Majorityrights News > Category: Activism

Social rule structures, notably citizenship, are an excellent place to focus when setting-about to re-constitute nationalism.

...simply (in theory, anyway) begin by designation those to be left out, those who should not be a part of your nation; as the Chinese have in the case of Muslims -

FT, “China orders Xinjiang residents to hand in passports”, 24 Nov 2016:

Citizens of restive region of 11m Muslim Uighurs must apply to get papers back.

China has ordered all residents in its western frontier region of Xinjiang to hand in their passports, the latest in a series of draconian moves in the restive province home to an 11m Muslim minority.

Citizens of Xinjiang, an oil-rich but ethnically divided region more than six times the size of the UK, must hand their documents to police and apply to get them back if they want to travel, state-controlled newspaper Global Times reported on Thursday. The purpose was to “maintain social order”, the paper said.

Al.com, “Pair charged in explosive device at elementary school; planned to shoot cops, start race war”, 24 Nov 2016:

A convicted felon who claims he wanted to shoot cops is behind bars in connection with the explosives device planted outside of a Trussville elementary school.

Authorities today announced state charges against 35-year-old Zachary Edwards and 34-year-old Raphel Dilligard, both of eastern Birmingham. They are charged with possession of a hoax destructive device, rendering false alarm and making terrorist threats, said Trussville police Capt. Jeff Bridges.

The warrants were issued this morning after the week-long probe by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Trussville police, the Alabama State Fire Marshal’s Office, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

Edwards claimed to be a member of the Black Panthers and the Black Mafia, but authorities have not yet confirmed his reported associations with any organized group. “My guys believe this individual to be a very dangerous person,’’ said Dave Hyche, ATF’s assistant special agent in charge in Alabama.

Lawmen responded en masse to Magnolia Elementary School on Wednesday, Nov. 16, after they received a 911 from a woman who reported seeing a Hispanic male place the package on a pickup truck that belonged to a school cafeteria worker. The package was a box with wires and timer attached.

“When we first saw what we had, we knew this was something to take serious and we put on the full-court press. It disturbed us from the start,’’ Hyche said. “I’ve never seen such a well-orchestrated and rapid response.”

Hyche today said the children and staff weren’t in any danger from the device, and even if it had been in working condition, it was on the far side of the school where there was no glass.

Teams of lawmen responded to Magnolia Elementary School after a device was found on a car in the school parking lot.

The first break in the case came when investigators were able to trace that 911 to a cell phone that had once been owned by Edwards, said Hyche and Bridges. The 911 call was actually placed by Edwards, who disguised his voice to try to sound like a woman.

Also, the timer – a stopwatch - used on the device was determined to have been sold at Walmart, and Hyche said investigators then analyzed all 18 recent buyers in the area. They quickly eliminated those that would have a legitimate reason for needing a timer – like a track coach - that ultimately led them to the store in Irondale where a woman - later determined to be Dilligard - was seen on video surveillance buying the timer.

Edwards and Dilligard were taken into custody Tuesday evening at their home in the 7700 block of Fifth Avenue South.

Once brought in for questioning, both gave confessions. Edwards admitted to planting the device, and said his plan was to get all police officers and first responders in one place so he could shoot them. “I guess he doesn’t like cops,’’ Bridges said.

Edwards also talked of using the incident as a diversion so he could commit crimes elsewhere -  such as robbing a bank - while the police were tied up at the elementary school, but backed out of that plan.

“Probably because of the overwhelming response to the area,’’ Hyche said. “He wanted everybody in one place so he could kill cops. He made it clear to our guys he wanted to commit acts of violence. This arrest probably did stop something bad from happening.”

He discussed starting a race war, but authorities didn’t elaborate on what he said.

The device – which was disabled in nearby woods – did contain gun powder. “It was painstakingly put together and it also had most of what you need to make a bomb,’’ Hyche said. He said, however, that there was no way the device could have detonated, but he didn’t elaborate.

Hyche said numerous tips came in to the ATF tip line, many of which named Edwards as the person who left the device. “It was someone that knew him, and was afraid he was going to do something,’’ he said.

