As everyone else is writing about the Trump’s first hundred days, how he didn’t accomplish anything that he’d said that he would, and how he just responded with yet another lie, telling the American people that, despite what we might hear from the “lying press,” he’s kept his promises, I’ve decided to spend my time today looking into a new phenomenon that I just learned about… Apparently, when members of the so-called “alt-right” get invited into the White House Press Corps, they mark the occasion by standing at the podium Sean “That’s What Dictatorships Do” Spicer delivers his lies from, and flash the new hate symbol associated with their movement, which, in recent years, has been popularized across the internet by the lovable little mascot of the new white power movement known as Pepe the Frog… And, yes, this is really a thing.
The folks on the right, of course, deny there’s anything to it, saying that it’s just the good, old “OK” sign, like the one your grandpa used to shoot you from across the room when did something awesome, like steal a few popsicles out of the freezer behind you grandma’s back for you and him to enjoy out int the backyard. That explanation, however, doesn’t hold much water when you consider the context. Take, for instance, the photo on the bottom right in the above collage. The older man on the left, the founder of the alt-right “news” site Gateway Pundit, tweeted out that image with the hashtag “#pepe”, referring to the above-mentioned frog, lest any of his followers not get the reference.
Standing next to the white haired man, whose name is Jim Hoft, is a young man by the name of Lucian Wintrich, who I first heard of during the presidential debates last year, when he tweeted out, “Trump needs to grab Anderson Cooper by the pussy.” This photo of Hoff and Wintrich was taken the day it was announced that Wintrich, the gay conservative agitator behind “Twinks for Trump”, would be attending White House press briefings as Gateway Pundit’s White House correspondent, in spite of the fact that he has no experience whatsoever as a journalist… For what it’s worth, Wintrich admits that. “I don’t consider myself a journalist,” he’s said before on Twitter, before then going on to say, “I consider myself the future of journalism.” [Interesting historical note: It’s not without precedent to hand out White House press credentials to non journalists pretending to be journalists. Does anyone remember, back during the Bush presidency, when the true identity of Jeff Gannon was discovered?]
For what it’s worth, Wintrich isn’t the only shocking unqualified person to receive press credentials under the Trump administration. The man in the top photo is “freelance journalist” Mike Cernovich, who you might know as the blogger who popularized the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring from beneath a popular pizza restaurant in Washington. [Cernovich also said during the campaign that Secretary Clinton was dying of an undisclosed neurological disease.] According to The Independent, Cernovich received White House press credentials on 25 April, just a few weeks after he broke the “news” (since proven to be false) that Susan Rice had misused intelligence data during the Obama administration, thus diverting attention away from Trump’s lie about Obama having tapped his phones. Can you say quid pro quo? [Cernovich, for what it’s worth, is also well known for his views on date rape, which, according to him, can’t really happen. “Have you guys ever tried ‘raping’ a girl without using force? Try it. It’s basically impossible,” he wrote in 2012. “Date rape does not exist.”]
The person standing next to Cernovich in the above photo is Cassandra Fairbanks, a woman who, as I understand it, supported Sanders for President until somewhat abruptly jumping over to team Trump. She now works for Russian news outlet Sputnik, which, I suppose, if I were suspicious by nature, might explain the radical shift… Oh, and if the rumors can be believed, she may have also played a role in the reopening of the investigation into Secretary Clinton’s server security right before the election, which many of us still think is what ultimately gave Trump the victory… Regardless, though, she also just received her White House press credentials.
And, for those of you who might not recognize him, the guy on the right in the remaining photo is none other that Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right agitator who was permanently banned from Twitter for instigating online racist attacks against actress Leslie Jones, and forced from Breitbart News after video surfaced of him appearing to condone pedophilia. While Yiannopoulos is not a member of the White House Press Corps (at least not yet), he has apparently been invited to attend press briefings on two occasions. And, one suspects, if he wanted to, he too could have a regular seat in front of Sean Spicer. For what it’s worth, though, that likely isn’t going to happen, as, according to Vanity Fair, secret backers just gave Yiannopoulos $12 million to build “a live-event touring company, dedicated to making progressives’ lives a ‘living hell’.”
Whether the above people are truly racist, or just enjoy the idea of being perceived of as racist, I’m not sure. I don’t know, however, that it really matters. Even if they’re just trolling the left, trying to upset those of us who care about things like decency, civil rights, and the future of humanity, the end result is the same. By lining up behind the Pepe flag, and signaling their allegiance, they’re normalizing extremism, acknowledging the work of those like Richard Spencer who are working to bring the American Nazi movement into the mainstream, and demonstrating to the public at large that it’s not only “OK” to believe such things, but acceptable to celebrate the fact in public. These are scary times, my friends.
