Israeli pitched covert pro-Trump plan while leading ‘nonpartisan’ iVote Israel

Eitan Charnoff, national director of iVote Israel in 2016, denies it had ties to intel firm Psy-Group, where he worked at same time on Senate-cited bid to help Trump win presidency

By SIMONA WEINGLASS 31 August 2020

Eitan Charnoff. (courtesy)


A former employee of the Israeli private intel company Psy-Group, who was cited by the US Senate Intelligence Committee in a report this month as a planner of a covert influence pitch by the firm to help Donald Trump win the 2016 elections, simultaneously headed iVote Israel, a purportedly nonpartisan group that aims to boost absentee voting in the US elections from Israel.

The former employee, Eitan Charnoff, insisted there was no connection between Psy-Group, whose pro-Trump covert plan he helped pitch to Trump officials, and the non-profit, ostensibly impartial iVote Israel, where he served at the same time as national director.


“They’re two completely separate organizations,” Eitan Charnoff said of Psy-Group and iVote Israel, when contacted by phone on August 26. He did not respond to further questions.

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Psy-Group went out of business in 2018. iVote Israel is still active. Its website urges Americans living in Israel “to make our voices heard. Register to vote, assert your voice and help safeguard the future of America and Israel.” It states: “We do not support any specific candidate or candidate’s committee.” According to media reports, 15,000 people used the organization’s services in 2016.

iVote Israel website. (Screenshot)

On August 18, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the fifth volume of its Russia investigation, which examines Russia’s attempts to meddle in US politics during the 2016 elections. An entire section of the report is devoted to the Israeli cyber-intelligence company, Psy-Group, which the report concludes pitched, but may not have carried out, covert influence services on behalf of the Trump presidential election campaign. “Psy Group representatives engaged with Trump Campaign senior officials in 2016 for a contract to perform work on behalf of the Campaign,” it states. “These engagements… purportedly never materialized into any Campaign work.”

Charnoff, an American-Israeli who immigrated to Israel from the Washington, DC area, is mentioned repeatedly in the report, as one of the Psy-Group employees actively involved in organizing the proposed covert influence campaign on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump. “Charnoff then sent an email to Psy Group employees Amon Epstein, Royi Burstien, and others, outlining a business opportunity for Psy Group with the Trump Campaign,” the Senate report states, for example.

A volunteer signing up US citizens to vote on the streets of Jerusalem in 2012 (courtesy Elie Pieprz)

At the very same time that Charnoff was allegedly proposing the covert influence campaign to help Trump win, he served as the national director of iVote Israel, a self-declared nonpartisan group that encourages Americans in Israel to vote in US elections.

iVote Israel was accused by some voters at the time of flubbing their absentee ballot requests. “Potential voters supporting both political parties say that requests for absentee ballots filed through iVote were never received by their local elections officials,” JTA reported in 2016.

Charnoff’s simultaneous employment and prominence at the two organizations — the one alleged to have directly proposed a covert pro-Trump campaign to senior Trump officials, and the other ostensibly encouraging a nonpartisan absentee ballot drive in Israel — raises concerns over the impartiality of iVoteIsrael, especially when Charnoff was its national director in 2016.

Beyond stating that Psy-Group and iVote Israel were two entirely separate organizations even when he held senior responsibilities in both, Charnoff refused to elaborate and did not answer subsequent phone calls.

iVote Israel was founded in 2012 and is registered in the United States as a 501(c)(4), a so-called “dark money” non-profit that is not required to disclose its donors. Its stated purpose is to help as many Americans in Israel as possible to vote by helping them to obtain and mail-in absentee ballots. Its directors in 2012 and since have kept mum about the identity of the organization’s donors.

At the time of the organization’s founding, it was run by Elie Pieprz, a former activist with the Republican Jewish Coalition and, after immigrating to Israel, with Republicans Abroad Israel.

The group’s campaign strategist at the time of its founding was Aron Shaviv, a former campaign staffer for Yisrael Beytenu party leader MK Avigdor Liberman, as well as an international consultant to election campaigns in central and eastern Europe.