Edwards has a lengthy criminal record, including a 2000 conviction for second-degree assault. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison with three to serve in that case.

Both suspects are awaiting transport from Trussville to the Jefferson County Jail. Hyche said the investigation is ongoing and they could also face federal charges.

During an on-the-record editorial board meeting with the New York Times today

“‘I Condemn Them’: Trump Tells NY Times He Disavows Alt-Right Conference”

During an on-the-record editorial board meeting with the New York Times today — a meeting he canceled at one point — President-elect Donald Trump hit on a number of topics and issues that were tossed at him from reporters.

One of the pressing subjects on the journalists’ minds was how Trump viewed the support he’s received from those in the alt-right. Specifically, they wanted to know how the incoming POTUS felt about the recent conference alt-right leaders held in Washington over the weekend in which attendees were seen giving Nazi salutes as Richard Spencer exclaimed “Hail Trump!”

                     

When first asked about whether he felt he did anything to “energize” the alt-right, Trump said he didn’t think so.

Source: Media.com, 22 Nov 2016

Daily News, “President-elect Donald Trump’s disavowal of his support among white nationalists didn’t sit right with the alt-right, 23 Nov 2016:

In one of his most direct repudiations of the once-fringe movement’s proximity to his bid for the presidency, Trump finally said Tuesday that he doesn’t “want to energize the group and I disavow the group,” during an on-the-record sit-down with the New York Times.

Alt-right members took to Reddit forums to express dismay over the president-elect’s comments, some saying they’ve been “fooled” into thinking Trump had truly taken up their white supremacist vision.

Donald Trump disavowed the support of the alt-right movement during a sit-down with the New York Times on Tuesday.

“Trump’s a civic nationalist which is a step in the right direction,” one Reddit commenter wrote. “His election was all about buying time, securing the Supreme Court and stopping illegal immigration. His victory is important but I hope no one deluded themselves into thinking that he was the second coming.”

Trump’s comments on Tuesday came days after white nationalists gathered at a conference in Washington D.C. organized by the far-right think tank National Policy Institute and its founder, Richard Spencer, in celebration of the “year of Donald Trump.”

Video of Spencer speaking showed scores of alt-right members raising their arms in a Nazi salute. Message board commenters said Trump wouldn’t stand by their cause after footage of the Neo-Nazis emerged.

“Certainly not after Richard Spencer saying ‘Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!’ and people in the audience doing the Nazi salute,” one post read.

The Anti-Defamation League, a leading advocacy group fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, praised Trump’s condemnation of his white supremacist supporters, specifically citing the NPI conference in D.C.

“We welcome President-elect Trump’s denunciation of the National Policy Institute convention just blocks from the White House,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt in an emailed statement. “Racist and anti-Semitic groups have absolutely no place in our politics or society.”

Trump was criticized during his campaign for being sluggish about condemning the support of white supremacists, most notably after receiving an endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.

His forthcoming administration continues to be associated with the alt-right movement due to the prominent role of Stephen Bannon, who was recently tapped to be Trump’s chief strategist.

Before becoming Trump’s campaign manager, Bannon was the chairman of Breitbart News, a haven for white nationalist news and anti-Semitism.

Daily Caller, “Politico Editor Resigns After Publishing Home Addresses Of Alt-Right Icon Richard Spencer, Advocating For ‘Baseball Bats”, 22 Nov 2016:

National editor at Politico Michael Hirsh resigned after publishing the home addresses of alt-right figurehead Richard Spencer Tuesday morning and advocating for serious violence.

Politico confirmed his resignation following requests for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Stop whining about Richard B. Spencer, Nazi, and exercise your rights as decent Americans,” Hirsh wrote in a public Facebook post. “Here are his two addresses.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation redacted the home addresses.

Michael Hirsh publishes the addresses of alt-right figure Richard Spencer, who runs the National Policy Institute. (Screengrab/Facebook).

