Latest news with #WhiteLivesMatter
Pink Villa
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Kanye West Declares Retirement From One of His Insensitive Antics and Asks For Forgiveness, Know What It's About
Kanye West proclaimed on May 22 through social media that he has abandoned antisemitism. He went to ask for forgiveness for the damage he had caused through his actions. Ye said that he is driven by a new passion to take in love and peace, apparently prompted by a FaceTime conversation with a call from his children. For the Donda rapper, it was a reminder of his role to be a force for good in the world. "I am done with antisemitism," he wrote in a series of X posts, adding, "I love all people. God forgive me for the pain I've caused. I forgive those who have caused me pain. Thank you, God." This statement comes after a series of inciting language and behavior that attracted broad condemnation. The rapper's antisemitic comments started picking up global attention in 2022. In October that year, he showed up at Paris Fashion Week dressed in a "White Lives Matter" top before then sharing threats aimed at the Jewish population. The reaction was swift, resulting in severed relationships with big firms like Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga, and Universal Music Group. West tweeted, "I simply got a FaceTime from my kids and I wanna save the world again…," adding, "GOD CALLS FOR PEACE. Share peace. Share love." Despite Ye's recent social media updates claiming a change of heart, there is high skepticism, especially with civil rights groups. According to Billnoars, the Anti-Defamation League reacted to his words by stating they have great doubt, given his track record of retracting statements. The group stressed, "Sorry, but we're not buying it. We've seen this kind of attempted apology from Kanye before, only for him to back down over and over again." Ye 's record since 2023 has shown a trend of concerning behavior. He had earlier attempted to peddle merchandise bearing Nazi symbols and made pro-Hitler statements. He has also attempted to drop a song about Hitler, which was said to have been censored by streaming sites. More controversy necessitated the postponement of Kanye West's concert in South Korea, as organizers blamed continued public outcry. While he professes to reform, not many are buying it, citing continuing provocation and a history of erratic behavior.
New Straits Times
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New Straits Times
#SHOWBIZ: Kanye West reveals disturbing past relationship with cousin
KUALA LUMPUR: American rapper Kanye West has posted another deeply disturbing message on X. This time, beyond his previous controversial statements, the rapper made a shocking claim: he alleged an incestuous relationship with his cousin, starting in childhood. According to The Wrap, West's message accompanied a video for his song "Cousins," which opens with the lyrics, "Hanging out with my cousin readin' dirty magazines." In his post, West wrote, "This song is called 'COUSINS' about my cousin that's locked in jail for life for killing a pregnant lady a few years after I told him we wouldn't 'look at dirty magazines together' anymore." He continued, "Perhaps in my self-centered mess, I felt it was my fault that I showed him those dirty magazines when he was 6, and then we acted out what we saw. My dad had Playboy magazines, but the magazines I found at the top of my mom's closet were different. My name is Ye and I sucked my cousins d--k till I was 14." This latest post is part of a pattern of highly controversial and erratic behavior from West. In 2022, he was locked out of both X (then Twitter) and Instagram after wearing a "White Lives Matter" shirt and making antisemitic remarks, including a claim that Sean Combs was being controlled by Jewish people. These statements led to a significant backlash, with major sponsors like Adidas and Balenciaga terminating their partnerships with him. More recently, in February, West's X account was again deactivated following a series of antisemitic posts, including one where he declared, "I am a Nazi." That same month, West also contradicted his previous statements about being bipolar. He told rapper Justin LaBoy on "The Download" podcast, "Come to find out it's really a case of autism that I have." Beyond his social media activity, West faces legal issues. In November, a model sued him, alleging sexual assault during a 2010 music video shoot. This is just one of several lawsuits against West, who has also been sued multiple times in connection with his now-closed Donda Academy.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Texas Track-Meet Stabbing Shows Where Right-Wing Influencers Are Headed
