Ivory Coast cocoa producers end chocolate war with Hershey's

Published December 5, 2020 By Agence France-Presse

Cocoa Workers (AFP)

Ivory Coast’s cocoa producers have ended their row with Hershey’s after the US chocolate giant committed to paying a premium above the market price under an initiative to help lift the incomes of poor farmers, according to a letter to the firm.

Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s number one and two cocoa producers respectively, on Monday accused confectionery giants Hershey’s and Mars of sidestepping a deal to pay the living income differential (LID), a bonus of $400 per tonne of cocoa, the raw material for chocolate.

Millions of small farmers in Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together grow 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, live in grinding poverty.

The LID is part of a programmes run by the multinationals to certify that their chocolate is ethically produced — meeting standards of sustainability and free of child labour — allowing them to sell it at higher prices to Western consumers.

Ivory Coast’s Coffee Cacao Council said Friday it had lifted the suspension of Hershey’s sustainability certification programmes after the firm committed to paying the premium, according to a letter to the US company.

“This lifting of the suspension follows your final commitment to pay the LID,” CCC head Yves Kone wrote to Hershey’s.

Ivory Coast and neighbouring Ghana on Monday had launched an unprecedented media offensive against Hershey’s and Mars, accusing the chocolate titans of avoiding paying the LID after Hershey’s reportedly made a large cocoa purchase on the US futures market.

The two firms had denied the charges and assured that they supported the mechanism, imposed by Ivory Coast and Ghana in 2019.

In his letter, Kone indicated that lifting the suspension was decided following a video interview with Hershey officials on December 1, the day after the public denunciation.

The CCC hopes that “in the interest of producers, in your own interests and those of the cocoa sector, our organisation will no longer have to suspend the Hershey programmes in Ivory Coast again,” Kone wrote.

It was not immediately known whether Ghana had also lifted its sanctions.

The public accusations, which escalated Thursday as Ivorian cocoa farmers threatened to boycott multinational chocolate makers, could be costly in terms of image and sales to the groups, already in the hot seat for several years over ethical issues.

The world’s chocolate market is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, concentrated in a small number of multinational corporations.

But only six percent of the bonanza trickles down to the farmers in tropical countries which grow the raw product.

Half of Ivorian growers live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

Research group buys 'salmon ranch' to feed southern resident orcas

The number of southern resident orcas is down to 74 largely because of dwindling salmon stocks in the Salish Sea

Author of the article: Darron Kloster • Victoria Times Colonist
Publishing date: Dec 07, 2020 • 

Mother J35, centre, surfaces with her 10-year-old son J47 along with her day-old baby J57 off the San Juan Islands in Washington state Saturday, Sept. 5, 2020. J35, nicknamed Tahlequah, is the mother orca who made international headlines when she carried her newborn dead calf for 17 days and over 1,600 kilometres in 2018, bringing the plight of the southern resident killer whales to the attention of the world. 

PHOTO BY SARAH MCCULLAGH/PACIFIC WHALE WATCH ASSOCIATION

An American organization that has studied the decline of the southern resident orca population for more than four decades has acquired land on either side of a Washington river with hopes it can restore historic runs of chinook salmon for an “ecosystem approach” to feeding the whales.

The Center for Whale Research, based in Friday Harbour, Washington, said chinook salmon are the main food source for the resident orcas, whose numbers have been squeezed down to 74 largely because of dwindling salmon stocks in the Salish Sea.

The centre has acquired 45 acres on the Elwha River near Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula, where native chinook salmon spawn. They’ve dubbed the property Big Salmon Ranch.

The U.S. government in 2014 removed two hydro-electric dams that blocked salmon runs on the Elwha, and fish populations are improving, said Ken Balcomb, the Center for Whale Research’s founder and senior scientist.

“The salmon are coming back in greater numbers each year and in 20 more years they may reach historical population levels,” he said. “Restore the ecosystem and the salmon will recover. We decided to champion a good example as a model for other river ecosystems that can ultimately provide food for the southern resident orcas.”

Balcomb said the organization will keep its Elwha ecosystem habitat in an undisturbed, non-resource-extraction condition in perpetuity so that chinook salmon can recover to pre-dam levels of 25,000 to 33,000 returning adults in the coming decades.

The 7,400 chinook that recently returned to the Elwha created about 900 redds, or spawning nests, each containing about 5,000 fertilized eggs. Optimally, more than four million chinook smolts will be produced by the Elwha. By 2024, the organization said it could result in 80,000 to 250,000 returning adult Chinook salmon for the orcas and the overall fishery.

But the new landowners say the Elwha alone won’t be enough to sustain the orca population.

The Center for Whale Research said the collapse of the Fraser River chinook populations in recent years has made it imperative that other food sources for the southern resident orcas be found and encouraged to recover as quickly as possible. The group believes all of the natural populations of chinook salmon that spawn in Salish Sea rivers are now endangered due to fishing and habitat degradation.

“If other major runs of chinook salmon in southern resident orca habitat were healthy, like the Snake and Columbia River systems once were, the whales might be OK,” the group says. “But virtually all of these other ecosystems have major habitat issues.”

The southern resident population is comprised of three pods, J, K and L, which use dialect in their calls that are unique from other orcas. As of October, the Center for Whale Research said J Pod consists of 24 animals, K Pod has 17 and L Pod 33.

'The original farmers': Interest in First Nations farming revival growing

The Tsawwassen First Nation farm school has become a model for other Indigenous agriculture projects across B.C.

Author of the article: Glenda Luymes
Publishing date: Dec 07, 2020 • 

Nicol Watson at the Tsawwassen First Nation Farm School. A former student, Watson now has a small farm plot where she grows vegetables for her community. 

PHOTO BY FRANCIS GEORGIAN /PNG

It felt like time to return to the land.

After several years away, Nicol Watson moved back to her family home on the Tsawwassen First Nation in 2017.

