Coughlin is an interesting study in American Fascism. While I don’t want to go overboard on drawing parallels, Coughlin worked the nativist crowd in a very Trumpian manner. Radio was the Twitter of his day and so long as Coughlin had a national megaphone he wielded considerable influence. After his radio programs and his newspaper were silenced (cancel culture!) he went back to being the insignificant little swine he always should have been. It’s worth reading the history of his movement (called with bitter irony “Social Justice”) to see both how he grew his flock and how the government and (reluctantly) the Church put him out of business. The system of licensing of radio stations was developed in part to find a way to force him off the air.
A big difference between now and then is that “the media” consisted of radio and print. Without access to these a small-timer had little chance of building a national following. As we’ve seen, the Internet grants equal time–if not an outright advantage–to the most deplorable factions as long as they bring in the advertising dollars. Kicking The Donald off Twitter has reduced his day-to-day influence but his minions are able to carry on in a way they couldn’t have in pre-Internet times.
Given that nearly half of Republicans have now bought into this white supremacist conspiracy as a result of them, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this.
4/8chan aren’t reaching half of Republican voters, though - Fox is.
Hate to see this happen anywhere, even worse to have it happen so close to home. Due to the demographics of this area however I knew deep down that as long as angry white men continue to get radicalized it was going to happen here sooner rather than later. What does surprise me is how far the shooter traveled. The AP is reporting he’s from Conklin, NY. Which is more or less equidistant to several other major cities including Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, NYC and even Philadelphia.
Not in this topic. Not anymore as a way for ammosexuals to derail. I get that you’re being sarcastic, but you just inspired a new post in BB’s anti-pattern catch-all topic in firearms, so thank you.
ETA: this is not a call for us not to discuss the racist motivation behind the shooting, just a way to forestall ammosexuals again using it as a way to downplay the core issue in any mass shooting in the U.S.
Tell me again guns aren’t the problem? Where else in the world would you need such a sign? Where do people go around armed all the time, making it easy for terrorists to mingle?
TeeVee talkers and the press need to stop saying “racially motivated” and accurately report the perp and the movement as racist and eliminationist. They’re looking to provoke and implement genocide.
The groups and forums should be treated like they would other terrorist organizations and individuals. You can bet they would have been shut down pronto.
I’ve read elsewhere that the motherfucking white terrorist plagiarised much of his ‘manifesto’ from the New Zealand mosque terrorist, who’s a motherfucking racist Australian.
It seems they are determined to pull our nation down on their own heads.
This lethal genocidal hate has now metastasized within the alt right. I haven’t
used a firearm (whacking varmints) since I left the farm (in 1967) in upstate N.Y.
