicle The Expendables.

“I presume you Gents approved of this,” Gorka wrote.

“THIS IS BRILLIANT. CC’ing LTG Flynn,” Flynn, Jr. wrote back, referring to his father.

“LOL!” Bannon responded.

“Yes. I’m jealous!!” Gorka replied.

Still, as the campaign progressed into the fall, there were clues that Bannon continued to run aspects of Breitbart and guide the career of his burgeoning alt-right star. On September 1, Bannon forwarded Yiannopoulos a story about a new Rutgers speech code; Yiannopoulos forwarded it to Bokhari and asked for a story. On the 3rd, Bannon emailed to tell Yiannopoulos he was “trying to set up DJT interview.” (The interview with Trump never happened.) And on September 11, Bannon introduced Yiannopoulos over email to the digital strategist and Trump supporter Oz Sultan and instructed the men to meet.

There were also signs that Bannon was using his proximity to the Republican nominee to promote the culture war pet causes that he and Yiannopoulos shared. On October 13, Saucier emailed Yiannopoulos a tweet from the white nationalist leader Nathan Damigo, who went on to punch a woman in the face at a Berkeley rally in April of this year and led marchers in Charlottesville: “@realDonaldTrump just said he would protect free speech on college campus.”

“He used phrases extremely close to what I say-- Bannon is feeding him,” Yiannopoulos responded.

Yet, by the early days of the Trump presidency-- and as the harder and more explicitly bigoted elements within the alt-right fought to reclaim the term-- Bannon had clearly established a formal distance from Yiannopoulos. On February 14, Yiannopoulos, who months earlier had worked hand in glove with Bannon, asked their mutual PR rep for help reaching him. “Here’s the book manuscript, to be kept confidential of course… still hoping for a Bannon or Don Jr or Ivanka endorsement!”

The next week, video appeared in which Yiannopoulos appeared to condone pedophilia. He resigned from Breitbart under pressure two days later, but not before his attorney beseeched Solov and Marlow to keep him.

“We implore you not to discard this rising star over a 13 month old video that we all know does not reflect his true views,” the lawyer wrote.

Bannon, ensconced in the chaotic Trump White House, didn’t comment, nor did he reach out to Yiannopoulos on his main email. But the machine wasn’t broken, just running quietly. And it wouldn’t jettison such a valuable component altogether, even after seeming to endorse pedophilia.

After firing Yiannopoulos, Marlow accompanied him to the Mercers’ Palm Beach home to discuss a new venture: MILO INC. On February 27, not quite two weeks after the scandal erupted, Yiannopoulos received an email from a woman who described herself as “Robert Mercer’s accountant.” “We will be sending a wire payment today,” she wrote. Later that day, in an email to the accountant and Robert Mercer, Yiannopoulos personally thanked his patron. And as Yiannopoulos prepared to publish his book, he stayed close enough to Rebekah Mercer to ask her by text for a recommendation when he needed a periodontist in New York.

Since Bannon left the White House, there have been signs that the two men may be collaborating again. On August 18, Yiannopoulos posted to Instagram a black-and-white photo of Bannon with the caption “Winter is Coming.” Though he ultimately didn’t show, Bannon was originally scheduled to speak at Yiannopoulos’s Free Speech Week at UC Berkeley. (The event, which was supposed to feature an all-star lineup of far-right personalities, was canceled last month, reportedly after the student group sponsoring it failed to fill out necessary paperwork.) And Yiannopoulos has told those close to him that he expects to be back at Breitbart soon.

Steve Bannon’s actions are often analyzed through the lens of his professed ideology, that of an anti-Islam, anti-immigrant, anti-“Globalist” crusader bent on destroying prevailing liberal ideas about immigration, diversity, and economics. To be sure, much of that comes through in the documents obtained by BuzzFeed News. The Camp of the Saints Bannon is there, demanding Yiannopoulos change “refugee” to “migrant” in a February 2016 story, speaking of the #war for the West.