“These posts were clearly outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, and POLITICO editors regard them as a serious lapse of newsroom standards,” Politico Editor-In-Chief John Harris and Editor Carrie Budoff Brown told TheDCNF. “They crossed a line in ways that the publication will not defend, and editors are taking steps to ensure that such a lapse does not occur again.”

While Hirsh’s initial post could have been charitably interpreted to imply advocacy of a non-violent protest outside of Spencer’s home or other similar non-violent actions, a subsequent question and answer clarified Hirsh’s intentions.

“Completely agree we should mobilize against his hateful ideas, but what does knowing his home addresses do?” one Facebook user asked Hirsh. “Send a letter? Confront him in person? Seems like counter-speech is the main thing we can do. You can call it ‘whining’ but I’m not sure that’s fair or constructive. Side note: Apparently the GSA-owned Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in DC felt obligated to host his organization’s event because it can’t discriminate against speech under the First Amendment, so there’s that problem, too.”

Hirsh responded in an unhinged manner: “I wasn’t thinking of a fucking letter, Doug. He lives part of the time next door to me in Arlington. Our grandfathers brought baseball bats to Bund meetings. Want to join me?”

Perhaps knowing it wasn’t such a good idea to advocate openly for serious violence against Spencer in a public format, Hirsh deleted the post, but not before TheDCNF grabbed a screenshot.

A now-deleted Facebook post by Michael Hirsh urging violence against Richard Spencer. (Screengrab/Facebook).

Hirsh’s mention of Bund meetings is a reference to the German-American Bund, a Nazi organization in the United States active in the mid-to-late 1930s, which promoted National Socialist ideology and was often subject to violent attacks by Jewish mobsters in New York City and Newark, New Jersey, using baseball bats.

Hirsh’s post comes just days after Spencer’s alt-right organization, the National Policy Institute, held a conference at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., to celebrate GOP President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory as a “step towards identity politics” and remind the audience that “The alt-right is here, the alt-right is not going anywhere, the alt-right is going to change the world.”

The NPI conference has attracted considerable controversy after numerous conference-goers threw up the Nazi salute following a rousing speech. Spencer also referred to the press using the German word “Lügenpresse,” which translates to “lying press.” The National Socialist German Workers’ Party often employed the term to attack critics in the press.

       

NPI Conference Washington D.C. 19 November 2016.

Part 2

       
Speakers taking questions from the press included alt-right supporters (left to right) Peter Brimelow, Kevin MacDonald, Jason Jorjani, and Jared Taylor.

       
Protesters gather along 14th Street outside of the Reagan Building before the start of the press conference.

Millennial Woes interviews Matt Tate, Richard Spencer and Nathan Damico about protestors:

Pre-NPI conference protested by anti-fa

       

       

...outside Trump International Hotel afterward.

Dviersity Macht Frei, “Italy: 80-year-old hotel owner tries to barricade his hotel against asylum invaders”, 17 Nov 2016:

       
Policemen ask hotel owner Luigi Fogli for the keys as tries to protect his hotel confiscated to host African asylum seekers.

The elderly gentleman in the video is Luigi Fogli, a businessman in his 80s, who runs a hotel (Hotel Lory) in Ficarolo, in the province of Rovigo. Not long ago, he inquired about providing asylum accommodation services from the local government, but chose not to pursue the matter further when he found out that he would only be paid 7 euros per “refugee” per night. At that point, the local prefecture simply confiscated his hotel and forced the invaders upon him.

He tried to block their admission and, in fact, managed to hold it up for a few hours. But, eventually, he succumbed and the invaders arrived. Apparently he fainted at some point during the proceedings.

Source

Things like this are going on all over Italy. The local authorities are confiscating hotels and using them as invader accommodation. In some places, as in the incident described above, the proprietors resist; in other cases they cooperate and defence is left to the local citizens.

Here is a picture from a similar incident in Verona. The hotel Castello had been confiscated (link) but locals were happy and set up barricades.

       

(Source)

The mass confiscation of property to host “refugees” has provoked mass protests in Verona and given rise to the “Verona ai Veronesi” [Verona for the Veronese] movement. Here are some videos of their recent protests.

