Tag: media

Steve Sailer finally gets his due

For once, the mainstream media pays attention to an actual thought leader who is legitimately influential across the Alt-Right:

Sailer’s brief career at National Review ended in 1997, when William F. Buckley, Jr. eased out the magazine’s then-editor, the immigration hawk John O’Sullivan, in favor of Rich Lowry — part of a larger shift in the conservative world away from paleoconservatives and immigration skeptics near the turn of the millennium. Since then, he has largely been confined to smaller and less mainstream conservative outlets. But after Trump won last November by getting blue-collar, Midwestern whites to vote like a minority bloc, as Sailer had so memorably recommended in 2000, a number of Sailer’s establishment critics, such as Michael Barone, were forced to acknowledge that Sailer had been vindicated.

On foreign policy, too, Sailer has been a pervasive if subtle presence on the right. During the mid-2000s, he popularized the phrase “Invade the World, Invite the World” to parody the apparent bipartisan foreign policy consensus of the last two decades around large-scale military intervention abroad and large-scale immigration at home. It took some time, but by the summer of 2016, the mood of the country had caught up with Sailer. Breitbart began using “Invade the World, Invite the World” to describe the ideology of John McCain and Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump’s stated hostility to elites’ perceived “globalist” overreach proved to be a major asset in his campaign.

As Michael Brendan Dougherty of The Week has observed, Sailer has exerted “a kind of subliminal influence across much of the right … even in the places where his controversial writing on race was decidedly unwelcome.” Sometimes that influence has not even been subliminal — David Brooks has cited Sailer in The New York Times on the correlation between white fertility rates and voting patterns, Times columnist Ross Douthat has referenced Sailer’s analogy between Breitbart-style conservatism and punk rock, and the economist Tyler Cowen has described him as “the most significant neo-reaction thinker today.” Meanwhile, Sailer’s ideas and catchphrases — including “the coalition of the fringes,” to describe the Obama coalition, and “elect a new people,” a paraphrase of Bertolt Brecht describing an alleged liberal plot to re-engineer the country’s demographics — have spread across the right-wing Internet like wildfire.

It’s a hit piece, to be sure. But it is a hit piece with a respectful tone, and one that even admits “he’s not entirely wrong”.

Announcing Infogalactic Tech

Following fast on the heels of Infogalactic News, the Techstars and Infogalactic News team are pleased to announce the launch of Infogalactic Tech, for all your daily tech-related headlines. This will likely include game-related news as well, at least until we put together an Infogalactic Game team. Technology is increasingly converged, which is why we are going to need to develop and support new Alt-Tech news sites.

If you have a site that you believe merits being permanently linked at the bottom, please email technews-at-infogalactic-dot-com or make a suggestion in the comments. We will also be adding link suggestion boxes to both News and Tech at some point in the near future. As always, if you wish to support these ongoing developments in Alt-Tech and Alt-Media, please join the Burn Unit. As people continue to join, we’re going to be able to keep doing more.

On a not-entirely-related note, I’ve begun blogging about some of the design and development challenges we’re facing with GameBrain and our other games, and how we’re deciding to address them. This really isn’t extra work; it’s more akin to thinking out loud about stuff we’re already doing. The DevGame post today poses the 3-strike challenge, which concerns how to end a multiplayer game that is based on a 3-strike system.

Failure at Fox News

As a general rule, when your management decisions are being met by the news that your competitors “smell blood in the water” and “are moving to take advantage”, you should probably rethink your overall strategy:

The profitable, influential, seemingly impregnable Fox News is suddenly vulnerable.

In a massive disruption for right-wing media, Fox talent is on the market, the purge of the old-boy clique may continue, and there’s huge internal paranoia about further lawsuits and revelations.

On top of that, there are episodic pushes from the next generation of Murdoch leadership for changes in culture and personality.

So at a time when all of cable is vulnerable as viewer habits change, Fox is caught between the America-first instincts of its base viewers, and the globalist impulses for Rupert Murdoch’s sons.

A woman to run Fox News? The Hollywood Reporter reports that James and Lachlan Murdoch have quietly put out feelers for a new head of Fox News to replace Bill Shine, the Roger Ailes consigliere.