Still, it is less often we think about Bannon simply as a media executive in charge of a private company. Any successful media executive produces content to expand audience size. The Breitbart alt-right machine, embodied by Milo Yiannopoulos, may read most clearly in this context. It was a brilliant audience expansion machine, financed by billionaires, designed to draw in people disgusted by some combination of identity politics, Muslim and Hispanic immigration, and the idea of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the White House. And if expanding that audience meant involving white nationalists and neo-Nazis, their participation could always be laundered to hide their contributions.

Yiannopoulos’s brand is his ego. Yet his role within the media ecosystem-- building an audience around identity politics in the era of news organizations relying on social media for growth-- makes him far less unique than he might believe. More and more outlets are firing writers and dumping resources into video. Given that trend, and particularly after Charlottesville, when the alt-right has proved a troublesome audience to court, it’s possible that Yiannopoulos’s use to Bannon has dwindled.

Or perhaps it hasn’t. For Bannon, of course, Yiannopoulos’s future was always in video, in spectacle. 2017 has provided plenty of spectacles that have gotten great ratings. Before it imploded, Free Speech Week had the potential to be the latest.

And the two men know the value of making a scene. In June 2016, Yiannopoulos, with Bannon’s enthusiastic support, planned to lead a gay pride march through a “Muslim ghetto” in Stockholm. Though Breitbart would later cancel the event over security concerns-- Yiannopoulos expressed concern in private repeatedly-- the Breitbart tech editor was in joking good spirits on June 26 when he wrote to Bannon of a “killer plan.”

“If I die doing this I expect a blackout on Breitbart.com for AT LEAST this afternoon,” Yiannopoulos wrote.

A few hours later, Bannon responded.

“And miss all the traffic in condolences?”

UPDATE: Nazi Murders Back In Charlottesville

Saturday night, Richard Spencer-- the sick Nazi who likes being punched in the face-- led another Republican/Nazi Party tiki torch march through Charlottesville. Mike Signer, the city's mayor sent a tweet denouncing the march: "Another despicable visit by neo-Nazi cowards. You’re not welcome here! Go home! Meantime we’re looking at all our legal options. Stay tuned." But the Nazi leader responded "You will not erase us... We are about our heritage. Not just us Virginians. Not just as Southerners. But as white people . . . we’ll take a stand. You’ll have to get used to us. "We’re going to come back again and again and again." Then they began singing about Dixie and chanting "The South will rise again. Russia is our friend. The South will rise again. Woo-hoo! Wooo."

A Little Turmoil For The Far Right Media

FDR was a godsend for this country after 3 consecutive Republican presidents nearly wrecked it. But afterwards when did things start going really drastically wrong in America again? Drastically wrong enough to place a 2-bit hustler from Queens into the Oval Office? After Roosevelt there were some good presidents and some bad presidents and mostly some pretty mediocre presidents but where things really turned to shit was in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected. All the anti-New Deal conservatives finally had their antidote to Roosevelt. And then in 1992 the Democratic Party proved it could be almost as bad as the Republicans-- a position it's worked hard to maintain ever since. In 1992, a conservative hustler from Arkansas was elected president and between Reagan and Clinton, America was speeding down the highway to the hell it's now reached.

Some people think it was Clinton's sellout of the working class via NAFTA that was the worst thing he did. And that may be true. But a contender was Clinton's decision to set Australian fascist Rupert Murdoch (and Republican strategist Roger Ailes) loose on America by signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Murdoch's media empire has changed America entirely for the worse. And, ironically, the far right it nurtured and mainstreamed, now demands a mass media organ even further right than Fox. Yes, America's newly energized fascists claim Fox isn't right-wing enough and must be supplanted. And there are plenty of dangerous right-wing billionaires-- think Mercers-- eager to Bannonize America. Without Ailes and O'Reilly (and soon perhaps Hannity), what good is Fox to the fascist movement? Rachel Stockman reports that "an alternative conservative network is being actively discussed amongst conservative fat cats."