       

(Source)

NPR, “Could Trump ‘Undermine The Legacy Of The Obama Presidency’ With The Stroke Of A Pen?” 15 Nov 2016:

New Yorker writer Evan Osnos talks about the executive orders and other actions that Trump can use to undo existing agreements on climate change, immigration and foreign policy.

[...]

DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, Evan Osnos, welcome back to FRESH AIR. How reliable are campaign promises as a predictor of a president’s agenda in office, and will Trump be different?

EVAN OSNOS: I assumed that, like, I think like a lot of Americans, that campaign promises are not very valuable in terms of actually predicting the course of a presidency. We - you know, we tend to remember when campaigns say things that they don’t then fulfill. But actually, the political science on this is pretty clear, and it tells a very different story, which is that if you go back over the history of the presidency, you find that presidents tend to achieve the majority - the overwhelming majority of the things that they set out to accomplish when they were candidates.

[...]

DAVIES: Now, when people look at Donald Trump, some would say it’s not clear that he has any deeply held political beliefs. I mean, he used to be pro-choice. He used to be a Democrat. He’s kind of been all over the place over the course of his business career, and a lot of what he says seems kind of improvised, but we have some clues. I mean, there are two big appointments just announced. The Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, will be Trump’s chief of staff, and at the same time, his campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, who is from the right wing Breitbart News, will be a senior adviser with equal status to Reince Priebus. What does this tell us about Trump’s likely agenda?

OSNOS: Right. Well, I think a lot of us were very wary of the idea that Trump as president would actually do a lot of the things that he said as a candidate partly because he was, you know, obviously from way outside the mainstream and - of previous presidents. So perhaps the political science was useless. But there are a couple of things that I think are important to keep in mind. One is that the appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist and a counselor to the president is an extension of something that was very clear when this piece was written, which was that Donald Trump will move around on a lot of issues. He’s fluid, for instance, on what he would do on the technical basis of an H-1B visa, for instance, or whether or not he would allow school teachers to carry guns in the classroom.

But on three core ideas, he has stayed completely consistent. One of them is his belief that the United States is fundamentally being damaged by immigration. Number two is his belief that trade deals have done more damage to the United States than they have helped. And number three is his belief that the United States does too much for the world. As he said in 2015, I want to take back everything that the United States has given the world.

Steve Bannon, in his career at Breitbart, really transformed that organization into the principal exponent of those three ideas. So what you see today is Donald Trump is trying to balance the strategic objectives that his campaign road to victory in the form of Steve Bannon with the practical necessity of how do you actually operate within Washington. And for that, Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, is the ultimate Washington professional. He has been here for his professional life. He has really risen to the top ranks of the Republican establishment, and he’s now in the position to be able to try to help Donald Trump achieve his objectives.

DAVIES: You know, there’s a point of view that says, yeah, ideologues can have their say, but it’s the chief of staff who controls the president’s schedule that really moves the levers of power. Do you have an opinion about whether one will be more important than the other?

OSNOS: I think if you look at the way that those two roles have been used in recent history, you find that they are both important, and in many ways, that’s the design here. Steve Bannon has called Breitbart, which was his media organization, quote, “the platform of the alt right,” unquote. And that is the previously fringe movement on the conservative far-right edge, which was founded by Richard Spencer who lives in Montana and believes in the separation of the races. And that has now moved sort of further into the mainstream as a result of Steve Bannon’s rise within the Trump campaign and now his installation in the White House. But in order to get those ideas accomplished, you need somebody who really is just as skilled as anyone in sort of managing the levers of inside power in Washington, and that’s where Reince Priebus comes in.

DAVIES: OK, I want to talk about some of the areas of policy that will matter here. And we’ll try and figure out, you know, what Trump has said, what he believes, what he is really committed to and what he can actually accomplish by himself and what he needs congressional action for. One thing that people have talked about is that President Obama has done a lot with executive orders because of the gridlock in Congress and that President Trump, once he is inaugurated, can immediately undo a bunch of stuff simply by signing executive orders, repealing President Obama’s initiatives. Is that true?