“[T]he preference … is that the new leader be female.”

And competitors are moving to take advantage.

Perhaps they could hire Marissa Mayer. I understand she is available these days.

Coulter cancels speech

Ann Coulter, quite understandably, has decided to cancel her scheduled Berkeley appearance:

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has canceled her speech planned for this week at the University of California’s Berkeley campus after a dispute with university officials, who feared violent protests, over whether a safe venue could be found. “There will be no speech,” she wrote in an email to Reuters on Wednesday, saying two conservative groups sponsoring her speech were no longer supporting her. “I looked over my shoulder and my allies had joined the other team,” she wrote. 

Never count on conservatives. They’ll usually find a way to cuck out somehow. I tend to doubt that Milo, with his backing from the Alt-Lite and Alt-Right, will see the need to do the same.

A belated discovery

The media belatedly discovers that Turkey’s AKP is not a pro-Western party that will serve as a model for Islamic democracy:

the Western party line remained unchanged over many years:


“Turkey is now a vibrant, competitive democracy….” —New York Times, June 8, 2010


“A vibrant democracy…an example of reform in the region….” —Foreign Policy, May 26, 2011


“Regionally, a vibrant, democratic Turkey no longer under the military’s thumb, can offer the Arab world a true model…. The Turkish model could also provide a model of how Islamic factions can coexist alongside liberal and secular groups, despite their clashing worldviews….”—Haaretz, August 15, 201


“A vibrant democracy…led by Islam’s equivalent to the Christian Democrats….” —Financial Times, September 15, 2011


“A template that effectively integrates Islam, democracy and vibrant economics….” — New York Times, February 5, 2011


“Turkey is poised to become one of the most successful countries of the 21st century, a model of Muslim democracy and a powerful force for regional peace… —Boston Globe, June 14, 2011


“One of the most remarkable success stories of the past decade…a vibrant democracy and dynamic economy under the Muslim equivalent of Christian Democrats”…—Financial Times, April 19, 20121

The Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP and widely (if meaninglessly) described as a “moderately Islamist” party, came to power in 2002, at which point the rubicund encomiums from the press and foreign spokesmen began. I began visiting Istanbul in 2003, moved there a year or so later, stayed until 2013, and left after the so-called Gezi protests, when, only then, the cheery music in the media fairly abruptly stopped.

The West’s collective assessment of Turkey throughout that time, displayed in official diplomatic statements, the mainstream press, and just as often in the specialized media, was notably weird and notably wrong. It was either the cause or the consequence of an exceptionally poor understanding of Turkey by Western publics and their policymakers. It resulted in the crafting of policies toward Turkey that were neither in Turkey’s interests nor the West’s, and helped, at least to some extent, to usher in the disaster before us today.

Living in a state of constant denial while clinging to the current Narrative is seldom an effective strategy. I can’t help but notice that absolutely no one is talking about Turkey joining the EU anymore.

The Media Bubble is real

However, the author’s attempts to blame geography and economics notwithstanding, the reality of the geographic concentration of the media in the big Left-dominated cities in no way excuses their dishonesty, partisanship, and attempts to enforce their ever-mutating narratives.

To some conservatives, Trump’s surprise win on November 8 simply bore out what they had suspected, that the Democrat-infested press was knowingly in the tank for Clinton all along. The media, in this view, was guilty not just of confirmation bias but of complicity. But the knowing-bias charge never added up: No news organization ignored the Clinton emails story, and everybody feasted on the damaging John Podesta email cache that WikiLeaks served up buffet-style. Practically speaking, you’re not pushing Clinton to victory if you’re pantsing her and her party to voters almost daily.

The answer to the press’ myopia lies elsewhere, and nobody has produced a better argument for how the national media missed the Trump story than FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. “As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,” Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” Bannon said. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no fucking idea what’s going on.”

But journalistic groupthink is a symptom, not a cause. And when it comes to the cause, there’s another, blunter way to think about the question than screaming “bias” and “conspiracy,” or counting D’s and R’s. That’s to ask a simple question about the map. Where do journalists work, and how much has that changed in recent years? To determine this, my colleague Tucker Doherty excavated labor statistics and cross-referenced them against voting patterns and Census data to figure out just what the American media landscape looks like, and how much it has changed.