A well-placed source close to the proposal tells Mediaite that serious discussions are underway to create an alternative conservative cable network on the belief that the Fox News Network is moving too far to the left. The source, who is engaged in the talks, says a meeting is planned for today with two prominent high-powered television executives, some underperforming conservative networks and people who have an interest and the ability to fund a new network.

The potential aim? Putting “the old band” back together. There are certainly plenty of (out-of-work?) conservative powerhouses to pick from that could star on a new network, and perhaps even some executives from within Fox News who might be lured by the new opportunity. Could the new channel include stars like the ousted Bill O’Reilly, who didn’t waste much time hitting the podcast waves after he was fired amid a sexual harassment scandal? Could Tomi Lahren, the conservative mega star, who was recently sidelined at The Blaze also take on a prominent role? The exact “who” won’t be clear until the deal is more defined but the source says the pitch is that the network could immediately reach at least 85 million homes.

This news comes on the heels of a long profile in last weekend’s New York Times which paints a picture of a changing Fox News Network with Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, CEO and co-chairman of parent company 21st Century Fox, at the helm. The piece struck fear into the minds of some Fox News’ hardcore conservatives with talk of the sons wanting to rid the company “of the old-guard culture on which their father built his empire” and bringing “a warmer and fuzzier workplace” that would move away from an “anti-politically correct environment.”

On Thursday, New York Magazine‘s Gabe Sherman, a constant thorn in the side of Fox News, reported that “sweeping management changes” may be coming to the network as well. Sherman’s report cited three anonymous sources that contend that the network’s co-President Bill Shine recently asked the Murdoch sons to release a statement in support of him amid the roiling lawsuits and scandals. Both Fox News and 21 Century Fox have vigorously denied that Shine made such a request but the report by Sherman prompted a rather mysterious tweet about the “total end of the FNC as we know it” by the network’s biggest remaining star, Sean Hannity:

“I just don’t see Fox News and Sean having a long relationship. If Sean becomes available, you have 100 percent turnover in primetime and a huge opportunity,” a television executive, who didn’t want to be identified, but is involved in some of the talks, told Mediaite.

“I’m working on it (the new conservative channel) hot and heavy,” the source said. “It’s live, it’s real.” The new channel could come to fruition within the next 10 to 12 months, the executive said.

It is no surprise that a savvy investor would see the turmoil within Fox News as a major opportunity. As The Times piece noted, analysts estimate that Fox News produced 25 percent of 21st Century Fox’s operating income last year or a whopping $6.6 billion. Conservative news remains a cash cow for investors, but the media landscape is quickly changing with younger viewers “cutting the cord” and turning to alternative over-the-top live streaming platforms like Hulu, Amazon, Roku and YouTube TV. Could a conservative alternative channel with some big names have an edge on the 20-year-old conservative network? Stay tuned. Our source is convinced it can happen.

Why the estate tax should be drastically increased

At least the White House is about to shit-can in-House Nazi Sebastian Gorka but that post-Fox network seems like a lot bigger deal than the silly one that gay neo-Nazi/publicity hound Milo was babbling about in a vanity press release published on his vanity Facebook page Friday.

MILO RAISES $12 MILLION FOR NEW MEDIA VENTURE: BOOKS, TOURS AND TV SHOWS PLANNED

Media sensation, conservative celebrity and youth culture icon announces details of new organization, book publishing plans, and nationwide tour.

Miami, FL.-- MILO has formed a new media company with $12 million in funding from undisclosed investors. He has hired a seasoned media executive to lead the new 30-person team based in Miami, Florida.

The new company, MILO, Inc., will manage MILO's books, tours, merchandise and radio and TV opportunities.

MILO said: "This isn't some vanity nameplate on a personal blog. This is a fully tooled-up talent factory and management company dedicated to the destruction of political correctness and the progressive left.

"I will spend every waking moment of the rest of my life making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists and other professional victims a living hell.

