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| Cernovich rejects and mocks mainstream ] in ''MAGA Mindset'', claiming it failed to conserve the nation and its values by embracing mass immigration, open borders and ], a decision that led to the conservative movement becoming pointless as politics would be tied to culture, which in turn would be affected by migration. (While many dominant right-wing parties, including the governing parties of ], ] and ], were running on a platform of ], the ] and the leading Western European conservative parties were stuck with more ] platforms in 2016.) Cernovich blames free trade, for example, for eroding the traditional family by outsourcing jobs and forcing mothers to work because |
Cernovich rejects and mocks mainstream ] in ''MAGA Mindset'', claiming it failed to conserve the nation and its values by embracing mass immigration, open borders and ], a decision that led to the conservative movement becoming pointless as politics would be tied to culture, which in turn would be affected by migration. (While many dominant right-wing parties, including the governing parties of ], ] and ], were running on a platform of ], the ] and the leading Western European conservative parties were stuck with more ] platforms in 2016.) Cernovich blames free trade, for example, for eroding the traditional family by outsourcing jobs and forcing mothers to work because their husbands can't financially support the family alone.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Cernovich|first1=Mike|title=How to Hurt Women | ||
| |url=http://www.dangerandplay.com/2015/12/22/how-feminism-destroys-women/ | |url=http://www.dangerandplay.com/2015/12/22/how-feminism-destroys-women/ | ||
| |website=Danger & Play|accessdate=18 November 2016|date=22 December 2015}}</ref> | |website=Danger & Play|accessdate=18 November 2016|date=22 December 2015}}</ref> | ||
Revision as of 11:10, 18 November 2016
| Mike Cernovich | |
|---|---|
| Born | Michael Cernovich Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Author, writer, lawyer |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois Pepperdine University School of Law |
| Genre | Politics, alt-right, men's rights |
| Notable works | Gorilla Mindset MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again |
| Website | |
| dangerandplay | |
Mike Cernovich is an alt-right social media personality, American political and men's rights activist, author, lawyer, and documentary film producer known for such books as Gorilla Mindset. His maxims include "conflict is attention" and "attention is influence".
Cernovich's website Danger & Play started in 2012 and was originally known mainly for men's rights and self-improvement content. However during the 2016 US presidential election campaign it has focused mainly on pro-Donald Trump and anti-Hillary Clinton commentary. During September 2016, when Cernovich's #HillarysHealth alleged that Clinton had health problems making her unfit to serve as president and that those health problems were being suppressed by the mainstream media, Cernovich's tweets were seen more than 100 million times.
Early life
Cernovich grew up in a conservative Christian family in Kewanee, a farming town Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois and later attended the Pepperdine University School of Law.
Personal life
Cernovich married his first wife as a law student in 2003. Cernovich has stated that his “first marriage was ruined by feminist indoctrination.” His wife became an attorney in Silicon Valley and "earned millions of dollars in stock from an I.P.O." She filed for divorce in 2011, and Cernovich received over one million dollars in the divorce settlement. Cernovich met his second wife shortly there after and as of November 2016 they are expecting a child.
Cernovich states that he was falsely accused of raping a woman in 2003. According to The New Yorker magazine, the charge was later dropped (and his record has since been expunged), but a judge ordered him "to do community service for misdemeanor battery".
Cernovich lives in a planned community fifty miles south of Los Angeles.
Writing career
Cernovich has described himself on the internet as a “Pulitzer-worthy journalist” who runs Cernovich Media, a “global worldwide brand.”
In 2012, he launched the website Danger & Play, a blog focused on politics, men's rights and self-improvement, and how to pick up women. As of 2016 it mainly features pro-Trump commentary. The title comes from a quote of Friedrich Nietzsche, “The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
In 2014 Cernovich was a "champion" of GamerGate, the campaign against feminists in the video-game industry, infuriating opponents with tweets such as: "Who cares about breast cancer and rape? Not me."
In 2015, Cernovich published the self-help book Gorilla Mindset: Timeless Strategies to Unleash the Animal Within You.
Until 2016 Cernovich was known primarily for his men's rights and self-improvement (or misogynism according to his critics). With the appearance of Donald Trump, he recognized "a kindred spirit" and began to make political commentary.
In 2016, Cernovich wrote the foreword to the book Cuckservative: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America written by John Red Eagle and Vox Day.
In 2016, Cernovich published the self-help book MAGA Mindset: Making YOU and America Great Again, inspired by the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Legal career
Cernovich has claimed to be a lawyer, and to have a "criminal law background" but it has been disputed as to whether he has actually ever practiced law. He has claimed to have passed the California Bar exam twice, due to his results expiring while he "fought a false rape case".