OSNOS: Yeah, that’s true, and that’s an explicit part of the incoming Trump administration’s plan. Campaign advisers described it to me as a first-day project, by which they meant that on the first day or within a few days Donald Trump would seek to sign as many as 25 executive orders, or uses of executive power in other forms, that would, in the words of one adviser, erase the Obama presidency.

I should point out that every president when they come in uses executive powers in one form or another. Barack Obama, for instance, signed nine executive orders in the first 10 days. Doing 25 would be ambitious. People who have been through transitions before tell me that’s not realistic. But he could do several things that would significantly undermine the legacy of the Obama presidency. His team has talked about this since Election Day, that one of the things that’s important to them is to restart exploration of the Keystone Pipeline.

They will significantly expand the pace and intensity of deportations. They will seek to, if not formally remove the United States from the Paris climate agreement, then they will be able to take steps that basically undermine it so they can make sure the United States is not enforcing restrictions on carbon output. They can restrict funding and so on. So they can do things right away with the stroke of a pen that would pretty significantly undermine the legacy of the Obama presidency.

DAVIES: Is there some fine print here? I mean, I believe I’ve read that when some executive orders have gone past the rulemaking stage…

OSNOS: That’s right.

DAVIES: ...There’s a process. What does that mean?

OSNOS: Yeah, that’s right. The hyperbole in saying that they would undermine the Obama presidency is that once an executive order has gone beyond what’s known as the rulemaking stage, then that means that in order to undo it there has to be, for instance, a period of public comment. There has to be other bureaucratic steps. And that can take as much as a year or more depending on how efficiently the bureaucracy goes about it. And that’s meaningful because I think the question of how civil servants will interpret efforts to try to undermine previous initiatives matters. But the relevant point is that by issuing the executive order the clock on that process begins.

DAVIES: OK. Well, let’s look at some specific policy areas and figure out what might happen. Let’s start with climate change. You just mentioned that. Do we - what do we know about his views on climate change and the extent to which he is committed to them based on his appointments so far?

OSNOS: Well, as a candidate and before, Donald Trump has expressed a lot of skepticism about climate change. He’s called it a hoax. At one point, he described it as a hoax that was perpetrated by the Chinese in order to try to undermine American competitiveness. He later said that was a joke. Since Election Day, some of the appointments that he’s made have made clear that he’s going to make good on his belief that American energy policy and attempts to combat climate change are going in the wrong direction. So, for instance, Donald Trump’s transition team for the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency is run by somebody named Myron Ebell who has been really one of the most outspoken skeptics of climate change, runs a program here called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and it opposes regulation. It’s not clear exactly who funds it, but in the past, it was funded by fossil fuel companies including Exxon Mobil and others.

So this would be, I think, safe to say a radical change in the way the United States has talked and thought about climate change. One of the people that he has also indicated could be powerful in terms of shaping energy policy is Harold Hamm who was a billionaire who founded the shale oil company Continental Resources. He’s been a big contributor to the Koch brothers fundraising network, and there is so far no indication that Donald Trump did not mean what he said when he talked about climate change being a hoax that has damaged American competitiveness.

DAVIES: Are there some specific things President Trump could do immediately to change the direction of climate policy?

OSNOS: Yeah, he could. The Paris climate deal is a formal matter, requires four years to unwind. So in the interim, he could immediately suspend American payments to the deal in effect. These are the payments that the United States would make to U.N.-affiliated agencies that would be in charge of both implementing the deal and then also helping developing countries pay for making some of the concessions and transitions that are required in order to implement it.

[...]

DAVIES: You talk to some experienced people in immigration for your piece in The New Yorker about what it would take to affirmatively go out and find millions of undocumented workers and get them out of the country. You want to share a bit of that with us?