“I decided to return to my community and learn to live off the earth,” she said. “I knew I needed a change, but I didn’t really know what I was doing.”

As a child, Watson helped her grandfather in his garden. She grew up, got a job and moved away, but a bad car crash made it hard for her to continue to work as an industrial painter.

“The garden gave me peace, so I decided to go in that direction,” she said.

Shortly after returning home, she enrolled in the Tsawwassen First Nation farm school.

In 2013, as part of its agricultural plan, the Tsawwassen First Nation set up a partnership with Kwantlen Polytechnic University to develop a hands-on agriculture training program. The Tsawwassen First Nation farm school was established on about 20 acres — roughly 20 city blocks — of traditional TFN land to teach students about small-scale sustainable agriculture and Indigenous food systems.

A first in B.C., the farm school has become a model for other Indigenous agriculture projects across the province.

“It’s a very practical program,” said Kent Mullinix, director of KPU’s institute for sustainable food systems. “It’s designed to transfer knowledge.”

While part of the school involves KPU classes, the majority of the learning happens, quite literally, in the field. There are no educational requirements for participation in the program, which is not accredited, meaning no diploma is awarded at the end. Instead, students are given the opportunity to create a business plan and establish their own incubator farm on a plot at the farm school.

“They have access to that for three years, as well as access to tools, machinery and technical and marketing support so they can build their business in an environment that’s as risk-free as possible,” said Mullinix.

The program accepts about 12 students each year on average, with priority given to Tsawwassen First Nation students and other Indigenous students.

The Tsawwassen First Nation Farm School gives students a hands-on education in sustainable agriculture. 

PHOTO BY SUBMITTED PHOTO - PAIGE LESLIE /PNG

The farm grows various crops and recently added livestock, including pigs. 

PHOTO BY SUBMITTED PHOTO - PAIGE LESLIE /PNG

Students work on the farm while taking classes in integrated pest management, plant science and tree fruit, among other subjects. Produce from the farm is provided to Tsawwassen First Nation elders. Students also participate in farmers’ markets and a community-supported agriculture box program. Indigenous food sovereignty and sustainability are at the forefront of teaching and discussion.

“We want settler-descendant students to learn that their farm has to reflect Indigenous food sovereignty — it needs to be a part of what it means to be a sustainable farmer,” said Mullinix.

Chief Ken Baird said in statement that his nation views food sovereignty as an “extension of its culture, of viewing Mother Earth as a sustaining force.”

The school draws from cultural practices, including respecting elders as knowledge keepers, and maintains a traditional smokehouse at the site.

Agriculture is also a land use that can provide revenue, food, jobs and education, he said, as well as “an enduring cultural connection for present and future generations.”
The original farmers

Discussion about Indigenous agriculture projects tends to forget that First Nations people are “the original farmers,” said Jennifer Grenz, a sessional lecturer in the University of B.C.’s faculty of land and food systems.

“People use terms like natural areas and wilderness to describe landscapes that we’ve shaped since time immemorial to provide food,” she said. “If you expect food production to look like a typical agrarian setting, you’re not going to see it.”

Historically, along with hunting and fishing, B.C. First Nations cultivated land to grow plants and bulbs.

“Now, we are taking up farming that might be slightly more recognizable to settlers, but it is still different,” said Grenz, who is Nlaka’pamux.

Indigenous agriculture is about growing food for people in a way that’s respectful of the land and ecological reconciliation. There’s also great variety in the types of farms and food production being done.

“Settler ideas sometimes hold us to the past. We bring a unique perspective and food experiences, but we’re farmers, and we’re expanding our expertise and pursuing our economic interests,” she said.

For Watson, who is also an ordained minister, farming is a way to contribute to her community. She uses her incubator farm to provide “blessing bags” to members of the community who can’t afford fresh, organic food.

“For me, it’s been valuable to learn how I can do my part for our nation. I want to gain that knowledge and pass it on to others,” she said.

Watson’s sister has also started to take courses through the farm school, which is now accepting students for its spring program after intake was suspended last spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic

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Nicol Watson at the Tsawwassen First Nation Farm School.

 PHOTO BY FRANCIS GEORGIAN /PNG

A quieter summer meant farm staff could focus on developing the farm, while KPU has provided support to several other B.C. First Nations that are also interested in starting a farm school or community farm on their lands.

The Sik-E-Dakh First Nation near Hazelton reached out to the university to provide online courses for its farm school students three days a week. On the other days, instruction happens on community farmland, where students plan, plant and harvest crops, raise chickens and attend workshops, including those on food preservation and Gitxsan food ways, said band administrator Velma Sutherland

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The Sik-E-Dakh First Nation “community pantry” farm stand. From L-R, farmers Eric Wale, Victor Wesley and Eric Fowler. PHOTO BY SUBMITTED PHOTO /PNG

Farmers tend the crops at the Sik-E-Dakh First Nation farm school.
PHOTO BY SUBMITTED PHOTO /PNG

Students in a carpentry program built a greenhouse and chicken house on the land, as well as a “community pantry” farm stand.

“Next year we hope to expand. The goal is to bring some economic development and also teach people skills,” she said. “We want this to be something the community can be proud of.”

Sutherland said food security has become even more important during the pandemic, but for the Sik-E-Dakh, generosity is also key.

“It doesn’t have to make us millionaires,” she said. “We want to make sure everyone in the community has enough potatoes and carrots, and once they do, we can sell the rest.”

Reliable access to nutritious food

Food security is top of mind for many of the B.C. First Nations that have begun exploring agricultural programs, said Trevor Kempthorne, a consultant with the First Nations Agriculture Association of B.C.

The association, which began in 1978 but shut down for several years before starting up again in 2018, provides business planning, soil testing and workshops for Indigenous farmers.

“When we’re invited into a community, they tell us what they’d like to do,” he said.

While COVID-19 has highlighted the need for local food sources that aren’t dependent on international markets, remote First Nations can also be cut off from the food supply chain by natural events, such as rock slides.