Media and views
Cernovich's "policy preferences" include "borders" and not allowing people with an IQ smaller than 115 "regardless of country" to immigrate, free speech but "no white guilt allowed" and identity politics either for all groups or for none, "guns", no federal funding for universities, student loan bankruptcy protection, "no wars" and no Wall Street bail outs, ending the use of tax havens by American companies, and a ban on "Saudi Arabian money" in US banks and companies.
Describing his political beliefs, Cernovich prefers to use the label “American nationalist” rather than a "white nationalist". He dismissed reports calling him a white nationalist several times, pointing out that actual white supremacists have attacked him for being a "race-mixer" (Cernovich's second wife is Persian). Responding to reports referring to him as a white nationalist, he wrote that he "disdains" identity politics, including white identity politics, but tries to explain them as a part of his work without condoning or judging them. He also doesn't regard himself as alt-right and claims to be generally opposed to joining ideological movements. He has criticized the movement, but also stated that he shares some "interests" with the alt-right and therefore hopes to see it "have some success".
In MAGA Mindset, Cernovich explains how he evolved from being an "open borders libertarian" to supporting stricter immigration rules, saying that the US has abandoned the cultural assimilation of immigrants in favor of multiculturalism and political correctness, a development that would lead to the replacement of the attractive American values with the values of foreign countries that made them repulsive to their own people. This kind of nationalism defines a nation by culture, a shared territory and a desire to live together, a concept opposed to ethnonationalism based on race (like white nationalism) and reflects the ideals of civic nationalism which inspired the United States Declaration of Independence. According to Cernovich, laissez-faire multiculturalism combined with the taboos of political correctness is a threat to the American society and the progress it achieved, because without strict assimilation it would fracture into several parallel societies with the culture of Third World countries eventually replacing the values of the modern American society, a process that would negatively impact freedom of speech, gay rights, and the rights of women. He also warned that "petty identity politics" would distract a society from its shared issues and "the true evil".
Cernovich rejects and mocks mainstream conservatism in MAGA Mindset, claiming it failed to conserve the nation and its values by embracing mass immigration, open borders and free trade, a decision that led to the conservative movement becoming pointless as politics would be tied to culture, which in turn would be affected by migration. (While many dominant right-wing parties, including the governing parties of India, Japan and Russia, were running on a platform of national conservatism, the GOP and the leading Western European conservative parties were stuck with more globalist platforms in 2016.) Cernovich blames free trade, for example, for eroding the traditional family by outsourcing jobs and forcing mothers to work because their husbands can't financially support the family alone.
Cernovich claims to have uncovered Media "hoaxes" and "lies" such as there being a crisis of Syrian refugees, or violence at Trump rallies.
He has emphasized the importance of simplicity in social media commentary, noting that when he made his posts "too complex", none of it got "through to people". He gives as an example of "more visceral" and successful posts, #HillarysHealth, which commented on the health of Trump opponent Hillary Clinton during the 2016 United States presidential election -- alleging among other things that Clinton had "both a seizure disorder and Parkinson's disease". By September this hashtag had got 240,000 page views and had become a national trending topic on Twitter. During the month of September, Cernovich's tweets were seen more than 100,000,000 times. According to Scott Greer, of the Daily Caller, “Cernovich memed #SickHillary into reality. Never doubt the power of memes.”
New Yorker quotes a statement on his website: "To beat a person, you lower his or her social status. Logic is pointless," in relation to Cernovich's frequent references to adversaries as "cucks" (cuckolds and "cuckservatives").
While Cernovich admits to sometimes being an Internet troll, he states: “I use trolling tactics to build my brand,” and not for his own amusement.
Cernovich opposes the two-party system and his support for Trump is not based on public policy. “What are Trump’s policies? I don’t particularly care.” In another post on his website he stated: “If Trump offends you, it’s because you live in a cucked world where no one speaks their minds.”
In an October 2016 interview with The New Yorker Cernovich said:
The left likes to talk about power structures, right?" he said. "Well, the media still thinks of itself as speaking truth to power. What they don't realize is that someone like me is perceived as the new Fourth Estate. Maybe they should check their structural privilege." The "paternalistic" media, he said, was giving way to a more democratic one. "It makes journalists crazy, because they used to be in control," he said. "They can't control people anymore. Everyone has a voice now.
Following a August 2016 appearance on Fox News Channel's Red Eye, the show's producers felt compelled afterwards to say that they had made a mistake in booking him when later learning of Cernovich's Internet history of ugly online disputes.
