Dispatches From Q-Land #1: QAnon's Latest Struggles to Rationalize a World They Don’t Understand

By Jim Vorel | 

 Photo via Unsplash, Wesley Tingey
March 16, 2021 | 



Ever since the election in November, we at Paste have been covertly plugged into the seedy online breeding grounds of the QAnon conspiracy theory— “free speech” right-wing internet bastions such as Gab and Parler, where violent fantasies are free to run wild as Anons (which is how they refer to themselves) prop each other up with hopes of violent revolution and the ever-delayed purge of their political enemies known as “The Storm.” I can assure you that spending countless hours in these internet hellholes is something I have no particular desire to be doing, but after becoming fascinated/obsessed by QAnon’s destructive influence and hate-mongering effect on American culture in the last three years, I saw it as something of a responsibility to keep an eye on the places where these terrifying discussions were happening. Lurking among them, I watched in real time as events such as the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol made idle QAnon fantasizing into deadly reality.

In the months since the election, I’ve written a few sprawling deep dives into QAnon internet culture, in an attempt to explain how their beliefs operate and how they’re able to retain faith in obvious falsehoods, even after countless defeats. My first piece covered the entire period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, chronicling the unshakeable confidence of Anons who swore that Joe Biden would never be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on Jan. 20. The second piece likewise covered the Q influencer sphere during Biden’s first month as President, recording how Anons were attempting to rationalize their mounting defeats and the lies they’d been fed, such as the idea that Donald Trump would magically become the President once again on March 4, 2021.


After those two massive pieces, each filled with hundreds of (disturbing) images and screenshots, I feel like I’ve covered the basic ground of “what is QAnon?” pretty thoroughly at this point, and I’d like to permanently retire myself from the “collecting and synthesizing hundreds of screenshots” game. But try as I might, I can’t drag myself away from continuing to monitor QAnon chatter on Gab in particular, and I still believe that people may need to know what the cult of QAnon is obsessing about at any given time, especially if another event like Jan. 6 is a possibility.

Therefore, I’m launching this new monthly(ish) series, which I’m titling Dispatches From Q-Land. Each month or so, I’ll check in with the latest topics of frantic QAnon obsession, potential threats bubbling on echo chambers like Gab, and illustrate how Anons are perpetually attempting to rationalize their world and avoid having to confront reality.

Let’s get to it, then.

The Painful Cognitive Dissonance of Q Believers


If there’s one defining experience that almost all Anons are linked by, it’s that they almost all seem to be struggling with cognitive dissonance more than ever in this moment, whether they recognize it or not. In particular, there are a few specific topics that Anon communities find it very difficult to discuss these days, because their beliefs have a tendency to clash directly against their other beliefs, or the beliefs of other Anons. There are numerous subjects where Anons end up split right down the middle, with half believing one version of events and the other half believing the polar opposite. All of this is amplified by the fact that Q himself seems to have permanently disappeared, leaving the cult in flux, and without any voice of authority to establish doctrine. There still hasn’t been a single post from Q in 2021, and you can feel the directionlessness and lack of organization in Q communities as a result, because every influencer commands their own flock. Infighting abounds. In their current state, it’s hard to believe that Anons could agree to organize in pursuit of any specific task.


As far as specific topics of cognitive dissonance go, though, none is more pervasive than COVID-19 and the increasingly available coronavirus vaccine. From the beginning, QAnon has had a tough time deciding how to feel about COVID, with half believing that the virus doesn’t exist at all, and the other half claiming that COVID is a biological weapon developed by the Chinese to target Americans. This results in some Anons highlighting that “COVID is a hoax,” or “COVID is no worse than the cold,” while others dramatize it as a plague unleashed by the evil Deep State to target GOP seniors. The group’s struggles to arrive at consistent messaging on the virus itself, though, is nothing compared to their cognitive dissonance when it comes to the vaccine. This is one of the issues where you can truly feel the anxiety in the air, as the group’s contradictory beliefs tear it in two directions at once.

A typical Anon statement on “China Virus.”


As you might expect, Anons are united against the vaccine in a broad, general way. They paint it is as “rushed” to completion and dangerous, despite the fact that the “rush” happened during Donald Trump’s presidency, and despite the fact that Trump has always demanded credit for Operation Warp Speed’s role in speeding development of the vaccine. Some claim that the vaccine is literal poison, and that those who receive it will be dead in minutes, hours or days from its “DNA-altering” effects. Others believe it’s part of some kind of dystopian, New World Order-style microchipping program, complete with “the mark of the beast,” etc, which plays in nicely to the apocalyptic Christian mysticism that runs hand in hand with QAnon. Whether it’s from a rationale of personal freedom (“you can’t tell me what to put in my body,” etc), religious fundamentalism or conspiracy theories about being poisoned to death by the Deep State, it was pretty easy from the start for the average Anon to be anti-vaccine. And given that Trump had been largely silent about actively promoting the vaccine, Anons took that as tacit endorsement of their beliefs.


That has all changed in recent weeks, and it’s sent Anons into a tizzy. First, Trump unequivocally endorsed the vaccine during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), in his first major public appearance since Biden’s inauguration. For the first time, the former President told his own supporters that they should get vaccinated, saying this: “Everybody, go get your shot.” That line comes from the middle of a rambling passage in which Trump is demanding that he and his administration receive credit for the successful vaccine rollout, in which he also said the the following: “Never forget that we did it. Never let them take the credit because they don’t deserve the credit. They just followed, they’re following our plan … Joe Biden is only implementing the plan that we put in place. Never let them forget. This was us. We did this. And the distribution is moving along, according to our plan.”

EDIT: Tuesday night, Trump was asked again in a Fox News interview if he would recommend his supporters should receive the vaccine, and he said the following: “I would recommend it and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly. But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by them and I agree with that also. But it is a great vaccine. It is a safe vaccine and it is something that works.”


Only a day later, the following news broke: Both Donald and Melania Trump received the vaccine themselves in January at the White House. And last week, Trump put out yet another public statement, phrased like he was composing a Tweet on the toilet, demanding credit for the vaccine once again. As hard as it may be to believe, the following is an actual press statement from an actual, former President of the United States. Frightening, I know.