“It’s all about sustainable agriculture for the community. To be able to grow and supply your own community and have some control over that,” said Kempthorne, adding food security can also lead to employment opportunities, better health and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Statistics Canada figures shows that while Indigenous people are under-represented in agriculture — making up about 2.7 per cent of Canada’s farm population compared to 4.9 per cent of the country’s total population — the number of Indigenous farm operators is rapidly growing.

According to a report based on the results of the 2016 agriculture census, the number of Indigenous agricultural operators increased 53.7 per cent from 2006, compared to a decline of 30 per cent in the total number of agricultural operators.

B.C. had the largest number of First Nations farmers in 2016 with 285, followed by Ontario with 215 and Alberta with 150.

“It should be noted that Aboriginal history has been marked by government policies that affected Aboriginal access to farmland, tools and markets,” said the report. “The recent statistics, then, should be viewed with this history in mind.”

Kempthorne said the most common barrier he’s encountered is access to capital. While some First Nations have high-quality farm land, startup costs for livestock and equipment can be very high. Part of his work includes sourcing funds and financing options for farmers.

“Basically, it’s all about putting together a strong business plan,” he said.

The median gross farm revenue of First Nations agricultural operations was about $18,000, according to the 2016 agriculture census, or about one-quarter of the revenue of farms managed by non-Aboriginal operators.

The census also found First Nations operators were more likely to be part-time farmers and work at an off-farm job or business as well.

The Statistics Canada report concluded “more research on Aboriginal peoples and agriculture remains to be done, particularly on the subject of Aboriginal access to agricultural land.”

Harvest at the Tsawwassen First Nation Farm School. 

PHOTO BY SUBMITTED PHOTO - PAIGE LESLIE /PNG

Students sell farm school produce at local farmers’ markets. 

PHOTO BY SUBMITTED PHOTO - PAIGE LESLIE /PNG

Fifty farm and food projects supported over two years

In 2018, the B.C. government launched the Indigenous agriculture development program, which has provided support to about 50 farm and food projects so far, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

The program aims to support business planning and skills development for communities and individuals who want to develop opportunities in agriculture and food. It has two streams, including one for Indigenous governments, communities and organizations, and another for Indigenous entrepreneurs.

Since its launch, the B.C. government has provided more than $320,000 in funding to the program, including $172,900 so far this fiscal year.

Many projects have “economic development goals as well as goals related to supporting food security and Indigenous food systems,” said a statement from the Ministry of Agriculture.

UBC instructor Grenz said it’s an exciting time for Indigenous agriculture.

“It’s a unique time,” she said. “We’re seeing more support.”

By reclaiming their culture, First Nations are also reclaiming food sovereignty.

“You don’t have food without culture,” she said.

#ENDFURFARMING

COVID-19: Outbreak declared at Fraser Valley mink farm

An outbreak has been declared at a Fraser Valley mink farm after eight people at the site tested positive for COVID-19

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© Provided by Vancouver Sun FILE PHOTO — 

A COVID-19 outbreak has been declared at a Fraser Valley mink farm.

Fraser Health says a team is now screening all farm employees and conducting contact tracing, while the farm operators and affected staff are self-isolating.

“The mink farm has been ordered to restrict the transport of animals, products and goods from the farm,” Fraser Health said in a news release. “Animal welfare is being supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and testing of animals is underway. Enhanced measures are in place to ensure safety of animals and farm owners.”

Minks have been discovered to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 virus, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Last month, the government in Denmark, the world’s largest producer of mink pelts, ordered a massive cull of the country’s 17 million minks, which are farmed for their pelts, to head off infection carrying over to the human population.

To date, no infections have been reported in mink here in B.C., but outbreaks have killed thousands of the animals across the border at farms in Utah, Wisconsin, Michigan and Oregon.

There are 14 mink farms in the Fraser Valley. Fraser Health did not identify which farm had the outbreak.

A Fraser Health spokesperson told Postmedia that it is not known if any of the farm’s animals had been tested for the virus.

Earlier this fall, government officials inspected every mink farm in B.C. to ensure that all measures were being taken to make certain that the virus that causes COVID-19 does not pass between animals and humans.

“Ministry of Agriculture staff have been in contact with the province’s licensed mink farms within the last several months to ensure that all necessary precautions are being taken to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 through human to animal or animal to human transmission,” the ministry said.

The ministry said the farms had been advised to increase sanitation and enhance “biosecurity measures.”

Lesley Fox, the executive director for the Fur-Bearers, a charity group established to eradicate the commercial fur industry, said the Fraser Valley outbreak shows that the government’s safety measures weren’t good enough.

“The ministry knew this was a problem — they knew mink are highly susceptible to this virus and despite whatever efforts they made … it was a failure. They can’t contain it,” said Fox, who noted that her group had called on the ministry to conduct testing of both the mink and farm workers.

Fox said if animals on the farm are also infected, the potential for spread is huge.

“Those animals are kept in outdoor sheds and mink escape from farms all the time,” she said.

The Fur-Bearers launched a petition last week calling on the federal government to carry out testing on mink farms, develop a plan to quarantine and sanitize infected farms, and create a program to help mink farmers in transition away from the fur industry.

With files from Randy Shore and National Post

Bankers ask Trump’s CDC to prioritize financial industry employees for vaccine: report

BANKERS SAY THEY ARE ESSENTIAL FOR CAPITALI$M

Published on December 4, 2020
By Bob Brigham

Doctor holding vaccine. (AFP)

The ethical questions over the prioritization of COVID-19 vaccines will be put to the test as industry trade groups attempt to get their workers to the front of the line.

“Frontline bank employees could get a shot in the arm in the coming months. Tellers and other consumer-facing bank workers could jump ahead of most Americans for coronavirus inoculations, after vaccines receive widely anticipated emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, potentially putting those financial-industry workers in line ahead of those 65 and older, other adults with medical issues and the rest of the U.S. population,” MarketWatch reported Friday.