"Free speech is back-- and it is fabulous."

..."MILO, Inc. will bring laughter and war to every corner of America in dozens of different formats. I will fight harder and look hotter than anyone else on the political right. And I will do more damage to the political left than anyone else in American culture.

Gee, What's So Wrong With Milo That's Not Just As Wrong With Señor Trumpanzee?

I was skipping around the HBO channels the other night, looking for something to watch before going to sleep. Bill Maher popped up on the screen-- with neo-Nazi publicity hound Milo Yiannopoulos and I quickly moved on to Alien vs. Predator. Until the last few weeks not many Americans knew who Milo Yiannopoulos was. Essentially a social media troll, he tries, tries, tries to be outrageous enough to get famous. It finally worked-- and he was kicked off this year's CPAC program, had his book deal with Simon and Schuster cancelled and was forced to resign as a senior editor from crazy Long Island billionaire Robert Mercer's on-line fascist propaganda sheet, Breibart. I guess he can go back to harassing Brianna Wu full-time now, although he does still have his Trump white House press accreditation.

Some Americans already knew him as the aging-but-flamboyent gay guy who was permanently banned by Twitter for harassing women and blacks-- particularly black women-- under various pseudonyms. But until a film of an interview he did embracing pedophilia and extolling the virtues of the statutory rape of 13 year old boys by old men, he was just another faceless Nazi buzzing around the Trump presidency-- who he refers to as "Daddy," while referring to himself as a "Trump-sexual." Needless to say, he's a close friend of Señor Trumpanzee's Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Ryan Lizza, in the article linked below, noted that "While working for Bannon, Yiannopoulos did more than anyone else at Breitbart to explain and build bridges to the so-called alt-right, the amorphous collection of neo-nationalist activists."

The son of a Greek gangster and thug living in England, Milo was chucked out by his parents' home at an early age-- leaving him an emotional cripple, intensely angry at the world-- and was raised by his Jewish grandmother, something that has been problematic for his Nazi allies. He was exposed for starting a phony charity for Nazi youth and then pocketing all of the money. He's also a serial plagiarizer who was caught using other peoples' work in his books.

As bizarrely obsessed with his own version of outrageous sexuality as he is, he is infamous among normal gay people for insisting that gays "get back in the closet" and assumes his own unhappiness and abhorrent behavior is something he has in common with the LGBT community, which completely rejects him on every level. Much of Milo's money comes from tubby little quasi-billionaire and racist Palmer Luckey (the Trump-crazed founder of Oculus who put up the "too big to jail" billboards with Hillary's picture on them during the election). Yiannopoulos publicly brags about being expert at fellatio. The Nazi movement in Germany started out with certain gay overtones. Milo, who made this video recently, may fancy himself a kind of modern day Ernst Röhm:



Tuesday Ryan Lizza tried making sense out of Yiannopoulos for New Yorker readers:

“Things sometimes tumble out of your mouth on these long late-night live streams, when everyone is spitballing and had a couple of drinks, that are not completely expressed and not exactly what you intend. Obviously, if I had known I was going to have the media profile I have now, I would have been cautious about this stuff. I never imagined that I would become famous,” Yiannopoulos told me. He is usually brash and outrageous, leaning on his partly Jewish background and the fact that he is gay as a shield to justify his insults. A recent short music video [the clip above] that he posted on YouTube showed him and some shirtless men building a wall on what purported to be the Mexican border. But yesterday afternoon he was sorrowful and self-pitying as he tried to explain himself. “Everything I say in there is completely defensible with proper context and explanation. It just takes nuance and close attention to understand what I’m really getting at.”

...[Before CPAC booted Milo] Conservatives scheduled to speak at the event also started to grow uncomfortable. “I’ve always thought Milo was pointlessly provocative and that he added nearly nothing in terms of conservative or libertarian ideas,” Tim Carney, the commentary editor for the Washington Examiner, said. “cpac never should have invited him to give a major speech, because his ‘provocativeness’ is often bigoted or licentious.”