Unsurprisingly, this has made life damn near excruciating for Anons who believe that the vaccine is a Deep State plot to inject literal poison into our veins. Why would Donald Trump, the figurehead deity of all QAnon belief, receive a deadly vaccine? Why would he tell millions of his supporters that they should receive a deadly vaccine? Why would he take time to release multiple statements wanting credit for a deadly vaccine or say that Joe Biden’s administration was “only implementing the plan that we put in place” when he’s talking about distributing a deadly vaccine? Who would want credit for a vaccine that kills people?

This leaves only two, equally undesirable conclusions for Anons to draw:

1. Donald Trump is telling millions of his supporters to receive a deadly vaccine, and has been a Deep State pawn all along. Millions of MAGA people will die from poisoned vaccines.

2. The vaccine isn’t actually dangerous, and Trump merely wants credit for a popular thing. Which means that Q influencers have been lying about the vaccine for months.


Suffice to say, Anons really don’t care for either of those options, so they’re forced to confabulate other scenarios in which their delusion can be allowed to persist. Some might say, for instance, that “Trump didn’t receive the real vaccine,” ignoring the fact that millions of MAGA people still would be receiving the real, apparently deadly, vaccine. Some Anons straight-up deny that Trump ever said “everybody, go get your shot” at all, despite there being countless transcripts and video of him saying exactly that, along with the fact that he continues to take credit for the vaccine in general. Others come up with scenarios where the deadly vaccines would exclusively target Anons and MAGA people, to explain why everyone else isn’t dying after getting their shots.

AKA, “the vaccine is only dangerous to those who choose not to receive it!” Brilliant.


In fact, most Anons seem determined to create a universe in which the vaccine is dangerous, while simultaneously avoiding holding Donald Trump responsible for promoting and demanding credit for that same dangerous vaccine. In their reality, Donald Trump is literally telling millions of Americans to kill themselves with poison, and they’re fine with that. Why are they fine with that? Well, in the words of many Anons, it’s okay because “Trump knows that his supporters think for themselves, and a lot of them will never take the vaccine even if he says we should.” Never mind the fact that some percentage of MAGA voters will no doubt listen to Trump and get vaccinated, receiving shots of what Anons believe is poison. The average Anon can’t be bothered to care about those people, even when the people in question are their own allies, friends and family. Which is to say: Even if Anons were RIGHT, and the vaccine was poison, many wouldn’t care if Trump told their friends to receive it and those people subsequently died. Even then, many Anons wouldn’t have a problem with Trump. That’s how rooted they are in their beliefs—even with the cognitive dissonance killing them inside, they can’t break free from it.


Granted, in incredibly rare scenarios, you do come across the occasional Anon who is disgusted with Trump for encouraging the vaccine.

“I put my life on the line for you and got nothing for return” is the QAnon version of “I ___ ___ ___ and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”


This same sort of cognitive dissonance applies to many other topics in the QAnon orbit as well. One notable example? The remaining National Guard troops stationed in Washington D.C. According to some QAnon influencers, the presence of the military in D.C. is a clear indication of Joe Biden’s tyrannical, anti-constitutional crusade to oppress Americans and rob us of our various freedoms. They show images of the fencing, and the soldiers, and draw easy comparisons to various tin pot dictators.

Of course, other Q influencers are still arguing that the “military is in control,” or that “Patriots are in control,” and that the military in D.C. is there under Donald Trump’s orders to confine Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats in what is apparently an entire prison city. In this scenario, the military is just waiting for the always just-around-the-corner orders to perform a bloody coup and topple the Biden administration, so that Trump can return to the White House. Once again, we’ve reached a scenario where Anons want to believe two mutually opposed things at the same time—that Joe Biden is abusing his military power as a dictator, and that Joe Biden doesn’t have any military power because the soldiers all still answer to Donald Trump. Again, Anons struggle mightily to reconcile these two beliefs.


For the sake of experimentation, I’ve occasionally tried to challenge Anons on Gab about some of these sources of cognitive dissonance, such as Trump endorsing the vaccine, or calling the Jan. 6 insurrection the work of Antifa, despite the fact that the participants in that siege proudly declare their loyalty to Trump. Rarely is it effective, but you do have to shake your head at some of the backflips that Anons are able to turn in order to justify not having to adjust their opinions. Pointing out that one person has espoused two, mutually opposed viewpoints does not tend to faze them—I’ve legitimately been told by Anons that “it doesn’t matter” if their views are factually correct or incorrect, but merely that they’re participating in the crusade. Suffice to say, this is thematically extremely appropriate for QAnon, in a belief system that has long been opposed to the very concept of objective truth. Talking with Anons feels a bit like going before a judge in a court case, only to be told “It doesn’t matter if we correctly find you guilty or not guilty; what matters is that I feel good about the result.”

QAnon Potpourri: Quick Bites of Lunacy


Here are some more topics that have been catching the eyes and overactive imagination of Anons lately.

1. QAnon on Dr. Seuss, et al

Getting riled up about “censorship” (while also calling for public executions of their enemies and expecting no consequences for it) has always been a QAnon tenant, so you better believe they were ready to get on board with a wider GOP push toward calling any kind of criticism “Cancel Culture.” In particular, they zoned in on absurd, non-news stories like Dr. Seuss being “canceled,” cherry picking bits of non-information while employing a steadfast ignorance to include context or the full story. Suffice to say, Dr. Seuss Enterprises this month announced that it would no longer be publishing six titles by Theodor Geisel that have been criticized over the years for their depictions of Black and Asian people. Those books include such illustrious titles as McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambles Eggs Super! and other minor Dr. Seuss titles you’ve never heard of.


So naturally, QAnon claimed that The Cat in the Hat had been banned, because they’re incapable of operating without hyperbole and deceit. It led to a proliferation of memes like this, which Anons use to incense and radicalize internet users who can’t be bothered to read any kind of context.




There’s nothing more QAnon than managing to misspell “Suess” in the midst of your meme implying that the Deep State is coming to take away your Bible.