“The American Bankers Association, which represents community banks, said it has asked the CDC to designate a narrow slice of the financial-services industry as ‘essential workers,’ mainly adhering to guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security,” MarketWatch explained.

Marxist philosopher foresaw the rise of Trumpism more than 80 years ago

Published on December 6, 2020 By Matthew Rozsa, Salon

More than eighty years ago, a then-obscure German philosopher wrote an essay that foresaw the essential reason behind President Donald Trump’s enduring political appeal. His name was Walter Benjamin; born to a Jewish family in Berlin, Benjamin was present for a pivotal moment in history, and watched Hitler rise to power. By the time he wrote his most famous essay, he was an exile living in France amidst financial hardships, having recognized that the Reichstag fire three years earlier signified that the Nazis had achieved total power in Germany.

In 1936 — as Hitler was violating international treaties with impunity and preparing Germany for war (a threat that many Western powers did not take seriously) — Benjamin, a Marxist and a Jew who was thus obviously opposed to the Nazis, postulated that modern fascists succeed when they are entertainers. Not just any entertainer — a circus clown or a juggler-turned-fascist wouldn’t do. Specifically, modern fascists were entertainers with a distinct aesthetic, one that appeals to mass grievances by encouraging their supporters to feel like they are personally expressing themselves through their demagogue of choice.

Benjamin’s insight, which appears to have been largely forgotten, is that keeping fascism out of power means recognizing how they use aesthetic entertainment to create their movements. That does require us to admit, cringe-inducing though it may be, that Trump is an artist — albeit a tacky, shallow and transparently self-aggrandizing one. More importantly, his movement, the MAGA crowd, has a distinct aesthetic which he has created and honed for them.

The key passage from Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” which was published in 1936, deserves to be quoted in full:

Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.

Earlier in the essay, Benjamin describes how the history of art itself had changed in modern history. Although works of art were initially created carefully by individual craftsmen working under mentors, industrialization made it possible for art to be produced on a large scale and distributed quickly and easily among millions of people. (Bear in mind that he wrote this in 1936, when printing presses and radio were the main means of mass distribution, television was in its infancy and the internet had yet to be conceived.)

Not surprisingly, this meant that politicians had learned how to utilize art to advance their own agendas. Fascists, however, took things one step further: They recognized that, by using purely aesthetic entertainment to create solidarity among their supporters, they could distract them from the economic and social forces oppressing them, and instead build political movements based around the ability to creatively express their grievances. In other words, you could promote policies that rampantly redistributed wealth upwards, consolidated power in the hands of a few and dismantled democracies, and one’s followers would not care as long as they had the aesthetic entertainment to comfort them and make them believe they were being heard by those very politicians who fundamentally despised them.

Because Benjamin was most concerned with Adolf Hitler, who ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, his essay drew particular attention to Hitler’s love of extravagant military exhibitions. Clearly, there are parallels to Trump, who has used gaudy military pageantry in unprecedented ways to impress his supporters, as well as declared literal war on many of his own citizens, in part to achieve that same effect. Benjamin quotes Italian fascist and futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose celebration of war is chillingly poetic:

War is beautiful because it establishes man’s dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony.

Obviously, Trump’s understanding of art and entertainment precedes his military displays, and may explain how he became the first president to lack either political or military experience. Acknowledging that he did not actually write the books like “The Art of the Deal,” which helped make him famous, he still played a major role in choosing the faux-opulent and brassy architectural style that distinguished his early buildings. He was a major creative force behind his hit reality TV show “The Apprentice,” which he hosted for a decade until shortly before he began his 2016 presidential campaign. While it would be a stretch to describe Trump as having the soul of an artist, he has always intuitively understood that people like to be entertained, and that making a spectacle of your businesses (such as his real estate holdings) and of oneself (such as through his reality TV show) is good for business.

By developing a knack for entertaining the masses in a self-promotional way — whether by claiming credit for art he did nothing to produce, like “The Art of the Deal,” or actually playing a role in artistic choices over investments like his buildings and his TV show — Trump created an image for himself as the quintessential American businessman, the type of billionaire that, as comedian John Mulaney astutely observed in 2009, is a caricature of what a hobo might imagine a wealthy person to be like. For the first sixty-plus years of his life, Trump became adept at using aesthetic presentations to make himself into a pop culture icon.

When he decided to run for president, he simply transferred that understanding to the political realm.

There are two main ways that he did this prior to his presidency, both of which he has continued to do during his administration. The first is through his tweets, which took advantage of Americans’ dwindling attention span by regularly packing memorable, punchy ideas into very small packages. As Amanda Hess wrote in Slate back in 2016, the secret to Trump’s ability to create a political movement off of Twitter is that “whether he realizes it or not—and he’s tweeted that he has ‘a very high IQ,’ so I’m assuming he does—his most Trump-ian tweets manage to hit upon all three of Aristotle’s modes of persuasion: logos (the appeal to logic), ethos (the appeal to credibility), and pathos (the appeal to emotion).”

Trump has tweeted so much that it would take an entire academic paper to deconstruct all of them thoroughly, but Hess’ analysis of a Trump tweet directed at one of his rivals in the 2016 Republican primaries, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, is quite revealing. After quoting Trump’s tweet — “Jeb Bush never uses his last name on advertising, signage, materials etc. Is he ashamed of the name BUSH? A pretty sad situation. Go Jeb!” — Hess points out that “he seized on a truth about Jeb Bush’s campaign branding, leveraged it to question the very legitimacy of the Bush name, declared the situation ‘sad,’ and still had leftover space to offer some condescending words of encouragement.”

