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The Fall of Michelle Malkin
At an alt-right conference running counter to CPAC, called AFPAC, conservative commentator Michelle Malkin fell further down the rabbit-hole:
.@michellemalkin on "anti-Semitism" pic.twitter.com/oFNMhVqLFj
— Zoomer Clips (@ZoomerClips) February 29, 2020
In this short clip Malkin engages in not just Holocaust denial, but also indiscriminately throws around charges of dual loyalty. It’s part of a trend for Malkin, who also endorsed anti-Semite Paul Nehlen in his contest against Rep. Paul Ryan.
In her opening remarks, Malkin referred to herself as the “Mommy” of the group and thanked the “Groypers,” the alt-right group hosting her, for pushing back against mainstream conservatives.
Today, the ConInc gatekeepers will welcome this lying asshole doxxer who does Antifa & SPLC’s dirty work back to @cpac. All the young culture warriors at @TPUSA & @yaf sit on their hands. Thank you, Groypers, for fighting back & hounding this toxic little menace! #AmericaFirst https://t.co/guZ3oCBmqF
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) February 29, 2020
It’s hard to overstate Malkin’s influence in the conservative media ecosystem; she is the founder of HotAir, Twitchy, and was a mentor to many up-and-comers over the course of her time at the helm of both.
Really embarrassing for anyone who continues to defend her and has refused to recognize she appeals almost exclusively to bigots now.
Hard for anyone on the right to complain about Omar, Tlaib etc. if we don't call this out.
— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) March 2, 2020
And because of Malkin’s influence, we (as a conservative movement) need to self-reflect about how reflective Malkin’s views are of our movement as a whole. Has Malkin always questioned the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust? Has Malkin always considered Jews to be agents of the Israeli government? How mainstream are the views she’s professing now in the conservative movement? They are uncomfortable questions, but ones we need to be asking as we continue to (rightly) call out the anti-Semitism on the Left with Omar, Tlaib, etc.
Published in General
What I take from the clip is his downplaying of the Holocaust for laughs. He has said in another clip that of course he thinks it happened, but he also can’t say that it didn’t because he doesn’t want to be attacked. He uses ambiguity. Take it as you will, but I think his intentions are clear. Youth is not an excuse at this point. He has been to a university. Youths have supported all kind of horrid movements in the past, from fascism to communism. I do not give him a pass for being young.
This argument is from abject ignorance fueled by what others have told you to think. How about actually going and listening to these people and not just what others say about them.
I’m not telling you to go dig up Nazis, by the way. But maybe you could start with The Z-Man and actually read what is being argued from a less trollish and older person.
Z-Man? I’m sorry, I have seen enough of Nick Fuentes to know to avoid that stuff. I live in a world where I have family who isn’t white. I have read enough about nationalism and where ethno-nationalism can lead that I don’t want it. The other participants at AFPAC included the leader of the American Identity Movement and a former Daily Caller employee who wrote for Richard Spencer under a pseudonym. I see the company these people keep. It will take this country nowhere good.
I know some intellectuals and writers are putting forward an American Nationalism. They had their own conference last summer. None were at AFPAC.
Great. Than persist in your bigotry and refuse to enlighten yourself.
Your “company they keep” argument as a placeholder for substance doesn’t really need more repetition. Is it too much to ask,if you’ve “seen enough of Nick Fuentes,” to provide us with a few links with objectionable quotes of his? I guess I could do my own homework, but, then, I’m not the one taking your perspective.
Ok. You post the name Z-Man as if that is supposed to mean something and I should go Google it right now. I don’t think I need the enlightenment of whatever nationalism you think you are selling.
I provided one link in an earlier thread. Here it is again. He is harder to find after they kicked him off of Youtube, which really does a disservice for what I am trying to point out. I am not going to try to find him on his Discord channel. That is a place I am wary to go.
I’m not suggesting a pass. I’m genuinely curious and undecided: is he the kind of person who sincerely revels in the mass industrialized dehumanization and murder of people, specifically of Jews? Or not? If not, yet he still produces a clip like this then how does that reconcile?
Bad, terrible jokes are insufficient data. Does the distinction matter to you? Or is this simply something never to be joked about, or else? When I was that young (I’m assuming very early twenties) literally everything was subject to rude and crude jokes. Why would anything be out of bounds for humor? Depends on the thrust of the joke, the truth being gotten after, I suppose.
He thinks this is a funny premise, comparing baking cookies to a process used for mass killing, that he can use to diminish the extent of the Holocaust. That is it. I don’t see it as a joke at all from what he is saying. His delivery is with laughter, but what he is saying can’t really be taken as part of a joke.
Quick question, who am I bigoted against in this scenario? White nationalists? Antisemites?
These two comments highlight the weakness in this discussion and the weakness in the original article. We are all approaching both Malkin and Bethany’s comments based on the things we know about various people.
Other than Malkin’s writings, I don’t know any of these people. I think it was incumbent on Bethany to have provided some details on who these people are and what they directly said that is objectionable. She could be exactly right, but needed to “show her work”. The piece starts with the assumption that we all know these people and know they are terrible.
It needed to be real quotes, because anyone wanting immigration laws enforced and/or basically any Republican has been repeatedly called racist or White Nationalist. Just making allegations does not work.
Again the idea that a minority woman married to a Jewish husband is an anti-Semitic, white nationalist strikes me as highly unlikely. Similarly from the little I know of true white nationalism it seems unlikely Malkin would be the type of person that they would give a platform to.
I am not sure why she finds Nick Fuentes, Scott Greer, and Casey Patrick so appealing. I think they would give her a platform because it boosts their credibility.