OSNOS: Yeah. I spoke to Julie Myers Wood, for instance, who was the head of Immigration Customs and Enforcement under George W. Bush, and she is opposed to Donald Trump-stated policies on immigration in many ways. But she also said that it’s a big mistake to assume that his ideas are so radical as to therefore be impossible, and that was her major point to me was that there are tools that are at the disposal of a president that would allow them to do this dramatic escalation of deportation. For instance, a president could give the IRS files to ICE, to Immigrations Customs Enforcement. So IRS files are considered to be the most reliable source of home addresses because a lot of undocumented immigrants who pay taxes, for instance, put in a reliable home address so that they can receive their refund.

If the president allowed it, that would then make it much easier for enforcement agents to be able to go out and find people. Another thing that would be at the disposal of a President is what’s known as 287-G of the Immigration Act which would allow the local and state agents, basically cops of one kind or another, to be enlisted in service of the deportation project. So that’s how you begin to see, for instance, local police being brought in for the purposes of raiding farms or factories and beginning to achieve the deportation numbers that he’s talked about.

But in order to do so, it would take a significant escalation of manpower and also of resources. But what came clear from my reporting on the subject was that it’s a big mistake to assume that it’s - this is binary that you either will have the system as it exists today or you would have some completely unimaginable system that Donald Trump has talked about. There is in fact a spectrum in between that Trump could move fairly substantially down the road to achieving his objectives on immigration.

[...]

DAVIES: Let’s talk about trade and the economy. You know, one of his core principles you said is the belief that trade deals have harmed America’s economy and killed jobs. What authority would he have immediately to remake or undo American trade policy?

OSNOS: The president has broad authority on trade. So, for instance, right away, the president could end American participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I think it’s fair to assume that the TPP as it’s known is now dead. But beyond that, he could also force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from it eventually.

There is a process in the case of NAFTA. He couldn’t just do it immediately. But when it comes to slapping tariffs, for instance, on other countries, there’s two ways to do it. One requires Congress and one doesn’t. If he goes after specific categories of goods - so if he says, for instance, that, you know, Chinese exports of one specific type, let’s call it, you know, chicken or tires or something like that, then he can use his own presidential power to do that sort of on an emergency basis. But if he’s going to try to impose a broad-based tariff against a country, that would actually require the consent of Congress.

But I think the important point is that he has the ability to change the tenor of the trade relationship with a country by talking about it in other ways. And as we all know, you know, he talked about China in very harsh terms during this campaign. My own sense based on talking to his trade advisers and his China specialists was that that was a kind of theater. I don’t believe that Donald Trump is prepared actually in any way to go to a trade war with China, I think, meaning that, you know, one of the things that his advisers said to me was that Donald Trump’s persona that he - you know, he’s confrontational, he says outrageous things, that that would have a chilling effect on the other side and that China would then fall in line. That’s their theory. They’re not actually prepared for the full economic consequences, which would be severe and profound, of a trade war with the world’s second-largest economy.

DAVIES: Well, this is an interesting and important question. And you can’t predict the future, but if, in fact, one of his core beliefs is that this is a big problem, we have to fix this to rebuild the American economy, what do the economists you talk to expect to happen? Are we going to have a trade war? What would it do?

OSNOS: A trade war could be a really dramatic turn in American economic history. If you talk to independent analysts, people who are not involved in either campaign, somebody - there’s a guy, for instance, named Mark Zandi, who’s an economist at Moody’s Analytics. And he’s worked for Republicans and he’s worked for Democrats in the past. And what he says is that Trump’s plan, if he actually did the things that he said he would and triggered a trade war with China that that would put probably somewhere around 4 million Americans out of work. And then over the ensuing recession that it would also cost the economy another 3 million jobs that would have been created otherwise.

Most economists broadly agree that a trade war would be hugely damaging to the United States.

[...]

DAVIES: One of the things he also says he wants to do is immediately cut the regulatory burdens on businesses on Wall Street. Can he do that himself?

OSNOS: He can. The president has authority, ultimate authority over 15 executive agencies. And he would be able to direct them to change the pace and spirit in which they are issuing regulations. He has said - I’m not clear on whether this is legally possible - that he wants to do a version of what Vice President-elect Mike Pence did in Indiana.

Pence created an agency that was dedicated to suspending the creation of all new regulations except for public health and safety.

[...]