2. Gab’s Embarrassing Hacks


The post-election period and subsequent ban of Donald Trump from every major social media platform was a boon to hucksters running two-bit, alt-right social media alternatives cloaked in the garb of being “free speech” bastions, and both Parler and Gab, along with others such as Telegram, have had their own moments in the MAGA sun since then. Parler was of course shut down for a lengthy period after Amazon web hosting revoked its services, establishing another theme: These businesses tend to have horrendous technical savvy, both when it comes to running their sites and delivering on the anonymity and security they promise their conservative users. In other words, what a site like Gab promises is usually completely different from what a site like Gab delivers.

This was all illustrated rather beautifully when novice hackers managed to shut down Gab entirely last month, stealing the data of pretty much every user in the process. Gab CEO Andrew Torba, a lovely man fond of saying that other social media services are “serving Satan” and posting memes that say women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, responded by refusing to pay ransom demands for user data, and posted that the site had been secured. And then, a week later, the site was hacked for a second time, with the attackers mocking Torba by taking over his account and posting the following.




That’s a mosaic, literally made from Gab user data and photos. The incidents only served to highlight the total lack of preparation by the Gab team to protect their users, who claim to value privacy and data protection more than any other subset of American society. To date, Gab still hasn’t even taken the most basic steps imaginable, such as making users reset their passwords, to keep users safe. It’s a good illustration of a basic adage: Don’t forget that these sites and their users tend to be just as incompetent as they are ignorant.

3. QAnon Transitions Away from Dates



In my last QAnon deep dive, a month into the Biden presidency, I wrote about how Q influencers in particular seemed to increasingly be realizing the obvious: Giving believers specific dates to focus on is bad business when you’re trying to keep them on the hook (and bleeding money into your account) for as long as possible. As such, and despite a massive amount of reporting from the traditional news media (far too much, to be honest), this is part of why QAnon’s much-publicized March 4 date passed without incident. Some Anons did indeed expect Trump to suddenly become President again on that date, but many others had been sufficiently warned off in advance from expecting anything. You can expect this to become the new norm.

QAnon influencers are in the business of peddling hope, or “hopium” as they say. If someone suggests a date is important in advance, and that date is far enough away on the horizon, Q influencers will run with it, offering their support to stoke the spirits of Anons and keep them in a perpetual state of anticipation. As the date gets closer, however, the influencers will slowly start to raise questions about its veracity. This culminates in renouncing the importance of the date on the eve of the non-event (to avoid being called wrong), along with shaming and then gaslighting Anons who say they’re expecting events on specific dates. They’ve even coined a term to more efficiently insult each other here, calling this “datefagging.”


You can now follow this process on pretty much any proposed Q-date of significance. For example, after the failure of March 4, many Anons immediately pivoted to March 20, on the 167th anniversary of the Republican Party’s founding. This interview with your typical Anon is rife with March 20 promises. March 20 has also been promised as important by some notable Q influencers, including perhaps my favorite account on all of Gab right now, a fellow named WhipLash347. Take a look at this very typical post of WhipLash’s, and see if you can read to the end without your brain melting out of your ears.




I wouldn’t blame you if you could no longer read the rest of this piece because you just chucked your computer monitor out the window, but in the off chance you’re still here, it gets even better. Not only is this schizophrenic, stream-of-consciousness style of prophecy exactly what WhipLash does on Gab every day to more than 24,000 followers, it came less than two weeks after his last failed prediction.

That’s right—WhipLash was a March 4 believer. In the days leading up to March 4, he stated that he was “100% certain” The Storm would finally occur on that date, and that him being incorrect about the issue was “statistically impossible.” When March 4 finally arrived, WhipLash responded by saying … nothing about his promise from a week earlier. Literally nothing. He just went on with business as usual, refusing to acknowledge he’d ever made the prediction at all.

Guess what his 24,000 followers said? If you stuck with “nothing,” you’d be about right, because even those Q influencers who do make constant failed predictions don’t tend to be held accountable for any of them. The vast majority of followers simply ignore failed predictions entirely, and focus on the next prediction. The few that do finally snap at repeated failures, meanwhile, are shouted down and viciously insulted by their own comrades, as in this exchange.




This is your reward for being an Anon for years, accepting everything you’re told, and then eventually having the gall to question someone who gave you a fake promise: Being called a “soy boy libtard” by the fellow Anon who’s supposed to be your loyal ally in the holy war against the Deep State. Instead of joining you in righteous indignation when you’re repeatedly lied to, your allies instead side with the person who continues to lie to them.


The smarter influencers, however, seem to realize that dates in general are more of a trap than they are a benefit, even if most believers will never hold them accountable for failed predictions. And as some of these disappointing dates have come and gone, I’ve begun to notice something: A lot of the influencers seem to be slowing down. Accounts that used to post a half dozen times a day or more now frequently go a few days between shorter posts. Increasingly, they look toward the future in a more vague and general way. It’s as if the Q movement is beginning to ossify into more of a long term, “power saving” mode, with the influencers pushing the attention of Anons away from obsessing over specific, unimportant events in the next week—which is their usual state of being—into a more long-term mindset that involves less active participation and more blind faith. In this version of QAnon, one simply sits at home and keeps the fires burning, stoking the personal conviction that everything will happen “on God’s time,” and that they don’t need to be personally involved. The influencers, meanwhile, can keep up the slow drip of hopium, selling books and merchandise, and asking for crowdfunding donations.


QAnon has so often been compared to a cult in the past, and the comparison is usually apt. But if anything, the group’s overtones are increasingly like an organized religion … except without the organization. I mean this in a sense of movement away from reactionary, revolutionary talk, of the “we need to go grab torches and pitchforks” sort, and more tired resignation in the direction of “we need to be patient and have faith.” As time goes by, Anon expectations deteriorate. They begin to reexamine their Q drop holy texts, and find ways to rationalize a long hiatus and justify the fact that they’ve run out of steam.

Perhaps some drift away from the group, or become “black pilled,” in the QAnon parlance. But many simply become less active, and organizing becomes harder and harder when any date that is put forth is shot down not by your enemies on the outside, but by your own allies. Eventually, you end up with a group militantly not doing anything, because when someone suggests a new prediction, another Anon replies with the following, blaming arrogant prognosticators for “THE DELAY.”