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. On April 2, Donald Trump's 'Liberation Day,' a teenage athlete fatally stabbed another teenage athlete at a track meet in Frisco, Texas. The exact details around this specific case remain unclear, but local investigators said it started when 17-year-old Karmelo Anthony sat under another team's tent during a rain delay. According to the authorities, the second student, 17-year-old Austin Metcalf, told Anthony to leave. The two argued. Anthony warned Metcalf not to touch him. Metcalf touched Anthony. Anthony stabbed Metcalf in the chest. Metcalf, it should be noted, was white. Anthony is Black. Over the past couple of weeks, the story of Metcalf's death has blown up on right-wing media. (Anthony allegedly confessed to stabbing Metcalf but has claimed self-defense. He has been charged with murder.) Fox News has run a number of segments on the incident, and many prominent commentators have spoken out about it. It has reached the point of saturation at which some influencers can simply post photos of the alleged killer, calling for retribution without name or context, and presume their audiences will know who they mean. There is one notable way in which this story diverges from other violent crime obsessions that occasionally grip social media. In recent years, news cycles about killings in the U.S. have triggered discussions of guns, of the internet, of misogyny, of racism. On the right, violent tragedies have supported specific political narratives: In the notable case of Laken Riley, for example, a murder by an immigrant has bolstered false arguments about migrant crime, which in turn were used in support of Trump's deportation policies. Similarly, stories about murders in Chicago and elsewhere have served to bolster fears of gang violence and other urban crime, to argue for the failed policies of blue cities and the need for robust policing. But despite the fact that there appears to be little to be pulled from the Austin Metcalf story, which seems like a tragic and random conflict between teenagers, its reach has been huge. What made the Metcalf murder so useful for certain people online is that it has the flavor of a culture war story—Metcalf was a white, Southern, Christian boy who liked to hunt and play football, and was killed while participating in wholesome high school athletics, and a Black youth was the villain—without having any actual use, at face value, in any kind of policy debate. That is, unless you're opening up debate to white supremacist ideas. After Metcalf's death was reported, the hashtag #WhiteLivesMatter was trending on X, with 40,000 mentions on April 3, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Comments on stories about the incident were cesspools of overt racism, with users throwing around slurs and ideas about the innate violence of Black men and their corroding effect on society. A white nationalist group in Pennsylvania distributed stickers with Metcalf's and Anthony's faces, declaring it to be 'time to take a stand!' White supremacists such as Nick Fuentes and Stew Peters spoke about the incident on their shows, insisting the incident reflected 'Black barbarism.' A post from the popular X account End Wokeness calling on supporters to 'say his name'—a co-opting of the Black Lives Matter slogan—received nearly 38 million views. It's hard to say, in the modern, hate-speech-flooded version of Twitter, how many of the accounts spouting white supremacist views in the replies are bots and trolls. But on sites like Substack, TikTok, and YouTube, verifiably real people are sharing extreme views based on the case. And major accounts and influencers have picked up the case as fodder, as well. The far-right commentator Benny Johnson called for the death penalty for Anthony, to 'send a message.' MAGA filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza called Anthony the 'product of a rotten set of values that had been transmitted on the urban street.' Michael Knowles, a Daily Wire personality, speculated that Anthony had come from 'some kind of terrible home' and was born out of wedlock. And Matt Walsh, another Daily Wire figure, has insisted on calling the stabbing a premeditated and racially motivated murder. 'Young black males are violent to a wildly, outrageously disproportionate degree,' he wrote in a post on X that has more than 19 million views. 'That's just a fact. We all know it. And it's time that we speak honestly about it, or nothing will ever change.' These accounts are incentivized in the attention economy to highlight stories that play to outrage, fear, and other base emotions. In this case, as the story moved on, they were given a gift: Supporters of Anthony, convinced of his innocence, started fundraising pages for his legal defense. Several real and scam accounts started pages for him on GoFundMe, which were taken down by the company for violating its rules against fundraisers for those charged with violent crimes. The family also started a still active fundraiser on the more libertarian GiveSendGo. The latter has raised $419,300—compared to the combined $518,700 from the two Metcalf fundraisers on GoFundMe—with donors' comments expressing their belief that Anthony had been acting in self-defense. For days, conservative influencers ran with updates on this fundraiser and on Anthony's base of support. To be fair, this rage-baiting campaign wasn't limited to the right. On social media, Anthony-supporting accounts spread fake stories about Metcalf espousing white supremacist opinions, or about media cover-ups of evidence that would justify Anthony's alleged behavior. Internet rumors spread that Metcalf had bullied Anthony, that Metcalf punched Anthony, that Metcalf had actually died of a drug