One finds the same strategy in his tweets trying to delegitimize Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, which the president insists he won even though he has repeatedly failed in court to prove any of his claims. On Thursday he nevertheless tweeted, “The ‘Republican’ Governor of Georgia, [Brian Kemp], and the Secretary of State, MUST immediately allow a signature verification match on the Presidential Election. If that happens, we quickly and easily win the State and importantly, pave the way for a big David and Kelly WIN!” Again, Trump very strategically packed a lot into this single tweet: An insult against a fellow Republican who he feels has been disloyal by not helping him steal the election, to inspire anger; a seeming appeal to logic by requesting “a signature verification match”; and the offer of rewards for other powerful if his wishes are granted.

But the other aesthetic that Trump has honed impeccably is the art of trolling. As my colleague Amanda Marcotte wrote in her book “Troll Nation: How The Right Became Trump-Worshipping Monsters Set On Rat-F*cking Liberals, America, and Truth Itself,” this fit with a longstanding trend among American conservatives. Indeed, for years before Trump’s rise, they began transitioning away from advocating for traditional conservative ideas and instead focused on encouraging their followers to be bitter, hateful and paranoid. Over time, American right-wing politics was no longer defined by beliefs, but by intense hostility toward perceived threats that they invariably attributed to the left.

“Watch Fox News any day of the week, and most of what they cover is a bunch of segments about how liberals are hypocrites or liberals are the worst,” Marcotte told Salon in 2018 when discussing her book. “Everything is just reinforcing the stereotype of liberals as these hate objects you can just feel justified in trying to punish.” She later added that “conservative audiences respond to this kind of media because they want to. I think we underestimate how much people are going to do what they want to do and believe what they want to believe.” While Trump supporters may recognize that certain government programs help them, they will disregard those facts if a right-winger appeals to their hostility toward racial minorities, women, the LGBTQ community, immigrants or members of other marginalized groups.

This trolling approach defines Trump’s official speeches, his press conferences, the rhetoric he employs at political rallies and virtually every other aspect of his political life. For his followers, this type of communication trope has become ingrained into their being. Plenty of conservative politicians appealed to their supporters’ basest instincts prior to Trump, but the president and his followers made overtly vilifying the left and gleefully savoring upsetting leftists through their words and actions into their central appeal. He did this when he kicked off his aborted 2012 presidential campaign by promoting a racist conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama and his successful 2016 effort by disparaging Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. He has done this on the countless occasions when he has made inflammatory statements about important issues that inevitably upset the left and, just as inevitably, put Trump in the headlines. He and his supporters have even sold T-shirts with controversial messages by appealing to supporters’ desire to “drive liberals crazy.” Frequently, Trump supporters will actually admit that they don’t agree with his rhetoric, but they enjoy his sadistic bullying because it makes them feel good. In other words, they connect with the aesthetic.

Trump’s is an an approach that goes beyond mere rhetoric and enters the realm of performance art, a fact that Trump himself unintentionally acknowledged during his first speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, when he urged his supporters to chant “12 more years” in order to “really drive [liberals] crazy.” That moment epitomized precisely how Trump has transformed traditional political rhetoric into performance art: Instead of simply making the case for his candidacy or advocating for certain ideas, Trump focused on creating a moment in which he would entreat his followers to join him in a performance — not for a major political point, but simply to elicit a desired emotional response from their supposed common enemy. It was the type of performance art that Trump has perfected: To act like a troll, and encourage his supporters to act like trolls, and thereby create an act of mass catharsis through creative self-expression that did absolutely nothing to address any legitimate economic or social concerns that his supporters might have.

If Trump was simply using these ends to advance an otherwise traditional political career, it would debase democracy but not necessarily pose a threat to it. The problem is that Trump is not a traditional American politician; he has all the hallmarks of being a fascist. As Italian philosopher Umberto Eco wrote in a 1995 essay about fascism, “behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives.” There are many drives that fuel fascist movements and are present with Trump, including a glorification of an imagined past through appeals to traditionalism (hence Trump’s slogan to “Make America Great Again”), a hostility toward intellectuals and a fear of difference (to quote Eco, “the first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders” and is thus “racist by definition”). Fascist movements also pander to the individual and social frustrations of their followers, heavily rely on nationalism, convince themselves that their opponents are elitists and utilize a specific type of machismo that “implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” When fascists talk about their support of “the People,” it is not in terms of a belief in individual rights but rather as “a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People.”

Even if Trump never again holds political office, the fascist tendencies that he exploited will continue to thrive, and it is not inconceivable that a future fascist political aspirant will figure out how to replicate his ability to create a political aesthetic as the glue that holds their movement together. The ongoing debacle over Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election loss is a perfect example of that. For Trump himself, this is almost certainly a symptom of his obvious narcissism, the fact that in his world nothing is worse than being a “loser.” Yet it is telling that so many people are buying into his claims (a recent poll found that 73 percent of likely Republican voters and 44 percent of all likely voters are questioning Biden’s victory), despite there being no evidence of voter fraud whatsoever.

Even if Trump miraculously vanishes from the political scene after leaving office, his lies about the 2020 election are likely to foreshadow future ways in which American fascists use mass entertainment to win over support. As Marcotte recently noted, polls show that most Republican voters do believe that their votes counted, and there are no plausible signs of waning interest in participating in future elections, because they realize that Trump’s claims of being robbed are yet another performance art piece in which they can participate.

“Republican voters understand perfectly that Trump’s lies are part of a con game — and they imagine they’re in on the con,” Marcotte wrote. Replace “con” with “spectacular show,” or “mass entertainment,” or even (dare I say it) “work of art.” That’s the Trump aesthetic.

The reality is that the problems facing ordinary Americans economically, socially, ecologically and internationally are largely due to the forces identified by the left: income inequality, lack of access to basic needs like healthcare, student debt, predatory lending and so on are all side effects of capitalism. Yet as long as fascists know how to win over supporters by appealing to an aesthetic — whether military parades and catchy tweets or trolling public statements and conspiracy theories that exist mainly to create a shared false narrative that can upset and delegitimize the left — their followers will misidentify the source of their misery, as Benjamin foresaw.:

SEE WALTER BENJAMIN 

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Rev. Warnock crushes Loeffler’s argument that ‘insider trading’ is the ‘American dream’

 December 6, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris
  

Rev. Raphael Warnock in debate (Photo: Screen capture)

Appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) was asked about her “insider trading” scandal that was under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee and the Justice Department.