If that image doesn’t evoke the image of Anons as religious fundamentalists, patiently waiting for the apocalypse or end of days when they’ll receive salvation, I don’t know what would. Perhaps if we’re lucky, that’s exactly how the entirety of QAnon will end up, leaving the rest of the world well enough alone.

https://www.pastemagazine.com

Walt the Quasi-Nazi: The Fascist History of Disney is Still Influencing American Life
By Ryan Beitler | June 16, 2017 

Photo courtesy of Getty



Since the inception of the Walt Disney Company, it’s not just the iconic images, stories, and characters that have left an indelible mark on the American psyche. The multimedia conglomerate has shaped American life in other ways, many of them derived and informed by the decidedly fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-labor union, conservative and religious perspective of Walt Disney himself.

The rumors that Walt Disney was a Nazi abound in the age of the internet, and though labeling him a National Socialist without physical proof is a bit of a stretch, there were certainly characteristics of Nazism in Disney’s politics, professional behavior, and views of social conservatism.

At best, Disney could be seen as a Nazi-sympathizer. Famed Disney animator Art Babbitt, who worked closely with Disney, once claimed—as quoted in Peter Fotis Kapnistos’ book Hitler’s Doubles—that “[i]n the immediate years before we entered the War [World War II] there was a small, but fiercely loyal, I suppose legal, following of the Nazi party…There were open meetings, anybody could attend and I wanted to see what was going on myself. On more than one I occasion I observed Walt Disney and Gunther Lessing [Disney’s lawyer] there, along with a lot of prominent Nazi-afflicted Hollywood personalities. Disney was going to these meetings all the time.” They were none other than the meetings of the German American Bund, or the American Nazi Party.

Disney also personally hosted Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl when she came to promote her film Olympia in 1938, a month after the infamous assault on Jews known as Kristallnacht. Disney gave the propagandist a grand tour of his studio, and Riefenstahl even commented that it was “gratifying to learn how thoroughly proper Americans distance themselves from the smear campaigns of the Jews.” This is documented in the Steve Bach biography about the filmmaker titled Leni.

Though difficult to defend, the meeting with a prominent Nazi figure could be explained through their shared craft and business interests: both were filmmakers enlisted at different times with the task of crafting propaganda as media limbs of the American and German governments respectively. A possible explanation for this meeting is that Disney wanted to get his films back into Germany after Hitler banned all American movies because Hollywood was “controlled by the Jews.” However, Disney was even criticized back then for receiving Riefenstahl shortly after the brutal Night of Broken Glass, which is, in any way you look at it, inexcusable.

In contrast to his reception of Riefenstahl and his meetings with the American Nazis, Disney was tasked with making anti-German propaganda films when the war started. In Education for Death: The Making of a Nazi (1943), Disney animators describe the birth of an Aryan German before cataloging the indoctrination process of the Hitler Youth in a ten-minute quasi-documentary propaganda piece. Unlike the depiction of the wolf in Disney classic Three Little Pigs posing as an ostensibly Jewish swindler—another possible example of Disney anti-Semitism—Der Fuehrer’s Face (Donald Duck in Naziland, 1943) fails to describe the systemic anti-Semitism of Nazi propaganda beyond mentioning the concept of a master race.

The anti-German propaganda films Disney made for the American government don’t go far enough in criticizing the Nazis, but that isn’t the point. Disney the man didn’t need to be a full-fledged Nazi to lean to the far-right in the Age of Fascism. Not only was Walt Disney a committed social conservative and God-fearing American patriot, he was a staunch capitalist whose political philosophy paradoxically embodied many of the criticisms found in the fascist worker ideology satirized in Education for Death.

The fact that Disney was enlisted to make these anti-German propaganda films is not surprising, and neither was his willingness to do so. However, it does not negate the allegations of anti-Semitism or of other fascist behavior. In fact, when Disney began working on the Disney World tourists flock to today in Florida, he was engaged in a utopian concept of fascism he called the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT).

The pet project EPCOT was not the theme park we know today, but an unfinished city of the future not unlike the fascist model of government employed by Nazi Germany. A place where slums wouldn’t be allowed to develop, it would include a prototype municipality, an airport, an industrial park. But the plan didn’t stop there. It went on and on. Disney’s vision was to cultivate a “community of the future designed to stimulate American corporations to come up with new ideas for urban living.”

It was to be a place where unions would be prohibited, democracy non-existent, and social security merely a laughable notion. The concept is now gaining tangible influence in privately gated communities guarded by their own security forces.

Walt Disney himself said about the project, “There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. People will rent houses instead of buying them, and at modest rentals. There will be no retirees; everyone must be employed.”

This demand for loyal labor is disturbingly similar to the governments of Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany. Fascist states of the 1930s and 40s utilized this communal approach to nationalizing land, resources, and labor to benefit the nation-state as well as the despots who controlled them rather than the citizens. Or they would benefit certain citizens over others. These practices created anti-democratic police states and societies in which the people were expected to labor diligently and give back to the state institution. Instead of using National Socialism, Disney wanted to utilize his prominent and unregulated role in bloated American capitalism to gain more power over land and people.

Disney wouldn’t usurp power in a state, he would create his own private entity using the labor of the workers—writing his own laws and enforcing them with his proto-police security force, making EPCOT a microcosmic society in America with sovereignty unchallenged by the local or federal governments.

As Benito Mussolini himself once said: “Fascism should be more appropriately called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

Even today this legacy lives on. To make it all possible, the Disney Corporation lobbied for the creation of the Reedy Creek Improvement District in the 1960s, which gave the company broad authority over what we know as the area surrounding Disney World. Since then, the corporation has maintained near total control of the land and does with it what it sees fit. Namely, building new attractions and making superfluous amounts of cash.

The result of Disney lobbying was the city known as Lake Buena Vista, Florida with a population of around 40 citizens who are all employed by the Disney parks that serve 30,000,000 visitors a year. The employees live there, are un-unionized, face strict standards and requirements, are paid low wages, and face eviction if they were to leave their job.