The results read like a revelation. The national media really does work in a bubble, something that wasn’t true as recently as 2008. And the bubble is growing more extreme. Concentrated heavily along the coasts, the bubble is both geographic and political. If you’re a working journalist, odds aren’t just that you work in a pro-Clinton county—odds are that you reside in one of the nation’s most pro-Clinton counties. And you’ve got company: If you’re a typical reader of Politico, chances are you’re a citizen of bubbleville, too.

It’s not an Either/Or situation. The media concentration on the coastal urban centers is real. As is the fact that the Democrat-infested press was knowingly and proudly in the tank for Clinton all along. This is just another attempt to deceive the public and reshape the narrative through half-truths.

The article is an exhibition of the very thing it seeks to disprove.

Sean Hannity is next

Debbie Schussel is accusing Sean Hannity of sexual misconduct:

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly was recently fired from Fox News after mounting accusations of sexual harassment and backlash from network sponsors. This follows the resignation of former CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes in July 2016 after allegations from Gretchen Carlson, Andrea Tantros, and Megyn Kelly of sexual harassment. Tantros also filed suit against Bill O’Reilly and politician Scott Brown. The latest conservative commentator to be accused of sexual misconduct is host Sean Hannity who was accused on the Pat Cambell Show by lawyer, political commentator, and frequent Fox News guest Debbie Schlussel. Debbie claimed on the show that Sean Hannity asked Schlussel to come back to his hotel twice after a book-signing event. Does this constitute sexual misconduct?

Why do these guys even talk to women in a professional capacity? This is further proof that the talking heads simply aren’t all that smart. If a woman shows even the slightest sign of being a fame whore, you’d have to be mad to think that she has any interest in you for yourself.

Anyhow, now that the new standard is “allegations have been made”, Hannity will obviously be expected to resign, since Mrs. Junior Murdoch doesn’t approve of those goings-on at her father-in-law’s company.

It’s rather amusing to see conservatives being ejected by the very “conservative” women they championed. At this rate, the Alt-Right is going to win by default.

Never too big

Bill O’Reilly is just the latest to learn that no matter how big you are, SJWs in the media and the corpocracy can take you down if you give them half a chance.

The Murdochs have decided Bill O’Reilly’s 21-year run at Fox News will come to an end. According to sources briefed on the discussions, network executives are preparing to announce O’Reilly’s departure before he returns from an Italian vacation on April 24…. The Murdochs’ decision to dump O’Reilly shocked many Fox News staffers I’ve spoken to in recent days. Late last week, the feeling inside the company was that Rupert Murdoch would prevail over his son James, who lobbied to jettison the embattled host. It’s still unclear exactly how the tide turned. According to one source, Lachlan Murdoch’s wife helped convince her husband that O’Reilly needed to go, which moved Lachlan into James’s corner.

I’m not a fan of O’Reilly. My book Media Whores was killed by the publisher and I was paid not to write it after Fox News learned that O’Reilly was one of the subjects to whom a chapter was devoted. But the point is that no one is bigger on cable news than he is, and yet a few allegations were enough to bring him down despite his continuing popularity.

This is why you MUST build your own platform. It’s a non-negotiable.

China warns Pyongyang

When reading this editorial, understand that The Global Times is essentially a foreign vehicle for the Chinese government, being published by “the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) paramount mouthpiece”, the People’s Daily.

US President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday that “North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them!”

North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly convened on Tuesday. A few days later, North Korea will mark the birth anniversary of the late leader Kim Il-sung on April 15, also known as the Day of the Sun. Pyongyang likes to launch nuclear activities as a political salute around this date. Therefore, April is widely seen as a high-risk period for new nuclear tests by North Korea.

The US aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is headed toward the Korean Peninsula after abruptly turning back from sailing to Australia, and Trump sent a warning via his tweet. These are probably related to reports that satellite surveillance shows North Korea is likely to conduct new nuclear tests. Washington’s latest threat to Pyongyang is more credible given its just launched missile attack at an air base in Syria. The Korean Peninsula has never been so close to a military clash since the North conducted its first nuclear test in 2006.

