Psychologists say that America is going through what Carl Jung warned us would eventually happen -- a mass delusion

Nicole Karlis, Salon
December 15, 2021

Photo by DJ Paine on Unsplash

In 2020, 34 percent of Republicans and independents who lean to the right surveyed by Pew Research Center agreed that it was "probably" or "definitely true" that powerful people intentionally planned the COVID-19 outbreak. Eighteen percent of Democrats and left-leaners agreed, too. That same year, results from a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey found that approximately three-quarters of Republicans did not trust the 2020 presidential election results.

It should go without saying that these kinds of beliefs are fantasy, not rooted in any rational fact or evidence. Hence, someone observing from afar the rise in conspiratorial beliefs and pseudoscience might characterize a vast swath of the American public as delusional. From the COVID-truther movement to people believing the 2020 presidential election was rigged, it appears that the body politic is — to put it mildly — no longer on the same page.

Given the perturbed psychological state of so many Americans, it is worth asking if something is happening — psychologically speaking — that is causing many Americans to live in very different realities.

Psychologists say yes; and, moreover, that what is happening was actually predicted long ago by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Indeed, Jung once wrote that the demise of society wouldn't be a physical threat, but instead mass delusion — a collective psychosis of sorts.

"Carl Jung noted that 'the wolf inside' man was far more a threat to human existence than external forces," Dr. Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist and author of "Joy From Fear," told Salon. "When mental forces become so toxic as to harm our overall well-being on an individual and collective level a 'psychic epidemic' can result."

Indeed, Jung himself warned that modern society was prone to collapse due to a pandemic of "delusional ideas."

"Greater than all physical dangers are the tremendous effects of delusional ideas, which are yet denied all reality by our world-blinded consciousness," Jung wrote. "Our much vaunted reason and our boundlessly overestimated will are sometimes utterly powerless in the face of 'unreal' thoughts."

Notably, Jung believed that the United States was particularly prone to society-breaking delusions.

"Anything new should always be questioned and tested with caution, for it may very easily turn out to be only a new disease; that is why true progress is impossible without mature judgment," Jung wrote. "The man who is unconscious of the historical context and lets slip his link with the past is in constant danger of succumbing to the crazes and delusions engendered by all novelties."

Some psychologists believe that this is what the country is experiencing right now — more or less.

"Something's definitely happening, and I think COVID amplified it to a painful point, you could say," Katharine Bainbridge, a Jungian analyst, tells Salon.

But there are caveats. "It's complicated," Bainbridge said. "From the left's point of view, people that aren't being vaccinated or think the election was rigged are psychotic, right? If you're on the right, you think the left is psychotic and has lost its mind in identity politics. Both sides look at each other and say, 'you've lost your mind.'"

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the concept of a "mass psychosis" has been seized upon by conspiracy theorists as a rationale for their conspiracies. For instance, anti-vaccination influencers like Joseph Mercola employ the term to suggest that those who are getting vaccinated are the real "delusional" ones.

Bainbridge said in order to contextualize what's actually happening in America through a Jungian lens, one must consider the role of a central guiding myth.

"Jung said man cannot live without religion — so you make it up," Bainbridge said. "You can't not have a central myth to live by. He would say maybe in this time that we've lost that — we don't have a collective unifying principle."

Cultural theorists often describe the history of human civilization as one of a transition between different central guiding myths. In the Western world, Christianity undergirded everyday existence and society for over a thousand years. After the Renaissance, the central guiding myth became a belief in rationalism; then, in modernity, a belief that technology might improve the lot of all humans.

Though the phrase is often reviled, the postmodern era — which, roughly, began in the 1960s or 1970s depending on who you ask — merely means the cultural transition into an epoch into which there were no longer any fundamental guiding myths that unified human societies and drove progress. Such an era is, by its nature, more fractured socially; two humans plucked at random from a postmodern epoch might find themselves believing wildly different things about human society, progress and morality, with little in common.

Jung believed, Bainbridge explained, that people needed myths to live by — hence the importance of religion. Yet interestingly, there has been an ever-increasing number of Americans leaving organized religion. In return, many people — perhaps those who were never religious in the first place — have turned to New Age spiritual beliefs, which in some circles have curiously syncretized with the tenets of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon.

Bainbridge noted the contrast between New Age circles and QAnon in Jungian terms.

"One is super dark and apocalyptic and the other is utopian," Bainbridge said. "The problem with New Age thinking that is it leaves out the shadow — and then QAnon is obsessed with the shadow."

"Unfortunately, many people were gravitating toward conspiracy theories prior to the pandemic," Manly observed, "yet this trend has intensified during the pandemic due to surges in online time, anxiety, and feelings of helpless."

Manly connected this to Jung's "wolf within" idea. "Individuals and groups who perpetuate conspiracy theories are often intentionally 'feeding the wolf inside' masses of people — often with substantial negative mental health effects."

But why is this happening now? As Bainbridge noted, the coronavirus pandemic appears to have amplified existing rifts. Joe Kelly, a cult intervention specialist, also told Salon that humans are often drawn to extremism when they are suffering.

"If an individual is hurting — financially, on any level, losing a job, having trouble with their mortgage, having trouble feeding themselves — then they're more likely to listen to extremist ideologies and talk about a conspiracy around them that is beyond their control," Kelly said.

Social psychologists like Jung often see the government as a stand-in for authority figures like parents. Indeed, Bainbridge said, one might analogize the draw to conspiracy theories and New Age religions as children acting out when their "parents" (meaning, the state) are not taking care of them properly.

