ALSO SEE: White House Ignores Calls for Stephen Miller
to Step Down After White Nationalist Emails Leaked

Stephen Miller Is No Outlier. White Supremacy Rules the Republican Party

By Cas Mudde, Guardian UK

16 November 19

Republican voters made Trump the white-supremacist-in-chief. That’s why a resignation from Miller wouldn’t change much

his week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a bombshell article revealing troubling emails that White House senior policy advisor Stephen Miller sent to editors at Breitbart News, the far-right media outlet previously led by Steve Bannon.

The emails, which were leaked by former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh and predate Miller’s period in the White House, show Miller’s obsession with immigration and his seemingly successful attempts to get Breitbart editors to write anti-immigration stories, some of which were based on openly white nationalist sources like American Renaissance and V-Dare.

The widespread public outrage in response to the revelations is understandable. Miller is the longest serving senior advisor to President Trump who is not related to the president, and is believed to be the architect of the White House’s draconian anti-immigration policies, which doesn’t just target “illegal immigration” but also aims to return to the country to the infamously racist immigration policy of the early 20th century.

In its response to the leak, the White House tried to discredit the source, SPLC, which has had some internal and external problems recently, but is overall a very reliable authority on the US far right (full disclaimer: I regularly collaborate with the SPLC). One White House spokesperson went full “alternative facts” by accusing SPLC of antisemitism, because Miller is Jewish. By doing so, the White House displayed a complete lack of understanding about what antisemitism is, which is no surprise, given that Trump considers himself “the least antisemitic person you’ve ever seen”.

The Democratic responses were predictable and swift as well. Of all the 2020 candidates, Julian Castro went the furthest in condemning Miller – he called him a “neo-Nazi” – but all agreed that he should resign from the White House.

But would Miller’s resignation change anything? While Miller might be behind the concrete policies that harm immigrants, he is not the main white supremacist in the White House. And Trump can easily find someone else to do Miller’s work, particularly now that almost the whole Republican party has fallen in line with their president.

It also externalizes white supremacy, as if it lives in the margins. But it has been hiding in plain sight within the Republican Party for decades. Miller wrote the emails to Breitbart when he was still an aide to Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been a consistent voice of white supremacy in Congress since 1997. And the Alabama Senator was not alone in Congress either. Representative Steve King has been the most open and unapologetic voice for the cause since 2003. Others, like representatives Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Tom Tancredo and Dana Rohrabacher, might not be as open in their support, but they all encourage white nationalism to varying degrees.

But white supremacy in the Republican party is not limited to just these individual congressmen and women. It runs much deeper than them. White supremacy was at the core of the “Southern Strategy”, dating back to the unsuccessful 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, which was formative for the future conservative movement. Perfected by President Richard Nixon, with the help of speechwriter Pat Buchanan, dog whistles to white supremacy have been at the heart of virtually every Republican campaign since the 1970s.

Talking of Buchanan, more than 25 years ago he gave his now famous “culture war” speech at the 1992 Republican convention. While the term has become mainly linked to the religious right, Buchanan is at least as much a white supremacist as a Christian fundamentalist. In many ways, he is the intellectual father of the Trump administration, personifying Mike Pence and Donald Trump in one.

This is why calling for Stephen Miller’s resignation wouldn’t change much. Neither Miller nor Bannon “made” Trump the white-supremacist-in-chief. And Trump is not the only problem either, as Joe Biden seems to believe. He won the Republican primaries, and presidential elections, not despite white supremacy but because of it.

In short, it is time for Democrats to face and name the ugly truth: the Grand Old Party is a party steeped in white supremacy. It is the basis of its electoral support and this will not change in the near future. By focusing on the most brazen examples, like Stephen Miller, Democrats strengthen the misguided belief that the Republican party is a good party with some bad apples. Ultimately, this will help the Republicans more than the Democrats.

Saudi Spies Hacked My Phone and Tried to Stop My Activism. I Won't Stop Fighting.

By Omar Abdulaziz, The Washington Post

16 November 19

n the fight against the online campaigns targeting Saudi citizens, I had a powerful ally and friend in Jamal Khashoggi, who recognized the power of Twitter to shape public opinion in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world. Jamal was murdered because he was willing to fight trolls and propaganda with truth and ideas. But we are still learning how far Saudi Arabia — and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — is willing to go to monitor and silence critics online.

Last week, the Justice Department announced that it was charging two former Twitter employees with spying for Saudi Arabia by accessing the company’s information on dissidents on the platform. I was one of the targets.

It’s all been part of a coordinated campaign of harassment. Saudi Arabia, using spyware sold by the Israeli company NSO Group, hacked my phone to read my messages with Jamal, with whom I was working to identify and combat Saudi trolls on Twitter, which we called the “electronic bees.” We were working together to organize an army of volunteers to counter them.

The Saudi government deployed every tactic to get me to drop the project. They arrested my relatives and friends to pressure me. They imprisoned my brothers and asked them to convince me to stop working on our volunteer campaign. Jamal was shocked they had learned about it and asked me to never discuss it publicly.

To understand why they cared so much about protecting their Twitter trolls you have to understand the popularity and importance of Twitter for Saudis.

Since we didn’t have a lot of options for entertainment in Saudi Arabia, we coped with our environment by living a different reality on our smartphones. Twitter soon became crucial to exercise the first element of individual liberty: freedom of expression. The platform’s popularity exploded among Saudis virtually overnight. We lived democratically on Twitter. People posted freely.

Twitter even allowed people to engage with dissidents in exile, something that wouldn’t have been possible before. It also allowed the government to track public opinion. At first the government was responsive. Royal decrees were announced on Twitter. Rumors circulated but also got debunked. Officials faced pressure to be more transparent.

That all changed with the rise of MBS. Saudi Twitter gradually morphed into a propaganda platform, with the government deploying trolls and pressuring influencers to amplify its messages. More than 30 influencers told me that the Saudi government blackmailed them with material obtained by hacking their phones. They were given two options: Tweet propaganda or have your private content, including pictures, released on Twitter.

McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm, prepared a report on how public opinion is shaped on Twitter (according to a source the report was reviewed by MBS but the company denies it was prepared for him). They identified me among the top three most influential users on Twitter. I’m now in exile; another got arrested, and the third user vanished. His tweets were all deleted.

In September 2017, more than 100 Twitter influencers were arrested. The charges were never made public. In December of that year, Jamal tweeted: “Saudi government trolls have a devastating effect on the national public opinion."

In unison, Saudi trolls ridicule free folks and resistance, Jamal added. He worried the propaganda was dividing the country. He is right.

Fake accounts and hired writers spread hatred among Saudis with tribal and racist attacks.

But Twitter is still worth fighting for — it remains the only free platform for many Saudis. After Jamal’s death, my team spent months trying to counter the troll narratives with trending hashtags.

It’s sad to see that Twitter may be one of the factors behind Jamal’s brutal murder. It’s a heartbreaking development because we had so much hope on the platform.

In 2013, Jamal posted: “Someday Twitter will win a Nobel prize.” But now we see it’s slipping into darkness. Will Twitter take measures to protect our public square? Right now I’m worried, but I will continue to fight for free expression, at least online.