Latest news with #cultureWars
Washington Post
4 hours ago
- General
- Washington Post
Hegseth moves to rename Navy ship honoring gay rights icon Harvey Milk
The Pentagon is making plans to strip the name from a Navy ship that honors the gay rights icon Harvey Milk, defense officials said Tuesday, the latest move by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to impose the Trump administration's will on America's culture wars. Deliberations are ongoing after a recent order by Hegseth to Navy Secretary John Phelan, with the decision to be announced as soon as mid-June, the officials said. It is possible other vessels honoring prominent U.S. civil rights figures also could be renamed, these people said on the condition of anonymity, citing the issue's sensitivity.
The Guardian
15 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
How the far right seeks to spread its ideology through the publishing world
The far right US publisher Passage Press is now part of Foundation Publishing Group and it is connected via a Foundation director, Daniel Lisi, to Network Press, whose only title to date is an 'effective accelerationist' manifesto by tech-right venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Another rightwing publisher, science fiction publisher Ark Press, appears connected to Chapter House which Lisi, a literary scenester in Los Angeles, originally co-founded as an independent publisher of poetry, sci-fi and esoterica, but which now presents itself as a homeschooling resource. The developments illuminate the far right's efforts to disseminate ideologically charged material as art in the US, and raise questions about its place in the broader culture wars waged by the Trump administration which is carrying out a broad attack on what it sees as liberal culture. Jordan Carroll is author of the book Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right, an account of the far right's recent efforts to advance their cause via genre fiction and the fan cultures surrounding it. Carroll pointed to 'a long tradition on the right of creating counter-institutions whose purpose is to develop a popular culture based on reactionary values in order to counterbalance what they have seen as the corrosive influence of the mainstream media, publishing, and academia'. Lisi, the publisher and director, spent years as a face in Los Angeles's diverse and left-leaning literary scene. He has now emerged as a player in a sprawling far-right cultural push, with his role in Foundation, Network, Passage and Ark revealed in company filings, trademarks, open source materials and public records. In a recently self-published book, Lisi effectively laid out a blueprint that is reflected in Passage's efforts to mainstream far-right writers by selling their work, offering high-end editions, and convening public events throughout the country. Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian it was 'another example of the far right moving to directly impact culture, and especially young people, with extremist and anti-democratic beliefs'. She added: 'These efforts represent another front in the culture wars, one that is pushing America further from democracy and equality and closer to autocratic rule.' The Guardian repeatedly contacted Lisi for comment. He did not respond. However, hours after the last request, a post from Passage's X account, framed as announcement, reflected the information in this reporting. The Guardian previously reported that Passage Press was founded in 2021 by Jonathan Keeperman, at that time a lecturer at the University of California Irvine who had long operated in far-right circles online under the online pseudonym 'L0m3z'. Passage's authors include Curtis Yarvin, whose antidemocratic ideas have influenced the Trump administration, neo-reactionary Nick Land, and Steve Sailer, who has been described as a 'white supremacist' and a 'proponent of scientific racism'. Passage recently announced four new books to its newsletter subscribers whose authors include Taki Theodoracopulos, Charles Cornish-Dale and Paul Gottfried. Theodoracopulos, heir to a Greek shipping fortune, was handed a 12 month suspended sentence for attempted rape by a Swiss court in 2023. Following the conviction–currently under appeal–he resigned as a columnist from UK conservative magazine The Spectator after 47 years. During his Spectator run, Theodoracopulos peppered his column anti-Black slurs, described New York's Puerto Ricans as 'fat, squat, ugly, dirty and unbelievably loud', praised Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party as 'good old-fashioned patriotic Greeks', and in a column on the 1944 D-Day landings wrote of the Wermacht that 'my heart goes out to those defenders'. A column in which Theodoracopulos claimed that 'Orientals … have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole' forced an apology from his former editor Boris Johnson, then campaigning to be mayor of London. Theodoracopulos also founded paleoconservative publications