"If the parent isn't taking care of a child, then the child acts out, right? The child is angry because it's not getting its needs met," Bainbridge said. "And there are lots of people, like left-progressives, who asked: 'How did Trump get elected?' But once you really look into it, you're like, that was obvious because there's a huge part of America that's in between New York and LA, and those people are fed up and they feel forgotten."

Bainbridge says the way out of this conundrum, from a Jungian perspective, is to embrace humanism and empathy.

"We have to find our humanity, and [ask], 'what does it mean to be a human being?'" Bainbridge said. "It means that you have to integrate your own darkness, wrestle with your own paradoxes and stop projecting out onto other people the opposite inside of you."

Bainbridge added: "There are no simple answers. But we have to hold on to our own humanity, instead of projecting out and demonizing other people. That's how we survive."

Red Book By Carl Gustav Jung : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Steppenwolf (netdna-ssl.com) HERMAN HESSE

BEWARE OF GATORS

Storm drains keep swallowing people during floods
Pro Publica
December 15, 2021

Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash

On the night of Sept. 1, Dhanush Reddy and his fiancee, Kavya Mandli, were returning home from a North Jersey mall when the remains of Hurricane Ida turned their drive perilous.

Rain pounded down, soaking the streets with so much water that cars stalled and police shut down traffic. They felt their own car rattling, and they abandoned it in a nearby lot. Deciding they’d walk to safer ground where Mandli’s brother could pick them up, they waded hand-in-hand into murky water “until we reached the middle point of the road,” Mandli recalled, “where it just sucked us both inside.”

They were both suddenly underwater, being pulled toward a large black vacuum that seemed to be guzzling anything and everything into its wide, open mouth. Mandli managed to grab part of a bridge railing, but Reddy clutched only her hand. She shouted for help as she tried to wrest her fiance from the vortex. But it was just too wet, too slippery. Reddy disappeared. Mandli was left holding his empty jacket.

As South Plainfield police searched for Reddy, who had been sucked into a 3-foot-wide stormwater drainage pipe that ran underground, they looked where they thought it might spit him out, on the other side of the road. Mandli’s heart jumped when they told her they found a man hanging from a tree branch and calling for help.

But it was 18-year-old Kevin Rivera, who had also been pulled into a drainage pipe. “I was completely underwater,” he told ProPublica. “I couldn’t grab a grip to hold on to anything. I just covered my head with my arms and just sort of tried to ride it out till I came out on the other side or maybe got a little gasp of air.”

Reddy’s body was found the next day in a wooded area, blocks away from where he got pulled in. The engineer and construction project manager was dead at 31.

During the same storm, in the same state, three others died the same way.

There’s no official count of how many Americans get pulled into storm drains, pipes or culverts during flood events, but ProPublica identified 35 such cases since 2015 using news accounts and court records. Twenty-one of those people died; nearly half of those lost were children. Thirteen of the deaths happened in the past three years alone. The numbers are likely an undercount, since reports of flood deaths often don’t give details other than the fact that someone was swept away.

Despite records of horrific cases that span the country and stretch back decades — and the scientific consensus that climate change will only worsen flooding — federal, state and local government agencies have failed to take simple steps to prevent such tragedies from happening, ProPublica found, after more than a dozen interviews with government officials, engineers and weather experts, as well as a review of documents including death investigations, government meeting minutes and emails, and academic papers. Officials are not surveying the nation’s aging stormwater drainage systems, which are being taxed beyond capacity by record downpours, to flag openings that could pose a hazard and install grates to prevent people from being sucked in.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an arm of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has recommended these steps, but it has no authority to compel cities or counties to act on that advice. It issued two reports on storm drain hazards after the near-identical deaths of firefighters during flood rescues. The first died in 2000. The second died in 2015. The first report did not reach the officials who could have prevented the second death.

ProPublica found instances in which local and state governments knew about a hazard but didn’t secure it. A man who died on the same night as Reddy, in Maplewood, New Jersey, was among a group of neighbors who had warned town and state officials that a storm pipe near their homes was dangerous; the man was pulled into the large opening while trying to clear out debris. That same night, in Passaic, New Jersey, two college students were sucked into the very same drain where, just one year earlier, a DoorDash driver had been pulled in. She had been dumped into a river and survived; they were expelled into the same river, but they died.

Some local and state government leaders have pushed back against recommendations to put in grates; they can be expensive to install, they trap debris and they can make flooding worse, opponents said. People can also become pinned to them and drown. But other municipal leaders and engineers said these problems can be overcome by using angled grates that provide victims an escape, and by investing in maintenance schedules so that covered drains don’t get clogged.

“It’s life or death,” said Ken MacKenzie, the executive director of Denver’s Mile High Flood District, who has for years tried to rally officials across the country to install grates and address the problem. He worked up his own count of deaths from 1996 to 2015, and he tallied at least 20 lives lost during that period. “It’s a hidden danger in nearly every community. And yes, it might cost a couple thousand dollars. But it’s worth it to not kill someone’s child in a culvert.”

Stormwater drainage is the type of infrastructure that people rarely think about until water is rushing down the road and cars are floating away. But when you walk around your neighborhood, you’ll see evidence of these systems all around you, from the small openings that run along curbs to larger pipes and culverts designed to channel rainwater into local waterways, retention ponds or stormwater treatment facilities. These systems are built to handle only so much water, and when the amount of rain exceeds the system’s capacity, it can lead to dangerous flooding in unexpected locations.

Many of these drainage systems were built decades ago and are designed based on historical rainfall data, which was used to help predict what capacity the systems should be able to handle. But Marouane Temimi, an associate professor at Stevens Institute of Technology who researches rainfall and flooding, said those predictions rely on one big assumption: “That the climate will continue to behave the same way it has been behaving for decades now,” he said. “If the climate changes — that’s what we are witnessing — then the past is no longer a good guide for the future.”