In the face of the growing outrage, Schlapp at first stood by his decision. Then, over the weekend, the videos of Yiannopoulos began to circulate. In one clip, he cavalierly approves of sex with thirteen-year-olds and suggests that he once attended a party at which minors were sexually assaulted. In another, he talks about the “statistical fact” that “Jews own most of the banks” and “completely dominate the media.”

...[T]he damage to the conservative movement had already been done. In a previous era, there was an élite conservative establishment that could police the movement and cast aside its fringe adherents. William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Review, famously did this in the early sixties, when he attacked the conspiracists and racists of the John Birch Society, the alt-right of the day.

“The invitation strikes me as more important than the disinvitation,” Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, said of the cpac conference. “The invite said, ‘We are welcoming an alt-right (or alt-right-fellow-travelling) provocateur into the big tent.’ The disinvite said, ‘Well, O.K., since you’ve advocated pederasty, we’ll back off.’ cpac hasn’t set out a principled position here, and absent the tapes presumably would have forged ahead.”

[American Conservative Union head Matt] Schlapp stood by his original decision and dismissed critics like Lowry. “Last year around this time, there was the creation of the Never Trump movement, and there were a lot of these very same journalists who were attacking us for inviting Donald Trump,” he told me. “There are journalists in the conservative world that use cpac as a piñata once a year, and they attack us for inviting, for not inviting. The fact is this: politics is messy and it’s complicated. And we can try to sanitize it for our stage or we can decide to not avoid the controversies, but simply put them on the stage in an appropriate way for our attendees to listen to.”

But even one of Schlapp’s own board members did not buy that argument. “So we were cool with the Anti Semitic, racist, vile stuff, but we drew the line at pedophilia?” Ryun wrote to me via text, echoing Lowry’s complaints. “My argument from the minute I heard about it was to reject the alt-right ASAP.”

As for Yiannopoulos, when I spoke to him at one p.m. yesterday, he said that he was still consulting with his team about what to do next. Asked if he might still show up in Washington this week, he responded, “Probably.”

Whether or not he attends, cpac promises to be a rowdy forum for debate about the future of conservatism and the alt-right. Fans of Yiannopoulos won’t be too disappointed. Yesterday, before announcing that Yiannopoulos was disinvited, cpac organizers revealed that they had a new speaker who was even more beloved by the alt-right: Donald Trump.

How Will We Know The Moment We Go From Not Fascist To Fascist? Like Canaries In A Coal Mine, Gays Will Be Among The First To Know

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at UC, Berkeley. He was the token progressive in Bill Clinton's very centrist cabinet, where he served as Secretary of Labor. In 2002, he ran for governor of Massachusetts-- Clinton, angered by his book, Locked in the Cabinet, endorsed one of his primary rivals, someone who won less than 1% of the vote-- and came in second in a 5-way race. Reich, the unabashed, cutting-edge progressive in the race, lost out to an uninspiring, unelectable establishment hack, state Treasurer Shannon O'Brien, who took 243,039 votes to his 185,315. She had nothing to offer anyone and went on to lose to Mitt Romney by over 5 points, quite an accomplishment in a deep blue state.

Reich was a strong Bernie Sanders proponent during the presidential primary but got behind Clinton after Bernie conceded. He's a regular on the cable talking heads shows and Thursday he was on CNN with Don Lemon to address Trump's inflammatory tweet about UC, Berkeley. Reich offered the possibility the whole thing could just be more alt-facts-- but alt-facts in action. His premise is that the rioters were not left-wingers but right-wingers impersonating left-wingers. Sounds plausible; the Nazi types always do that kind of thing. But the far right is incensed and the mainstream media hasn't risen to the bait.