According to reports, Loeffler’s stock trades had peculiar timing. After receiving a briefing about the coronavirus early on in the pandemic, Loeffler dumped stocks that later fell because of the pandemic. At the same time, Loeffler was downplaying the seriousness of the virus.

Loeffler said that her stock dump is the very definition of the American Dream. Rev. Warnock explained that he doesn’t believe that stock trades are wrong or that Loeffler doesn’t have the right to play the markets, he said he doesn’t believe Loeffler, or any senator, should have the right to self-dealing at the expense of the American tax-payer.

“I’m okay with the fact that she wants to make money—I just think you shouldn’t use the people’s seat to enrich yourself. You ought to use the people’s seat to represent the people,” he said.

Loeffler claimed she’s a “job creator” and that Rev. Warnock “never created a job in his life. Warnock, who oversees a church executive committee of seven, an executive staff of seven, and church staff of two, started a jobs program at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

See his answer in the video below:

ABC News
Democratic challenger Raphael Warnock on Sen. Kelly Loeffler: "I'm okay with the fact that she wants to make money—I just think you shouldn't use the people's seat to enrich yourself. You ought to use the people's seat to represent the people." https://abcn.ws/3mKoSel

Critics slam ‘robot’ Kelly Loeffler for short-circuiting when asked if senators should be dealing stocks as she did


Published on December 7, 2020
By Sarah K. Burris- Commentary

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) (Screen cap)

Appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) drew a lot of criticism for her performance in the nationally televised debate between her and her Democratic opponent Rev. Raphael Warnock.

Viewers noticed that questions from the debate moderators earned a response from Loeffler that had nothing to do with the question itself. When she was asked about whether she’d take the COVID-19 vaccine, Loeffler went off about “radical leftist” and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and didn’t say a word about the virus that has killed over 9,500 people in the state.

Loeffler also tried to claim that Democrats want to get rid of healthcare while also having socialized health care at the same time. The two ideas are in conflict with each other.

Others questioned why Loeffler remained so monotone, robotic and lacked any expression when speaking.

See the comments from Twitter viewers below:

US arms sales soar and bipartisan militarism thrives amid COVID-19 pandemic

SEE PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

DEC. 6, 2020 By Common Dreams

The United States sold more than $175 billion in military equipment to foreign governments in the fiscal year that ended September 30, Pentagon and State Department officials announced Friday—a 2.8% increase compared to 2019, when weapons exports totaled just over $170 billion.

The latest figures on arms transfers were released one day before President Donald Trump said that “military offense… is the most important thing a president can do,” during his meandering speech at the Republican Party’s Saturday night rally on behalf of Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia who are facing Democratic candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively, in runoff elections next month that will determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Although he spent most of the evening repeating unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud in the November election and baselessly asserting that Democrats will “cheat” again, Trump on Saturday still encouraged rallygoers to support the two GOP lawmakers at the polls on January 5 to avenge his loss in the “rigged” presidential contest.

“At stake in this election is control of the U.S. Senate and that really means control of this country,” the president said. “The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee, writes every piece of legislation, controls every single taxpayer dollar.”

Trump’s rationale for backing Loeffler and Perdue came in the form of a warning: “If the radical Democrats… get power, they will… ram through the most extreme left-wing agenda ever conceived while at the same time, destroying our military through a lack of funding.”

Whereas Trump portrayed congressional Democrats as eager to pursue “draconian military cuts,” journalist Sarah Lazare argued last week that “the annual approval of the gargantuan U.S. military budget,” which she called “one of the most reliable rituals in Congress… is so ordinary and overwhelmingly bipartisan, it’s barely considered newsworthy.”

The U.S. “has by far the biggest mil­i­tary bud­get on the plan­et, spend­ing more than the next 10 coun­tries com­bined,” Lazare continued. “There is no indi­ca­tion that U.S. law­mak­ers plan to reverse this trend any­time soon: For six con­sec­u­tive years the military bud­get has either increased or stayed rough­ly the same, tak­ing infla­tion into account. As the Nation­al Pri­or­i­ties Project point­ed out in June, the mil­i­tary bud­get in 2019 account­ed for 53% of the fed­er­al dis­cre­tionary bud­get.”

While millions of the country’s working-class households—battered by the Covid-19 pandemic and corresponding economic crisis—await a new relief package that ameliorates widespread hardship, “Con­gress had no prob­lem pass­ing leg­is­la­tion to con­tin­ue U.S. mil­i­tary vio­lence,” Lazare added.

She pointed out that the Sen­ate ver­sion of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed on July 23 in a vote of 86–14, while the House ver­sion was approved on July 21 by a margin of 295–125. The NDAA was subsequently approved last week by both cham­bers of Congress.

Lazare wrote that while it is “entire­ly rou­tine at this point, it’s use­ful to high­light on the eve of yet anoth­er mas­sive Pen­ta­gon hand­out how the bud­get for war could instead go toward life-pre­serv­ing social goods.”

“That we can find the mon­ey for war but not for coro­n­avirus relief expos­es the moral rot at the cen­ter of U.S. pol­i­tics, a rot that must be dug out and expunged if we are to get through this crisis,” she added.

NYT THE SHIFT
How Joe Biden’s Digital Team Tamed the MAGA Internet

The campaign’s empathetic digital strategy held up surprisingly well against President Trump’s passionate digital following.


  

Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Brayden Harrington in February in Gilford, N.H. A video showing them meeting each other was viewed millions of times.

Credit...Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times

By Kevin Roose
Dec. 6, 2020

Last April, when Rob Flaherty, the digital director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, told me that the former vice president’s team planned to use feel-good videos and inspirational memes to beat President Trump in a “battle for the soul of the internet,” my first thought was: Good luck with that.