In 2016 Shaviv reportedly served as a campaign consultant to the pro-Russian Montenegrin political party known as the Democratic Front, which became involved in an attempted coup. According to the Senate intelligence committee report, the coup attempt in Montenegro was orchestrated by Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who also happened to employ the services of Psy-Group, according to the Senate report. “By 2016, Deripaska was involved in funding and executing an aggressive Russian-directed campaign to overthrow the Montenegrin government and assassinate the Prime Minister in a violent coup,” the report stated.

On page 696 of the Senate intelligence committee report, in an almost entirely redacted section entitled “____ and overseas voters,” there is a single footnote visible that reads “See Samir Kajosevic, Montenegro Prosecution Suspects Israeli Consultant of Coup Role.” Balkan Insight, July 31, 2019.” The cited article says Montenegrin prosecutors suspect Shaviv of helping the alleged coup and that Shaviv denies any involvement in criminal acts in Montenegro. On August 14, 2020, a Bosnian-language channel of Radio Free Europe reported that a day earlier Shaviv’s lawyer announced that Interpol had revoked an arrest warrant against Shaviv, because, the lawyer said, Interpol had concluded that the legal proceedings against Shaviv in Montenegro were “politically motivated.”
iVote Israel gets a new director

By 2016, Shaviv and Pieprz were no longer publicly associated with iVote Israel. Charnoff became the organization’s “campaign strategy advisor” in 2014, and by 2016, had become its “national director,” according to publicly available documents. Charnoff became an employee of Psy-Group in early 2015 and worked there till the company’s demise in 2018, according to documents seen by The Times of Israel.

Eitan Charnoff (Courtesy)

Nowhere on its website did IVote Israel list an Israeli address or corporate registration number. Every company or non-profit organization in Israel is required to have a company number, as a transparency measure that allows members of the public to look up basic ownership and financial information about it.

The Times of Israel sent text messages to both Pieprz and Charnoff asking whether the organization had such a number, but did not hear back.

The Times of Israel was able to ascertain that iVote Israel paid at least some of its bills in 2016 through a company called Knyon Group and Strategies Ltd, which was registered in February 2016 by Elie Pieprz at his home address in Karnei Shomron.

iVote Israel still has an active website and Facebook page but, at the time of this writing, had not posted on its Facebook page since May. An eligible American voter in Israel told The Times of Israel that he had received a targeted Facebook ad from the organization in August. The Times of Israel contacted iVote Israel’s new director, Yossi Raskas, to ask if about the organization’s latest activities, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
The pitch

According to the Senate committee report, Psy-Group initially got in touch with the Trump campaign in March 2016, when Kory Bardash, the head of Republicans in Israel, emailed George Birnbaum, an international campaign consultant, as well as Charnoff, a project manager at Psy-Group.

Bardash wrote: “I have spoken to both of you about the other. Hopefully, you can have a mutually beneficial chat.”

Kory (left) and Philip Bardash at the annual White House Chanukah Dinner with President Bush and the First Lady in 2012 (Facebook)

The Senate report suggests Charnoff was one of the key people at Psy-Group charged with planning the potential covert influence campaign on behalf of Trump.

“In a follow-on email, Charnoff indicated that following Birnbaum’s consultation with ‘the campaign,’ the prospective work for the Trump Campaign would be divided into two projects,” the report says.

“The first project consisted of opposition research on ‘the female opposing candidate,’ and comprised ‘dig[ing] up dirt as well as active [information] gathering on associates.’ The second project was focused on U.S. state delegates voting in the Republican primary and entailed using social media analysis to index delegates as ‘pro [T]rump, against and unknown.’ Charnoff further stated that the latter two categories of delegates would be targeted in an influence campaign ‘to support [T]rump and not change the convention rules.’”
Republicans in Israel

The Times of Israel contacted Republicans in Israel to ask what, if any, relationship it had with Psy-Group or iVote Israel, in light of the fact that its representative Kory Bardash communicated with Charnoff in the months leading up to the 2016 elections.

Mark Zell, the organization’s chairman, said it had nothing to do with Psy-Group.

“I may have read about them, but I don’t know who they are. We’ve had absolutely no connection with them.”