overdose. Other people made TikTok and YouTube videos blaming Metcalf's behavior for the outcome, or otherwise justifying the violence—a difficult position to take, particularly when we don't know exactly what happened under that tent. But the parts of the discourse with the greatest reach—the X posts with 20 million views, the YouTube videos with the highest view counts—remained those discussing the problem of violent Black youth as an urgent, topical issue. This is notable, because violent crime continues to be much lower than it was in previous decades, and the murder rate appears to be falling post-pandemic. There is also no strong racial justice movement happening, as in 2020, that would explain a backlash. There is no reason to think anti-white-motivated violence is at any kind of high. There is, of course, an unrelated reason for the timing that may have prompted this particular story to blow up: It occurred on Liberation Day, the same day Trump's tariff announcement tanked the markets. 'This is part of the strategy to get people to look elsewhere,' said Sarah T. Roberts, a professor at UCLA who specializes in digital media and politics and culture. 'It's great for them to have something else to talk about that will press buttons for their audiences.' But even if it was an issue the influencers clung to for a distraction in a tough news cycle for the MAGA movement, some experts said it would make sense that during this second Trump presidency, the right-wing influencers would return to Black crime. Daniel Karell, a sociologist at Yale University who has studied social media and social movements, agreed that the timing likely had to do with the content creators' need for a sensational story during a bad tariff news cycle. But he did add that he would not be surprised if immigrant violence stories had become less interesting to this same group, with the Trump administration in charge of deportations—meaning they would be responsible for any new crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. 'The online Right needs to find another threat that is not under direct control of the executive branch,' Karell wrote in an email. 'One option, which is a tried-and-true boogeyman that runs throughout American history, is racial threat.' And with this moment of conservative cultural resurgence, when Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies and other anti-racist measures have been so thoroughly rolled back and 'woke' has become a taboo term, some influencers took the chance to push the conversation around race further than it could go during the Biden years. Take, for example, the case of Jack Posobiec, a podcaster and conspiracy theorist who has promoted Pizzagate and the 'Stop the Steal' movement. Posobiec has significant sway in the MAGA movement. He has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference; was a contributor to Turning Point USA; is a frequent guest on Steve Bannon's show; was invited to join Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on an official trip to Europe, according to the Washington Post; and, per the Post, has claimed he traveled with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on a trip to Ukraine. And to Posobiec, Metcalf's death was a 'rallying cry,' as he said in a post to his 3 million followers. He stated that 'white liberals have rated non-white groups more positively than their own race, a pattern not mirrored by other racial groups.' The conservative reaction to the Metcalf murder, he said, may have shown the scale of frustration white people had about 'racial crimes' against their own race. 'The White Guilt Narrative may have reached its breaking point.' This turn may show where the conversation about race in America is headed in the second Trump administration, when the conservative movement has largely won its older battles over education, corporate diversity standards, and hiring practices. The new right-wing vision is no longer of a race-blind society, pulling on indignation that liberals are making everything about race. Instead, there's a wholly different frontier in the debate, an argument for a world in which white people stop being blind to the problems of other demographics; one in which they protect each other—and prioritize their own shared interests.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A Black man says officials in Howell, Michigan, targeted him after he confronted white supremacists
Amayo confronts white supremacists in Howell, Feb. 6, 2025 | Jon KIng Municipal leaders in a small, Michigan city known as a hotbed for white supremacy are working to clean up its reputation, but they find themselves in a predicament. Officials in Howell have denounced white supremacy groups that have demonstrated there for a half century, and they recently hired a public relations firm to scrub the city's image. But at a February City Council meeting, even as they criticized protestors who waved swastika flags and yelled 'white power' – labeling them as outside agitators – they have castigated local residents who have stood up to racism. One of those residents is now pushing back against the city, too. Jeff Amayo, who is Black, filed a complaint March 11 with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, naming both the city and its police department. The complaint followed a Feb. 24 presentation during a City Council meeting outlining the city's response to a showdown earlier that month between white supremecist demonstrators and counterprotestors that included Amayo outside the Howell Theater. The presentation from Howell City Manager Erv Suida which also included Police Chief Michael Dunn, named Amayo as having 'antagonized, challenged and taunted' one of the white supremacists during the Feb. 6 event. Suida equated the actions of Amayo and Stand Against Extremism Livingston County, or SAGE which was showing a documentary and hosting a community discussion about white supremacy that evening – with those of White Lives Matter, which staged a protest outside the event. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified White Lives Matter, also known as WLM, as a neo-Nazi group. While Amayo is not a member of SAGE, he said he showed up that night to support the group's mission. The city's presentation noted that Amayo had posted a video to social media prior to the event in which he is standing outside the theater and says 'Apparently these Nazis are cowards…where you at? I'm waiting for you.' The city's presentation said Amayo's video was directed at Eric Cooper of Fowlerville, 'a known WLM member' and was challenging him to come downtown. Cooper did show up at the theater, and was confronted by Amayo, according to a video Amayo shared of the incident. Amayo told Cooper he didn't own Howell, and called him 'a joke.' While the city's presentation indicated Amayo sparked the confrontation, he told the Michigan Advance that it was Cooper who came to the event with the obvious intent of disrupting it. 'He did the Nazi salute and just something clicked in my brain,' Amayo said. 'I never touched him, but I just let him know that,'Your behavior is not tolerated. What you represent is not tolerated. And here's a Black man in your face. What are you going to do about it?'' A civil rights department spokesperson confirmed for Michigan Advance they had received Amayo's complaint and said their investigators were evaluating it. The Advance made a request for comment from Suida, but his office did not respond. The presentation to the City Council followed a city press release after the white supremacist protest in which the city asserted that while WLM was 'a small group of morally misguided individuals.' But city officials also 'strongly' denounced SAGE for bringing what it said were untrained armed security guards to the event. SAGE has said they did have several people attend who were legally carrying firearms to serve as a community safety team following online threats by extremist groups intent on disrupting the gathering. But Amayo said he was the only counterprotester who was patted down by Howell police officers that night after they accused him of being armed. Amayo told the Advance he never had a weapon that night as he is prohibited from doing so following a 2015 assault conviction in Livingston County Circuit Court for which he served time behind bars. 'I have a record,' said Amayo. 'I'm not stupid. I have too much to lose. I don't even own a gun, but they assumed that I had a gun, right? But where's the surveillance of Eric Cooper and these other four Nazis?' Suida's City Council presentation includes dash cam video from Howell patrol vehicles the night of Feb. 6. Video showed multiple units were providing surveillance on the confrontation, although none of the officers left their vehicles. That point was emphasized by SAGE, who posted a video from that night showing the WLM protestors harassing a Latina resident, calling her ethnic slurs and her husband a 'race traitor' before telling her to 'go back to your country,' despite her telling them she is a U.S. citizen. 'This is ethnic intimidation, it can not be normalized,' said SAGE. 'Law enforcement is protecting the rights of white supremacists over the rights of our most vulnerable and allowing them to continuously terrorize our community.' In their press release, Howell officials said they also had plainclothes officers monitoring the situation that night. The release said the Livingston County Sheriff's Office conducted a traffic stop in coordination with the Howell Police Department on a U-Haul vehicle as it was leaving the area, identifying one member of the group, although it didn't release that person's name or hometown. However, they did 'encourage the media' to use the Freedom of Information Act to identify the protestors 'and bring light to who these masked messengers of hate are and the organization they represent.' When the local newspaper the Livingston Daily did just that, submitting a FOIA request for that information, it reported that while it received two police reports from the incident, both redacted all identifying information. A reputation for racism Howell, a 90% white city of just over 10,000 between Lansing and Detroit, has long had a reputation for extremist activity. It became known as a Ku Klux Klan hotspot in the 1970s and 1980s. Then, infamous Michigan KKK Grand Dragon Robert Miles held hate rallies and cross burnings at his Cohoctah Township property north of Howell until his death in 1992. That