In the Northeast, for example, the amount of rainfall from heavy events increased by more than 70% from 1958 to 2010. Ida unleashed record-breaking rainfall on the region this year. So did the remnants of last year’s Hurricane Isaias, during which at least three good Samaritans were pulled into a culvert in Hockessin, Delaware, while trying to rescue a man trapped in his flooded car, and a 16-year-old boy in Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania, watched a 6-year-old boy get sucked into a pipe and went in after him. They all survived.

The higher the floodwater, and the more of it that’s rushing toward a culvert or pipe in a maxed-out drainage system, the more dangerous the conditions can get. To get a sense of how much force can be in play at the entrance of these pipes, consider that every cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds. So if someone is standing in 4 feet of water, that’s nearly 250 pounds of force. “And that's not including any velocity that's heading toward the pipe,” said MacKenzie, the Denver flood district director. “And so if you have a full-grown man at maybe 200 pounds, he’s up against 250 pounds of water pressure pushing into the inlet of that pipe.”

Rainfall has also increased in St. Louis in the past decade, said Jim Sieveking, a science and operations officer for the National Weather Service who’s based in the area. The city is particularly at risk for flooding because the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers converge around the same region, and urban sprawl and development have reduced the amount of permeable land that can absorb excess water. “We’ve seen our fair share of flooding in these past years,” he said.

On July 10 near St. Louis, Aaleya Carter and her family were on their way home after seeing the latest Fast and Furious movie. It was Aaleya’s birthday celebration. She had just turned 12.

There were heavy rains and thunderstorms that night as her aunt drove a small SUV along Interstate 70. The aunt spotted a flooded area in the road and turned around, but the wind and the slippery conditions made the car slide down an embankment toward a drainage culvert, which was filling with water.

Bridgette Carter, Aaleya’s mom, had to think and move quickly. Her three babies — including Skylar, 8, and Carter, 6 — were in the back seat, and water was starting to pour into the car. “My first instinct was to get out the car because the doors weren't opening,” Bridgette said.

It was a frantic rush to unbuckle all of the children and then climb out of the front driver’s side window, the only one that would open. While Bridgette was placing her two youngest on a roadway that was safely out of the water, Aaleya was clinging to the vehicle. “I was reaching for Leya,” the mother said. “And it swept her in the drain. The current was so strong.”

Aaleya, a goofy, funny kid who loved making TikTok videos and often helped her mom get dinner ready, was found a few hours later in a tree near a creek where the drainage pipe emptied. She had drowned.

Missouri’s Department of Transportation is responsible for the drain that Aaleya was pulled through. It was last updated in 1975. State officials wouldn’t say whether they have ever reviewed drains to determine if some should have safety measures like warning signs and grates. They pointed ProPublica to the Federal Highway Administration, which couldn’t name an instance when it had done such a safety evaluation, but noted that states have the autonomy to determine whether a grate is needed and to place flood warning and depth gauge signs at drains.

The loss of Aaleya was so unbearable that Bridgette decided to move her family to McKinney, Texas. “It’s hard,” she said in a conversation punctuated by tears. “It’s too much. … Everything just reminds me of my baby.”

The danger that large pipes and culverts pose to people during floods is not unknown to the federal government. NIOSH, the occupational safety arm of the CDC, issued a key recommendation two decades ago that could have saved lives. It came after a tragedy in Denver.

On Aug. 17, 2000, the city was drenched with up to 3 and a half inches of rain, causing flooding. Firefighter Robert Crump and his partner got an alert about a woman in distress. The water surrounding the woman appeared to be about waist deep. The firefighters didn’t know she was standing on the edge of a culvert near 10 feet of water. Crump’s partner, Will Roberts, jumped into the water to save the woman and was pulled under the surface by the drainage vacuum. Crump jumped in after his partner and was able to pull him to safety.

While his partner was trying to tie a cord to himself to attempt another rescue, Crump plunged back into the water to save the woman. He was pulled into the open drainage system that runs under the road. His body was found hours later, several blocks away from where he went missing.

NIOSH investigated Crump’s death and, in 2002, issued a report with recommendations for cities everywhere to prevent similar accidents, holding up as an example what it said Denver had done in the aftermath: covered the drainage pipe with a grate and then identified all similar open sewers, drains and culverts to start planning for more possible grates. (When contacted by ProPublica, Denver officials couldn’t find those records or say how much of that they wound up doing.)

Fifteen years after Crump died, another firefighter died after being pulled into an open drainage pipe during heavy rains, this time in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Jason Farley and his colleagues were wading through floodwater while trying to rescue people trapped in their homes when he stepped into a catch basin and was pulled into a drainage pipe. Another firefighter jumped in after him and was also pulled in. The other firefighter traveled almost 280 feet through the pipe and was expelled into a creek. Farley got tangled up in the pipe and drowned.

NIOSH once again released an investigative report, with recommendations that echoed those it had issued after Crump’s death: Government agencies should consider requirements for “identifying, marking, and guarding underground storm drains,” the report said. Sean Douglas, chief of the Claremore Fire Department, had requested that NIOSH investigate Farley’s death. He said he sees NIOSH reports from time to time in trade journals and firefighter magazines, but that he hadn’t seen the Denver report or its recommendations. “They’re not really in front of everybody all the time,” he said of the reports. “A lot of fire departments may not even talk to other fire departments, let alone an appendage of the CDC.”

