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If the 2020s are shaping up to be about any one thing, it's ultimately about how this was the decade in which millions of people decided no amount of evidence or rationality could ever pry them from their dumbest, most reactionary beliefs. We see this in the Big Lie, of course, but also in the ongoing pile-up of asinine right-wing myths and hoaxes currently taking hold like "critical race theory," accusations that Disney employees are "groomers," and claims that kids in schools are pooping in litterboxes. If there's an ethos of this era, it's that you can believe whatever idiotic thing you want, so long as it's "anti-woke." And, of course, any effort to dislodge you from your stupid idea with annoying facts is "cancel culture."
In recent weeks, the most virulent example of this hasn't come from likely culprits Donald Trump or Florida's Republican governor cursed with permanent constipation face, Ron DeSantis. No, it's the nauseating defamation trial that pits the bloated remains of what used to be a handsome and promising movie star against a long-suffering actress. In the real world, as many a journalist with a high tolerance for Twitter abuse has reminded us, Johnny Depp's defamation case against Amber Heard is not legitimate. Any jury that actually follows the evidence should throw the case out, as investigative journalist and podcaster Michael Hobbes recently explained on Twitter.
Thread: I've noticed a weird reluctance on the part of liberal journalists to assess the evidence in the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial. The right has spent weeks screaming "she's lying!" and so far, the left has responded with "it's complicated!"
It's not. Let's take a look.
— Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) May 21, 2022
RELATED: Why Fox News is obsessed with Johnny Depp, its Manliness Under Siege mascot
And yet, under a deluge of both right-wing media and online vitriol, the preposterous notion that Depp is in the right has taken root. It's not due to any evidence, as was already shown in a British court. No, it's just because Depp's toxic supporters, through sheer belligerence, have willed their false narrative into the public understanding of the case. The social media toxicity has largely been dismissed by the press not as a backlash to #MeToo, but as celebrity worship run amok. But this story is also being driven by right-wing media figures who don't give a single hoot about "Pirates of the Carribean."
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As Melanie McFarland noted at Salon last month, Depp has become "the celebrity poster model" for the Fox News hysteria over an entirely fictional "war on masculinity." Last week it was revealed that the Daily Wire, which is shaping up to be a real competitor against Fox News, has also been spending thousands of dollars in social media ads bashing Heard.
Right-wing media is smart to invest this much in the false narratives defending Depp because misogyny is the perfect gateway to lead young white men towards a more expansive constellation of reactionary politics. Get them in the door with a story about how feminism and #MeToo have "ruined" women, and then hit them with a larger narrative about the "great replacement," "critical race theory," and other conspiracy theories the increasingly fascist right-wing media is using to radicalize their audiences.
RELATED: Boosted by Candance Owens, The Daily Wire spends thousands on ads to discredit Amber Heard: report
In the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York that left 10 people dead, there's been a great deal of attention paid to the "great replacement" conspiracy theory that inspired the alleged shooter, and how it's been mainstreamed by the right-wing press. On Tucker Carlson's popular Fox News show alone, the conspiracy theory was hyped on over 400 separate episodes. For understandable reasons — the shooter was targeting Black patrons of a grocery store — most of the discussion has focused on the racist paranoia driving the conspiracy theory that holds that shadowy "elites" are trying to "replace" white Christians with people of color.
Right-wing media is smart to invest this much in the false narratives defending Depp because misogyny is the perfect gateway to lead young white men towards a more expansive constellation of reactionary politics.
But "great replacement" is also a deeply misogynist conspiracy theory. These "elites" — who are either Jews or progressive leaders, depending on who is telling the story — are also said to have pushed white women out of their "natural" roles as homemakers and into the workforce, leading to lower birth rates and the supposed destruction of the white race. This aspect of the conspiracy theory was on full display at the Conservative Political Action Conference held in Hungary over the weekend, in which "traditional" family structures and curtailing reproductive rights were held up as strategies to fight back against this mythical war on white Christians.
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Anti-feminism makes good bait to pull young men deeper into authoritarian — and even fascist — politics.
Polling demonstrates that a distressingly large number of young men long for old-fashioned gender roles. A 2018 poll by Perry Undem, for instance, found that while most teenage girls wanted equality in the workplace and in the home, the majority of teenage boys preferred men to dominate in the workplace while women are stuck at home caring for the family. As feminist Jessica Valenti noted in a 2020 article, male support for female equality has actually gone down in recent years. Not only are young married men still foisting the majority of domestic duties on their wives, but the percentage of men who openly long to have a housewife rose from 17% in 1994 to a whopping 45% in 2014. In reaction, increasing numbers of women are turning their noses up to marriage, preferring to be single rather than be with men who don't respect them.
Once you've got these guys on board with lies painting feminism as a conspiracy against men, it's a short jump to convincing them feminism is also a conspiracy against the white race.