A number of Cernovich's public comments have been criticized. According to Salon.com, Cernovich has accused the Democratic Party of attempting to assassinate him. In 2016, Cernovich criticized Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for speaking at a gender-segregated mosque. In August 2016, Lloyd Grove, an editor for The Daily Beast, referred to Cernovich as a "date rape apologist" because of Cernovich's comments on Twitter in August 2012 when Cernovich tweeted "Have you guys ever tried 'raping' a girl without using force? Try it. It's basically impossible. Date rape does not exist."
References
- ^ della Cava, Marco; Molina, Brett (September 27, 2016). "Facebook millionaire Luckey aligns himself with alt-right, but only if you squint". USA Today.
- McQuade, Dan (August 11, 2016). "Pistachio Girl Heckled Nick Denton at the Gawker Wake". Philadelphia.
- Marcotte, Amanda (July 5, 2016). "Trump's profitable bigotry: The takeaway from his anti-Semitic tweet — his run is more a grift than a real campaign". Salon.
- Nwanevu, Osita (August 25, 2016). "The Alt-Right Is Thrilled About Hillary Clinton's Alt-Right Speech". Slate.
- Rawle, Tom (July 10, 2016). "Revealed: Gruesome photo of Dallas gunman's body after robot bomb blast". Daily Star.
- Kutner, Max (October 13, 2016). "Roosh V's journey from pickup artist to right-wing provocateur". Newsweek.
- ^ Marantz, Andrew (October 31, 2016). "Trolls for Trump". The New Yorker. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
- Legum, Gary (August 10, 2016). "From fringe to mainstream: Conspiracies, baseless accusations and lunacy is the new normal for Republicans". Salon.
- Neyfakh, Leon (March 15, 2016). "They Totally Knew: The People Who Foresaw the Rise of Donald Trump". Slate.
- Rosen, Armin (May 4, 2016). "What Fuels Trump-Supporting Twitter Trolls?". Tablet.
- Stockton, Dustin (July 29, 2016). "Breitbart News Interviews Mike Cernovich in Middle of Commie Protest". Breitbart News.
- Ching, Frank (October 4, 2016). "Did Trump leak his own tax returns?". The New Zealand Herald.
- ^ Greenfield, Scott (February 24, 2016). "Cross: Mike Cernovich, The 800 lb. Gorilla Lawyer". Mimeis Law.
- ^ Grove, Lloyd (August 9, 2016). "Why Did Fox News Welcome Date Rape Apologist Mike Cernovich?". The Daily Beast.
- "Gorilla Mindset". Goodreads.
- Cernovich, Mike (December 7, 2015). "Cuckservative: How "Conservatives" Betrayed America". Danger & Play.
- Cernovich, Mike (October 13, 2016). "Mike Cernovich Breaks Twitter Records as His Trump Book Launch Approaches". Danger & Play.
- "Is Mike Cernovich a phony? - Simple Guy Skills". Simple Guy Skills. June 6, 2015. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
- "31 Random Facts About Mike Cernovich". Mike Cernovich Presents Danger & Play. July 12, 2014. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (August 31, 2016). "Is Mike Cernovich Part of the Alt-Right?". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (October 29, 2016). "Media Hoax Alert – The Atlantic and Esquire Caught Lying!". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (October 31, 2016). "Know Thy Enemy (Myopia)". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (August 31, 2016). "Is Mike Cernovich Part of the Alt-Right?". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (January 8, 2016). "An Arab Rape Gauntlet in Paris". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (December 22, 2015). "How to Hurt Women". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (November 17, 2016). "Fact-Checking an Article about Mike Cernovich". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike (December 22, 2015). "How to Hurt Women". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 18, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike. "Media Lies Exposed: The Truth About Violence at Trump's Rallies". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
- Cernovich, Mike. "Media Lies Exposed: The Truth About Trump". Retrieved November 7, 2016 – via YouTube.
- Greer, Scott (September 11, 2016). "Scott Greer @ScottMGreer Sep 11". Retrieved November 4, 2016 – via Twitter.
- Cernovich, Mike. "How We are Changing the Culture and Destroying SJWs [Social Justice Warriors]". Danger & Play. Retrieved November 4, 2016.
- Legum, Gary (August 10, 2016). "From fringe to mainstream: Conspiracies, baseless accusations and lunacy is the new normal for Republicans". Salon.
- "Mike Cernovich". Twitter. September 13, 2016. Retrieved November 4, 2016.