News accounts describe Republicans in Israel setting up Trump campaign headquarters in Karnei Shomron in 2016 and canvassing US citizens in Israel, urging them to vote, even if they had lived in Israel for many years and not voted in previous US elections. Republicans in Israel also reportedly set up telephone banks where volunteers phoned Israel-based supporters in swing states and encouraged them to vote for Trump because, they said, he would be good for Israel.

From left, Yossi Dagan, Mark Zell and Abe Katzman celebrating the opening of the Republicans Overseas Israel office in the West Bank town of Karnei Shomron, September 5, 2016. (Andrew Tobin)

Alexander Goldenshtein, a former adviser to Avigdor Liberman and former editor of the Russian-language Izrus news portal, reportedly helped set up Trump’s headquarters in Israel.

Republicans in Israel’s Zell said he remembered Goldenshtein. “He was a volunteer. We don’t have the budget to pay anyone. He helped set up balloons and organize the events physically, logistically.”

Goldenshtein told reporters that one of the headquarters’ purposes was to send a signal to Evangelical Christians in the United States.

“The opening of the headquarters in Israel was a signal for the evangelists. That is, the evangelicals realized that Trump is a real defender of the Jewish state, he will not give Israel offense. This is just the effect we wanted to achieve, and it seems to me that it turned out well!” Goldenshtein said in an interview with the Azerbaijani website, The Great Middle East.

Postal Service worker: Dismantled mail processing machines is only our latest burden

The Postal Service gave me a job that serves Americans all over the country. It is something to be proud of. But now it is in danger.

Muriel Ponder
Opinion contributor

DENVER — I remember the thrill I felt in the summer of 2004 when I finally got hired as a career employee by the U.S. Postal Service. After decades of low-end jobs in day care and hospitality it was a dream come true. I hoped that getting hired as a regular would lift me from the working poor into the middle class.

Incredibly, it did. I had a job with security, humane benefits and a good living wage. I am always surprised when people talk about those blessings as though they are bad things for the country. Because of my job, I was able to take in and help my brothers when they lost their less-secure jobs.

I have worked hard for those blessings, as we all do. I always wanted to become a mechanic and, after two years of study both on and off the clock, I finally had an entry level position at a post office as a maintenance mechanic, working on the machines that process the mail.


In those early few years, my post office often led our district in output. We were rewarded with praise and items like a T-shirt or cap. We, and the Postal Service, were doing an excellent job and we were even making a profit, financially. Every day, as I drove to work, I felt a thrill of pride to be part of the team.

An impossible task

And we were a team! There was a sense of camaraderie that I’ve never felt in any other workplace. There are not many female mechanics, but I was always treated with respect, because I could do the job and do it well. We liked that we were serving and helping people in an organization that had been around for over 200 years. We were a proud mix — a true cross-section and representation of the American people.


I still feel that thrill, but now it is mixed with sadness.

The Postal Service in which I take such pride has been charged to do almost impossible tasks in ways that no other business in the country has been required to do. In 2006, the Postal Service was singled out by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), as the only government agency or business in history required to fund the health care costs post-retirement for every employee for the next 75 years, and do it all in an immediate 10-year window.

Postal Service reform:USPS badly needs an overhaul, but not smack in the middle of the Trump-Biden campaign

The once financially stable, profitable and proud Postal Service began to suffer — which means people began to suffer. Over the years up to today, jobs were cut or left unfilled, overtime was cut, hiring was frozen. Eventually, they began closing both plants and post offices. The hardest part to swallow, and the part that broke my heart, was that the supporters who passed the PAEA began to point out how the Postal Service was losing money, as though it was the workers' fault.
Machines dismantled

The carriers are the beloved face of the Postal Service, as they should be, and an icon of our proud history. But as a mechanic working to keep them on their routes, in August I witnessed a scene I never could have imagined. My co-workers on another shift began dismantling at least three mail processing machines. They didn't want to do this, they told me; they just had to follow orders.

While there is less mail being delivered this year, those machines process over a million pieces of mail a day at my post office alone and were always in use. When I asked them what they were doing, they told me that the area was going to be rearranged. I later found the machines behind the processing plant, dismantled,in a huge scrap metal dumpster — uncovered in the rain. Later, Postal Service leaders said they paused these changes, but I don't expect the machines to ever come back. That’s a hard thing for a mechanic, or any caring person, to see.