Meanwhile, corporate sponsors are littered throughout the theme parks, which surely make Disney enough money to treat and compensate these customer-beaten and underpaid workers better. The attraction hosts, who bear the brunt of the emotional abuse from customers, get paid a modest $9.22 an hour. But paying lower level employees higher wages would obstruct the profits made by the Nation of Disney from its loyal legion of obsessive admirers.


And these tactics have been fruitful for Disney, with urban developments and commercial centers using the model as a blueprint that truly and unequivocally affects the lives of workers and consumers alike.

Like the fascist states of the 1930s, Disney dictates how their employees look—jewelry, long fingernails, and long hair for men are prohibited—and establishes the emotions that must be worn on their faces at all times. Emotional labor, as it has come to be known, has proliferated across American culture when we began demanding interminable smiles and cheer from service employees. If you’re wondering where this idea that creating a facade of happiness boosts profits, look no further than Disney. If going through unfair circumstances solely for the benefit of a corporate entity that has broad authority like a state and freedom like a corporation isn’t fascism, I don’t know what is.

The fascist tendencies in the questionable treatment of workers seeps out of the parks themselves. Both Disneyland and Disney World are infamous for their secrecy, making it difficult for the outsider to know how staff is treated outside of the reportedly strict rules and requirements. The former mayor was also the computer-operations supervisor in the corporate offices of the company, which suggests that the lines between public and private personnel in Lake Buena Vista are commonly blurred. Though the company denies any conflicts of interest, the evidence of possible corruption doesn’t lend itself very well to oversight of the company or their workforce that is not protected yet communally driven by an affinity for the company, a phenomenon similar to nationalism.


In addition to the problems with the parks’ employment, Disney portrays a pervasive willingness in its content, and therefore its parks, to promote the status-quo of elite dominance and subtle affinity for centralized power. It is found, among other things, in the promotion of monarchy. Some examples of class disparities are the princesses Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, the animal kingdom of The Lion King, and the pursuit of elitism in Cinderella just to name a few. In addition to elitism and monarchy, the first Jungle Book movie has been criticized as racist for stereotyping black and indigenous people while promoting racial segregation, and Pinocchio can be interpreted as a quest for racial purity. While many might say this is far-reaching, inequality in both class and race are more tangible consequences of the success of exploitative tendencies influenced by Walt Disney and are directly at odds with human rights and fair labor treatment.

Disney’s fiercely anti-organized worker stance is prevalent in the man’s unabashed hatred of unionized and collective labor. Some examples are his ties to Red Scare era film organizations and his association with Senator Joe McCarthy, who was infamous for his commie-witch-hunt in the 1950s. Disney was a member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and was associated with the House Un-American Activities Committee. The former, though ironically stating that they were not just anti-communist but anti-fascist, was also known for being quietly anti-Semitic. Many anti-communists of the time conflated communists and Jews. In a recent speech critical of Walt Disney, which was corroborated by Disney’s grand-niece, Meryl Streep described the Motion Picture Alliance as an “anti-Semitic industry lobbying group.”


Not only did Walt Disney seek political insulation to circumvent labor regulations and competition that threatened the landscape dominated by his pseudo-security state, Disney said he did so in an attempt to create whole new worlds at his theme parks. To achieve the political and social isolation the parks enjoy today, the Disney Corporation began a vast campaign of lobbying to get around regulation and taxes while using multiple companies to galvanize thousands of acres of land for the production of Disney World. It was to be secluded by a physical moat and accessed by Walt’s pipe dream of an airport within the microcosm.

Though public money was not used to establish resources or build the tangible worlds created by Disney, it does not mean the company should have been able to get around the law. Better yet, they should not have had the ability to write the laws. Now that the Disney Corporation has become the second largest media conglomerate on the planet, their attempts to influence politics in their favor have not mitigated. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the conglomerate spent around $4 million on lobbying contributions to political action committees, political parties, and individual candidates in 2016, while 17 out of their 22 lobbyists from the year 2015-2016 previously held government jobs.

Walt Disney is heralded as a utopian, but his personal record and the influence on the Disney Corporation’s tactics paint a picture that is much grimmer than the sunshine, cuddly animals, and quirky characters that are as sewn into the American fabric as hamburgers and apple pie. Simply put, the reality that one person’s utopia is another’s dystopia is simply a part of the American story.

While the consumer culture of Disney emanates out of its fabricated worlds, the inequitable influence of both the company and the man’s fascist history drips into American culture and politics, indirectly affecting our lives while remaining above the law and influencing public policy for their benefit.

Ryan Beitler is a journalist, fiction writer, traveler, musician, and blogger. He has written for Paste Magazine, Addiction Now, OC Weekly, and his travel blog Our Little Blue Rock. He can be reached at ryanrbeitler@gmail.com

https://www.pastemagazine.com

Ex-Trump attorney attacks Dem senator as a 'heretic' and MSNBC hosts 'who don’t even pretend to be Christians’

THE CORRECT TERM IS APOSTASY 

AS SHE IS A CULTIC SECTARIAN

HERESY IN HER VENACULAR

IS A CRIME OF WHICH THE VERDICT

IS DEATH BY BURNING, DUNKING OR 

HANGING IN THE BRITISH AMERICAN 

TRADITION

Image via Screengrab.
David Badash and
The New Civil Rights Movement April 05, 2021


Former Trump campaign and personal attorney Jenna Ellis is under fire for attacking U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) who is also the senior pastor of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s church, as a "heretic." She is also being criticized for attacking two MSNBC hosts "who don't even pretend to be Christians."

Ellis, whose career claim of being a "Constitutional law Attorney" is questioned by experts given her apparent lack of legal experience and having never argued a case before the Supreme Court, had no problem attacking Senator Warnock on Easter.


On Easter Sunday Ellis slammed Warnock for a tweet she called "heresy," which Warnock later deleted.

In it, he talked about how doing good work can help people to save themselves, something the religious right saw as an attack on the Christian church.



But she wasn't satisfied. Ellis continued to attack Warnock as a "heretic," and claims being pro-choice is "against the Bible and moral truth," despite the Bible not opposing abortion, according to some.