reputation has lingered, continually fueled by incidents such as a well-publicized auction of a Klan robe in 2005, and hate messages posted online by Howell students in 2014 after a basketball game with a racially-mixed Grand Blanc basketball team. Community leaders have worked hard to fight that image, including a symbolic scrubbing of the steps of the historic Livingston County courthouse in 1995 following a KKK rally. And while a similar symbolic scrubbing was held in August by SAGE a week after white supremacists marched through downtown Howell chanting 'Heil Hitler' and holding signs saying 'White Lives Matter,' city officials have been focused on emphasizing that the WLM protestors are not Howell residents. However, that hasn't stopped the Howell area from becoming a focal point for white supremacist activity, as evidenced by an incident in November when a group with Nazi flags protested outside a production of the play 'The Diary of Anne Frank,' which prompted SAGE to hold another counter-protest, this time on the steps of Howell City Hall. Amayo says the incident outside the play, which was being performed at the American Legion Hall in Howell Township, is what really motivated him to make a stand like he did on Feb. 6. 'Part of the reason people were afraid to come out of the American Legion was because they were intimidated by these people, and I want to show there's nothing to be intimidated about these people. They're cowards. They're nothing but cowards,' he said. Julie Ohashi, the cofounder of SAGE, grew up in Howell and told City Council members at their March 10 meeting that their choice of focusing on Amayo over white supremacists is a choice that leaves many questioning their priorities. 'The victim watched these people racially harass his community four times before that night when he decided that them being just a few blocks from his house was enough,' said Ohashi. 'The reason minority community members have been forced to the point of confronting these terrorists themselves is the direct result of the inaction by the city, local leaders and law enforcement. Ignoring and pretending away something is not a strategy.' Mark Fancher is a staff attorney for the Racial Justice Project with ACLU Michigan. He said the problems playing out in Howell are not isolated. Fancher believes that the anti-immigrant, anti-diversity rhetoric coming from the administration of President Donald Trump, and amplified by his supporters, can help explain the city's reaction. 'This creates a general climate in the country that makes it very easy, for even people in government, to see a very distorted picture of what's happening in their communities. They don't process the white supremacists as being a threat to the community. The way that they process that is that these are people who are coming in to Make America Great Again,' said Fancher. 'So I think it's a local manifestation of something that's happening nationally, and I think that there's going to be more of it.' Trying to rehab a reputation The city of Howell, meanwhile, has responded to the multiple recent incidents involving hate groups by hiring a public relations firm to try and provide 'consistent and accurate communications and messaging.' The firm, Holland, Michigan-based Burch Branded, was retained at the March 10 council meeting for three months at $6,500 per month, with an hourly rate of $135 per hour for any work outside the scope of the contract. As outlined in a letter from the firm, they will develop a 12-month communication plan, provide public relations services such as writing press releases and pitching stories to media, as well as 'support social media messaging on behalf of Howell' including creating and distributing an e-newsletter. Rich Perlberg is a retired journalist who covered Howell and the Livingston County area as a reporter, editor and general manager at the local newspaper, now called the Livingston Daily, from 1972 until he retired in 2013. Struggling to deal with racism is nothing new, he said, but hiring a public relations firm to try and resolve it is. 'In this case, what exactly are the negative consequences to the area after an unflattering story? Hurt feelings for a day or two? That's nothing compared to the marginalized person who feels unsafe here. Talk to them, if they are serious about improving their image. Spend $20,000 on them,' he said. Amayo believes the city is essentially trying to cure a disease by treating a symptom and not the underlying cause. 'I think it's a joke that they're willing to spend all this money when all they have to do is talk to the weak, the vulnerable, the minorities, the marginalized, and ask them their opinion,' he said. 'Why spend all this money when you have all these residents that you can ask? And that goes back to the bigger picture of why are you blaming me? Why wasn't I allowed to defend myself? Nobody reached out to me that they were going to do this. Nobody said anything.' Amayo says his complaint to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights will hopefully provide a better starting point for the city to try and resolve these issues. 'Something needs to be changed. The only way you can fix a mistake is to know what you're fixing,' he said.