including the American Conservative and Taki's Magazine; the latter was edited by Richard Spencer, home to white nationalists like John Derbyshire, and was the venue in which Gavin McInnes first announced the formation of the Proud Boys. Alongside a standard edition, Passage is offering a $295 'patrician edition' The Last Alpha Male, a collection of Theodoracopulos's writings. Cornish-Dale is a British 'neofascist lifestyle influencer' who operated under the pseudonym Raw Egg Nationalist until he was identified last year by UK anti-racist advocacy group Hope Not Hate. Gottfried is a paleoconservative academic and the editor in chief of Chronicles Magazine, which the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote in 2017 'caters to the more intellectual wing of the white nationalist movement' though Gottfried has disavowed any connection with white nationalism. With Spencer he coined the term 'alternative right' in 2008 to describe rightwing critics of then mainstream conservative idea. As reported in 2024, as 'L0m3z', Keeperman had become a key influencer in far-right circles. Since that reporting, the publisher has continued exerting influence over the New Right, and Keeperman has emerged as something of a movement celebrity. In January, a Passage-sponsored Coronation Ball celebrating Trump's inauguration attracted wide coverage. In early May, Keeperman garnered a friendly interview on the podcast of New York Times opinion writer Ross Douthat, in which he objected to the 'over-feminization of society' and stifling 'racial taboos', at one point referring to Donald Trump as the 'great father of the American people'. Recent business and trademark filings show Passage has moved under the umbrella of Foundation Publishing Group, connecting it to Lisi and other publishing imprints. US Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) records reveal that Foundation Publishing Group applied to register Passage Publishing as a trademark on 3 May 2024, an application that was granted on 4 February. The application was filed and signed by Lisi, identified in the filing as vice president of Foundation Publishing Group, and it indicated that Passage was no longer an independent entity, but an assumed business name of Foundation Publishing Group. The filing also implied that Foundation now owns Passage's catalog: the USPTO requires trade mark applicants to provide a specimen of a trademark in use, and Foundation's specimen was the cover of Noticing, the Passage-published anthology of Sailer's often far-right writing. The Glendale address provided in the application is also associated in California company records with at least three other companies: Not A Cult, Tetra House Publishing Group, and Day Job Capital, all of which count Lisi as an officer. Passage has appended the same address to recent emails sent to newsletter subscribers. Information from data brokers indicate that it is also Lisi's home address. Foundation Publishing Group was first registered in California in September 2021 under Lisi's name. A July 2024 statement of information lists Lisi, Keeperman, and Matthew Kahn as member-managers, with Keeperman identified as CEO. A subsequent February 2025 statement of information lists only Keeperman as CEO. Then on 2 April, Keeperman filed a request to dissolve the California entity. Meanwhile, Foundation Publishing Group was registered in Delaware on 12 March, with a branch registered in Oklahoma on 25 March. An online book distribution platforms indicate that the titles formerly published by Not A Cult are now being distributed by Ingram under the banner of Foundation Publishing Group. Ark Press, meanwhile, was launched on 14 January, with science fiction writer DJ Butler reproducing a press release in a post to his X account. Butler is a senior editor at Ark according to his personal LinkedIn, X biography and podcast appearances. The release posted by Butler indicated that the press's pitch would be to 'often-neglected Great American Male Reader'. Also, the imprint would launch 'with the acquisition of New York Times best-selling author Larry Correia, who will begin a new contemporary fantasy series scheduled for 2026'. Like Passage in 2021, Ark launched with a writing competition, directing prospective entrants to a landing page on submission platform Submittable. The URL of the submittable page is and at the time of reporting the banner – which featured an Ark Press logo – linked through to the Chapter House website. A 30 January story in science fiction Substack Fandom Pulse quoted Butler as saying that ''we're in the same corporate group [as Passage Press]. Ark has separate editorial and management from Passage. We wish those guys well, and we hope they feel benevolently disposed toward us.'' The Guardian emailed Butler for comment. Chapter House attracted coverage from Forbes when it was launched in 2022 as a merger between Lisi-founded Not A Cult and Black Ocean, founded by the poet Janaka Stucky. At that time, the new partners had