A spokesperson with NIOSH said they post the reports on their website and send them out to 79,000 announcement and newsletter subscribers. The spokesperson also said that the group’s investigations have contributed to important safety improvements for firefighters. But fire agencies aren’t responsible for the stormwater drainage reforms that NIOSH proposed; city and county public works managers usually are. ProPublica could identify no federal agency set up to inform local officials directly of these safety hazards and recommendations.

At the spot where Farley died, Claremore put up guardrails but opted against a grate, out of a concern that people would get pinned against it during a flood, but also because it would need extra maintenance to keep it free from debris that could stop water from flowing in. Douglas said the city has identified areas prone to flooding, cleared out debris before and after storms, raised awareness of the hazards through signs and instituted road closures in problem areas. He said he continues to work with the city to install more markings of the open drains and where they may lead, and Garrett Ball, the city’s engineer, said Claremore began mapping its storm drain system, an effort he hopes will be completed in the next year or two.

A few communities have aggressively tackled storm drain safety in reforms that followed tragedy. Bolingbrook, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, reviewed more than 40 storm drain inlets and grated some of them after a 6-year-old boy was pulled into one and drowned in 1998; the community also settled a lawsuit with the boy’s family for $2.8 million.

And Cedar Rapids, Iowa, evaluated 18 inlets and decided to place grates at 15 sites, some of which were large culverts.

The city embarked on the improvements after Logan Blake, 17, was swept into a culvert in 2014 when he went after a Frisbee during heavy rains. Logan’s friend jumped in the water to attempt to save him and was also pulled into the drain. The two teenagers traveled more than a mile and a half through the drainage pipe before being dumped into Cedar Lake. Logan’s friend survived and was able to walk to a nearby hospital. Logan’s body was found about 19 hours later.

Instead of suing, the teen’s family reached an agreement with the city to ensure it would invest in safety upgrades so that another child wouldn’t die, said Mark Blake, Logan’s father. “We just wanted them to fix one at that time,” he said. “And they came up with a plan to fix three right away because they had two other ones right next to schools in the same exact situation.”

For guidance on how to evaluate which inlets needed safety grates and which needed less aggressive improvements, Mark Blake and the Cedar Rapids officials turned to MacKenzie, whose Denver district had developed a set of criteria for reviewing the safety of open inlets. They would assess the length of pipe, size of the pipe’s entrances, whether there were bends and turns in the pipe, and its proximity to schools and parks.

Cedar Rapids also used the Mile High Flood District’s latest design for grates that are installed at an angle, which are meant to prevent people from being pinned against them during a flood. “And the idea is that the bars would be spaced tightly enough that somebody couldn’t get in there, but they could also act as a ladder or a walkway for someone to get out,” said David Wallace, Cedar Rapids’ utilities engineering manager. For larger culverts, ones that Wallace said were simply impractical to grate, the city put up fencing and signage warning people of the danger during floods.

Cedar Rapids has put grates on 11 drains, with four more expected to be completed by the end of 2022. The city expects to spend a total of about $700,000 on the 15 locations. Flooding caused by debris clogs is a risk, Wallace said, but it can be remedied with a consistent maintenance plan. The city’s teams go out after every rain to pull debris from the grates. It takes one workday for two crews of three people with a backhoe to clear the debris after big storms. They have to do that several times a year, Wallace said. With the diligent maintenance schedule, the grates have not added any additional flooding.

“The idea is to prevent the tragedy that we had here,” Wallace said. “So sure, it adds to the maintenance activities and adds some costs that we otherwise wouldn’t have had to do, but the idea is to prevent what happened. … It’s just a safety, prevention measure that we think is necessary.”

The Mile High Flood District, Colorado’s Larimer County Dive Rescue Team, Colorado State University’s Hydraulics Lab and the engineering company AECOM have been researching how people are injured or killed in drainpipes and have been working on grate designs for different pipe and culvert configurations. The group created a physical model at the university to test its research in simulated flood waters. Part of the team’s work looks into pitch angles, bar spacing and how far away from the pipe entrance a grate should be placed — all aimed at making grates safer and less expensive. The group plans to release detailed data from its work at the World Environmental and Water Resources Congress conference in June. “What we found is really going to allow us to make the grates smaller, which will really bring down the cost,” said Holly Piza, an engineer for the Mile High Flood District. “Which is great because then local governments and municipalities will be more likely to put in safety grates where they’re appropriate.”

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act includes funding that could help communities upgrade their drainage systems’ capacity and safety. More than $50 billion in new spending from the bill will go to drinking water, wastewater and stormwater investments over 10 years. A spokesperson with the Environmental Protection Agency told ProPublica that $1.9 billion of that money was going to the Clean Water program, which allows awarded communities to install grates in addition to making other upgrades.

The storm drain accidents recorded across New Jersey during Ida show just how preventable these deaths can be.

Residents of Maple Terrace in the town of Maplewood had been complaining for years about the dangerous and inadequate drainage structure there, a 48-inch pipe sitting on three properties, one on the north side of the street and on two on the south side. Patrick Jeffrey and his wife, Beth, who lived next to one of those homes, had been among those voicing concerns. The flooding caused by the pipe routinely spilled into their yard, and they worried its large opening could be dangerous to adults walking around it or children playing near it.

Over the years, a group of the neighborhood dads developed a routine before and during rainstorms: They’d work together to remove debris from the two inlets to try to keep the flooding down. On Sept. 1, Patrick Jeffrey was doing what he always did; a neighbor was going to meet him near the inlet and help remove debris. But when the neighbor arrived at the hole, he couldn’t find Jeffrey. Fred Meyer, who lived across the street from Jeffrey, joined the search effort.

“There was like a 360-degree waterfall … charging down this hole. There was water everywhere,” said Meyer. “It was terrifying.”