I still count my blessings. I am still grateful that we currently can still get things to the people of our country that they need to survive and thrive, wherever they are — at every single dwelling in America. It will be a lot harder now, but we’ve done hard before.

My dad, the mailman:

For mail carriers, neighborhoods and my family, the US Postal Service is personal.

I fear what will happen if the Postal Service is dismantled, like the machines, so that only the certain few benefit. The Constitution empowers Congress to "establish post offices and post roads" for all the people.

I hope all the people will work to keep the Postal Service alive and be proud of the decent living it gives workers and the valuable work it does.

Muriel Ponder has worked at the U.S. Postal Service's Denver, Colorado, Processing and Distribution Center for the last 16 years

HAND WRINGING RIGHT WINGERS
‘In Defense of Looting’ Author Says the Value of Small Businesses Is a 'Right-Wing Myth'

BY TYLER O'NEIL AUG 29, 2020 11:28 PM EST
AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa

After the police killing of George Floyd, mobs descended on major cities, rioting, looting, and burning down buildings. Yet left-leaning journalists, commentators, and politicians insisted that the riots were “mostly peaceful protests.” A new book seeks to justify looting, in particular, and taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR) published a lengthy interview with the author. Among other things, the author defends looting as a way to undermine the “white supremacy” behind the idea of property and that the value of small businesses is a “right-wing myth.”

NPR’s Natalie Escobar introduced the subject by claiming “there has been a lot of hand-wringing about looting.” In the newly-released book In Defense of Looting, (published by Hachette Book Group, which has published books by Joel Osteen, J.K. Rowling, Newt Gingrich, and others) Vicky Osterweil “argues that looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society. The rioters who smash windows and take items from stores, she says, are engaging in a powerful tactic that questions the justice of ‘law and order,’ and the distribution of property and wealth in an unequal society.”
Indeed, in an interview with Escobar, Osterweil claimed that looting — which she defined as “the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot” — is a tool for justice that doesn’t really harm anyone. She also dispelled certain “myths” about looting, like the idea that rioters and looters are disconnected from a peaceful protest.
Attacking the idea of property

According to Osterweil, looting “attacks the very way in which food and things are distributed. It attacks the idea of property. She claimed that property itself is unjust because it means that “in order for someone to have a roof over their head or have a meal ticket, they have to work for a boss, in order to buy things that people just like them somewhere else in the world had to make under the same conditions.”

She argued that “the reason that the world is organized that way, obviously, is for the profit of the people who own the stores and the factories.” Looting, according to this author, allows rioters to “demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.”

The In Defense of Looting author apparently has never read or perhaps even heard of Adam Smith, who explained that the idea of property enriches everyone, by encouraging people to work in order to enrich themselves. Without the idea of property and wages, inventors would not invent, builders would not build, and there would be no “things” to have for “free.” The idea of property inspires ingenuity, hard work, and the creation of the very goods and services Osterweil intends to enjoy.

Yet Osterweil followed the Marxist critical theory suggestion — pushed, among others, by The New York Times‘ “1619 Project” — that “the very basis of property in the U.S. is derived through whiteness and through Black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler domination of the country.” In order to fight “white supremacy,” rioters must destroy the idea of property.

This Activist’s Marxist Brainwashing Explains Why Antifa Has Terrorized Portland for 51 Nights

Looting is essentially harmless

Osterweil admitted that looting “freaks people out,” although she argued that “it’s basically nonviolent.”

“You’re mass shoplifting. Most stores are insured; it’s just hurting insurance companies on some level. It’s just money. It’s just property. It’s not actually hurting any people,” she argued.

While many businesses are insured, looting does more than cost insurance companies money. Insurance premiums go up accordingly. Many businesses, terrified by the lawlessness, decide to leave and remove both the goods and services they provide to the community (at a price, of course, but they still provide them) and the jobs they offer to locals. City centers become hollowed-out skeletons.

Of course, many businesses aren’t insured, and looters don’t exactly check for insurance before hitting a business. The insurance line is a post-hoc justification for the lawless and destructive activity.