broad ambitions for the merged entity, telling readers that 'Chapter House will also stand up a raft of additional imprints.' A 2023 snapshot of the Chapter House website reflects the plans and direction that Stucky and Lisi laid out for Forbes; at the time of reporting, however, the same website presented a radically different vision. Copy on the website reads, 'Chapter House offers a new home school curriculum rooted in the richness of the Western tradition: its myths and deeds, its heroes and thinkers, its enduring questions and hard-won insights.' The Guardian contacted Stucky for comment. He said that the joint venture had been launched with the hope of 'streamlining operations and consolidating back office overhead'. He added: 'Last year we amicably agreed to end that partnership. I took Black Ocean with me as I exited Chapter House, and incorporated it as a non-profit at the end of 2024 – which felt more aligned with Black Ocean's mission and vision.' Stucky declined to comment on whether Lisi's new, more political ventures had played any role in his decision. Correia, the author Ark launched with, was prominent as the founder of the so-called 'sad puppies', an effort to influence voting in science fiction's Hugo Awards between 2013 and 2017 that in subsequent years became a rightwing anti-diversity campaign . Carroll told the Guardian that Correia was 'a conservative libertarian gun enthusiast' who 'presented his work as an antidote to what he saw as the dull, pretentious, left-leaning bias of contemporary genre fiction that was being recognized by the Hugos'. Although they did not succeed in sweeping the awards, along with the Gamergate campaign happening at the same time, Carroll said that it 'demonstrated that small but well-coordinated groups of online reactionaries can be disruptive even to real-world institutions'. Carroll added: 'Ark Press's web presence contains many signals that it's intended to be a throwback to a prior era,' pointing out that 'there's a long tradition of far-right speculation that casts space exploration in science fiction and the real world as an expression of white men's settler-colonial spirit'. Like Keeperman, Lisi's foray into far-right publishing represents a significant pivot from a long sojourn in a liberal cultural and professional world. By Lisi's own account in A Book About Books, self-published this March, he spent more than a decade in and around Southern California's literary scene, first working in nonprofits and publishing ventures before moving on to start his own publishing companies. Lisi claims early stints of employment in literary ventures: an early internship with Long Beach poet, Derrick C Brown; a 'media and membership manager' at PEN America's Los Angeles chapter, which he says ended in 2013; and more recent experience 'teach(ing) workshops' and 'developing the curriculum' for a publisher's workshop series run by the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB). The Guardian contacted Brown, PEN and LARB for comment on his history with these organizations. In a response, LARB disputed his claims about his work with them. Lisi claims to have spent time 'developing the curriculum for the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishers Workshop, a program targeting graduate students that want to begin their careers in book or magazine publishing', which involved 'years of teaching hundreds of students in real time as I've built the thing I teach about.' LARB spokesperson Irene Yoon wrote in an email that Lisi 'even gets the name of the program wrong: our program is the LARB Publishing Workshop'. She said that the program had been running since 2017, Lisi 'came as a guest speaker to share about Not a Cult for a 90-minute Zoom session in 2021 & 2022', and in 2023 'we invited him to help lead our Book Track, a smaller subset of the program for 30 students that met for 4.5 out of some 30 workshop hours a week.' According to Yoon, Lisi was replaced as course lead in 2024. In 2016, Lisi co-founded the indie publisher Not A Cult according to company filings and press releases. The filings list LA-based artist Hollis Hart as Lisi's co-founder, and she was still part of the venture in 2020 according to media reports. On the current about page of Not A Cult's website, however, only Lisi, Matthew Kahn, and Long Beach based jewelry artist Ian Delucca are named as team members. The Guardian contacted Delucca for comment. While the company published a flurry of books in the late teens, the company website and book retailer sites indicate that its output has slowed since 2022, with only one book released in 2024. The Not A Cult social media accounts also appear moribund, with Only one Instagram post in 2024 and no YouTube posts for almost four years. In A Book About Books, one emphasis in Lisi's advice to aspiring publishers is to run events, which he says support 'the core task of vibemaking'. At one point he writes: 'While capital intensive, there are ways of standing up tours that can