The next morning, Jeffrey’s body was found along a neighboring roadway. He had been pulled into the drainage system and emerged out of a manhole. The father of two, who worked as a vice president and portfolio manager at U.S. Bank in New York, was 55.

“We were always thinking that a kid might fall into this thing,” said Meyer, Jeffrey’s neighbor. “I never thought something would happen to an adult and I never thought it would be someone dying. I still can’t believe it happened. The absolute worst thing that could possibly happen in this scenario actually has.”

One year earlier, in Pennsylvania’s Sewickley Township, a 38-year-old man died the exact same way, trying to clear debris from a pipe in his backyard.

Transcripts from Maplewood town meetings show residents had been asking since at least 2018 for the area where Jeffrey fell to be replaced by an underground pipe, but town leadership was resistant to the idea at the time. When town officials eventually came around to it, officials with New Jersey’s environmental department were against it because they said the area had a natural waterway designation that prevented such a move, according to emails. Had the problem been dealt with years ago, Meyer said, there would have been no open pipe for Jeffrey to remove debris from. He’d be alive to coach his son’s flag football team and cheer on his daughter’s softball team.

After Jeffrey’s death, state officials gave the town permission to install grates over the pipe and said they would grant an exemption that would allow the town to replace the area with an underground pipe, according to meeting minutes. The state didn’t directly answer ProPublica’s questions about why its officials had changed their minds, but in reference to the grates, a spokesperson told ProPublica the state and the town agreed that Maplewood would ask for permission to install the grates to “address the immediate concern for safety.”

The city of Passaic, too, had discussed a dangerous drain before best friends Nidhi Rana, 18, and Ayush Rana (no relation), 21, abandoned their flooded-out car and died after being sucked into the drain during Ida. In July 2020, DoorDash driver Nathalia Bruno had wound up in the same drain but survived after she fled her car during a flash flood.

Bruno recounted her harrowing story in news accounts, and city officials talked about grates and warning signs. But city engineers said that a grate would become clogged, leading to more flooding, and that people might get pinned to them. Mayor Hector Lora also said property owners voiced concerns about permanent flash flood warning signage because of what it could do to property values. Instead, the city focused on strengthening its barricades and moving them further away from problem areas. It also rolled out temporary LED warning signs with each heavy rain and began pursuing grants to elevate the roadway.

Lora said there wasn’t pressure for more urgent reforms back then because Bruno “miraculously survived.”

When asked if there was anything the city could have done more immediately after Bruno’s accident that could have helped save the two friends who later died, Lora said he believes the city did the best it could with the information it had and that no one could have planned or prepared for the devastation brought by Ida. “I think we did everything that municipalities are supposed to do,” he said. “Sometimes crisis and tragedy become the genesis for good policy and initiatives that come later.”

The city is now moving with more urgency, Lora said. He hadn’t heard of the idea of putting grates at an angle, but after speaking with ProPublica and being shown examples of the Denver design, Lora said he has asked his engineers to review the new model. “The tragedy compels me to explore every option,” he said. Officials with MacKenzie’s team in Denver reviewed an image of the Passaic culvert and said their early assessment is that a safe grate could be designed for the location.

Permanent warning signs have also been put in place near the culvert, and the city is pursuing grants to buy a sign that will monitor water depth and alert police and the fire department when it reaches a certain height. Lora is also looking for funds to surround the culvert with a large fence that curves at the top.

As for the pipes in South Plainfield, where Dhanush Reddy and Kevin Rivera were pulled in, it’s not clear if there are plans to do anything; Middlesex County officials, who are responsible for the maintenance of the pipes, declined to answer ProPublica’s questions.

Kavya Mandli no longer lives in New Jersey. She moved to the Atlanta area after the death of her fiance. “My life just went upside down since then,” she said. “I’m still really figuring out what to do. I had to move away from that place because I really couldn’t be myself there anymore.”

She hasn’t escaped the reminders of her loss. There was the trip they were supposed to take to Puerto Rico, two days after his death. There was what would have been his birthday gift — tickets she’d already bought to his first-ever Formula 1 race in October. Then there is their white labrador, Kush, whose name is a combination of their own first names. They were trying to get home to him quickly on Sept. 1; Reddy knew Kush would be frightened by the weather.

Every day, when Reddy got home from work, Kush would run toward the door and the two would tussle like kids. “Kush is so huge, he’s like 90 pounds, but Dhanush just picks him up like a baby and rocks him,” Mandli said.

“I sometimes think, ‘It’s around 5 o’clock, maybe he’ll come home.’”

 Patriot Front/Telegram

‘These people have really come to support us’: Leaked audio reveals white supremacists’ partnership with prominent anti-abortion movement

An antifascist group infiltrated Patriot Front and leaked its meeting.

 

Claire Goforth

 

Tech

 

Published Dec 14, 2021   

Audio reportedly leaked from a recent Patriot Front meeting reveals the white nationalist group’s inner workings. During the meeting, Patriot Front’s purported founder also claimed that they’ve garnered support from people who attend events by the anti-choice group March for Life

Patriot Front is a far-right racist group led by Thomas Rousseau, a man in his early twenties with a fondness for cowboy hats and rules.

The audio reveals how organized and image-conscious the group is. It demonstrates that it endeavors to hide its extremism and racism to attract new members and broaden its appeal even as top leadership approves its racist acts. If what Patriot Front says on the leaked audio is true, these methods are successful.

Atlanta Antifascists, which posted the leaked footage, said, “Patriot Front’s leader approves its racist vandalism from the top.”

In a direct message to the Daily Dot sent via Twitter, Atlanta Antifascists characterized the meeting as “an excruciating 50 minutes from the most micro-managerial white power group in the [United States].”