After all, we were talking about the internet, which doesn’t seem to reward anything uplifting or nuanced these days. In addition, Mr. Trump is a digital powerhouse, with an enormous and passionate following, a coalition of popular right-wing media outlets boosting his signal, and a flair for saying the kinds of outrageous, attention-grabbing things that are catnip to the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And after I wrote about Mr. Biden’s comparatively tiny internet presence last spring, I heard from legions of nervous Democratic strategists who worried that using “heal the nation” messaging against the MAGA meme army was like bringing a pinwheel to a prizefight.

But in the end, the bed-wetters were wrong. Mr. Biden won, and despite having many fewer followers and much less engagement on social media than Mr. Trump, his campaign raised record amounts of money and ultimately neutralized Mr. Trump’s vaunted “Death Star” — the name his erstwhile campaign manager, Brad Parscale, gave to the campaign’s digital operation.

Figuring out whether any particular online strategy decisively moved the needle for Mr. Biden is probably impossible. Offline factors, such as Mr. Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic and the economic devastation it has caused, undoubtedly played a major role. But since successful campaigns breed imitators, it’s worth looking under the hood of the Biden digital strategy to see what future campaigns might learn from it.

After the election, I spoke with Mr. Flaherty, along with more than a dozen other people who worked on the Biden digital team. They told me that while the internet alone didn’t get Mr. Biden elected, a few key decisions helped his chances.

1. Lean On Influencers and Validators

In the early days of his campaign, Mr. Biden’s team envisioned setting up its own digital media empire. It posted videos to his official YouTube channel, conducted virtual forums and even set up a podcast hosted by Mr. Biden, “Here’s the Deal.” But those efforts were marred by technical glitches and lukewarm receptions, and they never came close to rivaling the reach of Mr. Trump’s social media machine.

So the campaign pivoted to a different strategy, which involved expanding Mr. Biden’s reach by working with social media influencers and “validators,” people who were trusted by the kinds of voters the campaign hoped to reach.

“We were not the biggest megaphone compared to Trump, so we had to help arm any who were,” said Andrew Bleeker, the president of Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic strategy firm that worked with the Biden campaign.

One validator at the top of the team’s list was Brené Brown, a research professor and popular author and podcast host who speaks and writes about topics like courage and vulnerability. Dr. Brown has a devoted following among suburban women — a critical demographic for Mr. Biden’s campaign — and when Mr. Biden appeared as a guest on her podcast to talk about his own stories of grief and empathy, the campaign viewed it as a coup.

Also high on the list was the actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, whose following skews center-right and male. Mr. Johnson’s endorsement this fall of Mr. Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, created a so-called permission structure for his followers — including some who may have voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 — to support Mr. Biden, members of the campaign staff told me.

Dwayne Johnson

@TheRock

·

Sep 27

As a political independent & centrist, I’ve voted for both parties in the past. In this critical presidential election, I’m endorsing

@JoeBiden

&

@KamalaHarris

.

Progress takes courage, humanity, empathy, strength, KINDNESS & RESPECT.

We must ALL VOTE: https://bit.ly/DJVote2020

Celebrity endorsements aren’t a new campaign strategy. But Mr. Biden’s team also worked with lesser-known influencers, including YouTubers like Liza Koshy, and struck a partnership with a group of creators known as TikTok for Biden, which the campaign paid to promote pro-Biden content on the teen-dominated video app TikTok.

Perhaps the campaign’s most unlikely validator was Fox News. Headlines from the outlet that reflected well on Mr. Biden were relatively rare, but the campaign’s tests showed that they were more persuasive to on-the-fence voters than headlines from other outlets. So when they appeared — as they did in October when Fox News covered an endorsement that Mr. Biden received from more than 120 Republican former national security and military officials — the campaign paid to promote them on Facebook and other platforms.

“The headlines from the sources that were the most surprising were the ones that had the most impact,” said Rebecca Rinkevich, Mr. Biden’s digital rapid response director. “When people saw a Fox News headline endorsing Joe Biden, it made them stop scrolling and think.”

ON TECH WITH SHIRA OVIDE: Your guide to how technology is transforming our lives — in the time of coronavirus and beyond.Sign Up

2. Tune Out Twitter, and Focus on ‘Facebook Moms’

A frequent criticism of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign was that it was too focused on appealing to the elite, high-information crowd on Twitter, instead of paying attention to the much larger group of voters who get their news and information on Facebook. In 2020, Mr. Biden’s digital team was committed to avoiding a repeat.

“The whole Biden campaign ethos was ‘Twitter isn’t real life,’” Mr. Flaherty said. “There are risks of running a campaign that is too hyper-aware of your own ideological corner.”

As it focused on Facebook, the Biden campaign paid extra attention to “Facebook moms” — women who spend a lot of time sharing cute and uplifting content, and who the campaign believed could be persuaded to vote for Mr. Biden with positive messages about his character. Its target audience, Mr. Flaherty said, was women “who would go out and share a video of troops coming home, or who would follow The Dodo,” a website known for heartwarming animal videos.

One successful clip aimed at this group showed Mr. Biden giving his American flag lapel pin to a young boy at a campaign stop. Another video showed Mr. Biden, who has talked about overcoming a stutter in his youth, meeting Brayden Harrington, a 13-year-old boy with one. Both were viewed millions of times.

Voters also responded positively to videos in which Mr. Biden showed his command of foreign policy. In January, after a U.S. drone strike killed the Iranian general Qassim Suleimani, the campaign posted a three-minute Facebook video of Mr. Biden explaining the situation. Despite the snoozy title — “Joe Biden Discusses Donald Trump’s Recent Actions in the Middle East” — the video became one of the campaign’s earliest viral successes.