have a reasonable target of breaking even with a solid ticketing model,' later adding 'curating a space where an audience can have a good time is probably one of the most valuable things on the planet Earth.' He says that a 'throughline' in his history as a publisher is 'events – avenues where your readership can engage in a meaningful way is the core spirit of publishing in general.' In the last year, Passage has maintained a brisk schedule of events including Sailer's book tour, a debate at Harvard between Curtis Yarvin and Professor Danielle Allen, and a coronation ball at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC for Trump's inauguration. A Book about Books also promotes a business model that might be exemplified in another Lisi venture, Network Press, which Lisi claims credit for founding on his personal website. He points to the capacity for influencers to act as their own distributors in an attention economy where 'awareness is driven by two forms of fuel: authority and vibes.' Later Lisi writes that technologies that make book production and distribution more efficient open up opportunities for adaptations of older vanity press models that would allow 'publishers and distributors to prove their value-add to … celebrities, influencers, high net worth individuals, and so on.' There is no business entity whose name directly corresponds with that of network press, but the domain was registered in December 2023 according to whois records. Since then, Network has only released one book: the Techno Optimist Manifesto, written by rightwing Silicon Valley venture capitalist Andreessen, which has been credited with touching off broader knowledge of the 'e accelerationist' movement, which rejects all constraints on capitalism and technological development. Although the manifesto was first self-published in 2023, Network offers a $495 founders edition with an 'anodized and engraved titanium sheet pressed into front and back cover' and 'leather wrap on board'.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
‘So polarised': Bruce Springsteen's anti-Trump comments divide US fans
As the lead singer of a Bruce Springsteen cover band, Brad Hobicorn had been looking forward to performing at Riv's Toms River Hub in New Jersey on Friday. Then came a text message from the bar's owner, saying the gig was cancelled. Why? Because the real Bruce Springsteen had lambasted Donald Trump. 'He said to me his customer base is redder than red and he wishes Springsteen would just shut his mouth,' Hobicorn recalls by phone. 'It was clear that this guy was getting caught up in that and didn't want to lose business. The reality is we would have brought a huge crowd out there: new customers that are Springsteen fans that want to see a band locally.' The culture wars have arrived in New Jersey, the state of Frank Sinatra, Jon Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, comedian Jon Stewart and TV hit The Sopranos. Springsteen – revered for songs such as Born In The USA, Glory Days, Dancing In The Dark and Born To Run – has long been a balladeer of the state's blue collar workers. But last year, many of those same workers voted for the president. Now their split loyalties are being put to the test. Opening a recent tour in Manchester in Britain, Springsteen told his audience: 'The America I love, the America I've written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.' He repeated the criticisms at later concerts and released them on a surprise EP. Trump responded by calling Springsteen highly overrated. 'Never liked him, never liked his music or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he's not a talented guy — just a pushy, obnoxious JERK,' he wrote on social media. 'This dried out prune of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back in the Country.' Trump, 78, also posted a video edited to make it seem as if he had hit 75-year-old Springsteen with a golf drive. Trump called for a 'major investigation' into Springsteen, Beyoncé and other celebrities, alleging that they had been paid millions of dollars to endorse his Democratic opponent in the 2024 election, Kamala Harris. Harris beat Trump by six percentage points in New Jersey, significantly less than Joe Biden's 16-point winning margin in 2020. In Toms River, a township along the Jersey Shore, Trump received twice as many votes as Harris, helping explain why Riv's Toms River Hub got cold feet about hosting a Springsteen cover band. The bar and restaurant cancelled the 30 May gig by No Surrender, a nine-person band that has played Springsteen songs for more than two decades, despite it being scheduled months in advance. Contacted by the Guardian, owner Tony Rivoli declined to comment. Hobicorn, 59, from Livingston, New Jersey, says the band suggested a compromise of playing classic rock other than Springsteen's but Rivoli rejected the idea. Hobicorn also received some criticism from Springsteen fans for offering the partial climbdown. But he explains: 'That's where I made