Tag: elon musk
MAGA Heart Of Darkness III: Hitler's Ice Cream Meets Bronze Age Pervert

MAGA Heart Of Darkness III: Hitler's Ice Cream Meets Bronze Age Pervert

Welcome to the final installment of your Freakshow guide to the extremely online Nazi influencers of Trumpworld. It’s been a sickening tour, so take your anti-nausea meds one more time, and let’s get cracking...

First, an update on Canadian racist Geoff Martin, who we covered two weeks ago. Martin, who calls himself Captive Dreamer, includes Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and other high-profile Trumpies among his fans. But you will recall that Dreamer/Geoff’s day job was office drone at Canada’s largest Christian university, Western Trinity – an institution presided over by his own father.

After Geoff was outed, his father Todd Martin renounced his spawn’s views, albeit without naming him. In a video posted online, the senior Martin said, in part: “I reject white supremacy and any ideology that elevates one group of people over another. I denounce the use of derogatory and disparaging labels and language and any attempts to dehumanize another individual or group. I strongly oppose the use of social media as a means of spreading such harmful ideas.”

(FWIW, your Freakshow author reached out to the university’s media office inquiring about whether Geoff Martin is still employed. Their reply: “As a matter of policy and in compliance with the Personal Information Protection Act, we cannot disclose personal information about current or past employees. However, we can confirm that no individual by that name is employed by the university.”)

Dad’s renunciation didn’t sit well with Dreamer’s online fans. American racist influencer Mike Cernovich called Martin’s video “a degrading struggle session imposed on him.” As if the president of a university (“Christian,” no less) that advertises its “inclusivity” could maintain his position without denouncing the odious public views of his spawn.

Dreamer belongs to a pack of non-American influencers with advanced degrees who don’t all vote here but who have been drooling over the prospect of a fascist America for years. We’ll have one more quick look at two of them here before we bid them all good riddance (for our reading purposes at least – when it comes to the Trump administration, they don’t seem to be going anywhere).

The king of MAGA’s online fascists is a Romanian named Costin Vlad Almariu. Almariu, born in Bucharest in 1980, is a greasy hyper-misogynist racist, with a Yale PhD in political science, who posts a lot of photographs of oiled-up bodybuilders in Speedos. He argues that modernity has stripped (white) men - especially progressive men - of their manliness.

No “I like beer” Trumpworld frat boy’s shelf is without his best-selling 2018 manifesto, Bronze Age Mindset. The tome has been compared to a modern, non-German Mein Kampf. His ideas have even earned him an ism - BAPism, which stands for “Bronze Age Pervert” per Almariu’s Xitter handle. Bronze Age Mindset’s ironic tone and elevated vocabulary gild the savagery of his ideas (boiled down by him to “the desire to be worshipped as a god”).

Like last week’s Freak, Trump’s Under Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie, Almariu believes anyone who isn’t white is naturally inferior, and that “Black Africans, in particular, are so divergent from the rest of humanity that they exceed the threshold commonly used in other species to draw sub-species boundaries.”

BAPists also presume self-reliant women are the cause of all modern male problems. Almariu’s personal misogyny is bottomless. He loathes us, routinely referring to us as “grils” or with the obscene insult “roasties” or, if he paid one, “prosties.” On International Women’s Day last week, he tweeted a picture of a woman eating raw tuna, with the caption: “Highly repulsive. I will generally not see a gril again after she eats in front of me. I stopped seeing a favorite prostie after I made the mistake of having delivery sushis with her at my place.”

Almariu’s 186,000 followers include Trump Junior, Vance, and many mod Nazi fellow travelers like Charles Cornish-Dale, another offshore fascist who spews into the U.S. radicalization pipeline under the username Raw Egg Nationalist on Xitter. “Yes, disgusting’” Raw Egg responded to BAP. “Eating is a big test of compatibility. How a woman holds a knife, whether she takes time eating her food, small gestures like using napkin properly, etc.”

Delicate, napkin-noticing Brit Cornish-Dale is another MAGA favorite (followed by Musk, Vance, Trump Junior, and Silicon Valley billionaire Marc Andreessen). As recently as last fall, Trump Junior was retweeting Raw Egg’s bullshit about FEMA and DEI programs.

He has an Oxford PhD (his thesis was on the religious history of an English parish), and now edits and writes a hilariously homoerotic (given Cornish-Dale’s other sentiments) magazine called Man’s World, with covers that include AI-generated classical male nude sculpture with futuristic eye beams and an apparently erect member. A British anti-hate group that outed him reports that he lives at home with his mommy in England.

Devoted to the goal of “superlative male flourishing,” Cornish-Dale advocates “slonking” 36 raw eggs a day among other wackadoodle muscle-building cures. Tucker Carlson featured him in his ball-tanning documentary on men not long before Fox sacked him.

Cornish-Dale has promoted Mein Kampf, eugenics, and the great replacement conspiracy theory. In a recent issue of his magazine, he posted a recipe for Hitler’s ice cream - Panzerschokolade - a concoction of cocoa powder and speed that gave the brave frontline Nazi tank troops more energy! (see below)

Last week, Cornish-Dale posted an AI “portrait” of JD Vance, his pudgy face slimmed down and decked in mutton chops and 19th-century colonial uniform, leaning on a sword, with an Indian woman coiled at his feet.

Cornish-Dale, Almariu and Martin, all born or living abroad, are invested in the American fascist experiment and are engaged with, platformed, and retweeted by men with immense power over global affairs, national policy, and American people’s freedom of speech, assembly, and the pursuit of happiness. They radicalize American Trump racists suffering from the Obama Derangement Syndrome that has motivated MAGA since 2015.

For decades after 9/11, the U.S. government blew tens of millions of taxpayer dollars into anti-radicalization efforts aimed at Islamic extremists. Meanwhile, this clan formed and spewed scholarly Nazism and Euro-fascist crap into the American mainstream. They are empowered by and influencing an administration that claims to see anti-Semitism on every campus and is weaponizing that accusation to deport people, all while refusing to call a Nazi salute a Nazi salute.

These freaks remind us that whatever the appeasers (ADL, Bari Weiss) want to pretend, the sieg heil means exactly what it always has: jackboots, thugs, and mass murder.

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.


Reprinted with permission from American Freakshow.


MAGA Oligarchs Using 'Friction Theory' To Ruin Social Security

MAGA Oligarchs Using 'Friction Theory' To Ruin Social Security

Thomas Jefferson referred to the U.S. government as a "common house" that provided the people protection and stability. Donald Trump is trying to evict Americans from that comfy home by making it hard to get benefits that should be thought of as a right.

Witness the slashing of basic government services in the name of deficit reduction, or more accurately, paying for tax cuts. Elon Musk's rash firings are about more than saving taxpayers money on salaries and office rent. It's about frustrating Americans trying to obtain benefits to the point that they give up.

In economics, "friction theory" describes how governments (or other institutions) put into place unnecessary complexity, bureaucratic hurdles, or inefficiencies to discourage the public from accessing services. This can take the form of complex paperwork, or limited hours of operation to reduce demand.

It's no accident that Musk is cannibalizing the workforces that administer such benefits as Social Security and Medicaid. These are people we sometimes must talk to.

Trump started applying the friction theory in his first term to undermine the Affordable Care Act. Its purpose was to steer away the younger and healthy beneficiaries needed for a stable insurance pool.

He shortened the annual ACA enrollment period and slashed its advertising budget by 90%. He cut funding for the navigators who helped folks understand the ACA program and how to enroll in it.

He employed other means to dismantle the program. The tax cut legislation effectively repealed the "individual mandate" requiring most Americans to have health coverage or pay a penalty. By removing the penalty, fewer healthy people bought coverage. The result was higher ACA marketplace premiums to cover a riskier pool of beneficiaries.

Trump also expanded access to short-term plans that didn't have to meet basic ACA requirements, such as covering preexisting conditions. Many people opted for these cheaper plans, again leaving the ACA marketplaces burdened with a sicker population.

Unable to bankrupt the ACA, Trump then tried to kill the program outright and almost succeeded. Time to try again.

The ACA expanded access to Medicaid. Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a second Trump term, calls for stricter eligibility standards to decrease enrollment in Medicaid and place limits on lifetime benefits. What Project 2025 wants, Project 2025 seems to be getting.

As for the Social Security Administration, Musk's mass layoffs insert friction into the process of getting information about benefits or fixing problems. That has resulted in limited phone-based services and the shutting of local offices providing in-person assistance. The Social Security website has crashed four times in 10 days this month so far.

The MAGA slumlords now portray Social Security not as the earned benefit it is but as some kind of racket. Consider Musk's fake claims about armies of long-dead Americans still collecting benefits. And he calls Social Security a "Ponzi scheme."

Social Security faces financing challenges, but the benefits come out of taxes paid by the workers and their employers. What's not distributed to beneficiaries gets invested in securities backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.

Our new commerce secretary broke new ground in portraying those claiming a missed Social Security check or incorrect payment as likely criminals. I quote Howard Lutnick:

"A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling and complaining. ... The easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen, because whoever screams is the one stealing."

Face it. The knives are out to destroy Americans' confidence in the government services that made their national house feel like home. The goal of the MAGA slumlords is to get the public to curse the program and, most importantly, go away. Frustration is their weapon.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Elon Musk

How Trump And Musk Wrecked Social Security Program In Just Two Months

President Donald Trump and co-President Elon Musk's cuts to the Social Security Administration's workforce and operations have caused massive problems for the popular social safety net program that 73 million Americans depend on to afford their basic cost of living.

The Washington Post published a bombshell report on Tuesday, detailing the problems Musk has caused at the Social Security Administration through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

From the report:

The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk.[…]

The turmoil is leaving many retirees, disabled claimants and legal immigrants who need Social Security cards with less access or shut out of the system altogether, according to those familiar with the problems.

The problems are thanks to a myriad of choices Musk has made to how the agency runs.

The Social Security Administration plans to cut roughly 7,000 employees—or 12 percent of its workforce—which current and former Social Security officials say could make it impossible for the program to keep up with the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who receive and apply for benefits annually.

“Everything they have done so far is breaking the agency’s ability to serve the public,” Martin O’Malley, who served as Social Security commissioner under former President Joe Biden, told The New York Times.

Musk and his DOGE bros also changed the way recipients can verify their identities to the agency, nixing the ability to do so over the phone and requiring the elderly and disabled people who receive benefits to do it either online or in-person. That’s an incredible burden for a population that is not as computer literate as others. It could also burden recipients who live in rural areas or areas with poor internet access. Going in person would be even more of a burden since many elderly and disabled recipients cannot travel to offices—if they could even get an appointment.

A memo obtained by the newsletter Popular Information said the new identity-verification procedure would lead an additional 75,000 to 85,000 weekly visits to agency offices. In turn, that would lead to “longer wait times and processing times,” the memo said. Already, wait times for appointments can be more than a month.

Musk has had it out for Social Security since his buddy Trump put him in charge of finding waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.

Musk criticized the social safety net program as a “Ponzi scheme.” He lied that the program is rife with fraud—lies that have led eligible people to lose benefits. He also helped force out the acting Social Security administrator and replace him Leland Dudek, an unqualified hothead who has acted vindictively since taking over.

For example, Dudek canceled a contract that allowed new parents in Maine to apply for Social Security numbers for their newborn infants at the hospital—a move that would have forced those parents to travel to a Social Security office to obtain. He seemingly did it to punish Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who stood up to Trump at a meeting with governors.

Dudek also threatened to shut the entire Social Security Administration down because he was mad that a judge blocked DOGE officials from accessing Americans’ sensitive personal information as they sought to prove Musk’s baseless lies that the agency is rife with fraud.

Musk isn’t the only Trump administration official attacking Social Security.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disparaged the program and accused anyone who has had problems receiving benefits as being "fraudsters."

"Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining. And all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right? Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen,” Lutnick—who is a billionaire and could easily ensure his mother-in-law wouldn’t face financial ruin if her Social Security check went missing—said on a podcast.

Musk’s attacks on the overwhelmingly popular social safety net program goes against Trump’s claim that he would protect Social Security if elected.

And breaking Social Security is politically moronic. It is one of the most popular programs in the country.

Eighty-seven percent of Americans ages 25 and older believe that Social Security should be a priority for the nation, regardless of governmental budget deficits, according to an October 2023 poll from Greenwald Research for the National Institute on Retirement Security, a nonpartisan research organization. And a more recent poll, conducted by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that 67 percent of Americans believed the government spends too little on Social Security. Only six percent said too much is spent on the program.

What’s more, older voters who receive Social Security benefits are among the most reliable voting blocs in the country. That means a backlash from those voters could sink Republicans chances in the 2026 midterm elections. In 2024, Trump won voters ages 65 and older by just one percentage point, according to exit polls, so even a modest backlash from that voting group could heavily damage Republicans next November.

And the signs that the backlash is coming are already showing up. Older voters are packing into Republican lawmakers’ town halls to demand they stand up to Musk’s DOGE cuts.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Elon Musk

GOP Strategists Fear 'Mounting Voter Frustration' Over Musk Misconduct

It’s not all sunshine and roses for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) among Republican voters, The Hill reports.

“Republicans are facing mounting voter frustration with Trump administration cuts” spearheaded by the tech billionaire, The Hill’s Julia Mueller writes.

GOP strategist Alex Conant, who served as Marco Rubio’s communication director in 2016, told The Hill that voters “haven’t necessarily heard about the benefits”of DOGE, warning “there’s gonna be political costs” if the department slashes services Republicans support.

“What Republicans should be concerned about is Musk’s effectiveness,” Conant said. “If DOGE actually breaks things that people care about and rely on, there’s gonna be political costs to that.”

Republican strategist Doug Heye warned that DOGE's efforts to slash jobs throughout the federal government will eventually show in “real job losses.”

“There’s gonna be real job losses that we’re not measuring yet, but we’re going to in the coming weeks and months,” Heye told Mueller.

Heye added the losses will have an “an impact, especially in specific communities,” and could make “life harder for the reliable voter, typically, for Trump.”

“That kind of slow burn, I think, could have an impact,” Heye added.

University of Delaware political science professor Dannagal Young said with the GOP’s near-total control of the government, “what really matters is what is going on in Republican districts with Republican voters who have Republican lawmakers who are representing them.”

Young said the trust Republicans have in Trump isn’t necessarily translating to Musk — despite the billionaire being “aligned with the Trump agenda.”

“The trust in Musk, in DOGE, while still higher among Republicans, is not ginormous,” Young noted.

“I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear what it is that Republican lawmakers are saying internally about these pressures and what fears they may have about their own re-election prospects as a result,” Young said.


“I think that the more that Republican lawmakers are hearing from angry constituents, and the more that they become aware that these angry constituents are, in fact, Republicans who maybe voted for them just a couple months ago, I think that there’s going to be perhaps intra-party conversation about the extent to which Musk has been given the keys to the castle, and how their constituents don’t love that,” he added.

Read the full report at The Hill.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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