Ellis continued her attacks, going after MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan and Joy Reid, after they pushed back on her calling Rev. Warnock a heretic.





Hasan was happy to take on Ellis, who was incapable of grasping the gravity of her heresy attack:




Joy Reid also pushed back against Ellis's attack:






And then Ellis attacked both Hasan and Reid as "Leftists who don't even pretend to be Christians."





Reid's Christian faith is not in question, and Hasan is Muslim. Neither are "pretending." But Ellis' attack is larger than against the MSNBC hosts or "leftists."

The message Ellis is sending, whether she meant to or not, is that in America you have to either be a far right wing Christian or "pretend" to be one – which goes against everything our Founders stood for. She's attacking a person who has talked about his Islamic faith openly as someone who doesn't "even even pretend to be Christian," as if pretending to be Christian is something people should do – or have to do in Ellis' America.


What about people of no religious faith? What about atheists? Agnostics? What about people who are spiritual but not religious? Or people who believe in god, a god, or gods, but no organized religion? Or people of different faiths, like Hasan? What about people of the Jewish faith? Or other faiths?

Last week Gallup reported that "Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999."

Are they not acceptable to Ellis?

Why does anyone have to "pretend" to be Christian to be acceptable to Ellis and the religious right, many of whom have bastardized the Christian faith, used it as a sword, a shield, and for political advantage while not practicing its most important tenets?

heresy | Definition, History, & Examples | Britannica

https://www.britannica.com/topic/heresy

Heresy, theological doctrine or system rejected as false by ecclesiastical authority. The Greek word hairesis (from which heresy is derived) was originally a neutral term that signified merely the holding of a particular set of philosophical opinions. Once appropriated by Christianity, however, the …

Apostasy in Christianity - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Christianity

Apostasy in Christianity is the rejection of Christianity by someone who formerly was a Christian or who wishes to administratively be removed from a formal registry of church members. The term apostasy comes from the Greek word apostasia ("ἀποστασία") meaning "defection", "departure", "revolt" or "rebellion". It has been described as "a willful falling away from, or rebellion against, Christianity. Apostasy is the rejection 

of Christ by one who has been a Christian...." "Apostasy is a theological category 

  

‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ takes top honors at SAG Awards

By JAKE COYLE
AP 4/5/2021

1 of 7

In this video grab provided by the SAG Awards, the cast of "The Trial of the Chicago 7" accepts the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture during the 27th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on April 4, 2021. (SAG Awards via AP)

The starry cast of Aaron Sorkin’s 1960s courtroom drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7” took the top prize Sunday at a virtual Screen Actors Guild Awards where actors of color, for the first time, swept the individual film awards.

The 27th SAG Awards, presented by the Hollywood actors’ guild SAG-Aftra, were a muted affair — and not just because the red carpet-less ceremony was condensed to a pre-recorded, Zoom-heavy, one-hour broadcast on TBS and TNT. The perceived Academy Awards frontrunner — Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” — wasn’t nominated for best ensemble, making this year’s postponed SAG Awards less of an Oscar preview than it is most years.

Still, the win for Netflix’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7” marked the first time a film from any streaming service won the guild’s ensemble award. Written and directed by Sorkin, “The Trial of the Chicago 7” had been set for theatrical release by Paramount Pictures before the pandemic hit, leading to its sale to Netflix. The streamer is still after its first best-picture win at the Oscars.

Frank Langella, who plays the judge who presided over the 1969 prosecution of activists arrested during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, drew parallels between that era’s unrest and today’s while accepting the award on behalf of the cast.

“‘God give us leaders,’ said the Rev. Martin Luther King before he was shot down in cold blood on this very date in 1968 — a profound injustice,” said Langella, citing events leading up to those dramatized in “The Trial of the Chicago 7. “The Rev. King was right. We need leaders to guide us toward hating each other less.”

The win came over two other Netflix releases — “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Da 5 Bloods” — as well as Amazon’s “One Night in Miami” and A24’s “Minari.” Had Lee Isaac Chung’s Korean-American family drama “Minari” won, it would have been the second straight year a film largely not in English won SAG’s top award. Last year, the cast of “Parasite” triumphed, becoming the first cast from a non-English language film to do so.

The SAG Awards are a closely watched Oscar harbinger. Actors make up the largest branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and SAG winners often line up with Oscar ones. Last year, “Parasite” went on to win best picture at the Academy Awards, and all of the individual SAG winners — Renée Zellweger, Brad Pitt, Laura Dern, Joaquin Phoenix — won at the Oscars, too.

Those awards this year went to a group entirely of actors of color, potentially setting the stage for a historically diverse slate of Oscar winners: Chadwick Boseman, best male actor for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”; Viola Davis, best female actor for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”; Yuh-Jung Youn, best female supporting actor for “Minari”; and Daniel Kaluuya, best male supporting actor for “Judas and the Black Messiah.”

Of those, Davis’ win was the most surprising in a category that has often belonged to Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”) or Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”). It’s Davis’ fifth individual SAG award.

“Thank you, August, for leaving a legacy for actors of color that we can relish the rest of our lives,” said Davis, referring to playwright August Wilson.

As it has throughout the awards season, best male actor again belonged to Boseman for his final performance. Boseman, who died last August at age 43, had already set a record for most SAG film nominations — four — in a single year. He was also posthumously nominated for his supporting role in “Da 5 Bloods” and shared in the ensemble nominations for both Spike Lee’s film and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

It was the SAG Awards where Boseman gave one of his most memorable speeches. At the guild’s 2019 awards, Boseman spoke on behalf of the “Black Panther” cast when the film won the top award. “We all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured,” Boseman said then. “Yet you are young, gifted and Black.”

The Academy Awards frontrunner, “Nomadland” missed out on a best-ensemble nomination possibly because its cast is composed of largely non-professional actors. Zhao’s film previously won at the highly predictive Producers Guild Awards, as well as at the Golden Globes. “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” up for best picture at the Oscars and four other awards, could pose a challenge to the frontrunner.

In an interview following the pre-taping of the award for “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Langella called the virtual experience much more civilized. “I’m in my bedroom slippers,” he said from New York’s Hudson Valley. “I have no pants on,” added his co-star Michael Keaton.