If Pyongyang conducts its sixth nuclear test in the near future, the possibility of US military action against it will be higher than ever. Not only Washington brimming with confidence and arrogance following the missile attacks on Syria, but Trump is also willing to be regarded as a man who honors his promises.

Now the Trump team seems to have decided to solve the North Korean nuclear crisis. As the discussion runs deeper, a situation of no-solution will not be accepted. A new nuclear test or an intercontinental ballistic missile test, if conducted by Pyongyang at this time, will be a slap in the face of the US government and will intensify the confrontation between North Korea and the US.

Presumably Beijing will react strongly to Pyongyang’s new nuclear actions. China will not remain indifferent to Pyongyang’s aggravating violation of the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution.

Translation: China is utilizing US bellicosity as an excuse to save face in Asia and use force if necessary to resolve the North Korean situation. It is unlikely that this result is an accident or was unforeseen by the President.

SJW doesn’t like being identified as such

The amusing thing about SJWs taking offense to being called SJWs is that they clearly don’t understand that it was originally their own label adopted by their own kind that was weaponized by the Alt-Right’s sarcasm. Also: Every.Single.Time.

I’ve always said that I appreciate all my readers, both those who agree with me and those who don’t. But lately I’ve been puzzled by the new slurs directed at me by some of the latter. Many I didn’t even understand, so I did some digging.

Apparently, tried-and-true insults such as “fag,” “fairy,” “kike” and “hebe” (yes, I’m Jewish) are old-school, especially among the alt-right. That small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state is developing new coded language, much as the Nazis once did, says noted linguist George Lakoff, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley.

For instance, in February I wrote about Milo Yiannopoulos, the now-disgraced Breitbart News editor and alt-right poster boy. I heard from many readers about that column, which took Yiannopoulos to task for his incendiary language. But one email caught my eye: “Milo is far less bigoted, misogynist, and hateful than those of you sick sociopathic and psychotic SJW’s who smear him so desperately.” Sick, sociopathic and psychotic, I knew. But SJW? I had no clue. In a personal ad it might mean “straight Jewish woman,” but two of those don’t apply to me. So what was this snarky new gem of an insult?

I emailed back, “What is an SJW?” The reply: “An SJW is a social justice warrior. In the press, this particular public predator tends to be big on PC [political correctness] virtue signaling but happy to smear others viciously with false accusations of sexism, racism, white nationalism, hate speech, etc.”

Well, that was certainly clear — I’m a “public predator” allegedly guilty of smearing Yiannopoulos by referring to his very own, widely reported hateful language.

I started looking into other slurs readers hurled at me. There was “libtard,” and one I really liked at first — “snowflake,” because they’re magical, in moderation.

But here’s the nasty undercurrent: These new words are intrinsic to the alt-right’s rise, according to Lakoff. He connects this to the Nazis and the coded language (prime example: “the master race”) that eventually allowed them to topple governmental institutions. “The strategy is to control discourse,” Lakoff points out. “One way you do that is preemptive name calling . . . based on a moral hierarchy.”

First, the Alt-Right is much bigger than the Alt-White, much less the Alt-Reich. As evidence of this contention, I note that I’ve just been sent translations of the 16 Points in Ukrainian and, of all things, Esperanto. Second, Milo is Alt-Lite, not Alt-Right.

Third, the incessant whining about name-calling by people who don’t hesitate to hurl “Nazi” and “anti-semitic” at a pizza delivery driver who arrives thirty second late with their Veggie Supreme with extra eggplant and tofu is both pathetic as well as indicative of the extreme susceptibility of SJWs to rhetoric.

Fourth, they’re not “codewords”. As one of Steve’s commenters pointed out: ” The alt right is small but has power and this is for one reason only – the alt right is the one group that Calls Things By Their True Name.” And fifth, it’s not hard to understand why Steve Sailer’s appeal remains self-limited, he’s the classic example of the dialectic speaker who simply can’t bring himself to accept the necessity of rhetoric. I mean, if you’re still loftily sperging at this point about using the term “warrior” for SJWs, you simply don’t grasp the way rhetoric works.

Steven Petrow’s column is prima facie evidence of why you should simply utilize SJW instead of whatever your preferred dialectic alternative might be.