DAVIES: He’s promised big tax cuts. Will they really happen?

OSNOS: That, I think, is one of his better bets. He’s got a Republican Congress on his side. And at this point, it’s hard to see them not doing it.

DAVIES: And what kind of tax cuts are we talking about? I mean, for those of us who haven’t carefully followed his campaign positions, are they upper income, middle income, everybody?

OSNOS: They provide the greatest relief to the upper stratum of the tax base, so the highest earners will do best. There is also tax relief for the sort of upper-middle-class. Then corporate tax rates will be substantially relieved.

[...]

DAVIES: Let’s talk about foreign and military policy. He’s criticized the deal with Iran. Can he scuttle that deal by himself?

OSNOS: Yes, he can. What he has said he wants to do is renegotiate the deal with Iran, and renegotiate is a sort of a flexible word. It’s not clear what he means entirely. But were he to try to reopen that deal, that could actually - that could really change the course of things more broadly beyond just the Iran deal because at that point what happens is that Iran - and Iran specialists told me as much months ago - would regard the United States seeking to renegotiate the deal as an abrogation of the deal.

At that point, they would say that the United States has basically not held up its end of the bargain, and they would have the right - the legal authority and the right - to restart the development of nuclear energy. So I think he’s going to find once he begins to get into the details of this that by simply announcing that he’s going to renegotiate that might not achieve the effect he has in mind. It might actually hasten the restart of the Iranian nuclear program.

[...]

DAVIES: When you wrote about Donald Trump and his policies towards the military and towards foreign affairs, the issue of temperament comes up. This is a loaded word. He hated being criticized for his temperament. But you have - you found a quote from his book “Think Like A Billionaire.” It can be smart to be shallow, that he has a penchant for making big decisions quickly, that he trusts his gut. Share what - some of what you learned about what that might mean from your conversations with military and intelligence officials.

OSNOS: Yeah. When you talk to a broad range of people who have been involved in the most sensitive national security questions, you know - these are the people who’ve been in the Situation Room at crucial moments particularly from Republican administrations what they’ll tell you is that the crucial ingredient is whether or not a president is impetuous, whether or not the president makes decisions before they have as much information and as many competing points of view as possible. And often as one - James Woolsey who is a former director of the CIA is now an adviser to the Trump administration - before he became an adviser to Trump, he said to me in an interview that very often the first information that a president receives is wrong. And we’ve seen that beginning all the way from Vietnam up to the present day. And part of the sort of crucial patience that’s required is the ability to both wait until you have a fuller picture and then also be prepared to act. But if you act on the basis of limited information, history suggests to us that we would have made a lot of catastrophic choices.

[...]

DAVIES: You know, last year, you wrote about white nationalist groups that have embraced Trump, and they feel he’s expanded their reach, given them some legitimacy and, of course, since the election there have been some very troubling cases of swastikas, racist graffiti, some assaults racist hate speech. You know, some would see this as just a fringe that is an embarrassment to most Republicans and conservatives I’m wondering what you make of this and what the impact will be of Trump being in the White House?

OSNOS: Well, in some ways, this was a storyline that I think people who generally covered politics didn’t initially embrace, you know, the idea that somehow the alt-right or the white nationalist world would be even talked about in a discussion of an incoming presidential. It was so ludicrous that we didn’t even really do it. And then it just became very clear early on in the Trump campaign that they were a part of this phenomenon. The neo-Nazi website endorsed him for president 12 days after he announced. And later you follow it all the way through 20 months later. He was endorsed by the newspaper the KKK. Steve Bannon has been - who is now chief strategist in the White House - has been really the sort of principal thinker in terms of how do you take ideas that exist way out on the far right and get them in front of people’s eyes that are more conventional readers?

And at Breitbart, that’s really what he did. He sort of - it became the platform for the alt-right. When I spoke on Election Day to a white nationalist leader named Matthew Heimbach as the sort of results became clear, I said, you know, how are you feeling? And he said vindicated. And what he said was that this campaign and that the victory of Donald Trump has shown that there is an appetite out there for his ideas, even if people can’t quite bring themselves to say so.