The reason men want inequality is, quite obviously, entirely selfish. Men reject gender equality because, duh, it sounds nice having a full-time unpaid servant and emotional support system at home, all for your benefit. But no one wants to believe they're a selfish jerk, especially to someone you're supposed to love, such as a real or even hypothetical wife. So a lot of men are open to narratives, however silly, about how it's feminists who are the bad guys. They long to hear that it's men who are the victims of a conspiracy of "selfish" women who supposedly use false accusations and other shady tactics. It's not true, of course, but we live in times where facts are increasingly discarded if they cut against a will to believe. Once you've got these guys on board with lies painting feminism as a conspiracy against men, it's a short jump to convincing them feminism is also a conspiracy against the white race.
RELATED: What trial? Johnny Depp is playing the role of a lifetime, pandering to fans outside the courtroom
The Depp/Heard trial is perfect fascist agitprop, which is why right-wing media cannot get enough. As anyone who has glanced at social media can attest, the trial has become an occasion for a staggering number of men to wallow in their false sense of victimization. Heard has become the scapegoat for all this male anger about women's independence and women's freedom. That it's laughably false to view Depp as the victim here clearly doesn't matter. Heard is an imperfect person, so misogynists can derail any discussion about the case with demands that Depp's detractors defend every single life choice that Heard has ever made. But mostly, Depp's victim status — and therefore the victim status of men generally — can be established through the sheer power of relentless repetition, drowning out all available facts. And once those young men have bought onto one self-pitying right-wing conspiracy theory, they have been softened up to accept all the rest of them.
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A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that those who engaged in an insurrection could be barred from running for office in the future. The decision comes from a challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who lost his election just a week ago.
A judge had previously ruled in Cawthorn's favor, citing an 1872 amnesty law passed by Congress. But the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling.
"To ask such a question is nearly to answer it," the court filing said. "Consistent with the statutory text and context, we hold that the 1872 Amnesty Act removed the Fourteenth Amendment’s eligibility bar only for those whose constitutionally wrongful acts occurred before its enactment. Accordingly, we reverse the district court’s grant of injunctive relief and remand for further proceedings."
The appeals court didn't weigh in on whether Cawthorn should be banned from running for office. "We express no opinion about whether Representative Cawthorn in fact engaged in ‘insurrection or rebellion’ or is otherwise qualified to serve in Congress,” the ruling stated.
They also said in the footnote that Cawthorn suggested that the issue didn't matter because he was going to lose anyway. The court argued that it did matter.
"Nevertheless, based on the record before us, this appeal is not currently moot in an Article III sense because a primary winner has not yet been certified and it does not appear the challengers have withdrawn their challenge," the ruling read.
IN OTHER NEWS: GOP candidates deemed ineligible as massive signature fraud scandal upends Michigan gubernatorial race
In the case of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), she wasn't charged with being involved in the attempt to overthrow the government. If she is charged in the future by the Justice Department and convicted, this ruling holds that she could be barred from running for office.
The same is true in Arizona, where a Maricopa County judge ruled that the petitioners didn't have the standing to challenge candidates in court. There is no law that gives individuals the private right of action to sue to stop them from running. It's unclear if that means any other entity could. That was appealed to the state Supreme Court, which withheld the ruling.
In North Carolina the law is different. According to the court, it allows "[a]ny qualified voter registered in the same district as the office for which [a] candidate has filed or petitioned” to file a challenge with the state board of elections asserting “that the candidate does not meet the constitutional or statutory qualifications for the office."
Arizona doesn't have that law on its books.
There were questions about whether former President Donald Trump disqualified himself from office by calling for a "Civil War" on his new social media site. Legal analyst Seth Abramson suggested that Trump's call bolsters an "already-strong case" that he should be disqualified for running for any future office.
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At the same time that Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was standing in opposition to Democratic efforts to raise taxes on corporations, she was raking in campaign cash from many of the companies lobbying against the tax increases — corporate PACs have given Sinema more than $2.5 million since 2021, more than one out of every three dollars she’s raised.
An Arizona Mirror analysis of campaign finance reports between Jan. 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022 for both Sinema’s personal campaign and her leadership political action committee, Getting Stuff Done, show that her prodigious fundraising is powered by corporate money.
Her reports over that span shows she accepted just under $2 million for her campaign and $567,000 for her PAC. (Her PAC has drawn media scrutiny for spending thousands of dollars on wine, paying for a personal trip to Europe and a $34,500 payment to rent a resort in Sedona.) These numbers don’t reflect individual contributions from corporate executives or other employees at companies whose PACs gave her money.
In all, her campaign has raised more than $5.8 million in that same time, while her leadership PAC has brought in slightly less than $1.1 million. Her committees have received 36% of their combined money from corporate PACs.
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Sinema received checks from businesses like Amazon, Honeywell, Intel and Merck, among many others, that have been actively fighting off Democratic efforts to reverse the 2017 tax cuts on businesses that Republicans passed while they were in power. Those groups are all part of The Business Roundtable, a coalition of prominent corporate leaders that argue increasing taxes is a threat to their future plans.
Sinema’s opposition to undoing those 2017 tax cuts is also a far cry from her campaign in 2018 against Martha McSally, when she attacked her opponent for supporting Donald Trump’s “huge tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations at the expense of our middle class.”
