On Thursday, internet racists celebrated another perceived victory: Reports that President Trump will soon remove white nationalist groups from a federal effort to study and neutralize extremist radicalization, and rebrand the program to focus solely on groups associating themselves with Islam.
The Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program partners government agencies with community organizations in hopes of preventing people from being radicalized into various types of terror and hate groups. Its primary focus has always been in Muslim communities, but the Obama administration designed it to also encompass the American far-right groups that propagandize to people like Dylann Roof.
News of Trump’s plan to reverse that symbolic recognition of right-wing threats prompted a wave of celebration in white nationalist circles.
“Donald Trump wants to remove us from undue federal scrutiny by removing ‘white supremacists’ from the definition of ‘extremism,’” the founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer (which takes its name from a Nazi propaganda publication) wrote in a post on the site. “Yes, this is real life. Our memes are all real life. Donald Trump is setting us free.”
This interpretation overstates the scope of Reuter’s report somewhat. The meme-filled Daily Stormer post alleges that changing the CVE program and renaming it to focus solely on “Islamic extremism,” as Trump puts it, would also extend to to calling off FBI scrutiny and taking white supremacists and neo-Nazis off of extremist databases. That would actually require separate action from Trump.
But in Trump’s move to take even some measure of scrutiny off of far-right extremism, The Daily Stormer sees a direct parroting of their own writing and a reward for the far-right’s role in getting Trump elected.
“It’s fair to say that if the Trump team is not listening to us directly (I assume they are), they are thinking along very similar lines. We helped get Trump get [sic] elected, and the fact of the matter is, without Alt-Right meme magick, it simply wouldn’t have happened,” the post continues. “This is absolutely a signal of favor to us.”
And so it goes among the fascist nazi crowd all over. They are crowing, beyond happy, because they feel validated. They have been validated. Another excruciatingly clear message that killing “those” people doesn’t matter, it’s okay really, just don’t kill white people.
“Amazing my government no longer targets me as an enemy,” wrote one. “It’s now officially understood at the the highest levels that we are soooo much better than the kidnapper terrorist pedophile left,” wrote another.
I don’t, I just don’t have words today. Right now, I need more tea and a bout of dinosaur watching, just to assure myself we aren’t up in flames. Yet.
Full story at Think Progress.
Charly says
Well, if Trump ever wants to organize paramilitary troops willing to do his biding, he fist has to make sure nobody nips that effort in the bud, doesn´t he?
Unfortunately there is plenty of even non-fascist (at least overtly) politicions all over the world who still think he will be OK and that his anti-muslim policies are based in reality and not in bigotry.
Marcus Ranum says
we are soooo much better than the kidnapper terrorist pedophile left
Overgeneralization in action.
Charly@#1:
if Trump ever wants to organize paramilitary troops willing to do his biding
Those guys are only willing to fight unarmed people. If they encountered real resistance, they’d run shrieking to big brother for help.
emergence says
Where did they even get “kidnapper terrorist pedophile”? I’ve never seen a progressive support any of those. They’re pure non-sequiturs. Also, considering how many white supremacists and Trump supporters have gone around shooting and beating people they don’t like, I think that they perfectly fit the description of “terrorist”. You’re far more likely to be murdered by a white, Christian conservative terrorist in the US than you are by an Islamic terrorist.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- says
Happened in Bowling Green, but the media hushed it up.
Well, if the definition of terrorism includes people you like, you just have to change the definition of terrorism. I grew up in the 1980s, and as a kid of political people, I got treated to the news from a young age on. I clearly remember the terrorism of the IRA, but I had to become an adult and do my own reading to learn about protestant paramilitary groups and murders and the brutal treatment of the catholic Irish by British Police and Military…