You know, I just have to say, I mean, this was so preposterous that we’d be talking about this a couple of years ago, that it’s a reminder of how much politics have changed and been changed by the candidacy of Donald Trump. Now, look, how that actually translates into a White House, we don’t yet know. But Steve Bannon is now a couple of steps from the Oval Office, and that’s - we’re in uncharted territory there.

DAVIES: Evan Osnos, thanks so much for speaking with us.

OSNOS: Thanks for having me, Dave.

Yossi Klein Halevi, left, and Abdullah Antepli are co-directors of the Muslim Leadership Initiative. (Netanel Tobias/Shalom Hartman Inst.)

JTA, , 14 Nov 2016:

“Jews and Muslims ramp up alliances in wake of Trump’s election.”

On Monday, the American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America launched the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, a group of religious and business leaders from both communities who will help draft domestic policy legislation and advocate on issues of shared concern.

The ADL is planning to increase its efforts to provide support for legal and legislative efforts in the fight against anti-Muslim bigotry.

And the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative, which educates young Muslim leaders about Judaism and Israel, held a retreat over the weekend titled “Living in Trump’s America: Muslim Vulnerability and Jewish Echoes.”

“What’s happened as a result of the poisonous atmosphere that Trump has created is that American Muslims are desperate for allies,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, the Muslim Leadership Initiative’s co-director. “And the argument that MLI has made to the Muslim community — which is that the Jews are, at least in theory, natural allies for embattled Muslims — now has become compelling.”

Both Jewish and Muslim groups have expressed worry about Trump’s rhetoric, and his supporters’ actions, over the course of the presidential campaign. Muslims have protested Trump’s 2015 call for a ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, as well as his insinuations that Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks and have withheld information from law enforcement about terrorism. Anti-Muslim attacks rose during his campaign, and a string of attacks has followed his election.

And while Trump has not explicitly targeted Jews, Jewish groups raised alarm over his endorsements by white nationalists and online attacks on Jews by his supporters, along with his remarks late in the campaign that echoed anti-Semitic tropes. Jewish groups have protested his naming as his chief strategist Stephen Bannon, the executive chairman of a website, Breitbart News, that has been accused of incitement against Muslims and coddling anti-Semitism among its writers and readers. In addition, the ADL decried “a wave of anti-Semitic vandalism” following the election.

In the past, differing stances and sensitivities regarding Islamic extremism or Israeli military action drove groups apart. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he hopes Jewish groups will be more willing to work with his organization following Trump’s election. Jewish groups, including the ADL, have resisted working with CAIR due to its anti-Israel stances.

“It’s always been our position that we’re open to shared and cooperative action with the Jewish community,” Hooper said. “It doesn’t really take Donald Trump to spur that. I think it’s created an urgent need for mutual cooperation between all like-minded organizations and communities.”

The newly formed Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, which has 31 members from both communities, formed shortly before Trump was elected last week. The council will focus on protecting the right to wear religious head coverings, prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, recording hate crimes and advocating for immigrants and refugees, according to Robert Silverman, the American Jewish Committee’s director of Muslim-Jewish relations.

“It is a reaction to some of the bigotry and hate speech that came out of the campaign,” Silverman said. “We’re concerned about the public discourse in the whole country. We’re also concerned about messages that originated within the two communities. The Trump phenomenon is only going to make it come together more quickly.”

Jewish activists who have long championed Jewish-Muslim collaboration believe their community is finally coming around.

Rabbi Marc Schneier, co-founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which brings together leaders from the two religions, says he hopes Jews will come to the defense of Muslims if Trump follows through on his proposals to ban Muslims from entering the country, or to create a registry of American Muslims.

In June, Schneier’s foundation launched an initiative called Muslims are Speaking Out that highlights Muslim condemnations of extremism and aims to dispel misconceptions Americans have about the Muslim community.

“We have the obstacle of greater Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric,” Schneier said. “The opportunity is that this is another test for the American Jewish community. Will it step up to the plate, and will it perform as it has done in the past?”