Nick Gillespie of Reason interviewed filmmaker Errol Morris about American Dharma, his new documentary about Steve Bannon. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
When Errol Morris debuted American Dharma, his documentary about Stephen Bannon, last year at the Venice Film Festival, he received an ovation. But after early reviewers accused the Oscar-winning director of letting the former Breitbart.com head and adviser to President Trump "off the hook," Morris found it impossible to get a distribution deal in the United States.
It was the first time in decades that the acclaimed director of The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War couldn't get a movie into theaters. "The experience was so damn weird," Morris tells Reason. "People became so angry with me and with the movie, they certainly wanted to deplatform not just Bannon, but they wanted to deplatform me."
But now his film, American Dharma, is finally in theaters.
Nick Gillespie sat down with the 71-year-old Morris, whom Roger Ebert called "as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini," for a wide-ranging conversation about the censorious first reactions to his new film, his history with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, and what he learned—and didn't learn—about Steve Bannon's philosophy. He also talks about why he thinks we're in a golden age of documentary filmmaking, his heated grad-school confrontations with philosopher Thomas Kuhn (detailed in his recent book The Ashtray: Or the Man Who Denied Reality), and Wormwood, his 2017 Netflix docudrama series about the CIA's notorious MKUltra mind-control program.
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White nationalist activist Martin Sellner and British YouTuber the Iconoclast are free to rake in those YouTube views—and the money that goes with it.
Infowars' “War Room” created a brand-new hate channel on YouTube exactly one day after chief executive Susan Wojcicki's letter to content creators about reducing extremist content. YouTube deleted Alex Jones's all-new garbage channel shortly after receiving reports of its relaunch from VICE. Read the rest
In Ohio, a racist 20-year-old man was arrested over the weekend for threatening to attack a Jewish community center, in a post on Instagram. Read the rest
The white power hour on Fox will be in other hands for a short while: host Tucker Carlson is headed off on an improptu "vacation" the day after claiming America didn't have a white supremacy problem and that concerns it did were a "hoax".
There is, of course, a long history of Fox hosts heading out on vacation as they become engulfed in controversy for inflammatory comments.
-- Laura Ingraham announced she was going on vacation in March 2018 after mocking Parkland survivor and gun control activist David Hogg...
-- Sean Hannity went on vacation in May 2017 after losing advertisers for promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy theory...
-- Jesse Watters headed out on vacation in April 2017 after making a comment widely criticized as lewd about Ivanka Trump...
-- Bill O'Reilly went -- and never returned from -- a vacation in April 2017 after NYT reported he had settled five sexual harassment allegations for millions of dollars...
The backlash is intense even by these standards, what with memories of the latest white supremacist mass shooting as fresh as the corpses. But Carlson has been here before, is indispensible to the movement, and will not likely be going anywhere. Read the rest
The Atlantic unearthed an old tape of Ronald Reagan yukking it up with Richard Nixon about African "monkeys" at the United Nations.
The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.
P.S. Mickey Mouse is a minstrel caricature. Read the rest
When President Trump said on Sunday that "'Progressive' Democratic Congresswomen" should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” was he violating federal workplace discrimination law?
We aren't lawyers and we don't know, but here's something relevant from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website, “Immigrants' Employment Rights Under Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws” —
Ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical conduct because of nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person's foreign accent or comments like, "Go back to where you came from, " whether made by supervisors or by co-workers.
HT: @nick_ramsey
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Never forget: Trump said the Charlottesville racists were 'very fine people.'
Profiles in courage here, folks. Read the rest
None of this is a surprise. And none of it is normal or okay. Read the rest
Analysis of more than 1 million comments from the site finds dramatic shift toward racist hate content
Arrivederci, asshole.
In Italy, authorities are reportedly evicting alt-right self-promoter Steve Bannon from the medieval monastery he'd planned to transform into a white supremacist radicalization academy, “after reports of fraud in the competitive tender process.”
Being evicted from his fancy Italian gladiator castle is a big setback for Bannon, who's trying to grow an alt-right empire in Europe. Read the rest
Researchers report that a number of white supremacist/white nationalist/violent racist crackpot groups like the 'Proud Boys' and 'Soldiers of Odin' (gag) are doing just fine and being very active on Facebook -- all they had to do is ever so slightly modify their names. Read the rest
“Combining the public humiliation of racists and one of nature’s most delicious frosty treats is pure poetry in motion,” writes Kim Kelly at VICE's Munchies, where we also read a disclaimer we'd like to pass on to you: “For legal reasons, we must mention that throwing milkshakes qualifies as assault in some jurisdictions.” Read the rest
The apparent leader of a gang of white supremacists who terrorized immigrants along the US-Mexico border, holding hundreds of them at gunpoint, has been attacked in jail and reportedly received non-life-threatening injuries, say authorities. Read the rest
Just as pretty much everyone predicted, one week after Facebook made a big deal of banning white nationalist and white separatist content on its platform.... Facebook now says a viral video on its site which is obviously and explicitly white supremacist and toxic does not break Facebook's new policy. Read the rest
In a statement announcing the official ban, Facebook says the ideologies are "inherently hateful."