Accepting millions of dollars from corporate PACs -- mostly from pharmaceutical companies, public utilities, banks and hedge funds -- puts her at odds with Mark Kelly, Arizona’s other senator.
Kelly, a first-term Democrat, has sworn off accepting corporate PAC money and called for them to be banned entirely. His message is summed up in a recent ad his campaign has placed on social media: “I don’t take money from corporate PACs because I know who I’m fighting for.” Kelly also introduced a bill with Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff to ban for-profit corporate PACs altogether.
Sinema’s office refused to answer specific questions for this story, but pushed back on whether she is actually opposed to raising the corporate tax. Her campaign did not respond.
Communications director Hannah Hurley said when Sinema told business leaders at a private Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry event that, “You all know, the entire country knows, that I'm opposed to raising the corporate minimum tax rate,” what she really meant was she is opposed to raising tax rates on corporations — President Joe Biden sought to raise the corporate rate from 21% to 28% — but is still in favor of setting the corporate minimum tax rate to 15%, ensuring that profitable companies aren’t able to dodge paying taxes through loopholes and other measures.
Even so, Sinema has stymied legislation or proposals she says she supports because she has steadfastly refused to end or change the filibuster, which requires the support of 60 senators for any legislation to receive a formal vote. In a Senate that is split 50-50, with Democrats holding the tie-breaking vote in Vice President Kamala Harris, that means any legislation that doesn’t have the backing of at least 10 Republicans cannot advance.
On May 23, activists protested Sinema in Tucson for her stance on the filibuster and questioned whether she was beholden to her “corporate donors” or the “people, democracy and planet.” Hurley did not address whether Sinema prioritizes her corporate donors over her constituents.
Sinema has the benefit of not being up for re-election until 2024, while Kelly is up this year. But Sinema also has so angered Democrats that the party censured her earlier this year and she is likely to face a primary challenger. Many Democrats believe that U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a progressive who just had the best fundraising quarter in his political career, will run against her.
Sinema has already received scrutiny for some of her notable campaign contributors in the past, including several billionaires who backed Donald Trump’s presidential bids.
She has been a thorn in the side of her party since Democrats won control of both congressional chambers and the presidency, mostly due to her unwillingness to kill the filibuster. And her opposition to key parts of President Joe Biden’s agenda, along with that of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, has prevented much of the administration’s sweeping policy proposals from passing.
But Sinema has been able to claim victory on some issues: She was instrumental in a bipartisan deal on infrastructure spending, though the final plan was scaled back from what Democrats and Biden had initially sought.
Democratic political consultant Tony Cani told the Arizona Mirror that, while Sinema’s corporate backing isn’t popular in Democratic politics, it’s unlikely to change how people view her. At the end of the day, Democratic voters have already made up their minds, and those opinions are unlikely to change barring something drastic happening, he said.
“I personally think that the only thing that saves her from a viable primary challenge is if no credible Democrat decides to run against her,” Cani said.
When corporations give money to candidates, they're saying they believe in the same basic principles — in Sinema’s case, that she supports their interests. Cani likened it to anti-LGBTQ corporations contributing to campaigns of politicians or any corporation giving money to an “insurrectionist.”
“Voters should take into account which corporate PACs elected officials are taking money from, and consumers should take into account which elected officials corporations are giving to, because they are making a definitive statement,” he told the Mirror.
Cani also said candidates like Kelly are waving away corporate PAC money because it’s not as transparent as the money coming directly from individuals.
From Sinema’s Getting Stuff Done PAC, at least two scandal-plagued contributions stood out raising questions about why she accepted such money and what either has to do with Arizona’s needs.
In November, she raised $5,000 from Pacific Gas & Electric, a California utility company that just two months earlier was charged with manslaughter for starting a wildfire that killed four people. The company, which is the largest public utility in the country, also pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in 2020 for a similar reason.
Neither Sinema’s office nor her campaign would answer questions about the contribution.
But the other standout contribution came from the multi-level marketing firm Herbalife, which gave Sinema’s PAC $5,000. Herbalife admitted to engaging in criminal activity for a decade and paid a fine of $123 million in 2020 for criminal corruption and fraud. The company also contributed another $2,500 directly to Sinema’s campaign coffers.
Sinema previously faced scrutiny for accepting money from Herbalife and other MLMs because she took their money while those companies were working to kill a Democratic-sponsored labor bill called the PRO Act. Local business groups called on both Sinema and Kelly to oppose the legislation last year, which would wipe out Arizona’s “right-to-work” law that prohibits mandatory union membership.
She faced additional scrutiny last year when she hosted a private fundraiser with business leaders who were strongly opposed to Biden’s Build Back Better proposal. She charged up to $5,800 for the event which lasted 45 minutes on Sept. 27, 2021. Campaign finance records show she raised $82,000 for her campaign and another $47,500 for her PAC between Sept. 27 and Sept. 30 from PACs alone.
It was one of several fundraising events she held that correlated with moving legislation the corporations boosting her campaign coffers were against.
Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.
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