the point that not everybody in the band is aligned with Bruce Springsteen's politics. Everybody's got a different point of view but that's OK. You can still be in a Springsteen cover band and not 100% agree with everything he says.' He adds: 'My band is split. We're half red, half blue. We have civilised conversations and then we go and play the music and it's never been about politics. This thing got made into a political situation.' Springsteen is not new to the political arena. When former president Ronald Reagan referenced the singer's 'message of hope' at a campaign stop, Springsteen wondered if Reagan had listened to his music and its references to those left behind in the 1980s economy. Later, he was a regular presence on Barack Obama's presidential election campaign. He has also challenged his audience politically beyond presidential endorsements. Born in the USA told of a Vietnam war veteran who lost his brother in the war and came home to no job prospects and a bleak future. My Hometown described the kind of economic decline and discontent that Trump has exploited: 'Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores / Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more.' Springsteen's 1995 album The Ghost of Tom Joad bluntly documented the lives of struggling immigrants, including those from Mexico and Vietnam. His 2001 song American Skin (41 Shots), criticised the shooting by New York City police officers of an unarmed Guinean immigrant named Amadou Diallo, angering some of the blue-collar segments of his fanbase. But taking on Trump is a cause of a different magnitude. His 'Make America great again' (Maga) movement has proved uniquely polarising in US culture, forcing many people to choose whether they are on the blue team or red team. The clothes people wear, the food they eat and the music they listen to have become signifiers of Maga. Even some in New Jersey, where Springsteen grew up and now lives in the town of Colts Neck, are having doubts. Hobicorn reflects: 'As the country has become more and more divided, there's certainly a real disdain for Springsteen and his politics in New Jersey. Most New Jerseyans are supportive of who he is, what he's done for the state, what he's done for our culture, what he's done for music. 'I feel like it's not a lot of stuff in the middle like, yeah, he's OK. It's one way or the other. In New Jersey it's mostly in a positive way: people love and respect Bruce for everything. But some are going to paint the picture of him: he's a billionaire and he doesn't give a crap about anybody but himself. That's what they do.' No Surrender has found an alternative venue. After the cancellation of its Toms River gig, Randy Now's Man Cave, a record shop in Hightstown, New Jersey, stepped in and will host the band on 20 June. The shop will producers flyers and T-shirts that say: 'Free speech is live at Randy Now's Man Cave.' Owner Randy Ellis, 68, says: 'The state is proud of Bruce Springsteen. He should become the state bird for all I know.' But he admits: 'In the last election, Harris won the state but there were many more people for Trump than I ever expected in New Jersey. It's so polarised now. We may have people in front of my store saying Springsteen sucks and all that. Who knows?' At a time when many of Trump's critics have kept quiet, Springsteen is arguably his leading cultural foe. In 2020 he said: 'a good portion of our fine country, to my eye, has been thoroughly hypnotised, brainwashed by a conman from Queens' – knowing the outer-borough reference still stung a man who built his own tower in Manhattan. Dan DeLuca, who grew up in Ventnor, New Jersey, and is now a popular music critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper, says: 'The thing about Bruce that people love is this idea of being a truth teller. You see what you see and you need to speak on it. There's a lot of people who are muttering things or speaking in private about what's going on in America who are not speaking out for whatever reason. Maybe they don't believe that politics and art should mix. Maybe they're worried about their fanbase or something. 'As he said, there's a lot of crazy shit going on and it's happened since he was last on the road. It's good that he's speaking his mind and he's speaking what a lot of people want to hear but maybe are afraid to hear and it's maybe giving some people courage.' But as the case of No Surrender demonstrated, there is a significant minority in New Jersey who see things differently in this hyper-partisan era. DeLuca reflects: 'I grew up in south Jersey, which is less densely populated, less urban, and it's Trump country now. 'Springsteen has been true to what he sings about and the people he sings about and the blue collar concerns but then he's open to target because he's rich or hangs out with Obama. They probably think that Bruce has turned into a knucklehead socialist or something. I'm sure there are plenty of people who probably do have some divided loyalties.'