Eddie Redmayne, who plays Tom Hayden in the film, credited Sorkin and casting director Francine Maisler for assembling such a disparate group of actors — including Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Rylance, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jeremy Strong — into an ensemble.

“It was like a clash of different types of music, whether it was jazz or rock or classical -- but all of that coming together under Aaron. He was the conductor, almost,” said Redmayne. “It was a joy day and day out to watch these great and different and varied actors slugging it out.”

In television categories, the ensembles of “Schitt’s Creek” (for comedy series) and “The Crown” (for drama series) added to their string of awards. Other winners included Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Queen’s Gambit”), Gillian Anderson (“The Crown”), Jason Sudeikis (“Ted Lasso”), Jason Bateman (“Ozark”) and Mark Ruffalo (“I Know This Much Is True”).

The awards are typically the highest profile event for the Screen Actors Guild, though the union’s faceoff earlier this year with former President Donald Trump may have drawn more headlines. After the guild prepared to expel Trump (credits include “The Apprentice,” “Home Alone 2”) for his role in the Capitol riot, Trump resigned from SAG-Aftra.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

QUEBEC INC.
After failed takeover, Air Transat seeks help as debt crunch looms

ALL CAPITALISM IS STATE CAPITALI$M

By David Ljunggren, Allison Lampert

OTTAWA/MONTREAL (Reuters) - Struggling tour operator Air Transat is in talks with the federal government on aid but may not reach a deal by an April debt deadline, a source close to the situation said, putting pressure on Quebec to ride to the rescue of another troubled aerospace brand in the province.


An Airbus A330-200 aircraft of Air Transat airlines takes off

 in Colomiers near Toulouse, France, July 10, 2018. 

REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

Air Canada dropped its merger plans with Transat on Friday, saying European regulators had signaled it was unlikely to pass antitrust concerns.

Canada’s largest carrier first bid for Transat in 2019 and discounted its offer last year as the pandemic decimated the travel and tourism sector.

Airlines have been in talks with Ottawa since last year about a possible aid package. Transat’s aborted deal adds fresh urgency to the talks, given the jobs at risk if the carrier fails and the political importance of Quebec ahead of an expected federal election this year.

Transat, which last month suspended flights until June due to pandemic guidelines, has said it needs at least C$500 million in financing this year.

It has obligations due on April 29 for a $50 million revolving facility and a C$250 million short-term loan that matures on June 30. If it does not meet the April 29 requirements, or obtain another extension, creditors could accelerate the repayment obligation.

“There are ongoing negotiations and there is a budget coming up and there is no guarantee at this point that they will get there before the budget,” said a source close to the situation, referring to the federal budget slated for April 19.

“I think politically it would be a problem in Quebec. The federal government therefore absolutely has to come up with a solution,” the source added, noting that “Transat has more of a cachet in Quebec (than Air Canada).”

Both airlines are Montreal-based but Air Canada originated in Winnipeg before moving its headquarters to Quebec in the 1940s. Transat was founded by a group of Quebec businessmen, including the province’s current premier, in 1986 and grew to become the country’s third-biggest airline.

The airline was “confident we will be able to secure the necessary financing in the coming weeks,” spokesman Christophe Hennebelle said on Sunday, reiterating it was at an “advanced stage” of discussions with Ottawa on sector aid and accessing specific pandemic-aid to businesses.

Asked about the status of government talks with Transat, a spokeswoman for Canada’s finance minister said: “I can’t speak to which creditors or lines of financing Air Transat is pursuing. As a private company, they’d be best placed to answer that.”

Ottawa said on Friday that protecting jobs and securing the long-term viability of Transat were a priority for the government. The carrier employs 5,000 people, mostly in Quebec, home to much of Canada’s aerospace sector.

‘COLLECTIVE INTEREST’

The survival of Transat, its Montreal headquarters and employees puts significant pressure on the Quebec government to secure its future.

Quebec has come to the aid of struggling aerospace companies before. In 2015, the previous provincial government sunk US$1 billion into planemaker Bombardier’s then-struggling CSeries program. Two years later, Airbus paid Bombardier one dollar for control of the commercial jet program.

“The Quebec government is caught between a rock and a hard place on this one,” said John Gradek, a former airline executive and program coordinator at McGill University’s aviation management program.

“There will be a lot of pressure on (Premier Francois) Legault to come to (Quebec businessman) Pierre Karl Péladeau’s aid in terms of funding.”

Péladeau, who proposed buying Transat for $5 a share, said on Friday his offer is still available. Transat had previously said the bid lacked the required level of financing.

Péladeau, chief executive of Quebecor Inc, said in a statement that his offer includes “a rigorous business plan focusing on areas of the company with high growth potential, on expertise and job creation in Quebec” and a continued Montreal head office.

A second source familiar with the matter said Péladeau’s offer did not call for funding from the Quebec government, which said in February it was looking at scenarios for Transat “with or without Air Canada.”

A spokesman for Quebec’s economy minister declined comment on Sunday.

The separatist Bloc Quebecois said it wanted to ensure Quebec ownership would be favored for the carrier and blamed Ottawa, which approved the merger in February, for delaying an airline aid package.

“Air Transat is a flagship that has made Quebecers proud while offering Francophones a career in aviation,” BQ transport critic Xavier Barsalou-Duval said in a statement.

“It is in our collective interest that its decision-making center as well as its control remain in Quebec.”

Chauvin Trial: Systemic Racist Police Violence, Not Just “Bad Apples”

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As the murder trial of Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd proceeds, the prosecution will try to portray the defendant as a “bad apple.” In his opening statement, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell alerted the jurors that they would hear police officials testify Chauvin used excessive force in violation of departmental policy to apply restraints only as necessary to bring a person under control. However, this argument obfuscates the racist violence inherent in the U.S. system of policing.

The first prosecution witness to testify about Minnesota Police Department (MPD) policies was retired Sgt. David Ploeger, the supervising police sergeant on duty the day Chauvin killed Floyd. It was his job to conduct use of force reviews. Ploeger testified, “When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officer,” when he was handcuffed on the ground and no longer resisting, “they could have ended the restraint.”

Lt. Richard Zimmerman of the MPD also testified about what constitutes authorized use of force. He said that once a person is secure or handcuffed, “you need to get him out of the prone position as soon as possible because it restricts their breathing.” When a person is cuffed behind his back (as Floyd was), “it stretches the muscles back,” making it “more difficult to breathe.” Once cuffed, Zimmerman added, “you have to turn them on their side or have them sit up,” noting, “you have to get them off their chest” because that constricts the breathing “even more.”

“If your knee is on a person’s neck, that could kill him,” Zimmerman said. “Pulling him down to the ground facedown and putting your knee on a neck for that amount of time, it’s just uncalled for,” he declared. Zimmerman saw “no reason why the officers felt they were in danger,” which is “what they would have to feel to use that kind of force.” The restraint of Floyd “should have stopped once he was prone on the ground and had stopped putting up resistance,” he stated.

But many Minneapolis police officers receive “Killology training” through the police union, where they are taught to kill rather than de-escalate conflict situations. This training violates the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, which require officers to, “as far as possible,” use nonviolent techniques before resorting to force and firearms.

The MPD reported that its officers used violence against Black people at seven times the rate they used violence against white people, during the period from 2015 to 2020.

Prosecutors will likely try to isolate Chauvin as one of “a few bad apples.” That may be an effective prosecutorial strategy to convince jurors they should convict him. But this “rogue cop” characterization — also used after the 1991 Rodney King beating and the police killings of Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and Breonna Taylor — obscures the systemic nature of police violence against Black and Brown people in the United States. Even the best training in the world cannot teach police, who are licensed to kill and deployed to enforce a racist system, not to be racist.

Many Minneapolis police officers receive “Killology training” through the police union, where they are taught to kill rather than de-escalate conflict situations.

Black people who are unarmed or not attacking police are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people, the Brookings Institution found. Moreover, police kill Black people at more than twice the rate of whites even though Black people account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population. More than 75 percent of the time, chokeholds are applied on men of color.

Prosecutors were compelled to bring charges against Chauvin because the whole world had seen him kill Floyd. After massive protests erupted following the horrifying video of Chauvin’s torture of Floyd — now known to have lasted nine minutes and 29 seconds — the MPD fired Chauvin and prosecutors charged him with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. They later added a charge of second-degree murder.

But what would have happened if eyewitnesses had not recorded Floyd’s death? Would Chauvin have been fired and charged with murder?

Police Impunity Is the Norm

Officers know that they rarely face any semblance of accountability for killing Black people. “Officers were charged with a crime in only one percent of all killings by police,” Mapping Police Violence reported in 2020.

For nine minutes and 29 seconds, Chauvin continued to choke Floyd as several bystanders watched, many visibly recording the killing. Chauvin didn’t try to hide what he was doing. As eyewitness Genevieve Hansen testified, Chauvin looked “comfortable” with his weight on Floyd’s neck.

Other police killings of Black people have happened in similarly open ways. Michael Brown was killed while walking down a public street, his body left on the ground for four hours. Eric Garner was choked to death on a public sidewalk after he was suspected of selling illegal untaxed cigarettes. Both of those killings, which occurred in 2014, sparked public outrage. Although there was video footage in each case, none was as clear and graphic as the images that documented Floyd’s death. Neither Officer Darren Wilson who killed Michael Brown nor Officer Daniel Pantaleo who killed Eric Garner was ever indicted.

“Excited Delirium” Is a Racist Myth Used to Blame Victims

As eyewitness after eyewitness who saw Chauvin torture Floyd to death presents emotional testimony, the defense is attempting to distract the jury’s attention away from his brutal murder by laying the ground work to falsely claim that Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes was not the cause of death.

Defense attorney Eric Nelson alerted the jury during his opening statement that it would “learn about things such as … excited delirium.” MPD Officer Thomas Lane pointed his gun at Floyd who was sitting in his car before he was pulled out and choked to death. Although Lane aided and abetted Chauvin by holding Floyd’s legs, Lane asked at one point while Chauvin was choking Floyd, “Should we roll him on his side?” Chauvin replied, “No, staying put where we got him.” Lane then said, “I am worried about excited delirium or whatever,” as Chauvin maintained his knee on Floyd’s neck.

“Excited delirium” is a catch-all defense used to absolve police for killing Black people. According to the Brookings Institution, “[t]he diagnosis is a misappropriation of medical terminology, used by law enforcement to legitimize police brutality and to retroactively explain certain deaths occurring in police custody.” This diagnosis “inaccurately and selectively combines various signs and symptoms from real medical emergencies.”

Indeed, Chauvin’s defense attorneys are falsely implying that Floyd died from drug abuse, as Mike Ludwig reported in Truthout. Pursuant to the “war on drugs,” Black people are disproportionately targeted by police, although they use drugs at the same rate as whites.

Even the best training in the world cannot teach police, who are licensed to kill and deployed to enforce a racist system, not to be racist.

Derek Chauvin is a rotten apple. So is Officer Lane who held Floyd’s legs, and Officer J.A. Kueng who held Floyd’s back while Chauvin choked him to death. So is Officer Tou Thoa who kept bystanders from providing aid to Floyd.

But they are only four of myriad officers who kill Black people with impunity. They are not just “a few bad apples.” These officers are emblematic of the systemic racist police violence against Black people in the United States. Regardless of the outcome in the Chauvin trial, the entire system must be indicted as racist and violent, in and of itself.

The International Commission of Inquiry on Systemic Racist Police Violence against People of African Descent in the United States, for which I am serving as a Rapporteur, heard testimony from family members and attorneys about police killings of 43 Black people and the paralyzing of another, all of whom were unarmed or not threatening the officers or others. The commission, which is investigating whether police violence against Black people in the U.S. amounts to gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms, will release its 200-page report in mid-April. It contains recommendations addressed to national and international policy makers.

As Chauvin’s trial continues, we must remember that this is not simply the story of one “rogue cop.” It is a window into the anti-Black violence perpetrated routinely by police in this country, as part of a brutal and racist system.

Marjorie Cohn
Truthout

https://www.laprogressive.com