Below is an archived edition of Ctrl Alt Right Delete, a weekly email newsletter. This edition was published on 12/10/2017. Members of Factual Democracy Project have access to past editions. Subscribe to Ctrl Alt Right Delete.

This will be the last newsletter for 2017. I apologize that it’s also shorter than usual. I’ve been busy with a couple of projects and haven’t had as much time this week as I would have liked. Plus as I mentioned last week, I need a bit of a break.

Three things on my mind:

There’s been a lot of debate about Al Franken’s resignation and whether or not it helps Democrats long term. I believe his resignation was the right thing politically. The Frog Squad covered and amplified Weinstein, Spacey, etc. extensively. The Franken hit (likely from the right) and the Conyers hit (from Mike Cernovich) were clearly timed around the Alabama Senate race. The Frog Squad was banking that Democrats would protect Franken and Conyers because it negated Roy Moore’s own wrongdoing. As Amanda Marcotte pointed out this week, the early data shows that #metoo is a rare nonpartisan issue. Will it be enough for us to win in Alabama? Probably not but with Franken and Conyers gone, we can more easily take the moral high ground on all things sexism.
The attempted takedowns of Joy Reid and Sam Seder this week are just a preview of what’s to come in 2018. The media industry as a whole seems woefully unprepared to deal with targeted attacks like this. MSNBC fired and then unfired Seder because of a campaign from Mike Cernovich, a campaign he ran out in the open! The Frogs claim to hate the mainstream media but know they need them still to get their message beyond Breitbart. That’s why Milo and Co. put effort into developing relationships with media figures and why Cernovich gave Buzzfeed his Conyers scoop. These relationships might help break stories in the short term but the ecosystem it creates will do more harm to the media than good.
Important for 2018: The right aren’t trying to claim the moral high ground anymore. At this point all they want is for the public to think that progressives are just as bad and that nothing matters. Trump is terrible but so is everyone else in power. I’m not sure political folks have grasped this change in their strategy yet.

ICYMI

The racist right looks left (The Nation)
Roy Moore is the last straw, you can now call me a Democrat (USA Today)
White supremacists are the big winners of bitcoin’s epic rally (Raw Story)
Discord voice chat posts dizzying growth despite alt-right scandals (The Next Web)

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