Reich: "I know what I saw. They weren’t Berkeley students. They were outside agitators... I saw these people. They all looked almost paramilitary, not from the campus. And I’ve heard-- again I don’t want to say factually-- but heard there’s some relationship there between these people and the right wing. And the movement that is affiliated with Breitbart news." The whole incident has certainly been good for advance orders for neo-fascist Milo Yiannopoulos’ new book, Dangerous (which went to #1 on Amazon).

[T]he controversy that has driven pre-orders for Dangerous has also made promotion unusually complicated. The 32-year-old Breitbart editor, born in Greece and raised in England, is a walking challenge to free speech principles. A vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, Yiannopoulos has made vicious comments about Muslims, women and others, and on his website offers such products as "Feminism is Cancer" T-shirts and "Fat Shaming Works" hoodies. His harassment campaign last summer against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones led to his banishment from Twitter.

Yiannopoulos' talks have sparked protests, shouting matches and occasional violence at stops around the country. On Wednesday, the University of California, Berkeley cancelled a scheduled talk by Milo after violent protests broke out. A man was shot and wounded at protests outside his Jan. 21 talk at the University of Washington.

Rowdy protests at UC Davis on Jan. 13 prompted campus Republicans to cancel his appearance at the last minute. His final stop was supposed to be UCLA on Thursday, but the invitation was rescinded, making Berkeley his grand finale.

Yiannopoulos' book deal was greeted with immediate anger when announced in late December. Hundreds of authors have objected and one writer, Roxane Gay, withdrew a book she had planned for Simon & Schuster. Many independent sellers have expressed uneasiness, saying they will make the book available if asked for, but will not promote it. One store, The Booksmith in San Francisco, has announced it will neither stock the book nor order a copy upon customer request. Booksmith also said it was cutting orders for Simon & Schuster books by 50 percent.

There have always been fascists who were gay too

The book hasn't been sent to reviewers and not much is known about it, other than it's supposed to be kind of autobiographical and that Yiannopoulos, a modern-day self-loathing gay (something like we'd imagine Ernst Röhm was) is a particularly odious character and previous books were filled with other peoples' work used without attribution. Thinking about the little Nazi shit today, brought to mind a New Yorker column by Andrew Solomon, Fear And Loathing In Trump's America, specifically fear and loathing from the perspective of being gay in America under the new fascistic regime.

It’s different being gay now than it was in, say, October. In October, the progress we’d made as a movement seemed relatively secure, and our view was set on how we might better secure our freedoms. Now whatever we’ve achieved feels fragile, and our energies are occupied with trying to prevent a slide backward. We have had to give up on the future in attempting to save the past.

It was both unsurprising and traumatic to learn on Monday about a pending executive order that would take away our basic rights, and though it was a relief to learn, the next morning, that that executive order would not be issued, the stir of vulnerability will not soon quiet down. Donald Trump was contemplating rescinding President Barack Obama’s executive order granting protections to L.G.B.T.Q. Americans working for federal agencies. That Trump did not, that day, expose us to legal discrimination by our own government does not mitigate this Administration’s dark view of those who deviate from its narrow definition of normality-- white, U.S.-born, heterosexual, able-bodied, and Christian-- which excludes the majority of Americans.

On Wednesday, The Nation published a draft of a new executive order that would allow anyone to enact prejudice against L.G.B.T.Q. people on the basis of personal religious beliefs. Many medical services, elder-care services, and disability services are administered through religious organizations that could refuse help to those of whom they disapprove. One in five of the four hundred thousand kids in foster care identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., and under the order placement agencies would not be obliged to take care of them. The daily roller coaster of rights tenuously sustained or completely undermined is dizzying.