Image The Biden campaign paid to place lawn signs in the Animal Crossing video game. Credit...Joe Biden 2020

The campaign also experimented with lighter fare, putting virtual Biden for President lawn signs in Animal Crossing, the hit Nintendo game, and setting up a custom “Build Back Better” map in Fortnite, the popular battle royale game, in hopes of reaching younger voters. Some of these efforts were more gimmicky than others. But they all reflected the campaign’s decision to take a pro-Biden message to as many corners of the internet as possible.

“Our goal was really to meet people where they were,” said Christian Tom, the head of Mr. Biden’s digital partnerships team.
3. Build a Facebook Brain Trust

One of the campaign’s goals, Biden staff members told me, was promoting content that increased “social trust” — in other words, avoiding the kind of energizing, divisive fare that Mr. Trump has used to great effect.


But Mr. Biden’s digital strategy wasn’t all puppies and rainbows. The campaign also joined ranks with a number of popular left-wing Facebook pages, many of which are known for putting out aggressive anti-Trump content.

They called this group the “Rebel Alliance,” a jokey nod to Mr. Parscale’s “Death Star,” and it eventually grew to include the proprietors of pages like Occupy Democrats, Call to Activism, The Other 98 Percent and Being Liberal. On the messaging app Signal, the page owners formed a group text that became a kind of rapid-response brain trust for the campaign.

“I had the freedom to go for the jugular,” said Rafael Rivero, a co-founder of Occupy Democrats and Ridin’ With Biden, another big pro-Biden Facebook page.


Mr. Rivero, who was paid by the Biden campaign as a consultant, told me that in addition to cross-posting its content on Occupy Democrats, he often offered the campaign advice based on what was performing well on his pages.

During the Republican National Convention, for example, Mr. Rivero noticed that a meme posted by Ridin’ With Biden about Mr. Trump’s comments on Medicare and Social Security was going viral. He notified the rest of the Rebel Alliance group, and recommended that the campaign borrow the message for Mr. Biden’s official Twitter account.

“It was sort of a big, distributed message test,” Mr. Flaherty said of the Rebel Alliance. “If it was popping through Occupy or any of our other partners, we knew there was heat there.”

These left-wing pages gave the campaign a bigger Facebook audience than it could have reached on its own. But they also allowed Mr. Biden to keep most of his messaging positive, while still tapping into the anger and outrage many Democratic voters felt.

4. Promote ‘Small-Batch Creators,’ Not Just Slick Commercials

In its internal tests, the Biden campaign found that traditional political ads — professionally produced, slick-looking 30-second spots — were far less effective than impromptu, behind-the-scenes footage and ads that featured regular voters talking directly into their smartphones or webcams about why they were voting for Mr. Biden.

“All our testing showed that higher production value was not better,” said Nathaniel Lubin, a Biden campaign consultant. “The things that were realer, more grainy and cheaper to produce were more credible.”

So the campaign commissioned a series of simple, lo-fi ads targeted at key groups of voters, like a series of self-recorded videos by Biden supporters who didn’t vote in 2016, talking about their regrets.

In addition to hiring traditional Democratic ad firms, the campaign also teamed up with what it called “small-batch creators” — lesser-known producers and digital creators, some of whom had little experience making political ads. Among the small-batch creators it hired: Scotty Wagner, a former art school professor from California, who produced a video about young people who supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary sharing things they didn’t know about Mr. Biden, and Jawanza Tucker, a TikTok creator, who made a video styled after a TikTok meme about why he was voting for Mr. Biden.

5. Fight Misinformation, but Pick Your Battles

One of the biggest obstacles the Biden campaign faced was a tsunami of misinformation, much of it amplified by the Trump campaign and its right-wing media allies. There were baseless rumors about Mr. Biden’s health, unfounded questions about the citizenship of Ms. Harris and spurious claims about the business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

The campaign formed an in-house effort to combat these rumors, known as the “Malarkey Factory.” But it picked its battles carefully, using data from voter testing to guide its responses.

When the Hunter Biden laptop story emerged, for example, some Democrats — worried that it would be 2020’s version of the Hillary Clinton email story — suggested that the Biden campaign should forcefully denounce it. But the campaign’s testing found that most voters in its key groups couldn’t follow the complexities of the allegations, and that it wasn’t changing their opinion of Mr. Biden.

“We had running surveys so we could see in real-time how people were responding,” said Caitlin Mitchell, a digital adviser for the Biden campaign. “The two big metrics were: Are you aware of this? And many people had heard of it. The secondary category was: Are you concerned by it? And the clear answer was no.”

The campaign still responded to the reports, and Mr. Biden defended his son on the debate stage. But it stopped short of mounting a full-throated counter-messaging campaign.

When it did respond to misinformation, the Biden team tried to address the root of the narrative. After right-wing influencers posted compilation videos of Mr. Biden stumbling over his words and appearing forgetful, the campaign surveyed voters to try to figure out whether the attempt to paint him as mentally unfit was resonating. It discovered that the real concern for many people wasn’t Mr. Biden’s age, or his health per se, but whether he was an easily manipulated tool of the radical left.

The Biden team identified the voters who were most likely to see those clips and ran a targeted digital ad campaign showing them videos of Mr. Biden speaking lucidly at debates and public events.

Mr. Flaherty, the campaign digital director, said the campaign’s focus on empathy had informed how it treated misinformation: not as a cynical Trump ploy that was swallowed by credulous dupes, but as something that required listening to voters to understand their concerns and worries before fighting back. Ultimately, he said, the campaign’s entire digital strategy — the Malarkey Factory, the TikTok creators and Facebook moms, the Fortnite signs and small-batch creators — was about trying to reach a kinder, gentler version of the internet that it still believed existed.

“It was about how do we throw the incentives of the internet for a bit of a loop?” he said. “We made a decision early that we were going to be authentically Joe Biden online, even when 

people were saying that was a trap.”

See new 

Kevin Roose is a technology columnist for The Times. His column, "The Shift," examines the intersection of technology, business, and culture. You can find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. @kevinroose • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 7, 2020, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: How Biden Beat Trump On the Net. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe