Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2023 i Mother Jones

On the Cover For Ali Breland’s two investigations into corners of far-right culture, Mike McQuade's illustration of Pepe tearing through the face of a young white man is the perfect visual metaphor. Contributors What is something surprising you learned working on this story? My reporting reaffirmed that Gen Z and young millennials will not inevitably produce a better world. —Ali Breland, author, “Stream of Noxiousness” Daily Wire’s Jeremy Boreing ran a “safe space” club for Hollywood Republicans, whose membership included Clint Eastwood, Jon Voight, and Kelsey Grammer. —Eamon Whalen, author, “Lights, Camera, Propaganda” I was surprised how easily prejudice can lead to a child being separated from loving family and community. —Natasha Donovan, illustrator, “Forever Home”     By the Numbers To see our masthead, visit motherjones.com/about. For questions about your subscription or to…

LAST OCTOBER, Kanye West appeared on the popular podcast Drink Champs, a free-flowing interview show hosted by the rapper N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN—think The Joe Rogan Experience for rappers. In the interview, Ye said he’d been “screwed by the Jewish media.” That “Jewish Zionists” were responsible for crude tabloid stories about the mother of his children, Kim Kardashian. That Planned Parenthood was the Holocaust for Black America. And it was on Drink Champs that Ye proclaimed George Floyd’s cause of death an overdose. “They hit him with the fentanyl,” he said. “If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.” If you paid attention to the 2021 trial of “the guy,” former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, you might recognize this argument as nearly identical to…

RACHEL SWEET CAN’T PINPOINT a specific moment or life experience that inspired her to pursue a career fighting for reproductive rights. As a 31-year-old woman, she had always had the right to choose. She grew up in a Kansas City, Missouri, suburb, as part of a politically engaged family that often talked about liberal values. In college, she interned at Planned Parenthood. After graduating, she joined the policy team for Kansas City’s mayor, and part of her work focused on public health issues. “I don’t have a good story,” Sweet says. “I have never been pregnant. I’ve never had an abortion. I just know lots of people who have had abortions, and I love and care about them.” She also knows how to win. In 2022, she defeated two anti-abortion…

Ali Breland MOST WEBSITES AREN'T KNOWN for having a “kill count.” Kiwi Farms is. Its victims reportedly include Julie Terryberry, who in 2016 took her life after being targeted by users of the site. Two years later, after years of harassment from Kiwi Farms trolls, Chloe Sagal lit herself on fire in a public park. In June 2021, an American video game developer based in Japan, named David Ginder, took their life amid a campaign of Kiwi Farms abuse. Kiwi Farms is a forum similar in design to 4chan or 8chan, where anonymous posters gather. But instead of just spreading noxious discourse, Kiwi Farms users turn to the site to plan and coordinate. They work to make the lives of their targets a living hell. Their tactics include doxxing, SWATing,…

Tim Murphy IN THE SUMMER of 2011, as Washington deadlocked over the once-routine task of raising the nation’s debt ceiling, Kevin McCarthy, then the House GOP whip, decided to mix things up. At a caucus meeting, the California Republican screened a clip from the heist movie The Town, where Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner plot a violent act of revenge. “I need your help,” Affleck’s character says. “I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later. And we’re gonna hurt some people.” When the lights flicked on, Allen West, a first-term Florida congressman and Iraq veteran who had become a conservative hero for firing a gun while interrogating a detainee, rose to offer a version of Renner’s response. “I’m ready to drive the car,”…

EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE the white nationalist figure Nicholas J. Fuentes ignited a political firestorm by dining with Kanye West and Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, he strode out onstage to a crowd of what he claimed were 1,000 followers, chanting “America First.” Behind a podium, flanked by two American flags and one with that slogan, he hit his standard beats (the nation is in decline, Christ is king) while sprinkling in some extremely troubling riffs, like comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler—and suggesting the similarity was a “good thing.” This Marriott conference center worth of Groypers—which Fuentes’ fans call themselves in homage to a right-wing internet frog meme—had gathered in Orlando for the third annual America First Political Action Conference. He was serving as the warmup act for a secret guest of…

“CAN YOU TELL the court a little bit about what she was like as a baby?” It was December 2018, and Robyn Bradshaw sat on the witness stand in the Hennepin County Juvenile Justice Center in Minneapolis, fighting for custody of her granddaughter. The night before, Bradshaw had attended a support ceremony with other members of her tribe, the White Earth Band of Ojibwa, to give her strength through the hearing. But as she answered questions from her lawyer, Bradshaw’s breath was short and her heart raced. The face of her granddaughter, a quick-witted, energetic 7-year-old with big brown eyes and thick black curls, flashed in her mind. So, too, did the thought that had resurfaced countless times over the year: I cannot lose her again. The girl, who goes…

IN 1993, A GROUP of activists rented a warehouse in suburban Westchester County, New York. It was smaller than they’d hoped and had limited ventilation, but the two other locations they’d tried to rent belonged to universities and required jumping through too many bureaucratic hoops—the exact sort of paper trail this group was trying to avoid. Led by renowned pro-choice activist Lawrence Lader, their goal was to replicate RU-486, the revolutionary abortion pill developed in the 1980s by French manufacturer Roussel-Uclaf—which was unwilling to navigate American abortion politics to bring the pill stateside. Lader’s group, code-named ARM Research Council, set up shop just months after Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed outside his Florida clinic, the first US physician to be murdered by an anti-abortion activist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no…

WHEN I VISITED my cousin Beija in Munich last summer, her boyfriend, Julius, told me he was in his second year of surgery residency, and I was surprised by how well rested he looked. He and Beija had just returned from a boozy wedding over a long weekend, and as we watched soccer, ate schnitzel at a biergarten, and met family for lunch downtown, I kept expecting him to get a text and have to leave. But the weekend kept on rolling. It was a stark contrast to medical training in America, where residents refer to two days off in a row as a “golden weekend,” and spend three to seven years working 80 hours a week. As I start my last year of medical school this year, it makes…