Patriot Front splintered from the ideologically similar American Vanguard after the man who murdered Heather Heyer was seen carrying an American Vanguard shield at the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017, the Anti-Defamation League reports.

In 2019, ProPublica described Patriot Front as among the most active white supremacist groups in America. At the time, the group had an estimated 300 active members, ProPublica reported.

It’s not clear how many members Patriot Front currently has. More than 100 marched in Washington, D.C. earlier this month carrying banners reading “reclaim America” and “life, liberty, victory,” both slogans which appear on its website. Its Telegram channel has 15,000 subscribers.

Patriot Front is mostly known for spreading propaganda, demonstrating, and defacing anti-racist murals and displays. However, some members, including Rousseau, have been arrested on charges ranging from assaulting a police officer to vandalism

The group lays out its mission in a lengthy manifesto. It claims that America is run by tyrants and implies civil war is the only solution. “Democracy has failed this once great nation,” it states. “The resurgence of the American Spirit will bring with it the death of tyranny. The torch of revolution has been lit.” Its racist overtones are plain. “When our pre-Columbian forefathers left their European homes, they found a savage continent.”

Later, it reads, “To be an American is to be a descendant of conquerors, pioneers, visionaries, and explorers. This unique identity was given to us by our ancestors, and this national spirit remains firmly rooted in our blood.”

A previous version of the manifesto was more overtly racist. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that it stated, “An African may have lived, worked, and even been classed as a citizen in America for centuries, yet he is not American.”

The leaked audio, first posted by Atlanta Antifascists, is reportedly from Patriot Front’s Dec. 10 meeting. The group claims that Patriot Front has been infiltrated. Atlanta Antifascist wrote that the meeting audio was “brought to you by the antifascists in your chat.”

brought to you by the

antifascists in your chat:

Patriot Failurehttps://t.co/cNDp4ERoBI— Atlanta Antifascists (@afainatl)December 11, 2021ement

Patriot Front didn’t respond to a request to verify the audio’s authenticity sent on Monday via a form on its website for new members to sign up. It also hasn’t posted about being infiltrated on its social media channels.

The meeting was run by Rousseau or someone with an identical, distinctive voice. They talked about the recent march in Washington, D.C., plans for 2022, vetting new members, and being careful about their data and public acts.

Patriot Front has a reputation for being more image-conscious than other extremist groups. To appear more palatable, it attempts to somewhat mask its racism and antisemitism. Accordingly, it’s more strategic about group actions and insistent on maintaining the chain of command.

When someone said a racial slur and others laughingly repeated “N-word” during the meeting, the person who’s presumably Rousseau admonished them, “Do not break the discussion conduct guide. Exercise proper conduct at all times.

Not using racial slurs—in public, at least—is part of its strategy to be more acceptable.

Per the meeting, Rousseau and his top lieutenants give advanced approval of its racist acts of vandalism, one of Patriot Front’s preferred methods of spreading its message.

“When it comes to large scale mural coverups make sure you are always consulting a director for something like that or you are consulting me,” the man who’s presumably Rousseau said.

“… As the activism becomes higher in risk or scale, the more you need to get consultation. Things like billboards, big murals, you want to be careful, you want to run it by me.”

It’s Going Down, which serves as an online community center for various antifascist, anarchist, and anti-capitalist groups in the United States, characterized the leaked audio as both revealing and alarming.

“Patriot Front actions, such as the recent targeting of a Hmong Cultural Center in St. Paul; the George Floyd statue in New York; and Pride Centers, synagogues, and Black Lives Matter murals across the US, show that while the group presents itself as orderly and law abiding, its actions pull directly from the KKK playbook,” It’s Going Down told the Daily Dot via Twitter direct message.

When a Hmong center in Minnesota was defaced in September, local outlets report that the vandals had painted slogans associated with Patriot Front. Also in September, Essence reported that Patriot Front defaced Black Lives Matter murals in Michigan. Last June, the New York Times reported that a statue of George Floyd was graffitied with a symbol associated with the group. And in 2019, the Burlington Free Press reported that a gay pride center and synagogue in Vermont were plastered with posters linked to Patriot Front, quoting sources who described it as a “white nationalist hate group.”

During the meeting, members were instructed to delete all electronic records, such as chats and photos, of their recent march in Washington, D.C. to make sure “there is no digital footprint.” This is an apparent preventive measure to protect their identities and mask their true purpose and beliefs. They were told that the group had enough materials to create posters and other materials, but to send anything that might be helpful before they deleted it.

They further characterized the march as a success in terms of getting its message out to potential sympathizers.

The march was widely derided online, and not just for Patriot Front’s racism and its message to “reclaim America.” Many viewed masked men marching around in khaki pants and blue tops as rather ridiculous.

A viral video described their matching outfits, masks, and shields as “Ku Klux Klan bitch but it’s at Best Buy.”

Getting our outfits ready for the function at the Lincoln Memorial https://t.co/u45IuAOH2t pic.twitter.com/6BCdrIaMmr— Vinny Thomas (@vinn_ayy)December 5, 2021

It’s Going Down said that the audio contradicts claims made by conservatives that the march was actually conducted by federal officials masquerading as extremists. People on the right, including powerful politicians, have falsely claimed that the feds were behind acts such as this and the Capitol riot.

“While a large section of the Right has attempted to paint Patriot Front as ‘feds,’ following their recent debacle of a rally in D.C., in reality they represent one of the largest white nationalist groups in the U.S.; that like the Groypers led by Nick Fuentes, who has been embraced by several Republicans, are keen to push and influence the MAGA movement into an increasingly fascist trajectory,” It’s Going Down said.