News.com.au
22-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
MAGA is now bombarding US judges with pizzas in wild ‘intimidation plot'
America has weaponised the humble pizza. It's hot. It's delicious. It's convenient. It can be tailored to cross almost any taste divide. The Italian immigrant has long since become a staple of the United States diet. But it's just the latest aspect of everyday life to be co-opted by the culture wars tearing the once-great nation apart. Pizza has become an accidental casualty of the clash between US President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and the nation's independent judiciary. Federal judges are being delivered free pizzas. They do not choose them. They do not order them. They do not want them. But pizzas have begun landing on the doorsteps of hundreds of judges across at least seven states. They're not a gift. They're an intimidation: 'We know where you live. We're coming for you'. It is a symbology that has been a decade in the baking. A conspiracy theory assembled during the 2016 US presidential campaign falsely claimed that New York City police had found evidence high-profile Democrats were running an international satanic pedophilia ring. This was supposedly centred on a secret basement beneath the Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria in Washington DC. Then, in 2020, the son of a high-profile judge was killed when an upset lawyer disguised himself as a pizza delivery boy and opened fire when he answered the door to the family home. Slice of power President Trump campaigned heavily on protecting the US Constitution and applying literal interpretations of its dictates. But the bombastic former reality television host and real estate developer is having trouble with the separation of powers imposed upon the legislative, judicial and executive branches by the nation's First Founders. His Executive Orders are being challenged, held up, and sometimes rejected, in court. The US Constitution does not permit royal decrees from its president. Executive orders have traditionally been little more than memos proclaiming presidential interpretations of actions under legislative and judicial guidance. Trump is frustrated with these boundaries. But, despite often being political-partisan appointees, many US judges are still exercising their constitutional independence. At least 60 have challenged or blocked Trump Administration initiatives based on suspected legal breaches or overreaches of power. Some are Democrat appointees. Some are Republican. All have become the focus of an intense verbal campaign from the White House. 'We cannot allow a handful of communist radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the president of the United States,' Trump complained at a MAGA rally earlier this month. And his MAGA followers are eager to help. Menacing messages. Abusive phone calls. Death threats. Now: delivery pizzas. Judges - and their families - are being left in no doubt they are being targeted for not yielding to Trump's will. Pick up or Delivery? The overcooked mythology surrounding Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria grew so intense that 28-year-old self-styled 'hero' Edgar Welch took an AR-15 assault rifle to the restaurant, fired into the walls, and ordered staff to 'release' their prisoners. But there was no basement. And no satanically-enslaved children. Welch pleaded guilty to assault with a deadly weapon and was jailed for four years. He was later killed after pulling a gun on police at a traffic stop. Conspiracy theorists, however, still maintain that this was all a staged performance to discredit their 'investigations'. Pizza returned to the political stage shortly after Trump took office for his second shot at the Presidency. But it has taken an even more sinister turn in recent weeks. Many of the fake orders are now being made under the name 'Daniel Anderl'. That's the deceased son of Judge Esther Salas. 'It went from judges getting pizzas, to then judges' children getting pizzas, to then judges getting pizzas that they didn't order in my murdered son's name,' Salas told the Washington Post last week. In 2020, a disgruntled lawyer who had had his case dismissed by Salas disguised himself as a pizza delivery driver. He arrived at the judge's home with a concealed firearm and opened fire once the door was opened. Anderl, 20, was killed. Salas's husband was wounded. But, failing to find Salas herself, the lawyer shot himself dead. Now orders, falsely placed in Anderl's name, have reportedly been delivered to judges' homes in Washington DC, New York, California, Tennessee, South Carolina, Maryland and Oregon. Salas says the pizzas are threats. 'We know the first is, 'I know where you live.' Second is, 'We know where your children live.' And the third now is, 'Do you want to end up like Judge Salas? Do you want to end up like Daniel?' she said. Hot'n'spicy 'The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity,' US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told a conference earlier this month. 'The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy.' And the threats cross the political divide. One of the first pizza delivery recipients was US Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She was appointed to her post by President Donald Trump in 2020. But she opposed his move to freeze US Congressional foreign aid programs. In April, the Judicial Conference of the United States asked for increased funding for personal security. There were 179 threats of violence against judges in 2019. By 2023, that had soared to 457. Now the Marshals Service, tasked with judicial security, reports that the 'intensity' of these threats is increasing. Meanwhile, MAGA is getting impatient. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has accused the political movement of using death threats to ensure the party remains firmly behind President Trump. 'I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that's not right,' she said. 'We are all afraid. It's quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before.' Key MAGA figures - especially those arrested during the January 6, 2021, insurrection attempt on Capitol Hill - have been expressing frustration at the 'lack of progress' in dismantling the 'deep state'. 'We want justice!' demands Richard 'Bigo' Barnett. He had been photographed with his feet on Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's desk during the riot. 'We want the promises made kept! We stood! We showed up when Donald asked!' he posted to social media. 'We have seen nothing.' Former talk-show host and MAGA influencer Dan Bongino is feeling the sharp end of his own pressure. The Trump Administration appointed him as second-in-command of the FBI. Bongino is widely known for his allegations of criminal cabals within the Democrat party, of conspiracies to discredit and convict Trump, of 'deep state' machinations to avoid legal and legislative direction. He's now being accused of failing to produce results. 'I know you've been let down in the past,' he recently responded to his disgruntled MAGA audience on social media. 'You're owed better. And we're going to produce it.' He enigmatically added that he was developing 'a number of significant initiatives to ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated.'