Why can’t it be taken as part of a joke? Much of the joking when I was young was all about shock. My buddy didn’t really have intercourse with my mother, after all, and wouldn’t have even if he had wanted to and had teh opportunity. My other buddy actually treated all of his girlfriends with great respect – contrary to the vulgar raunch he would get into while riffing with the guys.
Dead Baby jokes were all the rage when I was a kid. Yes it’s dumb and not funny. Yes, it took the nation by storm anyway and they actually sold whole books dedicated to Dead baby Jokes (or at least books dedicated to tasteless humor in which Dead Baby jokes were a significant proportion).
Then too, I don’t believe that President Trump just grabs women by their p&$$#. I think it was a joke, not admission of sexual assault.
Expanding this a bit further, I loved and still love war games. Risk, Axis and Allies, a good Avalon Hill game like Squad Leader. Mass killing. Turned into entertainment. What kind of sicko would play a game like that, reenacting the sometimes senseless and always brutal deaths of millions? A sociopath?
I went to a military college. I have heard enough dead baby and dead puppy jokes to last me a lifetime.
I can’t fully explain the psychology behind Holocaust denial or why he chose to speak how he does in the clip, other than that he truly thinks that or thinks it is what his followers want to hear. It is sickening.
I think he is also trying to plant seeds of doubts about the Holocaust in his listeners. If they have limited knowledge of how it was carried out, in their ignorance they might think he has a point.
Well, there you’re just skipping the discussion and settling back into your conclusion. Why can’t this be part of a joke instead of Holocaust Denial and all that implicates?
Why do you think that?
Thank you, and sorry I missed the earlier post. Your point is very well taken.
Because of the language he uses. He suggests that all of the Jews who died were killed in the extermination centers. “The math doesn’t seem to add up there…I don’t think you’d result in 6 million cookies…maybe 200,000 to 300,000 cookies (some Holocaust deniers place this as the true number, citing the Red Cross, which is why he says “Red Cookie Association”)… “If you took aerial photographs over the kitchens you would need to see certain smoke stacks” (another Holocaust denial argument, which was put forward by David Irving), he mentions other ovens intended for delousing (which Holocaust deniers claim was the true purpose of the gas chambers)… All of these are arguments put forward by those who deny the Holocaust.
Of course he only mentions Auschwitz (when he talks about the aerial photos) but does not mention the other death camps that operated solely for mass murder, because how many casual listeners know of the existence of Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Chelmno? He does not mention the mass killing in the east that followed the Nazi invasion of the USSR that accounted for 1.2 million killed.
Super. Now we’re getting somewhere. What the America Firsters really are looking for. Racial purity. Now you need to explain why I should prefer that my neighbor is a white atheist instead of a nasty Hispanic Christian, cuz I’m not seeing the real benefits.
The whole screed is too steeped in the language of Holocaust denial, and too detailed to just be a casual riff. He has read these arguments before.
Its not taboo at all. Obama was just president and there was open conflict. But lots of foreign policy ignoramuses like to blame wars in the ME (and really all US military conflicts) on Israel. I mean, these geniuses aren’t sitting around worrying about North Korean or Iranian nukes or the Taliban, you can bet. No, the only thing they care about is Israel. So, its a give away on their true agenda.
I viewed these links. I already commented on Fuentes.
The Greer link contains a bunch of example quotes that, to me, don’t necessarily demonstrate the “ism” they say it does because the basic thrust of many of those quotes – without the white identitarianism aspect – are common among non-identitarians. As for the edgy and over the edge examples, I ‘d like to see more of the context first. That distrust of second hand characterizations remains in full effect. They even include smears of Milo connecting him to pedophelia. I like that they included a response from Greer: “The five-year-old emails contained stupid inside jokes and dark humor, which were exchanged privately between friends. They were obviously less serious than Sarah Jeong’s tweets.” That’s possible; I’m not sure how we’d know his motives one way or the other.
The last link, to me, doesn’t really describe much. A flurry of names (that I also don’t know) and allusions. blogs about what happened to people after being branded as racist.
Finally, I remember 2014 and 2015 being a different landscape. Radical free speech being prominent. Engage and learn – even if only to confirm that we should take a hard pass. Since paleo-conservatism had been suppressed it took a little review to remember some of the paths that used to be well-known. The wheat separated from the chaff into 2016 and 2017, and the alt right became a version of the worst characterizations that were not really valid just a few years before. What do these specific people say and write nowadays? Are they still interested in shock humor as a means to help preserve space and to fight the “everybody is a nazi” impulse of the left? Did they ever have that in mind? Or do all of these people truly revel in the mass industrialized dehumanization and murder of people, specifically of Jews? What was Malkin’s impression? Did she think that was true of these people when she agreed to speak there?
But you’re assuming the very thing in question: was it serious or was it a joke? Or is this just something that can’t ever be joked about for you?
America first is not the same as white nationalist. Seriously, you do this bait and switch all the time. Someone says something then you switch in some different term and begin commenting as if it’s all the same.
He may be familiar with the arguments. So are you apparently. That doesn’t answer the basic question.
I cannot speak to how their minds work. Or to what Michelle Malkin was thinking in agreeing to attend. I can note what she said there. I can say that Nick Fuentes revels in Holocaust denial based on his own words and behavior. As to Scott Greer and Patrick Casey, they are new names to me but the American Identity Movement is a new name for Identity Evropa. Rebranded white nationalism is still white nationalism. At some point we are going to have to say that what they are doing is more than just attempts to be edgy. Sure, they may see themselves as resisting the left, but they are doing it way wrong.
No one is beyond redemption – Bethany Mandel has made that argument.
Are you talking about Progressives? Sounds like it to me.
It is not a joke. Based on the above list, it is the propagation of Holocaust denial arguments. Delivering it with a smile does not make a difference.