Hierarchy and adherence to Patriot Front’s rules and standards were discussed extensively at the meeting.

According to their discussion, the group is organized into territories, each with directors who report to Rousseau. There are also “scribes,” a “quarter master,” and one person who serves in the dual roles of interview and photo coordinator who’s in charge of vetting recruits and capturing images for posters and other marketing materials, respectively. Another member creates what they refer to as “propaganda videos.”

As a means of safeguarding their identities, even on a call that’s supposedly only for members, each was referred to by a first name (all were male) and state of origin, for example “John Utah” and “Walter Idaho.”

Atlanta Antifascists isn’t convinced that Patriot Front’s efforts to conceal its true purpose and members’ identities are effective. “Despite Thomas Rousseau’s assurances that all security issues have been taken care of… well, LMAO,” it told the Daily Dot.

On multiple occasions, the man who is reportedly Rousseau scolded members for leaving their microphones on, telling jokes, or failing to clap at the proper interval for the appropriate length of time.

Let's review some key points from Patriot Front's latest private meeting, shall we?

It sounds like they experienced some disruptions at their D.C. march last weekend,

causing them to postpone their awards ceremony.

Also, Thomas has pretty strict rules about clapping. pic.twitter.com/2s78g10skB— 

Front Range Antifascists (@FrontRangeAFA) 

December 11, 2021

During another portion of the meeting, he claimed that the group’s visibility is on the rise. He said hundreds have recently applied to join.

One of the first items on its 2022 agenda, according to the meeting, is the annual March for Life on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade next month. Patriot Front has purportedly been participating in these anti-choice events for several years. Its Odysee platform includes a video from one such event.

The individual who’s presumably Rousseau indicated that they’re welcome at the March for Life.

“These people at the March for Life events have really come to support us over the years and because of the last year’s cancellations of these events, we are expecting even larger crowds of supportive individuals,” he said.

It’s Going Down characterized an alliance between March for Life and Patriot Front as “concerning,” though not particularly surprising.

March for Life didn’t respond to a request for comment sent via direct message on Twitter Monday afternoon.

“With attacks on reproductive freedom and health ramping up across the U.S., this shows that not only is misogyny and patriarchy a core feature within fascism, but also that seemingly conservative forces are finding common cause with street-level white supremacist groups with long histories of violence and targeted attacks,” It’s Going Down told the Daily Dot.

In spite of Patriot Front’s efforts to disguise their beliefs and identities alike, the leaked audio offers clues about how the group operates and what it really believes.

“The best info to glean from this call is the hierarchy and discipline of Patriot Front members, the overt racism, and the willingness to work with more mainstream right-wing groups from which Patriot Front can recruit.”

 

I Have No Doubt He Will Die if Extradited to US, Julian Assange's Brother Says

1 hour ago (Updated: 1 hour ago)

© AFP 2021 / JOHN THYS

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing new uncertainties after the UK's High Court ruled last Friday that he could be extradited to the US. "I have no doubt he will die [if extradited to the US]," said Assange's brother Gabriel Shipton in an exclusive interview with Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen.

Assange's fiancée revealed to the media that he suffered a stroke in prison in October due to stress over his future. What does the family plan to do next? How did the US administration disappoint the family? Shipton shared his thoughts with the Global Times.

GT: When was the last time you saw him? How was his condition?

Gabriel Shipton: The last time I saw Julian was in Belmarsh maximum-security prison just outside of London. And that was in October last year when I was last in the UK. His condition at that time I think he had almost been in that prison for two years. So it was taking its toll on him. Over the years when I go and visit him, whether it's in the Ecuadorian embassy or the prison, you can see what effect it's having on him.

This sort of pressure that he is under is really taking its toll on his health. He just had a mini-stroke during the appeal hearing in October. His health is progressively getting worse and we sort of live in fear that he won't survive this ordeal.

(FILES) In this file photo taken on May 19, 2017, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks on the balcony of the Embassy of Ecuador in London

© AFP 2021 / DANIEL LEAL

GT: How did you feel when you heard the latest ruling that he could be extradited to the US? Is the fear that Julian may choose to die by suicide haunting you more?

Gabriel Shipton: Yes, it certainly does. I hope he can survive. He's very strong and he's very determined. I think the extradition approval that was given by the high court - we're gonna fight it. Julian is going to appeal. He has until December 24 to lodge an appeal to the Supreme Court in the UK but I think we can't rely on the UK courts anymore. I think the chances of winning are very slim. One of the justices who approved the extradition on Friday (December 10) was the chief justice of England and Wales. So he is the most senior judge in the whole of the UK and that's his decision to grant the extradition.

So any appeal to the Supreme Court will have to take that into account that they will have to rule against the most senior judge in the UK. So it's really up to the US and the Biden administration to let this attack on press freedoms and attack on journalism go.

GT: Besides the appeal, what else do you plan to do?

Gabriel Shipton: We are campaigning now around the world for Julian's release. I'm here in the US in New York City today and I'll be in Washington, DC tomorrow, advocating for Julian's release. I'm doing media here. We have many avenues of the campaign that is going on. I was just at a protest action outside the UK consulate here in New York, where there were many people, celebrities, lots of media. So there's renewed attention on Julian's persecution now, and we're taking advantage of that and building momentum for a campaign to free him.

GT: What could happen to Julian if he is extradited to the US?

Gabriel Shipton:I have no doubt that he will die. If he is extradited in the US prison system, they cannot keep their prisoners safe. You just have to look at what happened to other high-profile prisoners like Jeffrey Epstein. He cannot be kept safe in the US prison [system]. And I don't think we can assume that they can look after him or keep him safe from the forces that are trying to keep him in prison now.