Osterweil admitted that some businesses leave after bouts of looting, but she blamed the businesses themselves and the “inequity of the society” for the hollowing-out of cities.

“A business being attacked in the community is ultimately about attacking like modes of oppression that exist in the community. It is true and possible that there are instances historically when businesses have refused to reopen or to come back. But that is a part of the inequity of the society, that people live in places where there is only one place where they can get access to something [like food or medicine],” she argued. “The food desert is already an incredibly unjust situation. There’s this real tendency to try and blame people for fighting back, for revealing the inequity of the injustice that’s already been formed by the time that they’re fighting.”

In other words, looters aren’t responsible for any negative consequences for their actions. They can steal and destroy in the name of justice. When they destroy a business owner’s life savings, they are “sticking it to the man.” When they drive businesses away, that’s just more proof of the “evil” of property.

Countering the Destructive ‘1619 Project’ Marxist Redefinition of American History

Small businesses are also instruments of “oppression”

In a particularly chilling section of the interview, Osterweil argued that even small and locally-owned businesses are instruments of “oppression.”

“When it comes to small business, family owned business or locally owned business, they are no more likely to provide worker protections. They are no more likely to have to provide good stuff for the community than big businesses,” she claimed.

“It’s actually a Republican myth that has, over the last 20 years, really crawled into even leftist discourse: that the small business owner must be respected, that the small business owner creates jobs and is part of the community. But that’s actually a right-wing myth,” the author repeated.
Dispelling other “myths”

Osterweil also decided to dispel other “myths,” some of which actually are false.

“One of the ones that’s been very powerful, that’s both been used by Donald Trump and Democrats, has been the outside agitator myth, that the people doing the riots are coming from the outside,” she argued. While some of the rioters and looters have come from out-of-town, many if not most of them have been locals. The narrative that every agitator is an out-of-state white supremacist is entirely absurd.

“Another trope that’s very common is that looters and rioters are not part of the protest, and they’re not part of the movement,” Osterweil added. “That has to do with the history of protesters trying to appear respectable and politically legible as a movement, and not wanting to be too frightening or threatening.”


Tragically, the rioters and looters are part of the movement. The protesters in the larger groups would not continue to march, night after night, if they were truly outraged at the rioting and looting for which their protests provide cover.

Early this month, Mayor Ted Wheeler (D-Portland) urged peaceful protesters to avoid providing cover for the riots. “If you are a non-violent demonstrator, and you don’t want to be part of intentional violence, please stay away from these areas. Our community must say that this violence is not Portland, that these actions do not reflect our values, and these crimes are distracting from reform, not advancing it,” Wheeler said.

Osterweil also claimed that it is a “myth” that “white anarchists” are leading the riots. While many black people are taking part in the lawless activity, antifa groups specifically recruit white people to commit violent acts because they don’t want black people to end up getting arrested. Yet Osterweil claimed that the “white anarchist” line “does a double service: It both creates a boogeyman around which you can stir up fear and potential repression, and it also totally erases the Black folks who are at the core of the protests.”

Portland Mayor Finally Admits Violent Riots Aren’t the Same as ‘Peaceful Protests,’ After 68 Nights

At the end of the lay, looting is still theft

Despite Osterweil’s repeated insistence that looting is an effective tool of protest, non-violent, and somehow also harmless, looting is still theft, a violation of a commandment central to the freedom and prosperity of modern western civilization.

The author admitted that looting “immediately provides” a “better life,” but she suggested there is no moral evil in it. She insisted that looting “provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be. And I think that’s a part of it that doesn’t really get talked about—that riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory.”

After months of coronavirus lockdowns, it stands to reason that some people are seeking a release. Yet the glee of taking something that does not belong to you is still immoral, no matter how hard you try to justify it. Widespread theft and lawlessness erodes the foundation of society. It may feel great in the moment to steal your neighbor’s goods, but the lawlessness undermines the basis for modern freedom and prosperity.

If the 2020 election is a battle between “law and order” and the justification of theft and destruction, there is no question in my mind that Americans will side with freedom and prosperity over lawlessness and chaos. But Americans of both parties should reject this toxic ideology.

Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

The far right

How did the US's mainstream right end up openly supporting vigilante terror?

Richard Seymour

The apocalyptic conspiracy theories of rightwing groups afraid of losing their power give evil a name, and offer an answer

Tue 1 Sep 2020 09.32 BSTLast modified on Tue 1 Sep 2020 13.51 BST

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 Donald Trump appears to defend Kenosha gunman – video

Kyle Rittenhouse, a “Blue Lives Matter” fanatic, Donald Trump supporter and militia member, has been charged with murder. It is alleged that having travelled from Illinois to Wisconsin to point his assault rifle at unarmed protesters, he shot two people dead. He was later heard claiming: “I just killed somebody.”

While the Trump campaign quietly disavowed this enthusiastic supporter, insisting he had “nothing to do with our campaign” (as though anyone had suggested otherwise), the president himself defended Rittenhouse, saying he appeared to have been acting in self defence. Message boards such as Reddit and 4chan are humming with commentary supporting Rittenhouse. Predictably, every accused lone-wolf murderer generates an online fan club. Likewise, the Christian right has already raised $250,000 for Rittenhouse’s defence.

However, the decision of rightwing celebrity journalists to gleefully defend Rittenhouse crosses a new threshold. Ann Coulter, the infantile shock-jock of American reaction, said of Rittenhouse: “I want him as my president.” While Coulter is a media opportunist mining for controversy, Tucker Carlson of Fox News, a more doctrinaire far-rightist, offered an emotional defence. “How shocked are we,” Carlson said, “that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?”

Biden accuses Trump of 'fomenting violence' in US after Portland clashes

 

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This, from a talking head who has spent the Trump years mainstreaming various white nationalists, inciting racism and portraying the apocalyptic meltdown of the US caused by immigrants and liberal elites, betrays a conception of order identical to that of Rittenhouse and other white vigilantes who have pointed their guns at Black Lives Matter protesters, such as the Three Percenters and militiamen who have paraded the streets of Philadelphia, Ohio, Chicago and Albuquerque.

For the ideologues, law and order in Kenosha is social obedience on the part of those targeted for police violence, and it would be legitimately upheld by a white paramilitary who guns people down in cold blood for opposing the racist murder of black people. This is an ideology of law and order that could come from the antebellum South, or the frontier west.

Just as disturbing, for those likely to be on the receiving end of police violence, has been the convergence of police and paramilitaries. It is not just that militiamen are hardline supporters of the police who see themselves as augmenting state repression. Police themselves have repeatedly condoned and indulged the vigilantes, who have been permitted to roam around with guns out, attacking Black Lives Matter crowds unimpeded by authorities.

In Kenosha, police were recorded handing out water to a crowd of white militiamen, telling them: “We appreciate you being here.” The chief of Kenosha police has defended the role of white vigilantes in the protests. Police allegedly declined to arrest Rittenhouse after he’d just shot two people, was pointed out as the shooter by several witnesses, and was walking towards a police vehicle with his hands up.

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 'I don't want pity, I want change': Jacob Blake's sister gives powerful testimony – video

The brazen overtness of the right’s dalliance with vigilante terror in answer to Black Lives Matter has been some time in the making. Trump has done as much as he can to mainstream the violent far right in the same way that he has normalised conspiracist paranoia with his birtherism, climate denialism and references to the “deep state”. From his declaration that armed Charlottesville protesters were “very fine people” to his defence of armed protesters in Michigan, and his exhortations to rightwing paramilitaries to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA”, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and then “LIBERATE VIRGINIA” from Covid-19 lockdown, Trump lets the purveyors of armed fury know just whose side he’s on.

He has also conspicuously refused to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory. According to this, he is saving the world from a “deep state” conspiracy of liberal, Satan-worshipping paedophiles, and hastening the “storm” – a day of violent reckoning. Its supporters are deemed a domestic terror threat. The American far right thrives on the prospect of annihilation, and the “end of days” mood licenses its paranoid violence.