The problems surfaced before Trump took office. Following the election, in Sarasota, Florida, a seventy-five-year-old gay man was pulled from his car, assaulted, and told, “You know, my new President says we can kill all you faggots now.” In Austin, Texas, vandals spray-painted “dyke,” “trump,” and a swastika on the front door of a lesbian couple’s home. In North Canton, Ohio, a lesbian couple who had lived in their home peacefully for years found their car door and hood defaced with the slur “dyke.” In Bean Blossom, Indiana, vandals painted “heil trump,” “fag church,” and a swastika on the side of St. David’s Episcopal, a church that had welcomed L.G.B.T.Q. congregants. A North Carolina couple received a chilling message on their windshield: “Can’t wait until your ‘marriage’ is overturned by a real president. Gay families = burn in hell. #Trump2016.” A similarly hateful note appeared on the car of a Burlington, Iowa, minister: “So father homo, how does it feel to have Trump as your president? At least he’s got a set of balls. They’ll put marriage back where God wants it and take your’s away. America’s gonna take care of your faggity ass.”

All of this was in keeping with the publicly expressed views of the new Administration. During his tenure in Congress, Mike Pence, as head of the Republican Study Committee, supported a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, opposed the repeal of the military ban on openly gay soldiers, and averred that “societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family,” suggesting that gay families would operationalize such a disruption of the social order. He believed that being gay was a choice and said that keeping gays from marrying was simply “God’s idea.” He later proposed cutting funding for aids research and diverting the money to “ex-gay” therapy programs. As governor of Indiana, he championed and signed the anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Religious Restoration Freedom Act, which he softened only after considerable pressure from big business.

Trump himself opposes gay marriage, and has nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. In response, Lambda Legal has, for the first time, declared pre-hearing opposition to a nomination, announcing, “Judge Gorsuch’s judicial record is hostile toward LGBT people and his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court is unacceptable.” Rea Carey, the executive director of the National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force (I serve on the board of the National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force Action Fund), observed that Trump “has been playing deeply harmful games with L.G.B.T.Q. people’s lives throughout his campaign and every single day of his days-old presidency. The problem for him is we are everywhere-- so when he signs executive orders designed to demonize and dehumanize anyone-- Muslims, women, refugees, people of color, immigrants-- he is attacking us all. President Trump does not get bonus points for discriminating a little. Not on our watch, not in our name.”

...During the height of the aids crisis, gay activism sprang from despair; during the Obama years, it reflected idealism; and now it is fuelled by paralyzing anxiety. It’s hard to live with what is going wrong right now without anticipating everything else that could go wrong shortly. There have been waves of anti-gay prejudice for centuries, of course. But one crucial difference now is that many of us have children. My husband and I have tried to explain to our children what is going on, but I would, at the same time, like to protect them from the reality that the people who now run the show would invalidate our kind of family. My life with my children seems nonthreatening enough; it includes taking them to school, cooking dinner together on weekends, sitting through tennis matches and swim meets, helping with homework. Prejudice against an ordinariness that the movement has only so recently achieved feels newly shocking.

When I was twenty-three, I went with my parents to the Dachau concentration camp. There was a display of photographs, including many grotesque images showing emaciated prisoners in tattered stripes, mounds of discarded clothing, slave crews working on pointless exercises. I found my mother, who was not given to public displays of emotion, weeping quietly in front of a photo of a woman walking with a child whose hand she was holding. It was an innocent-looking picture, but it was captioned, “On the way to the gas chambers.” My mother felt dissociated from the prisoner photos, but in that one she saw herself and me. We wondered what that mother had told her child about their destination. My children live in a world that suddenly requires a surrender of their innocence, as I try to explain why we may be less than other families in the eyes of the changing law. We are nowhere near a holocaust in the U.S., but, amid all the nationalistic frenzy of the past few weeks, I have found myself more than once wondering how to tell my son about the people who hate us, from whom I will be able to protect him only imperfectly.

Surrounded by friends, married with children, I nonetheless feel very alone when my government turns against me. I had told Hasan that it wasn’t like that here. I had told my children that we were safe and lucky. I had told my husband that we would go on and on and on and on. Perhaps all of that will remain true, but perhaps it won’t, and that is an adjustment that sears itself into our most mundane activities. No, in October, our family felt very different from how it feels now. We were an open landscape, but now we are a citadel.