We saw in September revelations coming from investigative reporters in Washington that there were plots from within the CIA to kidnap or kill Julian when he was in the Ecuadorian embassy. I think those plots haven't really gone away. There're still those factions within the American intelligence that want to see Julian dead. That's what I feel will happen if he gets extradited to the US.

Free Assange No US Extradition Poster at Woolwich Crown Court/Belmarsh pro Assange Rally

CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO / Mohamed Elmaazi /

GT: You tried to lobby the Biden administration when it was just about to take office. Did it disappoint you more when you dealt with it?

Gabriel Shipton: There was a time when people post-Trump thought that maybe Biden would let this go, maybe the Biden administration would revert to the position of the Obama administration where they found that they couldn't prosecute Julian without also prosecuting The New York Times.

So there was a bit of an expectation that the Biden administration might revert back to that position. And we did have some early contact with the administration. But after the inauguration on January 20, we had no more contact with them. And shortly after that, they announced that they would be pursuing this prosecution.

With the Biden administration, we've seen with the "democracy summit" last week, they are talking the talk when it comes to press freedom. They're using press freedom to lecture other countries and talk to other countries about press freedom in their country when they are holding a publisher and journalist in prison. Julian is in prison only at the request of the US DOJ (Department of Justice) and they have also requested that he not be given bail.

The Biden administration has an opportunity now to show the world how serious they actually are about press freedom. And it's not just hot air that they're talking about press freedoms and lecturing other nations on press freedoms, and that they're actually serious about press freedoms, and they should just let Julian go. And that is a way that they can show the world that they are actually serious about press freedom. They're not just lecturing other countries about it.

I see the Chinese foreign affairs spokesperson today (Monday) come out with a tweet saying that if the Biden administration wants to lecture people on press freedoms and they should let Julian Assange go. I think those sorts of things are going to increase over time. Nations and states around the world are going to say to the USA you can't say anything to us because look what you're doing to Julian Assange.

Supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, hold placards outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on December 10, 2021.

© NIKLAS HALLE'N

GT: What do you expect from the Australian government? If it steps in, will it make a difference?

Gabriel Shipton: I think so. Australia - they just have this AUKUS agreement in place. So Australia is an ally of the US, so Australia can turn around and say, hey, we're one of your allies. Just let this go, let our man come home to be with his family. Just yesterday (Sunday) the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia Barnaby Joyce called for the extradition of Julian Assange not to go ahead.

That's an encouraging sign that maybe the Australian government might do something here, or at least the deputy prime minister is on the side of Julian and sees that this is a problem, a problem that US law can be applied to anywhere. It can be applied to any of the allied countries - the extraterritorial reach of US law. I think that's a big problem and Barnaby Joyce sees that problem.

We even saw Meng Wanzhou in Canada. She is the CFO of Huawei. The US used the extradition treaties with Canada to hold her captive. So we can see it happening time and time again. The US is using these unfair extradition treaties to pursue people whom they don't agree with politically.

I think it's an opportunity for Australia to tell the US - its biggest ally - that they want Julian to be free. Australia should use its alliance in it for its favour rather than just take orders from the US. Australia is an important strategic ally of the US and we should be respected as such, and we should be listened to when it comes to our citizens.

GT: Some believe Julian's case is the result of the connivance of Western governments that cannot tolerate the truth, which shows the decline of the West. What do you think?

Gabriel Shipton: What we're seeing with Julian's persecution is that if you expose the crimes of a government, or if you expose torture, or if you expose the corruption of the government, you are going to be punished. What the US DOJ is attempting to do is to make telling the truth illegal.

I think when you look at a government that does that, you start to think, well, is this a democracy? Am I living in a democracy if I don't know what the government is doing in my name? What does my vote mean? Is it just a performance that we do every four years? Voting if we don't really know what our votes are voting for or where our tax money is going? I think this Julian persecution strikes at the very heart of what we believe our democracies are. So we need to stop it and sort of rebuild and stop this descent into barbarity that is happening in the West.

J. Assange in Prison Belmarsh in London

© Ruptly . Ruptly

 / 

Go to the photo bank

GT: Besides some news reports from US media about the process of Julian's case, few made the call to free him. What do you think of the US mainstream media's reaction to this case?

Gabriel Shipton: They could always do more. What is their stake here is their rights as well. So they should be coming to defend the defence of Julian. They're getting better and some are reporting on it more. But they can always do more and they need to realise that really, this is their business that's under attack here. If journalism is a crime, then how can I do business? What we've been saying since the last 10 years is mainstream media has been losing its audience and so they need to take a long hard look at themselves and say, what is their function in a democratic society?

GT: Have you imagined what you will do if Julian is set free? What is his wish?

Gabriel Shipton: I would imagine Julian coming up for Christmas this year would be good. I think if he gets out, he's going to need some time to recuperate, to sort of rehabilitate himself after this ordeal.

I hope he has some time to spend quiet time with his family, with his children and his fiancée Stella, so that they can just take some time to become a family again and do normal things, take the kids down to the park, or go and have a coffee or something like that. I think it's a pretty nice dream at the moment.

GT: How are his two children right now?

Gabriel Shipton: They're very cute. Gabriel and Max - they're OK, but they're still quite young and don't have a great grasp of what's going on. One of them has only ever known Julian in prison. He's never known his dad to live outside or anything like that.

So when they grow up more and begin to understand what's going on, I think they'll be very proud of what their father has done. And they'll get a better understanding. But at the moment, this is what they know. This is their life.

This article was originally published by the Global Times