There is a broader context for America’s turn toward what writer Huw Lemmey accurately characterises as a sub-Verhoeven dystopia. Rapture-seeking movements such as QAnon, or those prepping for the “boogaloo”, are working the margins of a culturally mainstream phenomenon. Although the US has always been immersed in the fantasy of “regeneration through violence”, rarely has so much of the country been so thoroughly in the grip of adrenaline-pumping, apocalyptic excitement and conspiracist paranoia.

In both conspiracy theories and apocalyptic fantasies, life is reduced to a cosmic showdown between good and evil. The traumas and disappointments of life are folded into a millenarian revenge fantasy-cum-death wish, as in the enormously popular series of Left Behind novels about rapture and the struggle with the papal antichrist. Such apocalyptic thinking reverberates through a network of institutions, including white evangelical churches, Fox News and the Republican party itself.

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 Chaotic scenes as gunfire rings out during unrest after Jacob Blake shooting – video

Trump’s rhetoric has always invoked gruesome apocalyptic scenarios if his opponents win. This year’s Republican convention is fully channelling this mania, with speakers shouting about liberals who want to “enslave” Americans, steal their freedom and turn the US “into a socialist utopia”, or comparing the Democrats to “communist China”. Notably, the convention paraded a white couple arrested and charged for waving guns at Black Lives Matter protesters, who claimed that the Democrats would abolish the suburbs and let the criminals move in next door. Truly, the end times.

The specific American form of apocalyptic thinking is not just Christian but, historically, anti-communist. In an era of anti-communism without communism, Trump charges that Black Lives Matter protests are led by Marxists, “leftwing extremists” and others out to destroy “the United States system of government”. Thus, the crises that afflict the US are figured as a diabolical plot, much as past generations of anti-communist blamed worker strikes and civil rights struggles on what John Rankin of the House un-American activities committee called “this great octopus, communism, which is out to destroy everything”.

Today’s conspiracist bricolage thrives on the collapse of consensus reality, and on the disintegrating authority of older gatekeepers of truth. More importantly, it milks a fascination with the destruction of one’s enemies and, tacitly, oneself. In the past, apocalyptic fantasy has been seen as a paranoid reaction to economic deprivation and political persecution. That was true of peasant movements such as the Lazzarettists, who launched a violent revolt against the government and the ruling class in 19th-century Italy, but it hardly explains the disproportionately affluent Trump base, and it doesn’t explain rich Washington journalists such as Tucker Carlson rationalising murder in cold blood.

Apocalyptic conspiracy thinking is, above all, a theodicy: it explains evil, and says what will be done about evil. The end times thinking that is sweeping the US, and justifying every new outrage, is the theodicy of groups frightened of losing their power and arming themselves to defend it.

• Richard Seymour is a political activist and author; his latest book is The Twittering Machine

Why Do Black Americans Have To Be Described As ‘Unarmed’?
Maia Niguel Hoskin Contributor
Diversity & Inclusion
Providing provocative views on racism, pop culture, and mental health.

Personal perspective of young African male in hooded sweatshirt being arrested by Caucasian police ... [+] GETTY

While reading or watching most news stories about incidents such as the Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, or George Floyd killings, headlines and opening comments typically begin by describing the victim as “unarmed.” This has also been the case for much of the reporting done on the shooting of Jacob Blake and countless others. This distinction is typically made to signal to white readers and viewers that the victim was undeserving of the excessive force that was inflicted upon them. Essentially, to elicit compassion and sympathy.

Many have argued that having a gun or being under the influence of a substance does not give law enforcement carte blanche to shot or kill Black people. While true, perhaps, the larger issue is that journalists and others feel the need to make the distinction of being armed versus unarmed in the first place and how that may be telling of a larger issue rooted in anti-Black racism, racial bias, and dangerous stereotypes that exist about Black people in America. Although it can be argued that having a weapon or not being fully compliant with police – alone — is not grounds to be killed or shot, that perspective in silo does not fully capture the magnitude and depth of a much larger and more insidious issue at play.
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To be fair, members of law enforcement have a difficult job and place their lives at risk every time they begin their shift. Which is why many have been trained to shoot – to not only to subdue — but to kill. Although potentially problematic, the true issue might not only rest in police training or other dismissive excuses that are used to justify excessive force toward Blacks. Perhaps, the best use of time and energy would be to explore the bias that rests at the root of many of these issues.