ABC News
15-05-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Labor hasn't risen above the culture wars — they've just adopted a more liberal way of negotiating disagreement - ABC Religion & Ethics
Culture wars, it would seem, were partly to blame for the recent losses incurred by both the Greens and the Coalition in Australia's federal election. But what are culture wars? And why did the public take such a strong stance against them? A quick dictionary search tells us that such wars typically take the shape of a conflict between progressive and conservative groups, who hold different cultural ideals, beliefs or philosophies. And it's easy to see how disagreements over values can lead straight into a full-blown culture war in many institutional contexts outside of politics. For instance, university academics might engage in a kind of culture war if one group were to denounce academic freedom — arguing that it protects speech to which vulnerable groups object — while the other side dismissed those concerns and went out of their way to encourage that kind of speech on campus. Suddenly, both groups would be vehemently disagreeing on what counts as harm and what the role of universities should be. You can also imagine the conflict escalating to the point where it interferes with teaching and research — the core business of universities. What is puzzling about the application of the culture war label to politics is that politics, at its core, is a space where so-called progressive and conservative groups in society passionately disagree about cultural ideals, beliefs and philosophical commitments. Disagreement arises because citizens who hold profound differences on questions of value must find a way to live together in peace. Yet, because citizens feel so strongly about moral, religious and cultural issues, conflict is inevitable — especially since resolutions often fall short of consensus and frequently result in laws that bind all citizens, even when not all citizens would have consented to such laws if given a choice. Disagreements over abortion laws illustrate this point well. When one group in society sees abortion entirely as a woman's right to reproductive health, and another as a foetus's right to life, consensus becomes impossible. To put it bluntly, no conceivable law could simultaneously secure the fundamental rights that each group prioritises in their advocacy, which means one side will always necessarily lose in this contest. Here is the truth of the matter: if all groups in society could come together, deliberate respectfully, and reach consensus on moral, religious and cultural issues, we would not need politics. Politics is a first step toward solving the problem of pervasive disagreement over these difficult, emotive and identity-defining issues. In fact, some realist political philosophers might go as far as to claim that culture wars are the core business of politics. But even if they are wrong, we can at least agree that some degree of cultural war is inevitable in political life. Is Labor the liberal party of Australia? So, if all political parties are parties to these conflicts, why was Labor spared from public condemnation? I suspect that Labor comes across as the party more inclined to take the interests of all citizens into account when making progress on controversial issues — to, as it were, stay neutral on controversial moral, religious and cultural matters. Or at least, Labor appears less likely to side with one group in society at the expense of another. By contrast, examples of Coalition and Greens MPs taking sides are everywhere to be seen. It was Jacinta Nampijinpa Price who referred to late-term abortion as 'infanticide'. It was Peter Dutton who accused public school teachers of indoctrinating students or dismissed Welcome to Country and Acknowledgment of Country ceremonies as 'overdone'. It was Adam Bandt who accused Anthony Albanese of being 'complicit' in genocide in Gaza, or who declared that trans rights are non-negotiable when asked about potential conflict between trans inclusion and some interests of natal women. Now, I don't take a stand on the validity of these views, but the sheer inability to recognise competing interests from other citizens — and at least attempt to advance such positions constructively — strikes me as problematic. Take one example: you can be pro trans inclusion and advocate for better healthcare for trans people, as the Greens have rightly done, while also acknowledging that some feminists have raised concerns around women's shelters and fairness in sports that deserve a more thoughtful response than the serious accusation of transphobia. Labor, on the other hand, has been much more disciplined in handling such controversial matters. They are more careful in how they engage with them, but they also seem more willing to work hard to find solutions that genuinely treat all citizens as free and equal, creating the conditions for everyone to flourish on their own terms — without interfering with one another. And this leads me to what I see as the greatest irony of this moment in Australia's political history: Labor is the real liberal party of Australia. They recognise that a just society is one that does not impose controversial positions on its citizens, and instead attempts to solve the perennial problem of pervasive disagreement by pursuing liberal laws and policies — laws and policies that create the conditions for individuals to make their own decisions on moral, religious and cultural issues, thereby allowing them to live according to their own values without preventing others from doing the same. Luara Ferracioli is Associate Professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Liberal Self-Determination in a World of Migration and Parenting and the Goods of Childhood.