Los Angeles Times
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Commentary: The last stand of Tory D. Johnson: What Huntington Beach tells us about the demise of Black Lives Matter
In the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter felt unstoppable. Protests swept the country, corporations pledged solidarity and police faced calls for reform. But nearly five years later, as the anniversary of George Floyd's murder approaches, that moment has collapsed — banners gone, donations dried up and racial justice has become taboo. Nowhere is this clearer than in Huntington Beach, where one man, Tory D. Johnson, refuses to let the movement die. 'I came here with a backpack and a dream,' Johnson says. He arrived in 2012, leaving Indiana behind with hopes of music and success. 'I wanted to prove my worth — to myself, to the white family that adopted me after 28 foster homes, and to my biological mother, who was 14 when she gave me up.' He had visited Huntington Beach once before, on tour with a heavy-metal band. The ocean and promise of reinvention stayed with him. 'I called it my happy place.' Yet for much of his time here, that place has been living in his car. After Floyd's murder on May 25, 2020, Johnson's dream shifted — not to fame, but to changing the story of a city. 'I could have been that Black man under Derek Chauvin's knee.' When Johnson organized the city's first major BLM protest, the backlash was immediate. 'I posted a flier on Facebook,' he says. 'Next thing I know, businesses boarded up and counter-protesters showed up.' Yet anti-vaccine rallies months earlier had drawn no such response. 'But me? A Black man calling for justice? That was different.' Since then, a MAGA-aligned city council has barred nongovernmental flags from city property after a previous council supported the Pride flag, attempted to privatize the library, rejected state housing requirements, imposed voter ID laws, affirmed biological differences between men and women, and dismantled a human relations committee formed in response to white supremacist hate crimes in the 1990s — to name a few of their decisions. 'It's about control,' Johnson says. 'They want to make sure the people who vote look like them.' Johnson, unaffiliated with national BLM, is caught in the contradictions of a fading movement. 'I never got a dime from them,' he says. 'But the name still has power.' By early 2021, white supremacist propaganda surfaced across Orange County. Fliers for a 'White Lives Matter' rally at the Huntington Beach Pier appeared on doorsteps. The same city that had responded to Johnson's protest with fear and plywood now faced an openly racist demonstration. He arrived in a black suit and tie, channeling Malcolm X. His counterprotest held ground. Then the crowd swelled. Tensions rose. Police declared an unlawful assembly. Ten people were arrested. The rally fizzled, but the message had been sent. 'This city belongs to all of us,' Johnson says. Johnson represents what remains of BLM in 2025 — not a movement, just individuals still fighting. The world has moved on, yet he remains, a solitary figure tilting at windmills. At city council meetings, he stands at the podium, one of the few Black voices. 'Should I be afraid as a Black man to live in Huntington Beach?' he asks. Even some supporters ask, 'Why do you stay?' They admire his persistence but know the fight has only gotten harder. His adopted family loves him, but that love isn't enough to quiet the deeper struggle in his 'orphan heart,' as he says, to believe he was never meant to be discarded so easily. 'I'm still here,' he says. Tory D. Johnson's fight in Huntington Beach reflects a broader struggle for racial justice — how movements rise, face backlash, and often fade. But the question remains: Will the next generation continue the fight, or will cities like Huntington Beach serve as warnings of how quickly progress can be undone? Tyler Stallings is a writer, filmmaker, and former museum curator/director based in Southern California. A longtime resident of Huntington Beach, where he has lived for over two decades, he is currently collaborating with Naida Osline on a documentary about Tory D. Johnson, now in the editing stage.