In May, Poynter searched NPR’s archive and found that the news outlet used the phrase “unarmed” to describe Black people who were shot or killed by police 82 times in the past five years –26 times in its headlines and 65 times since the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. But it makes sense why this is done. The phrase is used as coded language to express to the reader that the victim did not pose a threat to police and that they were unjustly shot or killed. There have been countless times when this has played out to the contrary in which the killing of Blacks such as Trayford Pellerin and Anthony McClain by law enforcement, have been justified with even the slightest threat of them being armed.

This poses a few questions. Are white individuals who have been shot or killed by law enforcement described using the same language and why is this important information for the public? More importantly, why would someone at home watching the news or reading about an incident in which a Black person was shot or killed by police immediately wonder, “What was the Black person doing that caused the white or non-Black officer to shoot them?” At the core of American psychology is the inaccurate assumption that Black people are more likely to be dangerous or to carry out criminal activity. Consequently, the issue is not if the Black person who was shot or killed was armed, but instead the immediate default to assume that they were unless otherwise informed.

The criminalization of Black Americans in film and popular culture has been well documented. The same trends of negative stereotypes and racist and sexist tropes of Blacks are now also sprinkled throughout social media. Whether it be through the overrepresentation of Blacks playing a villain, antagonist, or a flat out criminal in film and television or the lack of diversity in the representation of Blacks playing notable roles that are deemed acceptable or “good” by U.S. norms and standards. There’s also the overrepresentation of Blacks in the news. A study that was conducted by Media Matters found that between August 18 and December 13, 2014, local New York stations (WCBS, WNBC, WABC, and WNYW) reported on murder, theft, and assault cases in which Blacks were the suspect during their late-night broadcast disproportionately to the rate of actual arrests made of Blacks for those crimes.

However, the New York City Police Department reported that Blacks were suspects in 55% of thefts, 54 % of murders, and 49% of assaults. Yet, Black suspects made up 84% of their theft stories, 73% of their assault stories, and 74% of their murder stories. Consistent images that infer specific personality traits or characteristics of groups of people can be dangerous and re-enforce stereotypes and bias. When most people think about racism and bias, they often immediately defer to overt behaviors in which a person of color is called a racial slur or physically attacked. But covert and more subtle forms of bias exist and can be just as harmful.

Everyone has unconcious biases about other people that can impact their behavior. The Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for The Study of Race and Ethnicity defines implicit bias as, “attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.” These beliefs and assumptions, although subconscious and unknown, can impact behaviors, thoughts, and interactions just as much as conscious biases that a person is aware of. Similar to how explicit biases are formed, implicit biases are largely shaped by the images and messages that we receive – both directly and indirectly – about other people. These can be messages that a person does not necessarily agree with, but that still impacts how they view groups of people that differ from themselves. This is just one of the many problematic and dangerous consequences of inaccurate stereotypes and generalizations which depict Blacks as angry, violent, lazy, overly sexed, dangerous, and untrustworthy.

This issue can be conceptualized as having a cold. When sick with a cold or flu, a person might have symptoms that include coughing, sneezing, and a runny nose. After taking over the counter medication those symptoms may subside, but before long the medication will no longer be effective, and the symptoms will begin to present again until a second dose of cold medicine is taken. But, why? The root of the issue – the virus — is still present in the body. While cold medicine can be taken for a person to feel better temporarily until the core issue – the virus – is addressed the symptoms will continue to re-emerge.

So it is with police brutality and excessive force. Yes, it can be argued that some form of police reform is needed. Police reform can encompass a multitude of issues to include changes in training, protocol, and funding. But police brutality and excessive force targeted toward Blacks, although highly problematic and many times (sadly) deadly – is only a symptom of a much larger issue. Researchers suggest that members of the Black community will continue to experience these horrific incidents as long as Flintstone Vitamins are being used to treat the Bubonic Plague. That is, until we address the core reason why some police might be inclined to shot or kill a Black person without question or why a white person might inaccurately assume a Black person to be armed and/or dangerous — history will continue to repeat itself. Police brutality is not the issue. AntiBlack racism is.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.  Maia Niguel Hoskin